AJS Reviews

From AJS.COM

Welcome to AJS Reviews. I'll be tackling the latest geeky goodness out there, at least once a week, when I can. Most of these reviews are positive. That's not because I want to get people to buy things, but because I'm mostly covering those items that I've enjoyed in the past. If I run into problems with something, though, I won't hesitate to give it a bad review!

WARNING: If you have ad-blocking software enabled, you won't see the product links and images on this page. I use two types of ads: Amazon product links for each item I review and text-only Google ads. I hate huge dancing widgets, and you won't see those sorts of ads on AJS Reviews, so it should be safe to turn off such software for this site. You can also get AJS Reviews updates and changes by RSS feed.

A friend of mine also maintains an anime review site, if you're looking for reviews of Japanese animation specifically.

Iron Man

Friday, May 2, 2008

Iron Man is a superhero movie based on the Iron Man comic book series that has been running (in one form or another) since 1963. While not Marvel's most beloved hero, Tony Stark AKA Iron Man has long been a core member of their universe, often acting as a peer to Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. There are plenty of plots and twists from the 45 year history of the character. In rather typical fashion, the movie chose to focus on his origin, and in the case of Iron Man, that origin played well into current events in the real world.

OK, all of that's out of the way. How was it? Amazingly good. I don't throw around praise like that easily, and certainly not at superhero movies-gone-comedy. However, this was easily the best superhero film since the first Spider Man and for many of the same reasons. Let me cover some of the bad, then I'll get into why you should watch this.

There's a robot. It's a cute robot. It's a cute robot that's used for comedic relief. I can't express how close this came to ruining the movie for me. I think if it had ever had a line other than the whine of its servo motors I would have walked out of the theater. However, it's not in most of the film and it's never given any lines or a body. That saved the film. Other than that, there's not a lot of down-side, here. Tony is a caricature of a wealthy socialite, but that's Tony Stark for you. His transformation into the obsessive hero/leader requires something of an offset. Though this is perhaps handled clumsily, it's not terribly distracting and his playboy days are over fairly early on. The climactic fight scene is also a little bit of a let-down but frankly that's not what the movie is about. It's about Tony Stark and his personal transformation. The fight really just punctuates his emergence as a hero.

That's it for the bad. Now, here's the good bits:

Robert Downey Jr. was an unlikely choice but he's easily the best choice I can imagine in retrospect. He is Tony Stark, through and through. He hits the comedy with the precision of an Olympic gymnast and is equally believable when he is forced to come to terms with what his weapons are being used for. The supporting characters all work out perfectly. Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard make excellent foils in quite different ways, though I thought the military situation with Howard's character was unfortunately ill explained (why does he have the authority to make the calls he does?)

The suit is a real character in the film, and I love what they did with articulating every surface. That worked out very well. The CG is heavy in much of the film but they find ways to make it work without seeming like a video game.

There are a surprising number of pratfalls but somehow they manage not to change the tone of the film. During a montage where Stark is testing the suit for the first time, there are about 4 scenes that relish in throwing Downey around the room or dropping him from a height, but each time there's a different approach and the audience (and I) found themselves laughing at every beat.

I would caution against taking young children to the film. There are scenes with people being shot in the head, mild torture and the clear and graphic threat of severe torture. This all takes place in the beginning of the film, which is much less violent during later acts.

The Orphanage

Friday, May 2, 2008

The Orphanage (El Orfanato in Spanish) is a Spanish-language release by Juan Antonio Bayona (director) and Sergio G. Sánchez (writer), but you'll hear a lot about Guillermo del Toro in association with this film. He executive produced it, and the film shares his sensibilities expressed in Pan's Labyrinth (which del Toro wrote and directed). Unlike Pan's Labyrinth, however, this film does not explore the fairy tale world of imagination from a child's eyes, but rather from an adult's. At its heart, this is a ghost story, not horror. That's an important distinction. If you walk in thinking that you're going to see blood and gore or have people jumping out of dark corners at our heroes then you'll get little of what you came for. Instead, this is a very cerebral and personal thriller that tracks the fate of a distraught mother as she becomes more and more aware of what is going on in her home.

The references to Peter Pan in the film are a rather clever parallel, but in many ways I think the film's plot shares more likeness with Hamlet or The Telltale Heart.

