I Am In Love!

James Gunn continues to work on the upcoming Superman movie and it's still months and months away.

However.

We got some details today and a look at the next iteration of Krypto, the Super-Dog.  I am smitten.

 

I just want to scritch that scraggly pup!

Apparently, Gunn is an advocate for rescue dogs.  This is Adopt a Shelter Dog month, so he shared that the inspiration for Krypto was his own rescue dog.  When they brought their new dog home, he proceeded to destroy their house and made Gunn wonder how much more difficult it would be to deal with if the pup had super powers.  That apparently influenced the script and the direction of the movie.

Now that I've had a look at the pup they cast as Krypto, I'm dying to see what Gunn does with him!  He's scruffier than previous incarnations and I have a feeling that will reflect in his personality.  I can't wait!

PS:

It just occurred to me that the reason I love that dog is that it looks a lot like a dog my neighbour used to dog sit a couple of times a year.  That pup was the best!  So sweet, so friendly and so happy to see me every time I got home and she was out in the yard.
I miss that dog!

So Is Emmy Paying Attention?

Awards shows bore me to tears.  I never watch and haven't since back when Silence of the Lambs was Best Picture.

Still, they sometimes bring attention to stuff that might go unnoticed, so that's a good thing.

This year's Emmys have come and gone.  I think that the timing will be against it, but there's a show airing now that MUST get AT LEAST the Best Make-Up award for 2025.

Somehow, a team of geniuses make THIS work:

 

I've watched 4 episodes and I still can't get my head around it.

Colin Farrell's performance is amazing and he deserves consideration for it.  But the make-up!  

Not once have I looked at the lead character and seen anything but an overweight, scarred, middle-age slob with a limp.  It's like the anti-Farrell.

The show itself is as good as any mob drama I've seen (not my favourite genre) and Farrell's performance as the Batman villain has drawn me in completely.

Those Numbers Are Looney!

I'm currently doing a deep dive into the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons.

I thought my "Golden Collection" was complete, but it's only some 500 or so shorts.  They made 1000.

I don't happen to like the really old stuff and I'm horrified by some of the racist depictions that were considered "funny" at the time.  I'm also running across a LOT of shorts that never ran on the shows I watched in the 70s on tv.  I assume that the racism, alcholism, gun violence (there's a few horrible "funny" suicides that are truly jarring) and/or sexism in certain of the shorts (particularly those from the 40s) were deemed too "adult" to allow them on Saturday morning tv decades later.  

Still, there's a lot to love once you filter out the worst of it.  There are also a more than a few surprises to be noted in what I think of as "the good stuff" which makes up between half and two-thirds of the 1000 cartoons.

One BIG surprise was the number of times the various characters actually show up.  The numbers are generally lower that I expected and in some cases truly, shockingly low.

Consider 1000 cartoon shorts.  Now consider the global popularity of some of the characters.  Just off the top of my head I figured the "main" lead characters would have more appearances that they actually do.

Bugs Bunny, the marquee character, appears in 163 or so.  I didn't count and I'm getting that number from Google.  I mean, that's lots of cartoons, but somehow you'd just expect that he'd been in more like 250 of them or so.

Porky Pig appears in 153 according to the Google box.  He appears in a lot of the early stuff, when the characters were still finding their classic designs and voices, so in my "good stuff" list it's only about 125 or so.

Daffy Duck, 130.  Like Porky, the early Daffy stuff is (to me) not really enjoyable, so again, more like 100 or so.

Sylvester?  103, including 3 that won Academy Awards.

From 1000 cartoons, those 4 characters account for the leads in about half of them.  Not really a surprise, but I still find the totals lower than my Saturday morning cartoon memories would expect.

I was surprised by some of the numbers for other characters.

Elmer Fudd takes on Bugs or Daffy in 71 cartoons.  That seems about right.

60 Tweety appearances seemed low, but considering Sylvester also faces off with Hippity-Hopper the baby kangaroo and Speedy Gonzales, it tracks.

Speaking of Speedy, he appears 58 times, which is higher than I would have thought.  Based on how I remember the cartoons as a kid, I thought there was a LOT more Tweety than Speedy.

When I was a kid, we watched the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show.  Considering he got second billing, it's kind of shocking to see that there were only 49 Road Runner cartoons.  Wile E. Coyote shows up in 5 more where he's trying to catch Bugs and the same character design was used for "Ralph Wolf" in 7 shorts where he's up against Sam the Sheepdog. 

 

Somewhere, Road-Runner is doing a bird seed spit take.

 

Yosemite Sam only appeared in 33 cartoons.  Can you believe that?  Only 33 out of 1000 and yet he's one of the most beloved characters of the franchise, particularly among short-tempered fans and pick-up truck drivers, for some reason.

Foghorn Leghorn was in 29 cartoons.  He wasn't a favourite of mine as a kid, so it seemed like he'd been in a lot more than that! 

Now comes the truly stunning number.

 

Wild turkey surprising!

The Tazmanian Devil.  Insanely popular character, huge global recognition.  He spun (see what I did there?) off into his own show in the 90s, is on shirts, cups, posters, bumper stickers and just about any other place you can print something.

Truly a mascot for the phrase "quality over quantity."

How many times do you think, in all those 1000 cartoons, did he show up?

Take a guess.  If you don't Google it, you'll be wrong.

He's since showed up in more shorts and movies, but from that original 1930 to 1965 run of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, he was in five. 

FIVE.

That just spun me out.

How Did I Miss THIS!

Try to imagine being in a theatre in 1942.  Not so much the theatre itself, but think about the kneelength or longer skirts, uptight about all things sex related, no nudity in film AT ALL, wholesome expectations you would have had of the experience.  Movies in general were, by today's standards, strictly G and PG affairs.

Especially the cartoons.

And yet...

From "The Rabbit Who Came To Dinner," a Bugs Bunny and (very off-model) Elmer Fudd cartoon from 1942 as Elmer tries to get Bugs out of his house:

 

Yep. Elmer Fudd is an art lover.  Nekkid art.

Elmer's got naked lady paintings in his house!  Now I've watched a LOT of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons over the years, but I never saw that!

And in case you think it's a fluke, from the same short cartoon:

 

That's a BUM!

