Category Archives: Movies

Last minute Geek Christmas Gifts already?

Cripes, it’s Christmas already. What’s going on? Well, here’s gift suggestions- maybe for your geek friends, maybe for you.

Of course, I expect lots of folks around these parts are playing Skyrim or Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m certainly doing the latter at the moment. The only problem looking at those as gifts is that it is incredibly likely your fans of the material already have them. ^^ But it wouldn’t hurt to check. Also, the Humble Indie Bundle 4 looks great, and half the profits go to charity.

Hey, look- The Guild Season Five is now out, just in time for Christmas.

Right Stuf Anime is having a bunch of sales. Of particular note is the remastered Utena DVD box sets. The series had been hard to find for awhile. It’s one of my wife’s favorites. I may have picked up the Soul Eater holiday package…

For the budding RPGer, or someone who might want a bit simpler rule set, Pathfinder’s Beginner Box has been popular. And the Bestiary 3 was just released! Another interesting up and coming d20 game seems to be Legend. It’s a little over the top at times, but it’s an interesting approach to mixing classes, races, and specialties via mix-and-match tracks. That is, you can take a bit of ranger, combine it with a bit of steampunk robot-making, and be a dragon. Or you can be an elven ranger with all of its ranger-y goodness. (I suspect the former option might be more popular, but ya never know.) ^_^ Plus, right now all proceeds go to the Child’s Play charity. Nice. And lest I forget, although I haven’t had the opportunity to play it, the 3rd edition of Mutants and Masterminds sounds fun.

For the eBook fantasy readers out there, check out B. Justin Shier’s Zero Sight and its sequel, Zero Sum. Check out Zachary Rawlin’s The Academy. Both are marketed YA, but fun reads. Of course, if you haven’t picked up Sanderson’s Way of Kings, that’s fun. And Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind and its sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. If you’d like RPG tie-ins, Paizo’s James Sutter’s Death’s Heretic is really very good.

Come to think of it, I can recommend books forever. =P

Oh, and I did pick up Betrayal at House on the Hill, for board gaming goodness…

And who can go wrong with a squishable Narhwal? (Picked one up for Q, it’s great. ^_^)

Other suggestions?

Speaking of cheese

So I’m testing out the WordPress app for iPhone, and figured this tidbit was as good as any to share in the process.

While looking at box office totals for each year of the 80s to jog my memory, I found myself struck by the top 6 films of 1981. The first 5, in order:

Raiders of the Lost Ark
On Golden Pond
Superman II
Arthur
Stripes

Number 6 that year? The Cannonball Run. $72 million. MILLION!

Even sadder…I know I contributed to that figure. At least twice. To be fair, Adrienne Barbeau’s boobs figured…prominently…in my actions, I’m sure.

MMockery 3: The last easy post

And here’s part 3, which is the last of the parts.  It’s even more specifically related to MxO.  And also the last of my gimmie posts.  If I’m gonna hit my “3 posts a week” metric, I’m gonna have to start being original now.  Bugger.

This one was written 2 months after the others.  In that two month window, they changed about 80% of the game (to their credit, it was much better in a lot of ways, unlike, say, Star Wars Galaxies).  Prior to that, the game had gotten really buggy.  I was unable to play without it eating my PC alive, so I gave up….

But I still want a pudding faucet (you’ll understand if you read – that’s what we in “the business” call a hook.  Or a teaser.  Or …. I dunno.  Look, just read it).
Continue reading →

Vintage? Or archaic?

“You see, this profession is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don’t.”

Marsellus Wallace, Pulp Fiction

Marsellus is talking about boxers in the above quote, but he could just as easily be talking about Hollywood or film in general.  Whether it is failing to utilize “actresses of a certain age” until they really need someone to play old old, or in a more technical light going back and touching up effects to erase wires and boom mikes that would otherwise be visible in the shot, film works very hard to facilitate an illusion.  Some of these sleights of hand hold up well no matter the number of years that have passed.  Others…not so much. Continue reading →

Fight!

Who’d win in a fight? Terminator 2’s Sarah Connor or Aliens’ Ellen Ripley?

