Transformers 2 F.A.Q.

Ok, as my review tried to establish, Transformers 2 isn't a good movie, but I thought it was kind of fun. In fact, though there are certainly better examples, I occasionally really like movies that are fun when I'm watching them but can also laugh at their absurdities later. And here is a hilarious F.A.Q. on Transformers 2 that puts it in just such a category. I might disagree with some of the points on substance (I don't think the movie is nearly as confusing as people both here and elsewhere seem to think it is) but it doesn't matter because his points work great for humor. Link.

Hat tip to Ezra for the find.

Update: Eh, Transformers, G.I. Joe, same difference. Here's a video of the most ridiculous escapes in the G.I. Joe cartoon. Link.

Update the Second: Ok, there's no real link to 80s cartoons with this one, but I did get this link from Ezra and I'm too lazy to do another post. The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Link.

Review: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

In short: Meh.

Look, let's be honest. The original Transformers TV show and feature film are pretty crappy. Sure, they're awesome and I'll love them my whole life, but the plots were thin, the characterizations almost non-existent, and there's a thin...ok thick layer of cheesiness that's just slathered all over. But hey, it's robots that turn into other things and then back and then they fight. That's still pretty cool.

So, does Revenge Of The Fallen take the series to new levels of depth? No. Not even close. This is a movie where robots turn into other things and then back and then they fight. If you're down for that then you won't be disappointed. Would I some day like to see a really serious take on the Transformer concept, where they fought over something more metaphysical than energon and where they managed to elicit an emotion from the audience other than whatever emotion accompanies big explosions? Sure. That'd be great. On the other hand, based on the box office returns, I think I'm probably in the minority for wanting to see Transformers: Field Of Robot Dreams.

Any way, what I kept thinking as I watched the movie, however, was that this movie isn't nearly as confusing as I had heard. Yes, there are times when you might not be able to name the robots that are fighting, but most of the time it's because one of the robots doesn't have a name. Do people complain that you don't know who's getting shot in a battle scene in a war movie? No, in any battle scene there's going to be some generic fodder characters and there are indeed some here. But otherwise I really didn't have a hard time figuring out what was going on.

At the end of the day, this is a big summer blockbuster about robots fighting. If you can't sign on for that, then why complain when that's what the movie presents?

I Didn't Do It

Ezra's got a good post about people blaming the lack of speed or the quality of reform on Obama rather than the Legislature. Link.

Wizard World '09

Frequently at Wizard World, you'll run across someone who's clearly into it. They love the convention, they love the people, they love the source material, and they love the attention, so they make a very elaborate and super cool costume. Then you have their friends, who love the attention.

Here we have the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick. Not the custom Mercury's Helmet. No small feat, friend. Then you've got his friend here, who's, uh, a guy in a coat? Don't punch me Coat-Man! Just continue to bleed attention off your more industrious friend!

Wizard World '09

Ah, a cool Beaker and...and...and...people with me actually said the other guy was supposed to be Bunsen Honeydew. ORLY?! Let's look at the evidence: glasses, camera, satchel with a Spidey mask hanging out. Does that scream Bunsen Honeydew? NO SIR, IT DOES NOT!

Wizard World '09

This woman is an example of a certain type of Wizard World costume-wearer: SHE'S A LIAR! Wizard World is a place of happiness and wonder, but also commerce. And many of business people there have studied the nerds long enough to figure out that people in costumes get attention, especially pretty women. So this lady's job was to just walk around in her low-cut top, with a bat symbol all up on her boobs and then try to convince people to go to some leather working booth. I don't know, I didn't really need anything leather.

Wizard World '09

Ah, Wizard World. The happiest weekend of the year! It's like Christmas and Captain Picard Day rolled up into one! So, over the next however-long-it-takes-me, I'm going to be posting pictures that I took from our days at the 'con. Hopefully I'll think of interesting things to add to them.

Here, we have female Hush and Riddler. The Riddler must have come here after work, because you wouldn't want to rob a bank with a loosened tie. What would people think?!

Also, Jay's head!

Hot Off The Presses

Did you know you can read the script for the unmade full length feature film Grayson (likely to remain the best trailer ever)? It's true! Link.

10 Best Picture Nominees

So the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that they're increasing the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10 this year. Initially this may seem like a stunt. Then you might think, "Are there really 10 great films in a given year?" But after that you may come around to the idea that it could be pretty interesting.

Limiting the Best Picture group to five has, in my opinion at least, limited the nominees to a pretty narrow band of movie-types: Very serious dramas with famous celebrities in the leading (and usually supporting) roles. It's become really easy to distinguish between normal movies and movies that are trying to emulate that type in an effort to get an Oscar nod (the most obvious to me was Pay It Forward, which didn't get anything despite trying oh so very hard to seem important). Increasing the number of nominees to ten means there's room to nominate a great documentary, foreign film, or pure comedy, none of which ever get that biggest of nods. Will the big self-important dramas still win most of the time? Probably, and don't take this post to mean that I haven't liked most of the nominees in the last few years, but this allows the Academy to recognize that "best" doesn't necessarily mean most heavy, emotional, or serious; at least not for most people. Link.