A full moon!  Not a cheeky look at Bugs' furry, always naked anyhow butt under a hillbilly wrap skirt, but a human posterior in its full artistic glory!

Gives a whole new meaning to "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!"

Charlie Hustle's Season Is Over

In a Hollywood-esque piece of serendipity, on the last day of the Major League Baseball season, Pete Rose has died at the age of 83.

If you look at the season as a life and the post season as a Hall of Fame, it sadly lines up.

Sure, Rose bet on games.  

He also played more games (3,562), had more at-bats (14,053), accumulated more hits (4,256) than anyone in the history of the sport and had more than 200 hits in 10 different seasons.  All of those numbers are major league records that have stood since he retired in 1986.  He was named to the All-Star squad 17 of his 24 active seasons as well.

The idea of someone holding 4 significant MLB records for nearly 40 years and NOT being in the Hall of Fame is just silly.

It is long past time for an asterisk section, with all the gory details writ large to make it clear that the inclusion isn't an honour but just an acknowledgement of the facts.

If necessary, open it only to the asterisk players once they die so they cannot collect on the glory, even tainted, of being in the Hall.  Steriods, gambling, criminal activity and more can disqualify a player from the Hall, but none of those things erase a player's dominance during their career.  They might have cheated, but they still DID it.  You can't tell me that Babe Ruth never played loaded (or that he didn't drink like a fish during his career which coincided with Prohibition, making him a law breaker) or that there aren't men who abused their wives and kids in the Hall or a hundred other disqualifications.  The only difference is that they never got caught.  Ty Cobb is in the Hall and by all accounts he was a TERRIBLE human being on a bunch of levels.

Shoeless Joe, Pete Rose and a whole host of steroid era hitters like Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa who aren't technically banned but won't ever be voted in as legitimate inductees were DOMINANT in their day.  That the all-time single season home run record holder, Barry Bonds, isn't in the Hall in some way or other is mind boggling.  How does ignoring the most dominant hitter of an era serve baseball? 

I'm not in any way suggesting that the cheating behaviours be forgiven or glossed over, but the Hall of Fame is a museum of sorts and a museum needs to display the truth.  The truth is, Pete Rose hit safely more times during his career than anyone in history.  Not putting him in the Hall isn't punishing him anymore, it's denying a historical truth.

 

Hall of Fame*? You betcha.

Lost In The Shuffle. As Cool As I Hoped!

A long time ago, I saw a very famous magician live at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Two things are significant. 

1. I annoyed my then girlfriend by pointing out how most of the tricks were done and likely ruined the experience for her.  I'm single for a reason, folks.

2. Turns out that one of the most influential magicians, a guy who a lot of modern magicians point to as the inspiration for the modern, intimate, natural style of magic that most of us are familiar with from stage and screen, was from Ottawa.  I grew up there, so it's always a kick to learn that a local boy made good.  Look up Dai Vernon, he's really cool.  Or just watch Lost in the Shuffle.

 

Magic!

A little history, a little personality, a little magic and a lot of fun.  I won't say it's the best documentary I've ever seen, but it's definitely the best documentary about a possible murder mystery that might just have had clues to its solution embedded in the art of standard playing cards for centuries that I've ever seen.

Talk about hiding in plain sight!

If the theory is true, it's the greatest piece of close up card magic ever done!  

Check it out.  It's worth your time. 

Filed Under "S" For: Stuff I Did Not Know...

...or "Super Hero".

I was only made aware that Marvel and DC Comics  both held a joint Trademark on the term "Super Hero" or "Super Heroes" very, very recently when I read about an effort (apparently not the first) to get the Patent and Trademark people to rescind the trademark as too generic a term.  A company wanted to market "Superbabies" (I have NO idea and nor do I care) as a "team of superheroes" and ran into the trademark issue.

Well, now you no longer have to worry about it.  They won.

Apparently the Marvel and DC people failed to respond to the petition and the Trademark has been revoked.

I'm usually on board with most things that comic book companies want to do to protect their interests, but this one seemed pretty low class to me.  It's a very generic term, thrown around for all kinds of reasons by all kinds of people.  Marketing a character or characters as "super hero" in NO way could ever diminish Marvel and DC's brand.  Perhaps they finally saw just how crappy it was to hold onto it and simply decided to do the right thing.  We'll likely never know.

If the legalese interests you, there's an article for you here.

High Potential

So there's a new show on ABC, based on a French show (that also inspired a Greek show) that is called HSI: Haut Potentiel Intellectuel.

The ABC version of the show is called High Potential.  I love this show so much, it's doomed.

It's another "outsider gets a job as a consultant helping the police" show.  Castle, The Irrational, Monk, Elementary and on and on.  It's a well used trope.  Well used tropes are well used for a reason.

To work, a show like this requires two key things.  A great McGuffin and a great lead to make it work.

1.  Morgan is a single mom with authority issues and an IQ of 160.  Her high functioning brain can't sleep if she sees mistakes, so she winds up fixing a mistake in a murder file she knocks over while working as a night cleaner at the police station.   The technical term (according to the show, I'm not 100% on it) is "High Potential Intellectual" which means you have advanced cognitive, creative and memory skills.

2.  Kaitlin Olson, who I've never heard of or seen in a single thing absolutely KILLS it.  Super charming, yet perfectly believable as someone barely able to manage her life thanks to her obsessive brain, while simultaneously always being the smartest person in the room.

 

This better run for years.

Writing will be key.  It's not enough that they showcase her brain full of facts, they have to keep finding ways for her to tie things only she notices to the things rattling around in her head.  The gruff detective she works with...I'm not sold on yet but he's very "opposites attract" and these shows usually go down the "will they/won't they" road.  So far...don't see it and hope that's the way it stays.

Nothing I like this much usually makes it past the first season, but hey...it's got high potential.

Happy Birthday, Jim Henson!

How I dearly wish he was still with us. Thankfully, his genius lives on through his creations. 

 

 

 

 

B is for Bittersweet.

Moo-Deng. Yep, I'm A Fan.

So unless you only use the internet for e-mail and porn, you're aware of Moo-Deng.

