Games under the tree
Definitely a traditional Christmas for me… History and Science channels on the tube, wrapping presents for others while being unable to wait to unwrap ours 🙂
My Munchkin collection is looking healthier! Starr gave me Munchkin Impossible and Munchkin Cthulhu I & II… now we have to invite someone over to play them with us. 2-handed Munchkin is much less fun.
Back in my Decipher days, Justin taught me how to play Carcassonne, and I’ve been wanting a copy for the years since. Never managed to pick it up, but I knew it was fun to play, so I picked up a set as a Christmas present for raininva when I heard she was gaming again. Well, guess what other game I got yesterday 🙂 Already broken it in, too. Fun!
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I had a little trouble with some of the older movies I haven’t seen yet…
Tweets for Today
- 08:01 Lovely evening last night. Great early Xmas present, good company, “Chicken Run”. Even got a decent night’s sleep! #
- 14:24 Randomly met two fandom friends at lunch… knew they worked here, but hadn’t seen them in months in or outside or work. Nice! #
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I Know I Am Wasting My Time
With the released news that Peter Jackson will once again be working on “The Hobbit”, the “OMG Jackson got Lord of the Rings ALL WRONG!!!” people have come back out of the woodwork.
Of course, in fandom, the concept “I would have liked if Jackson had done x differently” is the same as “He completely screwed it up, he ruined the books for me forever, I had to burn my copies afterwards!” This is crap. If you want to see LotR completely screwed up, Ralph Bakshi can help there. Jackson didn’t even come close.
Y’know, I would have liked it if the last “Pirates of the Carribean” movie had done some things differently. I still had a good time in the theater, and felt like my cash was not ill-spent. I’ll probably go see number four when it inevitably gets made. There’s a difference here.
I still say the same thing to these flamers: a whiny blog post doesn’t cut it. Write your script, get the budget, assemble the creative team, hire actors, film your work, get it edited and scored, and get it distributed, and gather widespread critical acclaim. Winning 13 Academy Awards is not necessary, though it won’t hurt anything. Once you’ve done that, I’ll allow that yes indeed, you might be able to make a better LotR than Peter Jackson.
And I’ll gleefully read all the posts from all the fans letting the world know that yes, you too have completely screwed up The Lord of the Rings.
Misty Technicolor Memories
It seems that actor Chris Pine is up for the part of Captain James Kirk in the upcoming Trek movie. Among other named participants are Zoe Saldana as Uhura, and Zachary Quinto as Spock. Looking pretty good, so far.
“You’ve wrecked my childhood!” is a phrase oft heard on the Internet, when the new remake of a favorite property comes along. Most recently, some Transformers fans screamed it to anyone who would listen. I can’t help but think that these people show a disappointing level of perspective; who over the age of 20 hasn’t picked up an old book, or the DVD of an old movie, and discovered that it just doesn’t speak to them the way it did all those years ago?
I recently acquired the first season of “Battle of the Planets“: an anime import about a team of bird-costumed super-ninjas in a rocket-jet fighting a high-tech criminal syndicate. It suffered from translation; the translators were forced to make massive cuts of violence and teenage-level plot points while adding in footage of a cute robot and space travel. Imagine that someone had told you that, for Freedonian broadcast, classic Trek had to be cut to 30 minutes per episode, never leave Earth’s solar system, and ditch the pointy-ear guy.
I loved “Battle of the Planets” when I was 8. I made paper airplane versions of the hero’s razor-edged jet boomerang, tinfoil helmets, and beach towel capes. Finally seeing it again all these years later was fun, but I couldn’t help but admit that I was no longer able to appreciate it the way I once could, and that was okay. The upcoming live-action movie will probably be a tiny bit more mature; and I won’t complain at all about all the things they got “wrong”.
Or at least not very much.
Have fun storming the castle
One of the blogs I read is full of people who, for the last week or so, have been making cheesy Inigo Montoya jokes.
After Cthulhu Montoya “The stars are right again; prepare to die!” came this jewel:
The Princess Bride of Frankenstein: “My name isz Viktor Montoya. You killed my fazzer. But now I bring him back to LIFE!“
Robotech Live-Action?
On the “Robotech” movie Tobey Maguire’s producing:
I would love to see a good Robotech movie. I don’t even mind if Maguire plays Rick Hunter – they could do worse.
