Episode 70 of Pressed & Bound is online! In this week’s episode we review:

Books:

• American Gods: A Novel

Movies:

• La Femme Nikita [Blu-ray]

Right click and download the seventieth episode here:

• MP4 257mb

Comments or questions? Email us at: pnbfans(at)gmail(dot)com

J.J. Abrams hasn’t had the best of luck lately. A couple of years ago Cloverfield came out to some marginal reviews, and last fall Fringe became a high budget show to avoid if for no other reason than the main character never changes facial expressions, but this summer might bring the mighty Abrams (J.J., not M1) back into the spotlight. Well, Lost’s new season currently not sucking could do the same, but we’re not talking about that right now, are we?

According to Yahoo News, even though it’s against Kahn’s wishes, the new Star Trek movie is actually pretty good.

Fans of the “Star Trek” saga will be delighted to see Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Bones (Karl Urban) and all the others in the early part of their lives as the Starship Enterprise takes its maiden voyage. The film is so much fun, however, that it will draw in moviegoers just looking for a sensational ride. The box office should beam up enormous returns when the film opens on May 7.

So there you have it. Some one you’ve never met liked the movie. I just hope that unlike George Lucas, this re-envisioning of a decades old space film will not feature any Gungans. Also, there had better be Tribbles in some form or fashion or I’m walking out of the theater.

The show will be a little late this week. On his way to shoot the show, Joe was attacked by bridge trolls. It was a bloody battle, but he came out victorious, although he had to set a broken collar bone and femur. Luckily, a dolphin with a saddle on its back came jumping down the river and picked him up.

Also, we got some new mics and that held up the show a bit too, but it was mostly the goblins.

I spent a few days trying to figure out what I wanted to buy with the two free books offered by the Audible deal posted a few days ago. The experience of getting books in the audio format was somewhat strange, I must say.

It was really kind of difficult to find something that I wanted simply because I wasn’t standing somewhere holding it in my hand. Call me old fashioned, but I do like to physically hold and open and flip through a book before buying it, as it will be my compatriot in the hours it and I will spend together. While I don’t think my difficulties with finding something is a fault of Audible at all, I do like the experience and steps one has to go through with buying traditional novels. I like going to the store and wading through isles to find that one novel that looks the best. Buying the same literature online in the fashion that Audible presents feels very sterile and uninteresting.

I did, however, find two novels that I had somewhat on my periphery: Coraline and The Graveyard Book. I’ve been on a Gaiman kick lately. We’ll see how they go. I hope to have some impressions on the show here in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Reported by /Film, at the midnight showing of a sequel to a movie that no one had ever heard of, Crank 2: High Voltage, 30 folks from the Twitter community gathered together to “live-tweet” the film as it premiered. Unfortunately, though, some cranky old farts (or random hipsters, no one knows), were upset with this rampant use of Twitter in the movie theater. These people, however, were not even at the showing, so their point is moot:

A fun social networking movie event eventually degraded into an anger-filled shouting match. But strangely enough, no one in the theater itself was upset about cell phone usage. It was the people at home on Twitter who were outraged

Those most vocal people, or, at least, those who sat at home and read about it then got upset, were movie critics, bringing up the point that dozens of lit up screens in a theater kinda destroys the fun of going to a theater. Aziz Ansari, actor in the newish The Office clone Parks and Recreation, replied to some criticisms:

…This was Crank 2 and we did make a point to sit in the back row by ourselves where the light could not bother anyone. Basically, I don’t want to give the impression that its cool to text or Twitter in a theatre, BUT if there is a movie with a character named PoonDong… I think its a unique situation and we were respectful in how we did TwitFlix.”

So the question arises: Is Twittering during a movie with somewhat controlled circumstances a bad thing, especially during a movie that for all intents and purposes you will forget as soon as you leave? Also: who wants to get together so that we can all do this exact same thing?

You can read the full /Film article here.