She's a baby Pygmy Hippopotamus in Thailand and has more fans than Taylor Swift.  Or something like that.  She is beautiful, full of life and fun and I love that something so pure and innocent has become a viral sensation.  It gives me hope for us as a species.

And now she has her own AI Generator.  That's right.  You can click this link and create your own AI generated, custom situated Moo-Deng.  It's free to do, but Buzzfeed wants you to post your creation to their comment section.  To do that you need to sign up or sign in.  If you don't want to do that, use the print screen button and paste the screen into your paint or photo program and save your creation that way.

It's nice when the interwebs give us something...nice.

 

Warp speed, Mooster Sooloo.

 

Jedi Master Moo-Deng.  "Moo or moo not.  There is no 'try'."

 

The AI is still...AI.  It didn't know what to do with:

"Moo-Deng riding in the Scooby-Doo van."

Scooby-Dooby-Moo!

As with all AI, it's got limitations.  I couldn't get a 200 foot tall Moo-Deng trampling Tokyo any more than I could get the Scooby-Doo van.  

 

Below is what I got with "wearing a flying helmet and goggles, flying a bi-plane."  AI will never destroy humanity at this rate:

 

 

Geronimooooo!

 

 

Still, there are lots of fun spots she should explore. 

 

Go, have some fun.

 

Update:

 

I took my own advice and went back.  This one is the best of my second visit:

 

 

Giant steps are what you take, walkin' on the moooon. 

PPS:

 

Hufflepuff.  Most definitely, Hufflepuff.

Happy Batman Day!

Hard to believe I almost missed this!

 

 Happy Batman Day!

Enjoy sliding up and down your Bat-Poles tonight.  And may all your enemies be Jokers.

It Does Beat The Alternative...

...but getting old still sucks.

I was helping a neighbour with a little paint project today.  She's in her 80s and I prefer that it's me on the ladder painting her eaves.  Plus, it gets me off the couch, which is not a bad thing. 

So, while we have he ladder out, she graciously allows me to use it to clear out a little ecosystem that's grown up in one of my eaves troughs.

Now this particular gutter is just above the roof of my back porch and I've cleaned it out plenty of times over the years when enough muck builds up that things start growing there, but it's been a few years since I've noticed that it needed tending.  This year, it's trying to grow a whole forest up there.

The back porch has a low slope roof that I've been on a dozen times over the years.  I usually get out there through my little bathroom window, but it's been several years and more than a few pounds since I last did this.  There's at least the fear, if not the real possibility of a Winnie the Pooh situation here.

 

Oh, #%@^& bother.

So I get the ladder up beside the roof, clamber up and put one foot on the roof, ready to lightly hop onto the low slope roof.  I've done this literally hundreds of times in my capacity as a telecom technician.  That one foot gets over there and alarm bells go off in my head.  

Now, usually, it's the other way around.  I usually wind up going to do something that my brain is convinced I can do and it's my body that lets me down.  Not this time.  My aging brain recognized something that is now officially beyond me and flat out refused to let that other foot step off the ladder.  

Roofs are now officially off my "to do" list and on to my "I gotta pay somebody to do that" list.

Getting old sucks.

Am I Blue Two...

Have you ever thought about how other people see colour?  

I remember having my mind blown during a drunken conversation in my twenties about this very thing.  Since I can't see through your eyes, it's entirely possible that you are seeing totally different colours than I am.  What I think of as red might be what you think of as yellow.  Like that.

Now until we can figure out how to see through another person's eyes, there's no way to confirm that hypothesis one way or another, but there are still colour questions that science can answer.

Every once in a while the internet will go a little nuts over a blue dress that looks gold to some people or some other colour dispute.  One scientist has had an ongoing dispute with his optometrist wife about a blanket in their house that he sees as green and she sees as blue.

So, he created the Is my blue your blue? website.  You click the link and pick if the screen you see is green or blue until you get a result.  The whole story is here.

I've taken it twice and I get the same result each time. My green/blue boundary is 177 which is bluer than 78% of the population.  For me, what most people deem "turquoise" looks green.

There's obviously some skewing because different monitors will display the same colour slightly differently, but it's still fascinating.  If you have the ability, I recommend taking this with several people at once, all on the same monitor.  It might not remove the colour skew as a monitor to monitor issue, but you'll be able to see among yourselves who is green with envy and who is boo-hoo blue.

This Will Be A Day Long Remembered

Sad, sad news today.

James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa, the bad guy in Arnold's Conan movie, the glue in Field of Dreams and many, many other characters in cinematic history, has died at the age of 93.

 

Thulsa Doom, Darth Vader and so many more.

Jones' unmistakable voice was one of the first to be licensed for digital reproduction, so in a very real sense, we may well get new performances from him in the future, even though he has died.  I'm honestly not sure how I feel about that.  On one hand, it's nice know that a new Star Wars project can still have the "real" Darth Vader in it, but on the other hand, it really subverts the natural order of life and may take roles away from up and coming actors in the future.

Should you like to see the late, great James Earl Jones in a joyful, fun and not in any way digitally created role, I recommend his turn as the Josh Gibson inspired power hitting Leon Carter in 1976's The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings.  It's a somewhat sanitized look at the lives of (fictional) Negro League baseball players in the late 1930s and it's a very, very good film with Jones, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor and more.  One of my favourite movies of that era, actually. 

So, if you're so inclined, fire up a Star Wars movie, Conan the Barbarian or Field of Dreams and salute the career of one of the all time great actors of the last 50 years.  

Thanks for the memories, Mr. Jones.  With great respect, you shall be mourned.

Blue Eye Samurai, Award Richly Deserved.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This time I have more than my opinion to back it up. 

Blue Eye Samurai was the BEST show of 2023. Not the best animated show, not the best drama, not the best fantasy show, the best show, PERIOD. 

I don't do award shows, but this year's Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program went to Blue Eye Samurai. As far as I'm concerned, it should also win best Drama, but awards programs are notorious category snobs. 

For me, the knowledge that there's a season 2 on the way is even better news than the Emmy.

 

  

Best. Show. Period.

What She Said In Jest...

...in one of those "funny tweets of the week" lists...

Those tweets are never funny by the way.

Anyhow.

One of them struck one of my few remaining nerves.  It was said facetiously but I think it has real merit and as a natural night person, I fully endorse it.

