Customer Reviews

Cinema Spec: Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy

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I'm not sure why someone has not done an anthology about the magic of the movies before this. Movies create a special sort of magic that can take you anywhere you can imagine.

This is my first reading of one of the Spec anthologies edited by Karen A. Romanko. Cinema Spec is definitely one of those instances where you should not judge a book by the cover. The quality of the copyediting and the overall feel of the anthology impressed me.

A proper anthology will always have hits and misses. Cinema Spec has fewer misses and only the very rare dud. Here are some random thoughts about my favorite stories.

My favorite story of the collection is "Sundowner" by Paul Milliken. An elderly movie star has slipped into dementia and her child amuses her by showing old movies. When the addled movie star starts talking about a secret long buried, her child begins to wonder if the memory true. This was a really creepy story and I loved this. This story is worth buying the entire anthology. I've never heard of Paul Milliken, but he gets it and he has a fan in me.

"Kraken's Wake" by Cliff Winning takes us into the far future with humans making movies with aliens. An actress gets a chance to put her name in the papers forever. I enjoyed the thought process of the alien life and the novelty of movies in space. This story really played well with the themes. I wish the Star Trek movie was this good.

"Lori" by Connor Moran explores what might happen if creatures of legend and myths got involved with movies. This is a refreshing take on an old theme.

"Lost in the Fun Factory" by Craig Wolf is a classic ghost story told in a movie theater and ponders what would happen to ghosts that watch movies every day.

I highly recommend this anthology to movie lovers and fantasy fanatics.