There, that’s out of the way.

I realise that it’s not my usual cup of tea and it may surprise some people that I do enjoy that show, but then I enjoy quite a few strange brews.  The show whilst at times set in a completely different world to mine and I suspect for most of you yours as well but at the core of the show the characters were engaging (well maybe not Carrie a lot of the time) and they went through a journey of change and portrayed friendship (the fashion aspect is completely lost on me).  The show also presented women in a different light (for good or for bad) and crossed boundaries for television.

The first film overall was in my opinion a satisfying end for the characters, we got to see them moving on with their lives and some resolutions that were only implied by the finale of the show.

Then Sex and the City 2 came along.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-aOpznm44

To say that this film is pointless, offensive drivel is, as the joke goes giving pointless, offensive drivel a bad name.

I just found the characters to be completely gutted shells of themselves with certain aspects of their personalities pushed into overdrive to compensate for the lack of anything of worth.  It’s Kim Cattrall and the character Samantha that seems to suffer the most from this.  Samantha has always been selfish, oversexed and crude but in this it’s taken to a ridiculous level where she is overly so and abandons any actual humanity within the character in favour of a parody.

The other characters except for Carrie are barely even really in the film, though they take a stab at Charlotte suffering under motherhood.

Carrie is pretty much as unlikeable as she’s ever been.  She nags on Big who just wants to watch some telly and eat some takeaway and she maintains a whole apartment for two years with no one living in it!?!?  Oh yeah they really embraced the whole global financial crisis and injected that into the story well… I’m joking.

There are cringe worthy cameos, horrible karaoke and for a fair amount of the movie the most condescending drivel that you’re likely to encounter.  I’m reasonably certain it borders on racism as well.

I do not recommend this film to anyone.

Except maybe that kid who used to pick on me everyday in kindergarten. Yeah you, you little bastard you should watch this film.

Rating: 0 out of 10 stars

Related posts:

1. Television I’m watching: SGU, V and Dr Who amongst others
2. Film number 5 from my top 5 films: Serenity
3. Stargate Universe: Earth – human resources disasters – oh and there are spoilers

That’s the question posed to me by Rol after I asked for ideas from everyone, actually I should mention that the collectibles post from last week was inspired by Jeff and I hadn’t acknowledged that (and now I have).

So I should explain a little about what I think of the current Iron Man in the Marvel Universe, to be honest it’s not much.

I mean I am a huge fan of Iron Man, I even bought the The Invincible Iron Man Marvel Omnibus which is a giant hard cover that features the character’s early appearances which goes to illustrate that I’m an old school Shell head.  My favourite armour is potentially the Mark II armour because of its simplicity, I do say potentially because I am also quite a fan of the Mark V (which is referred to as the classic armour).

So with my cards on the table as a purest,  one of the first things I would do is I would remove the ridiculous “posthuman biology” armour that is stored within Tony’s body and return him to a suit of armour.

You see my theory here is that they’ve gone too far now, how do you improve upon a nan0-machine armour that can manifest itself as anything?  It’s too advanced and the cool thing about Iron Man were the refinements he would make to the general design of the Iron Man armour.  You can’t really improve upon this can you?

I think they fell into this trap to a lessor degree in the Iron Man films with the Rolex armour, it’s awesome don’t get me wrong, but how do you improve upon it?  The sequel’s armour is essentially the same thing with very small enhancements.  They just left themselves with very little way forward for the armour.

The other thing I would change is that I would bring back Stark Enterprises and the cast of characters that entails.  Stark needs grounding and that’s SE and the staff there.

So what would my first story be?

Imagine an old school Crimson Dynamo tearing up a Stark Enterprises facility, demanding to see Tony Stark.  Of course he shows up ready for a fight but the Dynamo slumps to the ground and asks for help.  The thing is the Crimson Dynamo is a child, trapped in the suit because of bizarre experiments that a splinter group were conducting on fusing humans to the technology.  Stark would spend the issue trying to work out a way around the defensive systems to free the child, whilst also getting to know her.  At the end he would fail and she would die and the story would end with Stark taking a very long look at a bottle…

Related posts:

1. Iron Man’s new armour – I hate it
2. Iron Man Wednesday: Mark 3
3. Iron Man Wednesdays – MKV Armour – ‘The Classic’

Brilliant.

Now all of Dan‘s late night emails where he confesses his true affection for John Travolta films will be relegated to their rightful place amongst the other emails I refuse to read.

Now whilst some of this is apparently automatic you also have the chance to refine your results and train the magical Google machine what is actually important and what are the ravings of a self loathing Sweathog fan.  So now there is a real dilemma, who do I deem a priority?!  I don’t want to waste this opportunity because what if the email comes that offers me the chance to learn to play drums from Ringo Starr and I miss it because it was wedged between two emails from you people**!?!!

