MyBrute

This is a cute little game: MyBrute. Very simple, you make a fighter, then watch it fight. You have no control over the battles, but it's still fun to see your fighter win and go up in levels.

You can fight my Brute here.

"It's The Next Harry Potter!"

I finally saw Twilight, but I'm not here to review that. It really wasn't bad enough or good enough for me to care enough to analyze. What I do want to rant on a little is the hype it received when it was hot.

I don't know why this bothers me so much... but...

I hate trendwatchers. Twilight has been called "the next Harry Potter", probably by the same drooling idiots who called Kurt Cobain "the next John Lennon". Frankly, I'm getting sick of every new book being called "the next Harry Potter". Any time a book sells more than three copies lately, somebody labels it "the next Harry Potter." The phrase has very quickly become so overused, that it instantly fills me with rage. They said it about Lemony Snicket - did that really catch on? They said it about Eragon - anybody seen an Eragon T-shirt lately? Bedsheets? Candy bar? No? Why, just the other day I was using my Golden Compass toothbrush while wearing my Spiderwick Chronicles underwear! Seriously, though, none of these are bad properties, and they are perfectly deserving of whatever success they get. But that doesn't mean we'll see conventions and theme parks dedicated to them.

So I wish Twilight a world of success, and I didn't totally hate the movie. I haven't read the books, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume their popularity was well earned. But can we please stop the comparisons? It's apples and oranges. If we're judging it by content, then it should be compared to other vampire stories. But if we're just judging it by success, you might as well call the Nintendo Wii "the next Harry Potter."

IMO, Harry Potter was the next "Chronicles of Narnia" (1950). And Narnia was the next "Wizard of Oz" (1900). See a pattern here? You needn't start looking for "the next Harry Potter" until 2050! Even if you want to call Harry Potter "the next Star Wars", there's still a 20 year gap.

There probably won't be a successor to Harry Potter for a while. Possibly not in your lifetime. Get over it. Get on with your life. Continue to read and enjoy movies, but quit looking for things. Pottermania is the kind of thing that happens unexpectedly, not while you're looking for it, and definitely not when you try to force it. If you try to predict one of these things, I will laugh at you, and I will lose respect for you, and I will steal your car and run over your dog with it.

Moving In

Note, I'm transferring a lot of my old blog entries from MySpace. If you go to this blog through the main page, you should see my posts in chronological order. But if you are using Google Reader or other such site/program, then my posts might show up in the order I transfered them, which won't make a bit of sense. But from this point on, my posts should show up in a sane order again.

The Cat Burglar

Warning: Cutesy-Wutesy Kitty Story

KJ has been making pendants out of clay. When working with clay, she wooden tools. When she's not using them, she keeps them in a plastic bag, held together by a rubber band:

She keeps this downstairs, on the living room table. For the past few days, Sybil has been picking up the bag and carrying it around the room. I don't know, it must be a cat thing. We just keep taking it away from her, and putting it back on the table. So this morning, our precious Sybil brings KJ this as a present:

The plastic bag, still held together with the rubber band, minus the tools. She brought it to KJ as a gift, the same way a cat might bring its owner a dead mouse. But where were the tools? We looked all over the house, under every piece of furniture. We were dumbfounded. It seemed like there should have at least been a trail. I can picture her playing with them around the house, and losing them under furniture, as she often does with Q-Tips and milk rings. But there's nine tools in that set, we should have at least been able to find one of them.

In the end, it was Sybil who showed KJ where they were. Upstairs, in the bedroom, under some shoes. And neatly organized, for a cat.

Sybil was a bit protective of them, and didn't want to give them up. She kept complaining about us taking away her toy, and she keeps trying to get at them again.

Hancock

I'd really rather review the reviewers than the actual movie, if that's okay. Or even if it's not okay - it's my blog, so nyahh!

Dear Tennessean: Next time you don't do your homework, bring a note from your mother.

I read half-a-dozen reviews for this movie, and none of them were very positive. A typical review:
"Hancock starts out as a hilarious anti-hero movie, showing the flipside to the tired comic book formula. Unfortunately, halfway through the movie Hancock finds his morality, and from there it turns into the very type of movie it tried to parody - the standard formulaic super hero movie."

These reviewers are wrong. They're nuts. And worst of all, they're liars - they reviewed the trailer, not the movie. I know this because that's exactly the kind of review I might have written if I'd only watched the trailers. However, this is one of those cases where the actual movie bears very little resemblance to the trailers, which makes the reviewers flat out liars.

Regarding the first half of the movie, the reviewers are fairly close. Granted, they don't say anything you couldn't have found out from the trailers, but they're partly right. The Hancock character is a superhero who isn't very heroic, or rather a drunken slob who just happens to have super powers. There are a lot of gags to be had from this, but for the most part Hancock is just too much of a jerk for the jokes to really be funny. There is a blurry line between grungy anti-hero, and super-villian, but Hancock blatantly crosses it. He could save the world 100 times over, and I'd still want him locked away.

The second half is where the reviewers get it all wrong. From the trailers, I'm sure you thought that Hancock has a magical change of heart, and suddenly becomes sappier-than-Superman, and spends the rest of the movie helping people until he finally saves the world from some evil menace. Apparently the reviewers thought so too, because that's what they wrote. In actuality, it never becomes anything even close to resembling a typical formulaic super hero movie. What it does become is a bit of a mess, something harder to classify. But I will say that rather than fighting a final boss or having to move mountains to save humanity, it becomes more about Hancock's own past catching up with him. Spoiler alert, but how many superhero movies are resolved by having the hero literally run away from his problems (and, where it's actually a noble thing to do)?

It would be one thing if I'd only read people's blogs & message board posts. But a couple of the reviews I read were from actual papers, including my local paper. To be fair, in the case of the Tennessean, it might have been one of those national reviews that the local paper reprints. I've tried to find that paper again to see if that was the case, but it had already been thrown away. But regardless of where the review came from, someone was paid to write it, someone who didn't even bother to see the movie first. I've rarely seen such a clear-cut case of sloppy journalism. Telling people you saw a movie when you actually didn't, is the same as not doing your research on any article.

This is not a case of "I liked the movie, and reviewers didn't, so the reviewers suck." I have a few of those ready (Ask me about Starship Troopers sometime. Or Fantastic Four.), but this isn't one of them. I actually feel about the same way the reviewers did - lukewarm. Hancock is a decent matinee (though we got charged full price for a matinee due to Regal's new policy... but that's another rant altogether). The movie is flawed and uneven, with some cruel humor and some nonsensical plot twists. Some of the character motivations seem forced, as if the writers were so intent on it playing out a certain way, they didn't consider whether a certain character would actually do such a thing. But these flaws are not quite enough to make it a bad movie, and the good stuff makes up for the bad, IMO. Your mileage may vary.

But it doesn't matter that the reviewers and I agreed overall. The point is, that I actually bought a ticket (paying too much, Damn you Regal... *ahem*) and watched the thing, while the other guys got paid to write a review and didn't watch it. Maybe it's because I'm out of Cymbalta, but I think these reviewers should be shot, then fired, then shot again. Personally, I would love getting paid to watch movies and then write about them, and I know several people who would consider it a dream job. Can't these people see how good they have it? I might not be the best writer in the world, but if I were hired, I promise I would actually see the movies I'm paid to see.

Bottom line: Don't trust the reviews. And while we're at it, boycott Regal until they change the matinee times back.

Mario Kart Wii

I love my Wii, and I love most of the games I've played for it so far. Of course, the best of the best - Wii Sports, Zelda, Metroid, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros Brawl - are the ones made by Nintendo themselves. They're the only ones who really know how to get the most out of their system. So it's no real surprise that Mario Kart is a hit.

