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.

I hear a lot of discussion online via other podcasts about audio books. I happen to listen to a few shows that are sponsored by Audible, an online audio book service, and it is given some ample praise. Some people seem to gravitate towards audio books in lieu of picking up physical copies of novels, but do audio books deserve the hype? The answer to this question is my ultimate goal.

Audio books give off some strange miasma in my view of consumable media. I’ve yet to see where I could place them in my daily usage, opting instead, of course, to simply read with my eyes and not my ears. I can, however, see the function if you travel frequently. One cannot always keep their nose in a book. But if you find yourself at home and want to know the contents of The Illiad, why would you choose the audio over the novel?

I want to hear if anyone has had any experience with audio books. Did you find the experience to be pleasant, or did it feel like a big waste of time? Would you rather just read the books themselves? Is it technically “reading” if you’re just listening?

So here’s what we’re going to do: using this link you can sign up for a 14 day free trial of Audible and receive two free book credits. If you cancel before the 14 days are up you get to keep the books, so no biggie. Don’t say I didn’t do anything for you.

ALSO: the link above came from a really great podcast that I’ve listened to for a long, long time called “TWiT,” or This Week in Tech. The show discusses the major technology headlines of the week and is really fun to listen to. Please take some time to hop over there and listen to a show or two; if you like technology, you’ll probably like the show.

According to /Film, in a recent screening of Transformers 2: Revenge of LeBoof, Michael Bay told reporters and anyone else who would listen to him that Steven Spielberg thought the film was Bay’s best.

“Steven Spielberg sat next to me in a big 100 person theater at Sony today,” wrote Bay on his online forum. “There were 98 empty seats. The lights came up after we just watched my cut of Revenge of the Fallen. He turned to me and said ‘It’s awesome’ He felt this movie was better then the first – and probably my best, who knows – at this point in a movie you start to lose your objectivity. I just hope the fans like it.”

And although it would be super easy to make fun of Bay, to make a joke about how easy it would be to make “his best movie” considering the films in his portfolio, it might be better to discuss Spielberg, who has most likely gone crazy in the last few years when he put his name on such things as Indy 4: Aliens, Aliens, Aliens.

/Film reports that the newest trailer for Transformers 2 will show with X-Men Origins: Wolverine Becomes A Man, if you’re interested.

Episode 69 of Pressed & Bound is online! In this week’s episode we review:

Books:

• McTeague

Movies:

• Man on Wire

Right click and download the sixty-ninth episode here:

• MP4 244mb

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

Episode 68 of Pressed & Bound is online! In this week’s episode we review:

Books:

• Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)

Movies:

• Bonnie and Clyde

Right click and download the sixty-eighth episode here:

• MP4 326mb

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