...way out on the corner of fucked up and evil...

You know who could have totally kicked Isildur's ass? Angel. Think about it. Angel eclipses him in both the hand-chopping and ring-destroying arenas. And if he did fall under the lure of the Ring's eeeevvvilll powers, hey, we get Angelus. Everybody wins.

You suck, Isildur. Get in the Reject Bin.

Finished reading 'Eragon' by Christopher Paolini, and can I just say... meh.

Okay, I know he was fifteen when he wrote it, and that's very commendable, especially since I'm 20 and my stories look as though they were written by a sleep-deprived, sugar-crazed Fangirl whose idea of comedy is 'Ninja monkeys attack!'. Whcih they were. But the whole book is one giant cliche. I saw every 'plot twist' coming a mile off. I figured out Brom was a magic-user within the first few minutes (harmless old story-tellers are *always* magic users). I knew Murtagh was going to be Morzen's kid. I knew Brom would die.

There's nothing wrong with being influenced by Lord of the Rings - hell, most modern-day fantasy has some degree of LOTRness - but it shouldn't come through on every page.

And more importantly, his female characters suck. I mean really suck. Like, David Eddings level of suckitude. They're weak, helpless, one-dimensional and downright boring. The only one who is even slightly likeable is Angela (who amuses me with her toad/frog philosophising). And that's it. I already hate Arya and... that other girl who is so mind-numbingly dull that I can't remember her name.

The Shade was briefly cool, until he died and we had the goddamn tragic past scene. I hate tragic pasts. I want my villians to be evil just because.

So much of the media frenzy around this book focuses on his age, that it seems his followers have neglected to actually read the book itself.

I'm already hating the movie.

Previously on Froodle: I was too busy grumbling about that damn spider to mention Corey Feldman was in Big Wolf on Campus last night. Damn, he's all shades of hot. I want to watch the Lost Boys again.

Van Helsing: The London Assignment is wonderful. Gabriel being molested by the Queen is like Lindsey getting his hand cut off: just never stops being funny. Carl in drag, (hereafter refered to as 'Dragimir') whining about the shade of lip rouge and the tightness of his corset, is the stuff of legend.

Like most people who've watched it, I take issue with it only being half an hour long - I know that's all it took to tell the story, but for £10, I feel like we should have gotten another 'episode' or whatever. Still, wasn't my money, so, meh.

The CGI was pretty bad in places, but not on the scale of, say, Treasure Planet, Underworld or the Richard Roxburgh version of Hound of the Baskervilles. Or even the VH movie itself.

Now, time for me to have a bath, then curl up in bed and watch 'Return of the King'. Or more accurately, all ROTK scenes with Merry and/or Pippin in. Which means it'll be about forty minutes long.