So I’m compiling a list of people who’s emails will find their way to the special VIP section of my inbox:

• Ringo Starr for aforementioned reasons, I’d probably include Paul too I suppose but only because I don’t want to play favourites***
• Batman.
• Bill Murray.
• Patrick Stewart but not William Shatner, I’ve been on Shatner mailing lists before and all he tries to do is sell stuff.
• Prof. Stephen Hawking in case he gets stuck on something and needs to talk it out, don’t want to leave him waiting on me.
• Mario, but not Luigi.

That pretty much does it I suppose.  I can’t imagine anyone else that needs to be…

• Tracey!!  ummm hehe yeah I was just kiddin around not including her, funny guy that’s me (O_o)

So who will you be adding to your priority inbox****?

*I’m not judging you… much
** I love EVERY email I get from you people.
*** What am I talking about?!? All I’m doing here is playing favourites!
**** Apart from me obviously…

Related posts:

1. So who’s getting some Shatner love?
2. Yes, these are the Doctors you’ve all been waiting on

Which is fine, I don’t need a lot of the collectibles I already have though I love them all dearly and they do come in handy for reference material when illustrating but part of the overall streamlining strategy is not adding more!! So I’ve found myself resisting several very cool pieces of movie memorabilia lately and not worrying too much about it.

But I’m not made of stone.

These three items would be so cool to have, no doubts about that and honestly I think whilst the title of the post says “won’t” it’s probably more a case of can’t.  Money of course plays a huge role but I think the cost of these things reminds me of their actual worth.  If I can’t afford them or they take money away from important things then they are essentially useless to me. (or something like that anyway…)

It actually looks comfortable

1. Captain Kirk’s Chair

When I was a young man watching Star Trek I always dreamt that one day I would have a lounge room that was an exact replica of the bridge of the USS Enterprise (NCC1701).  That and a replica shuttle craft in the back yard.  Now the shuttle craft is a little harder to come by, not impossible but pretty hard.  The bridge on the other hand or at least the centre seat is a retail possibility.

Now there are a couple of issues to address.

Obviously the price is a talking point when having a chat with the wife about the practicality of purchasing this piece of furniture for our lounge room.  At US$2199.99 you might want to offer to do the washing up… forever.  But if you are thinking of starting negotiations this following couch puts it into perspective:

Not quite as cool as Kirk's chair but much more expensive

Another issue to address is that unlike the chair above it only seats the one person, presumably yourself and it’s no fun playing Mario Kart on your own so practicality raises its ugly head again.

2. Serenity – The Big Damn Replica

Would you look at that gorram detail!!

Okay as far as toys go this is pretty bloody impressive.  This is a studio scale replica of the Firefly spaceship Serenity, measuring just under 60 cm in length and featuring hand painted details it’s literally the best model available for Serenity fans.  One little hitch though.

US $2699.99

Yup, still not as expensive as that couch but that’s a pretty chunk of change which would buy many many packets of cheetos.

It’s pretty to look at though.

Appa plush figurine that I would love so very much

3. Appa plush figurine

I came to the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series (there is no movie, there is no movie) quite late, at least a couple years after it originally aired and so unfortunately I missed the craze and the merchandising that went with it.  So Appa (the flying bison who I love so very much) plush figurines are only really available on ebay now and they go for a huge figure, not Serenity huge but expensive enough that it makes me think twice, which is probably a good thing because as much as I would love an Appa doll I really don’t need one…

Okay I’ve nearly convinced myself.  I have a bunch of plush toys from Aliens and Farscape already and some of them I could probably part with easily but my lifesize Rygel is another story.

So are there any collectibles out there that you guys would dearly love to get but probably can’t (or won’t)?

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1. Three ways to make your place more awesome than theirs
2. Superman and Batman fought the law and the law won
3. I don’t want to start nothing but is that seriously the best phaser we’re going to get?

I think I’m a little spoilt over at The Coalition of Awesomeness and the Midnight Movie Club as those blogs have themes in which to work around, but out here all I’ve got is me and my stupid brain which hasn’t been playing ball of late.  Of course there are the flying monkeys in the QYDJ lab but those little bastards only want to talk about oily versus dry peanut butter.  That conversation gets old quickly let me tell you!

This is the reason why there's no point responding to those email notifications...

