The thing about Lebron James is this: most people I know disliked the dude before the ill-fated “Decision” and subsequent welcome celebratory event held in Miami. Before those events, most of the folks I know would describe Lebron this way: childish, self-congratulatory, arrogant (who really tattoos “chosen one” on his body?), but the most talented player the NBA has seen in years.

That was the view before the events of last summer and definitely before his disappearance act in this year’s NBA Finals and meltdown following Game 6.

All this last year did was cement our preconceived image for Lebron.

So when I turn on the radio and NBA TV and hear and see commentators saying that Lebron was just tired after all of his burdens this last year, my response is simple: shut up.

LeBron is undeniably the most talented player in the NBA and is, arguably, the greatest athlete to ever lace up his sneakers and take the court.

But a humble, well-liked player, he never was.

This is the guy who tattooed “Chosen One” on his back.

This is the guy who, when 17, talked about himself in third person and dubbed himself “King James.”

This is the guy who dances on the court during blowout victories.

Sure he might be nice to media guys, unlike Kobe, but that doesn’t mean anything to the average fan. For seven seasons, LeBron has spit at the little guy. It’s about time, his face gets wet in return.

(Note: I wrote this immediately after the NBA Finals, but forgot to hit “post.” Oops.)

Super 8 was a very good film. A film I’ll probably watch in the theaters many more times over my summer vacation. I say this knowing that the movie wasn’t made for me–a writer and teacher in his mid-30s, nor was it was it made for my 31-year-old girlfriend. While we both enjoyed the film, a lot, the person who got the biggest kick out of it was my 13-year-old stepdaughter. She laughed harder and jumped more than both of us and her first words when leaving the theater were, “I want to make a movie” like the kids in Super 8.

In this director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg achieved their collective goal. They made Super 8 for an audience her age. They wanted to make a throwback movie that could introduce the concept of “adventure” to her much like the Spielberg movies from the 80′s, especially E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Goonies did for my generation. Yeah she had watched E.T. and The Goonies and enjoyed both, but those were MY movies. They were her mother’s movies. They included kids who are now my age. They weren’t for her.

But Super 8? That movie is hers (hopefully). It’s made for her generation with kids her age.

I’m not going to go too into the actual plot of the movie in this review other than the following because I think it sums up nicely what I took from Super 8.

The movie begins with the funeral for the mother of Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney). She had died in a work accident, which left sheriff deputy father Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler) the lone source of love for Joe. It becomes very clear that Jackson has no clue how to be a father. To him parenting is all about making his son’s decisions and telling him “no” just to keep him safe. And like all parents who don’t know what to do with their kids when they’re set to be home alone, Jackson wants to send his boy off for the summer. A baseball camp would help both of them a lot, Jackson tells his son. But Joe wants none of that. He wants to be with his friends.

Jackson reminds me of, well, myself and countless parents I’ve met.

We don’t trust that our kids will make good choices. We fear that they’ll end up kidnapped or dead or worse, pregnant. We fear the outside world. So we keep them inside the house and when we let them out, we make sure it’s in a structured and safe environment. We don’t know what to do with them, so we sign them up for sport after sport, program after program. We make sure they’re “busy.” We give our kids Facebook and Call of Duty and 200 channels of HD programming on television, which includes countless reruns of twin 30 year olds Zach and Cody.

Jackson wants to give his son baseball camp because he won’t get in trouble there like he might by helping his friend, Charles (Riley Griffiths) make a zombie flick for an Ohio movie contest.

But a real monster gets in the way of Jackson’s plans and sets Joe off on adventure with his buddies and the school hottie, Alice (Elle Fanning). By the way, the love story between the two lonely kids is the most convincing (kid or adult) I’ve seen in a film in a long time.

The children’s adventures is where Super 8 thrives. It’s not an action movie-by the numbers the way Pirates of the Caribbean 4 is or the way Transformers 3 will most likely be. Super 8 brings back that world of imagination and possibilities. Each action scene and each revelation is tied together by the friendships that will shape these people for life. It brings back that world when kids, innocent and naive of the world, weren’t scared to go into a scary pit to try to save their friends, and when the young, because they didn’t know any better, actually knew more about the world and how to save it than their parents.

This movie is about kids blowing shit up, falling in love, and applying their imaginations and talents to something productive. It’s the type of movie that inspired the 80′s Spielberg and today’s Abrams.

