The website was getting pretty stale and I hadn’t really updated it in a couple of years so I decided it was time to do a redesign. I’ve added some functionality like my new Rogue Reviews blog which I’ll use to share my experiences on things like movies I’m watching, restaurants I’m visiting, games I’m playing etc… I’ll even have a couple of my friends posting some of their reviews on various things.

There are still a few pages on the site that need updating but I’ll get to them quickly. I’ve been learning a lot about Cascading Style Sheets and I’m happy for the oportunity to put that new information to use updating the older HTML pages. It is taking some time to get it all straight but once finished it will be much easier to update.

–Digital Rogue

Not having a chance to read the book series before seeing the screen adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles I went into the viewing with zero expectation and no predetermined notions of how the movie should be.

The storyline revolves around the experiences of the children of Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker) a newly divorced mother who inherits her uncle’s forest secluded mansion. The daughter Mallory (Sarah Bolger) and the two twin sons Simon and Jared (Freddie Highmore) find themselves fighting a fantastic battle against goblins, trolls and a mighty ogre after unwittingly calling their attention to a book full of secret information regarding all types of mystical and magical creatures.

The storyline is engaging but short. As I understand it the book series consists of five novels and to condense that into a 90 minute movie means a lot must have been left out of the movie. The computer generated graphics for all of the mystical creatures was par for a movie these days without nothing really standing out either good or bad.

If you like fantasy films you will probably enjoy the film however if you are a fan of the books you may be dissapointed by the lack of substance in the film.

I give The Spiderwick Chronicles a 6 Rogueys out of 10.

Last night my brother-in-law invited me to a pre-screening of the movie Jumper.  My original feeling is that this movie is probably one of most unique films to have come out of Hollywood in ages.  Most of the movies released these days are rehashes, regurgitations, or remakes of previous works and it was refreshing to see something new.