Healthcare

One of the most important aspects of the healthcare debate that you almost never hear about is that it's not about making people more healthy. Genetics and lifestyle play such an important role that it's only in a small minority of cases that having good quality insurance makes a decisive difference in medical outcomes. What healthcare reform *is* about, however, is cost. The U.S. spends more than any other developed nation on healthcare for pretty bad health outcomes overall.

Ezra, who you should really be reading every day for you healthcare debate fix, has a great peace up today that makes the case that we've set up a system in America where we pay through the nose so that we can avoid having to make tough choices, but that refusal is itself a choice with very real consequences. Link.

Yeahbuhwha?

Can someone explain to me what's so great about WolframIAlpha? I've heard a news story about it, and now Ezra's talking about it at his new digs. I feel like a dumb, old man over here, but I don't get it. THESE KIDS, AND THEIR "MUSIC"!

Dollhouse Renewed

As Drew pointed out in the comments to the last post, Fox has opted to renew Dollhouse for a 13 episode second season, despite chronically weak ratings. Here's an article that has some interesting theories on the renewal. Most interesting to me was the idea that Dollhouse didn't do that great on TV, but did great on Hulu, which is also owned by Fox and where the bar for success is much lower. So Fox has a nascent web TV business (Hulu), and they want it to succeed by getting tech savvy viewers hooked on seeing their niche shows there. What better place than Hulu for a Whedon show to flourish, where Dr. Horrible made such a splash? It also helps that unlike The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Fox owns the actual show Dollhouse as well. So this is all corporatey goodness over at Fox, and with the added restriction of a lower budget, Dollhouse looks like a safer bet for renewal. Oh, and here's an interview with Joss.

Don't, however, take any of this as an excuse to not buy the Dollhouse Season 1 DVDs when they come out over the summer. This show needs (and deserves!) all the help it can get.

Dollhouse: Episode 12

So, I missed a post or two, but here we are, the (possible) end of the series. Honestly, I'd be fine with this as the end of the series as long as Joss Whedon did another 12 episode series next year, and another the year after that, and so on. More than anyone else that I can think of, I think Joss Whedon is uniquely in a position to bring the UK format of television series to the US. He's got a smallish but totally devoted fan base and creates shows with enough watchability to pull in a few non-devotees here and there. His shows aren't going to be the center of a broadcast network's Thursday night lineup, but they'd make decent fill ins for the summer or after the fall lineup has been culled of the dead weight. He also knows how to sqeeze impressive results from a constrained budget. This is probably wishful thinking, because a stupid reality show will always be a cheaper fill in than a scripted show. Still, it'd be nice.

What would also be nice is if Fox would give Dollhouse another chance. They hobbled it from the beginning by dropping it behind the flagging Terminator show on Friday nights, when nobody watches TV. They made it a mid-season replacement, which probably get renewed even less frequently than a new show in the fall, which have pretty short average lives to begin with.

This episode, like most of the series, made interesting use of the premise and got great performances out of every member of the cast. It was also perfect in striking the balance between "end of the season episode" and "last episode ever," unlike Firefly, which was brilliant right up until it just stopped.

At the end of the day though, there's just not much I can say about the episode. If you've been following the series, you'll almost certainly like it. If you haven't been following the series YOU'VE BEEN KILLING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, YOU BASTARD! Ok, breathe...Anyway this leave enough open doors to pick right back up in the fall, but closes enough to not leave the fans screaming at their TVs (or computers if you've been watching on Hulu). Everyone and everything related to this show is underrated, and I can only hope that Fox gives the show a chance to catch on with a broader audience so that may be remedied.

Review: Star Trek

Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered September 28, 1987. From then until the last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise on May 13, 2005, the Star Trek franchise was continuously on the air. An entire generation grew up with new sets of characters and a history that evolved through the series. The new Star Trek film from J.J. Abrams tosses out all that history and brings us back to the original series crew.

I guess we should settle this now: there is really no right way to do this. Like with comic book movies, hewing too close to the extensive cannon of the franchise will impress fans, but will likely drive away anyone without a PhD. in the subject matter. Ignoring the franchise's history will make the film more accessible, but there's a strong chance that you alienate your base. J.J. Abrams leans more to the latter than the former, but I think he did as good a job of balancing the competing goals as was possible.