It’s this type of movie that inspired me to want to write fiction.

I’m sure some people will dislike this movie. They’ll complain that they didn’t see enough of “the monster.” And they’re right in that sense. But I have advice for these people: take some kids to see the movie, go home, take away their phones (“But, how will I get in touch with him?”), take away their iPods, give them a video camera, some firecrackers, some makeup, and kick them out of the f’n house. I guarantee you that they’ll have more fun for two hours of that than they’ll ever have sitting in front of a laptop computer checking their friends’ latest status updates or killing Nazis in the latest first-person shooter and the end product might not be great, but I bet it’ll sure be fun to watch.

Or maybe these people should just think back to what they used to do when they were 13 or 14 and how anything was possible. Then maybe they’ll realize just how super Super 8 really is.

It’s official, Jennifer Lawrence will play Katniss Everdeen in the adaptation of The Hunger Games. While I had originally hoped Emma Watson would at least be considered for the role, I had grown to believe Hailee Steinfeld would be perfect for the part.

But Lawrence’s casting makes sense for one reason: she’s 20 and her features won’t change much between the filming of The Hunger Games and, hopefully, Mockingjay, the third novel in Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy.

I’m disappointed for one reason. Once the Watson pipe dream was clearly not going to happen, I wanted Katniss to be more ethnic looking and Steinfeld fit that mold.

Still, I’m not a stickler for exact adaptations and an Oscar-nominated actress (Lawrence was nominated for her role in The Winter’s Bone) adds acting credibility to the series, which is more than can be said for other young adult novels turned movies (ahem, Twilight saga).

I just finished re-reading (listening to) George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984 and find myself both fascinated by its excellence and disappointed by the contrived story.

See, re-reading 1984 as an adult as opposed to a 17-year-old high school senior makes a huge difference. While seniors are usually taught, or led to believe that a 1984-like society is something to fear, an adult can look at the novel not as what might happen, but as what has been happening in varying degrees throughout the modern world.

And this is where the novel is absolutely excellent. It is neither a liberal book, nor is it a conservative book. Members from all political spectrums could read passages from the novel and say, “See! I told you so!”

For examples, Republicans can say that social programs like welfare and food stamps do nothing but pacify the poor from standing up for their rights.

While liberals can point to passages that equate political anger and viciousness to an undersexed society and say, “The Tea Partiers need to get laid more,” or that Republicans constantly try to pretend that the Founding Fathers did not hold racist tendencies and founded the United States on Enlightenment principles, not religious ones.

Conspiracy theorists can have a field day with the novel. A modern reading by a member of the radical left and radical right can look at the mythical opposition leader Emmanuel Goldstein and the need for a tighter-controlled society and Osama Bin Laden, who seems to be put on the television every few months just to remind Americans that the al Qaeda threat remains and that Americans must be vigilant in stopping terrorism.

While Orwell’s political message is clear and concise, 1984 lacks the heart that other dystopian tomes, such as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, have succeeded in portraying much more effectively. In fact, the novel 1984 seems to be just a vehicle for Orwell to spread his political warnings. This becomes exceedingly clear in Part II, Chapter 9 in which the novel’s main character Winston Smith reads from Goldstein’s “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” — a 90-minute essay when listening on audiobook.

Perhaps a political warning is all Orwell wanted to accomplish from 1984. And in that he succeeded tremendously.

The main warning I took from my re-reading the novel is that language is much more valuable than we treat it. Of course the structure of language is a much more complex issue than social welfare and warfare. Orwell feared for the English language as evidenced in his famous “Politics and the English Language” essay. While one of 1984′s recurring motifs is that of simplifying the newspeak version of English, and in “Politics” he rails against the lack of clarity in English political speak, the results are the same: without strong language, we are in a bad way.

We can draw a corollary to today’s educational focus on testing instead of developing language and original thought. More and more adults and teenagers frown upon reading in today’s culture. The Internet and text messaging is making writing a farce (“LOL,” “ROFL”). Hell, most adults don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” and think “should have” is actually “should of” based on sound.

I believe that the degradation of language is the most dangerous threat to America today. Conservatives want to point to political correctness as the main culprit, and liberals want to point to an underfunded educational system. But, like in 1984, not one group is to blame and all are at fault.

