Category: Television & Movies

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Television & Movies

Another Clone Wars clone already?

Clone TrooperApparently a Clone Wars CGI series trailer premiered at Celebration IV and is live on the web. Just mere days ago I was going on about how much Star Wars changed my life and how much I love it, so you’ll have to forgive me for sounding a bit schizophrenic here. I’m starting to wonder if it wasn’t a mistake for Lucas to have said one word about a live action, between-trilogies project before now. Am I the only one looking at this trailer and thinking “meh”?

Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars series was cool because we were actually in the between-movies blank that his ‘toons were filling in. I’m not sure what light can really be shed on the Clone Wars now that will make me go ooh and aah. And is it going to create a whole new strand of inconsistent expanded universe storytelling, completely separate from the Cartoon Network shorts and the comics, which already seem to be mutually exclusive from one another?

Call me crazy, but I guess I haven’t had enough of the Lucasfilm kool-aid here. I’m not sure I’m really interested until we get to the live action thingamabob. And part of me is thinking “Good God, everyone’s just ga-ga about the Clone Wars because we were wondering what they were since 1977.” Now that I know it was a situation engineered by Palpatine, as a means to an end and not just to start a war for its own sake, and served as the backdrop to the fall of Anakin…well, I guess my curiosity is satiated. I’d almost rather they did a CG series to follow some other strand, even – so help me, I can’t believe I’m going to say this – something related to the Star Wars: Galaxies MMORPG…in other words, something new.

Now, what would be a good use of CGI? Something bold? Pick up post-ROTJ, becuase CG Luke, Leia and Han never age. Oh, and don’t kill Chewie this time. See? That would be daring.… Read more

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Television & Movies Toiling In The Pixel Mines

The Friday recap

And now for a word… I signed on the dotted line today to run an ad in the July bridal issue of Entertainment Fort Smith for GreenhouseFX.tv. I’ll be spending the next week putting the ad together to send to them. I had been thinking of running an ad in there at some point, but a little bird (who happens to write entries in Elabeth’s LJ blog) tipped me off to the bridal issue. I figure a video production outfit that can’t get business from an ad in a magazine’s bridal issue has to be right up there with someone who can’t get laid in a women’s prison with a handful of pardons. 😆 If this doesn’t work, then it’s clearly time to think of something else!

ThreepioStar Wars, nothing but Star Wars… I’ll shanghai my own response from Digital Press’ “post your memories of the original Star Wars” and add more stuff to it here, since it’s Star Wars Day. This way, even the DP folks get something new out of the deal. Kinda like that one “new” song that some band slaps onto a greatest hits CD so you have to buy it.

I was four, just about to turn five, when I first saw Star Wars. So much of what is important in my life can be traced back to my first viewing of that movie – my lifelong fascination with space, my curiosity about special effects and movie/TV production, and even my computer and video game fixation can be traced on a straight through-line from R2-D2 to Pong to Space Invaders to Pac-Man to home consoles and computers. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the soundtrack completely altered my listening palette. I’m still a soundtrack fan to this day, and still have the double LP of The Empire Strikes Back just about memorized, note for note, instrument for instrument. Even my ELO fixation has its starting point in Star Wars – later in 1977, my older brother was trying to get me to be quiet and leave him and his date alone, and finally out of exasperation gave me an 8-track of “A New World Record” and told me to listen to the beginning of “Tightrope” because “it sounds like Star Wars music!” 😆

StormtrooperStar Wars completely altered any course my life might have been thinking about taking. I wasn’t a kid who wanted to be a fireman or a doctor when he grew up. After I saw Star Wars, I wanted to be a Jedi Knight. Upon learning that there really was no such thing, five-year-old me was deeply disappointed, since I had already been running around the house in my bathrobe (which I had hated before, but loved now because it looked like Luke’s farmboy duds) and practicing my lightsaber technique with the family flashlight. My parents suggested to me that maybe I should be an astronaut, so I latched onto that. Turns out I didn’t meet the requirements for that either, and besides, astronauts didn’t have lightsabers or droids or wookiees!

I was truly glad when the prequels came out when they did. I’m not going to try to get into a debate with the camp who thought Episodes I-III were an abortion, but I was more than happy to watch them and generally enjoyed them quite a bit. And I loved collecting the figures again. Yeah, let’s not forget about the figures – I think in the end I stopped just 15 short of having all of them. I’d like to have a full collection someday, and have even done some eBaying to close that gap, but I understand realistically that it may never happen. But there’s nothing like classic Star Wars toys – and even some of the new ones, especially if they’re characters who didn’t get turned into figures back when Kenner was in business – to make me feel young again.

I remember my family’s next door neighbors had a CED player – you remember, the poor relation of laserdiscs that RCA did, where movies were encoded at slightly-better-than-VHS-6-hour-quality onto a non-opitcal medium that resembled an LP in a huge cartridge casing, and they got Star Wars on CED just because we were over there so much. They really had no interest in it, but they knew that I thought grown-ups were kinda boring. (A perception that, now that I am a grown-up, I realize was completely and entirely correct.) Around this time, my dad bestowed me with the nickname of “Luke”, which is what both my parents called me until I was about 10 or 11 or so. Up until I started getting old enough that I thought I was clearly too cool to have a nickname, I just ate that up.

