Bowling for Dilithium
I don’t even know who won the Super Bowl. As the “Mythbusters” marathon unreeled in the background, I spent the day doing laundry and dishes, finding our digital camera which has been lost for three months, and making a little box for the new kitten’s food bowl. The box has an opening through which only she should be able to fit, therefore keeping the other cats from stealing her kitten food. Older cats seem to love kitten food.
Anyway, the Internet’s allowed me to catch up on some of the Super Bowl movie trailers. J.J. Abrams has done me a favor, I think; it’s finally gotten through my head that this is not the Star Trek I grew up on, and that I need to stop worrying and just go along for the ride, or not. Right now, I’m still on the side of giving it a shot – if nothing else, it’s audacious, and the franchise needs “audacious” badly. Besides, I’m a bit impressed with their method of crowbarring this story into 40 years of canon whether it ought to fit or not.
Plus, Enterprise appears to have a LOT of firepower these days. In that one half-second clip, she seems to be absolutely dumping phasers and photorps on whatever’s upset her. Battletech players, remember the “alpha strike”? “Screw the heat, screw the ammo, fire everything!!!”
Having said that: the Ninth Doctor as the arms-dealing mastermind behind Cobra is awesome, but I already miss his mask. And the Baroness’ bodysuit. Also, Land of the Lost didn’t look too bad, once we take out the bits with 20-century junk lying around. And the bits with Will Ferrell. Oh, wait…
An old message for Operator 7G
I just found the Megazone 23 3-disc DVD set on Barnes and Noble. These movies influenced my imagination strongly, and I set one of the strongest pieces of fanfic I’ve written aboard a similar Megazone.
I got to tell you, though, this Christmas my reptilian “want” reflex is a little muted by the recent move. I can’t forget that everything I might buy, or receive as a gift, is something I may have to pack up and move in a box someday. Right now, I’m not thrilled at the prospect; who knows, perhaps my distaste will fade over coming months.
On the other hand, I still do have a B&N card from my birthday… and a couple hardcovers or a DVD set don’t take up all that much space… right? Right?
Yeah. I think I’ll wait until after the holidays and see if I still want it then 🙂
Senior officers to the Bridge
Paramount has released several stills from next year’s Star Trek movie. Of course, since I want everything on that big screen to be a surprise, I was able to resist checking them out…
… for all of about twenty seconds.
But I'm cutting it, since I love and respect you guys
At the Movies
I am turning Starr into a Hayao Miyazaki fan, getting her attention with “The Castle of Cagliostro”, cheering her on a bleh evening with “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, and charming her last night with “My Neighbor Totoro”. After “Nausicaa” and “Spirited Away”, though, I’ll be all out and have to pick up some more sometime.
Oddly enough, by coincidence she’d been reading up on Shinto traditions yesterday afternoon, and recognized much of them in the movie – more than I! I foresee a Catbus plush in our future.
Also, over the weekend I finally saw the “Lost Skeleton of Cadavra” (Rowr.) An intentionally bad 50s-style SF movie, this flick is awesome if the viewer’s got the right sense of humor. The associated drinking game required drinks on the words “science”, “meteor”, “atmospherium”, “alien”, “mutant”, and “skeleton”. I didn’t participate, mainly because I don’t drink, but also because I’d have ended up blasted out of my mind. Why do people need to pretend to be forced to drink alcohol?
The other weekend movie was “Dorkness Rising“. I really loved it, and am tempted to buy a copy; good script, nice production values for a low-budget film, and an utterly believable – if silly – look at the GM-player dynamic in tabletop RPGs. Additionally, much of the scenes ‘within the game’ are absolutely hilarious. Really, if you game and you happen to see this on the video schedule at a con, make time to see it.
I will be 40 years old on November 15th. I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m still reminding myself multiple times per day to act like a grownup. I’ve taken responsibility for a lot of things in life, and willingly so; I want the perks of adulthood. But it means there’s a long list these days of stuff that I can’t wait for someone else to take care of for me, and after all these years I’m still learning many of the tricks of handling a grownup’s duties.
On the other hand, I am surrounded every day by people who aren’t giving that half the effort I am, so I suppose there’s hope. 🙂
Stand back, I’m doing… stuff.
