Noiseless Chatter Archive

Just a quick update here, to hopefully tide you over before the big announcement at the end of those month regarding which stories will be included. By the grace, kindness, and all around incredibleawesomeness of Sindi Johnson, I am pleased to present to you…the cover. This is pretty much final…any changes at this point will be minor. So enjoy, because I love this, and I’m very much looking forward to getting you a finished product. Thanks for your patience. It will be worth it!

So I know it’s been quiet on this front, but we are planning to post the finalized list of contents here on March 31. To be honest we’ll probably know slightly ahead of that date (and if we do we’ll be sure to contact each of the authors with the news rather than make them wait), but I don’t want to provide an unrealistic deadline again. Updates can be found on this site’s Twitter feed , so be sure to follow that if you want to hear about me ripping my hair out because it’s impossible to whittle down the great submissions we’ve gotten to a reasonable number. This puts us a month behind schedule in terms of the acceptance / rejection portion of our project, but overall we’re still on track for a spring release, I think. It’ll just be…late spring. I’ll post dates, of course, as soon as I know them, and am reasonably confident we can meet them. I appreciate everybody’s patience. Mark my words: you will hear from us no later than March 31, at which point the formal ann...

Surprising no-one, I love the new Wes Anderson film. I’m going to get that out of the way right now. And I honestly believe this has every potential to be his masterpiece. (Of course, the man’s made at least three strong contenders for “his masterpiece” by now, so I’m positive this is a question that can’t be seriously discussed for another few decades.) I expected to like it. The trailers looked great, it’s full of fantastic actors, and it was the first full-length screenplay that Anderson wrote solo. Those are all very promising components, and I didn’t expect they’d disappoint. The surprise, however, came with just how good this movie turned out to be. It’s a moving, rollicking, tragicomic juggernaut of a film, and I haven’t been this deeply affected by a movie-going experience since…well… The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. The plot of The Grand Budapest Hotel is so layered, so dense with momentum, so quick to evolve and so vast in the span of time it covers...

  ALF Reviews: “The Gambler” (Season 1, Episode 22) When I was in Vegas I met up with  Ron DelVillano , a talented artist friend who took the opportunity to question me about the  ALF  reviews. They were good, he said, and interesting, but he couldn’t believe I was getting so many words out of each one. I’ll be honest: I kind of can’t believe it either. A few times I’ve deliberately tried to keep them short, but it never seems to work out that way. Each episode ends up having entire scenes I gloss over or omit entirely, and I still find myself staring at 5,000 words about some unmemorable episode of a show nobody’s cared about for two decades. I don’t know why. This one, though, I will try to keep relatively short, simply because I don’t know how much I’ll have to say about anything apart from the ending. That’s not to say that “The Gambler” is any  good  before we get to the ending; it’s just…holy hell that ending. Anyway, it starts with Willie and Kate in...

So I’m going to try something a little bit new here. Please take a moment to read this post, and let me know what you think in the comments below. (There are some prizes available for commenting, which will hopefully be a nice incentive for you, but mainly I want your feedback.) SO WHAT IS IT? I’ve decided to take part in an online book tour. If this is well received, I will do more of them moving forward. You may remember that I’ve reviewed a few self-published and indie books in the past, and that’s something that I’d like to keep doing. The difference with an online book tour is that instead of simply receiving a copy of the book in exchange for review, Novel Publicity & Co. will be ponying up gifts and prizes to commenters on the blogs hosting the tour. AND WHAT DO YOU GET PHILIP? HUH? In the interest of openness and full discretion, I will say that I don’t get anything for this that I wasn’t getting for my standard reviews. That is to say that I receive a c...

Just before I left for vacation last week I alluded in my farewell post to a song from Fallout: New Vegas . It was “Let’s Ride Into the Sunset Together,” which is my favorite one on the soundtrack. In retrospect, I should have used this one, because boy does it take on a whole other resonance when you’re in a place like Vegas in a post-relationship state of mind. It really was the perfect soundtrack, even if I only realized it on the plane coming home. I’m not sure I ever got as much out of a vacation as I did this time around. Great, great fun…thanks to everyone I got to meet up with, everyone I got to meet period, and everyone I was unable to coordinate with, for giving me a reason to go back. More actual content to come…I promise. I’d better get working, though, since I have nothing left in the pipeline. In the meantime, here’s a nice big picture dump of all the fun you missed. But no worries…that’s one hell of a city, and that’s where I plan on holding Chatter...

  ALF Reviews: “It Isn’t Easy. . .Bein’ Green” (Season 1, Episode 21) Ladies and gentlemen…start the countdown. As of now, we have only five episodes left in the first season of  ALF ! Hooray! And yes, yes, I know I will have 74 more episodes to slug through after that, but I’m still looking forward to finishing the season. Why? Because I’m going to take a cue from the late, lamented  Full House Reviewed  and post a few “breather” installments before moving onto season two. That should hopefully keep you folks amused and allow me a much-deserved rest. What will the breathers consist of? Well, I’ll definitely do an overall season one review, and I’ve got a couple other things in mind, too. Stay tuned. You will love them. So much it will hurt. Speaking of hurt, this episode opens with ALF rapping in Lynn’s bedroom. Yeah. ALF…is rapping. I don’t care. There are only five episodes left. Rap away, ALF. Oh, and then he hands the microphone to Lynn, who raps, too. The fake ...