But what a hit... I can honestly say that this is the most fun I've had on the Wii so far. Of course the game is fun, it's Mario Kart - they could have repackaged Mario Kart 64 with some updated graphics and I'd have been happy. And to some extent, that's what they did - there's really not a whole lot of new content here. But the overall package is so enjoyable, that I can't complain.

Well, okay, I can complain. There are a few major flaws that would absolutely cripple it, if it were a non-Nintendo title.

For one thing, I hate the way you lose your items whenever you crash, get hit, spin out, get electrocuted, fall, burn, blink, sneeze, or think about cabbage. In the older Mario Kart games, it was a good strategy to hoarde the best items when you get them, and use them at just the right moment. For example, if you fell off the course but you happened to have a mushroom boost on you, then you could get going again in a flash. In MKW, falling off the course makes you lose that mushroom. It's so easy to lose your items in MKW, that the best strategy is to try to use your items as soon as you get them, before somebody hits you with their items.

And you will get hit often. Which brings me to my next complaint - the newest items are just too powerful. And since it's now 12 racers instead of 8, items are getting used constantly. The way MKW is programmed, the player in the lead gets the worst items, and those bringing up the rear get unblockable psycho-uber WMDs. In theory this is a good idea. In the older MK games, if you found yourself in 8th place in the third lap, then there wasn't much chance you'd place above 7th. With MKW, there's always hope. Now you can go from last to first in the final stretch of the last lap, just by getting the right powerup. And everybody targets the guy in front. So now, when you're the kart in first place, you spend most of your time flattened and shrunk, with a storm cloud over your head, a shell on your ass, and a squid in your face. You're almost better off staying in second for most of the race until the finish line is in sight.

Sometimes it bothers me that I'm not feeling the speed. Often I don't feel like I'm moving any faster than you can run in any given Mario game. And with some of the game's gimmicks (the one where you bounce off mushrooms comes to mind), I almost feel like I'm playing something besides a racing game. Maybe Nintendo needs to make a "Wii Fan" peripheral that blows air in your face, depending on how fast you're going.

Unless I'm missing something, there's seems to be no two-player GP mode. That's too bad, because I always enjoyed unlocking the cups with a friend. You can still race other people, both online and off. But without working towards something, those kind of matches feel a little empty to me. MKW has a lot of new characters and vehicles to unlock, but you have to switch to single player to unlock most of them. And when you unlock things, it only unlocks for the player who unlocks them. So KJ and I will each have to master every GP and time trial by ourselves, if we both want all the characters and vehicles. There's a lot of stuff to unlock (14 characters and 18 vehicles, I think), so doing it twice is a pain. And from what I've read, a few of the characters/karts are going to be a downright pain to unlock.

But despite my complaints, most of the time I'm having too much fun to care. I've seen some mixed reviews of MKW so far... Well, most reviewers have loved it, but a few have made the same complaints I mention above. Also, Nintendo has been accused of just going through the motions for this one, and saying that this is actually a step down from the much more innovative "Mario Kart Double Dash" for the Gamecube. I never played MKDD, so I can't really say if that's true. In fact, I haven't played any of them since the N64 version, so I can only see MKW as a huge improvement.

Sidetrack - Should reviewers base their reviews on previous games in the series? After all, if MKW is only a disappointment to those who played Double Dash, then how many people is that, really? The Wii console has probably outsold the Gamecube several times over by now. This question has bothered me for over a decade. When Capcom released "Super Street Fighter II" for the SNES, EGM gave it a bad review because they were tired of Capcom re-releasing the same game over and over, with only a few improvements. While I agree with the sentiment, I think a game should be reviewed based on its own merits. If a game receives a high score, then a few months later they release a version that's the exact same except for a few improvements, how can it get a lower score? That's letting personal politics get in the way of your review. There might be someone out there who didn't buy the previous versions of the game, who is trying to decide between the second or third version. Then they see that the second version got a better score than the third version, and don't realize that the reviewer was just trying to punish the game company with a bad review.

Another example, and one that never fails to piss me off: When a game is released for a couple of systems I don't own, and gets killer reviews. About a year later, it finally comes to the system I do own, and every review I find says, "Well, it's as good as ever, with a few improvements even. But we've already played it on Systems A and B, and we've moved on. We've beaten it so many times that we're bored with it now, so we're giving it a low score." WTF? Not everybody owns all three current consoles. How about a review for those of us who haven't played it yet? I'm a late adopter. I tend to wait for the prices to come down before I buy something. So I don't mind playing games with last year's graphics. Heck, I still regularly play games with last decade's graphics.

Anyway, sidetrack over, back to MKW. The online mode is a lot of fun. It's hard to say what's different, except that real people are a lot less predictable than computer AI. And knocking someone off the track is somehow more fulfilling when you know there's another human at the controls, than when it's just another bot.

The wheel works a lot better than I thought it would. I personally do better with the classic controller, as it's what I'm used to after all these years. But I have played with the wheel, and it's pretty responsive and a lot of fun. KJ does great with it, and it's all she uses. I just might have to buy a second wheel when I get the cash.

So if you have a Wii, and you've enjoyed any of the Mario Kart series in the past, you should pick this one up. It's flawed but fun. I wouldn't buy a Wii just for this game, but I wouldn't buy a Wii without it.

Anyway, if any of you also have a Wii, and want to add me to your friends list and whatnot, here's my Nintendo codes. Like Smash Bros, Mario Kart Wii requires its own code, different from the Wii console's friend code. Remember that I have to add yours as well, or nothing will happen. So if you put in my codes, you also have to send me yours.

Wii Console Friend Code:
7045 1920 7172 8881

Smash Bros Code:
4468 0854 8798

Mario Kart Wii:
Matt 0387-9165-2538
KJ 1504-6091-8383

The Batblog

There's really no point in making a long blog about The Dark Knight. If you're reading this, you've probably already seen it. If not, you've probably read some of the many glowing reviews of it. If you're on the fence, seriously, see it, you won't regret it. Beyond this sentence, I can't promise there won't be spoilers.

It's very intelligent. Not just "smart for a comic book movie", but smart for any genre. It didn't miss a trick, throwing out ethical questions just as often as explosions. It was a little overlong, but that's my bladder talking. There's not a lot of scenes I would have removed.

The Joker is incredibly well-done. He's morbidly funny, but more importantly, he's crafty and scary. Part clown, part Hannibal Lecter. He is a true psychopath, unpredictable and unremorseful. His machinations are brilliant, making the movie feel more chess-like than most similar attempts I've seen. I can not tell you how much I hate that Heath Ledger died, and how guilty I feel that I'm so glad he finished this movie first, and how selfish I feel for wishing he was still alive for a sequel. It's like saying, "It's okay for most people to die, but not the ones that entertain me." But I didn't know him, and thousands of people die every day, so I can only process his death in the ways that it effects me personally. Still, as much as I admire Ledger's performance, it is copyable. Another actor could do it, with practice. With a thorough enough casting call, they could get another actor to replace Ledger if they're determined to put the Joker in a sequel. It helps that he wore clown makeup for the entire movie.

Two-Face was awesome. Yeah, yeah, the makeup/CGI blend was incredible, yadda yadda, but the writing is the key. He didn't go around pulling two-themed crimes and strapping Batman to giant coins; actually, he didn't have much time to do anything silly. Instead, his tragic tale is told very realistically (given the parameters), and given just the right amount of screen time. Some people were disappointed that his entire story is done as the movie's "B" plot, but I'm glad they did it this way. I don't think Two-Face (at least, post-accident) is a strong enough character to carry a 2.5-hour movie, nor do I think this version of the character had much farther to go. He experiences a tragedy, his mind snaps, and he seeks a quick and violent (though misguided) revenge. A longer movie would have had him become a crime boss, and that's just not what this version of Two-Face was about. His motivations were better served by a quick ending. He probably would have died from infections before too long anyway.

