Midnight Ramblings

Another PVR Cleanout

2013-05-22T14:31:00.000-06:00

I love my PVR to bits. So much good stuff on there that I can watch whenever I want! It's going to be such a shame when the introductory rate from my cable company runs out and I'll have to start paying full price, because by then, I won't be able to afford it, and I'll have to give it up. But until then, let's enjoy. Rather than one of the countless Star Trek reruns I fill it with, let's start with a Transformers rerun!

Transformers: Webworld - When I saw this one coming up late one night on TeleToon Retro, I knew I had to record it to see if this episode was as weird as I remembered. This comes from Season 3, so it's after The Transformers: The Movie. After a recent skirmish with the Autobots where Galvatron fired upon his own troops for getting in the way, the Decepticons are starting to fret that maybe their leader is just a little too psychotic to be in charge. Cyclonus, second-in-command, is loyal to a fault and refuses to overthrow Galvatron. Instead, the Qunitesons suggest that Cyclonus take Galvatron to the planet Tokulon, as its residents might be able to help Galvatron. So the Decepticons dupe Galvatron into leading a raid on Tokulon. It turns out Tokulon, the entire planet, is a psychiatric hospital, and upon setting foot on the planet, Galvatron is instantly committed to the hospital against his will. What follows is a scathing satire of the therapy trends of the 1980s...well, as scathing as a Saturday morning cartoon can get. Galvatron is made to talk about his feelings, where he just kind of chants "murder everyone" over and over. Galvatron is made to express his feelings through arts and crafts, where he builds a gun and proceeds to murder everyone. And finally, Galvatron is made to act out his feelings through role playing, where Galvatron takes the role of Galvatron and proceeds to murder everyone. Fearing that Galvatron is too far gone for therapy, the Tokulans figure they need to lobotomize Galvatron. It turns out the whole planet of Tokulon is alive, and they lobotomize by plugging Galvatron directly into their planet's mind. But, Galvatron is so psychotic, he instantly makes the whole planet psychotic, and the Tokulans have to sever the link before the planet destroys itself. In the ruckus, Cyclonus sees the error of his ways and busts out Galvatron. With what he learned from the mind link, Galvatron leads a raid to the heart of the planet, and murders the planet Tokulon. From there, the Decepticons declare war on the Tokulans and proceed to lay waste to the whole planet. Once everything on the planet is ashes, Cyclonus reminds Galvatron that the Autobots are the true enemies, and Galvatron and the Decepticons take off to hunt down the Autobots. And they lived murderously every after.

Yup. Still as weird as I remembered. I wonder what it was like in the Transformers writers room where someone stood up and said, "Hey, I've got an idea! Let's put Galvatron in therapy!" Was it meant to be some slam at parents groups who didn't like the violence in the show? I guess what makes it weird is the fact that Galvatron, the enemy we've all grown to hate, is suddenly made a kind of damsel-in-distress, and Cyclonus becomes the hero. Just weird.

Star Trek: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield - Another famous episode of Star Trek. Despite all the critics declaring it to be a rather mediocre episode, it's fondly remembered for special guest star Frank Gorshin, still best remembered as the Riddler on the 1960s Batman, and it's very, very blunt message.

While on a mission of mercy to planet stricken by a plague, the Enterprise recovers a stolen shuttlecraft. It's lone occupant appears human, but with a peculiar skin colouration. He's split right down the middle, with his left side being black and his right side being white. The man awakens and identifies himself as Lokai, from the planet Charon. Lokai claims to be a wrongly accused individual, who fled tyranny and oppression on Charon. The Enterprise is soon joined by Bele, claiming to be a lawman from Charon and chasing down Lokai to bring him to justice. Bele, played by Gorshin, is oppositely coloured...his left side is white and his right side is black. Bele tries to hijack the Enterprise, but after a tense standoff between Bele and Captain Kirk, Bele relents and allows the Enterprise to finish its mission. In the meantime, Lokai and Bele are treated as guests on the Enterprise, and in their interactions with the crew, we learn that the source of Lokai and Bele's conflict is just good ol' fashioned racism...they can't stand each other because of their oppositely coloured skin. Once the Enterprise has cured the planet of its plague, Lokai once again hijacks the Enterprise, but this time, he's successful. The Enterprise discovers Charon is nothing but a burnt out shell of a planet...the racism that consumed the people erupted into a world war that killed everyone. Lokai and Bele are the last two remaining Charons. Kirk implores that they let go of their hatred and being new lives, but they'll have none of it. They chase each other throughout the Enterprise's corridors until they wind up in the transporter room and beam down to Charon. As the Enterprise departs, the message is summed up thusly:

Uhura>> Do you think their hatred for each other is all they ever had?

Kirk>> No, Liutenant, but it's all they have left.

I know Star Trek always prided itself on tackling real world issues in a satirical sci-fi light, but sometimes, they get just a little too blunt and heavy handed with their message. And this is a prime example of that. Slow, talky, and making sure everyone gets the point. But it's (literal) black and white premise and famous guest star have made it a staple of the original series.

I was also going to talk about the season finale of Doctor Who, but I think I'll save that for a separate blog entry.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Jaws

2013-05-16T00:30:00.000-06:00

And here we are, once again, with Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly watch of something in my DVD collection. Today, we get to one of those classics that I'm stunned I'd never seen before...Jaws. This entry is dated in my notes at September 8, 2012.

What can I write about Jaws that hasn't already been written? Books have been written on it. Documentaries have been filmed on it. It was a legendarily troubled production. The most famous problem was a mechanical shark that refused to work. 55 days of shooting soon expanded into 159. But its influence is equally legendary. It made Steven Spielberg a superstar director. It was the first true summer blockbuster, establishing the marketing and release formulas that are still followed to this day. And children the world over still hum that music in swimming pools.

But the one thing that's always baffled me about Jaws is its fandom. Jaws has a gigantic and rabid fanbase. One of my favourite filmmakers, Kevin Smith, has long cited it as one of his favourite films and tries to slip in a Jaws reference in all his films. Bryan Singer (the first two X-Men films and Superman Returns) loves it so much he named his production company - Bad Hat Harry - after a line in the film. There's a very famous documentary called The Shark is Still Working. 3 hours long, completely made by fans, detailing the film's production. But why? It doesn't seem like the typical kind of film that would establish a fandom. Fandoms are usually reserved for sci-fi epics and sprawling fantasy tales. Why would this simple tale of a shark hunt create such a large and diverse fan base?

As I've previously blogged, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Universal Studios, and as such, lots of their classic films are getting re-released in special 100th anniversary editions to Blu-Ray...some films, for the first time. Such as Jaws. So as I was reading online about the forthcoming Blu-Ray release, and started thinking, "I should pick this up." I mean, as famous a film as it is, with its reputation as the first blockbuster, it just felt like the kind of film I should own. So I picked it up.

I'd only ever seen pieces of Jaws. I always came in halfway through on basic cable, watching a bit of it, and then moving on to something else. However, I figured I should watch the whole thing because of another film in the Spielberg filmography. I remember when Jurassic Park came out. Many people drew comparisons between Jurassic Park and Jaws. Heck, I even saw Spielberg himself say it in an interview. "Jurassic Park is MY Jaws 2," said Spielberg. "It's Land Shark." And I LOVE Jurassic Park.

Really makes you wonder, then. They say that one of the best things about Jaws is how you rarely see the shark and the suspense it builds. If Spielberg had the digital technology of today back in 1975, how much of the shark would we have seen?

The film opens in true slasher film fashion. Some promiscuous teenagers are about to get it on by going skinny dipping, and the shark promptly eats the young woman. When her chewed up remains wash up on shore the next day, Chief Brody leads the investigation, the coroner declares the cause of death to be a shark attack. Brody moves to close the beaches, but the mayor convinces Brody that he's overreacting. Besides, the mayor points out that their town of Amity Island is a tourist town, and closing the beaches for the upcoming July long weekend could cripple the local economy. Brody reluctantly decides to keep the beaches open...a decision he quickly regrets when a boy is killed by the shark a week later.

The mother puts a bounty on the shark's head, and a flood of amateur shark hunters comes to town, trying to get the shark. A colorful local and professional shark hunter named Quint offers to get the shark for $10,000. Brody soon gets some help from the mainland...the oceanographic institute sends a shark expert named Hooper to help hunt the shark. The amateur shark hunters soon bring in a tiger shark. Everyone thinks that the town is saved, but Hooper does some quick calculations, comparing the shark's mouth to the wounds on the remains of the victims, and determines that it wasn't the same shark. A quick night hunt looking for the real shark leads to the discovery of a third victim.

Despite all this, the mayor is still reluctant to close the beaches for the upcoming Fourth of July weekend, and is forever remembered in filmdom as the origin of the "selfish public official who puts his own needs ahead of the people" cliche. So, Brody and Hooper form a small army of shark spotters to patrol the waters and keep an eye out for the shark. A prank from some kids, though, allows the real shark to slip through the defenses and claim a fourth victim. Unable to ignore the evidence any longer, the mayor signs a contract with Quint and Quint is officially hired to head out into the water and hunt the shark. Quint, Brody, and Hooper all head out to see, and the rest of the film - pretty much the entire second half - is Quint, Brody and Hooper playing cat-and-mouse with the shark on the open sea.

I remember from the Jurassic Park/Jaws comparisons back in the day. One thing that a lot of film critics said was, the one thing that Jaws had over Jurassic Park was the characters. And I've got to agree with that now. In Jurassic Park, about all we ever learn about our dinosaur expert Alan Grant is that he's not good with kids. His Jaws counterpart though, shark expert Hooper, we learn that he comes from a life of wealth and privilege, as he shows up with all kinds of expensive and high-tech shark finding gear that he boasts he bought himself. He tells a story of a close encounter with a shark in his youth that inspired him to study sharks. And we see him engage in a battle of oneupsmanship with Quint as they have a "book smarts vs. street smarts" kind of conflict.

Brody. A small town sheriff. He lets us know that he was originally a New York City cop, but he moved out to the island because he felt he could do more good. "Out here, one man can make a difference," he tells Hooper. It comes with a price, though, as he has a fear of the water and usually refuses to go out on boats. So going out to hunt a shark shows that he's finally summoned up a lot of courage to do what needs to be done.

And then there's Quint. He explains his line of work and his obsession with hunting sharks in what is now simply known as "The Indianapolis Speech," which is considered to be an acting tour de force.

And Spielberg. Make no mistake about it, this is a Spielberg movie. The look, the style, the little director flourishes. It's all there. We even have a shooting star in a shot of the night sky. That's the first little Spielberg flourish I ever noticed. Whenever Spielberg has an establishing shot of the night sky, there's a shooting star. And it's right there in Jaws. This was only Spielberg's second theatrical film, and he also had a buttload of TV experience under his belt, but to see so many of his trademark touches so early in his career just speaks to his confidence as a director.

Peter Jackson once remarked that the key to the fandom for The Lord of the Rings wasn't the rich and detailed universe that JRR Tolkien created, but the rich and detailed characters. I think that's why Jaws has generated the fandom that it has. It's the characters that make this film pop. We really get to know these characters, and that makes the film all the more powerful. Jaws is a remarkable film, and I'm sure it will forever be remembered as one of the films that reshaped cinema.

Superman Unbound Review

2013-05-13T00:30:00.000-06:00

Well, for the past few weeks, I've been watching every Star Trek movie as part of my own personal preperation for Into Darkness coming out this Friday. Given it takes me about 5 months for things to move from my notes to this blog, look for my epic 11-part series on every Star Trek movie in Fishing in the Discount Bin some time this fall. But, now that that's done, I can start working my way through all the other new DVDs I've acquired over the past few weeks, such as Warner Bros. latest straight-to-DVD DC Comics movie...

Superman Unbound

Directed by James Tucker

Starring the voices of Matt Bomer, Stana Katic, John Noble, Molly Quinn, Diedrich Bader, Frances Conroy, Alexander Gould, and Stephen Root.

Backstory: While I generally enjoy these DC films, I am starting to grow weary of them being about nothing but Batman and Superman. But still, Superman seems to be a little bit tricky for most, and these films seem to be the best way to explore other facets of the Superman mythology, other than just the Batman vs. Lex Luthor or General Zod that we only seem to get at the movies. So this latest one is based on the storyline Brainiac from a few years ago, which gave us a gritty reboot for Superman's nemesis Braniac, and re-introduced many beloved aspects of the Superman universe, such as the bottled city of Kandor. And it's nice when the spotlight is shone on other members of Superman's rogues gallery. So let's see how this one fares.

Plot: A mysterious probe falls out of space and lands in Arizona. Superman goes to investigate and does battle with this alien android. When he takes the wreckage back to the Fortress of Solitude for analysis, Supergirl is quickly able to identify it as one of the robot drones of Brainiac...a ruthless alien cyborg who travels the universe, collecting information on whole planets, capturing their cities to be archived, and then destroying the planet and moving on. Supergirl knows all this because she was there when Brainiac came to Krypton and took their capital city of Kandor. Hearing all this information, Superman heads into deep space to take the battle to Brainiac before he reaches Earth. It's a journey that will put Superman back in touch with his heritage, Supergirl face-to-face with her demons, and the fate of Metropolis in the balance.

What I Liked: Lots of great outer-space action. A great subplot for Supergirl, as she is truly traumatized at having witness Kandor's destruction and the threat of Brainiac's return. Great voice acting all around. Matt Bomer makes a great Superman. Stana Katic is perhaps the sassiest Lois Lane we've seen so far in these films, and it's a great laugh seeing her give Brainiac the finger. And it's nice to see that the big screen superhero movie trend of the post-credit sequence has made its way to these animated films.

What I Didn't Like: Just can't shake the feeling that I've seen this all before. For example, it seems like Clark Kent and Lois Lane's domestic squabbles are always the subplot in these Superman films, and it's just starting to get so repetitive.

Final Verdict: Just a solid Superman adventure

3 Nibs

Bonus Materials: On this Blu-Ray, we get a running commentary with the director and several DC bigwigs, a featurette on the history of Brainiac, a featurette on the history of Kandor, 4 bonus episodes of Superman: The Animated Series, a digital comic excerpt from the original Brainiac storyline, and a preview of the next straight-to-DVD film, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.

