Howls at a blood moon
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jon_a_ross' LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | | 3:40 pm |
| | Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 6:49 am |
Good Ship Chronicles and other things to suggest
http://www.goodshipchronicles.com/A webcomic by Tauhid R. Bondia. I quite enjoy his work with sterotypes to make them into interesting characters on a sort of 'reality TV show' set in space on a ship of rejects humour strip. He does tend to take long breaks from working on the strip, but those aside the work itself is very solid and quite enjoyable. http://www.nuklearpower.com/atomic-robo/Not actually a webcomic, but instead the work of writer Brian Clevinger (of www.nuklearpower.com fame) and a very talented team of artists from Red 5 comics. They take two fisted pulp action and mix in some very clever writing to end up with an amazingly strong product. ("Did you hear that?" "No." "That's because it's ninja's, Run!") Two short stories are free to read online at the link above, two graphic novels are already out and they are about half way through the 3 series. I had more but time is not my ally and I must away. | | Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | | 6:37 am |
Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series
Have you ever read one of those Yu Gi Oh Fan Fics where the author clearly has no friggin clue about story structure whatsoever, and they end up making me and the pharaoh long lost brothers, and then they completely forget to stick any card games into the plot? If so then you'll find X-Men Origins: Wolverine to be extremely familiar territory, as it plays out precisely like a fanfic gone horribly wrong.
—Yami Marik of Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series I know nothing else about the series but I now have a strong urge to find it. The Japanese english subbed version, as another quote found on TV-tropes gives the Japanese version the lines Why don't you just kill him instead of playing these #$#&%@ cardgames?
Because the Bastards would just censor it. It seems self aware enough that I can get into it and feel some enjoyment from the show. | | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 7:10 am |
| | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 11:05 pm |
Transformers 2: Lowering of the brain-stuff thing.
Short from review: Directing sucked much like Star Trek for the same reasons -- Camera moving all the time, short cuts no time to 'act' and CGI consuming much of the screen that wasn't taken by the shapely co-star and brief love interest. Acting was bad, our young stars are not given time to act but instead are 'cut to and show this emotion and cut away' and they are not able to transmit emotions in those brief seconds. Noticed the safety gear on some of the stunt double shots, not sure if that was laziness or they just didn't think anyone would be looking for it. Plot was as full of holes as anything else put out by Bay. The sort of holes that leave a thinking man going 'Really? That was their answer? How come this much smarter, simpler and easier answer didn't occur to them?' Enjoyed it more then the first one, more then star trek; but much much less then say Crank or Lock, Stock and Two smoking barrels. ( more going here under a cut for spoilers because I'm ranting until sleep comes ) | | Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | | 6:32 am |
| | Sunday, June 14th, 2009 | | 9:24 am |
Camera, damaged... perhaps fatally.
My poor digital camera has suffered a fall that seems to have knocked the lens out of alignment. The camera will not retract the lens nor display any images on the LCD. It also makes a rather distressing digital beep that speaks to me of fatal error. More on this as it develops ;) Photo humour at it's finest. | | Saturday, June 6th, 2009 | | 10:19 am |
All three cats together
Their has been a fair amount of progress in our house with the cats learning to get along. This was taken in September with Danya having been with us for less then 2 months. And this was Thursday. So they are slowly getting closer. Sure, it's not like Danya is happy to have the other cats on the bed with her... But at least they aren't fighting. | | 7:24 am |
I turn 32 today.
