This site contains both live pages and some under construction. Check back frequently for updates!
 
Site launched on July 11th, 2007
For a glimpse into the next step in the evolution of science fiction, check out the sites for my series of novels "The Reign" at www.reignnovels.com and www.thereignstory.com!
NOTE: All articles on this site are both written by, and are the property of, Lance Berry. Articles or excerpts may be reprinted verbatim, so long as the author is notified of where said repostings will appear. All images on this site are either public domain, or the properties of their respective parent companies, and the author makes no claim to such ownership.
 
 
 
 
Comments? Agree or disagree with my review of a film? Write to me at lberry@reignnovels.com and I'll be certain to get back to you. Thanks for visiting!
NEWSFLASH: Although this site is easily navig-able, in an attempt to make it even easier for visitors to find the newer articles and reviews, I have now archived some older ones! Check out what I thought at the time of the following, and see whether some of my predictions were accurate or not!
                          Archives
 
007 Reasons Bale Should Be Bond
10,000 B.C.
2007 Best and Worst Movies
21
30 Days Of Night
88 Minutes
3:10 To Yuma
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
American Gangster
Awake
Baby Mama
Balls of Fury
Battlestar Galactica
Beowulf
Blade Runner DVD
Casino Royale
Cloverfield
Cruising On DVD
Dan In Real Life
Dark Resurrection
Death Sentence
Deception
Doomsday
Dragon Wars
Eastern Promises
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Enchanted
Family Guy: Blue Harvest
Fan-made Films: The Very Best
Film Score Spotlight
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Futurama: Bender's Big Score DVD
Gojira(Godzilla) 50th Anniversary
Gone Baby Gone
Gone Baby Gone DVD
Halloween
Hitman
Horton Hears A Who
Hot Fuzz
I Am Legend
In the Valley of Elah
Isis
Jumper
Juno
Justice League: My Picks for Heroes
Knight Rider Pilot
Lady in the Water
Lust, Caution DVD
Miami Vice
Michael Clayton
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
New Amsterdam
No Country For Old Men
P2
Penelope
Pirates 2: Dead Man's Chest
P.S. I Love You
Pulse
Remembering Heath Ledger
Resident Evil: Extinction
Resurrecting The Champ
Revisiting Babylon 5
Run, Fatboy, Run
Rush Hour 3
Shoot 'Em Up
Shutter
Sicko DVD
Simpsons Movie
Skinwalkers
Smallville Season 7 Premiere
Snakes on a Plane
Speed Racer
Spiderwick Chronicles
Star Trek Enhanced
Star Trek: New Voyages
Stardust
Stephen King's The Mist
Street Kings
Sunshine
Superbad
Superman Returns
Sweeney Todd
The Bank Job
The Best DVDs To Own
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Brave One
The Eye
The Forbidden Kingdom
The Game Plan
The Golden Compass
The Great Debaters
The Hunting Party
The Invasion
The Orphanage(El Orfanato)
The REAL Superman Returns!
The Ruins
The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
Things We Lost In The Fire
This Christmas
Transformers
Untraceable
Vantage Point
We Own The Night
What Happens In Vegas
What Makes A Blockbuster
Why George Lucas Disses His Fans
X-Men 3
 
 
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New Reviews Up: The Happening!/Get Smart!/Wall-E!
Coming 6/27-6/28/08: Wanted!
 
Apologies Forthcoming: Haunting Echoes of Days When a Country Went Mad
 
     It was some decade. The universities were closed. Students were at war. Poetry was banned. And the word “love,” unless applied to Mao, was expressly forbidden. Artists were denounced, and many opted for suicide. Forty years—and half a world away—mere memories of a nation’s cultural upheaval could rekindle the embers of the fanaticism and anguish that an entire generation knew as China’s Cultural Revolution.
 
 
     This is the time—its madness, its passion, its complexity—that Xujun Eberlein brings so vividly to life in Apologies Forthcoming(Livingston Press/University of West Alabama), her moving collection of poignant short stories about the millions who lived during this modern reign of chaos. It is a winner of the 2007 Tarrt Fiction Award.
 
 
     Surprisingly, however, instead of mere suffering and accusation, one finds life and humanism in these stories. Love and relationships beyond romance, political struggle portrayed in an apolitical tone, the line between victims and victimizers blurred . . . this book of realistic fiction fills a major void in English literature dealing with the Cultural Revolution.
 
     An award-winning writer who now lives in Massachusetts, Xujun(pronounced "shoe"-"June") has nothing to apologize for. Her stories are electrifying—and lyrically beautiful.  “There’s a richness in her vision that sets her apart,” says Jay Parini, poet, novelist, professor, and the author of The Apprentice Lover.  “Eberlein is a fresh voice in American fiction, a Chinese writer with a remarkably shrewd and interesting tongue.”
 
 
     About half of Apologies Forthcoming’s stories take place during the years of the Cultural Revolution; the other half in its aftermath. The final story, “Second Encounter,” unfolds—tensely and insistently—near MIT, in the months following September 11th.  It’s forty years after the worst excesses of Mao’s decade-long experiment in chaos. Wei Dong is a laid-off software programmer interviewing for a job in Boston, Massachusetts. He finds himself across a desk from the comp-any’s chief engineer who looks at his resume and then at his face. George Zhang recognizes Wei Dong immediately. They were Red Guard fighters, barely teenagers, on opposite sides of a war between factions. In the opening story, “Snow Line,” Eberlein nicely limns the forbidden inner thoughts of a love-struck poet, in a time when the ban on poetry has just been lifted.
 
 
     How many of these stories come from personal experience is hard to say.  Eberlein, who lived through the Cultural Revolution’s decade as a child and teenager, had a sister who died as a Red Guard, and that event seems fiction-alized in one of the stories. Eberlein also holds a PhD from MIT and worked in high-tech—which lends credence to the story that unfolds in “Second Encounter.”

 
     Apologies Forthcoming shines a revealing light on some of the millions of people whose lives were changed forever by the ten years that turned China upside down and inside out. With the upcoming Olympics, discord in Tibet, and China’s increasing presence on the world stage as she flexes her economic muscle, interest in this mysterious giant in the east will only grow larger. In Apologies Forthcoming, Xujun Eberlein does the great service of illuminating the interior lives of a peculiar generation, many of whom are now leading China’s phenomenal awakening.
 
Information and purchase link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/160489007X/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp 
 
For more information about Xujun herself and to read her articles/blogs, visit:
 www.xujuneberlein.com (web page) and www.insideoutchina.com (blog)
 

 
 
For those of you interested in Chinese culture, check out the brilliant new short story collection Apologies Forthcoming from award-winning author Xujun Eberlein!(details below photo)
Also: THE REIGN contest begins next week! To celebrate the one year anniversary of LanceReviews, answer trivia questions and win prizes, including this poster of the main characters within The Reign series of novels! Artwork by Angela Davis.