The Batman

Just finished up the Season 1 Disc 2 (they sent me 2 before #1), and I'm pretty impressed. I've liked the episodes I've seen, and so far there really hasn't been a bad one at all. I still don't like Joker's character design, and Mr Freeze's origin is not nearly as good as it was in the previous Batman: TAS, but it was serviceable. I loved the Catwoman intro episode, and I hope the use her more later on.

In general, I've liked their reinterpretations of various characters and the slightly deeper relationship between Bruce and Alfred than you usually saw on TAS. The fourth production cycle should be starting fairly soon and I'm curious as to which Robin design they're going to go with. Batgirl has been handled very well so far, so I hope they do as good a job with Dick as they did with her.

Editing

I'd like a wider layout that this one, but the custom graphics that make Rounder useful would have to be redone. What I'd like is a decent style sheet editor, but I haven't found one so far. I hate dealing with style sheets in Notepad, too.

King of the Seas

I was anticipating Aquaman, Sword of Atlantis, for several reasons. I've always liked Aquaman but the directions they dragged him through over the past ten years have just left me cold. I'd pick up the occassional issue that featured Tempest/Aqualad in it, but that was about it. So I was pretty excited about a reboot under One Year Later, especially since Buseik was doing the writing. So far, Busiek can do virtually no wrong in my book. I liked the idea because it gets a new person into the orange-and-green, and has more of a sword-and-sorcery quality to the title than a straight superhero book.

I was pretty underwhelmed but a lot of that was due to the art. Really, this guy is not the artist I'd have chosen for a major relauch of a title. Arthur is like 23 and while Guice did a decent cover the interior art is pretty bad - he makes the character look like he's 35 and been working in a coal mine most of his life. The script keeps referring to the new Aquaman as 'boy' and the 'boy' looks like he could kill a bar-full of Jersey bikers. Eh. I'll give it a couple more issues and see what develops.

More HeroClix

I oicked up some more Heroclix. This time, stuff from the new Armor Wars set for Marvel. I ordered the individual figures online for less than half what I'd pay for a single booster set, and now I have all but two or three I want. There are a lot of Unique figures in the set that are nice, but no way am I paying for them. I just cherry picked what I wanted, though I will certainly go back and order more Titanium Man figures: they are perfect for the Steel Corps, a power-armored criminal group in my M&M world.

Scott Kutz over at PvP also put up a cool link: they're looking for a new set idea, and one is an Indy set for Invincible, one of my favorite comics, period. Hopefully they go with that.

Movies Seen

I finally got around to seeing Fargo, and it was a wonderful movie. I love films where the outcome is a result of a slow inevitable slide caused by circumstance and chance combined. Lundegaard's surprise as the parking lot deal falls through, his utter ineptness at crime, his slowly being overtaken by whatever scam he's tried unsuccessfully to pull over on his father in law.. wonderful. Maggie, though, is the great character here. No wonder the actress got an Oscar for her performance. She's just doing her job, going about the steps, and it just feels like real police work as well.

I've been on a trend of watching some larger, more mainstream movies that I missed in the theaters or have since heard good things about. Ocean's Eleven falls into that catagory. I've never seen the original, but this was a good, slick film with a cool plot and a very nice execution. Brad Pitt does a nicely understated role when he's not the star of a film. He did the same for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and True Romance.

I'd heard a tremendous amount about Falling Down, and always meant to rent it sooner than I did. It was a darn fine film, but suffers a bit from what I think of as misrepresentation. I'd always gotten the feel that life had simply beaten D-Fens down until he snapped and there was a major thead of the film: that anyone could go nuts if enough pressure were applied to them. Not really like that, but it does involve him reaching his breaking point. It's a really good film and I'm glad I finally got around to seeing it.

Suicide Club

If this is not the most fucked-up movie I have ever seen, it ranks second. It's horrific, disturbing, bloody as hell and just shows that the Japanese don't pull any punches when it comes to bringing out the weird and bizarre.

After 54 high-school girls simultaneous jump in front of a subway train and two nurses just decide to walk out of their office windows, police discover a chain of sewn human skin with over 200 peices to it. Suicides rock the city as normal people with no past history just decide to kill themselves, seemingly on a whim.

Check it out. If the House of Blue Leave sequence in Kill Bill left you queasy, don't bother. There is more blood in this film than in any ten slasher pics.

Game Spot

I started the Pacific City blog to put down some ideas for my superhero campaign. No, I did not draw any of those pictures.

Ahem

We interrupt our regularly scheduled movie, comic, book and gaming posts to bring you this special announcement.

The very next person that puts a comment in the blog that is nothing more than spam for cell phones or whatever, I will personally make it my goal to find your real-life self, drag your spamming ass out into the back parking lot, bend you over some old bums fire barrel and strip the skin off your miserable body using only a spiked bicycle chain and a blunt cheese grater. Hopefully you will live long enough to beg whatever hellish gods you suckle on to grant you death, before I set you on fire and watch your exposed fat bubble like pork rinds.

Now I guess I have to learn how to filter comments and such, or whatever this service allows you to do.

Movie Reviews

I finished up The Assassin (special edition) and Planetes, Disc 1.

The Assassin was pretty good, with some minor wushu effects and a good cast; it's a normal 'assassin who kills because he has no reason to live finds a reason, turns his back on his profession and is hunted by his former employers' storyline, but done competently well and, ususual for the genre, has a happy ending. The evil cheif eunuch is great; you think he's some old pampered idiot until a group of assassins tries to kill him and he destroys them with casual ease by ripping their hearts out with his bare hands. B.