At some point in the early morning hours I made my 32nd transit of the sun. About 1/3 of the time I've been asleep and most likely 50% of the time dreaming in one way or another. I don't really feel like an Adult. It's a common thing for people to say these days, and I have no doubt people have been saying it for thousands of years really. In some ages that means I would be a grandfather by now and looking Death straight in the eye, knowing it was coming for me in the form of a bad winter or a rough harvest. Now it just means I'm a third of the way along my average life expectancy. Of course, as I'm writing this wearing only my shorts on a cold wet rainy day perhaps thinking I'll go on the long side of the age may be a bit hopeful. I also wrote a rant to Adam this morning about how Lucas and the fanboy writers he hires have taken the Star Wars universe and filled it with crap, flash and wizbang flash to appeal to the current generation of kids. I felt every word of it, about how everything that has been added to the old material is empty and flavourless. The reboots on the classics are making them ever more empty and thoughtless. I dare say that a reboot on Robotech will be coming along any month now (as robotech was originally three different tv series out of Japan rewritten in the dub to be a single storyline the fact that Robotech itself has had four movies (that i know of) done in Japan amuses me, the English relaunch will happen soon). All of the reboots bother me for how empty they are. But the question I guess I should be asking myself is how solid were the original works they are gutting to make these new movies of? The superheroes of the 50's and 60's were cheeseball, dough eyed happy tales of Good vs pointlessly stupid evil. Superman, who could never fail, beating evil Russian spies (who often talked with an accent) just by being super. Batman beating up sterotypes and other crazies and sending them back to the madhouse. Mutants facing an uphill battle just like weak kids and minorities in a world of overly simple good vs really stupid evil. Transformers was a show about the toys fighting each other. No more, no less. The fact that the movie based on them seems to be about watching the humans run away from a blue screen or try to read lines of dialogue that are so unnatural to the ear they pain me just says they didn't understand the point. It was empty to begin with, now it is just a different glaze on the emtpiness. Star wars redone forced me to see the movies afresh and I was filled with hate. Hate at the bad acting, the bad dialogue, the back script and the added CGI crap that cluttered the screen and took away from the main action. I couldn't see a movie in all that crap that was worth the love I felt for it. I only loved that empty ball of shit because I loved it when I was Seven. That unreturned Love was pissed on when they didn't keep the writing that gave us Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Both movies I can defend for the writing and dialogue even if the rest of my comments can be transfered. I also often whine about how these new movies are missing the Iconic moments from the earlier hollywood works. The taking the idol off the stand in raiders of the lost ark, or the 'Luke I am your Father' moment of Empire Strikes back. I am fairly sure somewhere out there a kid is telling his parents about how he loved the moment when Spock tells Kirk he is unhappy with Kirk's offer to help save the evil crew at the end of Star Trek (oh spoiler by the by). The scene for me passes without any happiness, being another example of the three second cut style of acting, but to that kid it will become an Iconic moment equal to 'You're all clear kid, now let's blow this thing and go home.' Which is a moment they stole and glued to the Star Trek movie about 2 minutes earlier. And I'm sure that a hero who left our main character just before the final battle returning, coming out of the sun, to give the hero the time he needs to make that last final shot for the win happened before Star Wars. But for me, that moment is the Star Wars 'Let's blow this thing.' Perhaps for my hypothetical kid it will be the enterprise saving Spock and Kick from the black hole. And perhaps that is fair enough. I know I can't go back to my childhood. Robotect has such poor animation that I seriously can't watch the original show anymore without twitching like a Junebug on a frypan. Transformers isn't much better and the dialogue on that show eats at my brain in unnatural ways. When I finally get myself some genetic offspring to raise they will get some of the best aspects of my own childhood. Being read to, and not just books with two sentences a page and a single verb, noun phrase per sentence either. Only you can Save Mankind will be read as soon as they are six or seven. It is a complex book, written for a reader who is about 10 or 12 (I'm guessing) but it has complex layers damn it. The main story about a boy who discovers that the aliens from a space invader type game have surrendered to him and how he is responsable for all of them, and the underlying story about how he is trying to deal with his parents and their rough marriage. Not deep deep layers true, but at least a little more complexity then simple good vs stupid evil. With any luck the offspring will take after Jen and be reading books like Johnny and the Bomb inside large print colourful books in class. And I guess that is another sign I'm 32. I'm talking about raising another generation even after I bitch about how much the current generation growing up being treated like they are stupid. Perhaps my own generation was treated as stupid too. I can't really tell anymore. Oh and I was about seven or eight when the Lord of the Rings was read to me as a child. Even the boring bits at the beginning of book five. Stupid dull gay lovestory hidden in the subtext of a swamp. | | Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | | 9:29 pm |