After the realism of the first movie, I was a bit worried that having colorful over-the-top villains would cheapen this one. It doesn't. Though I still don't want them to deluge us with sequels, throwing in every silly animal-themed villian from the Penguin to Killer Croc.

And that's maybe the only problem I have with this series. The movie itself is smarter than the concept. I'm watching the movie and thinking, "Hey, that's a good line... Hey, that's a brilliant plot twist... Hey, that's a deep character... Hey, the hero is dressed like a freaking BAT!" I love Batman, but that is hard to get past. His main schtick is creating an air of superstition around Gotham's underworld, making the bad guys wonder, "Is he real? Is he a man or a monster?" This strategy can only work for the short term. Once Batman gets more exposure - getting caught on film, speaking in public, etc - that part of his career is over. Criminals will no longer be afraid of him, or at least they won't fear him any more than they fear the police. He'd still be an effective detective and prime crime fighter, but at that point he might as well lose the silly ears and wear something more like a ninja costume. Or (*gasp*) become a legitimate detective and fight crime legally!

That's what bothers me about the comics & cartoons. They can start his origin over and over, but any time the same series has lasted long enough to be handled by enough different writers, then eventually the "legend" part dies and he's just another guy in animal jammies. Sooner or later he starts fighting in the day time, working with groups like the Justice League, making television appearances, telling kids not to do drugs, and so on. And that turns him from scary to silly. The comics will have you believe that the Batjet can be seen fighting off an alien invasion alongside Superman and Captain Marvel, as the world watches on TV... then the following week in Batman's own comic, the criminals still fear the mysterious Bat, who may or may not exist, who could be watching them at any time.

So one of the reasons the Dark Knight movie works for me, is that it appears to take place shortly after the first one. Therefore the legend hasn't had a chance to die. If they make a third one, I hope they continue to give it a short timeline. I just can't believe that a fear-based hero would work for very long. In the Dark Knight movie we already see a couple of villains who are no longer intimidated by Batman's song-and-dance, and I have to believe that this familiarity would spread quickly, reducing any fear the criminals have of the Bat.

I would like to see a third movie, but only if they actually have another intelligent story to tell. I don't want them to go into it thinking, "This is a money maker, so we have to hash out something" the way some movies do. I don't know which villian I would want to see. Batman's enemies are too flashy and silly, and while they're great fun, they just don't fit in this movie series. I don't care how serious they make him, nobody is going to fear a crime boss called "The Penguin". The Riddler is just a knock-off of the Joker. Most of Batman's enemies are insane, but we've already done the "Batman fights an insane person" plot. And the ones with super powers like Clayface are right out. First person who suggests King Tut or Egghead gets kicked in the nads.

I wouldn't mind seeing Bane, but only if they do it right. Forget the movie and cartoon versions, and give him the intuitiveness and craftiness he has in the comics. Give him a personality like John Malkovich in Con Air, and don't comically overdo his strength. I want the Bane who was raised by the prison system from birth, the one who figured out Batman's secret identity just by "knowing his enemy", the one who masterminded the Arkham breakout just to make Batman tired. But that's just me. (Edit: I also wouldn't mind Lady Shiva.)

I don't want to see this series turn into another villain-of-the-week battle, the way most superhero movies do. After all, one of the best parts of the Dark Knight movie is that it's not the same plot as Batman Begins. Not to put down other superhero movies; everything has its place. They can make 30 Spider-Man movies for all I care, each one siller than the last, each one the exact same movie with a different bad guy pasted in. I'll still see them all, and have fun doing it. But the Dark Knight isn't about finding flashier enemies and CGI effects. It's about having a great story, and telling it well.

If there is a third movie, I would like an ending that deals a major blow to Gotham's crime problem, thus eliminating the need for Batman. Have Batman retire at the end of the movie, and fade away into legend. Let Bruce Wayne concentrate on corporate means of making the world a better place. Didn't they say that most of Gotham's crime issues come from the corrupt cops? Do you honestly believe Bruce Wayne isn't powerful enough to have these cops removed and replaced with more honest officers? That combination of intelligence and wealth doesn't need a cape & cowl to be scary.

Then... when the time is right... make a fourth movie that takes place 20 or 30 years later, when the Batman is needed again. We could call it something like... "The Dark Knight Comes Back"? No... "The Dark Knight Unretires"? No.... Oh, I don't know, ask Frank Miller.

Jumper / Vantage Point / Cloverfield

Spoilers abound, so I'll sum up first:
Jumper - Not bad, but not memorable.
Vantage Point - Pretty decent, but it's been done before.
Cloverfield - Awesome, but nausea-inducing.

Jumper:
Nothing memorable - you're not going to go out afterwards and buy the video game - but it's still a pretty good time. Hayden discovers he can teleport. No real scientific explanation is ever given, but random people are discovering they have this power. Sort of like X-Men, except everybody's Nightcrawler. What annoyed me most was the Paladins - a secret society of fanatics who know about the Jumpers, and want to kill them for no particular reason. The motivation of the Paladins was paper-thin - "Because no one should have that much power." - that might be enough to justify a few nutjob vigilantes, but a whole secret society? Plus, the concept that for every secret group, there's another secret group that knows about them. Like the Watchers on Buffy. Or the, uh, Watchers on Highlander. Even Anne Rice's Vampire books have a Watchers-type group.

If you want to see it just to make fun of it, there's plenty of humor potential in the "Anakin Skywalker Vs Mace Windu" theme. Jackson even uses an electric shocker stick that looks sort of lightsabery. Hayden's acting skills have improved some, but he's still not great.

Vantage Point:
This is not the movie I thought it was going to be from the trailers. My Supposition: The president gets shot, investigators find that six people in the crowd had video cameras, the footage is recovered, and the rest of the movie is a dramatic investigation in JFK-style. The Actual Movie: From the TV station's point of view, the President is shot and a bomb goes off. Then the movie rewinds the 23 minutes you've seen so far, and replays the same event from a different character's point of view, this time giving you a bit more insight. Then they do it again. It's the same story six times, from different characters' POVs, each going a bit farther and revealing a bit more of the plot.

Sitting next to me, Bryan kept thinking of that Star Trek episode where the Enterprise keeps blowing up. I kept thinking of Groundhog day, so every time the next segment started, I had to stop myself from singing, "You put your little hand in mine..." And for some reason, I whenever the action rewound to start the next segment, I wanted to say, "Previously on 24"... even though I've never seen 24.

I would call this movie groundbreaking and brilliant, if I hadn't seen the concept done before on various TV shows. I think there's even an episode of the Batman cartoon series that was done this way. And while Vantage Point is a pretty good movie, the gimmick is really all it has going for it. The story isn't very deep or interesting, and if it was shown straight through like a normal movie, it wouldn't have even made it to the theaters.

A pet peeve of mine: The trailer for this movie contains a major spoiler. It shows that the president is actually still alive, even though the movie audience doesn't find out until at least halfway through the movie.

Cloverfield:
This one get summed up as "Blair Witch meets Godzilla", and it's really not much deeper than that. And it's true what they say about the shakiness - if you get nauseous easily, you should definitely take a Dramamine first. Comparing action movies to amusement park rides is cliche, but this time it truly fits. Cloverfield is like one of those roller coasters that really makes you sick, but you ride it anyway because it's worth it. And Cloverfield is definitely worth it. I've seen plenty of "giant monster destroys city" movies, but I've never actually thought they were scary. But seeing it through the victims' eyes really does sell it. Never has a giant monster looked more menacing, because never have I seen a giant monster from this angle.