I'm kind of looking forward to the next one. As I said, I'm growing tired of the Superman/Batman dynamic, but Flashpoint, despite having Justice League up front, is very much a Flash story, so it's nice to see the Flash taking centre stage.

And hey, DC, since you've come to adding digital comics as a bonus feature, how about making it an actual digital comic, that you download to your digital comic app? And not just projecting the pages of the comic on your TV? Just a thought.

Prairie Sentinels

2013-05-12T00:30:00.000-06:00

So I've recently become fascinated with grain elevators, mainly because Westlock has one, and I'm walking past it every day. We've all heard the tales by now, about how these once dotted the landscape across western Canada, but now, they're almost gone. Every small town from about 1850 on had one. Farmers would bring their grain in there, where it would be loaded up onto rail cars and shipped off to market.

They started going away in the 1990s or so, as it started becoming cheaper and easier to truck the grain off to market. The railways started pulling up their short lines to all these rural towns, and the grain elevators started getting demolished soon after. Which is why Westlock's is so fascinating. It's still operational. It's still viable. As you can tell by all the silos next to it, it's so thriving it's been added to several times over the years.

I wonder how technologically advanced it is. How automated and computerized are grain elevators these days? I mean, the last instance I know of of a new grain elevator is when I drove by one when I was kid in the 1980s. And since they started going away in the 1990s, I imagine that grain elevator technology really didn't advance much past the 1980s.

Don't get me wrong, I know how they work. I've spoken with the interpreters who man the grain elevator at the Ukranian Cultural Heritage Centre, I've seen the demonstration of the grain elevators interior at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum. Hell, working in a grain elevator was one of my Dad's first jobs off the farm and he'll gladly tell you stories.

So, yeah. Not much more to say, nothing really profound. Just as so many begin to feel nostalgic for these old prairie skyscrapers, I just feel lucky that I have one in my own backyard.

And in case you've never been to one of the many places where they explain how a grain elevator works, here's a neat old documentary about grain elevators I found on the National Film Board of Canada website. Just play the sound of a 16mm projector in the background, and it's just like movie day in school!

Grain Elevator by Charles Konowal, National Film Board of Canada

Big Hero 6

2013-05-11T10:36:00.001-06:00

Like a lot of geeks, I feel that animation and superheroes are a medium and a genre made for each other. Who needs to worry about fancy special effects? Just draw it. No more nerd rage over who the perfect actor is. Just draw the perfect guy. It's just so easy.

So, of course, when Disney bought Marvel back in 2009, people came up with wish lists a mile long as to what Marvel heroes would best be given the Disney animated treatment. And, earlier this week, Disney made the announcement as to which Marvel hero is coming to the big screen in animation first. And that is...

Big Hero 6.

Big Hero 6 follows the adventures of Japan's first group of state-sanctioned superheroes. It's the Alpha Flight of Japan. However, the film will mainly focus on one member of the group, Hiro Hamada, a robotics prodigy, and his prize creation Baymax, a humanoid robot who can transform into a giant dragon. And the film will follow the adventures of Hiro as he goes out to recruit the heroes and save the day.

Disney is already saying it's "inspired by" the original comic, so that means there's going to be lots of deviations from the source material. The man behind it is Disney animator Don Hall, who co-directed Disney's last attempt at traditional 2D animation, Winnie the Pooh. No word yet on who's doing voices or any of that, but Disney's already hard at work on it.

Earlier this week, they released concept of art of "San Fransokyo," the San Fransisco/Tokyo mash-up that serves as our film's setting.

And they also released this test footage of a San Fransokyo flyover.

I'm interested in this. As I said, I love superheroes in animation, and the fact that Disney is finally being turned loose on the Marvel library is intriguing. But still, it's very early. Who knows what can happen?

Big Hero 6 is scheduled to come out November 2014.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - A Couple of Star Trek Episodes

2013-05-09T00:30:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly look at one of the many DVDs I own. Something different this week, as we take a look at a couple of individual Star Trek episodes that I've accumulated over the years. This entry was originally written on September 8, 2012.

I pen this entry on September 8. This is a very auspicious day for geeks for, it was on this day in 1966, that Star Trek first premiered on TV and a cult following was born. In the grand history of home entertainment formats, Paramount has always capitalized on its most famous franchise by releasing individual episodes of the original series. As I'm sure you can imagine, I've picked up a few of those episodes across the spectrum of formats. And, to celebrate the 46 anniversary of the franchise, I decided to dig through my library and watch a couple of the individual episodes I've acquired.

Let's start with VHS, which was having its heyday during my junior high years. Junior high was when I first got into Star Trek and I got it bad. The Next Generation was in the midst of its run, and I obsess over new episodes. My school had this thing called USSR, where we'd sit and read every day for 15 minutes, and my nose was always buried in either the latest Star Trek Pocket Book or some book about the making of the original series. (The Internet wasn't a thing yet, so I got all my knowledge about the Star Trek from my local library.)

Perhaps my favourite memory of Grade 9. For about a week, we had this substitute teacher in English, and all the 14-year old girls in my class, with their developing bodies and what not, had declared him to be the perfect specimen of a man and were fawning over him. That Friday afternoon, as USSR came around and a pulled out my Star Trek book and I started reading, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked over, and it was the sub, who had this big goofy grin on his face. He flashed the Vulcan salute. I returned it. "Oh my God, are you a Trekkie, too?" he excitedly exclaimed. I responded with a yes. "Tonight's part 2 of the Spock episode! Is that gonna rock or what?" I agreed, and we chatted Star Trek for a bit before he remembered that one of the S's in USSR stands for "silent" and he went back to his desk. Before putting my nose back in that book, I took a look around the class. And those young ladies who were fawning over him? The look of horror on their faces was priceless. Their dreamboat was a geek like me.

Around that time, my Dad came home for work one night and told me of one of his discoveries. On a recent business trip to Edmonton, he found a video rental place in West Edmonton Mall that had every Star Trek episode ever. Needless to say, a couple weeks later, on the next family trip to the city, that place was high on my list of places to visit. At that time, most of the literature I was reading was declaring The Trouble With Tribbles to be one of the best episodes of the original series. While CBC Edmonton was good to show it in reruns at the time, I lacked the patience for it to come up in rotation. So when I reached that video store and saw every episode of the original series, I knew I'd be buying myself The Trouble With Tribbles.

Gene Roddenberry once wrote that the Star Trek universe is big enough for comedy, and he knew that a lighthearted episode every once in a while was invaluable for breaking up the monotony. The Trouble With Tribbles is notable in that it is one of the better of the lighthearted episodes. The Enterprise is off to Deep Space Station K7 to assist in a mission to develop Sherman's Planet. The planet is under dispute between the Federation and the Klingons, and under the terms of a peace treaty, whoever can develop the planet the best gets it. Captain Kirk, of course, is incredibly frustrated as he trades barbs with the Klingon captain in charge of the Klingon side of the project, and the Federation diplomat with a stick up his ass who thinks that his wheat - key to the Federation's development of the project - is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. And then a trader by the name of Cyrano Jones shows up with a new little animal he's discovered called a Tribble...and this little critters - who are born pregnant and have a voracious appetite - are soon overrunning the space station and the Enterprise.

No wonder this episode is held with such reverence. It's full of great pithy one lines, mostly delivered by Captain Kirk. Having met a few municipal politicians in my line of work very similar to the Federation diplomat, I found Kirk's quips with him somewhat cathartic.

The fancy wheat is called "quadro-triticale." Based on a real wheat called triticale. Apparently, when triticale was first developed in the 1960s, it was a pretty big deal in the agricultural world.

The fame of this episode made it a natural choice when Deep Space Nine did their 30th anniversary tribute episode Trials and Tribble-ations, in which the crew of Deep Space Nine was digitally inserted into the background to make sure that history happened accordingly. A few years ago, they did their Star Trek Remastered project where they replaced all the visual effects with new ones. According to those in charge of the project, when it came to remaster The Trouble With Tribbles, the did briefly consider inserting some DS9 actors into the background of The Trouble With Tribbles as a little wink to the fans, but they said their goal with the project was not to rewrite episodes, and such an act might have come to close to the line.

So now we jump ahead 10 years. VHS is falling by the wayside, and DVD is becoming the new popular home video format. In those early days of DVD, the whole "complete season boxed set" concept hadn't really taken off yet, so for the first DVD release of the original series, Paramount released two episodes per DVD and sold them individually. One day, as I was browsing the DVDs in HMV, I happened to stumble across the DVD for Space Seed, or as I like to call it, "the exciting prequel to Star Trek II." This is the episode that introduces Khan, and the fact that Paramount doesn't include it as a bonus feature on all the various DVD and Blu-Ray releases of The Wrath of Khan is beyond me.

So the Enterprise is boldly going where no one has gone before when they stumble across a spaceship dating from the 1990s. The 1990s was a turbulent time on Earth, when The Eugenics Wars broke out...genetically enhanced supermen who set out to conquer the planet. Yeah...kind of laughably out of date now. Captain Kirk decides to beam over to the ship and check it out, and he brings along the ship's historian, Lt. Marla McGivers. When they arrive on the ship, McGivers instantly identifies it as a sleeper ship, containing people in suspended animation. The leader of this group is revived first, but there's a problem in the reviving, so they have to take him back to sickbay on the Enterprise. For McGivers, it's lust at first sight.

Once revived, the leader of these humans identifies himself only as Khan, and he starts bringing himself up to speed on what he's missed in his centuries asleep. The crew begins working to deduce Khan's true identity. Kirk notices that McGivers' interest in Khan may be crossing the line from professional into personal, but McGivers assured Kirk that her loyalty is to the Enterprise. That being said, though, the relationship between Khan and McGivers continues to grow, as Khan is equally fascinated with this woman of the future. McGivers reveals that she does know who Khan really is, and that he won't like living in this era. Taking advantage of McGivers feelings for him, Khan soon gets her to help him take over the ship.

Around this time, Kirk and the rest have also deduced Khan's true identity: Khan Noonien Singh. During the Eugenics Wars, he ruled about 25% of the Earth. Historians regard him as "the best of tyrants," mainly because he committed the fewest war crimes. As Kirk points out, under his rule, there were no massacres, no slaughters, but then as Spock points out, no freedom either. It kind of baffles me how Kirk and company hold Khan in such high regard. Granted, they portray it as how a historian of our time might show admiration for Alexander the Great, but something about it just doesn't sit right with me.

So, Khan's revived his crew of genetically engineered superhumans and they take over the Enterprise. They're going to execute the crew one-by-one until they agree to help Khan find a planet for him to conquer. McGivers, horrified at what she's done, springs Captain Kirk and he retakes the Enterprise. Kirk's admiration for Khan kind of gets in the way, though, as he figures it would be a waste to get Khan all readjusted to modern civilization and just put to work in some factory some where. (Or, maybe, rot in prison for his 300 year old war crimes.) So, Kirk instead decides to strand Khan and his crew on a deserted planet to colonize. Khan admits that this is pretty much all he ever wanted: his own world to conquer. As for McGivers, Kirk offers her a choice. Stay behind, and face the crimes she committed against the Enterprise, or join Khan in exile. She chooses Khan. As the Enterprise leaves Khan on his planet, Spock remarks that it will be interesting to come back in 100 years and see the crop that has sprung from the seed that Kirk has planted.

And that's the line that made film producer Harve Bennett decide that Khan would be an interesting villain for Star Trek II. And even though it's never stated in the script, it is usually assumed that McGivers is the "beloved wife" whose death Khan is trying to avenge in Star Trek II.

And I don't get the deal with McGivers, either. She seems to totally get off on being 100% submissive to Khan. Makes me wonder if 50 Shades of Grey is among her historical texts.

And that was Space Seed. A very intriguing episode, and we're very lucky we got Star Trek II to help flesh out the characters a little more.

That's about all I've got for the original series, until the day comes that I can afford the big boxed sets.

Iron Man 3 Review

2013-05-03T00:30:00.000-06:00

So, where do we go after The Avengers? That film was just so big, so grand, so over the top, that the question of where Marvel goes with their Phase II was one that I was really wondering. Could they go bigger? Do they save "big" for The Avengers now, with each individual hero's film now smaller? Really, where do we go from here?

Well, Marvel is kicking off Phase II with the guy who started their run at the box office in the first place, Tony Stark, back on screen with Iron Man 3. There were a few creative changes behind the scenes. Jon Favreau, director of the first two films, steps down as the director this time, although he does reprise his role of Happy Hogan, Tony Stark's chauffeur and bodyguard (and now head of Stark Industries security). ("You know what people would do when I told them I was Iron Man's bodyguard? They'd laugh in my face!" A great line in the film, explaining why he chose his new vocation.) Taking over in the director's chair is Shane Black, the legendary Hollywood screenwriter who pretty much invented the cop-buddy genre when he wrote Lethal Weapon back in the 80s, and kind of launched Robert Downey Jr's comeback with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang back in 2005. With promises that Iron Man's arch-enemy the Mandarin would finally be rearing his head, the game was set for Phase II to begin.

It's a few months after the events of The Avengers, and Tony Stark is still rather stressed out from the experience. He's having nightmares about the battles, has become prone to panic attacks, and not even he can answer the #1 question people ask him, "So how did you get back through that wormhole?" As such, he's become obsessed with the idea of protection and spends his nights in his workshop producing bigger, better armors. His friend and sidekick James Rhodes, recently re-branded as the Iron Patriot ("War Machine sounded too aggressive. Iron Patriot tested better in focus groups.") is on the hunt for the terrorist known as the Mandarin, who has launched a series of attacks on American soil. And Pepper Potts is being wooed, both personally and professionally, by her old employer Aldrich Killian to come back and work for him. When one of the Mandarin's attacks puts Happy Hogan in the hospital, Tony takes on the mission to track down the Mandarin. This leads Tony Stark on a mission to confront demons from this past, battle his personal demons, and finally bring the Mandarin to justice.

As always, Robert Downey Jr thoroughly owns the role of Tony Stark. He's so full of charm and swagger and pithy one liners that you just can't help but love the guy. In the mid-section of the film, he actually even picks up a kid sidekick, and their banter with one another is priceless. It's nice to see Gwyneth Patlrow even gets to get in on some of the ass-kicking as Pepper Pots this time around, as she does get a little more to do than just be the damsel-in-distress. Don Cheadle is great too as War Machine/Iron Patriot. Seriously, give him his own movie at this point. And the Mandarin...oh my God. There is a great plot twist concerning the origins of the Mandarin, and the way it's revealed in the film is just so damn funny...I don't want to give it away, but trust me, it's fantastic.