The cast is just about perfect, and they all tread the very fine line between invoking the famous traits of their characters without pantomiming Shatner, Nimoy, or the other original cast members. The only down side I see to the cast is that by the time the Trek movies of the past were released, pretty much all of the actors were typecast as their Trek character. This allowed them to do several movies with a pretty fixed cast because nobody was getting other work. For some reason I doubt that Chris Pine is going to want to spend the next 10-20 years playing Kirk, but I also doubt that Paramount is going to stop making Trek movies if this one is successful but Pine wants out. I hope that they've signed everyone to at least a three picture deal, but I've got a sinking feeling that we'll start to see new faces subbed in eventually.

The special effects were really fantastic. The newer Trek series had increased their special effects so greatly that the original Enterprise, particularly the television version, looked pretty lame by comparison. This movie restores a sense of awe to the original ship that's been gone for a long time.

It's not the most contemplative science fiction story of all time, but Trek movies have mostly been about exciting space battles, so that's not the worst criticism of all time.

All in all, this is a great (re)start to the franchise, and I'm sure we'll see more films in the next few years.

Wolverine

Short review: It's not great, but it's worth watching at some point. There are some things that are annoying, but they cast the movie well. The script is a bit bland and overly packed with fights, but it does do a good job laying out a backstory for Wolverine and tying him to several characters from the previous films. They also waste a lot of time and special effects money introducing a slew of mutants that really don't serve any function in the movie other than "Oh snap, it's Emma Frost!"

Overall, I'd give it a C, or a 70% or whatever. Not great, not terrible, worth watching.

What I *don't* understand is that I've seen several people online give essentially the same review that I just did, but say, "It's not great, but it's not Daredevil or Superman Returns bad." I still don't get what was so terrible about those movies. I don't think either was great, but though I though Superman Returns was better than Daredevil, I've seen much worse than either. Here are the main points that I remember people making against them:

Daredevil: They changed Daredevil and Bullseye's costumes. They made Kingpin black. The park scene with Electra was bad.

Superman Returns: They reused the airplane scene from the earlier Superman movies. They made Superman a deadbeat dad.

None of those were very convincing to me at the time, and I don't find them terribly convincing now. So, can anyone explain why those movies are considered at or near the bottom of the superhero barrel?

The End Is Nigh

The Mayans were right...maybe.

Uhhh...What?

It's two, two, two utterly bizarre ideas in one!

Up first, Warren Ellis is evidently working on a comic called "Supergod" and the graphic includes a crown of thorns. The only surprising thing would be if it ended up being inoffensive.

Second, we have a software company making a game where Mr. T and Will Wright (of Sim City fame) fight Nazis.

Uhhh...What?

Link 1 and Link 2.

Six Days In Fallujah

Konami recently announced an upcoming video game called "Six Days In Fallujah," which chronicled one of the most heated battles in the current operations in Iraq. After getting heat from a number of sources (veteran's groups, families of soldiers, and probably miscilaneous people from the internet), the game has been cancelled. This has led to somewhat heated discussions, though bizarrely not nearly so heated as dicussions about which video game console is the best, about the appropriateness of the game, war games generally, and whether there's a proper place for interactive software to cover real world events in a similar manner to other media. Any thoughts?

Here's my post from the above discussion:

"For me, the "too soon" argument isn't about being too emotionally close to the events. Well, at least, that's not really the point. The point is that we've had more than enough time to settle the history on WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and (perhaps) the first Gulf War. What I mean is that we can pretty much all agree that the Germans were on the "wrong" side of the war in a pretty extreme sense and few would be offended by the portrayal of Germans as the villains of a game. Similarly, Vietnam has been determined to be a morally questionable war, and most representations in modern media reflect that.

The current operations in Iraq, however, a much less settled. It'd be far too easy to fall into caricatures; to represent the U.S. characters as unambiguously morally correct and the people they fight as unambiguously evil, and all the things that come with current caricatures of Islamic peoples. And no, I'm not talking about "political correctness," which is its own caricature, I'm talking about producing reflections on war that are of real social value. The tendency to produce the shallow, simplistic works that I described earlier in this paragraph don't add anything to our understanding of conflict, war, or the specific events of our history. They're produced as entertainment; as propaganda to make one side of a conflict feel superior to the other and justified in their actions. These aren't sober reflections on history but tools to further agendas which are still all too current and relevant. They're also, frequently, crass attempts to cash in on the emotions, patriotism, and sometimes jingoism that follow international conflict.

There is definitely value in using interactive software as a tool to explore history. From what I've seen, however, this is not the product to help interactive software shed its "games" label for something perhaps more respectable."

George Will

Man, I read this article and just thought, "What an utter douche." But then, I'm the type of guy that wears jeans a lot. Link.

Hat tip, Ezra.

Almost Makes Me Like The Bruins

This ad is hereby immediately nominated to the Hall of Fame for great advertisements. Link.