1984 is an important book, but shouldn’t be read as an indictment of one side or another, which is what often happens when the book is brought up in political discussions. Instead, it should be read as a warning to society as a whole because there is nothing more important than language and original and honest thought in a democratic society.

Just finished reading Mockingjay (review to come later) and couldn’t help but getting excited about The Hunger Games movie slated for release in 2011.

Here’s my cast:

Emma Watson as Katniss Everdeen

Fresh off Harry Potter, Watson has no roles slated and has even talked about giving up acting. But she’s everything I imagine in Katniss: pretty, but not super hot, young and fragile-looking, but an inner toughness. Also, Watson brings an A-list actress into the fold, which would give The Hunger Games instant credibility among sci-fi/fantasy fans and teenagers. (Of course she’d have to lose her British accent.)

Matt Lauria as Peeta Mellark

Not sure how old Lauria is (his age is not on IMDB), but he played a high school junior in season four of Friday Night Lights. Peeta has to be the hardest character to cast for The Hunger Games because he needs to be good looking, but he also must have depth and should have a greater screen presence than Katniss. While Lauria might not command the screen more than an Emma Watson-type actress, he was convincing in his sincerity during the pregnancy crisis in FNL.

Josh Holloway as Haymitch

An angry, alcoholic, 40-year-old former Hunger Games victor, Haymitch should be tough, funny, but also have a sensitive side. Holloway, who played Sawyer on Lost fits all of those characteristics. Holloway would just need to keep his shirt on.

Chloe Moretz as Rue

Everyone wants to cast Moretz as Katniss. No. Moretz looks too young and people must forget the sexual tension between Katniss and Peeta and Katniss and Gale throughout the books. Are you ready to believe Moretz pregnant? I thought not. But the crafty Rue? Absolutely.

Elle Fanning as Prim Everdeen

Prim is supposed to be the same age as Rue and should resemble her. She should also have an adult-like presence. Fanning fits those characteristics.

Charlize Theron as Mrs. Everdeen

Beaten down former beauty? Sounds like a role for our favorite hot actress who likes to play ugly.

Amy Poehler as Effie Trinket

Effie is a major character and should be able to act ignorant, funny, and kind of bitchy. Poehler meets all of those requirements.

Any good looking young dude as Gale

Face it, Gale plays a good role in the mind of Katniss during the games, but do we really see him? Nope. Just pick Zac Effron or someone like him and call it a day.

Recommendations for the Month:

• Audio: The Green Mile by Stephen King (Read by Frank Muller)
• Book: The Hunger Games and Catching Fire both by Suzanne Collins (Book three, Mockingjay comes out in August)

Stuff I Read:

• A Game of Thrones (Book 1 of the A Song of Fire and Ice series)
• Wild Child and Other Stories by T.C. Boyle

My Reading List:

• The Promise by Jonathan Alter
• Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer
• A Clash of Kings (Book 2 of the A Song of Fire and Ice series) by George R.R. Martin
• The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
• Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

My Listening List:

• The Great Hunt (Book 2 of The Wheel of Time series) by Robert Jordan
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Read by Carolyn McCormick)

Stuff I Listened To:

• The Eye of the World (Book 1 of the The Wheel of Time series) by Robert Jordan (Read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Read by Sissy Spacek)

I don’t think I have adult-onset ADHD or anything. I just like variety. And I hate the incessant bullshit that is printed everyday in newspapers, talked about on TV  or even reported on the reliable NPR. I just get tired of it. So I need to find myself distracted, entertained, hell, fulfilled. Books do this for me. So I bombard myself with things to read or listen to just to keep myself distracted (or focused, depending on your point of view) from the crazy, gossip-driven, crisis-laden world out there.

At any given moment, I’m shuffling between 10 or so books. So sometimes it takes me a while to get through my list. For example, I just finished reading TC Boyle’s Wild Child and Other Stories, which I started sometime in February. And I’ve been reading The Promise by Jonathan Alter since early June and probably won’t finish until mid-August.

I guess my reading habits mirror my eating habits. I pick a little from every part of the meal. I’ll have a little pancakes, then a little bit of eggs, a bite of bacon, and then back to the pancakes, and so on. Then, when I get close to the end, I’ll just finish each food item really quickly. While I started reading Wild Child in February, I read about 120 pages the last four days.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not keeping myself ignorant about the current state of things (the economy sucks and Republicans don’t like Obama), but too much of this stuff drives me crazy. Hell, it should drive anyone crazy. But I prefer to get my information from longer analyses, not 30 second soundbites by politicians running for office in a few months.