I give high marks to this film, but I have to caution potential viewers: there is one scene that comes as a shock and is not scary, but certainly is unexpected and rather brutal. It's brief, and does serve to move the plot forward, but if you walked out of Meet Joe Black when Brad Pitt was killed, then you'll know exactly why I'm warning you about this scene and its aftermath. That said, most of the movie isn't there for the quick shock. The Orphanage is about slow and horrific realization, not the cheap thrill.

I've put the Blue Ray link above. I think Blue Ray would be overkill for this film. It's just not in need of the extra detail, but some people want that, so there you go.

Cloverfield

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

I have a new review of the movie, Cloverfield up that I recommend you check out if you haven't seen the movie. Long story short: this is easily the best giant monster movie in recent memory, dispatching all of the competition for that title with ease.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 1: The Long Way Home

Monday, January 7, 2007

You've heard of direct-to-DVD, so why not direct-to-comic-book? This collected volume of issues 1-5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight is the official 8th season of the Emmy-winning TV series, written by show creator Joss Whedon and packed with every surviving character from the series (plus a few that you thought didn't make it). Only Angel and Faith fail to make an appearance, both of whom show up later on (Angel in his own after-the-series comic and Faith in the latter half of season 8).

The book is a must for die-hard-fans of course, but even for those of us who simply watched the show and enjoyed it, this is an excellent follow-on. The humor, pop-culture, action and character tension are all there. The writing is not Whedon's best, but it's excellent. It's not all roses. The new big bad is, so far, ill-defined and smells like a bit of a re-hash of what we've seen before. Dawn's dilemma is a bit of a contrived metaphor for the fact that she's been feeling like an outsider since her retcon introduction.

However, these are blemishes on an otherwise excellent story that has had me eagerly running out to my local comic shop and buying each new issue. The new issues that are on the stands now are apparently the hottest-selling thing that my local comic shop has moved in a long while (they commented that they've re-ordered several times).

On the technical side, the story is effects-heavy in places that the small screen was obviously not conducive to. Spells and strange dimensions are thrown around without any of the build-up that they got in the series (where they were the culmination of many budget meetings, I'm sure). The art is up to the task, however, suffering only slightly from the usual problems of trying to identify actors by their illustrations. Buffy's body language is spot-on, and when I look at Giles or Xander, I really see the actor that gave those characters life in the show shining through. The covers are excellent, and are collected in the back for you to peruse after reading the collection.

Bottom line: If you watched the show and liked it, buy this book. If you didn't watch the show, consider buying the whole series on DVD or just starting out with the 1st season to see if you like it. The 8th season has a lot of history behind it, and it's probably going to be hard to just "jump in". The good news, though, is that the series is well worth watching anyway!

The Sacrifice

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Sacrifice is a psychological horror film that takes place in a sleepy New England town that has too many secrets. On the surface it's a bit Lovecraftian, but it has some modern twists including a romantic interest between the two male leads, Jonathan Kelly (Kersey) and David (Snyder). This is a first effort for independent director, Jamie Fessenden, and it shows. The camera work is uneven, the lighting is occasionally terrible, and the sound makes some scenes feel more like a reality show than a movie. For all its warts, though, this is the kind of suspenseful horror that the genre used to be all about. If you enjoyed The Ninth Gate or some of the Twilight Zone's more horror-oriented episodes, then this is a film for you. Keep an eye out for the upcoming sequel from Dunkirk Studios.

Huey Fong Chili Garlic Sauce

Monday, October 15, 2007

Hot sauces are a dime a dozen these days, but there's one chili sauce that no kitchen should be without, and this is it. I've used this sauce for about 10 years now, ever since I had the fortune to live near Boston's Chinatown. This sauce isn't useful for most at-the-table applications, but for cooking any kind of meat dish that needs a little extra zing, it's perfect. In fact, it's one of the core ingredients of my Thai Nam Prik Ong recipe (a spicy pork dipping sauce). You can also add this to just about any Italian-style tomato sauce to give it some extra kick.

The Warren Ellis Mega-Review

Monday, October 1, 2007

Warren Ellis breaks many of what I considered to be the rules of modern, commercial writing and I think he likes it that way.