Once I exhausted all avenues of discourse regarding peanut butter I turned to ol faithful idea machine Google.  Unfortunately even though there were blog posts that boasted “101 blog post ideas to get you thinking” the majority (all that I could bring myself to look at) featured helpful ideas such as:

• Write something funny
• Give advice
• Give your opinion on something
• Write about something you know…

And then they got worse, I’m thinking of developing the universal law of writing good blog posts according to these sites: “write about something that people want to read”.  Bravo.  Great advice.  Where’s my cheque?

So I thought I might open it up to you guys and see if there was anything in particular you were interested in reading about?  I’ve done this before and people have left really good ideas and then I’ve completely lost track of them and I feel bad about that because they were really great ideas… yeah I know I should really go back and find those posts.  Of course if you write your suggestion again maybe the power of repetition will get through to me.

On another note I’m catching up on some commission pieces that are over due, got a bunch of superhero illustrations coming

So ask away and I’ll try to respond to at least 34% of them in post format.

Related posts:

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2. So it has now been three years – blog anniversary
3. I love this book cover

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbkQTB-OJsk

I suspect that going into the film Salt it is probably a disadvantage watching the above trailer and forming the expectation that this might be like a Bourne film.

It’s not.

Salt stars Angelina Jolie and is about a CIA agent who goes on the run after a Russian defector names her as a Russian sleeper agent who is going to kill the Russian President on US soil.

Who is Salt? I know but I don't really care...

That trailer and the general description make Salt sound like a pretty cool movie but to be honest in the actual execution it’s a severely lacking film.  First off the whole idea of Russians infiltrating America to assassinate presidents and take over nuclear bombs feels like it’s an idea that went out with the cold war.  I found it really clichéd, like a poor man’s Bond villain routine.  The plot loses its credibility as we dive head first into the “plunging the world into war” for Mother Russia and to wipe out the evil American capitalist swine storyline!

A huge problem is that we don’t have anyone to identify as the main villain of the piece, there’s no mastermind behind it all, well there is but he certainly doesn’t rate much of a mention, I might have felt different had he been stroking a white cat and actually had any real impact.

I will admit that there are at least one or two twists that are impressive enough that they elevate themselves above the mucky muck story but they’re not exactly Crying Game/Fight Club level revelations and they don’t save the movie.

The stunts and the action sequences seem mediocre at best and the acting seems bored.  In fact Jolie (who I quite like normally) looks exhausted throughout, I just want her to eat a nice meal and have a nap.

At the end of the film I just don’t care about any of the characters, they’ve made no impression on me and I don’t honestly care if they live or die.  If they make a sequel, which they certainly seem interested in I won’t bother seeing it outside of some sick curiosity to see if they have learnt from this underwhelming experience.

See it if you have nothing else to watch, it’s not effective enough to make you think it’s really bad.

Rating: 3 out of 10 stars

Related posts:

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2. Second Take: Punisher War Zone
3. Where did all the slow zombies go?

Even my local comic book shop have refused to play Batdance on repeat in the store to celebrate the wonder that is Prince’s masterpiece.

So it’s up to me, enjoy and ponder life’s mysteries:

Oh by the way, it was really hard to find the video clip!!

*not really…

Related posts:

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2. Streamlining our lives
3. Are comic book shops going to have to become digital distributors?

mmmm define irony

I have to make the confession up front.

I’m not a leave it in its box kind of guy.

I’m just not, I once bought a Jurassic Park T-Rex pristine in its box for 15 years and within 15 seconds of being in my care it was out of that box.  You have to let these things breathe.

So you can imagine that I don’t leave my comics in bags, I don’t have cotton gloves and special tweezers to examine my comics and I certainly don’t see them as any form of investment other than in my sanity.

But a lot of people do.

I’m not knocking you guys but honestly you’re going to have to hang on to that Superman #75 for a very long time to make any money, I’m talking pyramid construction kind of years.  Comics from this era are not worth golden age prices because the market is different.  Better paper, more issues and everyone is collecting, it does not make for rare comic books.

So stemming off of yesterday’s post and the discussions it generated I’m now wondering about the impact of digital comics on the stories and art.  I don’t so much mean in a display point of view, that’s fairly standard but I mean what happens when you take the collector aspect out of comic books.

You wouldn’t buy two digital copies of Deadpool #45 just because one has an alternative cover featuring whatever character has either a movie coming out or is a) Wolverine or b) Deadpool (an alternate Deadpool comic book cover featuring Deadpool… how meta) but there are plenty of people who appear to buy the physical version for collector and investment reasons.

Well that gimmick probably won’t work, I say probably, I mean these are still people we’re talking about here.  So when you remove the resale or collectible aspect of a comic book what do you have left?

Story and art.

