Villains

The Power of the Dark Side: Creating Great Villains, Dangerous Situations, & Dramatic Conflict
$22.95
How can you respect the thoughts and ideas of anyone who touts themselves as an authority in the business of creating story and character, when the simplest errors are evident in their examples.

1. p.43 H.G.Wells wrote "The Time Machine" not Jules Verne.
2. p.82 Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" (1953) answered the question "What are you rebelling against?" with "Whaddya got?", not James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause".
3. p.85 "those stinking badges" comes from "Blazing Saddles", not "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" - got the wrong film and couldn't get its title right either.
4. p.126 The Saint Crispian's Day speech is given in "Henry V" at Agincourt, not Avignon, (it's Shakespeare, for god's sake, read the damn play!)

Combined with the other problems of this book, page 126 was about as far as I was able to stomach. I recognised the aforementioned errors immediately, but at least took the few seconds of Googling required to confirm my knowledge. Which is way more than Ms.Smith bothered to do.

Although these may seem paltry and petty examples, when they are combined with a general trend of overt political correctness, with the need to subscribe the female pronoun to most things good and the male pronoun to most things bad (in a book about the bad side of things, this gets to be a bit of a drag), with the generally sloppy writing and inexplicable "Inner Drives" sections, and with the tendency to choose film examples without full explanation of their impact, then this book becomes a less than valuable stocking-stuffer when you can't think of anything else to get a budding writer for Christmas.

And then to top it all off, there is this pseudo-mystical mumbo-jumbo that is meant to make us believe that there is deeply spiritual content to what we are reading.

This book comes through as a shopping list for rather prosaic ideas, something to pull out when you have a block, but is almost useless as an authoritative examination of the Dark Side. Most of the examples are assinine - I mean, please - how many times can you use Vin Diesel in "The Chronicles of Riddick" to illustrate a point? There are so many more profound and more thoughtful examinations of evil and human darkness, that were filmed before the 1990s. Maybe Ms. Smith should sit down for a weekend and watch a few black-and-white DVDs. If she drops me an email, I'll give a few examples.

Leave off buying this book for a while and either borrow it from a library, or look for it in the bargain bins at your local bookstore next to the celebrity cook books and sports stars biographies. It has about as much substance.

Fisher Price Imaginext Adventures - Villain Van
$30.00
The Batman Vehicle Assortment consists of a Batman ATV and a Joker Van. The Batman ATV has a launcher on the front and a cage to hold the villians on the back. Batman and Robin figures are included. The Joker van has back Turbo blasters that work with the easy fill base. It has a trigger pull squirting action and can squirt water up to 30 feet. Uses air pressure system.

The Villain
$14.94
the movie was in amazing shape and shipped very quickly, i am very pleased with this transaction:)

Mickey's House of Villains
$19.99
I AM VERY PLEASED WITH THIS ITEM. I RECIEVED IT IN THE CONDITION DESCRIBED BY THE SELLER. I ORDERED THIS MOVIE ON A FRIDAY AND RECIEVED IT THE FOLLOWING MONDAY!!! NOW THAT IS CUSTOMER SERVICE. EXTREMELY SPEEDY SERVICE AND A NEW MINT DVD ALL FOR A LOW PRICE, WHAT MORE CAN I ASK FOR? I WAS VERY EXCITED TO FINALLY WATCH IT AND SEE THE CLASSIC MICKEY HALLOWEEN CARTOONS. WONDERFUL SERVICE AND I WOULD DEFINATELY ORDER AGAIN!!!