love of silent horror films is the animating spark that brings Cory Gross' Silent Movie Monsters to life. A source of reviews and film criticism about the earliest creatures to slouch across the silver screen, this site is a must-see for Web surfers curious about classic films like
Vampyr, the lives of silent movers and shakers such as special-effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, or the process by which films like 1927's Metropolis end up resurrected from the pop culture graveyard ... with substantial editing and modern musical soundtrack.
With a dark but tidy design and plenty of stills of classic film monsters, this Web site offers up film reviews, character studies and articles on topics from German Expressionism to vampire lore. The reviews are detailed and place the movies in their historical context, comparing the originals, when appropriate, to their source novels as well as sequels and remakes. What's more, they tend to be footnoted with off-site links to other places on the Web concerned with the same film.
Silent Movie Monsters is most emphatically not an encyclopedia. Instead of trying to cover every silent horror film in brief, it chooses a select cross-section and discusses its choices at some length. For visitors who do want a larger view of silent film, though, the site's general links page is
long, annotated, well indexed and thoroughly packed with nifty suggestions for further surfing.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—September 3, 2002
omenGamers.com shatters stereotypes about gamers, proving that yes, women game and yes, they can kick butt. The site's hefty "Reviews/Previews" section runs the gamut from Campaign Cartographer 2 (a mapping program for pen-and-paper RPGs) to Final Fantasy X to Twisted Metal: Black, covering all of the major gaming genres in the process.
Each review gives the standard blow-by-blow analysis of the game, but provide a feminine tweak with a "Marketing Efforts Towards Women" section. This section analyzes the game's appeal (or lack thereof) to women gamers, including the effectiveness of female characters, how they stack up against their male counterparts and how scantily dressed they are. There's also a discussion of any overtly sexist themes.
The reviews are decent, but the site's special sections are its true strength. In "Digital Women," the site profiles famous female characters from gaming such as Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Mara Jade (Star Wars) and Elayna Sedai (Wheel of Time). The profiles give an overview of a character and then rate her on based on intelligence, stance, look, attitude and other attributes.
Even better is the "Interviews" section, where the site speaks to some of the leading female—and occasionally male—game designers in the video game industry. It has interviews with Roberta Williams of King's Quest fame and Karen McLarney of Guardians of Order, an RPG company.
— Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week—August 26, 2002
he first grandmaster of science fiction is given the royal treatment at the Robert A. Heinlein Home Page, a site dedicated to chronicling its namesake's life and work.
The site's first and largest section, "Archives," is divided into three categories: "Reference Documents," "Essays and Articles" and "Multimedia." A detailed frequently-asked-questions list tops the first category, answering questions about the author's military service, his marriages (including his little-known first wife), his numerous pseudonyms, the three pre-World War II short stories he called the "stinkeroos," and much more. Other references include "Published Heinlein," which is a list of the author's work divided into short stories, novels and other formats, as well as the more exhaustive "New Heinlein Opus List" that includes every Heinlein publication and its various iterations.
The Essays category offers a few gems examining the nature of "federal service" in Heinlein's oft-debated Starship Troopers, as well as a look at what went wrong (and right) with the big-screen adaptation of his book The Puppetmasters. Rounding out the Archives, the multi-media category has a handful of rare audio clips of Heinlein speaking during a 1980 radio interview, as well as shots of Martian and lunar craters named for the grandmaster.
The Links section offers just over a dozen links to other Heinlein sites, along with detailed descriptions of what visitors will find on them. Rounding out the site is a new feature: An evolving critique of longtime Heinlein critic/chronicler Alexei Panshin, who wrote the 1968 book Heinlein in Dimension. It's a work in progress with much left to be done, but worth bookmarking for future visits.
— Kenneth Newquist
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