Deadpool love
I have in the past ranted about how the Wolverine movie was not able to live up to the character of Deadpool, this collection of 10 best moments in deadpool history. Perhaps through them some of you may understand why I wanted the character to be on the screen instead of the plothammer that we saw. Oh and another little bit about the 'gi joe' movie... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4pdy8WfAAYWhich looks about as GI Joe as Halo 3. | | 6:38 pm |
Star Wars Old Republic trailer
http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/deceived-cinematic-trailer?sourceid=ea3719This was posted by my friend Adam, and rather then fill up his facebook post with all my comments on it I've decided I'd start a entry here. First up, my first thoughts posted to Adam, for context: Ok, just watched it the once but: 1) TOO Many Jedi. For crying out loud either they are rare and special (thus only the two in return of the Jedi, father and son plus evil overlord) or they are common as dirt and thus Luke really looks like some sort of force cripple, barely able to walk. 2) Really? These buggers are able to see bits of the future as a warning and they didn't see a cargo bay full of force people smashing in? I know they are not Highlanders and can sense when another is close... Oh wait, they Are like Highlanders and can sense others. ... Read more 3) Boba Fett is now in 22 different movies according to IMDB. He was cool because he was one silent guy who had some fifteen lines between two movies originally. Now he is an over used model and seeing his armour find it's way into everything in this new lucas drivel bothers me to no end. I request that his children, cloned or otherwise, be removed from any future products plus the copywrite to his armour be enforced. All that aside, I'll never buy the game but I would watch other people play it. :) One third thing, I went back to the website to watch the video again and started to read the comments there instead. I should never read comments posted on the internet by people who are mentally and emotionally eight years old. It makes me die a little inside to know that only some of them are the future of this world and yet I would prefer to see it cleansed by fire then give any of them a place in it. And so I want to rant some more. This is for an online world of warcraft style game I understand. (I could be wrong on this, I have escaped the website as soon as I read the comments about messing one's pants in excitement and thought wishing death on morons isn't good for my own health.) But some elements in the trailer bother me. A) Why? I mean why bother? The Jedi are a threat to this sudden attack on the planet and so a strike force is sent to hit the temple. Why are they a threat? At the end of a three minute attack at most the skies over the planet are filled with imperial star destroyers and tie fighters blasting everything that isn't them to bits. What could the 40 or so Jedi that seemed to be picking their noses back at the temple have done in the face of that? Was it more that they were altogether at one time to be struck down? Or is the stupidly high power level given in Star Wars Force unleased in which you grab and pull a Star Destroyer out of the sky with a single Jedi really suppost to be how powerful all of the buggers were? B) Colour coded villianly? If the lightsabre is something that is built by the Jedi at the end of their training to show they are ready to proceed into a full knighthood, why are they so uniform? Is there no space for individually in the shade and construction of the blade? A little longer but thinner blade for one... === Interrupted by life returning 40 minutes later or so === I want to blame the current generation for the problems I have with the Star Wars movies and indeed the whole universe. The need for an instant payoff instead of a build-up as it occurs in movies and in games. The first Star Wars (IV a new hope) starts with a fight in space and then goes to a whiny brat and his family life before escalating to a fight he quickly losses and being saved by a mysterious stranger and then a release of the tension because it is the old man he was looking for. Episode one has no release of tension, instead every seen, every moment has to have a larger instant payoff of visual glory then the moment that came before. There must always be a bigger fish. For me that lack of build and release is vexing, as you stop caring. I stop anyway. I was talking about this unwillingness of the current generation to allow a movie to lay the groundwork for a payoff later on. Ma href=" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/">The Birds</a> came up as an example of that. At least half the movie is basically one guy running away from birds for no readily understandable reason. The payoff comes at the end of the movie for all that build-up. If it was redone by Michael Bay (I joked) we would have petradactal sized birds attacking our heroes in the first ten minutes. Only I find out that a Martin Campbell is in fact remaking The Birds because no new idea is as good as a crappy remake of an old idea. To be