My first exposure to his work was in the pages of superhero comic books such as The Authority and Planetary. Ok, there's a pigeon-hole. Problem is, there are more. He's also written the hybrid tale, Transmetropolitan, which is a darkly comedic and highly cynical near-future tale of a suspiciously Hunter S. Thompson-like gonzo journalist. Well, that certainly pegs him as the run-of-the-mill black-and-white comics writer, except for the fact that Transmetropolitan is from Time Warner's DC Comics' Vertigo line... not exactly the niche one would expect.

Outside of comics, Ellis has collaborated on a never-aired TV series called Global Frequency which was based on his science fiction graphic novels of the same name. His first effort in the world of historical fiction was the graphic novel, Crecy, which traces the events of the battle of Crecy which, along with two other battles, established the supremacy of the English Longbow in medieval warfare.

As you can see, tracking down what it is that Warren Ellis writes about is a little difficult. There are, however, many common themes and he has a style which invites comparisons to some of the greats of the New Wave science fiction of the 1960s, especially with respect to Harlan Ellison's acerbic wit. Vulgarity, unorthodox sexuality and violence are often interspersed with an analysis of the human condition that borders on the post-modern but isn't quite introspective enough to become lost in its own deconstructive naval-gazing. He's also prone to the abuse of pop-cultural cliché in unexpected settings. His series, Planetary, for example is something like The X-Files in a world of super-heroes and mad science, but every issue is written as if it were the story that immediately follows a film or comic of some other genre. There is the issue about giant monsters on a Japanese island, now all dead. There's an issue about two cops that could have come straight out of any of a dozen action films from Hong Kong in the 1990s, but one of them has died and become a vengeful ghost. You get the idea. It's the story you don't hear after an otherwise interesting genre story.

I could ramble on for quite a while trying to explain who Warren Ellis is, but I'll stop here. For the play-by-play review of many of his works to date, see my full Warren Ellis Mega Review.

Jekyll: The Best Show You've Never Heard Of

Monday, September 24, 2007

Jekyll is a BBC drama series about a modern day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The story opens in the middle, as Dr. Jackman is dealing with his uncontrollable transformations. There's nothing in this series that knowing the original story can spoil for you. You meet Mr. Hyde in the very first episode. You are told about the original story very early on. What you don't expect is the radically unique way they handle the transformation. I won't ruin it, but it's not at all what you expect, and the way both the writing and the acting rise to the challenge is one of the high notes of the show. If you want to know more about the story, please read the Spoiler Review. Otherwise, read on for more spoiler-free details.

And about the writing.... This is potentially the best written show of 2007. There's a level of faith in both the actors and the audience that is rare on TV today. Certainly an American show that tried to treat the audience with such respect would be deluged in "notes" from the studio. Twists are the norm in every episode, and everything about this series is a surprise. Every character is more than they seem at first, and the series keeps throwing curves until the very end of the season.

What about the lead? James Nesbitt delivers a mousy, unassuming, clever and surprisingly strong Dr. Jackman, and a complementary creepy and unhinged Mr. Hyde. When Hyde refers to his scientist alter-ego as "Daddy," my skin crawled. The secondary roles are equally well played. His assistant dances around admitting her obvious desire for and fear of the doctor with grace and skill. His wife has some difficult scenes to film, and she pulls them all off perfectly. I found myself rooting for her more than Dr. Jackman.

Overall, this is the one series this year that you're both least likely to have seen, and most likely to be pleased with. Don't miss it now that it's on DVD!

Munchkin 2: Unnatural Axe

Thursday, September 13, 2007

This is a Steve Jackson game, and includes a long line of Munchkin card games. Some of them (like Munchkin Fu) are playable by themselves. Some (such as Unnatural Axe) are meant to be combined with one of the starter games. This is a non-collectible game (which means you get the same cards as anyone else who buys the game), which makes it much less of a money-sink. If you want to buy a few expansions you can, but you don't gain any advantage except fun.

What follows is the review I wrote for Amazon a while back for Unnatural Axe.

Munchkin, like all good comedy, makes it look easy. The game seems to be a haphazard collection of puns and silly in-jokes for gamers. But there's something else there. It plays well, has fairly balanced rules and manages to keep the competitiveness in the game even through all the laughter, right up to the last card.

