Beware spoilers, if you’ve not watched Firefly or Serenity your going to be pissed. I’d recommend watching Firefly and passing on Serenity if your looking for advice… however for future reference I wouldn’t be visiting this site for advice.
I just went through another watching of Firefly, and each time I do, I really appreciate that show more and more. I love the characters, I love the world they play in and how stories are told. However when I start to think of how Joss Whedon destroys those characters in Serenity I get sick. With the movie… I should have gotten additional adventures in this cool world… with all my favorite characters, instead I got a pissed off writer going on a murderous rampage. I despise his writing for the most part, but at the same time I’m floored that this asshole created a show and characters that I really love. I’m beginning to understand that Firefly was really a fluke for him, and if it would have gone on longer he would of crushed the show into a pulp of horrid, putrid, self destructive, stomach bile.
Buffy and Angel are excellent examples of this… (hate mail cometh)
This is just one geek’s opinion, and if I ever meet him I will ask him why he’s such a fucking sadist.
This is a shot of the Space Shuttle Atlantis traveling in front of the Sun. Captured using a solar-filtered telescope. Realizing the crazy difficulty of this shot is just amazing…
I’ve grown up in a world where astronauts are glorified TV repair men. Our government is filled with people who have no interest in dumping money into space exploration. It feels like the dream of having real space ships filled with real people going to planets and checking shit out is gone. However when I see shots like the one above, taken by someone that doesn’t even work for NASA (how about taking some notes NASA) I’m inspired.
The second image above actually shows Atlantis and the Hubble… no it’s not dirt on your screen.
What do you do when Amazon/FedEx delivers a package and gives you the following information?
How should I feel about our door mat now that it is apparently, a sentient life form? How should I gauge it’s actions of signing for packages that are not his/hers? Is it trying to steal my newly acquired items, or is it simply helping out, holding the package for me? How does it feel about being used to scrape mud or shit from our shoes on a regular basis… or is it those compounds that ‘in fact’ brought it to life? Will it seek it’s maker? Will it want to now live inside?
I’ll try to do this without any spoilers, after a few weeks please consider yourself screwed if you haven’t seen it, because a more in depth review is required. Reason being is that last night I witnessed the rebirth of a series, the reawakening of a genre and hope for the future of sci-fi/fantasy. You can continue reading the spoiler free version below, but what you really should be doing right now is seeing this movie.
Yes, I saw Star Trek…
Was the movie perfect? No… was is damn close? Yes, and for a reboot of this magnitude, with this many characters and history, I don’t see how they could of done much better. I think the only way they might of perfected this vision is to add an extra hour to the movie to draw out promotions/by chance meetings. Which would have eliminated the core purpose of this film which is to reawaken a monster of a series from sleepy town land. This isn’t old Trek (which I love by the way) this is new Trek, this is a Star Trek film opportunity handed to people who love Star Wars (original trilogy) and respect the world of Star Trek… they handed this opportunity to them and said “run with it”. I agree with Simon Pegg, this is the movie experience that Phantom Menace should have been. I can’t even remember when I was applauding after the first 8 minutes of the movie… yes it’s that good. If you know me, you know I hate the act of applauding (it’s too pieces of meat smacking together) so knowing that I even applauded was a big deal.
So without spoiling anything let me say this…
To those who haven’t seen it… go… now…
To those who have seen it and loved it… we are now brothers.
To those who have seen it and hated it… I’ll deal with you later.
To those who created it… make a second one…
To those who work in the film industry… take notes.
Remember how I mentioned that clone wars would be a waste of my time and I wouldn’t review it. Well it arrived on netflix (per my wife’s selection) and as the bluray sat there near my television I realized that I could just return it and save an hour+ of my life, or I could watch it and perhaps have something to write about. When all is said and done, basically, I was half right… it was a waste of my time, yet I guess I’m about to review it.
Now before I begin, I’ll repeat the following, the prequels never raped my childhood or crushed my dreams, they are just… eh. The exception is Episode 3 which was indeed awesome, however it’s hindered by Episodes 1 and 2 hanging in it’s ugly past. I always find myself going back and forth on my feelings with the prequels (1 and 2)… They have incredible pieces to them, however as whole chapters… they kind of blow. An example is the Darth Maul vs Obi-Wan vs Qui Gon lightsaber battle from Episode 1. It’s potentially my favorite lightsaber battle ever. It’s extremely short, but extremely fast and feels deadly.
I’m pretty sure it’s because Ray Park is a damn ninja. In the clip above, watch 3:46 to 3:55 (shit yeah).
You may be asking yourself why I’m showing you a clip from the worst Star Wars movie ever… because now it’s not… It’s been replaced.
Clone Wars is the worst Star Wars movie ever.
Ever.
Because no matter how bad Episode 1 was, it still had the greatest lightsaber battle ever. Clone Wars has nothing… well, nearly nothing.
Clone Wars isn’t even worth a full review, so I’ve decided it gets ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bullet points. We’ll get the good out of the way first… because there are less of them.
The Good.
The assault up the cliff face had it’s moments.
Star Wars characters blasting at other things is cool. You can try to say it’s shallow, and boring but your lying and you know it.
The Bad.
The remixed theme music, what the hell was that?
A 1930’s newsreel style intro? Is this Indiana Jones now?
Animation, uhg… animation…
Dialog? What you say?
Directing… was it directed? When characters talk to each other they can talk slightly over each other realistically, or answer questions in a reasonable time. They do not require a one second buffer.
You’ve introduced transsexual hutt’s into this world now… are you kidding me?
Voice acting… distracting.
Why when you don’t have to worry about gravity or physics or even directing human beings, your lightsaber fights are horrendous?
Well it feels like we just did this dance… Blizzcon tickets are going on sale in 10 days (May 16th). This time they have a something in place called the queue system which sounds like the most horrible idea in the world. However I have zero alternate solutions to resolve the imminent and unavoidable crisis we all will soon experience. They’ve given a fair warning that If you don’t have a battle.net account you are screwed.com. Please observe that it’s not a blizzard store account you must have, but a battle.net account which is just another little detail that I’m sure people will be pissed about. It does appear that blizzard is combining all their numerous accounts, so as long as you log in before that time, I’m sure everything will work to the best of ‘your’ ability.
I’m not playing wow anymore, however Starcraft 2 looks and plays incredible and another chance to play is too good to pass up.
I’m kind of irritated that they are not doing a Warcraft Lore panel… Hearing Chris Metzen go on and on about this world he has trapped in his head is inspiring. Furthermore, I learned from last years event that unless I want to hear gamers whine and complain for hours I need to avoid the wow class and dungeon panels. I’ll be sticking to the Lore, Art, Music and Cinematic panels this year.