They need to keep museums and art galleries open past midnight.  At 11PM, I'm ready to go do something, but the only option is a bar.  I'm a guy in his 50s.  Bars hold no mystery and less appeal.

Plus, I remember how we looked at the "old guys" in the bar when I was in my 20s.  Yeesh.

If there was an art gallery or a museum open at that time, I'd so go!  I don't want to drink at that hour, or ever, really, but I can see myself checking out some artifacts or great art.  Put a serious "no, this isn't a place for kids to meet each other" cover charge on it to pay the staff.  Sell some nice snacks and drinks at ridiculous prices and I'm a weekly visitor.

Let's get on this.

Vic Fontaine, Singing Off...

Alas, another one of the supporting players in the tapestry of my life has left us.

James Darren, singer, actor, bon vivant, has died at the age of 88.

He had a long and varied career, but to me he will ever be the sentient hologram with a heart of gold and effortless stage presence, Vic Fontaine.  Deep Space Nine went far off the usual script when they added his recurring, swingin' sixties lounge singer and the odd juxtaposition of the man out of time, worldly wise, 1960s Vegas entertainer on an alien space station in the 24th Century just...worked.

The proof is in the I'danian spice pudding.  From the 7th Season episode, Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang, Darren's Fontaine and Avery Brooks' Captain Sisko just...work.

 

The best is yet to come...

Thanks for the memories, James.  You are missed.

Wildlife Photographers of the Year

It's once again time for someone, somewhere, to determine the best wildlife photographer of the year.

Personally, I prefer the comedic version if this competition, but even the "serious" photographs can be stunning, funny and even heartbreaking.

The link to the story is here.  Enjoy.

And what's a post about photographs without...a photograph?

One of the finalists:

 

Me, this week, finding a forgotten box of action figures and Looney Tunes cups.

 

 

Turns Out, It's A Popular Opinion...

A little while ago, I posted this image:

 

Ellie Black and Shallon Olsen consoling French gymnast 

Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos

At the time, I deemed this the most Canadian moment I'd seen at the Olympics.  The Canadians hadn't had a stellar day themselves, but Ellie Black and Shallon Olsen went out of their way to console a competitor from the French team after her disappointing outing.

Fast forward to today and Black has been awarded the Paris 2024 Fair Play award, which is awarded to athletes who "exemplify sportsmanship, the spirit of fair play and respect for others." 

I'll take that over a gold medal in any sport, any damned day of the week.  

My only beef with this is that Olsen should have shared the award, even if she wasn't as hands on as Black.  They both obviously went out of their way to support a fellow athlete during a tough moment, without concern for flags, standings or medals.

Great athletes are fleeting.  Great humans are eternal.  Thank you, ladies. 

Look-ee What I Found!

Waaaay back in the early '90s, KFC ran one of the best promotions a fast food joint ever did.

They sold (gave away?  I can't recall) a set of Looney Tunes mugs to collect and sucked me right in.

I've been digging through a few boxes that got shuffled into a disused closet area in my house back when I first moved in.  I hadn't seen anything in these boxes since at least 2003.

Sufferin' Suckatash!  Look what's been stashed in a closet for 20+ years!

 

Somehow, I still don't have a Tweety.

I picked up Wile E. and Taz back in those days.  I know because I remember carting them around all over the country during my touring days.  I have no idea where or when I picked up the rest, but I'm so glad I did.  They definitely got picked up second hand, since there's a couple of ink stains on Daffy and Bugs and some "no way I did that" scratches on Yosemite Sam's nose and Sylvester's fur.  Still, I'm thrilled that I own them.

I hadn't exactly forgotten owning them.  It's more like I just assumed that they were lost during one move or another and just never made it all the way here.  I'm so, so happy to be proven wrong on that score!

Unless my finances make a miraculous rebound, I can't justify the expense of e-bay-ing a Tweety at the moment, but at least I can display these in my comic book kitchen!

There may also be a Foghorn Leghorn mug, but I will need to do more research to be sure.

I can't believe there isn't a Porky! Th-th-th-that's a fail, folks!

And the lack of a Marvin the Martian makes me very, very angry.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

The trailer made me weepy.

 

  

Not 100% sure I will get through the whole movie without a breakdown. 

Seven year old me is gonna need therapy.

I'm Not Often Excited About A Documentary...

...and even less often when it's not about superheroes, baseball or science. This is one of the rare exceptions. Never heard of this guy, not a big fan of magic or magicians in general but...damn that sounds SO cool!

 

 

It apparently premiered in Toronto this past May at Hot Docs, and will drop on DVD/Blu-Ray on September 10.  No easy to find word on a digital release.

Rest assured, when I watch it, I'll let you know if it's as cool as it sounds.

Scooby-Dooby-Shoes!

This weekend is the "Players Weekend" in Major League Baseball.  The normally conservative League relaxes its rules and lets players play with decorated bats, decorated hats and some unbelievable custom footwear.

Now, I'm not really big on custom footwear and am frankly baffled by those that collect shoes (like I should throw shade on anyone for collecting!) but this I get:

Tarik Skubal, starting pitcher for the Detroit Tigers (nickname: Skub, natch), took the mound wearing these:

 

I would SO wear those.  The cleats would be hell on my hardwood.

Just awesome.

In Four Words...

...describe my brain at any given moment:

 

Nailed it.

Who Watches The Watchmen...Again?

Back when I was really into comics in the late 80s and early 90s, there were two graphic novels (that's the pretentious nerd term for comic book) that were front and centre in the mind of every geek on the planet.

The Dark Knight Returns gave us the darkest, scariest, most serious Batman in a dark, serious, scary and depressing future.  It was so big it influenced Hollywood into putting Batman back on the big screen as a "dramatic" rather than "comedic" property.  You'd have to be living under a rock for the last 40 years to have missed the changes that have resulted.

The other was Watchmen.  Artist Dave Gibbons and writer Alan Moore set out to put a headstone on superhero comic books.  Oh, the irony.

 

So serious.

The book is a masterpiece.  The irony is that it's SUCH a masterpiece that it's intended goal has so totally and magnificently backfired.  Instead of writing the final superhero classic and turning comic books away from men in tights and capes, the genre experienced a massive resurgence, largely due to an influx of writers and artists who were influenced by Watchmen.