I also want to give props to Brian Tyler's score. One of my main complaints about the dearth of superhero films over the past 15 years is there's been a true lack of iconic superhero themes that I'd put alongside John Williams' Superman theme and Danny Elfman's Batman theme. And while Tyler's Iron Man 3 doesn't reach that iconic status, you can at least pick it out of the soundtrack.

However, I did find that the film slowed down a bit in the middle. It kind of dragged on for a bit while , and Tony Stark's swagger is about all that kept it going. What can I say? I wanted to see more men in suits blowing stuff up. And also, sometimes, I did find it tough to follow what was going on. I mean, I saw it in 3D, right? And we all know now that when you put on those 3D glasses, everything goes dimmer. So why on Earth then, when they make films in 3D, do they keep putting all the action scenes at night? Made it very tough to know what was going on.

(I also found it tough to follow what was going because, at the very crowded theatre where I saw it, the 8-year old girl I sat next to grew restless and kept checking her cellphone, wandered down the aisle to check on her father and brother who were sitting 5 rows down, and all other kinds of restless kid stuff.)

All in all, I find it was a very good and very entertaining film, if only it lacked more "men-in-suit" action.

3 Nibs

Oh, and I've got to hand it to Jon Favreau and what he started. The truth is, when Nick Fury popped up at the end of Iron Man's credits, Marvel wasn't planning their "Phase I" yet. Favreau just thought it'd be a cute post-credits scene. But the post-credit scene has now become such an ingrained part of the superhero film genre. Back in 2008 with the first film, it was just me and the other half-a-dozen people who usually sit around until the end of the end credits. And now, the entire dang audience stayed riveted to their seats to the post-credits scene this time around.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Fantasia 2000

2013-05-02T00:30:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly peek at one of the many, many DVDs in my collection. Today, we finish off what we started last week. We cap off Disney's Fantasia franchise with Fantasia 2000. This entry is originally dated September 2, 2012.

Well, it's a grey, rainy day. Can't do much outside, so may as well stay warm and snuggly inside. Let's finish off the box set I started last night and move on to Fantasia 2000.

Now, as was widely reported when Fantasia 2000 hit theatres, Walt Disney originally intended for Fantasia to be a perpetual work in progress. Every few years, it would be returned to theatres with some segments removed and some new ones put in. But, with Fantasia being a bit of a box office bomb when it first hit theatres in 1940, followed by World War II breaking out and Disney, like all American companies, putting their focus on the war effort, the plan fell by the wayside. Over the years, there'd be a half-hearted attempt to continue that vision, and there'd be some development work on new segments, but again, things never came to be.

Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew, and a very public face of the Walt Disney Company in the 1980s and 90s, always held true to Walt's vision for Fantasia. When that era that animation historians now refer to as "the Disney Renaissance" came around, continuing with Fantasia became Roy's pet project. The success of the 1990 theatrical re-release and its subsequent home video release convinced the Disney brass that there might be a market for this. Fantasia Continued (as was its working titled) was given the greenlight.

Fantasia 2000 was made pretty much throughout the 1990s. It was worked on by whatever animators were available in their downtime between feature films. They also pushed the technological limits by making the decision to release it in IMAX...the first for a major Hollywood film. It hit theatres on January 1, 2000, and played exclusively in IMAX theatres unill April 30, when it moved into regular theatres.

As we all know, Disney animation ruled the 1990s, with a new blockbuster every summer. So, I was making the effort to go see every animated film that hit theatres. Of course, in January of 2000, I was there to see Fantasia 2000 in the IMAX at West Edmonton Mall. It was the first film I'd seen in that particular IMAX theatre. I went with my parents. Mom has always been a bit of a classical music buff, and Dad got outvoted. I remember thinking that it was pretty neat seeing it in IMAX.

So, for the introductory segments for each piece, this time around, Disney contacted a bunch of celebrities to do it. The first one is...Deems Taylor, host of the first Fantasia, using archival recordings.

Beethoven's 5th - We all know this one. DA DA DA DUH. They decided to kick things off with a very famous piece of music. And, harkening back to the original, this is made up of abstract images floating in space....triangles flying around like butterflies. It's cute.

The next intro is from Steve Martin, who explains that "constantly changing line-up" concept for Fantasia, and indulges in some typical Steve Martin schtick. He then hands it off to legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman, who introduces....

Pines of Rome - I remember hearing Roy Disney on the running commentary saying that he insisted this piece of music be in Fantasia 2000. He heard it in a music appreciation class he took in college, and it stuck with him ever since. This segment has humpback whales frolicking in the Arctic Ocean, before taking flight and frolicking in the stars. This is a little weird. The whales are done with computer animation, but it was felt their eyes weren't expressive enough, so their eyes were done with traditional cel animation. It's an effect that works for the most part, but now in 2012, with the computer animation showing its age, the blend is a little off putting.

Legendary musician Quincy Jones then appears to introduce

Rhapsody in Blue - Just about everyone I talk to says this is their favourite segment. I think it's mine, too. It really stands out, with artwork based on the designs of legendary illustrator and caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. We're treated to four very classic New York stories, as four people dream of a better life. As the story goes, this was not originally going to be a Fantasia 2000 segment. Director Eric Goldberg was already working on it as an individual short film. But, when Roy Disney saw a rough version, he turned to Goldberg and said, "This isn't a short film anymore. It's going in the new Fantasia." Disney later elaborated, saying they were looking for an American composer to be represented in the film, and this bit of animation, all set to the music of George Gershwin, was right there, under their noses, the whole time.

Bette Midler is out next celebrity, giving us a recap on some of those abandoned ideas over the years, before we get to...

Piano Concerto #2 in F Major/The Steadfast Tin Soldier - The Hans Christen Andersen tale is set to this piano concerto. It's heavily computer animated, and I remember some online trolls at the time sarcastically called it Toy Story 3. The Andersen tale of a one-legged tin soldier who falls in love with a ballerina doll and the evil jack-in-the-box who seeks to break them up. This is a very good segment. It's got a very nice love story to it. This is why I like DVD bonus features. As they show in the bonus features, the animators did consider going with Andersen's original ending and even storyboarded it. In this tale, the jack-in-the-box falls into a fire, burns to death, and the soldier and the ballerina live happily ever after. In the original ending as Andersen wrote, it's the toy soldier and the ballerina who fall into the fire, and these two tin toys melt together into a solid gold heart. Should have gone with that original ending...would have caught people off guard.

Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) then comes on the scene to set-up....

Carnival of the Animals: Finale - A flamingo playing with a yo-yo. Fun trivia fact: this was Disney's first bit of animation to have hand-painted cels since The Little Mermaid. (After The Little Mermaid, Disney switched to a new computer system that handled all that by computer) This actually was a segment considered for an earlier Fantasia follow-up. In the original concept, it wasn't flamingos, but the ballet-dancing ostriches from the first Fantasia that were playing with it. The concept was come up with by one of the animators on the original Fantasia. Dude was in his 90s, and Disney got him out of retirement to come consult on this segment and make sure it stayed true to his idea. That's respect man.

Penn and Teller come in and do their thing to set up....

The Sorcerer's Apprentice - The only one from the original Fantasia that made it to this version, adhering to Walt Disney's original concept that classic segments be included as well. Apparently, the original concept for Fantasia 2000 was that a lot more segments from the original Fantasia were to be included, but when the decision was made to release it in IMAX, all but The Sorcerer's Apprentice were cut to get it down to IMAX-length. Due to the technological limitations of the late-1990s, IMAX films could only be a maximum of 90 minutes long. So if you're only going to go with one, go with the most famous.

For our next intro, the film's conductor, James Levine, stalls for time while Mickey goes looking for Donald Duck. Now this is the best intro segment, especially when you see it in IMAX. Thanks to the bazillion speakers that an IMAX sound system uses, you get to hear Mickey Mouse rooting around through the whole theatre looking for Donald. They do their best to replicate it on my basic 5.1 home surround sound system. But in the IMAX sound system, it sounded incredible.

Pomp and Circumstance - If the original had a segment with Mickey Mouse, then it's only logical that the next Fantasia have a segment with Donald Duck. The bit here is Donald is Noah's assistant, and he's tasked with getting all the animals on the ark. Pomp and Circumstance is, of course, the graduation music, so when the animals march onto the ark, we here the graduation march. Apparently, Disney CEO Michael Eisner insisted on this piece of music. Eisner's concept would it would contain every animated character the Walt Disney Company ever created, and it would the kindergarten graduation of their Disney-baby-kids. Yeah...that idea was nixed.

Angela Lansbury concludes our evening by setting up....

The Firebird Suite - This is truly spectacular. We have this Mother Nature-type deity who's doing her work at the base of a volcano. The volcano erupts, and the lava takes on the form of this enormous firebird that destroys all of Mother Nature's work and eventually hunts her down. A great stag (probably one of Bambi's descendants as the Great King of the Forest) eventually finds Mother Nature in the ashes, and hoists her up on his antlers. She weeps at how her beautiful forest is destroyed, but she sees new life spring up from her teardrops. This re-energizes her, and she goes back to work, bringing new life to the wasteland.

And that's Fantasia 2000. It's definitely a lot more slick than the first one...no doubt having more to do with 1990s production techniques as opposed to the 1940s techniques of the original. I'm not so sure that it'll be the timeless classic that the first one is, but then, the first one did have a 60 year head start. Time will tell.

And sadly, it looks like the "revised every few years" concept is once again dead. After Fantasia 2000 hit theatres, there was talk of doing a third one with new segments to come out in around 2010 or so. But, Disney making their foolish decision in 2005 that traditional animation was dead and shutting down their traditional animation department kind of killed it. A few segments actually were in production and were finished and released as short films. The 2003 short Destino (the much-hyped collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvadore Dali) was one of them, and the 2006 short The Little Matchgirl is another.

But who knows? Maybe, someday, Walt Disney's vision will be realized again.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation Review

2013-04-27T08:33:00.003-06:00

Took me all week to find the time, but I've finally got my review of G.I. Joe: Retaliation up and online.

Head on over to the main site to read it!

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Fantasia

2013-04-25T00:30:00.000-06:00

It's time for another installment of Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly perusal of my DVD library where I watch one of my movies and "go off on it," as my friend who suggested I do this described it. Today, we get to one my favourite Disney animated films, Fantasia. In my notes, this entry carries a date of September 1, 2012.

Ah, Fantasia. The artsy-fartsy of the Disney animated film canon. I've always been fond of it myself. It was actually one of the first DVDs I bought. 10 years ago or so, when DVD was new and exciting, Disney released this very prestigious boxed set called The Fantasia Anthology, which contained Fantasia, Fantasia 2000, and a third disc dubbed The Fantasia Legacy which had all the bonus features you could ever ask for on the making of those two films. And that boxed set was one of the first things I bought to watch on my shiny first DVD player. For some reason, though, I started having this paranoid delusion that my Fantasia DVD might be suffering from disc rot and not playable anymore. So I figured I should watch it to make sure it still works.

I'd seen bits and pieces of Fantasia during my childhood. Disney released the individual segments as 16MM films, and as such, they were popular in my elementary school music classes for rainy afternoons. I finally saw the whole film from beginning to end back in 1990, when it was finally released on VHS. With Fantasia's release on video in 1990, Disney really tried out their "vault" concept for the first time. It was only available for 50 days, and then never again. My Mom picked it up, and i watched it quite a bit as junior high rolled on.

I remember when I was showing off my first DVD player and showing off Fantasia to my friends. One made the comment that she always felt that the famous Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence felt out of place...like it belonged in another movie. Well, that's kind of the case, and that's kind of how Fantasia came to be. The Sorcerer's Apprentice began production before the entire film. It was originally meant to be a prestigious animated short. But, as production continued, Walt Disney and legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski, who was conducting the orchestra for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, really fell in love with the concept of merging animated images with classical music. The decided to make a whole film like that, with the working title The Concert Feature.

For the 2000 DVD release, Disney went to painstaking lengths to restore the "Roadshow" version. Roadshow versions of movies were common in the Golden Age of Cinema. They played only in the major cities. Sometimes, like in the case of Fantasia, they ran a little bit longer. And they were meant to be prestigious events, with souvenir programs and the like. So, if you were seeing Fantasia when it first hit theatres in New York City in 1940, this is the exact film you'd see.

Well, Disney had to make one change. The film is narrated, and each segment introduced, by Deems Taylor. Apparently, back in 1940, he was a pretty big deal in classical music circles...working to bringing it to the masses, and doing a very popular radio show about the classics. Perfect choice for Fantasia. However, the main bit of restoration work for the roadshow version meant his longer introductions to the segments. Disney found that the audio was degraded beyond repair. So, they brought in legendary voice actor Corey Burton (Brainiac on Superman: The Animated Series) to re-dub Taylor's lines. It's a little off-putting, because Burton does get a little Brainaic-esque in some parts.

So let's get into the segments, shall we?

I forget the name of the music, but it's your generic spooky castle music. This one plays out a bunch of abstract shapes. Always kind of weird for my tastes. Fantasia had a resurgence in popularity in the 1960s as part of the psychedelic movement....this was a great way to open it, then.

Next is the Nutcracker Suite. Probably my favourite. Rather than the Christmas tale we're all familiar with, we see sprites and pixies dancing in a garden throughout the seasons.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice. What more needs to be said? I'm sure we've all seen it and/or are familiar with it.

Rite of Spring. I find this one weird as hell. We're treated to prehistoric times, and the origins of life on Earth. We got dinosaurs in this! And as it was made in 1940, some of the science is now hilariously out-of-date. Back then, rather than an ice age that killed the dinosaurs, they thought it was a massive global warming event. So it ends with all the dinosaurs going on this death march across an endless desert. I guess it's not so much weird, as it is scary. And the T-Rex that shows up just seems a little cartoonish and out of place, but still, very scary.