Last I heard the property was in Licensing Rights Hell. I will believe this is actually in production when reliable on-set reports start filtering out.
I’m not worried about whether the script will be more faithful to Robotech or Macross. When the studio suits are done with it, it will more resemble the Go-Bots. “Geez, you idiot fanboys, it’s just a cartoon.” Otaku who thought that Peter Jackson was spawn of Satan will be utterly enraged, burning down message boards across the ‘Tubes.
Minmei will no longer be Chinese, or ethnic in any way. (Claudia Grant, either.) She will be played by some losing American Idol finalist who will produce a soundtrack album of mildly grating, forgettable songs; this will put her ahead of poor Reba West but still behind Mari Iijima.
The iconic VF-1 Valkyrie, one of the most believable and good-looking transforming mecha in anime history, will no longer strongly resemble an F-14 Tomcat; but be based off of an F-22 Raptor or some Wing Commander refugee, whose transformation sequence only works if you look at something else for several seconds in the middle. (“Hey, where’d Optimus Prime’s trailer go, anyway?”) The SDF-1 Macross will probably fare little better.
Finally, I’m sure I’ll see it at least twice and buy the DVD.
So who would you cast for the main characters? (I just had this mental picture of The Rock as Breetai, which horrified me initially, but is slowly growing on me.)
Wanna go “up”, and wanna go “fast”
I had occasion last night to reflect on how incredible my friends are.
It’s been one crisis after another for the last four months, and at every turn, someone’s stepped up and had my back. I don’t think there can be many people out there as lucky as me.
Once again, furniture had to be moved, this time with about 45 minutes notice. To my great surprise, ptownhiker, fixitup, and Dwight all showed up and were rewarded with booze, food, and Radar Men From the Moon.
You guys are all wonderful. Not just the three who were here last night, but all of you.
Yes, I’m mushy tonight.
EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot: Badger Trance
The Running Joke
You’ve probably heard of the “Running of the Bulls”. A WoW guild this week did a “running of the beef”, where around 100 of them created level 1 Tauren (Minotaur) characters; they then ran them as a herd from the peaceful grasslands of their Mulgore homeland all the way the the forbidding, lava-spewing, Blackrock Mountain (an area where a level-one character has no business being). As anyone who’s played the game up to level 45 can confirm, Stranglethorn Vale was the worst bit 🙂
I’m really into this sort of thing – a bit of business which isn’t part of the game, which will net no experience points or loot, and yet was certainly hilarious for the participants. Virtual worlds need more fun like this! There are YouTube videos – search for AIE Bull Run.
Starr and I are a bit socialized out. We really appreciate our friends inviting us places, but we haven’t had a quiet evening at home in days – so tonight will be Azeroth and TV. (What with my <4 hours of play time per week, I think I'm safe from WoW addiction.) Dave and Jodi (ptownhiker & fixitup) were kind enough to invite us to see Pirates 3 last night at one of those dinner movie theaters. There were a lot of fun bits in the movie – plenty of times I laughed out loud – but eventually, the movie just didn’t make any sense. I’m training myself not to mind movie BS as much as I used to, but I still insist on internally-consistent movie BS. I have the terrible feeling that the writers scripted 3 hours of action and double/ triple/ quadruple/ quintuple/ sextuple/ septuple/ octuple-crosses (I’m stopping before the film did) and then suddenly realized that they were going to have to end the flick at some point.
Can’t say it was a wasted evening… it’s not like the movie was lousy, and the company was excellent.
On a quick note, they previewed The Golden Compass before Pirates. Now, the books impressed me little, and I wasn’t planning on going to see the big-screen version. However, there’s some fair acting talent on board, and the visuals in the preview were gorgeous. I may just go for the eye candy.
“Pro-ceedin’!”
Those that play computer games should wander over to http://www.blizzard.com today. Seriously.
It’s sort of embarrassing to know that someone’s sold me a game before the thing’s even finished. But that’s the truth, and so it goes. The CGI trailers are AMAZING. I don’t know why Blizz is talking about shooting the WoW movie in live action, their CGI people should be winning awards right and left.
If there’s anything that company does well, it’s detail. The level of polish in their website, trailers, and their actual games are amazing. None of that would help if there was no solid foundation, but that’s been taken care of too. Of course, simultaneous Mac releases are also a plus for me 🙂
“Hell. It’s about time.”