Sometimes I’d like to go back in time and tell myself that there’s nothing cooler than being a kid with a room full of Star Wars toys and video games. Then again, even if I did, my younger self would look at my older self, see he’s a boring grown-up, and ignore his advice! 😯… Read more

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Funny Stuff Television & Movies

The true story of the Doctor and the Master

And I tell you, this is as official and canon as you can get. It comes from the novelization of final story from the original series of Doctor Who, Survival, both scripts and novelization by Rona Munro. And I quote:

The Master's balls 😯

Man, I’d be out to steal every remaining regeneration the Doctor has too. What an indignity!… Read more

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Television & Movies

More Star Wars? Oh hell yeah.

Artoo Detoo, where are you?So help me God, I’m going to point you to an article on FoxNews.com for the first and only time ever. George Lucas is doing more Star Wars, but this time as a couple of TV movies – though I wonder if these won’t morph into the new trend of “direct to DVD movies which get a broadcast window immediately before their DVD release”, a la the upcoming Galactica movie.

And while I know that “received popular opinion,” as I like to call it, has decided that the Star Wars prequels were crap, I’m up for more. I was underwhelmed with a few elements of Episode II, but was almost completely happy with I and III. I love this idea. I love that I might be able to sit down with my son and watch some new stories unfold in that universe, not something that I’ve seen a zillion times and analyzed to death while he’s just seeing it for the first time. Something new to both of us.

Even if it takes, oh, say, four years from this September…well, hey, that was good enough for me when I was four years old.

Rock on, George.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Television & Movies

And he’d already have a cat buddy nicknamed Obi-Wan…

For all of about 60 seconds last night, we were hemming and hawing over the possibility of Ewan as a baby name, and then it was back to Evan. The only problem there was simply that, like Ellison (remember, that name where I was the only one who liked it), nobody would be able to disassociate it from, well, someone else in particular.

I have to recant a bit on a pet hate of mine – my wife has actually gotten me semi-hooked on a reality show, in this case Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, or, as I call it because I can’t believe I’m actually tuning in on a regular basis for a reality show, That Damn Crab Show. I got to thinking about it the other night – as much as they go on and on and on about how these king crab fishermen who brave the Bering Strait are paid kingly amounts of money for all that crab…I wonder how much Discovery Channel is paying the photogs who are tagging along with them, getting in the way, and getting their gear soaked on a routine basis? At least the poor bastards accustomed to working on deck know what to do when some whacking great rogue wave knocks the ship on its side. What in the world do you do when you’re just standing around on the slippery deck with a $25,000 camera to hold onto and not much else? There are some jobs you couldn’t even pay me enough for.

And speaking of crab meat and danger, let’s talk Lost. … Read more

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Gaming Home Base Music Television & Movies

A brief, and yet still boring, look at my day

The past 24 hours or so are really supposed to have constituted my “day off,” a concept which increasingly is fading from the realm of the real and being relegated to the realm of the mythological. (I know, I know – just wait until the baby arrives and “8 hours of sleep” also fades into myth.)

I spent a good chunk of my day mowing the front yard – as much of it as I could – with a weed eater whose battery goes kersplat after about 45 minutes. We have yet to pick up the push mower that I lusted after a while back, as Jan’s vehicle had another breakdown Friday. If the vehicle’s not a lemon, then the place in Rogers we’ve had to keep taking it to is, at least in my mind, highly suspect. I can’t come up with words to express how much we don’t need this go-in-for-one-repair-and-three-other-things-that-were-fine-suddenly-fall-apart-the-next-week crap right now. It’s just getting extremely suspicious. If I do find out they’ve been screwing us, I’m not going to walk in there and kick their asses. I’m going to let her do it – and trust me, that’s gonna hurt a hell of a lot more. (I know of what I speak here.)

Anyway, I also sprayed some weed-killer along our fence rows, tried rather not-at-all-successfully to install a screen on yet another window, and got some fallen limbs and hedge clippings out of the yard. I even remembered to wear something on my head – which is now a crispy golden-brown – during most of this activity.

Late last night, I got a bit of gaming in, trying out a few old friends and testing out some new ones I hadn’t played before, and I’m working on the reviews of those games right now. I set up a new video segment to render on the Avid today every time I came inside to get a drink, go to the bathroom, install some new weed-eater cord, etc., so it was digesting all that raw footage and farting up video segments while I was working outside. (On second thought, there has simply got to be a better way to put that.)

During the height of the mid-day heat, I came inside for a bit to wash, dry and fold clothes, and watched the Doctor Who Keeper Of Traken DVD with the commentary on. It’s funny how art imitates life (I’m one of the few folks out there who openly admits to enjoying Matthew Waterhouse and his portrayal of Adric, but by the beginning of part 3 I was mentally willing him to shut the heck up and let the other folks get a word in edgewise) and how it doesn’t (it’s incredibly sad that Anthony Ainley only got to do this one DVD commentary before his death a few years ago, because he seems like such a nice fellow, a real old-school British showbiz gentleman). There’s a nice dedication to him at the end of part 4. I’ll have a full review up, maybe as soon as next weekend, time permitting.

