[and it's down...]
youtube link via mr. heilemann, crap video taken at nerd prom, full-screen that bastard for full effect.
it’s a spectacularly bad version, and still, even in grainy one tenth of a youtube file vision, i’m already there opening day.
and buying all the action figures. and hoping like hell that the video games are worth a damn.
ironically i was just today looking up the wall:e games on gamespot. apparently the 360 and ps3 versions are gorgeous but vapid, while the ps2 and psp versions are superfun. and the ds version looks clunky and reviews poorly but i like the look of it anyways. maybe when it’s cheap?
best movies of the year? i don’t see any upcoming contenders on my list. maybe quantam of solace, but i doubt it’ll be as solid as royale.
the day the earth stood still looks great, except keanu is acting really wierd and stilted and kind of off, even for keanu. and he looks a little round in the face? i can’t quite figure it out. but it looks amazing otherwise, and i’m sure he’ll be as fine as ever. giant spherical spacecraft? fuck yes.
watchmen on the big screen is infinitely better than on youtube. the details are ridiculous. i cannot wait for that.
was hoping for a new star trek teaser, probably in front of the day the earth stood still. or clone wars. speaking of, new trailer for the clone wars? awful. i think the movie is going to be cool, but you wouldn’t know it from that trailer.
so, the dark knight. intense. relentless, even. the escalation was amazing. right when any other movie would have ended, nolan ramped things up yet again for the final act.
i can’t even imagine doing another without heath ledger as the joker.
wall:e was absolutely amazing, but in such a completely different way than the dark knight, they’re not even comparable. it should be in the running for best picture, instead it’ll sweep best animated. at least they’ll both get to win.
i wasn’t expecting iron man to be my number three for the year.
Future Tents
Despite whatever eased into the ether regarding what we’re working on at Bungie, speculative hunches and guesswork certainly don’t tell the full tale. I’d go so far as to say these ramblings are barely even a Prologue, not even a Foreword to the storybook we’re putting together. Rest assured, there are multiple machinations afoot at Bungie, one is so close you can feel its familiar warmth on your cheek while you sleep; another so far off and foreign that like a faint star in deep space, you can only look to the heavens as its light speeds ever closer.
Lo, there is still another.
while i like they way they manage to word their carefully constructed non-news, seriously, motherfuckers, listen; this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of radical transparency. and how the hell is bungie consistently able to pull this off?
i’m not even talking about this. news was going to be announced, wasn’t. this could be lame, but at the end of the day, no change in status quo. except that they gave us a totally rad new map for free last week. so we’re actually coming out ahead.
but the elaborate secrecy in the weekly updates runs counter-productive to a heavy web presence. it runs counter to the purpose of even having a weekly update.
valve doesn’t have a blog. valve doesn’t have a front-end focused on valve games that promotes discussion of valve gameplay and news within the gigantic valve fan-community. consequently, when valve doesn’t tell us anything, we don’t even notice.
bungie not only doesn’t tell us anything, but goes out of their way to tell us that they aren’t telling us anything.
it’s also important to remember that since the release of halo shot bungie into the highest echelon of popular game developers, they’ve used their vast powers to deliver two products upon the masses, and one of them was halo 2. so there’s still that lingering doubt that their oblique whispering is just more smoke and mirrors.
so i’m inspecting a fascia (bumper cover) that’s come in from out of town, looking for damage because the box was kind of trashed.
ick, i think, as i run my hand over some thick webbing. i turn the part over, then drop it back on top of it’s box and step back as i spy three things in rapid succession.
the spider is still in there, hanging out on a bit of web where i was about to put my hand.
it’s a pointy mean looking jet black number.
with a red >< hourglass on the underside.
fuck! i’ve never actually seen one. i was going to try to catch it in a jar or something, but realized there was no way i was going anywhere near it. so i knocked it onto the floor with a stick and smashed the hell out of it.
i’ve inspected hundreds and hundreds of panels and parts in the four years i’ve been here. god. i could have been killed at practically any moment.
[there's actually a debate right now over whether the brown recluse or the hobo spider are actually dangerous or even particularly venomous, but the black widow is still a potentially lethal little bastard.]
you do! quickly. before they take it down.
[update - 9:24pm]
and we’re done. no surprise there.