fair to him I don't know his work well enough to know if he is going to be willing to respect the original or if I am seeing the birth of another Michael Bay fill plot holes with more CGI until the viewers either choke on it or declare me genius. I am filled with both Rage at the thought and sadness at the need. I dare say that no current 20 year old movie goer would see The Birds on the big screen as it was done. A great movie and one I personally enjoyed, the pacing is very much from the 60's and the shape of the story not all that complex. It could be very easy to gut that puppy and turn it into some CGI monster. The Birds IN SPACE!!! (which had me thinking about some comments I made about so many movie sequals going that way. Wolverine IN SPACE! (2011 I'm betting) Star Trek in Space!! (2011 as well) Harry Potter IN SPACE! (2012) where IN SPACE refers to both moving the characters into an unknown extreme environment (it doesn't need to be actual outer space, which is quite dull) and jumping the shark by adding new characters or bringing back dead old villains (or both!) to do battle once again.) Sigh. I rail against so much of this mindset because I so desperately want it to be better and to be part of the force reshaping it to be Better. Because it can so easily be better. Just stop being a lazy bunch of fucks and solve your plot holes instead of saying 'they'll never notice or even care.' | | Saturday, May 30th, 2009 | | 8:24 am |
| | Thursday, May 28th, 2009 | | 7:16 am |
Call to action, an element missing from most modern movies
Just thinking about this out loud as it were but... I hated the new star wars movies (episodes 1-3) and the newest Indiana jones, star trek and wolverine movies for many many reasons. Joseph Campbell in his book Hero with a thousand faces goes over the importance of the Call to Action and I think that is something I'm missing from these movies. Our heroes are often simple examples of their professions going about their normal lives when they have a call to action that they can either ignore (Hamlet) or jump to (most 80's movies for example). The call to action is something that interrupts and threatens their normal existence. Star Wars (a new hope) has the classic and memorable 'Obi-wan you're my only hope' that sets Luke down the path that leads to him escaping his family farm when it gets destroyed and the rest of the adventure. Raiders of the Lost Ark has the two people from the government waving the bait of the ultimate treasure in front of our Hero and asking if he wants to stop the forces of evil from getting their hands on it. Both of these scenes stick in the mind and are well done. The crystal skull (and to a lesser extend the other Jones movies) skip this by having our hero start already in the action. The characters are pulled in by means beyond their control (kidnapped for Jones and sent by his mother and just tagging along thereafter for Mutt -- Both scenes happen before the movie starts) and we fail to feel why they are undergoing the quest in the first place. Star Trek as well doesn't have the call to action, but instead the characters we know just feel a need to be in the action. No actual call or reason for them to force their way onto the Enterprize, take command of the ship or anything else... Actually I think for star trek that's a lie. Kirk has a call to duty in the form of the old man who dares him to live up to his father's image. So it does have a call to action for one of the characters, the rest however don't have the same justifications. I also didn't remember the call for Kirk at first, suggesting that it wasn't as memorable as the examples above. Hmmm, took a short pause to spell check the above and I remembered that Wolverine has a call to action as well. It is in the shape of our hero's ex-commander saying I found you and want you to join us. He doesn't and his life falls apart and then he goes on a very poorly constructed 'You've lied to me every time I've talked to you but I'll trust what you say this time' plot string. It is looking more and more like my thought that 'That must be what is wrong with these movies' was a false one after all. The Crystal Skull doesn't have it, but the other movies I hated included a weak moment. I guess I just have to return to blaming the bad writing on these movies for why I hated them after all instead of finding a specific weakpoint in the writing. Lucas has forgotten the importance of the call to action for his movies. The newest Star Wars all failed to have a moment of choice for the hero to either take action that will change his world or to stay home. This was in part because his world's had events that happened between the movies causing us to join the action after the choice had been made. Beyond that claim my thoughts were false, which saddens me. Almost as much as the knowledge that I swore I wouldn't see Wolverine or Star Trek and I was taken to both of them, so my wish never to see Transformers 2 or GI Joe may also be as fruitless. | | Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | | 6:29 am |
Another pet chart pick
Hmmm, I'm going to go with the pet chart picker is completely random and then screened by a very bored worker to make sure the pictures are of cats and Dogs. This one was picked out of all my images posted that day to be on the pet chart. (I think the key word for todays pet chart search was 'sitting') http://petcharts.purina.com/Default.aspx?day=2009-5-26 | | Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | | 7:35 am |
out of action for a couple of days.