As far as my literary habits go, I prefer to read stuff that’s timely.

For example, I started reading George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Fire and Ice because of the upcoming HBO series A Game of Thrones, which is based off the first book in this series. The series stars Lena Headey, one of my personal favorites, and after reading the first book in the series, I’m definitely interested. This fantasy series, about several royal families positioning themselves to take power of all the kingdoms in the realm, is unapologetically harsh and not like any fantasy series I’ve read. No apologies for marrying off 14-year-olds and no apologies for the lords screwing wenches, servants, and whores without any qualms. None of that. This series .

In contrast, I’ve decided to start listening to Robert Jordan’s classic The Wheel of Time series. I’m a recreational distance runner (I’m doing about 22 miles this week) and often prefer listening to books over music. In fact, I’ve read reports that said running while listening to audiobooks actually helps distance runners. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can say listening helps me maintain when I’m on the road for an hour-plus on my long runs.

I decided to start listening to these books because a coworker recommended them for my dad and my dad loves them and I didn’t want to feel left out. The first book, The Eye of the World, is really cool and a great beginning for the fantasy series. While listening to the book, I noticed many similarities to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and several biblical allusions, but I didn’t find these distracting, or think, “What a rip off.” Jordan has created his own coming-of-age hero story with the initial book. I didn’t find the hero, Rand al’Thor, as compelling as his friend Perrin Aybara, but al’Thor is sympathetic, albeit in a Luke Skywalker-whiny sort of way, enough.

It is a little confusing trying to read two major fantasy series at the same time, but I’m managing it by rotating. When I run, I listen to The Great Hunt, the second book in the Jordan series, and on days off from running, I’m reading A Clash of Kings by Martin.

As a teacher, I’m often lucky enough to read masterful pieces of writing (although students might not always realize it) by some of the great masters. (I’m also unlucky enough to read some pretty bad stuff, which I guess is why so many Americans grow up disliking reading.) One story I fell in love with while reading it to my summer school class is Shirley Jackson’s “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts.” As illustrated by the classic “The Lottery,” Jackson is the master writer of suspense. “What’s going to happen? What’s the purpose of this? Who is this guy? UGH!” Jackson is the master of the short story, which is why I picked up The Lottery and Other Stories. So far, the collection doesn’t disappoint. The first two stories in the collection, “The Intoxicated” and “The Daemon Lover,” are haunting in their own ways.

Maybe it’s a love for the classics, and the need to feel challenged that has pushed me to read Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. I picked up the new translation and really want to absorb the writing. I feel pompous saying, “I’m reading Proust,” but hell, I am. Now, the writing is not hard to understand, but it is filled with so much depth. People like saying “detailed” when referring to Proust’s writing. But so far, I don’t see it that way. Yes, he’s detailed, but it’s the depth that impresses me.

Take for example this little passage he wrote about a dream:

Sometimes, as Eve was born from one of Adam’s ribs, a woman was born during my sleep from a cramped position of my thigh. Formed from the pleasure I was on the point of enjoying, she, I imagined, was the one offering it to me. My body, which felt in hers my own warmth, would try to find itself inside her, I would wake up (4-5).

That’s depth, not detail, and that’s more sensual than most passages from any romantic novel out there.

But aside from trying to deal with Proust, I try to stay practical. I like self-help books. But I hadn’t really heard of Wayne Dyer until I saw the recent short cartoon Day & Night (links to iTunes) from Pixar that appeared before Toy Story 3. The cartoon featured a remarkable little portion of a speech by Dyer about the importance of tolerance:

Fear of the unknown.

They are afraid of new ideas.

They are loaded with prejudices, not based upon anything in reality, but based on… if something is new, I reject it immediately because it’s frightening to me. What they do instead is just stay with the familiar.

You know, to me, the most beautiful things in all the universe, are the most mysterious.

Anyone, I thought when I arrived home from the movies, who has that much wisdom has to be someone to listen to. So I Googled and found out that Dyer is a self-help writer, so I purchased one of his first books, The Erroneous Zones. It’s a pretty good summary of many of the co-dependent, need-for-approval weaknesses people have. It illustrates how far too many of us need the approval of others in order to feel better about ourselves.