This expansion walks the same tightrope, but it does work. The humor is as good as the cover implies, and if you have a group of gamers that enjoy a good laugh, you need to grab Munchkin and the first two expansions at least.

Bridge Books

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Bridge is a great game, but it can be hard to learn. I'm reviewing a number of my favorite bridge books as a group. Please read on at Review:Bridge Books To Learn From. I cover Root, Reese and many of the other authors of some of the most widely read bridge books. Beginners and intermediate players are most likely to get some use out of these books.

Sceptre 22WG Widescreen LCD monitor

Sunday, August 26, 2007

For the full review, see Sceptre 22WG Widescreen LCD monitor. This is the monitor that I currently use, and I have to say that it's probably the best I've ever had. The only down-sides are that the auto-adjust doesn't always keep up with Linux at boot time, and the speakers are tinny and as useless as monitor speakers typically are. The picture, however, is perfect. When playing video games like World of Warcraft, there is no perception of lag in screen refresh. Overall, a monitor that I would recommend.

Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital Elph Camera

Monday, August 20, 2007

The Canon PowerShot line has been my favorite non-SLR digital camera for several generations now. I think my first was the S200, way back in the day. The full review is at, Review:Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital Elph Camera. The short version is that this camera is an excellent tool for anyone who doesn't have the time or money to deal with an SLR, but if you think an SLR would work for you, it's probably the better choice.

Apple 30 GB iPod

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The Apple 30 GB iPod probably needs no introduction. You know iPods. You know about iTunes. These things are fairly easy to assume. Well, I just broke down and bought one, since the iPhone is out, which means that this is now fairly stable, old technology. Read my full review of this iPod for more details on how I use it, and how I feel about it now that I've had it for a bit. In the full review, I also describe all of the extras I've bought for it, and give some mini-reviews of them.

Short form: The UI isn't quite as easy to use and polished as I expected from Apple, but overall it's a wonderful device, and has given me plenty of fun for the money.

The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark

Monday, August 6, 2007

The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark is the first of a new direct-to-DVD series by the same team that did Mystery Science Theater 3000. The idea is similar. Three people provide a sort of "commentary track" for an otherwise unwatchably bad movie. That's about as far as the comparison goes. Had this been an episode of MST3k, it would have been one of the worst.

Hollywood After Dark was a crime thriller front for a soft-core porno (no naked body parts, but only thanks to pasties and tiny bikini-bottoms) from the 1960s starring Golden Girl, Rue McClanahan as a stripper in the seedy world of Hollywood nightclubs. There's really not much there to work with, and even the otherwise ribald Film Crew can't come up with enough jokes to last through the tortuously long exotic dance sequences. I watched this with some co-workers, and we did laugh at times. Mike Nelson's timing is still excellent, and the two "robots" from the series are just as funny as real people. The sketches were dull and lifeless, but mercifully short.

If I had to identify one thing that this movie suffered from most, I'd say that its the genre. Erotic crime thrillers just aren't as good when they're bad, and you can't fall back on making fun of the silly rubber suits or laughable tech.

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales / Voices In the Dark

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales is the name of the first volume of the new, direct-to-DVD series, which follows the events from the Babylon 5 series, 10 years later. This review will be rather extensive, so I'm going to put it in its own article: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales - Voices In the Dark. To sum up: this is a first effort on many levels. There are two stories, and I suspect that fans of the fifth season are going to like the first story (Over Here) quite a lot more than the rest of the fans. The second story (Over There) is a continuation of the Alliance and Centauri storylines. Both stories clearly provide setup for the larger arc, which will probably be looser than that of the original show. The graphics are excellent, but there's a sense — as with most of the virtual set heavy work that's come out of Hollywood in the last few years — that we're looking at someone's memories of what happened, not the original event. There is an emptiness to every scene that makes it seem unreal. Overall, I'd rate this as a 5 out of 10, if I were pressed to assign numbers. It's not the best B5 story, but it has the virtue of being the only B5 story in a long, long time, so I recommend it to fans and those who would like to see more direct-to-DVD science fiction series get the greenlight.