So now you can’t rely on that guy who just buys every single issue of every Batman related title because he has to haves thems because they’s his precious.  (yeah I know that was a really hard sentence to read, it was hard writing it, I think it came out different to what was in my head)

If a series that features a Batman related character has poor art and poor storylines then I would hope that without the collectible status that readers just wouldn’t buy that book any more.

The lessor known, less effective I'm on a horse Old Spice campaign

So with no more gimmicks apart obviously from motion comics and soundtracks etc you return the merit system, we as a comic book reading public should hopefully reject poor story lines or poor art and no longer buy books to complete collections or because one day they might be worth something!

Of course now that I think about it, potentially it could work in favour of those limited readership books, with no printing costs and the potential to be added to a library that people could continue to purchase from for years and years, maybe the big companies could carry some indie books that have limited appeal.

Maybe Aquaman will get his own series again?!

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3. Comic books primer for comics book n00bs

It’s the thought that I was pondering this morning as I read a Judge Dredd Megazine on my iPad whilst riding the bus in to work.  The simple fact is that whilst I realise I can only talk from my own perspective I actually am completely comfortable reading a comic book in that format and I suspect I’m not alone (actually I know I’m not but figure I shouldn’t speak for everyone else).  I find the experience as rewarding as if I were holding the paper and ink book in my hands and flipping the pages.

In fact I would almost go as far as to say that I find digital comics to be more convenient and therefore more rewarding.

The resolution on the iPad is clear enough that I can enjoy the artwork completely and I’ve got the added bonus of zooming in on particular panels to appreciate them in finer detail without straining my eyes.  I can carry a large library of material around with me and so I’m never stuck on a train or a bus or in a meeting without at least something of interest.  There are also no creased pages or ripped covers or lost books.

Actually in one of my social media presentations I make the point of mobile devices but pointing out that the average weight of ten silver age era comic books is about half a kilogram.  On my iPad I’m carrying at least 100 Aquaman comics which would normally weigh me down by 50 kilos!  (I of course tie this fact back to an actual business requirement)

But what of my friendly neighbourhood comic book shop?

I love my comic book shop, they know my name, I have a standing order with them, they know a lot about comics and there is a general atmosphere of… well… comic books in there.  So what happens if everyone started buying their comics digitally and directly from the source?  (right now digital costs around the same and above for actual books which is just ridiculous and a topic for another post but sheesh…)

I wondered this about music as well with digital downloads surging in popularity, how CD shops might survive and was impressed to see the Sanity music chain selling “burn on demand” CDs.  They simply have a card on the shelf which you take to the counter and they advise you it’ll be an hour or whatever and they burn and print it there and then.  I mean that doesn’t really provide a solution for them but at least they are exploring new markets and using technology well.

Not that I think CDs will completely disappear either nor do I expect comic books to stop printing.

But the fact that I see a day that I wouldn’t be upset at the thought of buying a virtual comic rather than the paper book makes me wonder if I’m being disloyal to the comic book shop?  I’m a huge advocate of supporting the comic book shops who have carried comic book culture for decades when newsagents would only stock two copies of the Super Friends at triple the standard cost.

So is there a day in the future where I can set up an account with my local comic book shop and purchase my digital comics through them?  Or take my iPad or laptop into the store and download the books as I scan bar codes off the racks?

I don’t see physical books disappearing at all but I wonder about the enthusiast market such as myself who don’t really have the room at home for three tonnes of comic books and therefore about comic book shops in general?

For anyone interested my comic book reader of choice right now is Comic Book Lover for iPad.

Related posts:

1. Comic book treasure at the second hand shop
2. Will digital comics make them raise the standards?
3. Comic Book Questionnaire

I had no idea what Voyagers! was.

I mean I had heard of the show and seen the occasional reference to it, it’s very possible that my podcasting partner Dan may have even talked to me about it (if not he I’m sure Matt probably has).  But I’d never laid eyes on any actual footage until the other day whilst trawling YouTube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm-o_7AGJRQ

Now hang on a second.

Let me get this straight, these guys jump or leap if you like back through time and they fix it when events have gone astray.  I’m reasonably certain I’ve seen this before (or later as the case actually is) with Quantum Leap?!?

Actually if I was being completely fair I might point to the Time Tunnel but still I find it interesting that I never encountered this show before.  So now I’ve got myself an interesting scenario, since I have absolutely no personal connection to this show at all I can watch it without fear of it ruining a cherished memory.

I have no idea who these people are but I respect the manliness of that vest!

However, it looks like it could be a little dated and I don’t know what my tolerance might be like of its acting and effects.

Are there any Voyagers! fans out there that will recommend it?  Remember though I might carve it up in front of you so be sure

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2. Guest post: Andrew on Quantum Leap
3. The Cape: bad name for a show, cool idea though