Some minor nitpicks, because it just wouldn't be me to call a movie perfect: The opening is a bit long. There's some very good reasons for it, and I don't begrudge the director one bit for giving us so much background on the characters. But when this puppy hits DVD, I'm fast-forwarding to the action. Some of the characters show superhuman toughness that can't just be chalked up to adrenaline. And... okay, this is really nitpicky, but... It's two thousand frikkin eight. Is there really anybody out there who has never held a video camera? And even if you've never touched one, are they really that hard to figure out?

Yes, I'm talking about the shakiness. This is the one type of movie where I not only forgive the use of a shakycam, but I even encourage it. But they still overdid it. I understand that when you're being chased by monsters, you're not going to worry about getting good footage. And even when standing still, if you're in a life-or-death situation, you still might have the shakes. But even at the beginning of the movie, when he's just walking around the party, he's shaking it, tilting it in odd ways, zooming badly, and so on. The amateurs on "America's Funniest Home Videos" possessed better camera skills 15 years ago.

But overall, Cloverfield is an awesome movie, and defintely worth a little queasiness. It relies heavily on the "what you don't show is as important as what you do" method of storytelling, and it leaves the audience with a lot of questions - but in a good way. Now I'm hearing rumors of other movies in the works using the same "found footage" format. I hope this doesn't become a genre. Once or twice is innovative, but beyond that it's just annoying.

Three Movies & Six Minutes

Alien Vs Predator: Requiem
This is the type of bad movie I usually love. Good action, nice gore effects, bad script, bad acting. I had a lot of fun. But there's really not a whole lot to be said about this movie. If you like the AVP universe, it has some nice eye candy. After seeing the Aliens in mostly isolated sci-fi settings, it's pretty surreal to see them running around a modern day city. Spoiler alert (not that this movie has a lot of twists): There's only one Predator in this one, so it's not so much the war scenario we saw in the AVP, and more similar to the hunter scenario of the original Predator movies. And the hybrid Alien/Predator is pretty neat, but the action figure is cooler looking.

Sweeny Todd
According to Wikipedia, the Broadway musical Sweeny Todd opened in 1979. It was based on a 1973 play, which in turn was based on a 19th century legend. Well, I don't care. It was written for Tim Burton. This story fits Burton's style so much, that I can't picture anyone else filming it. KJ and I saw the play about a year ago, and loved every minute of it. However, the movie blows it away... which is not something I would usually say. It's like saying, "The movie was better than the book" - it's just not done, at least not by those who consider themselves intellectual. And I'm sure that we didn't see the best production of Sweeny Todd ever made; it was at a small playhouse with a low budget. But I can't imagine any play being able to capture the mood of Burton's theatrical version.

It's funny, if someone had simply told me, "They're making a movie version of Sweeny Todd", I wouldn't have had any thoughts about the casting. But if someone had told me, "Tim Burton's making a movie version of Sweeny Todd", I would have immediately known: Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. And they both do fantastic jobs. A warning, the movie is a musical (for those who hate musicals) and it is very, very, very, very bloody. It's an unrealistically bright red blood that artistically offsets the lack of color elsewhere in the movie, but it can still be nausea-inducing for those who don't deal well with gore.

While not my favorite movie of all time, this is one of those few movies I consider "flawless", in that I really can't think of anything I would change.

I Am Legend
Great movie, but I don't think I'll see it again. This is the third movie based on the Richard Matheson novel, but variations of the plot have been used in dozens of other movies. So one way or another, you've probably already seen it. This is one of the better versions of the "last man on Earth fights mutants" story, but it's a little uneven, and I think a lot of the movie will be boring on repeated viewings. Also, the computer effects could have used a little polish. I hear that they decided to use computer-rendered mutants at the last moment (they tried makeup but it didn't look right), and it shows. It wasn't bad enough to pull me out of the movie, but it was bad enough for me to think, "Isn't this 2007?" Overall, I highly recommend the movie, especially if you see it on IMAX, where you'll see...

The Dark Knight preview
As much as I enjoyed "I Am Legend", this six minute preview of the upcoming Batman movie was better. You can find it online if you look hard enough, but seeing it on the IMAX screen was just awesome. It basically shows a bank robbery pulled off by the Joker's gang, with several plot twists already showing how delightfully devious the new Joker is going to be. Based on this preview, I really don't know if they're going to be able to keep the realism that I loved so much in Batman Begins... but I still think this movie is going to rock.

By the way, Happy New Year!

The Mist

I first read The Mist (as a short story in Skeleton Crew) when I was in 7th grade or so, and it's always been my favorite Stephen King story. I've been wanting them to make it into a movie for years, so this movie had a lot to live up to. I'm glad to say that, for the most part, it matched (but didn't exceed) my expectations. The movie plays out on the screen almost exactly as it played out in my head. Even though I haven't re-read the story in a couple of years, I knew who some characters were right away from their first appearance, just by the way they looked. I don't know if that's a compliment to the casting director, or wardrobe, or even King's writing for being so easily interpreted.

The movie follows the book very closely (except for the ending, which I'll get to in a bit). You know, I think the story is the perfect length to make into a movie: they didn't have to cut much out (other than the ending, I can only remember one scene in the book that wasn't in the movie, and I bet it was filmed), and they didn't have to add much in. Even without the story fresh in my mind, I generally knew what was going to happen next. Because the movie is set in a somewhat rural area, even the setting hasn't changed much since the story was written. The movie could easily have taken place 20 years ago, except for one scene where someone uses a cell phone as a flashlight.

Some of the acting is a little flat, and the whole movie has a little bit of a "made for the Sci-Fi Channel" feel to it, but I'm okay with that. I do wish they'd had a slightly bigger budget, as some of the computer FX could have used a little polish. But that's just the jaded FX cynic in me; if this had come out a few years ago, we would have been amazed. A warning to the easily grossed-out: The Mist does contain a few very good gore effects, some of which made me cringe. KJ had to cover her eyes through some of the bloodier moments, and even complained of nausea at one point.

The monster designs are very cool, and the director really understood the spirit of the story - knowing what NOT to show being more important than what to show. This movie is everything I wished the "Silent Hill" movie had been. My favorite thing about the SH video game was how it felt like I was playing through The Mist short story, and now The Mist movie feels like a better film adaptation of the game than the actual SH movie. One thing I didn't like: If I remember correctly, in the book, the characters put forth a lot of theories about what happened up at the military base ("Project Arrowhead") that caused the mist and everything in it. But they're never really certain, and that adds to the mysteriousness of it all. The movie, on the other hand, has a scene that completely spells out what caused the mist. Sometimes it's just cooler to live with the mystery. It's as if someone said that the Force in Star Wars was caused by microscopic bacteria in a Jedi's blood cells. Or if the immortals in Highlander turned out to be space aliens. I mean, really, who would do that?

The ending... Ohhhhh, the ending... I'm not going to spell it out exactly, but if you want to stay spoiler-free, skip this paragraph. In a word, the ending is cruel. It has an ironic "Outer Limits"-style twist, or at least it tries to. Instead it comes off like the punchline to a sick practical joke. Remember that part in the Bible, where God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and at the last moment an angel yells out, "April Fool!" (And people say God doesn't have a sense of humor.) Okay, now imagine the same joke if the angel had shown up a few minutes later. "Just kidding! You didn't really have to do that! Here, I'll help you clean up..." I realize the book's ambiguous ending wouldn't have translated well to the big screen, but I can think of a few alternatives that would have worked, IMO.

To sum up, I really enjoyed the movie. My favorite Stephen King short story turns into one of my favorite SK movies. I just hope the DVD has some alternate endings.