The Pastoral Symphony. Roman mythology is theme for this one. I remember seeing this for the first time. There's topless female centaurs in this, right? I saw it and went, "OH MY GOD! BOOBS! IN A DISNEY MOVIE!" Yeah...I'm immature. The boy centaurs show up, and they all pair off. Bacchus shows up, and they proceed to eat, drink, and be merry. Then Zeus shows up and he has to be a dick and blasts everything with his lightening bolts. But the little baby pegasuses are cute. According to The Fantasia Legacy, Disney did seriously giving the baby Pegasus a couple of animated shorts.

Dance of the Hours. Ostriches, hippos, elephants, and gators doing ballet. The most pure Disney cartoon out of the bunch.

Night on Bald Mountain. More well-known spooky castle music. But again, dancing demons in a Disney cartoon. And some of the demonesses are topless!

Ava Maria. And Hell gives way to Heaven as we follow a procession through the woods.

But that's Fantasia. It had been a while since I'd watched it, and I'm glad to say that it still captures the imagination. Sounds really good on the surround sound, too. Apparently, when it first came out in 1940, it was recorded in a process Disney invented called "Fantasound," which was a very early attempt at a surround sound system.

But yeah. Still liking it.

First Trailer for Thor: The Dark World

2013-04-23T14:32:00.000-06:00

Well, Marvel Comics is now in the full throes of their "Phase II" when it comes to their films. To recap, the time table looks like this:

Iron Man 3 - Next week! May 3, to be specific

Thor: The Dark World - November 2013

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - April 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy - August 2014

The Avengers 2 - May 2015

I kind of liked Thor when it came out in 2011. Being a DC guy at heart, I walked out of the theatre going, "C'mon, Warner Brothers! How hard would it be to make a Wonder Woman movie like that?" I mean, in both of their respective pantheons, both Wonder Woman and Thor find their roots in mythology. Wonder Woman from the Greek, and Thor from the Norse. In fact, Stan Lee even said when he created Thor, he chose Norse mythology because Greek had become too well-known in pop culture.

If I had one complaint about Thor, though, that would be it had a lack of superheroics. The middle section kind of dragged as Thor was back on Earth, learning humility and gaining his powers back. But other than that, enjoyable.

And hopefully, things will turn around in its sequel, Thor: The Dark World, due out this November. In this one, we find Thor gathering his Earthbound love Jane Foster and heading through the Nine Realms when it looks like all the realms are threatened by a great evil.

Of course, Chris Hemsworth is back as Thor, Tom Hiddleston is back as Loki, and Natalie Portman is back as Jane Foster. For a new villain this time out, we have the Ninth Doctor himself, Christopher Eccleston as Malekith the Accursed, leader of the Dark Elves.

Let's take a look at the trailer, shall we?

My thoughts on this trailer? It looks pretty good...we're definitely expanding this universe a little more and we're going to be seeing more of Thor's world. Which is nice. I mean, post-Avengers, how do you make each film different now? How do you have these solo adventures without calling in others for help? So moving off-Earth is a good way to do that.

Thor: The Dark World hits theatres on November 8, 2013.

Have a Magical Day!

2013-04-21T20:51:00.000-06:00

I got my car back.

I'm just so happy that I have my car back. I have freedom. I can go places. I've been so reluctant to stray too far from home the past few months because my car has been in such rough shape.

For those just joining us. It took about a month for my place in Westlock to open up. So for most of the month of February, I was commuting back and forth from Westlock to Athabasca. And, because this northern Alberta region is full of wildlife, and I was driving home to Athabasca when they were on the move, when I was driving home one night, I hit a deer. The bumper was knocked out of place. The panel about the front driver's side tire was beat all to hell. The driver's side headlight just disintegrated. That's what pained me the most...it was like my baby had this huge scar in her face.

But, after several months of patiently waiting for the insurance company and the body shop to hash things out, I was finally able to get her in and get her all fixed. I got her back on Friday, and she was just like new. You can hardly see where the deer hit her.

So, of course, a Sunday drive was in order.

I was off to Edmonton because there were a few things in the city I needed to pick up. I needed some new filters for my bagless vacuum cleaner. My parents were awesome to come and help me move from Athabasca to Westlock, and Mom cleaned my old place like crazy. But, she did warn me, that she wound up using all the filters for my vacuum cleaner. Now that I could move again, I got those hard-to-find vacuum filters and I'm ready to clean rugs again.

And, I was also in for a sad surprise. I also needed ink cartridges for my printer. So, I swung by Staples, who proudly boast that they carry every ink cartridge known to man, and they told me that they don't carry my ink cartridges anymore. I shouldn't be surprised. My printer is over 10 years old now. Got it second-hand from my parents. The printing has been spotty for a couple years now, and I've been thinking that I would like to get a new one. Ideally, I'd like to get one of those "all-in-one" units that are both a printer and a scanner, cuz then I can scan stuff. They're a good price, too, as you can get them between $100 - $150.

I've been putting off getting a new one for so long though because, seriously, how often do you use a printer anymore? I use mine about once a month, when I send a letter to the bank to accompany my student loan payment. The letter reads, "Here's my student loan payment. This is my account number. Have a nice day!" But, needless to say, now that the ink cartridges are no more, getting a new printer has gone from the "want" pile into the "need" pile.

So, admitting that I should start thinking about getting a new printer, it was time to have a little fun. I can't believe I haven't been to the theatre to see a movie since my Christmas vacation! I tend to go batty if I go too long without seeing a film. And I had this Cineplex Gift Card I got for Christmas that I hadn't fully used up yet. And for a few weeks now, I've been wanting to indulge my childhood nostalgia. I went to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

My thoughts on G.I Joe 2...meh. I loved the first film because my childhood nostalgia for the property was overwhelming, and I loved how it reveled in the sci-fi/high adventure aspects of G.I. Joe. This second one was a little more grounded and a little more realistic but you know, it really didn't offer anything new in this cinematic G.I. Joe universe. Same problem I had with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. My childhood nostalgia was no longer enough to blind me to the flaws. But, whereas Transformers 2 turned out to be a very bad movie, G.I. Joe 2 was just...meh. Short on action. Short on thrills. It just was there.

And Jinx! They totally under-utilized Jinx! She was one of my favourite G.I. Joes when I was a kid, I was thrilled when I heard they were having her in this film, but she only gets like 6 lines and two action sequences.
And Bruce Willis as General Joseph Colton, the founder of G.I. Joe. Willis is in pure "I'm just doing this for the paycheck" mode, as he seems half asleep for all 10 minutes of his scenes.

So, yeah. G.I Joe: Retaliation. Meh.

After that, I toured the mall a little bit. I try to avoid West Edmonton Mall on Sundays. It's just a little more crowded and I find there's a few more crazy people. Stopped in at HMV. As I've already blogged, I seem to be upgrading all my James Bond movies to Blu-Ray right now because, thanks to the Skyfall hype, they seem to be dirt cheap right now. Not content with just my favourite Bond movies, I've now moved on to my second favourites. And, to complete things, I needed GoldenEye for the Pierce Brosnan era, and License to Kill for the Timothy Dalton era. And guess what was sitting in HMV's 2 for $20 bin?

And yeah, did my usual rounds in West Edmonton Mall. Went through the Apple Store, and held back the tears because I really want an iPad but can't afford one. Went by the former Zellers to see if it's a Target yet. (It's not.) And then stopped in at the Disney Store because, you know, Disney. Because Disney owns LucasFilm now, I keep waiting for it turn into a Star Wars Store, but not yet. I was a little taken aback as I left the Disney Store, because the clerk told me to "have a magical day!"

Got to say, between the mild disappointment that was G.I. Joe: Retaliation and finding out I need to get a new printer, I wasn't feeling very magical. But then I got back behind the wheel of my nice, shiny, fixed-up automobile, and I was feeling magical again. I can now go anywhere, and do anything, thanks to my shiny silver car.

So I went home.

The Final Trailer for the Lone Ranger

2013-04-19T00:30:00.000-06:00

Well, this has been a great week for final trailers! We got the final trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness, the final trailer for Man of Steel, and back on Wednesday, Disney rolled out the final trailer for The Lone Ranger.

I'm kind of looking forward to this one, too. As I've previously blogged, some of my earliest conscious memories of television are of watching reruns of The Lone Ranger. As such, I've always had a soft spot for the character. There's such a great history of western heroes, too. It's nice to see them get some manner of big screen respect.

I'm assuming Disney is hoping to launch another franchise out of this, especially how they're playing up that this is from most of the same creative team that gave us the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. They've got to be careful, though. Last time they hoped to launch a new franchise courtesy of the makers of PotC it turned out to be Prince of Persia. Haven't seen it yet, but still, they say it was not so good.

I haven't been a big fan of some of the other trailers we've gotten so far. They're making it look so dark and gritty. I don't want a dark and gritty Lone Ranger. I want a good guy in a white hat, out busting the outlaws wearing black hats. Something nice and simple. But this trailer...this is looking, well, still not like the traditional Lone Ranger, but I'm more on board now.

Besides, I love trains, and I enjoyed the heck out of all that train chase action in this trailer. Still not so sure about Johnny Depp as Tonto, though. I mean, one of the most prominent Native American characters in pop culture, and you don't get a Native American to play him? I'm a little surprised there hasn't been more outrage.

Anyway, here's the final trailer. I like it.

The Lone Ranger hits theatres on July 3.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Apollo 13

2013-04-18T00:30:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly look at one of the many DVDs or Blu-Rays, or VHS tapes that I've acquired over the years. Today, we're tackling one of the surprise hits of the summer of 1995, the historical drama Apollo 13. This entry is dated in my notes as having originally been written on August 26, 2012.

I was hoping to start a big multi-part series on the Batman movies this weekend, but when I heard of the death of Neal Armstrong, I was in the mood for something space-related instead. It's always neat reading about Armstrong. He was a very private man...almost to the point of being a recluse. Whenever he'd be asked about being the first man on the moon, he'd just kind of shrug and have a "I was just doing my job" attitude about the whole thing. From what I gather, that attitude is partially why NASA chose him to be the first man on the moon...they wanted someone with very little ego who wouldn't let the fame go to his head.

So, going through my DVD collection, I figured I'd watch Apollo 13, probably one of the finest movies ever made about the space program. I must like that movie a lot...it's one of the few films I own on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray. I still regret that I have yet to see From the Earth to the Moon. After the success of Apollo 13, Tom Hanks and Ron Howard felt like telling the tale of the entire Apollo program, and produced the epic HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon. 1998 it came out. I've been putting it off for far too long.

Apollo 13 really was one of the sleeper hits of the summer of 1995. (Movie terminology: Sleeper hit = movie that becomes a massive hit with little to no promotion.) Sadly, despite my love of the space program, I'm still rather ignorant of the whole thing, so when Apollo 13 hit theatres and I learned of this near-disaster in space, my mind was suitably blown. After seeing the movie, I remember seeking out the book that the movie was based on (Lost Moon, co-authored by Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell). If the movie blew my mind, the book was a real revelation. I highly recommend the book, because it goes into a hell of a lot more detail than the film. One thing that I can tell you: the movie's explanation for the explosion as being a "faulty coil in the oxygen tank" is a gross simplification.

There's a few Hollywood fabrications in the film. The biggest one is, just days before launch, astronaut Ken Mattingly is replaced with Jack Swigert. While that did happen, the real astronauts maintain that it did NOT cause the tension on the crew that we see in the movie...they were all professionals out there doing a job.

But some things really did happen. Marilyn Lovell losing her wedding ring down the shower drain on the day of the launch, which she interpreted as a bad omen...totally happened. And she said as much in interviews.

Did you know Annie Lennox contributed to the film's score? She's a featured vocalist on the soundtrack. I always found that kind of neat. The composer was James Horner, and I've always found his score for this to be quite similar to his score for Titanic.

After all these years, if I have a complaint about the film, that is Apollo 13 is very much a "men on a mission" film. It's all about the story and the mission to get these people home. We don't find out too much about the astronauts and the ground crew as people.

But yeah. Apollo 13. When I saw it back in 1995, I remember enjoying it a lot more than the other big blockbuster in 1995 I was waiting for, Batman Forever.

Ooo! Amazon.ca has From the Earth to the Moon down to $30!

--Edits on August 30--

Kinda been reflecting on this all week cuz when I watched it on Sunday, I had the sniffles and was kind of out of it. Lots of little stuff I liked.

Like there's this one character moment early in the film. Shortly after the landing of Apollo 11, we see Jim Lovell reflecting on it. Lovell points out that Neil Armstrong will now be remembered in the same breath as Christopher Columbus and Charles Lindbergh. And he laughs. I always wondered why he laughed at that. And then it hit me. Yeah, for a guy like me, Neil Armstrong is up there with Columbus and Lindbergh. Always has been. But to a fellow Apollo astronaut like Jim Lovell, Armstrong was just the guy in the cubicle down the hall. Of course he'd find it just a little bit ridiculous that this guy...this co-worker is now cemented in history.

And then there's the part where they have to get the CO2 filters from the CM to work in the LM. These brilliant NASA engineers have to literally figure out how to make a round peg fit in a square hole. So they dump all the spare parts that the Apollo 13 astronauts have to work with on a table and start figuring it out. It's a great scene, and apparently it was the inspiration for Junkyard Wars, a reality TV show that was on a few years back that I was kind of fond of.

Yeah...just a few more reflections as the week went on.

The Final Man of Steel Trailer

2013-04-17T14:30:00.001-06:00

So here I was, so busy geeking out about the new Star Trek Into Darkness trailer yesterday, that I almost didn't notice Warner Brothers going and slipping the final trailer for their Superman reboot, Man of Steel, online!

Like a lot of members of the DC Nation, I can't help but hope that DC/Warner Brothers will finally get their shit together like Marvel/Disney did and pump out a ton of movies based on their pantheon. Don't get me wrong, I love Batman. But where's Wonder Woman? Where's the Flash? They tried Green Lantern, but man, that movie just didn't click.

So here's hoping that Man of Steel is where things start turning around. I've blogged it before and I'll blog it again: despite its flaws, I kinda like Superman Returns. I feel it's a movie that needed to be made. Since the Richard Donner Superman was one of the films that birthed the event picture and is so beloved in the public consciousness, it had to be acknowledged somehow. It had to be gotten out of our collective system before a reboot could be done. So reboot away!

I was kind of scratching my head at the last two trailers. I couldn't quite figure out where they were going with this reboot. They were playing too much with the iconography of Superman, and not really giving us a taste of what would be happening in this adventure. But with this trailer, we finally get more a sense of what's going on.