At the time, my fellow geeks were of the opinion that Watchmen would and could never see a big (or even small) screen release.  The massive tome was deemed unfilmable.

Fast-forward twenty years and thanks to a lot of geek influence in cinema and the advent of realistic CGI effects, Zack Snyder brings the unfilmable to theatres everywhere.

 

So serious.

Opinions differ, but for my money, Snyder's version is definitive.  All the beats are there, the melody is unchanged, the tempo is faster and yes, he changed the ending.  I'll risk the wrath of a certain segment of fandom and just say, Snyder's ending is actually better and more logical than the original version, at least in my opinion.

Sure, even I would have loved to see the giant squid fully realized in larger than life CGI, but having the patsy be onscreen almost more than any other character was effective and tidy storytelling.

The movie has dozens of shots that are lifted directly from the graphic novel and it's simply an ode to the story, art and genius of the graphic novel from start to finish.

Snyder put a bow on it and it's tough to imagine a more faithful movie could be extracted from the source material.

Fast-forward again, 15 years this time.

Warner Bros has just digitally released Watchmen - Chapter I.  Physical release is due August 27.

 

Seriously?

 

This version is animated.  Honestly, after watching it, the animation is one of the few things that sets it apart from Snyder's live action version.  It's an almost beat for beat animated recreation of what Snyder did and by extension, what Gibbons and Moore did in the first place.

Sure, it's able to effectively juxtapose the story within a story of The Black Freighter with the real time action of the characters.  Snyder wasn't able to include the pirate comic book story in the theatrical version since his film was already pushing 3 hours, but he did get it back into the "Ultimate Cut" physical release, so even that accomplishment is a minor one to hold over the Snyder version.  They do have a nifty way to also get the fictional "biography" of the first Nite Owl in as well, having the actor read part of it over the closing credits.

Still, while the two part format gives them room to stretch and restore a few cutting room floor beats that didn't make Snyder's version, this version just feels empty.  The voice cast is solid, the animation as good as this CG style animation gets and there's a nice "pre-Blade Rnnner" vibe to the streets scenes which I don't recall from the Snyder version, but there's little life and even less real reason to bother going to all the trouble of making this version.  That said, you can bet that Watchmen fans will lap up Chapter II (due sometime in 2025) and use the inevitable inclusion of the giant squid ending to point to this version's superiority.

For me, this version is truly pointless.  I'll add it to my collection for the sake of my inner obsessive, but it's likely I won't revisit it once I've watched my copy once.  It's like someone decided to make a shot for shot animated version of Michael Keaton's Batman or the first Avengers movie.  Sure, I'd put those in my collection and watch them once or twice, but what's the point?

Another Kid Experimenting With Drugs.

The young man in the picture below is Herman Bekele.

Remember that name. 

 

He's humble, but he has a vision.

He might just change the world.

Normally, a kid experimenting with drugs wouldn't be a feel good kind of story.  This time it is.

There's this drug, imiquimod.  Not only is unpronounceable, but it's also used for the treatment of skin cancer.  For the moment it's just used for one type of skin cancer, but it's shown promise against others.

It's usually dispensed as a cream and it's not cheap.

That's where Herman Bekele comes in.  He heard about this drug and wondered if there mightn't be a better, cheaper way to dispense it.  He came up with the idea of putting it in a bar of soap.

It's fascinating and uplifting reading.  I recommend clicking here and checking it out.  

There are still a bunch of hurdles to go before Bekele's vision comes to fruition, but I plan to remember his name.  He's the kind of out of the box thinker that can make big, earth shaking changes.

In Other News...

Sad news out of the sporting world today.

Chi Chi Rodriguez, world famous golf champion, has died at the age of 88.

You might rightly wonder why I'm posting about it.

I don't follow golf and I wasn't particularly a fan of the man or his accomplishments.

So why?

Well, it makes me sad that he died, from a purely human perspective.

It makes me sadder that Les Nessman of WKRP in Cincinnati isn't around to read his obituary.

Sadly Missed.

The Star Trek Universe is a little less bright tonight.

Patti Yasutake, the actress Trek fans will remember as Nurse Alyssa Ogawa, has died of cancer at the age of 70.

 

A smile that could power a warp drive.

Yasutake's Ogawa character was admittedly a minor one, but in 16 episodes spread over the last 4 seasons of Star Trek - The Next Generation plus appearances in two of the franchise's big screen movies, she brought a bright presence to the infirmary.

I just got through another re-watch of all 7 seasons of TNG, so that bright smile is fresh in my mind.  My heart sank when I read the news today.  The actors and actresses who brought and bring Star Trek to the screen are a sort of extended, if never actually met, family for fans like myself.  It's always a sad moment when I lose one of them.

Thanks, Patti.  You will be missed.

The Most Canadian Thing I've Seen From The Olympics

As I said earlier, I don't watch the Olympics.  It is, however, impossible to miss certain things that happen during the Olympics unless you hide under a rock for a couple of weeks.

Today, I ran across something that impresses me a helluva lot more than any sporting accomplishment.

Below is a picture taken following a bad day for French gymnast Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos.  That's her with her back to the camera.

 

Canadian gymnasts Ellie Black and Shallon Olsen console 

French gymnast Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos

The two women facing the camera are Canadian gymnasts Ellie Black and Shallon Olsen.  The pair went out of their way, after a disappointing finish of their own, to console the French competitor.  It's a long exchange, shown on video in the article you can read here.

You really don't need to read it, though.  The picture says it all.

When Canadians take Canada with them as they travel, it makes me proud.  Thank you, ladies.

I Don't Watch The Olympics...

...at least not in the years they don't include baseball, like this year.

I also don't watch or care about surfing.

I wouldn't know a great surfing talent if I watched for weeks.  

This guy?  He's fucking awesome. 

 

This is Brazil's Gabriel Medina.

 

Apparently, he leapt of his board to strike this pose at the end of a near perfect wave.  It's not photoshop or AI, but pure, expert, bad ass showmanship.  

The whole story is here if you're interested.  

Me?  I just love the picture and the exuberance and joy it evokes.

Fucking legend.

After Shows.

I blame LOST.  