I'm still getting over the inflection of my lungs by a cluster of alien paracites that laid milky clear eggs in my chest. It seemed the only way to get rid of them was to spent large amounts of time feeling bad about my wife looking after me while coughing up their children into a tissue for later burning. Only now, as I am not yet fully restored, I learn my wife is showing signs of having the same issues starting. This is going to be a fun couple of weeks as we trade it back and forth :) | | Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | | 7:11 am |
| | Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 | | 7:18 pm |
My thoughts on Wolverine the movie
Deadpool spin-off in the works as is the second Wolverine movie, a Magneto movie and a second X-Men Origins: First Class spin-off as well. Sigh. I think that alone speaks to why I had such a problem with this movie. They are selling me the promise of seeing the characters I read about as a youth (and beyond) on the big screen while at the same time ripping out their souls and selling me corpses with someone else speaking lines that they wouldn't. As a pop corn don't think too hard about anything that happens and the chain of events and the choices the characters make it could be one to enjoy. I'm not sure I would've left happy, but at least I wouldn't have left sad and drained. The special effects replace acting in far too many scenes for me. Especially the dropping claws out or growing longer nails... If you were to take a shot each time it happened I'm sure you wouldn't mind the ending. Hell, I don't think I would've made it 30 minutes. Events just happen one after the other in the style of the modern action movie. The action itself ramps up in the amount of secondary damage even if the tension over the characters fails to. The first fights will have only one person injuried and by the end buildings are being blown up in CGI greatness. Some of the scenes thrown in to feed the spin offs look wrong, poorly done and rushed. Seeing the number of threads they were wanting to feed off this movie I can see why. (Spoiler here -- The scene with Professor X looks specially bad when the children run to him, but if you want the next movie to feature Scott Summers and the other first class of mutants you needed the Professor to show up and invite Scott to join Spoiler ends. But if you didn't guess that happened you didn't really follow the characters anyway.) Thus we have a weak super hero movie that shows us a number of mutants based on popularity in the marvel world, not on the likelyhood of being involved in the story. Gambit and Deadpool because they know fans want to see them. Their characters are changed and re-written to fit the story that the hacks turned out instead of having a story with these characters in it. Which is were I start to get mad at the movie. If you change the character to the point that he isn't the same why not change the name too and be done with it? If in the next Batman we get the Riddler who shoots people with a flamethrower and dances on their corpses without saying anything but wordlessly following the orders of Two-face, is he the Riddler? If Deadpool goes from being a 4th wall breaking smart mouthed merc with questionable sanity and morality who was given wolverine's regeneration in an attempt to cure his cancer as part of a Canadian government super soldier program into a build by a shadowly american government silent remote controlled creature with all the powers of all the mutants they were able to capture, is that still Deadpool? I say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Changing the government behind the program from Canadian to American I could except if with poor grace. After all, it was done by the original writers as a logical answer to how would Canada answer Captain America and the American super soldier program. By aiming to have a more lower budget single soldier who would be able to survive in Canada. Wolverine was seen as perfect for that. Over the years and over the re-writes that changed of course, but still the Weapon X program focusing on using a single soldier for national and international defense was the theme. Agent X was the next Weapon X after Deadpool in marvel cannon (as I understand it, but to be fair I haven't read much of Marvel in the last couple of years). I even have a fight between Deadpool and Agent X in a comic downstairs. It was smart, well designed and showcases both characters abilities. None of that flow made it into the movie, with Agent X becoming a shallow evil character who shoots really really well. Deadpool is nothing like his character when he is being called Deadpool and before that he has a couple of scenes that feel close but... not. Deadpool in the comic world wears as a mask, Wade will answer a phone call and if it turns out to be for a contract will leave the phone off the hook until he puts on his mask. (I really enjoy details of Character like that, things that make the characters more rounded even if they are just throw away details.) Wade is the real name of Deadpool for those that don't know. The deadpool in the movie doesn't wear a mask nor talk at all. Which is where I start to lose it really. If you are going to use a character's name and not anything else about the character then please don't use the name either. If you want me to see a Deadpool movie with the piece of shit you dropped into this wolverine movie I'm not going to do it. But I know all too well that it is going to make movie and will sell. I also have the same hate for the Star Trek movie. People are saying 'Fun and action packed but a bit light on the plot' or 'The fast paced action jolt that is given to the Star Trek movie series is just what is needed' are missing the point. If it was a new movie set in the same world with New Fucking Characters then I would be supporting it and even willing to allow it to slip into some PG-13 90210 Trek fest. But they are trying to tell me that these characters are the same ones that will go on to have the adventures I've seen before? Ages and personalities are shifted and changed to fit the demands of the plot, not a plot that fits the characters. The onion did a piece this week that captures my hate and pokes fun at it all too well. http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_filmTrekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'(Huh, while I was looking for the onion piece I see that they are also thinking about a Gambit spinoff. New story, new characters guys. Please.) Oh well. I'm running out of focus and control over my hate for all of this. This is the same thing that I get mad at Star Wars for and most spin-offs and follow ups. Missing the point and adding CGI to cover holes in the plot and calling it good enough. | | 3:22 pm |
Danya picture edited while on the phone
I was on the phone today for an hour, this was up on flickr being edited while I talked as it was not talking the majority of my mental powers to reply to the questions I was being asked. Anyway, enjoy eh? :) | | 2:23 pm |
| | Friday, May 1st, 2009 | | 10:02 am |
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