Until next month.

Many people want to point at the explosion of Twitter as the moment our culture hit that narcissistic tipping point. But for anyone who has actually used Twitter knows that, for the most part, this social network is nothing more than a convenient RSS reader and trend checker. What’s in the news right now? Let me check Twitter. What’s happening at Comic-Con? Let me check Twitter. What are people watching right now? Let me check Twitter.

Yes, teenagers and Kim Kardashian still use Twitter to talk about their up-to-the-minute activities. (Damn it, Kim, I don’t give a rat’s ass how you look in that bikini! Not bad, by the way.)

Still, I can understand some of the hostility directed at micro-blogging and Facebook status updates. I’ve experienced some backlash: “No one cares about the damn Lakers, so you don’t have to tweet about them every five minutes.”

I admit, Twitter can be annoying. I cringe when I hear a “serious” reporter on CNN say, “Let’s hear what America was Tweeting about last night” or “On his Twitter page, So-and-So said this…”

But the narcissistic tipping point in American culture? Not even close. America jumped that shark when reality television became the staple of nightly household entertainment.

I’m not really talking about shows like Survivor, The Greatest Race, and American Idol (even though spending two hours a week watching singers who can’t sing “win” a record contract seems like a horrible waste of time to me). Those shows have their reasons for existing. They at least have dramatic tension.

I’m talking about the shows with no purpose, the shows in which networks put the most dysfunctional group of people in a house with cameramen just to see what happens, like a human ant farm for teenagers and women. The genre created by MTV’s The Real World. I’m talking about shows like Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives, the Bad Girls Club, and countless other The Real World clones. I’m also talking about the shows in which cameras follow around “celebrities” the audience is supposed to find interesting: John & Kate Plus Eight, Keeping Up With the Kardashians and the like.

The shows in which “drama,” the way the kids use the word, is the dramatic tension.

The other day I found myself sitting on my couch watching Bad Girls Club with my girlfriend. The premise of the show is this: put seven “bad girls” in a house, prohibit them from hitting one another, and watch chaos unfold as they exhibit their passive-aggressive tendencies to get back at their roommates in as many awful ways as possible. Just like every other reality show that involves a group of America’s most dysfunctional, the house is split between two camps in Bad Girls Club. One camp is made up of the four more attractive women in the house who all enjoy partying. The other three girls spend their time talking and complaining about the other four. In the episode I watched, the partiers come home from a bar drunk and angry at their other three roommates. So what do they do? The ring leader, a not-so-unattractive woman, repeatedly pissed in the sink. And then her and another girl proceeded to stick bottles of condiments up their asses and in their cooches, following that class act by spitting in the other girls’ milk and juice.

Watching the show is like slowing down to see a car accident and having your day made by seeing a yellow tarp covering a dead body. You feel bad for looking, but can’t help it because you’re in shock and a little bit excited to go home and tell everyone (tweet everyone?) what you just witnessed.

Same thing with last year’s idiotic hit, Jersey Shore. Not only did the show reinforce some terrible stereotypes, but it popularized an abhorrent aspect of American culture: uneducated, untalented young people wasting their lives fist pumping, tanning, lifting weights, getting hammered, and having sex with strangers. Personal responsibility? Forget about it. Self-improvement? I’m fine the way I am.

While the people on these shows are narcissistic at the core, a more insidious kind of narcissism occurs on the viewers’ sides of their TV sets.

Viewers give thanks that they’re not as fucked up as the people on the television screen. They feel better about themselves because they’d never stick a bottle of ketchup up their asses–they’re not that trashy. They feel better about themselves because while they might spend much of their time fist pumping at bars and clubs, obsessing over makeup and tans, or working out, they at least go to school or have real jobs. They’re comforted in that they’re not the only ones who’ve cheated on boyfriends, girlfriends or fiancés, or have had hundreds of sex partners, most of them before or on the first date. (Of course there are those viewers who just like watching just because it’s funny, but this rant is not about them.)

This type of narcissism says that while they can relate to the characters on the screen and even think some of the things that happen is cool and even do some of those things, they are better than them because of X, Y, and Z.