The Host

You've got to see the first half hour of this movie. I swear, for the first thirty-odd minutes, I just knew that this was going to be my favorite monster movie of all time. The creature FX are just so indescribably entertaining. The monster is both funny and scary, and you hardly have to wait at all to see it. First you see the creature like you would in any other movie... off in the distance, then as a shadow under the water, and you think, "This is how I'm going to see the monster for the next hour, until we finally get a full view of the thing right at the end." Um, nope. Shortly after it swims by, it comes running down the sidewalk, in broad daylight. The next twenty minutes are B-movie nirvana.

And then the movie loses momentum. The next hour or so of the movie kind of drags, as it centers on the family of one of the victims. It has a lot of comic relief - it's originally Korean, and sometimes it's hard to tell if the tongue-in-cheek humor is intentional or just bad dubbing - but the humor can only sustain you for so long. Even the monster eventually gets boring, which is why most horror movies keep it hidden until the climax - this movie has no "payoff" scene. I kept hoping that they'd kill it, only to find a larger, weirder monster lurking in the shadows. Spoiler alert: Nope.

Basically, the whole movie feels backwards. It's as if you're watching one of those really slow, suspenseful horror movies, the kind filled with long scenes of exposition followed by quick flashes of monster killing someone, until the big-budget reveal scene right before they kill it. Except, you've decided to watch the ending first.

So rent this one, and rent it now. The opening is worth it. But if you start to get bored, and want to hit the fast-forward button, I promise not to tell anyone.

...Does Whatever An Iron Can...

Yesterday I saw the trailer for Iron Man. So for the past 24 hours I've had Black Sabbath stuck in my head.

It looks a fun movie, but it is getting a little tiring watching them dredge up every super hero they can think of for a movie. Heck, I was surprised they made Ghost Rider. A lot of these movies are too similar to each other. Really, what was in Daredevil that wasn't already in Batman or Spiderman? What's going to be in Iron Man that wasn't in Superman? Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely going to see it, and I'll probably like it very much. I don't really consider Iron Man the bottom of the barrel, but he's close. I just hope they don't get to Sub-Mariner - that's where I draw the line.

The Bourne Redundancy

We saw The Bourne Ultimatum today. To fully appreciate the movie and this review, you need to remember the details of all three movies. To recap:

The Bourne Identity - 2002
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.

The Bourne Supremacy - 2004
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.

The Bourne Ultimatum - 2007
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.

Truly, there hasn't been such a wild variety of unexpected plot twists since the Rocky movies. Which is not to say that The Bourne Ultimatum is bad, but it sure isn't anything new. If you liked the first two, then you'll like this one... but you might not remember which is which. The Bourne Ultimatum is a perfectly adequate action movie. In fact, it's incredibly adequate, mind-bogglingly mediocre, and brain-bendingly bland. In fact, it's so fantastically average, that it would actually have to be worse just to be any better. The movie so unmemorable, that even if every actor had gone through the entire movie in the nude, painted blue, and on fire, I still would have forgotten what I'd just seen by the time I got to my car. And yet, it's still a decent movie. It's just so.... so.... "so-so".

Ben Aff- I mean, Matt Damon (MATT DAMON!!), a.k.a. overrated generic actor No. 235, does his usual adequate job in portraying the untouchable hero devoid of any personality. Since it's obvious they were going for "average" anyway for this series of movies, Damon is probably the best actor they could have gotten. Or "most appropriate" actor, I should say. The words "Damon" and "best actor" should never belong in the same sentence.

By the time I got out of there, I wasn't quite sure if I'd just seen the newest Bourne movie, or one of the earlier ones again. It doesn't really matter; they're pretty much interchangeable. Tell someone you're going to show them the Bourne trilogy, and you can either show them all three in a row, 1-2-3, or you can get creative and show them 2-3-2 or 3-1-1 or 2-2-2. They won't know the difference. You could probably even put them in one of those 3-DVD disc changers, and have it show scenes from all three in random order, maybe even mixed in with with Good Will Hunting or Saving Private Ryan just for the heck of it. Mix it up, it can only make it better.

An Open Letter To Filmmakers:

Using a hand-held shaky-cam was a nice little gimmick a few decades ago, but it's time to move on. Having the film shot by an epileptic Chihuahua doesn't make the movie any more immersive. It doesn't make the movie edgy or raw or interesting. All it does is make the action scenes harder to follow, and makes your audience nauseous. If you can afford to spend 100 million dollars on a movie, you can spend 50 bucks on a tripod. For Gawd's sake, now that the MPAA rating has gotten so detailed that they include every little offensive thing... "Rated R for Brief Nudity, Pervasive Crude Humor, Light Drug Use, Violence, Language, and a Bad Haircut"... could they not start listing things like "Vomit-inducing shaky-cam"? I find that a lot more offensive than nudity.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!! ...and Stuff.

It's been an interesting wiik. Wii've been having troubles wiith our internet connection since Sunday (a wiik ago today). Every day, our internet has gone out for an hour or two. The cable TV hasn't gone out, so wii don't have a clue what's been causing it. Wii called Comcast a few times, and they gave us their typical newbie solutions (Did you try resetting the modem? Duh. Did you unplug the modem and plug it back in? Double duh. Did you try resetting the router? Duh.) And of course they still try to blame the router (because nothing is ever Comcast's fault), even though wii'd tried bypassing the router and plugging the modem into the computer directly, with no success.

They sent a tech out on Friday to look at it. He fiddled wiith my configuration settings, and declared it fixed. I left for work right as he left, and when I got there, I already had a voice mail from KJ... yep, it was out again. So wii had the tech come back. He gave us a new cable modem.

So this morning I woke up to find our internet out again. Wii called Comcast yet again, and they scheduled a "better" tech to come out this Wednesday (the first two were "basic" troubleshooters, this new guy would have been one of their techmasters). Then, later this afternoon, Comcast calls me back to tell me that there's been an outage in our area all day. So for once, it wasn't just our house (though they could have checked that when wii called this morning).

So wii cancelled the Wiidnesday appointment, whiich is a sure-fire way to guarantii it's going to go out again. Right now, wii're just waiting to sii how long our connection lasts.

Btw, as I mentioned in yesterday's blog: one other thing wii did this wiikend, is wii bought a Nintendo Wii. Whiich miins that now wii both have arm cramps, and I thiink iit's affectiing my spiich.

Seriously, though, I love the new system. If any of you also have one, let me know and we'll trade friend codes. For whatever that does.

Anyway, it's a great system, but it doesn't have a very good library yet. With it we bought Zelda, Metroid, and Wii Play (best way to get a second controller). We especially love the Bowling on Wii Sports, and the Pool on Wii Play, both of which are proof that fun gameplay beats good graphics any day of the week.

What I really don't like is the gimmicky use of the Wii's controls. It's the same speech I keep giving about the overuse of the stylus in DS games: Just because it's there, doesn't mean you have to use it. The wiimote/nunchuck combo actually makes a very natural-feeling controller, and it's much more comfortable than classic gamepads because you can hold your arms apart and rest them however you like. So if a cross-platform game hits the Wii, they really don't need to tack on "shake the controller wildly to punch" functions; it actually makes the game feel less natural.

Which isn't to say I don't like swinging the wiimote around like an idiot. I love it. I love using it like a sword or a gun or what have you. But only if it makes sense in the context of the game. I'm really afraid that the gimmicky-ness is going to mean fewer cross-platform games hitting the system, because of this obligation to use the sensors.

Next gripe... I'm usually the first in line to argue for backwards compatibility. But in this case, I'm really not sure they needed it to play Gamecube games. There's a panel on the system that opens up to reveal four Gamecube controller ports, and another panel that hides a couple of Gamecube memory card slots. Since they were hyping the Wii as the cheapest of the next-gen consoles, surely they could've knocked a couple of bucks off the system if they hadn't included it. Also, the Gamecube wasn't that big a system anyway, at least when you compare it to its peers (PS2 & Xbox). Arguably they would've been better off giving the Wii a cartridge slot for SNES games.