I'm getting goosebumps watching this! We get an army of evil Kryptonians! And finally, a Krypton and a Fortress of Solitude that looks different from the crystal structures of the original films! And he flies around and punches stuff. That's one of my big complaints about the original films. Superman doesn't do much...super. He (quite literally) did nothing but heavy lifting. I think his is going to be good.

Man of Steel hits theatres on June 14.

The Final Star Trek Into Darkness Trailer

2013-04-16T13:58:00.000-06:00

ONE MORE MONTH!

Just one more month to go until the next Star Trek film, Into Darkness, hits theatres. As I blogged four years ago, as the first film in this JJ Abrams reboot franchise neared released, I had reached a point in my life where I was burnt out on Star Trek. The final two movies, Insurrection and Nemesis, were just so lackluster, and Star Trek: Enterprise was just going through the motions. I was incredibly bored with the whole thing.

But JJ Abrams came along and invigorated the whole thing. The peeks and glimpses I got were getting me excited again. And then, when I was there on opening day, with that beautiful pre-titles sequence where we witness the birth of Captain Kirk, and we saw that bigger-then-life Starfleet emblem accompanying the titles, and that amazing Michael Giacchino score kicks in...I got goosebumps. Star Trek was truly a Star Trek epic. I'd never seen it rendered on such a large scale.

See, the Star Trek films had always been done by television people. Harve Bennett, the producers of the majority of the original crew films, had a television background. The Next Generation films were all done by the TV crews, and as such, they just never shook this 2-hour episode of Voyager feeling. But JJ Abrams...that was a movie.

Of course, there are detractors. Some die-hard Trekkies still condescendingly call it STINO (Star Trek in name only), arguing that it was just another big, dumb action film, and not the cerebral science-fiction that Gene Roddenberry envisioned. Less explosions, more philosophical debate about the human condition! That's what Star Trek is! To which I say, "So?" There have been countless Star Trek episodes that took a break from the philosophizing to give us some kick-ass space battles. What's wrong with the movies doing that?

Needless to say, as the countdown continues to Star Trek Into Darkness, my excitement is building. I'm eager to see how things play out in this altered timeline. I'm ready to see where we go next. And everything I've seen so far, I've liked.

Let's take a look at the final trailer released today, shall we?

Again, I'm just loving everything I'm seeing in this film. It really does look like more of the same...a continuation to build on what came before. And the villain's starship! It totally looks like the Excelsior! And those huge guns, and Kirk's simple, "I'm sorry," to his crew. You want your cerebral sci-fi? That "I'm sorry" is a very Tenth Doctor moment.

Still unclear as to who the villain is. They keep telling us that it's John Harrison. Fan speculation is still that it's really Khan. I hope it's not Khan. It's probably Khan, because thanks to the popularity of The Wrath of Khan, he is one of the best-known Star Trek villains. I'll guess we'll know for sure when the movie comes out!

Let's throw in the poster of Benedict Cumberbatch as the villainous John Harrison in a shameless ploy to drive up hits. Something about that skinny Brit just makes the fangirls go "squee!"

Star Trek Into Darkness comes out on May 17.

More Stuff on my PVR

2013-04-15T14:44:00.000-06:00

Well, I still don't think this is going to be a regular segment, but here we are again. There's stuff that's accumulated on my PVR, and I feel compelled to blog about it. So tempting to dissect the new episodes of Doctor Who and start speculating as to what the deal is with Clara Oswald, but since the Internet is already flush with that, let's blog about something that's rarely blogged about...Star Trek.

Yup, I frequently finding myself recording reruns of the original series on Space in the middle of the afternoon. Space is showing the remastered episodes, and there are some episodes where I never got to see the new special effects.

Quick history lesson for the norms: for Star Trek's 40th anniversary back in 2006, Paramount figured it was time to digitally remaster the original series for high definition. But, in the process, they discovered that the classic special effects just did not hold up in high definition at all. So, they decided to create new special effects with modern computer animation that would be HD-ready. Don't worry, if you're a purist who still wants the original episodes with the original special effects, it's all been released on Blu-Ray.

Anyway, I saw that The Trouble With Tribbles was coming up, so I had to give that one a watch. I won't go into it too much, because I actually own it on VHS and I've got a Fishing in the Discount Bin coming up dedicated to it. Again, mainly I was watching it for the new special effects. Trouble with Tribbles isn't a special effects extravaganza, just showing the Enterprise in orbit around a space station. For new additions, there's a Klingon battle cruiser, too. Originally, the battle cruiser was off screen for the whole episode, but for the remastering, they slipped it into a couple of shots. I was actually a little disappointed with this one. The effects in this episode just seemed a too CGI. A little too slick and polished, and as such, a little out of place.

And then, later in the week, it was time for A Piece of the Action, aka "the gangster planet episode." This is another much beloved lighter episode of Star Trek. The Enterprise travels to the planet Iotia, which was last visited by the starship Horizon a century before. Since the Horizon visited before the Prime Directive was in place, Kirk, Spock and crew are curious to see what kind of cultural contamination there's been. They beam down to the planet...and land smack dab in the middle of a rerun of The Untouchables. Upon investigating, they discover that a Horizon crewman left behind a history text entitled Chicago Mobs of the Twenties, and those highly imitative Iotians based their whole society around it. Knowing that mob rule is no way to run a planet, Kirk, Spock and Bones set out to stop a gang war and start steering the society towards a more responsible government.

Again, this episode is just funny, as the Enterprise crew gets caught up in the culture shock of landing in a planet straight out of the past. As the episode ends, Kirk even gets lost in the part and starts speaking in a bad Al Capone impersonation.

It's also notable in that there was long talk of doing some kind of sequel. See, the episode ends with Bones sheepishly admitting that he left his communicator behind. Of course, since the communicator contains the fundamentals of Starfleet technology, our heroes wonder what might happen if those highly intelligent and imitative Iotians reverse-engineer it. So people really wanted to see a sequel in the Next Generation era. They wanted to do it on The Next Generation, but Gene Roddenberry vetoed the idea. Roddenberry wanted to minimize references to the original series on The Next Generation, so TNG would be its own thing. They were painfully close to doing it on Deep Space Nine as their 30th anniversary tribute episode, but they ultimately decided to do their crossover with The Trouble With Tribbles instead.

The premise would have been simple. The Enterprise-D or the Defiant visits Iotia. They discover that, thanks to McCoy leaving behind his communicator, the Iotians have now based their society around 23rd Century Starfleet (i.e. the original series), and the entire planet is now one never-ending Star Trek convention. They tell us it would have been a "loving homage/gentle poke at the fandom."

I kinda hoped they'd do a prequel on Star Trek: Enterprise where the Enterprise NX-01 encounters the Horizon and meets a forgetful historian who's always leaving things behind.

But there's more on my PVR than Star Trek. Thank you, TeleToon Retro, for allowing me to get all nostalgic for my youth and showing all those cartoons from the 1980s. Like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Another much beloved episode was on recently, Teela's Quest.

This one has become quite famous for the new developments it brought to Masters of the Universe continuity. Teela begins to wonder about her biological parents, and goes off on a quest to the Oracle of the Crystal Sea to find answers. Skeletor's henchman Mer-Man sees this, and asks Skeletor if he can pursue Teela, as Mer-Man has sworn a vendetta against Man-At-Arms, and seeks to gain vengeance through Man-At-Arms' adopted daughter.

He-Man finds out where Teela's gone, and since the Crystal Sea is too dangerous for one to go alone, He-Man decides to go after Teela. But, Teela's looking after herself just fine, and as the Oracle begins giving Teela her answers, Mer-Man shows up and ambushes her. Every 20 years, a demon rises from the bottom of the Crystal Sea, and if you give it a sacrifice, you can tame it and get it to do your bidding. Man-At-Amrs interrupted the ceremony 20 years ago, and now, Mer-Man seeks to do the ceremony again, and get his revenge on Man-At-Arms by using his own daughter as the sacrifice.

He-Man finally shows up, and the Oracle fills He-Man in on what's going on. He-Man shows up, rescues Teela, defeats Mer-Man, and kicks demon ass. With that done, they go back to the Oracle. The Oracle continues his story, of how 20 years ago, Mer-Man was going to sacrifice a beautiful falcon to the demon. But Man-At-Arms fought off Mer-Man and saved the falcon. The falcon then leads Man-At-Arms to her nest, and in it is a baby...the infant Teela. In the Oracle's vision, Teela immediatly recognizes the falcon as Zoar, the falcon form of the Sorceress of Greyskull. Teela begins to put it together. "But then that would mean...."

The Sorceress emerges from the shadows. "Yes, Teela. I am your mother." The Sorceress then explains that Teela is destined to become the next Sorceress of Greyskull. And that's why Teela must have no knowledge of her parentage. If anyone knew of Teela's connection to the Sorceress, or Teela's destiny, evildoers might attempt to get the Power of Greyskull through Teela. So, with tears in her eyes, the Sorceress erases this knowledge from Teela's memory, replacing it with the simple knowledge that Teela's mother is alive and loves her daughter very much.

Such a beautiful episode, and provides some very interesting back story for the familiar characters. And it was written by Paul Dini! Dini, of course, a long time writer who's become best known in recent years for his Batman work. He worked on The Animated Series, is the co-creator of Harley Quinn, and wrote the mega-blockbuster video game Arkham City. Working on He-Man back in the day was one of his first professional gigs. He doesn't look back on it with much fondness, as Filmation, the studio that made He-Man, was a very cheap outfit, and most of his colleagues seemed to be very bitter old TV writers just killing time before retirement.

That, and I've recently become enraptured with reruns of The Mighty Hercules. It's on TeleToon Retro every night. It was one of those cartoons that was just always on when I was a kid. Watching it now is a little bit shocking. Apparently, the outfit that owns The Mighty Hercules had all the episodes painstakingly digitally remastered a few years ago, so I've never seen it looking this crisp and sharp.

Not too long ago, an artistic friend of mine asked me if I'd be interested in writing a comic book. I'd write it, he'd draw it, and we'd self-publish it digitally. The thing was he didn't want it to be superheroes. I was intrigued, but idea wise, I had nothing. About the most I got was some form of high adventure tale set in a fantasy world. The Mighty Hercules would definitely be the model to follow, though. Just a simple tale of high adventure in a fantasy setting.

Fishing in the Discount Bin: South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut

2013-04-11T00:30:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly look at one of the many things I own in a home video format. Today, we get to a big screen version of a classic cartoon, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. This is dated in my notes at August 18, 2012.

Time for another installment of "Crap I Still Own on VHS." When I first upgraded to DVD, I swore I wouldn't upgrade any of my VHS tapes to DVD until a special edition came along that warranted double-dipping. As such, to this very day, I still own a few movies on VHS that I haven't upgraded to DVD or Blu-Ray yet. And this Saturday, I dug deep into the back of my closet to grab my VHS copy of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

(I keep my VHS tapes in the back of my bedroom closet to keep them away from the super-powerful magnets in my surround sound system speakers so they don't get erased.)

I was feeling my age earlier this week because, i was researching historical bits to share on the air, I saw that South Park hit its 15th anniversary. South Park really is tied to my college experience. It debuted as I was about to start my third year of college. The douche-bag editors of the school paper had determined that crudity and vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity was "cutting edge." They sought to turn the school paper into a "cutting edge" publication.

(I should clarify that, of the co-editors of the paper at that time, only one was a douchbag, and the other was kind of cool. I feel I have to clarify because the kind of cool one follows me on Twitter and might even be reading this blog. Hi, Lucas!)

And in this tide of "cutting edge," along came South Park. South Park became the very definition of "cutting edge."

But what they failed to grasp was, in South Park, once you get past the crudity and the vulgarity, there's actually some very clever satire going on. I'm pretty I sure I never caught the satire when I first started watching it. All I knew was it was funny as hell and I became a fan.

In this day and age, I've become more a casual fan of South Park. I'll realize I haven't watched it in a while, so I'll seek out the two or three most recent seasons online, and binge-watch them over a couple of weeks. And I swear, South Park is an anomaly. Unlike other series that have been on for 15 years, I think South Park has actually gotten funnier. The satire is stronger, it's more topical, and it never fails to make me laugh.

But I'm not the rabid fan I was in the closing days of the 1990s. And in 1999, we were getting the movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. After Episode I, this was probably my most anticipated film of the summer of 1999.

I had just discovered the Internet and using it to find news on upcoming movies, but I wasn't seeing much info on South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Which was good, because it meant when I saw it in the theatre, a lot of it was a surprise. Heck, every little bit in the build-up to the film was making me laugh.

As I reflect on those college years, I think the only people I knew in college who hated South Park were the people in the Anime Club. And it wasn't for the vulgarity. They hated it because they felt the crude animation was setting back the art form a century or two. Hence, they felt a real nasty bait and switch when we all saw the first teaser and it mentioned "the top animators in America teaming with the top four animators in Japan."

That was such a good gag that 8 years later they ripped it off for the first teaser for The Simpsons Movie.

The summer of 1999 was a fun summer. As I blogged before, it was the first summer after college, wondering what was to come next, and it all kicked off with Episode I. Going to see Episode I kind of set forth how that summer was going to be spent. Every couple of weeks, I'd get together with my old college friends and we'd go see a movie. It was like we were desperately trying to make college last just a little bit longer.

But it wasn't too long before we were all in the newly-opened Silver City in West Edmonton Mall to see South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. The theatre darkened, the movie began, Stan started singing the opening number "Quiet Mountain Town" and one of my buddies turned to me and whispered, "Holy fuck, this is a musical?"

Yes it is. And the soundtrack, along with Weird Al's "Running With Scissors" and the soundtrack to Episode I, formed the score for the summer of 1999. I still the end credits of "What Would Brain Boitano Do?" would make a great hockey song.

Reading up online, apparently it was a musical because South Park's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, felt that South Park was a fad that wouldn't last very long, so they felt that they should just go for broke.

I remember the various gags in the film, and various reactions to them. There's this one scene where a general is briefing the troops. His holographic projector starts flickering, and the general screams out, "Fucking Windows 98! Bring me Bill Gates!" So Bill Gates comes in, attempts to defend Windows 98, and the general grows frustrated and blows Bill Gates' head off. Most of my friends were computer science majors...I'm pretty sure that's where they laughed the loudest.