I’m not the moral police, not by a long shot. I don’t care if the movies I watch are filled with sex, cursing and violence. That stuff doesn’t bother me. But I think reality TV is dangerous. Just the moniker “reality” is troublesome. What the folks on Jersey Shore do isn’t reality. That’s homo-erotic fantasy. The Bad Girls? That’s idiocy.

But these shows are bad because the narcissistic lifestyles they promote show up in real life. They make viewers believe that they are more important cogs than they really are, or that success is really contingent on nothing more than showing up–no need to work hard to earn a good grade, a raise or a promotion.

A few weeks ago, IFC started showing reruns of Freaks and Geeks, one of the greatest one-season shows in the history of television. Excellent writing (Judd Apatow, Mike White, Paul Feig) and excellent comedic acting (James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel) abound. This show is one of the most realistic aspects of high-school life I have ever seen. But the show lasted one half-season on NBC before finishing its run on Fox Family. Clearly one of the great tragedies of American television, but a boon to the movie industry. But I don’t blame NBC for canceling Freaks, it had atrocious ratings despite rave reviews and it costs a lot to keep together a talented cast, while reality TV costs very little by industry standards. NBC made a good business decision although it consisted of no backbone or vision. But I do believe the paltry ratings for that show and the high ratings for “reality TV” depict something about the current prime-time American audience: people don’t want to see accurate portrayals of reality; they just want to feel better about themselves.

****½ (4.5/5)

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire
by Suzanne Collins

Hundreds of years in the future, what was once North America has disappeared, the dystopian society of Panem in its place. Surrounding Panem are 12 districts, each designated a specific task (District 12 mines coal, District 11 works farms, etc.). And each district is required to send two teenagers, one male and one female, to the “hunger games,” a yearly, fight-to-the-death televised event (think Stephen King’s The Running Man with teenagers) designed to not only entertain the grotesque citizens of Panem’s Capitol, but to remind the people of the districts that disobedience and rebellion will not be tolerated.

It’s through the hunger games that we meet 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who feeds her family by illegally hunting in forests that have been ruled off-limits by the authorities. Katniss volunteers to take her 12-year-old sister’s place in the games after her name is drawn in a ritual that alludes to the one played out in the classic Shirley Jackson story, “The Lottery.”

Beneath the surface of what seems to be total control by President Snow and the Panem authorities, a rebellion is brewing and Katniss’s actions in both books add fuel to that fire.

Both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are written at break-neck speeds with nary a dull moment. The first two books in this series have something for everyone. Unhindered action and violence in a do-or-die reality TV show. A love triangle between Katniss, a studly hunter named Gale, and Peeta, a kind boy her age, who she decides she needs to keep alive during the games. There are even some fashion tips, albeit bad ones, that are shared when Katniss visits the Capitol.

Throughout the books are acknowledgments that life isn’t always fair. The idea hits Katniss like a ton of bricks (Sorry for the cliche. One of my only problems with the books are the plethora of cliches used by author Collins.) when she begins to like Peeta knowing that, in the end, only one of them will be pulled out of the arena alive.

But it’s the reflections on our society that makes these books even more pertinent. We enjoy watching people fail on shows like Survivor and American Idol. Idiots like Snookie and The Situation become famous and wealthy because MTV puts them in a house to see how much trouble they can create. Car chases are must see TV because, well, who knows how those will end. One has to wonder, how far off are we as a society from these games?

While the first book is a great introduction to the world, the second book really expands the story beyond the hunger games. Collins gives both her characters and the world of Panem more depth in Catching Fire. Still, both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are in the upper echelon of teen sci-fi novels. They tell gripping stories and should make readers yearn for the third and final installment of the series, Mockingjay, which is due out in August.

Notable Stars: Logan Lerman, Brandon Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean, Rosario Dawson, Kevin McKidd

Running Time: 119 minutes

In the post-Harry Potter world, there are of course going to be comparisons between that story and every teen sci-fi/fantasy movie that’s released. And for Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief, the comparisons poured in before the movie was released and kept pouring in.

… the obvious similarity of Percy Jackson to the Harry Potter movies inevitably makes it feel somewhat secondhand. – NY Times

Dutifully Potteresque it begins, and dutifully Potteresque it ends. – Globe and Mail

Has all the CGI sorcery of a Harry Potter pic, but none of the magic. – Entertainment Weekly

Percy Jackson, you are no Harry Potter. – Detroit News

The only problem: Percy Jackson is not like Harry Potter. Aside from having a boy and a girl help out the story’s teenage hero, the movies diverge, and quite quickly.