Maybe if they'd left off the Gamecube emulation, they could have used the money to put in a DVD player. Seriously, I'm willing to bet there's more people out there who own DVDs than own Gamecube games. The Wii already uses normal-size discs, as opposed to the Gamecube's minidiscs. And then I wouldn't have to keep my PS2 in the living room along side the Wii just to watch movies. And I wouldn't have had to spend extra money solving the problem of hooking two systems up to my TV.

But anyway. For all that, the Wii is still my favorite of the systems out there. The X-Box 360 and the PS3 are just bigger, better, and prettier versions of what we've already been playing for years and years. I've been getting sort of jaded lately about video games. It just feels like I've played it all before, and most of it wasn't that interesting the first time. Graphics are getting better and better, but that just doesn't make things funner. I still have more fun with the 2D games of the 16-bit era than I do with most of the current stuff.

But that's just me.

Changing gears again...

The night before last I woke up screaming. I dreamed that for some reason, KJ and I were living in my old house on Long Hollow Pike. I don't know if we actually owned it or if we were just guests, but we were staying in the "green room" upstairs, which was a guest room last time I lived there.

I don't remember anything but the end, but I know it wasn't a nightmare until then. It was just a normal dream about us doing normal stuff. I remember I had been reading a Star Wars book, and I only had a couple of pages left. I had to use the bathroom, so I sat down on the toilet in the upstairs hall bathroom and opened my book. In the dream, the shower was to my left (which is the opposite of real life). I was looking at the book's pages, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw my legs. One hairy leg on the right, and one hairy leg on the right. And one more hairy leg on the left, next to mine. I screamed, in the dream and I think in real life.

The leg was sticking out of the shower, bent just like mine but slightly more outstretched, as if the owner was sitting on a chair in the shower. I craned my head around and opened the shower curtain, and my Dad was lying in the shower, dead. I remember his lips were blue-ish. I screamed again.

Then he very slightly started to twitch, and his lips started moving. I screamed until KJ woke me up. That was about 6 AM, and we didn't go back to sleep. On the plus side, there's no line at Pancake Pantry if you go early enough.

Well, I'm off to play some Wii. It's a nice thrii-day wiikend, the best tiime to buy a new system.

Fish & Trips

Fish & Trips

Saturday morning we got up very early, and drove down to Atlanta. We went to the Georgia Aquarium, which was very cool but very crowded. It is, according to their website, the "World's Largest Aquarium". However, I'm not exactly sure how they're measuring it exactly. Total building size? Gallons of water? Number of fish? Size of fish?

I only bring this up because KJ and I have been to several great aquariums in the past few years, and while Atlanta's is certainly huge, it didn't keep us occupied as long as some of the others. And a lot of the length was due to the crowds.

That said, it is a great aquarium. We got tons of beautiful pictures there. If not for the crowds, I could have spent several more hours there. If you're people-phobic like me, here's my suggestion: Try to find out when the "off season" is, or wait a couple of years until the furor has died down a bit. For a great aquarium fix in the meantime, I would recommend the Newport Aquarium (http://www.newportaquarium.com/). No, it's not as big, but it's still pretty impressive. Plus, it's not as well-known, so you don't have as many problems with crowds. Why worry about whether or not the tank you're looking at holds 1 or 2 million gallons of water? Without the other people getting in your way and ruining your pictures, you can stare at the same tank for hours and still see new fish swim by.

Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg (http://www.ripleysaquariumofthesmokies.com/) is good too, probably slightly better than Newport, but of course it's Gatlinburg... you're back to dealing with crowds again. Chattanooga's Aquarium (http://www.tnaqua.org/) is just okay... it's nice because it's close, but it's not worth visiting very often. Really, I'd almost rather just eat at the Aquarium Restaurant (http://www.aquariumrestaurants.com/AquariumNashville/) at the mall.

After the Aquarium, we drove to the nearby town of Douglasville to surprise my cousin at work, after which we saw the movie 1408. This movie is based on a short story by Stephen King, from the book "Everything's Eventual". I'm not often satisfied with 50-page stories forcibly stretched into 2-hour movies, but this one is quite good. It's "spooky-scary", not "gory-scary", so slasher fans might want to stay away. It's been a while since I've read the story, but I think it's relatively faithful, except towards the end. It's one of those where the longer it goes on, the farther it strays from the book. But I'm no purist - I believe that movies are movies and books are books, and some things work better in print than on screen. With the exception of about 20 minutes near the end, the director made some very good choices.

I have a hard time recommending 1408 because I'm afraid a lot of people just won't "get it". But the theater audience seemed to have a good time, so maybe that's not really an issue. This movie should be seen in the theater, as the gasps and screams from the audience were almost as entertaining as what's on the screen. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Before the movie, there were a couple of neat trailers I hadn't seen before. "Shoot 'Em Up" is full of mesmerizing (if unbelievable) action scenes, reminiscent of the Transporter movies or Crank... but instead of Jason Statham, this movie stars Clive Owen as an expert marksman, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Also known as "Standard Movie Plot #23", but when you see the action, you won't care about the plot.)

"The Invasion" is yet another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It updates the plot to make it more timely and less "60's Drive-In" schlock, but there wasn't much else interesting to say about it. I'll probably see it just to compare it with the other versions, but I'm not expecting much.

They also showed the trailer for Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween. I had already seen the trailer a few months ago, but this was the first time on a big screen. I've been reading a lot of debates about this one... it supposedly goes a bit deeper into Michael's mind, which could be good or bad. One of the coolest things about the original was that he was so blank. It made him a force of the unknown, a character with which no one could possibly relate, and in its own way it made Meyers a lot scarier. But I'll reserve judgement until I see this one, because the previews do look pretty darn cool.

Anyway, we stayed in Douglasville for the night. Bit of triva for you. The most annoying traffic light in the country is at the corner of Douglas Blvd and Bill Arp Rd. At least that was my experience - it didn't matter which direction we came from, it was always red when we got there, and stayed red for what seemed like 10 minutes. Coincidence, or does the light just not like out-of-towners?

Sunday morning we went to Atlanta's Pride Parade. I had planned to dress up - same outfit as Nashville Pride, but a different wig - but it was just too hot. KJ and I both got horrible sunburns as it was (we forgot to bring our sunblock). I can't imagine what it would have been like if I'd been wearing a wig.

Anyway, Pride was great. There were hundreds of booths with loads of neat stuff for sale, making us regret our tight budget. Then we watched was the longest parade I've ever seen. We managed to get a spot just a few feet from a group of religious protestors, who held up anti-gay signs and shouted Bible verses through their microphone. Eh, we mostly just laughed at them. I really can't say anything bad about the preachers because they were trying to help their fellow man. If they want to spread their beliefs in a non-violent way, then I have no problem with that.

But the stuff they were saying through their microphone was so incredibly stupid, that any idiot with a Bible and 10 minutes to spare could disprove whatever they said. I just wish these guys would do their research.

But again, the parade was a lot of fun; though I will have to say, the transgender community was woefully underrepresented. Nothing unusual there... I often feel like a minority within a minority that way. Still, there were plenty of unique people there, and while I'm not actually gay (in the man/man sense), I do feel a strong connection with the GLBT community. Seeing so many thousands of fellow freaks in one place makes me feel much less alone in the world.

God, I'm tired. Good night.

And Now For A Literary Interlude...

The last few books I read:


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K. Rowling

I'll try and go light on the spoilers here, but if you truly don't want to know anything about this book, you should probably skip this review. Heh, "review"... like I'm Roger Ebert or something. This book doesn't need a review. If you've read the first six, you're obviously going to read it. If you haven't read any of them, then you're not going to start with this one. Rowling could have released 759 pages of Harry brushing his teeth, and it would still sell more copies than War and Peace.