And then there's the scene where Terrance and Phillip are arrested on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Conan, disgusted with himself for betraying Terrance and Phillip, promptly kills himself. Well, as I am now, as I was then, I'm a huge fan of Conan O'Brien. So when Matt Stone and Trey Parker were on Conan to plug the film, I was expecting hilarious awkwardness. But no. It turns out Conan loved the scene because it was the first time that he and his show were ever acknowledged in a movie, so Conan felt honored by it. Conan's only complaint was that the guy who did his voice sounded nothing like him. "Yeah, you were voiced by Brent Spiner, who plays Data on Star Trek," said Stone. "I know who Brent Spiner is!" retorted Conan.

Am I the only one that noticed that Saddam Hussien's death at the end of the film was pretty much a re-creation of the death of the villainous Klingon Captain Kruge at the end of I? God, I've always wondered, which one is the Trekkie, Stone or Parker? Because there are so many Star Trek references sprinkled throughout I.

The plot, in case it's been that long.... Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny sneak into the new Terrance and Phillip movie. Terrance and Phillip, though, cuss a blue streak in their film, and the kids soon start imitating all the vulgar language in the film. Kyle's Mom is outraged by this, and, since Terrance and Phillip are Canadian, Kyle's Mom decides that the solution is to, according to the film's most famous musical number, blame Canada. Kyle's Mom forms an activist group called Mothers Against Canada, and has Terrance and Phillip arrested live on TV. This sparks an international incident, and soon the USA and Canada are about to go to war with each other. Meanwhile, down in Hell, Satan watches this with glee, as the deaths of Terrance and Phillip would signal the beginning of the apocalypse, and Satan, along with his new gay lover Saddam Hussein, would be ready to rule the Earth!

And of course, throughout the film, each of our South Park kids gets their own character arc. Stan is upset that his longtime crush/girlfriend has hooked up with a new guy named Gregory, so Stan's out to become an activist and impress Wendy once again. And, in one of the film's running gags, Chef tells Stan that the way to impress a woman is to find the clitoris, so Stan is constantly asking people where the clitoris is. In Kyle's arc, he has to find the courage to stand up to his mother, because it's the only way the insanity will end. For Cartman, as he swears the most, he's implanted with a V-chip that gives him an electric shock every time he swears. And, since Kenny dies early in the film, he spends his arc in Hell, where we see that Satan is in an abusive relationship with Saddam, and its up to Kenny to give Satan the courage to leave Saddam.

So I guess "finding courage" would be the general theme of the film.

It had been a while since I'd watched this film, and I was shocked at how much it still made me laugh. But it's that music. Hearing that gigantic orchestral score against the typical South Park animation is a shock that gets a laugh. And the music just tried to make this film seem so gigantic and epic.

Maybe it is time to upgrade this one. It was released on Blu-Ray a few years back, in a fancy new "10th Anniversary Edition." For it, they got Matt Stone and Trey Parker to sit down and do a running commentary. From what I gather, they just sit and rip on how crude the animation is. Well...yeah. In these times, South Park is made using Maya, generally regarded as the most powerful computer animation software in the world. In some interviews, Parker likens it to "using a bulldozer to build a sandcastle." I don't know what Bigger, Longer, and Uncut was made on, but back in 1999, Adobe Flash was still considered pretty cutting edge.

There's that term again...cutting edge. As I tried to warn the editors of the paper back in the day, the problem with a cutting edge is it soon gets worn dull. And at that point, cutting edge becomes cliche. So I was greatly surprised to see that South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut holds up after all these years. As I said before, once you get passed the shock value, there's some very clever satire going on. Come for the cutting edge, stay for the cleverness. That's the genius of South Park.

And before I punch out for the night, good Lord, this came out mere months after I finished college, and this film was really the first place where I heard the term "handjob"? God damn, I need to get laid.

Some Thoughts on the Passing of Roger Ebert

2013-04-06T11:20:00.001-06:00

As I'm sure you've heard by now, renowned film critic Roger Ebert passed away two days ago. I was at work when the news broke, and I was surprised at how torn up I was about it. Roger Ebert really was my gateway into being the movie geek I was today.

Most of my family are churchgoers, but I was never really into it. So, when my teen years came, and I was old enough to be left home on my own, I'd stay home on Sunday mornings and watch Siskel and Ebert. And I tell you, Siskel and Ebert was an eye-opening show. When all you've got for movies is the 2-dozen or so blockbusters down at the local convenience store, Siskel and Ebert was there to show me that there is so much more out there in the world for movies.

And this was in the early 1990s, too, which was a golden era to be getting into movies. We had the rise of the independents in that era, with folks like Quentin Tarintino, Robert Rodreiguiz, and Kevin Smith launching their careers. And that in general started bringing more attention to art house fare, and giving more attention to foreign films.

Siskel and Ebert was where I was first exposed to the works of Kevin Smith. On the show, they used to end it with the "Video Pick of the Week," where they'd highlight a really good movie that had just been released on video. But, with Laserdisc being the format of choice for cinephiles at the time, they also started doing a "Laserdisc Pick of the Month." One Sunday morning, their Laserdisc Pick of the Month was the special edition Laserdisc of Clerks. And, from the Laserdisc, they showed the original ending of Clerks, and then Siskel and Ebert had a quick debate as to whether Smith was right to cut it or not.

It was also where I was first exposed to the films of Hayao Miyazaki. My Neighbor Totoro was dubbed and released by legendary film studio Troma Studios in 1992, and I remember seeing it reviewed on Siskel and Ebert, and Ebert gave an incredibly positive review to it. I'm pretty sure he put it on his "10 Best" list for 1992. I remember watching that episode, and they showed the clip of Totoro and Satsuki hanging out at the bus stop, and then the Catbus pulls up, and I thought to myself, "This film looks freaky as fuck." And now, Miyazaki is one of my favourite filmmakers.

And also, Quentin Tarantino. I remember, when Tarantino only had four films to his name (Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs, and the Tarantino-scripted-only True Romance and Natural Born Killers), they already did a retrospective on Tarintino's career and how Tarintino was going to revolutionize filmmaking. I remember Ebert expressing in amazement that there were already websites dedictated to Tarintino. This would have been early 1995.

And that leads into another bit of Ebert's legacy. As many in the online film crticism community are pointing out, Ebert was an early adopter of the Internet, and was quick to embrace online film critics as his brethren and not wannabes. I remember, in 1997 or so, I saw Ebert on a talk show, and he was asked if he had any advice for anyone who wanted to be a film critic. And Ebert said, "My advice to anyone who wants to be a film critic is the same advice to anyone who wants to be a writer: never stop writing. And with the Internet now, it's become so easy to publish your work and have it reach a wide audience." I took those words to heart, and I started writing movie reviews on my website not longer after. Probably why I still find the time to sit and jot down a few thoughts whenever I come back from the city, because watching a movie is still the main reason why I venture into Edmonton.

The Internet is where Ebert flourished in his later years. He'd been battling cancer, and it literally robbed him of his voice about 10 years ago. So he started blogging more. I loved his blog. He was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, and his blog was always such a treat to read. Which is why his death was so heartbreaking. The day before he died, he wrote his final blog entry, in which he announced that his cancer had come back, and he would be taking a "leave of presence" to battle it. He wasn't going to give up, just slow down a bit. Write less reviews, but still blogging, and he made mention of turning to Kickstarter to fund his TV show and get it back on the air, which really caught my eye.

And that's the most inspiring thing about Roger Ebert. Up until the end, he never gave up, he never quit. He had his passions, like movies and writing, and nothing stood in between himself and his passions. He just kept going.

So thank you, Roger Ebert. My love of movies, my love of writing, all inspired by you. Thank you.

2 New Films from 2 Favourite Filmmakers

2013-04-05T00:30:00.000-06:00

So, a quick recap on the current history of Pixar.

Around 2006, the deal between Pixar and Disney was coming to a close, and things between Pixar and Disney got a little heated in the re-negotiations. During those re-negotiations, Disney invoked a clause in their original deal with Pixar that granted them the sequel rights to any and all Pixar films. So, as a big "screw you" to Pixar, Disney announced the creation of a new animation studio called Circle Seven Studios, and the sole purpose of this new studio would be to make Pixar sequels. Disney quickly announced that they would be making Toy Story 3, Monsters, Inc. 2, and Finding Nemo 2 under the Circle Seven label.

The re-negotiations finally ended with Disney remembering they have more money than God and just buying Pixar. In the buyout, a lot of Pixar's senior management became senior management at Disney, and the first thing they did was pull the plug on Circle Seven Studios. However, seeing the little bit of work that Circle Seven did did get Pixar's creative juices flowing, and so Pixar decided to go ahead with Toy Story 3, which came out in 2010 and was spectacular, and Monsters, Inc. 2, a prequel now titled Monsters University, which comes out this summer.

So, I guess then, I shouldn't be too surprised when Disney and Pixar made the official announcement back on Tuesday that Finding Nemo 2 is officially in the works, to be titled Finding Dory.

Along with the announcement of the film came the announcement that Ellen DeGeneres is coming back to voice Dory. That was expected...DeGeneres (and many Hollywood watchers) have long credited her voice work in Finding Nemo to have jumpstarted her career about 10 years ago. And, when she made the announcement on her talk show on Tuesday, she said she'd been bugging Pixar pretty hard about it for the past few years.

Also coming back to direct is veteran Pixar director Andrew Stanton, who gave us the original Finding Nemo and WALL-E. Now, Stanton made his live-action debut a year ago with John Carter, which went on to become one of the biggest bombs of all time. So when rumors of Finding Nemo 2 started circulating last summer and that Stanton would be coming back to direct, Stanton initially denied the rumors. I did dig up an interview he did in the fall where he addressed the rumors. He said that he always had an idea for a Finding Nemo 2, but, since John Carter was hoped to launch a major franchise, he honestly expected he'd be neck-deep in making John Carter 2 right now. So he was readjusting his schedule and moving certain projects up on his personal timeline. Looks like Finding Dory got moved to the front of the line.

The official plot description sent out by Disney says it'll take place one year after Finding Nemo, and be set primarily along the California coastline. Marlin and the Tank Gang will be returning from the first film, and we'll also get a new slate of beloved, toyetic characters.

Finding Dory will be hitting theatres November 25, 2015.

I'm still a fan of Tim Burton's, even though I have yet to bring myself to watch Dark Shadows. That being said, though, upon re-watching Frankenweenie when it came out on DVD a few months ago, I thought that film was...well, something special. That film had real heart to it, something that a lot of Tim Burton films have been lacking lately as he pumps out the latest product for a major studio starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter. So I was intrigued earlier this week with the announcement of his next film, the biography Big Eyes.

Big Eyes tells the story of painter Margaret Keane and her ex-husband Walter Keane. Back in the 1950s and 60s, the Keanes became famous for creating those paintings of children with really big eyes. With Walter's marketing savvy, the paintings soon became a pop culture phenomenon. Margaret, being the shy, introverted type, just spent her days at home painting the paintings. But, the success started going to Walter's head, and soon he started taking credit for the paintings and going on talk shows and the like to talk about them. Margaret finally found her voice and start calling out her husband. Needless to say, it put a strain on their marriage, and the true authorship of the paintings was something that became a very crucial part of their divorce proceedings.

Burton is apparently a fan of Margaret Keane's work (she was eventually ruled the true painter), and Burton commissioned Keene to do a painting of Lisa Marie, the Guess jeans supermodel who was Burton's-girlfriend-that-he-stuck-in-every-movie back in the 1990s. Burton has been trying to get this project going for a few years, and finally got around to it.

To make the film, Burton is re-teaming with screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. They originally worked together on Ed Wood, and following that, Alexander and Karaszewski made a name of themselves in the 1990s, writing screenplays about offbeat individuals, including The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon.

And to play Walter and Margaret Keene, Burton is NOT going with his obvious choices of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter. Walter will be played by Christoph Waltz, who won two Oscars working with Quentin Tarantino on Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained. And Margaret will be played by fellow Oscar winner Amy Adams.

No word yet on when it'll be hitting theatres.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Captain Power and the Soliders of the Future

2013-04-04T00:30:00.000-06:00

Time once again for that weekly look at one of the many movies in my home video library, Fishing in the Discount Bin. Yet my latest attempt to do an entire TV series on Fishing in the Discount Bin, and this time out, we're doing a show I loved in my youth, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. This one is dated in my notes at August 12, 2012.

Alright, doing a Fishing in the Discount Bin on a TV series is easier when I just get it because I sit down and binge-watch the whole thing in a week. And I just finished watching a true classic from my childhood, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. I loved this show when I was a kid, and I remember my brother once admitted that the show scared the hell out of him. I once read the statistic that 75% of children in the 1980s believed they would die in the fires of nuclear war, so it was just a matter of time before that became fodder for a kids show!

As the opening narration stated...Earth. 2147. The legacy of the Metal Wars, when man fought machine...and machine won! So it's essentially the future wars from the Terminator movies. Machines now rule the planet, and the machines hunt down the remaining human survivors and "digitize" them...convert them into an electronic signal and store them in the evil AI known as OverMind. The machines are led by the cybernetic Lord Dredd, who believes that merging man and machine is the next step in human evolution. His endgame in digitizing humanity is to eventually transfer their consciousnesses into perfect machine bodies. Pockets of resistance remain to battle Lord Dredd and his armies. The most famous...Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future! With their power suits, they battle Lord Dredd's forces and seek to free humanity!

Machines and human warriors in power suits...that's right, it's Iron Man vs. the Terminator.

As I tend to do, when I watch a beloved series like this, I tend go to the episode I remember the most vividly, and watch it first. With Captain Power, the episode would be "A Fire in the Dark." Lord Dredd is designing his latest mechanical soldiers, but finds they lack grace...elegance...beauty. He orders his soldiers to search for a human fugitive named Jessica Morgan. We see in a flashback that, in his pre-cyborg days, Jessica was an artist that Lord Dredd was sweet on, but when the machines first rose, Jessica was rendered blind in a machine attack. With Dredd's forces hunting down Jessica, Captain Power and his team find her and take her into protective custody. However, when Dredd broadcasts that he'll start killing hostages unless Jessica turns herself in, she runs away from Captain Power and surrenders herself to Dredd. Dredd soon subjects her to a medical procedure to restore her sight. Captain Power launches a rescue mission, and manages to find her and Dredd. When Jessica comes to, she is thrilled to have her sight restored, but when she runs to the window, she's horrified at the post-apocalyptic wasteland Dredd has turned the world into. The VISOR-like device that restored her sight is powered by signals from Dredd. Dredd offers Jessica a choice: remain with him, and keep her sight, or leave with Captain Power and again be blind. She chooses to go with Captain Power, saying she prefers her memories of the world as it was, rather than to look upon what it is now. The episode ends with Dredd, alone in his fortress, destroying his last remaining picture of Jessica.

