23 posts tagged “geekstuff”
I love Robert Downey, Jr.; particularly of late, with Iron Man, Tropic Thunder, even A Scanner Darkly, he's quite a chameleon.
But, this?
No. Just...no.
Will Murray (who, among other things, wrote for Starlog, and wrote much of The Destroyer series from Lester Dent plots) was recently interviewed by Comic Book Resources, and he delivers a fascinating survey course on pulp fiction.
Wonderful stuff.
So, after several days of trying to navigate GoDaddy's HORRIBLE, convoluted dashboard, I have managed to finally get my website up and running again.
My thanks to my friend Wendy for all her help.
So, I'm quite excited to finally have a decent web space set up, one which I'm actually able to update regularly.
PLEASE do check it out -- it's lonely.
- Very not bad. Lots to like.
- Not perfect. Lots of stuff to make you go "huh?"
- Well paced, doesn't let up.
- Nice mix of character and action beats.
- For the most part, the cast works well.
- Zoe Saldana is gorgeous.
- I was eventually won over by Christopher Pine, but did enjoy watching him get punched in the face. Over. And over. And over.
- Karl Urban essays McCoy flawlessly.
- Zoe Saldana is gorgeous. Really. Not kidding.
- Simon Pegg doesn't work as Scotty, but doesn't ruin it.
- Eric Bana is game, but doesn't get a lot of space to breathe as villain.
- Uh, black holes don't do that.
- Pike is awesome.
- Zoe Saldana is gorgeous. Seriously.
- Syler/Spock is doubleplus excellent.
- This movie is NOT for Trekkies/Trekkers -- though it makes it palatable enough for us. It's for people who aren't diehard fans, and it delivers a compelling experience for them, that those of us who think that tiny little scoutship years before the construction of Enterprise wouldn't be carrying 800 people won't mind. Yes, I AM that nerd, thank you.
- Definitely worth a watch, and certainly not an insult to intelligence and assault on goodwill (like Wolverine, or worse offenders like the Star Wars prequels, Spider-Man 3, or the Matrix sequels).
For a variety of reasons, I've elected not to continue the 100 Movies Meme, as much as I enjoyed it. Too hard to mesh my viewing schedule with my wife's, and lately I've been watching movies I don't think merit actual comment.
I did see a few things recently that I quite enjoyed.
Finally got to see WALL-E, in glorious Blu-Ray. HOLY SMOKES, what a terrific movie. More than made up for CARS, which was the only truly lackluster Pixar movie I've encountered. Ben Burtt's sound effects made the film for me, and Wall-E himself is clearly an inspired hybrid of R2-D2 and E.T., which means I'm genetically imprinted to respond favorably to him.
Watched The Wrestler recently as well, and loved it. Mickey Roarke is riveting, and the movie is -- as is common for Aronofsky -- bleak, painful, and unimaginably sad. Not for the faint of heart (especially the bit with the staple gun), but a tremendous bit of acting from Roarke, and from Marisa Tomei.
And then, there's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Yes, yes, it made $80+ million opening weekend. Whatever. It's still a thuggish, stupid movie, with laughable dialogue, creaky special effects (there are several moments where the adamantium claws look like they're rendered in the style of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), and a nonsensical über-threat.
Which is a pity, because all the ingredients of a good movie were there. Poor Hugh Jackman, saddled with some of the worst dialogue outside of a 1990s-era Image comic, is game as hell, really working his ass off to sell those lines. And Liev Schreiber worked shockingly well as Victor Creed. The scenes between Logan and Victor crackle. Don't be fooled by the trailer -- Schreiber, for the most part, underplays Victor, and has probably added eighty pounds of muscle to his normally lanky frame. Much better than the Sabretooth we saw in the first X-Men movie.
But lord, the movie is a mess. At turns plodding, pointless and silly, with a few genuinely good moments worked in. Gambit is cool, though his Texas accent is inexplicable; Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson is genuinely great, until the movie hijacks the character and turns him into something painfully dumb.
The ostensible villain of the piece might as well have worn a long mustache, which he could twirl as he cackles menacingly, probably whilst chaining virgins to train tracks. Danny Huston is a good actor, who's been turning in basically the same performance since The Constant Gardener, so his version of Stryker is tremendously disappointing.