By the way, I’m a HUGE fan of the Potter series and I have read and really enjoy Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books.

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief is one of the funnier fantasy movies I’ve seen in a while. What it lacks in “magic,” it makes up for with humor, wit, and some well-placed lessons in Greek mythology.

The Lightning Thief is the tale of young Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), a dyslexic, ADHD-affected New York teenager who finds out he’s a demigod — the son of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon. Once discovered, Percy gets whisked away to a training camp for demigods where he discovers that his ADHD is something that will help him in battle and his dyslexia will help him make sense out of Greek, literally.

Percy is joined by the beautiful Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), a daughter of Athena, and best friend Grover (Brandon Jackson), a satyr assigned as a protector to Poseidon’s offspring.

The trio go on a quest — like Perseus and Hercules, not Harry — to free Percy’s mother from the grips of Hades and to hopefully find out what the heck happened to Zeus’s stolen lightning bolt. Zeus (Sean Bean) suspects his brother Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and son Percy because of a long rivalry between the two top gods. As a result, global war between the gods seems to be a sure thing.

Those gods and their petty fights.

Now, let me make something very clear: The Lightning Thief is a FUN movie, just like the novels are FUN books. The first in the series is fast-paced, full of humor, likable characters and exciting events, and contains modern re-imaginings of millenia-old myths. (So yes, I guess you can say Percy Jackson ripped off old stories–2,500-year-old ones.)

The movie is the same.

There will be complaints from the Percy Jackson literalists, who will be pissed that the characters in the movie are at least five years older than in the book, that Ares, the god of war, isn’t in the movie, and that there is just a very brief mention of Kronos, the Titan father of the gods.

But all of these sacrifices make for a better, free-flowing movie.

In The Lightning Thief, director Chris Columbus, who also directed the first two Potter films, matched the spirit of the Riordan’s book. His changes helped make The Lightning Thief a superior film than either of his literal takes on The Sorcerer’s Stone or The Chamber of Secrets, just without the superior source material.

While Columbus spends some time explaining Percy Jackson’s world, he uses most of the movie showing the mythological world. (What makes Riordan’s books so enjoyable is that they take place in the real world, not off magically hidden in the forest.)

Lerman, Daddario and Jackson are great in their roles as the main characters, but the older, more seasoned actors, like Pierce Brosnan as demigod trainer Chiron and Rosario Dawson as pissed-off goddess Persephone, are effective in their performances, while Uma Thurman as Medusa nearly stole the show.

My Take

In the end, Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief is a fun movie with some really good performances. Just enjoy the ride and try not to take it too seriously.

Rating: 4/5

Editorial

It’s getting pretty easy to predict where the T-Meter will land on RottenTomatoes.com before a movie comes out. Before even seeing the movie, I projected that The Lightning Thief would be at 50 percent. It’s currently at 49 percent.

It was a HUGE mistake to give the directorial job of the first Percy Jackson film to Chris Columbus because no matter how different the stories are, critics were going to pan it as a Harry Potter-ripoff. And then 20th Century Fox made an even more terrible error by advertising the movie as a new film by “The director of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

But Columbus made several attempts to separate the two series. The biggest change was getting rip of a “cap of invisibility” that Athena had given her daughter Annabeth. The comparison between this and Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak would be a very easy target for critics licking their fingertips in anticipation of writing the cleverest insult to the film. Nevermind that the “cap of invisibility” was first mentioned more than 2,000 years ago.

The review industry needs to change. I’ve heard on multiple occasions that professional reviewers enjoy writing negative reviews more than positive ones. That is a shame. Their reviews are capable of priming audiences to hate movies that are not deserving of such wrathful dislike. They’ve created a media world in which being “intellectual” means not liking anything except those things that general audiences don’t like.

The Lightning Thief is a good movie. It’s not great, but it’s better than most sci-fi/fantasy tween movies that are released. Those who go in to see the film without any expectations will probably enjoy it for what it is, while those who anticipate a Harry Potter ripoff will see a Harry Potter ripoff.

The key to season six of Lost occurred three seasons ago in the Desmond-centric “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” In that episode, Desmond travels back to his happy life with Penelope Widmore. But it’s not just any day that he travels back to. It’s the day that he has an appointment to see Charles Widmore and the day before he makes his decision to leave Penny, which, in turn, leads to his boat race and that to his being stranded on the Island.

