PreTeena: March 4 – March 10, 2019
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
Check out Allison Barrows’ new PreTeena blog here.
Another Dune Remake?
By Tamara Wilhite
I heard the news of a “Dune” remake due out in 2020. I saw the endless comparisons to the disastrous movie that came out in 1984. Sting goes shirtless! Picard is a warrior! The ending nullifies the entire freaking point of the book by making the deliberately bred super-human and culturally manipulative character magically conjure rain.
The interesting chasm I discovered was when I said in response to this news, “Another Dune remake?” To which others said, “What other Dune movie?” I know Syfy has made a number of B-list sci-fi movies, but their Dune remakes a decade ago were works of art. It is a tragedy they aren’t better known, much less well known to Dune fans.
On Theatre the Left Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks
By Robert Cooperman
Choosing where to submit one’s plays is often a daunting task, but no more so than for the conservative playwright. Given that 99.9% of the country’s theatre companies – professional or community — lean to the left (let’s be honest: they dive headfirst into the left), the conservative playwright often has nowhere to turn. Even companies that call for plays in the most benign sense (“seeking full-length plays about American life in 2019”) most often have a leftwing agenda. I imagine the artistic directors of such companies express shock that a conservative-themed play has been sent to them, let alone that there is such a thing as a conservative-themed play.
A NEW LIBERTY ISLAND BOOK: The Odds Are Against Us: An Anthology of Military Fiction
Check out the collection’s introduction by editor Oren Litwin
By Oren Litwin
From a Marine in Vietnam trying to get back home, to Roman soldiers facing an Iceni rebellion; from cynical mercenaries in the harsh Chadian desert, to a Yazidi girl fighting for her freedom; from Soviet conscripts trying to survive war in Afghanistan, to American bomber pilots lost at sea.
Experience the triumph of the human spirit even in the face of death.
Includes eight short stories of military fiction from from skilled authors, some of whom are veterans themselves.
Click here to purchase The Odds Are Against Us: An Anthology of Military Fiction
Still an Idiot with a Machine Gun after All These Years
Great Moments in Chaos and Order, Part V
By Fred Tribuzzo
Paul Ehrlich is infamously attached to the notion that providing cheap fuel to the masses would be like giving an idiot a machine gun. The Left insists that idiot is still with us, primarily in the heartland where regular folks go about their lives with common sense appreciation for fossil fuels that power a standard of living never before seen in human history. In Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb, he predicted famine for America, starvation for millions before the unleashing of the 1970s Disco rage. Those of us remaining would be eating bark and stuffing old newspapers in our boots to stay warm from the sneaky, man-induced new ice age. Imagine, never to be thrilled on the dance floor by the bass drum clocking in at 120 beats per minute, anchoring the melodies of Boz Scaggs and the Bee Gees by thousands of lounge bands across the land.
Atom Egoyan’s Stammering Grief
Deconstructing Canadian Culture, Part 18: Ararat
By Josh Lieblein
I wish I could tell you that Atom Egoyan’s films are as interesting as David Cronenberg’s or Guy Maddin’s, but they aren’t.
Are they more realistic? Sure. His characters stammer and mumble. They speak quietly and move clumsily. They affect pained expressions instead of Maddin’s exaggerated silent movie mugging. But then again that may be the point. When life seems meaningless, or when disaster strikes, people don’t always spend an hour in makeup, shoot a few takes before the director yells “Cut!” and then break for lunch. Sometimes people just freeze or go numb.
Egoyan and his wife, actress Arsinee Khanjian, know of what they speak. They are intimately familiar with grief and loss and can be justly credited with raising awareness of the Armenian genocide, which they explore in depth in Ararat.
PreTeena: February 25 – March 3, 2019
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
Check out Allison Barrows’ new PreTeena blog here.
Frank Herbert Vs. Brian Herbert: Dune Cannon Vs. Everything Else
By Tamara Wilhite
Frank Herbert wrote the original “Dune” series, which I have read in its entirety. For those who read the original series, the cliffhanger after Murbella takes over the Bene Gesserit and Sheena flees with a Duncan Idaho turning into the Kwisatz Haderach leaves people wanting more. Frank Herbert died, and his son Brian Herbert decided to try to finish the series. Brian Herbert arguably wrote the prequels, though I think Mr. Anderson did more of the work, though that is not a compliment. There are a variety of problems with the sequels and prequels that they wrote.