Planetes is a fantastic anime. I have seen the manga and I was very impressed by it; I might actually have to pick it up now. This is one of the few shows that I've thought would do very well as a live action show. Set in 2075, it has plausible technology (no giant robots or psychics, physics is real and dangerous, space is silent) and nicely done characters though Tanabe's idealistic viewpoint and sometimes obscure reasoning make you want to put her over your knee until you finally realize what her motives in a scene really are.

From the review: ...Over the course of the century that humanity has expanded into space in near orbit, an immense amount of junk has been left up there from repair kits to satellites and other craft. All of these objects, from the biggest piece to the tiniest screw, pose a threat to everything else out there as they on average have a traveling speed of eight kilometers a second. One accident happened back in the 2060's where a tiny screw traveling along hit a suborbital jet and destroyed it completely. In the interim, ships like that beefed up in their armor and other protective measures but all of the main satellites out there in low earth orbit had to start bringing new programs into place that would handle all of the debris. And like any department, they're just as underfunded and often thought of as second class to everyone else. A+

Movie Reviews

Last night, I watched King's Guard and Sword of Doom. King's Guard was almost utterly unwatchable. I didn't even bother fast-forwarding through it all. It might be fun for the little kids. Sword of Doom on the other hand... wow. While not in the league of Kurosawa's films, it's a tight, nice little black-and-white Critereon Collection film about a doomed swordsman who forsakes the path of honor for expediancy and pays the price. He falls in with a band of common assassins and thugs, and continues the spiral downward. He's a total sociopath, caring only for his skill with the sword since that's all that is left to him.

The great Toshiro Mifune has a role as the head of a sword school and shows everyone else how it's done: there is a scene where the assassin gang + our 'hero' Ryunosuke are going to kill a rival. The rival is protected by Mifune's character, though. The assassins make a mistake, follow the wrong pallanquin and wind up facing this master swordsman instead of the fat lord. He stands down 20 men and berates them for their lack of courtesy in admitting they made a mistake. The leader of the assassins doesn't want to admit it, and Mifune cuts them down like wheat, all except Ryunosuke who stands and watches the man's technique. At the end Mifune leaves the assassin leader alive, which is the worst most shameful thing to do to the leader, and gives Ryunosuke a brief lecture, ending with 'Evil mind. Evil Sword'. That's when Ryunosuke begins to realize what he's done with his wasted life and begins the downward spiral of madness that ends with him fighting like 50 guys in a burning courtesan house.

The only real problem is that, like most Toho fioms of the period that I have seen, it just ends in mid-action. Not too bad, but it also leaves unresolved a couple of major plotlines I really wanted to see taken care of. I really, really wanted to see him duel Hyoma and see if Hyoma's tsuki thrust was really the counter for Ryunosuke's 'cruel' style.

Waited For The Trade

I've been waiting on a few trades and hardbacks to come out. This week I put Absolute Hush in the Amazon wishlist, joined by the Identity Crisis hardback, Superman: For Tomorrow 2, and Green Lantern: Rebirth - some of which isn't out yet. So far, I'm looking at putting up the Young Avengers comics up on eBay, because their hardback comes out in October. The Golden Age Torch masterworks book comes out soon, so I'm hoping that Barnes and Nobles will get it in paperback due to their exclusive deal.

The next thing to hope for and probably get will be a Gravity trade; I'm hoping the series has done well since I'm enjoying it; it seems to have gotten good reviews. Things really hit the fan in Greg's personal life this last issue, so things really can't get worse for him as a superhero. Well, yeah, they really can. Poor guy.

Click!

I picked up the new Heroclix Icons started set and one booster today. The game store here won't be ordering any more new ones since the ones they have are not selling, and the eBay store I like to use doesn't have them yet. So.. I got the starter set, which comes with a visible preselected set number of figures, and they were all ones I wanted: Batman, the original Robin, Man-Bat, Joker, Harly Quinn, and Hawkgirl (that last is a bit odd.. why not another Bat-villain or ally?). I got a single booster just on the off chance I'd get something good and picked up Superman, Wonder Woman, Cheetah, and Beast Boy; I traded WW to the store owner for an extra Tim Drake Robin he had, and thus got like 75% of all the ones I want from this run all in one blow. Not too many I want from this set, really. Luthor, Scarecrow, and Ra's al-Ghul will do it for me from this set; I'd like the Flash one, but he's a unique figure so he's out of my price range. Maybe in a year or two when people are begging to dump the things. I could do with some more Man-Bat figures, though. They would make a good fantasy monster and I can use them for the superhero game as well; the city has a colony of vampires that like prowling in man/bat hybrid form.

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Early reports say that Threshold was pretty bad. I didn't see it and likely never will because it's on Friday nights, but I still have hopes for Surface, which starts this Monday. And, yay, back-to-back Justice League Unlimited tonight with the new season premiere. Apparently it's going to run back-to-back for awhile. Teen Titans should start next week, I hope.

Mutant Mania

Mutants and Masterminds Second Ed went up for pre-order today; all indications are that the book hits the warehouse next week and ships around the end of September. I did really well in some eBay sales so I decided to splurge a bit and buy everyone in the gaming group their own copy.

The current GM said he was getting ideas for a new campaign, a much more four-color one. I like that idea a lot. I'll probably restart mine as well once I redo all the info I lost in the HD crash last year.

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In addition to fooling with Blogger, I started looking at Wikipedia. Several people have made mention of creating a campaign Wiki and the idea is starting to sound very appealing. I played with it today, adding an entry for Color Kid of the Legion of Substitute Heroes. Interesting. I could make an encyclopedia-like site with stats, pics, history, etc and I could edit it from any PC as inspiration struck. People in the campaign could similarly update their characters.

First Post

Well, I'm going to give Blogger a try and see if it's what I might want to move to at some point. I like LiveJournal, but I also like the look of Blogger as well. If nothing else, I can create more free blogs to do for various interests, like fiction, or to use as in-character blogs for RPG's.