There was a time when I devoted a TON of my precious energy to unravelling what I thought was a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

I really thought the folks running the show had a big plan and we mere mortals could parse the clues and figure out that plan.  

As we now know, there was no plan and the show ended with a big collective whimper.  I still haven't watched the last half of the last season and I never will.  I was that disappointed with it.

But.

Some (not all, but some) showrunners took a lesson.  Shows like Game of Thrones, Dexter and others took a lesson from LOST and the before it's time Deep Space Nine and tried to implement a planned over-plot and an endpoint.  They haven't always stuck the landing, but you can see the intention.

Then there's this "after show" thing, which takes the lesson and runs too far with it.  I've seen them on a few shows but paid little attention.  These days I watch shows.  I rarely care enough to dissect and analyze them.  I see that the old LOST spirit is alive and well in those after shows though.  

Here's the thing.  It's a lesson I learned from my own writing, as unsuccessful as it has been:

If you need a second show to explain your show to me, you're not doing it right.  

There's nothing wrong with sprinkling clues in a show for your hyper-obsessed fan base, but they have to either by simple enough for most to catch or if they're really tricky, they need to be explained in show.  If I need to watch the writers and directors talking about what's what in order to understand what's going on, that's a fail.  If the intention is to clarify or reinforce things that they don't feel they truly conveyed or might have been missed by the general audience, same.

How Did I Miss This?

I always have a dvd ready and waiting for those evenings when there's nothing new to watch.

With baseball on the All-Star week break and few shows that interest me on the go right now, tonight was one of those nights I found myself with nothing to watch.

I've been re-watching Star Trek - The Next Generation for the last few months on these nights and I'm coming into the home stretch.  Season 7, Disk 5 to be exact.

One of the episodes is "Genesis", a rather weak "the crew is 'de-evolving' into a bunch of monsters" episode.  When Picard and Data return from a mission to retrieve a wayward test torpedo, they find the ship dark and the crew in various states of "de-evolution".  The questionable "intron" science used to explain this aside, it's not the show's best work.

With one brilliant exception.

Somehow, against all the odds, actor Jonathan Frakes managed to slip something almost unbelievable past the network censors.  Intentionally or accidentally, his de-evolved Australopithecus-like hominid version of Will Riker manages to flip the bird to Captain Picard and Data when they find him mindlessly trying to get his hands on the (presumably) tasty fish in Picard's aquarium.

 

That's my preferred bird flip - fingers bend at the knuckle rather than a fist.  

More sophisticated.

To be clear, this is at least my 5th time watching this series from start to finish.  Season 1 is the first television series set I ever bought and I've gone through the whole series many times since then.  Somehow, I never caught this.  

Interestingly, this is the only episode of TNG that was directed by a female cast member.  Gates McFadden had to lobby for years for the chance to direct.  It's a shame they gave her this weak-sauce episode and I'd be interested to know if this was something she and Frakes cooked up or just Frakes on his own.  I wouldn't blame her if it was her sending a message to the show's producers.

I suspect the copious hair on Frakes' hands helped get this by the censor.  I also have a hard time believing that the gesture was pure accident.  It's just too specific.  

Whatever the story is, seeing Riker flip off the Captain made my otherwise dull evening into a ton of fun that I'm more than happy to share.

Oh, To Be A Mouse In The House....

...when Kevin Feige had to explain this to his uninformed co-workers.

For those unfamiliar, I'll leave you to google the term "pegging" but I suggest you don't use the Google Image query until you know what you might be in for...

From the most recent interview with the Marvel Studios head honcho, as he was asked about the drug and sex jokes that are part and parcel of the Deadpool franchise and how those R Rated elements would work now that the character is under the banner of the House of Mouse:

"There’s a line in the red band trailer — you don’t have to write this in the article for crying out loud! — about pegging. I know what pegging is; it’s in the first “Deadpool” movie. But there were people that I worked with and for who didn’t know what it was. I had to explain it to them."

"...people I worked with and for..." 

There's a conversation with his boss I bet he never thought he'd be having.

 

I just wish I could have been in the room as Feige explained...

I wonder if he used action figures...

 

I mean, the accessory pack alone...

One More Reason Not To Go To The Gym...

I admit it.  I click on those "18 times people failed at their job" lists.  

Most are lame, but every once in a while...

This list deserves sharing.  It's a list of times that a font was chosen that really, really didn't work out the way the designer thought it would.

Click Here for the list.

I'm filling space so the design fail example I'm posting is far enough down the page that you don't see it first thing when you hit the blog.  It's hilarious but out of context it's offensive as hell.

Most of the entries on the list are too...

 

La.la-la--

 

Read the above before scrolling any further....

 

La-la-la-

 

 

 

 

"A whole day?"

More Powerful Than A Locomotive...

...sorta.

Around this time next year, a new Superman movie is due to hit theatres.

James Gunn, he of Guardians of the Galaxy directing fame, has taken the helm of this film and written it as well.  He's totally ignored my overtures on social media (admittedly, I'm no expert in that field, so I can't really blame him) but if this new Superman film is great, I'll happily forgive him.

Below is probably the best picture I've seen from all the shots coming out of the film set.  The cape (with the comic accurate yellow S shield, Yay!) looks phenomenal.  Gunn has put the trunks and big yellow belt back in the costume as well, so I'm happy with the look.  There have been a lot of fanboys bitching that the suit looks too baggy, but I'm confident that cgi post production will make it look slick and well fitted.  I suspect it's a function of convenience for the actor over a long production to not have to squeeze into a form fitting suit every day, since these days they can add muscle definition and nip and tuck the suit digitally after the fact.

 

And I'm confident Superman will be doing the heavy lifting solo.

Filmhands can be cgi'd out as easily as loose fitting trunks.

I have two hopes for this version:  

First, I'm really hoping to see Lex Luthor in the power suit.  The anti-Iron Man version of Superman's nemesis has never graced the big screen and it's WAY past time he did.

Second, no mopey, broody, dark and gritty Man of Steel.  I want a bright, optimistic, happy Superman and from what I've seen, I think we might actually get him this time around.

Happy Canada Day, eh!

A Very Special Person

The morbidly curious portion of me really wants to meet the person who prompted the posting of this sign.