Most weeks I wait impatiently for my Kingdom of Loathing turns to build up to a useful level. This week, I’ve been sitting at the max of 200 turns for days, but I don’t have time to mess with it. I guess it’s a sign I’m using my time well… KoL isn’t exactly productive… but on the other hand, you can’t be productive all the time. Makes Jack a dull boy, you know.
On that note, I am going to watch a movie this weekend. Either in the theater, or from my list of DVDs to watch or re-watch. I don’t remember sitting through an entire movie since we watched “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” together.
One of the two 400MHz CRT iMacs that have been sitting in my office gathering dust since I left Decipher has found a good home – it’s in the possession of Starr’s youngest sister. She’ll probably want to give it an external FireWire HD and/or a memory upgrade before long, it’s only got a 10GB drive and 256MB of memory. But it’ll do Word and Photoshop and play DVDs, and she seems thrilled with it, so happiness all around. I need to find some old games to pass along that don’t involve serious mayhem.
Speaking of productivity, I am attempting to do something personally productive at least once a day. Either spend at least an hour on a personal project, or sit and write something with some thought in it (thus the recent outbreak of philosophising every week or so in my LJ). It doesn’t come easy: I am a slacker and procrastinator. But time moves with or without me, and I’m not going to be left behind.
Brief updates
- 08:20 Reading rumor that Diablo 3 will not support LAN multiplayer, only Battle.net multiplayer. This makes kitty sad. #
- 19:25 @meiran Tell her that ‘film noir’ is when the lighting guys aren’t doing their job. #
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Let’s Not Do the Time Warp Again
MTV is planning to remake the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
What a complete and utter waste of time and money. Something as bizarre as RHPS happens once. You can’t make it better; after all we don’t keep going to see it because it’s good. We go to see it specifically because it scrambles one’s brain, rinses it, and hangs it up to dry; all the while supported by Richard O’Brien’s catchy songs, Tim Curry’s matchless hamming, and a theater full of fellow weirdos who, for 100 minutes, are in the same headspace with us.
I wish them good fortune – they’ll need quite a lot of it.
Back to the World of Two Moons
Richard Pini reports on the ElfQuest website that the latest movie deal has gone through, and it’s in the lap of Warner Bros. now.
While Pini is optimistic, so I too shall be, EQ fans have heard this song before. OTOH, fantasy movies are much hotter these days, so who knows?
He links to a story in the Hollywood Reporter as well. Cross your fingers, fans!
“I’ve found interesting correspondences in your DNA.”
The other day, I finally broke out my subtitled, un-cut copy of My Youth In Arcadia. I’ve owned the cut, dubbed release for a long time, to the point that I know the script pretty well, and I looked forward to seeing what had been removed from the original.
I only made it to the end of the World War II sequence, but I was still pretty surprised. While this version is clearly a slightly better translation, so far the only new material I’ve seen is the World War I-era prologue. Plot points that I’d assumed would be better explained in an uncut version remain murky.
Of course, this is a common condition with anime films, which have a habit of stringing together cool sequences with a minimum of narrative linkage, and letting the viewers fill in the gaps from their own imaginations. I’m not saying that it’s an invalid technique – there are some American SF / Fantasy movies that would have been better had they explained less – but I was hoping for more.
And They’ll Monitor His Mind
I really want to sit and watch some good DVDs, preferably with company as I hate watching movies alone. I wonder if it’s worth it to buy an upconverting DVD player at some point; we’re using the PS2 at the moment.
The Aviator and Catch Me If You Can are on my list. I’ve seen them before, but they are cool enough to make me appreciate Leo as an actor, and Starr’s never seen either. The uncut, re-dubbed My Youth In Arcadia is on the list, as is the recent CGI Appleseed. (Is there an uncut, properly dubbed Galaxy Express 999 available? I’d like to find a good version of that too.)
Also sitting unwatched on my shelf: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Heroic Trio, about which I endlessly badgered kittykatya for a copy; and the new Transformers movie, which may not be fanservice perfection, but at least it’s got the right Optimus Prime voice.
We won’t even talk about the movies in theaters. Everyone’s raving about Iron Man, yes I intend to see Speed Racer despite the reviewer bashing, and ditto Indy 4.
I can’t even blame World of Warcraft for this. I enjoy the game enormously, but go weeks without touching it sometimes.