GO.

ps. hello everyone! :)

The Bret Michaels of Terminator Films

Official Movie PosterYou know like, “every rose has its thorns” or “man, I didn’t age well but I still look better than Vince Neil.” Kinda like Terminator Salvation feels a lot like the disappointment from Revenge of the Sith and a lot less like Alien Versus Predator. Hey, I’m trying to find somewhere nice to start because Henry covered the beatdown.

Spoilers fall like rain below.

****

Okay, this film isn’t good, but I could taste the hint of a decent film beneath some of the mistakes. The problem arises from how lazy the mistakes were. I contend that if they had taken the time to fix just six mistakes, T4 had more than enough in it to live up to the first two films. That said, lazy filmmaking is the difference between Terminator and Krull.

So, six points that would have made this film work for me:

Is that Michael Ironside out acting your A-list lead?

I’ve loved Michael Ironside since V, and it was great seeing him reunite with CGI Schwarzenegger for the first time since Total Recall. That said, holy cow how badly did Bale have to mail in his scenes to get out acted by a C-list baddie from the 80s? I understand that this film seemed to be more about Marcus, but Connor hasn’t been so secondary in a film since appearing as an embryo in the original Terminator. Seriously, his best emoting came from Linda Hamilton’s voice tapes. How hard would it have been to find an actor who cared enough to try?

Can we find something smaller than a metal beam to stab John Connor with?

Not sure what else to say here. Even in Hollywood, if you’re human and stabbed by a full-sized beam of metal, that’s it. Game Over. Would it have been so hard to have stabbed him with a piece of metal mangled into a pointy tip instead? Really?

I’d like a side of subtlety with my power of the human heart analogy, please.

This analogy fits the series, but we don’t need it served up with actual dialog. The Terminator has a heart. That’s enough right there. We get it. Please stop.

Doesn’t a war movie need casualties?

Can you name a war movie where none of the leads die? Sure, we presume Marcus does, but we don’t see it. Michael Ironside doesn’t count because we aren’t supposed to care about him. I mean he’s only the leader of resistance. In the end, for all the chatter, this isn’t a war movie because there are no casualties that bring it home.

To really make this point, consider that such light-weight fare as Independence Day killed the president’s wife, the hillbilly pilot, and Houston. Salvation didn’t even have the conviction to singe Blair’s hair in a rocket launcher explosion.

Is there a reason Kyle’s still alive? Beyond the fact that you can’t let him die, I mean.

Why even have Skynet find him? Let him stay hidden. Because once Skynet finds Kyle and doesn’t put a bullet in his brain we’re suddenly in 70s bond villain territory.

Maybe we should avoid allowing our homage list to take us into Airplane! territory

Henry covered this well, and I did love some of the film’s references. Fighting the top half of a terminator, Guns and Roses playing, and even the harvesters worked a hundred times better in this movie than in War of the Worlds, but these things pile up quick. Pick a couple and let it go. I mean why do you need a Newt character when you’ve eliminated the tradition of a strong female role from the movie? At the point where people think your electric eels are an homage to The Princess Bride, you might as well have Shatner replace Michael Ironside.

You think Ironside’ll appear in the new V series? You can bet I’d post about that.

Anyway, if you fix those elements, you have a decent enough film going on here. Chekhov keeps the imitation train going from Star Trek with a dead on Kyle Reese impersonation. The Marcus character seems a natural evolution of the humanization of the terminator concept (so long as you stop “beating” us over the head with his Wizard of Oz-like heart metaphor). And the idea that we have to go back to the future to get some good ole fashioned T-800 action warmed my heart–which beats with the inimitable strength of my irreplaceable humanity, just so you know.

I didn’t hate this film like I thought I would. I loved parts of it: Connor listening to the tapes, CGI Arnie throwing down, the GnR reference, and Michael Ironside. But that just made all the fixable mistakes so much more painful, especially given just how lazy they felt. I wouldn’t mind another film, I just hope a little bit more heart goes into it.

Terminate this: Salvation and McSuck

You know, as a card-carrying pinko-commie-hippie-liberal, I’m all for recycling.  Green planet and all that.