Trippy stuff for a kids show, eh?

So, our heroes. Captain Power, the leader of the bunch. His father invented the power suits that they use to fight Lord Dredd, and in one of those twists of fate, Captain Power's father helped develop OverMind along side Lord Dredd. His father was eventually killed by Lord Dredd.

Then there was Maj. Matthew "Hawk" Masterson. His gimmick was that his power suit had a jet pack and he could fly. He was the best friend of Captain Power's father, and kind of became a surrogate father to Power. We learn early on that he's an old soldier, and lost his wife and son in the Metal Wars.

Next up, Lt. Michael "Tank" Ellis, played by Swedish bodybuilder Sven-Ole Thornson, who's actually a good buddy of Arnold Schwarznegger's. His power suit's gimmick was that it was massive and heavily-armored with a BFG. We also learn he's a genetically enhanced super-soldier. And, as foreshadowing to the show's head writer J. Michael Strazinsky's most famous creation, the facility where he was engineered was called Babylon 5.

Sergeant Robert "Scout" Baker. Sadly, this guy got no character development whatsoever. He's the squad's prankster, and that's about it. His armor's gimmick was that it was outfitted with holographic projectors, so he could disguise himself as Dredd's troops and stuff.

And then, we get Corporal Jennifer "Pilot" Chase, played by the great Canadian actress Jessica Steen. She turned out to be the most developed character on the show. We learn that she was born and raised in the "Dredd Youth," the show's equivalent to the Hitler Youth, designed to breed the toughest officer's in Dredd's army. But, she grew disillusioned with it and defected. Several episodes were dedicated to her past catching up with her, and we learn that she didn't just simply see the light and defect...she's trying to atone for her past sins. One episode, "Gemini and Counting," sees Pilot have to don her old Dredd Youth uniform once again to infiltrate a Dredd medical facility. And while in there, she meets a Dredd Youth member who's very much like she was, and she manages to plant the seeds of doubt in her mind and lead her down the path to good. In another one, "Judgement," she wanders into a human settlement, and she's recognized as one of the Dredd officers who razed the village a few years earlier, and so she's put on trial for her crimes. All very dramatic stuff.

And then they killed her off in the final episode. Again, a very good death scene, where she's all alone at our heroes' hidden fortress, the villains have finally discovered it's location, she's all alone at the base, and dies fighting them off. And of course, her dying words are an admission of love for Captain Power.

But man, this show is still pretty good. I really wish they'd do a reboot for it. It wouldn't have to be a dark and gritty reboot because it's already pretty dark and gritty as it is. And it'd be neat to see some of their concepts finally realized. As they say in the bonus features, most of season 2 was already scripted. Series creator Gary Goddard expresses a regret at selling his TV series to a toy company...he says the only reason why the show was canceled was because the toys weren't selling.

Some of their season 2 concepts included Lord Dredd disposing of his cybernetic implants and gaining a purely mechanical body. As it was a 1980s TV series geared for selling toys, they already had a new token female character ready to join the team...Christine "Ranger" O'Connor. And there would have been a search for Eden II. Let me use the example of another franchise of man vs. machine, The Matrix. Eden II would be Zion.

And as the series was filmed in Toronto, it was fun watching all kinds of Canadian actors pop up. Oscar nominee Graham Greene....Cigarette Smoking Man William B. Davis...and future JAG star David James Elliot!

And the bonus features on the DVD finally answered an unresolved question for me. I remember being a kid, seeing the Captain Power toys in the store, and seeing a figure by the name of Colonel "Stingray" Johnson. His gimmick was his armor had a whole deep-sea diving thing to it. And on the DVD, there's a series trailer that actually has Stingray in it! And in the behind the scenes documentary, series creator Gary Goddard says, "Yeah, Stingray. He was cut right before we started production, because we couldn't afford a water tank."

And that's how the world was deprived of Stingray.

Final assessment: still a great show.

The 10th Anniversary of Midnight Ramblings: A Decade of Spilling My Guts Online

2013-04-02T00:30:00.000-06:00

“Just a test. This is only a test.”

And with those auspicious words, on this day 10 years ago, April 2, 2003, I launched this blog.

I don’t think I expected this to go on for 10 years. Back in the day, it was just meant to be a quick and easy replacement...something to maintain my online presence, as such things were important to me back then. There I was, on my post-college adventure, teaching English as a second language in Japan. My laptop crapped out on, leaving me with no way to update my website. I wanted some way to keep posting messages online, and let my family back home hear my stories of my Japanese adventures. I wanted something that would be quick and easy to update at the Internet cafes. A lot of my friends were hopping on the Blogger service, because that was the blogging host of choice back in the day. So, on one moonlit night, at the Manga Hiroba Internet cafe, I signed up for a blogger account, and Midnight Ramblings was born.

While this is the 10th anniversary of this particular facet of my online presence, it’s not the 10th anniversary of me blogging. That would be 14 years of that. And even then, it goes back further. Nope, for my first ventures into having an online presence, we have to go back all the way to a wintry November night in 1997, when I was still a carefree college student at Augustana University College. The dot-com bubble hadn’t popped yet, and the Internet was rapidly expanding. As I spent many an evening in college, I was hanging out in the offices of the school newspaper, where my best friend was the editor, and we were having one of our typical conversations about life, the universe, and cartoons of the 1980s. And the topic soon changed to the growing Internet and how it was starting to take hold in pop culture. “Man, I would sure love to have a website,” I said.

“Well, let’s get you one,” he said. And within 10 minutes, he directed to me to a free webhosting outfit called Angelfire, and I had a website. With the “how to use HTML” tutorials I found online, and my best friend’s help, I soon had a half-descent website to promote my college radio show. In the drive for more content, I started posting my opinion columns from the college paper. Since my radio show was Chaos in a Box and my opinion column was Chaos in Print, I decided to christen the website Chaos on the Net.

But then, along came the summer of Episode I, 1999, and with it, graduation. Upon my college graduation, like with most college grads, I suddenly found myself at a loss. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself, or what was to come next. And even worse, now that I no longer had my radio show or my opinion column in the school paper, I had no creative outlet where I could put my words out there and help sort things out.

But I still had the website....

So on July 5, just a few days before my 22nd birthday, I re-launched my opinion column on my website. And for the next 7 years, for once a week, I saw down and wrote a 2-page article about the state of my life. Blogs really were starting to enter the pop culture lexicon at that time, but I deeply resisted referring to what I was doing online as a blog. It wasn’t a blog, it was a column. It was real, honest-to-gosh writing I was doing, not just simply popping off a paragraph about what I did that day. No, I was popping off an essay about what I did that week. This was serious, you guys, and blogs weren’t serious.

Looking back at it now, yeah, it was a blog. But I think it was very beneficial to me. I’ve read that the period in your early-20s, when you’re done with school and wrestling with what to do next, is now referred to as your “quarter-life crisis.” Needless to say, putting my thoughts on paper about that time in my life really helped me figure some things out. I keep threatening to go back and take it down someday, because a lot of it is deeply moody, introspective and personal, but I haven’t yet. I really hadn’t figured out the concept of a website’s back end yet, so each and every entry in that blog – all 500+ of them – were lovingly hand-coded by me. That’s a lot of computer programming.

And with all that hard work and effort, it came as quite the devastating blow in 2003, when I was on the other side of the world, and my laptop crapped out, and I couldn’t blog anymore. Looking back on the history of my blogging, I really think that things kind of peaked in my year in Japan. I mean, when you’re completely immersed in another culture, suddenly going down to the corner store for a carton of milk is an adventure. For the first time ever, it felt like my blog was truly about something.

I had to keep it going. I had to continue to tell my tale. For the first time, my tale was worth telling. And that’s what led me to the Internet cafe that one night to launch my blog. I christened it Midnight Ramblings to differentiate it from Chaos in Print. The title comes from a series of entries I did in Chaos in Print. Taking the form of an e-mail to my best friend, I’d just share the latest pop culture news that I’d come across and felt my friend would find interesting. When I did return home to Canada and finally got my laptop fixed, I decided that’s what I’d do to differentiate Midnight Ramblings and Chaos in Print. Chaos in Print would continue to be my column; my serious writing where I’d sit down and lovingly hand-code a 2-page essay. And Midnight Ramblings would be my off-the-cuff comments.

And it’s a dichotomy that existed until the spring of 2006, when I finally landed a gig in radio and moved to Athabasca. I swore I’d continue Chaos in Print once I’d settled in and things started feeling like home, but I never got around to it. And in a way, I think that’s appropriate. It was there to help me sort through stuff, get through that quarter-life crisis, and it led me to the ultimate decision that I wanted to work in radio when I grew up. It served its purpose, and I think I can close that chapter for good.

But I still have this blog....

This blog was started because I wanted to maintain an online presence. Now, though, maintaining an online presence is easier than ever. There’s Facebook. There’s Twitter. There’s podcasting. There are YouTube videos. That once-important online presence has now become a wildfire. It’s growing and spreading and taking on a life of its own. I can’t end it completely, but the best I can do is try to keep it under control.
And in trying to keep things under control, the question becomes, what is this blog’s purpose? Obviously, it still has one, or else I wouldn’t have kept doing it after I got home and resumed Chaos in Print. It must have one, or else it wouldn’t still be here after the rise of the social networks. What tale do I have to tell that’s so important that I still come here a couple of times a week and jot down my thoughts?

I know one thing that this blog shouldn’t be about...my life. My friends have mentioned that they miss the moody and introspective analysis of my life that represented the Chaos in Print days. My best friend was telling me the other day that he always longed for the day when I finally got a girlfriend and settled down and the blog became moody and introspective analysis of my relationship. No doubt, he’s hoping for a little payback, as him and his girlfriend were large recurring characters in Chaos in Print back in the day, and I’m sure he grew weary of the moody and introspective analysis of his relationship.

But no, the moody and introspective analysis of my life is gone, and I can tell you why. I have a job now. A job I love and would like to keep. Long before the news was sharing tales of people being fired because they tweeted about a slow day at work, I was reading stories of people being fired because they blogged about a bad day at work. And there’s no doubt that blogging about the intimate details of my life these days would eventually turn to moody and introspective analysis of my career. I can’t take the risk of writing something that would displease my employers.

And I know it’s happened. I know I’ve made enemies because of this blog. Back at NAIT, I was warned time and again by my teachers that this blog could get me in trouble with any future employers. I didn’t heed their warnings, and I have classmates from NAIT who, to this very day, refuse to speak to me because of things I wrote on this blog. And I have been told by some in the company that I have an ex-co-worker who reads this blog every day and sends a weekly report on my online activities to my boss. “But don’t worry,” said this person who warned me of this ex-co-worker. “Your blog is nothing interesting and won’t get you in trouble.” Good. Let’s keep it that way.

So if what created this blog is out, what should the content be? Well, let’s take a look at the web stats for my blog. The web stats only go back to May of 2008, because that’s when Google acquired Blogger and then incorporated Google Analytics into all their Blogger blogs.

Taking a look at my all-time blog stats, my top 3 entries are:

3) Alpocalypse Track Listing!: May 2, 2011 – In this entry, I share the news of the track listing of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s album Alpocalypse and what the songs parody.

2) Double Down Comes to Canada!: October 7, 2010 – Sharing the triumphant news that KFC was bringing their infamous Double Down sandwich to the Great White North.

And my #1 blog entry, with more than 4000 views....

1) And the news Transformers Girl Is...: June 2, 2010 – Announcing the news that Rosie Huntington-Whiteley would be taking over for Megan Fox as Shia LeBeouf’s girlfriend in Transformers 3. No doubt it has so many hits because I posted some of Ms. Huntington-Whiteley’s Victoria’s Secret modeling work to jazz up the blog entry, and Google Images is directing horny young men to those pictures. Stay classy, Internet!

So if we use these three entries as my guide, then the Internet is telling me that my blog should be about Weird Al, fast food, and boobs. But in the end, with things like that as my guide, then all I’m doing is repeating other things I’ve found online. While it may drive up the hit count, ultimately it proves...unsatisfying.

I think I had the right idea all those years ago in Japan, when things started. This blog should be about adventure. It should be about heading into the world and seeing the sights, and then sharing those sights with you. Even in casual conversations with friends and co-workers, they tell me the blogs they have the most fun reading are my days in the city, just talking about the things I see in West Edmonton Mall and the stuff I buy. The interesting things to write about are from the journeys without, not within.

So I’ll probably keep writing about that. I’ll keep writing about movies. I’ll keep writing about fast food. I’ll keep writing about the things that are interesting to me. I’ll keep writing about me.

My best friend, who set me up with my first website, and who has been one of my most dedicated readers throughout all my online endeavours, once told me that “blogs are done by people with little to do and even less to say.” The trick must be then to keep doing stuff, keep busy, and get things worth saying.

The blog will always be about me. I will continue to tell my tale. It may not be a compelling tale or particularly interesting, but it’s my tale to tell, so I will tell it.

10 years ago, this was just a test. And it seems that test continues.

All the Times I Bought Snake-Eyes

2013-03-30T00:30:00.000-06:00

While I was going through some of the photos on my digital camera, I came across a bunch of pictures of some of my favourite action figures in my collection. I took them when I was home at Christmas, which is where the bulk of my collection is still in storage. I had planned on writing a bunch of blog entries about these characters and why I bought them so many times, but it kind of got put on the back burner. But, since I was gifted with a day off from work, and I found the pictures on my camera, I figured I should sit down and write the one entry I always planned on doing. And that's my many purchases of the G.I. Joe ninja commando, Snake Eyes.

Snake Eyes, hands down, was everyone's favourite G.I. Joe growing up. Larry Hama, who wrote the original G.I. Joe comic books and wrote the backstories for pretty much every character, always attributed this to the fact that, because he's completely masked and has a mysterious past, pretty much anybody could project their own self onto him. That being said, though, Snake Eyes did have a rich history in the comics.