A few weeks ago I posted a blog with my predictions about this one. I was right about some things, and I was wrong about some things. Deathly Hallows is definitely the darkest of this series, and has very little of the awe and wonder of the early books. In many ways it reads like a Nazi Holocaust story, with the characters constantly trying to find new places to hide from the evil army. There were parts that were hard to get through, simply because they were drawn out and depressing. But the action scenes are exciting, and the plot is involving. Like most of the HP books, it gets a little convoluted here and there, but everything ties up quite nicely in the end.

Overall, Deathly Hallows is quite good, and the perfect cap for the series. If I were to rank the series, favorite to least favorite, I would say 1, 4, 2, 6, 7, 3, 5. But all of them are excellent books, and easy to read despite the length. In fact, even though this one was one of the harder ones to get through, I still managed to read it in two days.



Icewind Dale: The Crystal Shard
by R.A. Salvatore

I'm halfway through the second book in this trilogy, and so far it's pretty good. The first book, The Crystal Shard, introduces us to Drizzt Do'Urden, one of the most well-known characters in D&D lore. Drizzt is a Drow (that's a dark elf, for you non-gamers), but he's a good guy, which is rare for a Drow. Which of course, means he's an outcast - his own people think he's too nice, and other races think all dark elves are evil. Drizzt is the ultimate "fan service" character, the kind of hero Todd McFarlane would design if he wrote novels instead of comics. There is absolutely nothing about this character that isn't "cool". He fights with a pair of scimitars, he can summon a black panther, he can hide like a ninja, he knows magic, and he's nearly untouchable in battle. Even his weaknesses are badass: he's allergic to sunlight, and he's a social outcast; so he stays in the shadows and wears concealing hoods. This is exactly the kind of "ultimate" character you would design if you were a twelve-year-old boy.

That said, the book is surprisingly absorbing. Salvatore, who some might remember for killing a major Star Wars character in Vector Prime, is actually a pretty good writer. I didn't care for his Star Wars writing at the time, but here he seems to be more in his element. I think he has more freedom here, even within the boundries of D&D's strict rulebooks, because he's using his own characters. While Drizzt is obviously Salvatore's favorite, the other characters get plenty of time to shine. They aren't nearly as deep as Drizzt (a couple of them feel like they walked right off a standard Character Sheet), but they have their moments. I do wish the book had a stronger female presence, though. The only major female character, Catti-Brie, gets very little screen time. I hope she has a larger role later in the trilogy.

If you've been wanting to try any books set in the D&D universe, I would definitely start with this one.



Cell
by Stephen King

Stephen King does zombie horror. Except they're not zombies. And it's another post-apocalyptic story, like The Stand. Except this is nothing like The Stand. Well, whatever it is, this is a really good book about the last few sane people in a world gone mad. This is one of those books that just jumps right into the story, hooking you after just a few pages, and becomes hard to put down. I thought the ending was a little weak, but the journey was still worth it. This is one of my favorite Stephen King books.



Lisey's Story
by Stephen King

This is NOT one of my favorite Stephen King books, but it wasn't bad. I can't tell you much about the plot without spoiling it, so this is going to be pretty vague: The main character is the widow of a famous novelist, and a large portion of the book is her flashbacks of life with her late husband. Like other King books involving novelists (The Dark Half, Misery), King throws a lot of himself into this book. It doesn't get interesting until about halfway through, so if you start it, stick with it. It took a lot of work to get to the good parts of this book, and I can't promise that the payoff is worth it. Overall, I am glad I read it, but I can't really recommend it.



The Dragonlance Chronicles
(Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning)
by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

I read these because they are some of the earliest novels that take place in the D&D universe. The characters introduced are well-known to gamers, and therefore these are books you're simply "supposed to have read" if you're in the gaming crowd. Standard fantasy fare; filled with dwarves and elves, monsters and magic, dungeons and, well, dragons. Let's call it "Tolkein For Dummies", since the elements are similar, but it's much easier to read. I enjoyed them, but they aren't particularly memorable.



She's Not There: A Life In Two Genders
by Jennifer Finney Boylan

This is the autobiography of a trangender college professor. Boylan is an excellent writer, and was already a published author even before she realized she was a woman. It's both thought-provoking and funny, with a quirky sense of humor punctuating the drama. This is one of two books I generally recommend anyone who is interested in learning more about the subject, the other being True Selves. True Selves is more informative; this one is more entertaining.



Religion Gone Bad
by Mel White

One of the few non-fiction books I've read by choice, this is a report on the war between Christian fundamentalism and gay rights. Much of the book is an attack on Jerry Falwell, who ironically died shortly after this book was published... kind of making it obsolete. But Falwell's associates still spread the same message, so the book is still relevant. It was written by a gay preacher, who was once a fundie himself before he saw the light. Pastor Mel White still preaches the word of God, but without the bigotry inherent in the sermons of fundies like Pat Roberson. If even half of what this book says is true (and with the extensive footnotes and bibliography, I don't think White made anything up), then I fear greatly for the future. Our current president has committed some serious crimes with regards to seperation of church and state; more than most people know. After reading this book, I'd have to say that if there is a Hell, Jerry Falwell is roasting in it as we speak. But that's just my opinion.

Harry Potter and the Underwhelming Soundtrack

Thursday night we saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Great movie, really enjoyable. -But- I think you might need to have read the book to appreciate it. It's hard to say if there were any actual "holes" due to the translation, because any questions I had would doubtlessly have been filled by memories from the book. Book 5 was my least favorite of the series, which is like saying my "least favorite" sexual position - it's still an awesome book. But it is talky and political, and while the movie only shows the most interesting parts of the book, I still think it's going to bore the more casual fans.

I loved Tonks, and I wish she'd had more screen time. Great casting all over, really - Bellatrix, Luna, Umbridge, even Mrs. Figg.

Terrible, terrible soundtrack. The score was bland, and absent in the oddest places. Heh, during Voldemort's fight with Dumbledore, I started humming "Duel of the Fates"... but it was odd that there wasn't any music playing already. The end credits music sounded like it belonged to another genre of movie altogether. They should really consider rescoring the movie before it hits DVD.

Another "Heh" - during that same battle between V&D, when Voldy made a giant firesnake, I wanted Dumbledore to shout, "You shall not pass!"

Live Free or Transform

On Sunday we saw "Live Free or Die Hard". That is a fun movie, with lots of great action scenes. Of the four Die Hard movies, this is probably my second favorite. My only real problem is that all the best action shots - and all the funniest lines - were shown in the trailers. Of course, if you want to make people see your movie, you offer them lots of eye candy and quotable quotes. But you should at least leave something to the imagination.

The working title for this movie was "Die Hard 4.0", because the plot revolves around computers. I don't know how feasible this movie is from a technological standpoint, but it's pretty scary to see what could happen if someone had complete control over the nation's computers. Justin Long is cast as an expert hacker, and given his previous role as Macintosh spokesman, he's probably now typecast for life. I don't think I've seen a whinier character in any movie. Of course you know he's going to turn around and do something brave by the end of the movie, but in the meantime I wanted to kill him myself.

"We Just Lost Marty" factor: The movie starts out pretty good, but the action scenes get more and more outrageous as it goes one. There's a scene towards the end (involving an airplane) that is out-and-out outrageous... but who cares, it was fun.

Oh, and there was one part - and maybe I'm just being nitpicky here, but this really stood out to me. Remember back when the bad guys actually stayed down? Remember when they blew up Ah-nold in The Terminator, and you thought the movie was over, until the endoskeleton crawled out of the wreckage? Did you notice how after that, no bad guy ever stays down the first time, in any movie, anywhere?