Newman's Own Organics K-Cups

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Newman's Own Organics K-Cups are a K-Cup-dispensed, single-serving coffee that comes in Special Decaf and Extra Bold Special Blend. These are very good, but it's important to understand the limitations before you go out and buy them expecting the same taste you would get from a home-brew cup of Newman's Own coffee.

K-Cups are mostly used institutionally by companies that want to provide coffee to their employees. It's a rapid brewing technique that does not deliver the same flavor as regular coffee, though it's as close as I've ever tasted from a rapid brew. So, Newman's Own doesn't deliver when it comes to breaking the K-Cup taste barrier, but of the K-Cup coffees I've tried, this is far-and-away the best. I highly recommend that anyone who's locked in to K-Cups at work think about trying this out. It's also nice to know that what you're drinking supports fair trade farming, and doesn't contain pesticides and other things that I'd rather I never heard news reports about.

Old Man's War

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Old Man's War by John Scalzi (published in 2005) is the first SF book I've read in a little while. I've just had other things to do, and this is exactly the kind of book to break the fast with! An awful lot of people are comparing this book to Starship Troopers, the 1950s classic by Robert Heinlein (not the travesty of a movie from the 90s). That's a fair comparison, but I'd like to throw a few more comparisons in there. It shares Gun With Occasional Music's twisted vision of an altered future and Altered Carbon's dim view of the ethical maturity of mankind. As a military SF novel, and as a dark, but subtly optimistic view of mankind's future in the stars, it's one of the best I've read.

A word of warning, however. The story, at first, seems to be about how these 75-year-old soldiers will be altered so that they can be productive combatants. Like many elements of the story, this is only the beginning. Don't be disappointed when the answer is presented early on, and relatively matter-of-factly. The real story is in following our hero, John Perry, as he learns to be a soldier in a galaxy that is both more dangerous and more strange than he could have imagined.

Monte Cook's World of Darkness

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Monte Cook's World of Darkness is a roleplaying source-book that's upcoming from White Wolf publishing. The odd thing about it is that Monte Cook is the co-creator of White Wolf's biggest competition: the 3rd edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. For him to be writing a White Wolf book is rather an interesting move since White Wolf has always been the more left-brain nemesis to the rules-and-tables-heavy Dungeons & Dragons and d20 system.

I'll be reviewing this title as soon as I get my hands on it, but wanted to give folks a heads-up. For now, it's on pre-order.

Goya Hot Sauces

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Goya Hot Sauces are a fairly broad group of specialty hot sauces that have become popular recently. These are, in my humble opinion, the finest hot sauces sold today. Before these, there was a trend toward one of two things: amping up flavorless sauces with extract oils (ala Dave's Insanity Sauce) or taking generic vinegar sauces and slapping absurd labels on them, usually involving the words "ass", "nuclear", "hell", or a combination of the three. In contrast, each of the new Goya sauces focuses on a specific chile (smoked or plain), ranging from ancho (pictured) to habanero to jalapeño and so on. Each of these sauces captures the spirit of these wonderful fruits (yes, chiles are fruits), without adding overpowering vinegar or other competing flavors. Now, don't get me wrong. I love complex sauces that have ginger, cumin, carrot, honey, mustard, or any number of other ingredients. For sandwiches a complex sauce is quite nice, but when I'm cooking I want a pure, simple sauce that I can combine with whatever ingredients are appropriate or even none at all. Goya delivers with just enough secondary ingredients to bring out the flavor of the chile in question, and no more.

The best part about these sauces, though, is their availability. Most major supermarket chains are carrying them, even here in the northeast. Go find them. Try them. If you don't like things that are too spicy, start with the smoky and alluring ancho sauce. Add small dabs of it to your mayonnaise or mustard when making sandwiches or just a bit to your scrambled eggs. Before you know it, you'll be slathering the super-hot habanero sauce on your hot dogs like it was ketchup!

