The Great Escape - An oldie but a goodie to start the year. Superb movie - if you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a service and have a look-see. ★★★★★ I Am Legend - Will Smith is the last man left alive, a virologist named Robert Neville who has survived a virus which turns people into aggressive, cannibalistic, vampire-esque zombies who cannot come out in the day. Great effects, especially the empty New York, makes the setting effective. Smith plays the character well, and the zombies for the most part live up to the hype, but the plot has some holes in it that you’re expected to ignore for the sake of the horror/action part of the flick. Very different from the book, apparently. ★★★ ...

More mid-summer/winter fiction! Esquire magazine mailed a napkin to 250 writers and asked them to write a short story on it. They got nearly a hundred back, and the results are available online.

She walks in to the bar, and instantly my eye is drawn to her. The red overcoat certainly grabs attention, as many heads in the room flick momentarily towards the door. I let my gaze linger, drinking in her figure and her grace. Ordering, she looks around the room while waiting for her drink, casually searching the room. Our eyes lock across the room, and I smile. She smiles back, dips her eyes for a moment, but then looks back up, eyes connected once again. Damn, that’s a yes if there ever was one. I let my eyes wander up and down a little. ...

I may have linked to this before, but what the hell: A Shade Less Perfect by Max Barry, author extraordinaire.

Sir Edmund Hillary, 1919 - 2008.