Wow! I just loved this movie. It was so odd, gritty, and stylish yet somehow very sweet. Does anyone know any other Hungarian films that I might enjoy? I would love to see more like this.

I love this book. It was packed full of intrigue, theoretical physics, philosophy, and mice. “The End of Mr. Y” has bumped “Popco” as my favorite Scarlett Thomas book yet. In her previous books I had taken issue with her endings which I felt were a bit weak, but not so here. Well done, Scarlett! Thanks for writing smart fiction. My head still hurts from being wrapped around the concepts in the book. Youch!

I am so addicted to this show! It has great characters and does not overuse special effects.

This was hands down the best book I have read in some time. It was one part mystery, two parts teenage drama, with a twist of literary and pop references. Unlike many books by new authors, Marisha Pessl really came through on a satisfactory way to end her novel. This is quite an achievement considering the enormous undertaking of writing a 550 page post-modern treatise on loneliness and the world of academia that still reads as a funny and smart mystery novel. Are you confused? You won’t be after you read “Special Topics In Calamity Physics”.

“Cooking With Fernet Branca” is a delightful send-up of those travel/food books which usually involve someone staying at a lovely villa in Provence or Tuscany and meeting quirky characters and eating wonderful food. In this novel, an obnoxious but well-meaning English writer lives next door to a composer from a made up Eastern European country and they have misadventures involving really terrible recipes and drinking large amounts of Fernet Branca, which in my experience is an acquired taste (to say the least).

The Englishman cooks concoctions like “Lychees on Toast” in which he mashes anchovies into peanut butter with Tabasco sauce, and stuffs the mixture into lychee nuts. These lychees are then smothered with gorgonzola cheese on toast. The recipe is one of the only ones listed in the book that do not include smoked cat. While this delightfully bizarre book did not make me hungry, it did make me want to give the black and bitter Fernet Branca another try, and so I shall.

I really wanted to like this film, but I simply could not get through it. The post-modern storytelling and the bits from the novel were wonderful, but they were too scarcely scattered amidst a sea of boring “making-of” scenes. I would love to have seen the film-within-the-film rather than sitting through the film itself. Steve Coogan tried very hard to be an irritating British actor and I must commend him on his terrific success.

If you read one book this year then you don’t read enough. On the other hand, if you read many books this year, “Blood Sucking Fiends: a Love Story” should be one of them. I have yet to read a Chris Moore book that I didn’t like. His characters are terrific, his stories are creative (if not a little morbid) and he is very funny. This book was no exception.

I didn’t understand about half of the audio on this badly remastered DVD, but the oddly choreographed dance club scenes were fabulous. It was high camp, Aussie style.

This is the best thing to wear for today, you understand. Because I don’t like women in skirts and the best thing is to wear pantyhose or some pants under a short skirt, I think. Then you have the pants under the skirt and then you can pull the stockings up over the pants underneath the skirt. And you can always take off the skirt and use it as a cape. So I think this is the best costume for today.

Little Miss Sunshine was one of the funniest movies I have seen in the past few years. It was also one of the few movies that had both my wife and me laughing out loud in the theatre. The cast was outstanding. Just see it. You know you want to.