World of Warcraft

Thursday, June 14, 2007

World of Warcraft is a game which has been out for a while, so why review it now? Because it's worth it! World of Warcraft is, frankly, every gamer's dream. I even maintain a page about the game mechanics (World of Warcraft: Raiding the Metagame). The game features that hooked me include:

• Excellent single-player play from level 1 to 70 including quests all the way through the levels that are really worth doing
• Instanced dungeons that you and 4 others can explore for every level of player from 1 to 70
• A rich set of player-to-player sale tools for in-game goods
• A player-made goods system that's powerful and easy to use
• Player-vs-player options as rich as any game, MMO or otherwise
  • 1-on-1 duels
  • 2-on-2, 3-on-3, and 5-on-5 arena matches against all comers in ladder
  • 4 battlegrounds, each with their own objectives, where one faction fights against the other
  • Several "world pvp" objectives that provide wide-open possibilities
  • But most importantly, PVP is entirely optional (except on PVP servers, which you can choose to start on if you want)

For the programmers out there, World of Warcraft is leaps ahead of the pack. It offers a fully programmable user interface and modding system that allows you to write complex programs to control the layout and behavior of the user interface in a language called Lua.

The other thing worth mentioning is that the developers and their representatives are deeply involved with the community, and can be communicated with via the official WoW forums.

The expansion, The Burning Crusade, was released in early 2007, and continues to deliver new content to players 6 months later, including a rise of level cap (from 60 to 70), new PVP options, deep and rich raiding progression, two new races, and a host of new tools.

A great board game: Settlers of Catan

Monday May 7, 2007

Settlers of Catan is one of my favorite board games, a topic I intend to cover in detail as AJS Reviews continues. This game has what all good board games have:

• Simple rules
• Good play for a group
• Multiple strategies for success
• Nicely made pieces

The basics are simple: you're building up commerce in the island nation of Catan. You can build roads and houses, and gather goods wherever you build, but building itself requires goods. Build enough and you win. It will give any family or social group many sessions of fun, and who can beat a game where you find yourself saying, "I have a stack of sheep I want to turn into a road." ;-)

The ultimate wake-up: Zen Alarm Clock

Monday May 7, 2007

Also find this review on its own page: Zen Alarm Clock

The Zen Alarm Clock changed my life. No really. I was one of those people who always over-slept, and always got used to new alarm clocks over time. That was ten years ago. Today, I always get up, even when I've had four hours of sleep. When it first goes off, it chimes once, and no reasonable person would wake up. Over the course of 10 minutes, it chimes ever-more-frequently, and eventually chimes every 4 seconds. However, over that period of 10 minutes, you've been gradually brought to a state of wakefulness that resembles the way a good teacher will train you to end meditation. You're fully awake by the time you get up to turn it off, and though you might still be tired, you don't have to fight off the urge to simply close your eyes and keep sleeping. The only down-side is the price-tag, but knowing how well this worked for me, I'd pay twice as much today! The Zen Alarm Clock is one several next-generation approaches to alarm clocks, many others of which also show promise.

Wrist work-out: Dynaflex Power Ball

Monday, May 7, 2007

The Dynaflex Power Ball is one of those wrist/arm work-out devices. I'm sure you've seen many, but this one actually works quite well. It's a gyroscope that you spin up like a top, using the provided string. Then you turn it in your hand, rotating your wrist in a circular motion. If you do it right, it will spin up and keep going as long as you want to keep up the effort. It's a great workout, and I use mine quite often to keep my wrists from doing the same thing all day long. The only down-side is that it's a bit loud, so you either have to go somewhere else to use it, or have co-workers who are OK with the whirring sound.

Update: Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Well, that sound turned out to be a deal-breaker as did the easy-to-lose string. After a while I had no where left that I could use the thing without annoying others and it was always a struggle to figure out where the string had gotten to. I recommend this only to those who have a real need for the wrist/arm workout that it can provide and who have somewhere they can go to use it in private.

Upcoming: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Monday, May 7, 2007

This has been a long time in coming. Babylon 5 finally has what the series' creator, J. Michael Straczynski, once thought might be the sixth season of the original show in 1997. At the time, he posted to Usenet saying it would be, "an anthology series, to all intents and purposes, using our characters almost like a repertory group." In July of 2007, Babylon 5: The Lost Tales will be for sale, direct-to-DVD to general audiences! Expect a full review here once it is released!

Update: Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Well, Amazon has told me that I should now expect Lost Tales between August 3rd and 7th, a delay that's unfortunate, since there was a party I wanted to tout the DVD at this month... oh well.