Wow...I just saw a trailer for the movie The Road, based on the Cormac McCarthy book. That book is so gloomy I was wondering how they could ever make it into a watchable film...but I must admit it looks pretty good. Kind of a Road Warrior vibe--lots of post-apocalyptic bad guys driving junk vehicles, and the good guy (Viggo Mortensen) trying to protect his child from the marauders. Be interesting to see if it holds up, but I like what I saw.

Oh, I also saw the trailer for James Cameron's Avatar. I try to avoid learning too much about movies I'm interested in (I deliberately skipped the Avatar presentation at Comic-Con) but a lot of what I've been hearing has been negative, so I finally decided to check out the trailer for myself. Frankly, I think it looks pretty amazing. I mean, come on! A crippled Earthman infiltrating an alien tribe amid a backdrop of interstellar jungle warfare? It's like the best Edgar Rice Burroughs story never written, illustrated by Frank Frazetta. Spaceships and exotic planets and sexy blue aliens riding flying beasts--how can anyone not love that? And in 3-D!

Speaking of cool weird stuff, I just read Bob Fingerman's illustrated book Connective Tissue, which is like Dante meets Lewis Carroll meets Jonathan Swift meets Harvey Kurtzman (in full-on Little Annie Fannie mode) and narrated by a juicier Janeane Garofalo. It's the tale of a pulchritudinous and smartly snarky New York chick who is literally snatched from her dead-end job and dropped into a surreal wasteland full of freaks and geeks. Is it Hell...or just a really bad trip? I'll just say that by the end it really doesn't matter--it's all about the ride. You'll never look at Gummi Bears the same way again.