Snake Eyes was the all American boy, who grew up to serve his country by joining the Army. While on patrol in Vietnam, his helicopter was shot down, and rather than run to safety, he stayed behind to rescue his team-mate Scarlett. Though Scarlett was safe, the cost was high to Snake Eyes, as the helicopter crash would up horribly burning his face, and damaging his vocal cords, rendering him mute. This is why he is always masked, and why he never speaks.

The tragedy continued, though. Upon returning to the States, he was informed that his parents and beloved twin sister were killed by a drunk driver. With no family, and very despondent, Snake Eyes' best friend Tommy Arashikage invited Snake Eyes to come home with him in Japan, and offered him a place in the Arashikage family business. Of course, the family business turned out to be a ninja clan. Snake Eyes quickly took to the ninja training and excelled in all his studies, but the ninja master's perceived favourtism of Snake Eyes quickly made Tommy jealous. In an act of jealousy, Tommy killed their ninja master and escaped into the wilderness. Despondent over the loss of his new family, Snake Eyes returned to the States, and lived in seclusion Sierra mountains, until General Hawk recruited him for a new military unit that was being put together...G.I. Joe. And as for Tommy, he fell into a life of crime, became a mercenary, and was eventually hired by Cobra, where he took the name Storm Shadow.

(But not really. As was eventually revealed, the drunk driver that killed Snake Eyes' parents and sister was Cobra Commander's brother, so in typically twisted comic book villain logic, Cobra Commander blamed Snake Eyes for his brother's death. Cobra Commander hired Zartan to kill Snake Eyes, but Zartan missed and killed the ninja master instead, framing Storm Shadow in the process. Storm Shadow infiltrated Cobra to try and find the master's true killer. Once all this came to light, Storm Shadow defected and fought along side his friend Snake Eyes once gain. But I digress.)

As awesome as he was, I never had Snake Eyes when I was a kid. My brother and I found him in Zellers one night, and we pooled our money to get him, but since my brother was the bigger G.I. Joe fan, Snake Eyes was always mixed in with his G.I. Joes, and I rarely got to play with him. So, when I started collecting action figures, and G.I. Joe started making a big resurgence about 10 years ago, getting Snake Eyes was high on my list.

And, of course, I went a little bit overboard.

My first purchase of Snake Eyes was as part of the G.I. Joe vs Cobra line from about 10 years ago or so, when the 3.75" G.I. Joes began their big comeback. I loved this in the beginning, because they had the clever idea of putting out the figures in 2-packs, so you'd always get the Joe and their Cobra arch-enemy. Snake Eyes was, of course, packaged with Storm Shadow.

I loved reading ToyFare magazine back in the day, and they offered quite the wide array of exclusive action figures during their lifetime. (Look for a future entry detailing all the ToyFare exclusives I bought.) For G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero's 20th anniversary in 2002, they offered up this special 2-pack of Snake Eyes and Scarlett. These are re-productions of the original Snake Eyes and Scarlett figures released in 1982, with one notable exception. See, when G.I. Joe first hit toy store shelves back in 1982, Hasbro started running out of money. As such, they couldn't afford to paint one of the figures in the toy line. The one they chose not to paint: Snake Eyes, because he was dressed all in black anyway, so just release him in the black plastic. For this 2-pack, they finally gave Snake Eyes a proper paint job, which essentially boiled down to painting his belts brown.

The G.I. Joe: Ninja Battles set. One of the few sets in my collection that I am very, very, very tempted to open up and proudly display. Contained in this set is Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Tiger Claw (Snake Eyes apprentice, created just for this set), Shadow Strike (Storm Shadow's apprentice, created just for this set), and a Black Dragon Ninja (cannon fodder). You also get the fancy display base to pose them all on (complete with a torii), an exclusive DVD, and an exclusive comic book. This is just so beautiful to look at. And I love how I got this. I actually got this at CFB Cold Lake. I did my practicum at K-Rock, Cold Lake's radio station, and this was my present to myself for successfully completing my practicum.

Another one I was really lucky to get my hands on. Much like with the Star Wars figures, I'm a sucker for these retro packages. And for the 25th anniversary of the toyline in 2007, Hasbro released a series that duplicated the packaging of the original toys from the early 1980s. So not only is it the packaging I remember from when I coveted Snake Eyes from my youth, this is also the most popular Snake Eyes from my youth. Snake Eyes has had many costumes over the years -- as I'm sure this blog entry is showing -- but this is his best-known, with his very distinct visor covering his eyes. And also, he comes with his pet wolf Timber. This is the one I wanted when I was kid. It's not the one my brother and I shared though...that one came, like, two costumes after this one.

I think I've blogged about these before...Hasbro's comic packs. They started doing it with G.I. Joe, and it was so popular, they started doing it for Star Wars action figures, too. What it is, is you get a reprint of a very famous G.I. Joe comic book. And the two action figures in the pack are designed and painted to look exactly as they do in that comic. So, of course, when I saw the Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow comic pack, I had to snap it up. The comic book that's enclosed is the legendary G.I. Joe #21...most commonly referred to as "the silent issue." There's no dialogue in the comic. Just wordless action. Sounds like a perfect way to do a story on the silent Snake Eyes.

And of course, the logical extension of the comic packs is the DVD packs. You get a DVD containing some episodes of the original cartoon, and a set of 4-figures, all done up to look exactly as they do in the cartoon. You'll have to forgive me...I don't know why Blogger's gone screwy and decided to upload the picture sideways. The episodes on this DVD are the entire 5 parts of The MASS Device, the mini-series that launched the G.I. Joe cartoon. In this 4-pack, we've got Radioactive Snake Eyes, a Cobra Trooper, the Baroness in her SCUBA gear, and Stalker with his jetpack.

So, in case you've never seen The MASS Device, you're probably wondering why Snake Eyes is radioactive. And why he's radioactive is why this figure has glowing orange feet, arms, and face. So, in The MASS Device, Cobra is holding the world hostage with...the MASS device, a teleportation machine. To combat this, G.I. Joe rescues the scientist who developed it and builds their own MASS device. But, the device is powered by three ultra-rare elements from all over the globe. With their new MASS device, and with Cobra's MASS device out of fuel, G.I. Joe and Cobra are battling each other across the globe to gather the three ultra-rare elements.

One of those ultra-rare elements is a radioactive crystal from a mine in the Arctic. G.I. Joe is in the middle of gathering the crystals, when Cobra attacks, and Snake Eyes is sealed in the mine and thought to be dead. However, Snake Eyes does eventually find a way out of the mine, and with the crystals in hand, begins his trek across the Arctic. However, his experience has left him with some minor radiation sickness, and they symbolize this in the cartoon by giving him a glowing red aura...hence the orange highlights on this figure. Snake Eyes is found by Timber, who gets the attention of a blind Inuit hermit, who rescues Snake Eyes and nurses him back to health. And a nice little added touch: one of his accessories is the canister containing the radioactive crystals.

And that's it! That's all the Snake Eyes I have in my collection. I think I'm good enough now with Snake Eyes to appease my inner child.

The Wolverine Trailer

2013-03-29T14:05:00.000-06:00

So here I am, chillin' out with my pants off, because I have curtains in my apartment now so I can do that, when I get a Facebook message from my cousin. "Hey, I may have missed it," says he, "but what did you think of the trailer for The Wolverine?" And it occurred to me that I hadn't blogged about it yet, so I should, because that's kind of my thing.

The latest in the long and storied X-Men franchise comes out this summer, The Wolverine, following the solo adventures of everyone's favourite Canadian mutant, once again played by Australian Hugh Jackman. I was thinking about this the other day...Wolverine has essentially become Jackman's James Bond. I can't think of any other franchise that's kept the same actor for the same iconic character for so long. And not bad for a guy who kind of stumbled into it. As has been well documented now, Bryan Singer's first choice to play Wolverine in X-Men all those years ago was Russell Crowe, but Crowe passed. Then, Singer hired Dougray Scott, but he was playing the bad guy in Mission: Impossible II, and when filming on that one went long, Scott had to pull out. So it was down to #3 choice, Hugh Jackman, who was still primarily known in Australia as a song-and-dance man. Jackman accepted the role, it turned him into a global superstar, and the rest is history.

In a way, this particular film has been a pet project of Jackman's. Ever since he accepted the role of Wolverine and began researching the character, he's been dying to tell the tale told in the epic 1982 Frank Miller mini-series about Wolverine settling down in Japan, adopting the code of the samurai, and finally finding inner peace. But, of course, Wolverine always seems to run into trouble and he gets caught in the middle of ninja battles and yakuza wars. And before you know it, Wolverine is once again proving that he's the best there is and what he does, and what he does isn't very nice.

Getting this particular Wolverine adventure to the big screen took some doing. The always knew they wanted to do it as a sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but when the reaction to that film was kind of "meh," there was some doubt about continuing with Wolverine's solo franchise. But people still love the character, so they went ahead and started developing the sequel. Jackman brought in his old buddy Christopher McQuarrie to write the script. McQuarrie, of course, is Bryan Singer's longtime writing partner, who scripted The Usual Suspects and Valkyre. And for a director, Jackman asked another one of his buddies...Darren Aronofsky, who directed The Wrestler and Black Swan and, where Jackman met him, The Fountain.

But, that kind of fell apart. They wanted to film it on location in Japan. Makes perfect sense. But, filming on location in Japan would have taken Aronofsky away from his young family for about a year, and he didn't want to do that. So Aronofsky pulled out. And then the tsunami hit Japan a couple years ago, and that kind of frightened the producers away from filming in Japan. So the search was on for another for a new director and a new location. Much like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, they finally settled on filming in Jackman's homeland of Australia, and for a new director, they got James Mangold, who directed the Oscar winners Girl, Interrupted (the film that made Angelina Jolie a star) and Walk the Line (the Johnny Cash biopic).

So, the film itself. In the official plot description we've been given, they tell us it takes place after X-Men: The Last Stand. After the events of that film, he's been walking the Earth, finding himself, when an old figure from his past invites him to Japan. Where's the line that the studio handed out that's incredibly cheezy: "Vulnerable for the first time, and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel, but also his inner struggle against his own immortality, emerging more powerful than ever before."

Jackman, of course, is back as Wolverine. Japanese model Tao Okamoto plays Mariko, the beloved that Wolverine settles down with. Will Yun Lee plays Wolverine's Japanese enemy, the Silver Samurai. And, the trailers have confirmed it, Famke Jansen puts in a cameo as Jean Grey.

I know people were kind of worried about this, because, well, the film comes out this July, and we're only getting a trailer at the end of March. The fact that they were holding off for so long really started making people think that the film is going to be crappy. Well, let's take a look at and see.

Well, let's get back to my cousin's original question, shall we? What did I think of it? My reaction is somewhat...well, I'm underwhelmed. I'm looking at this trailer and going, "Meh." I'm just getting a real, "Been there, done that" vibe from this trailer. It's not getting me fired up. Looks like, for the plot, we're getting the whole "Hero loses his powers, and finds that he's still a hero without them" trope that we saw in Spider-Man 2 and Superman 2, and most other superhero sequels.

So, yeah. I'm just not feeling it with this one. But I'll still probably check it out, because I'm a sucker for all things superhero.

The Wolverine hits theaters July 26.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King -- Extended Edition

2013-03-28T00:30:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly ramble about one of the many DVDs in my collection. Today, we finally finish of the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings with The Return of the King. This entry is originally dated August 5, 2012.

I remember when Titanic first hit home media formats. People were wondering if it would sell well. As one critic pointed out at the time, when movies get too long, people can't pop them in the VCR to kill a few hours. You've got to start setting aside a whole day to watch them. Which was my original attitude going into the 4+ hours of the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. But then I remembered what Peter Jackson said when he made these extended editions. The beauty of home media is you can pause it, go about your business, and come back to it later.

So I decided to split up The Return of the King over two days. Watched part 1 (aka the first disc) on Saturday night, and part 2 (the second disc) on Sunday afternoon. Probably the best way to do it.

Like with the other two in the trilogy, I won't recap the plot. If you read this blog, odds are you've already seen it and remember it for yourself. Besides, with so many kingdoms and soldiers and everything having fancy titles and names in both English and Elvish, I find I get confused a lot. So I just kick back and focus on the large, epic battles.

But of course, this being the extended editions, my eyes were looking for the new scenes that were added. Of course, early in the film we get the most famous deleted scene, the final confrontation with the evil wizard Saruman. I don't know why they had to cut this out...I'm sure there were folks in the theatrical editions who would have seen it, and with some trimming in other areas, it would have been a fine addition to the theatrical version.

As always, it's the little character moments that they added that I noticed. When Pippin offers his service to Denethor for the death of Boromir, he's presented with some armor to wear. Added in was a nice little moment between Pippin and Faramir where Faramir reveals that it was his armor when he was a child. It's a nice little scene that forms a friendship between them. And later in the film, when Pippin is fighting to save Faramir from being burned alive by an insane Denethor, you see that Pippin is fighting to save his new friend.

Man...Denethor is just bat-shit crazy, isn't he? Mad with power, mad with hopelessness. When the forces of Mordor first start attacking Gondor, he starts loosing his shit and telling everyone to run for their lives and they're all doomed...dude was just crazy, man.

Another scene that was re-incorporated was when the forces of good launch their assault on the Black Gate to distract Sauron and give Frodo and Sam a fighting chance. In the theatrical version, the gate opens and Sauron's armies come and they just start fighting. In this extended edition, "The Mouth of Sauron" comes out first and they negotiate a bit. I only remember a big deal being made out of this scene because I was still reading ToyFare magazine, and when they made an action figure of the Mouth of Sauron, they were all, "OH MY GOD! A character from the extended editions made it to action figure form!"

And there was more stuff with the undead army. Love that undead army.

And it was good to see my favourite parts again. I still think Minas Tirith is one of the most amazing castles put to the big screen. And I still enjoy it when Eowyn slays the lead Nazgul.

Nazgul>> No man can slay me!

(Eowyn removes her helmet, revealing she's a woman.)

Eowyn>> I am no man!

Such a cheesy action movie line and moment, but it works.

I'm glad they didn't add more endings, though, for this extended edition. The ending still extends way too long.

But other than that, still a good flick.