Which must mean that McG is Al Gore’s BFF, because I will be damned if I can think of a sci-fi movie he DIDN’T rip off in putting together Terminator: Salvation. Continue reading →

Trek the Third: The Search for More Trek

Gaming Together: My Uncle Ken, Cousin Wes, Me, and Dad
Gaming Together: My Uncle Ken, Cousin Wes, Me, and Dad

Okay, I may well be the closest to an actual Trekkie/Trekker on this blog. Like all aspects of my life that involve geekery, this one comes pretty much directly from my father. Let’s be honest, much of what we call preference likely exists as little more than random acts of osmosis from the fragmented habits of our parents.

RPGs? My parents started playing them when I was four. I be knighted my first character with the name of Bert and my sister Ernie. My mother promptly tried to kill us with a purple worm at 1st level. Those who have played in any game of mine might consider this insightful.

Classics and pulp? While my house frequently went dark from unpaid electricity bills during childhood, when light could be found the works of Ovid, Caesar, and Plato set nestled beside works of Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Heinlein.  My parents’ collection would never bear the weight of unread vanity texts.

Board games? I cut my teeth on Axis and Allies and Blitzkrieg. My first steps into game design involved my father and I tweaking Fortress America in an attempt to make that historic mess of a simulation vaguely fair. We, as so many before us, failed.

I should get back on Trek. My father adored Kirk and company. Between the original series and Dr. Who, I likely spent more time watching television with him than just about any other activity beyond Boy Scouts. One reason for that may well have been that he worked nights and slept days, so catching late night sci-fi provided us a rare chance to do something together on a daily basis.

My first convention was a Star Trek convention in downtown Fort Worth. Dad took Sam (not the Sam of this blog), Jason, and myself. I recall buying a Red Dwarf t-shirt and not a ton more. I’m sure Dad could recite the events of that day in detail.  That’s how it goes; feel free to take a Harry Chapin break.

 

Now, I can recall numerous Channel 39 marathons of Star Trek, complete with dial-in trivia questions. I devoured the original series during these marathons. I knew everything about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Maybe in part because I’m from the rural Southwest, I always adored the angry, emotional stalwartness of McCoy’s sense of determined from the gut justice. I point this out in contrast to Henry’s comment about the secondhand nature of McCoy in the original series. In no way unrelated, I also found Urban’s portrayal the most annoying in the new flick. It felt more façade then inspired re-invention—and now that the thought has arisen within this reflection, let there be no doubt, I found J.J. Abrams new film the definition of inspired re-invention.

Really, it’s more than discovering the crew on the Enterprise anew—and Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty will always be the crew of the Enterprise to me. Some of the true art in this film comes in how the actors who are known quantities disappear. Nero might not be a great villain—there’s really no such thing as a great Trek villain—but he definitely doesn’t scream Eric Bana. And I’m still not sure I believe Ryder was Spok’s mum. Most importantly, Chris Pine and Abrams have rescued the character Kirk from the gloriously absurd satire of Shatner’s legacy. Because of this film, I have hope again that new audiences might understand why some fans take Kirk seriously. Mostly because we knew him before T.J Hooker, Airplane!, SNL, and “I’m Denny Crane.” There actually existed a time when you could view Kirk as legit, when the original crew was legit. Abrams has given that back to a lot of us—and not just those old enough to have written letters in the 60s, but a few of us who had fathers that might have written a letter or two.

I doubt a pulp franchise could ask for anything more. Abrams might not have done for Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek what Shakespeare did for Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, but I bet George Lucas prays at night someone half as talented as J.J. Abrams will rescue his franchise someday. In a theatre far, far away (Yep, cheapest joke of the post). Since my son and I have a similar connection over Star Wars as Dad and I over Star Trek, I must hold out hope.

Oh, and as far as Trek canon and the new film. I defer to the wisdom of my father who stated, “the original series didn’t follow any canon from one episode to the next. Why should this film?”

No reason at all. It’s too true to the original spirit of the series to care a whit about canon over character.

Now I have to sleep so that I can get enough work done in the morning to slip out of the office by 10:15.  My son is dressing up as Neil Armstrong for school tomorrow and will give a speech about the journey from Mercury to Apollo. There’s a family legacy at stake, one with an eye toward the stars.