(it is, of course, still up. once they pull this one, someone else will upload it and so on until the official release tomorrow? they should just stick with ‘officially’ leaking things onto youtube, it’s more immediately accessible than a 90 meg quicktime file…)
it looks amazing. the owl-ship, doctor manhattan, rorschach… solid. completely solid.
flipping through the trade at the shop today, recognized several panels that i’d seen in the trailer. had to buy it.
ron moore’s serenity, joss whedon’s farscape, jj abrams’ caprica.
or, ron moore presents ds9 stage two: this time i can do whatever the hell i want.
outlander, wherein an alien bounty hunter recruits eighth century vikings to help him kill a ‘dragon’.
i’m shocked that this isn’t a scifi original, that it has a budget and a decent name cast. and looks good! like pitch black good. a nice little scifi action piece.
not sure about jim caveziel as the lead, don’t know him that well. and frankly, while i can get behind vikings all being white people, because, hey, you know, vikings. still. would it have killed them to include even a single woman in the main cast? or any other ethnicity?
i mean, why not cast a black man as the alien? or better yet, a black woman. that’d play nicely against expectations. they could call her a valkyrie and grudgingly accept her aid after she’d kicked the ass of their biggest and best warrior.
denzel is past that phase of his career (virtuosity), sam jackson or will smith would have overwhelmed the material. vin diesel or antonio banderas would have fit nicely.
or michelle yeoh. or angela bassett. or gina torres.
anyways. that it exists at all is still pretty great. looks like a mashup of brotherhood of the wolf (the big bad monster, traps, hunters), the 13th warrior (lone outsider joins a band of medievial warriors against an unspeakable evil), and army of darkness (monsters show up in the middle of internecine conflict, both sides must band together in the end to defeat the mutual enemy).
ron perlman is in this, i’m guessing the bald viking in the woods in the trailer. i’m calling it right now, without even researching this, he’s eric the red from army of darkness. he’s the leader of the ‘enemy’ viking group from the one our alien hero lands in, and they have to get his help by the end to defeat the monster.
from wikipedia:
Tureaud worked as a bouncer after he returned from the army. It was at this time that he created the persona of “Mr. T.” His wearing of gold neck chains and other jewelry was the result of customers losing the items, leaving them behind at the bar/night club after a fight, or being removed from the place. A customer would not have to re-enter or even have to see anyone else again if Mr. T wore their jewelry as he stood out front. When a customer came back, their item was readily visible and available with no further confrontations required. Often, the “former” customers did not return. Mr. T thus built up a large collection and earned a reputation for wearing lots of gold neck chains and bracelets.
very interesting article in the new yorker about a schism in the evangelical movement.
essentially, the hard religious right and their implied and acknowledged marriage to the republican party has led to an image of the ‘average’ evangelical as ‘i hate abortion doctors and the gays and i love the bush administration so so much but i don’t believe in evolution or global warming or anything outside of america being important’.
and a growing number of more moderate evangelicals are getting tired of being assumed to be associated with that. so they’re speaking out in favor of other issues. such as fighting global warming. to preserve god’s creation. and to prevent the possibility of horrible consequences for the very poorest nations, as a result of the inaction of the richest.
… the movement’s leaders are theological conservatives who share the concerns of the religious right about sex outside of heterosexual marriage, the preservation of the family, and abortion. However, many leaders, such as Hunter, oppose government coercion on issues of private morality, and all have what Gushee calls a “consistent pro-life agenda”—one that accords with Catholic social teachings on war, poverty, and human rights. Moreover, they lack the cultural attitudes descended from the fundamentalist resistance to modernist thought, such as a distrust of science, a rejection of institutional solutions to poverty, and the notion that evangelicals are the saving remnant of Christianity and the American tradition. Religious-right leaders have perpetuated these attitudes and done their best to see that evangelicals continue to regard themselves as an embattled subculture. The new leaders, however, embrace pluralism. Unlike the right, they don’t engage in partisan politics, but many of the policies they espouse coincide with those of the Democratic Party. What they aspire to is nothing less than an end to the culture wars and the polarization of American politics.
to my list of shows not returning until january of next year, at least, add doctor who, which is offline until 2010 on the bbc. steven moffat is busy writing some tintin movies, having been hand-picked and wooed with promises of no studio interference by spielberg himself.
which makes me somewhat more excited about the tintin movies, at least.
gives me a couple years to get caught up on seasons two three and four. not to mention the other eight doctors. there was a movie at some point, i presume a tv-movie, with peter cushing as the doctor. since all i know him from is tarkin and a few bits of vintage hammer draculas where he played van helsing, that’d be interesting to see.
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