 

"Yikes" seems so inadequate.

This Just Seems Wrong To Me...

Watching a baseball game just now and one of the commentators referred to 2009 as "the good old days".

It was like someone tapping me on the shoulder and saying "you need to give up your seat, sir.  Younger people are waiting."

Next thing you know, I'm going to be wearing my pants above my belly button and hitting the dinner buffet at 3PM.

AI. Not Just Apocolyptic. Also Handy For Fan Films.

Someone put together a fantasy "what if" casting/trailer for a Justice League movie, had such a thing been made in the late 80s or early 90s. I don't agree with every choice, but given how fast AI is moving, there will come a day when every one of us will be able to cast and create a full film like this. It'll be the death of Hollywood, but the possibilities are still damned interesting! 

 

 

Kinda speaks for itself, don't it?

The Fail Guy.

Gave it all I could manage.

I think it was about 6 and a half minutes.

 

Just...no.

No idea what the actual plot is.  After 6 minutes or so, I just don't care.  

My time is more valuable than this.

You Otter Know...

...that today is World Otter Day.

 

Not just cute. Really Cute.

There are River Otters, Giant Otters, Sea Otters and more.  You otter know there are 13 species in total, according to the Wiki machine.

There's at leas one more otteration not listed in the Wiki - The Aniimated Otter.

 

This is Marlene.  You otter get to know her.

The best example of the Animated Otter is Marlene from the Penguins of Madagascar animated series.  She's sassy, smart and even though she knows they're all daft, she's a good friend to the penguins in the show.  She's also voiced by Nicole Sullivan who also voices my favourite Supergirl incarnation in Super Hero Girls.  Sullivan is so good, someone otter give her an award.

Otters aren't just cute.  They are smart, fierce, devoted and really, really cute.

And you otter be aware, they're really, really, really cute.

Happy World Otter Day!

At Long, Long Last, I Close A Chapter...

Until today, the last post at my custom chess set blog was put up nearly 14 years ago, November 7, 2010.  At that time I had just finished the final video of the final chess set and was eager to show it off.

I had also only recently added a couple of rambunctious, lovable cats to my life, so displaying the chess sets in my house would take some thought.

Actually, it turned out to be impractical.  I was simply too worried that one of my little darlings would take a liking to a chess piece or two and turn 4 years of work into shards of glass, plastic, metal and tears.

So for the whole time they were with me, the cats kept my custom chess sets in a box, literally.  The pieces were boxed up in my spare room until just recently.

Now that both cats have left this earthly plane, the idea of displaying these sets and putting all the work they represent front and centre has slowly worked its spell on me.  A dozen ideas, all of which turned out to be impractical or insanely expensive or both, came and went.  I finally settled on some nice, simple, if a little unusual, bookcases from a big box store.

Not being custom, I found that my display solution seemed a little too...open.  I've added a couple of flourishes to fill the space and I think the result is very appealing.  Plus, I got to display the dragons I've painted, my souvenir chess set from Egypt, a nice glass set I've had for years and a few knick-knacks as well.

While I would like a custom solution, this does the job.

So at long, long last, I close the book on the Chess Set blog with this post.  The sets are done, they are finally on display and I can say the project is truly complete.

Feel free to take another look at the Chess Set Blog and see the project as it went from idea to fruition over almost 4 years before sitting idle for a decade and a half in my guest room.

UPDATE:

It occurs to me that I now have to regularly dust the damned things. 

Wolverine By Way of Vikings!

There are a few things I love. 

Three at the top of the list are Wolverine (the Marvel Comics character - I'm ambivalent on the 4 legged version), well choreographed sword fighting and a great, unexpected variation on a beloved character.

 This fan film has all three.

Most fan films are fun but flawed. hampered by low budgets and limited acting skills.  This one is not.  The acting is solid, the script tight and the action is spectacular.  The only weakness is in the opening scene, but after that first minute it is pure, joyfully violent gold!  It's as good (or better) than anything Marvel or Fox has ever done with the character.  I'd put it up against Jackman's turn in Logan, it's that good.  Take 10 minutes and see.  

 

How can this be SO good?!?

Somehow, this "fan film" gets the Logan/Wolverine character better than the multi-million dollar blockbusters that he's headlined.  THIS is the character as I saw him in the comics, before Hugh Jackman redefined him for a generation of film fans.

And putting Wolverine in the age of Vikings is simply genius!  In most iterations, his berserker nature is something he has to reign in and battle against.  Here, we see his core unleashed.  Truly spectacular!

Possibly The Coolest Thing I've Ever Read...

Scientists look at stars.  While doing so, they match the amount of light to the amount of heat being measured to determine a star's properties and classify it.

So why are some stars showing much less light than the amount expected, based on how much heat they're radiating?

One possible explanation is that these stars are sending less light out into the universe because it's being blocked artificially by a Dyson Sphere.  

What's a Dyson Sphere, you ask?  It's a hypothetical construction by a hypothetical alien race.  The concept is that this hypothetical race has advance to a point where they can surround their star with a massive construction that would harvest the energy of the star for use by their civilization.

I admit, when I envision a Dyson Sphere, I imagine a huge solid shell around a star with the inhabitants living inside it, but the more likely configuration would be what's termed a "Dyson Swarm" which would take the form of many satellites orbiting the star rather than a solid shell.  A civilization could harvest a fraction of the star's radiated energy using this method and that would more than satisfy their total energy needs.

If an alien race did all this, the signature would be a star whose visible light did not match its heat profile and scientists have found a bunch of stars with this exact signature.

The whole article is here and it's a FASCINATING read.

Now That The Blog Is Over 18...

...it feels naughty.

When I ran across this today, it just made me smile.  I hope it did the same for you.

It's My BLIRTHDAY!

That's right.  As of today, the blog is legal to vote, get drafted or drink in about half of all Canadian provinces.  18 Blogaversaries?  Nah.  18 BLIRTHDAYS! 

Besides my car, my house, a few sticks of furniture and the very beginnings of my DVD collection, there's not much in my life that has been around that long.

In case you are wondering, this post will be #1265.  That averages out to about 70 posts a year or just under 6 a month.  That's more often than I buy groceries!

For 18 years.  

Who knows?  Check back this time in 2042.  I might still be here.