So John McClane is fighting this villain, a strikingly beautiful Asian-looking martial arts expert. The actress is actually Polish-Irish/Vietnamese, but in the movies you only have to look Japanese to be a martial arts master. So, he knocks her down a few times, she knocks him down a few times, each giving and taking blows that would finish off anyone in real life. No biggie. She knocks him over a rail, he falls a few stories, gets back up, dusts himself off. No big deal. He finds a car, drives it back up to the top floor, drives through the wall, hits the woman with the car... and while stuck to the front grill, she still keeps fighting back. Clearly I need to switch vitamins.

But was that before or after he fights the circus acrobat in the air ducts? I don't remember... all I can say is that it's funny how bad guys can be such computer experts, spending a significant portion of their lives in front of keyboards, and still fight like Batman. But all that's okay, because the Die Hard movies take place in the "Action Movie" universe, a place where cars blow up like the Death Star when you tap the bumpers, where wounds stop bleeding within minutes, and where people can outrun explosions.

Reality is depressing; fantasy is exhilarating. I saw screw accuracy, and cue the explosions.


Today we saw "The Transformers". That was also mindless fun. It is a special effects movie, and it appeals to the little kid in me, the one who wanted to grow up to be a fire truck. It's hard to reconcile the fact that it's written like a grown-up movie, and yet it's clearly a toy-line concept.

I would have loved to see two other versions of this movie. One version would follow the cartoons more closely, with the old school designs and size-changing transformations. The other version would cut out the toy/comic tie-in altogether and strictly make a serious movie about shape-changing space robot invaders. As is, the movie feels a little bit schitzophrenic. You can see where the makers made agonizing decisions about what to include, and what to cut. Anything silly or far-fetched had to be weighed against it's value as fan service. What resulted is a perfectly adequate product, but with a very specific target audience.

People who never saw the cartoon/comics/toys are going to find the movie a bit goofy, but might enjoy the SFX and action. Classic Transformers fanatics are going to be angry over all the changes, but they're still going to see it 10 times and buy the DVD.

Of course, there are plot holes big enough to drive Optimus Prime through. Like it matters. If you put aside your suspension of disbelief long enough to accept the concept of the movie, then there's probably a lot of other things you're willing to accept.

In an early issue of the Transformers comic series, there was a scene in which a human fell off a cliff, and at the last second an autobot managed to catch him. This was absurd, of course - so he fell from a lethal height, but because he landed in a robot's metal hand instead of the ground, he was safe? Riiiight. Well, that same thing happens twice in the Transformers movie.

The dialogue was okay, but it varied in quality throughout the movie. My expectations in that area where pretty low, so I was fairly impressed. It's like the writers knew which lines were bad, and even admitted it once: When Sam told Mikaela that she was "more than meets the eye", the audience groaned. But after she left, Sam scolded himself saying, "That was a bad line!"

Since the robots speak very little in the previews, I had no idea what to expect from their personalities. More than any other factor, the robots' dialogue made the movie feel silly to me. Especially Optimus. Out of all the Autobots, Optimus Prime was the only one in the comics/toons who never broke his serious persona, and was generally a humorless character. But in this movie, he had some of the funniest lines. And the part when the Autobots are trying to hide from Sam's parents... for a moment I thought I was watching Ninja Turtles.

My biggest gripe is actually one of my own pet peeves. This is just my problem, so don't take it as a mark against the movie: I had trouble following a lot of the action. Either things happened too fast, or a scene would be filmed with a shaky-cam causing everything to blur. I hate shaky-cam, it ruins a lot of movies for me. I see the artistic relevance, but artistry means squat when I can't tell what's going on (or worse, getting nauseous). On the other hand, there were a few shots that where slowed down, Matrix-style... but that's another one of my pet peeves. I know, it sounds like I should avoid action movies altogether, but I generally love them when they don't go to those particular extremes.

I know it sounds like I've said a lot of negative things, but I really did love the movie. And as long as you know what you're getting into - two hours of frenzied action with nostalgic undertones - you'll have a great time.

By the way, with the Transformers movie premiered a new trailer for a so-far-untitled giant monster movie. The twist is that the movie is shot like the Blair Witch Project - all on home video cameras, as if someone found the footage later after the disaster. It's a neat trailer, so make sure you get to Transformers early enough to see the previews.

I'm In Ur House, Upsetting Ur Kitties

We got a new kitten! KJ has been wanting one for a while, but we where waiting until we found the perfect one. Basically, she wanted one that "called to her". So today (technically yesterday now), while we were killing time before seeing a movie, we popped into PetSmart and discovered our kitten. Say hello to Sybil:

Sybil is an 8-week old female tortoiseshell. Like many kittens, she has two modes: Play and sleep.

Banchi and Honi are NOT happy about the new addition. They both ran upstairs, and have holed up in separate hiding spots. They hiss whenever we go near them, or when they see each other.

But they will get over it. Sooner or later they'll realize that the new kitten is not going away, and they'll have to accept her (or at least learn to avoid/ignore her). Until then, we're keeping their claws trimmed, and keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't hurt her.

Nicholas Cage Spectacular!

That's about the only time you'll ever see the words "Nicholas Cage" and "Spectacular" together. Nick Cage has never been one of my favorite actors, and yet I always seem to enjoy his movies. Here's the rundown on the last three Nick Cage movies I viewed.

***Next***

Nick Cage does sci-fi! ...that about sums it up. The movie "Next" is actually pretty neat... but forgettable. The concept is cool - Cage can see two minutes into the future, allowing him to do little things like dodge bullets and cheat at cards. There's some great action scenes and fun special effects, but the movie doesn't really go anywhere interesting. Julianne Moore plays his main enemy, even though they're both "good guys". And Moore can't seem to act. I've always thought Moore was a good actress, ever since her pantsless scene in "Short Cuts"... er... I mean, ever since her minor role in "The Fugitive". But in "Next", apparently the director told her to just read her lines and try not to act. Anyway, Next is an okay movie that won't put you to sleep. It wouldn't hurt to add it to your Netflix queue, but I wouldn't drive to the video store just to rent it.


***GhostRider***

It's not as dumb as it looks.

I was skeptical of this one, mainly because the previews made it look silly, stupid, and goofy. And the Ghostrider is all those things, but in a good way. I'm sure the critics ripped this one to shreds, but really, do the critics even have fun at the movies any more? Ghostrider is a popcorn muncher, nothing more or less, and shouldn't be judged next to Academy Award winners.

Ghostrider is not as deep or memorable as the "Spider-Man" or "X-Men" movies. But it keeps you awake, unlike snore-fests "Hulk" and "Elektra". In comparing it to other comic book movies, I'd say it's closest to "The Fantastic Four" - which is another movie that has been undeservedly trashed by the critics.
Cage works much harder than the role really deserves. I respect that - he acts as though this amusement park ride is an "actual" movie. Actually, it's not just Cage, most of the acting in the movie is better than I would have required... except possibly for Cage's love interest - she's just as shallow as I would have expected.

The bad guys are two-dimensional and forgettable. The main bad guy is the vampire-like son of Satan, which you'd think would be enough to make him interesting, but it doesn't. That's a little disappointing, as a good cheesy movie should have an over-the-top bad guy.

Anyway, I liked the movie, but it's not one of those I'd see over and over. I would rather see it again than "Daredevil"... but I'd also rather get a prostate exam than sit through Daredevil again, so take that however you want.

Oh, and the Mortal Kombat reference.... awesome.

***Wicker Man***

Bad, good, who cares? The original was much, much better than this okay remake, and it still stands the test of time. I liked the new one, but there's simply no reason to see it over the old one, unless you're just the world's biggest Nick Cage fan. Of course, if none of your local video stores have a copy of the old one, the new one's not a bad substitute. You should be able to say you've seen at least one version, because it's just a neat story.