A misconceived idea from the outset. If you're gonna do a Wolverine movie, it damn well better be Wolverine vs. Hand ninjas. I mean, come on.
Oh, and the multiple "secret" teaser endings? Dear filmmakers: if you're going to do this, it'd be nice if they were all, y'know, interesting. The screening we attended had a teaser ending that essentially consisted of one guy, sitting at a bar. That's it. Guy. Sitting. A guy we just spent two hours watching do things.
Lame. Lame lame lame.
The DC Comics blog space, The Source, has a new article by the dauntless Alex Segura, a look at some of the behind-the-scenes work and discussions that went into creating the covers for the upcoming JSA vs. Kobra: Engines of Faith six-issue series.
I've worked -- and continue to work -- with some great artists and writers; it's been the real blessing of my work in comics. Apprenticing under Greg Rucka, batting mad ideas around with Brandon Jerwa, checking out new character sketches from Chris Samnee, or watching page after page of awesome appear in my inbox from Don Kramer and Michael Babinski... it's been exhilarating.
Chewing over designs and sources of inspiration with Gene Ha is definitely one of the highlights, though.
So, click on over to The Source and enjoy.
The "remastered" Star Trek: Original Series episodes are fantastic, but THIS is the one I've been waiting for: A digitally remastered version of "The Cage" (the series' failed pilot) with all new special effects and upgraded sound.
Embedding disabled, apparently, but here's the YouTube link.
As a diehard Trek nerd, I've grown increasingly disenchanted with the various new Enterprise designs over the years, as they get shiner, and bumpier, and more and more complicated in their appearance.
The original Enterprise was the iPod of spaceship designs. Sleek, elegant, minimalist and just as cool-looking today as it was then.
In related news: the new Star Trek movie toys arrived in the store yesterday.
Feh. The new Enterprise design does nothing for me; it's too humpbacked and reminds me of a modern VW Beetle.
That is all.
On Free Comic Book Day (which, of course, you KNOW is May 2nd, 2009), Brandon Jerwa and I will be launching a six-page preview of our upcoming webcomic, Wide Awake.
We will also be signing (along with Eric Nylund and Joshua Ortega) at Olympic Cards & Comics in Lacey, WA. Brandon and I will have a poster on hand, a wonderful Wide Awake piece by David Messina and Mirco Pierfederici. We're selling them for $10 bucks, and have limited the run to 500 (and, of course, Brandon and I are happy to sign them.)
The posters are 13 inches by 19 inches on 100lb aqueous stock.
Oh, and they look like this...
P.W. Singer, the author of one of the first scholarly works about private military companies (a wonderful, if a bit dry, tome called Corporate Warriors, which I commend to your attention) thinks about war with a depth and clarity that's unique in the field.
Most non-fiction works about military action tend to be concerned largely with the men and women kicking down doors, about tactics, about strategy, about the technology of warfare.
Singer tends to approach war from a macroeconomics standpoint, and the results in his work are often devastatingly intelligent and terrifyingly plausible.
Here, Singer talks about the rise of robotics in warfare, and warfare for the YouTube generation. (Among other things, he references a jihadi website wherein one can login and detonate IEDs in Iraq remotely.)
Terrific video, and scary as hell.
[Trek Movie Spoilers if you click-a-da-link.]
So, a while back a couple clips from the upcoming J.J. Abrams' helmed STAR TREK movie were released, and I'd managed to miss them until yesterday.
Folks who know me know I prefer the Original Series Trek to just about any other incarnation (Star Trek V being a notable exception; god, what a dismal movie), and also know that I do not hold Abrams' ouvre in particularly high esteem. To be blunt, I fully expect the new Trek film to boldly suck where no one has sucked before.
Then I saw the first clip, with Chris Pine essaying Kirk as a brash "townie" hitting on Uhura.
Then the second, with Karl Urban as Doctor McCoy, freaking out about a shuttle flight.
DAMMIT.
I want to see the movie now. They've given me a glimmer of hope for the film, which will then be cruelly dashed.
Sigh.
Some days, it's not easy being a geek.