He Probably Didn't Even Need The Ice...

...because Harrison Ford is just that cool.

Sure, he's over 80 and that last Indiana Jones movie was weak, but find me another 80 year old guy who could have done it better.  Ford's "weak" is most men's "Gawd, don't I wish!".  For those of us of a certain generation he's Han Solo, Jack Ryan, Dekker, the coolest U.S. President and the one and only Indiana Jones. 

He's crashed his plane, walked away and continued to fly, improvised that amazing scene where he just shoots the super sword guy in the market in Raiders of the Lost Ark, relegated Sean Bloody Connery to riding bitch in the side car, chucked terrorists out of Air Force One with a hearty "Get off my plane!" and so much more.

From something I read today:

While filming an action sequence for Blade Runner 2049, Harrison Ford punched Ryan Gosling... for real. According to Gosling, Ford didn't apologize. Ford instead poured Gosling a glass of scotch and told him it's an honor to be hit by Indiana Jones. Additionally, Ford pushed Gosling out of the way when the crew brought ice for Gosling's face. Ford used the ice to soothe his fist instead, saying that part of Gosling's job was to be out of the way of the punch.

 

Gosling: I am the hottest leading man in the world.

Ford: Hold my beer.

Same guy who improvised the immortal "I know" when Princess Leia told him she loved him.

Simply the coolest living being on the planet.

The Best of The Three Musketeers - Addendum

I posted a "best of" for The Three Musketeers a while back.  I also posted the trailer for a then upcoming French production of the property that was to be split into two movies.

The first, subtitled D'Artagnan, came out last year and the second, Milady, is due to be released on DVD in early June.

I don't know if this two movie version is a better movie than the 1970s version that I love so much.  It is in French and while subtitles are always a pain, it's best watched that way.  The acting, sets, direction, costumes and action all are as good as anything one could hope for in yet another production of this property.  Better might be a stretch, but it's certainly a worthy successor.

This is undeniably a French story, so it's good to see it done justice in a production in the language it was created in.

 

For Eva Green alone, I'd set aside 4 hours to watch this.

 

The standout, as with pretty much anything she's in, is Eva Green.  I had NO idea that English wasn't her first language.  Turns out she was born in Paris, so she brings her Hollywood honed skills and star power to a French production that I might well have missed entirely, if not for her participation.  I'm really glad I didn't miss this one.

You shouldn't miss it either.

Dead Boy Detectives - Watchable.

Yep.  To my great surprise, despite the weak trailer I posted a while ago, Dead Boy Detectives is watchable.  Six episodes in and it's got a nice season arc going and the characters aren't as vapid as they appeared in the trailer.  There's some well acted tension in a very convoluted set up.  There's also some nice weirdness to it, including an apparently one-off character who lives in a fish and a magic shop owner who used to be a walrus.

So yeah, watchable.

Not really re-watchable, but watchable. 

Rebel Moon Part Two - The Scargiver

So, I'm pretty good at suspending my disbelief, particularly wen it comes to sci-fi and fantasy.

I can bend.  A lot.

Still, some things are sort of part of my DNA and I can't just gloss over them when they are the main thrust of a plot.

The recent movie, Rebel Moon - Part Two has a couple of "oh come on" foundational problems.

It's not a spoiler to tell you that the dude that got tossed off a cliff at the end of part one gets resurrected.

This is problem number one.  The organization behind this dude is modelled after the Roman Empire.  I have a real problem imagining that the Roman Empire would put ANY resources into resurrecting a soldier of any rank.  Empires churn out soldiers because they're replaceable.  

Further, I have a real problem with the idea that a ruthless empire would take the time and energy to resurrect a soldier of any rank who had failed.  It seems much more likely that they'd simply promote the next in line, point him at the problem and move on.

Then there's the whole mcguffin of these ragtag warriors protecting the village from the empire.  This series (two already, no doubt 3 and more on the way) is based on the Seven Samurai movie by the great Kurosawa; an epic film that has inspired films ranging from westerns to space operas.  I have no problem with the idea that the warriors have the village harvest their grain to use as a shield and bargaining chip.  I love Seven Samurai and have great affection for some of the film it has inspired.  I have no problem with a small village hiring mercenaries to protect them.  All of these things make a certain kind of sense. 

The Seven Samurai plot is based on a feudal society with small, mobile armies that could plunder on the move this way.  Adapting it to different times and settings works up to a point, but you can't swap out a small force for a massive space faring empire and assume the plot will still work.  It won't.

What bugs me is that this massive space faring empire needs all this grain and apparently has no centralized method to provision its fleet.  They plan to have these almost technology free villagers grow, harvest and (I assume)  package and load the grain onto their SPACE SHIPS.  The villagers harvest the grain with scythes and thresh it with wooden flails.

Scythes and wooden flails.  In three days.

Three days worth of hand harvested grain from a subsistence community of what looks like about 40 or 50 people.  Let's say that's enough grain to make the year's bread for the village plus half again.  How long do you imagine that would sustain hundreds of soldiers and space travellers on a ship with enough soldiers to count as a credible force?  A month, maybe two?   They take it all and can't take it all again next year because the farmers starve to death before they can grow more.  

At this rate, the fleet would spend ALL its time stealing grain from farmers just to not starve to death themselves.  Even if they could find enough grain in this patchwork way, they seem hellbent on these transactions being a fatal one and done every time.  The Rebel Moon farmers opt for likely death in battle instead of certain death from starvation and you have to imagine that would be the choice of at least a small percentage of all the villages they raid like this.

No empire gets to be space worthy big with this kind of short sighted approach.  

Yeah, I think far too much about a silly movie.  I can't help it.  During the slow motion, fast motion, slow motion space-amish harvest sequence I kept thinking that one combine-harvester and a good crop management plan would have made this a much shorter film.

Oh and as I was reminded during my viewing of the second Dune movie, what is it with American movies and the glorification of hereditary rulers?  I thought they did a whole thing to get rid of kings and queens, but it seems like every Hollywood sci-fi and fantasy movie revolves around and revels in the chosen prince or princess (or duke) being the one to fix everything.  Where's the democratically elected hero?

Ah well.  It's pretty to look at and the robot with the antlers is cool.