Desmond’s mysterious appearance on Flight 815 has to be foreshadowing, or just a major clue, that the alternative timeline that the Losties we know — Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, and Sayid — are experiencing is not a true alternative timeline. Instead, it’s a hypothetical timeline that looks, like Desmond’s in “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” at what could happen if they don’t go to the island.

Admittedly, there are definite differences to what we’ve seen so far this season and what happened in that earlier episode.

First, Desmond is taken well into the past and well before he gets to the island–three years, if my math is correct. While  those on Oceanic Flight 815 seem to miss their chances to ever get to the island because the plane doesn’t crash.

Second, we haven’t seen “flashes” in Jack or Kate. They haven’t had a sudden recognition of where they’re supposed to be. However, we have seen them experience deja vu. Several times actually:

• When coming out of the restroom, Jack seems to recognize Kate and she seems to recognize him
• In “What Kate Does,” Kate sees Jack along the side of the road and there is a definite deja vu moment.
• Claire, out of nowhere, calls her baby “Aaron.”
• Jack looks at Desmond and asks in “LA X” and says, “Have we met?”

Finally, there’s Eloise Hawking in “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” She shatters Desmond’s hypothetical reality by telling him that he does not in fact marry Penny, and then the “greatest thing” he’ll ever do is push that button on the Island. There is no guide, or no sign of a guide, in Season Six so far.

But if this hypothetical timeline is all in the characters’ heads, much like Desmond’s was in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” and his other time jumping episodes, they won’t experience the need for a “guide” until they start making choices that will remove them from their fates.

Let’s use my theory about the hypothetical timeline to analyze the last episode, “What Kate Does,” specifically the off-island story to see if the “all-in-the-head” idea holds weight:

1. Kate’s biggest desire in going back to the island in Season Five was to find Claire.
2. When Daniel Faraday and then Jack propose the idea to blow up the atom bomb in order to reset the timeline, Kate is all for it because she believes it could help reunite Claire and baby Aaron off-island.
3. Kate somehow escapes from a U.S. marshal in an airport, a highly securitized environment, and ends up in a cab with (guess who?) Claire.
4. Kate goes to an auto shop where the guy helps her right away break out of handcuffs. She looks in Claire’s bag and then feels guilty. So what does she do? She drives back to where Claire jumped out of the car. Claire hasn’t called the police. She hasn’t even left the curb where she got out of the car. Huh?
5. Claire is unable to give up her baby for adoption. The family doesn’t want the baby. Remember Kate’s biggest wish is for Claire to raise baby Aaron herself.
6. Claire goes into labor, and guess who’s there with her? Kate. Just like on the island. However, Claire’s doctor is Ethan. This is the same man who kidnapped Claire on the island poking her with needles. Alarms were probably ringing in Kate’s subconscience, which is why, despite the possibility of it happening, Claire tells “Dr. Goodspeed” that she would rather not have her baby at that point.
7. Two cops, not federal marshals or FBI members, go looking for Kate after her airport escape. That’s what I call wishful thinking.

I think it’s too much of a coincidence that Kate is able to do exactly what she hoped she’d be able to do by helping Jack blow up that bomb, which leads me to believe that  when we see Jack’s flash-sideways that his ex-wife will show up at his dad’s funeral and they go grab a bite to eat and then end up together.

But this is where Desmond comes into play. We’ve been told that he is “special.” His conscience can be in multiple places. He has his constant. What are the chances Desmond plays the role of Eloise Hawking to Jack and Kate and the bunch? His goal will be to get them to accept their fates–accept who they are and why they need to be on that island.

“You can’t change it,” Desmond tells Charlie about the future in that masterpiece of an episode in Season Three . “You can’t change it, no matter what you do.”

Kate, Jack and Sawyer are meant to be on that island no matter what they do. How soon before they start seeing their fates in flashes before their eyes?

“Crackpot”  Theory (To steal Jay and Jack’s term)

If any part of my theory holds, what does that mean for Locke? Since he’s dead on the island, the alternative timeline isn’t happening in his head. What if Reborn Locke is experiencing the alternative timeline? Perhaps that’s why he seems so at ease with himself? Just a thought.