Jan and I watched the Olivia de Havilland / Errol Flynn Robin Hood tonight. Man, I love that movie. Flynn’s just the quintessential cocky-bastard-with-a-heart-of-gold in that one, and everyone from Harrison Ford on down who’s essayed some variation on that basic archetype owes him at least a nod. For the record, I have yet to see a movie or TV take on the Robin Hood legend that I like better than this. Seriously. And let’s not get started on Korngold’s put-the-whole-brass-section-right-in-your-face score.

I’m so looking forward to the push mower – I could actually listen to something on my minidisc player while I’m mowing the yard. And hear it. I was trying to listen to the score from The Incredibles today while doing my weed-whacking (hey, you have to afford me at least one big beefy delusion of grandeur a day), and that music is not quiet and it is not subtle, and I could barely hear it.… Read more

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Funny Stuff Television & Movies

Opening the pod bay doors…OF LOVE.

HAL 9000Another silent movie concoction for you (because what it’s spoofing is also silent), it’s time for a True ad spoof that’s maybe, just maybe, a little more universal than Burchuss. 😆 (I’d say Burchuss is something only my friends get, but I’d put good money on the table and bet that at least a third of my friends are like “What? Little orange stuffed animal from space? What!?“) With that in mind, here’s a new one shot late Sunday night at my own desk in near-total darkness. Hey, admit it, if you owned a HAL 9000 prop, you’d do this too. Click here to see.

Couple of shout-outs: thanks to the folks behind the alarmingly accurate 2001 screen saver (free download from The Hal Project) and the simply astounding Celestia (free download here), which are what you see on the screens, giving the whole thing as much 2001 authenticity as I can muster on zero budget at 11:30pm on a Sunday night. If anyone’s really interested, I can do a little piece later on just how crappily I threw the whole thing together. 😛

Enjoy!… Read more

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Critters Serious Stuff Television & Movies Toiling In The Pixel Mines ToyBox

Friday the 13th Part 2

Some random, unrelated notes from today:

In what must be the 6 and 9/10th sign of the Apocalypse, I walked into a national chain store in Fort Smith, Arkansas today and bought a Doctor Who action figure right off the peg. Not a special order or anything like that – it was already there. I hadn’t picked any of these up since I got a couple of loose Cybermen last fall from someone on eBay who had already imported them, so I was just utterly stunned. I’m under no illusion that this means that Fort Smith is stepping up in the world; I’m sure they wound up here because they never left the pegs in the Hastings in Little Rock or Tulsa. 😆 One final note: as difficult as it is not to win yourself some snickers or at least weird looks when you’re 30-something and bellying up to the checkout counter with an action figure, a new layer of difficulty is added when the figure in question is a baroque, frilly-costumed Clockwork Man from The Girl In The Fireplace. Trust me, funny looks are guaranteed…and despite that, I hope they get the Ood, Cassandra and/or Captain Jack figures that I’m missing. My trip to northwest Arkansas has been delayed until next week, so maybe I can check any Hastings stores that might be lurking up there. Inasmuch as a store can possibly lurk.

After I went there and went to get dinner to bring home, I stopped to get gas at one of the ubiquitous Murphy Oil stations perched next to Wal-Mart Supercenters. There was a youngish guy ahead of me, I’m going to say 20 or so, who was tweaking. He was extremely agitated, cursing up a storm for no readily apparent reason, and got pissed at the girl working the checkout booth when it turns out he didn’t have enough money for a pack of cigarettes. He then turned to me and asked if I’d buy them for him and I just shook my head. I had half a thought about offering to buy him some nicotine patches instead, but it’s just as well that I didn’t say a word, because he then proceeded to go off on me. Of course, I can already hear the argument that he needs his next pack of cigarettes as much as I need a Clockwork Man, but y’know, if I hadn’t been able to afford that…I wouldn’t have gotten it. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have asked anyone else to pick up the tab for me for something that isn’t exactly – okay, not exactly and not remotely – essential to my continued survival. (I’m sure the jury is still out with my wife about whether or not I needed a Clockwork Man, but hey, at least he’s not gonna damage my health. 😆 )

I’ve finally started getting GreenhouseFX.tv put together. A lot of what I’ve put on there so far is copied over and modified from the original 2002 version of the site. The list of services is still in “flux” – there are a couple of things under “what we do” that I won’t, in fact, be doing. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but hopefully in about a week it will be.

I tried to watch the premiere of Painkiller Jane on Sci-Fi tonight. I’m not familiar with the comic that it’s based on, so I can’t vouch for how faithful it is/isn’t to the source material, but overall I found it just left the taste of apathy in my mouth. Kinda like…I dunno. Dark Angel Minus The Barely-Engaging Backstory.

Tomorrow I’m going to get some dog food, as well as some new cat food that we’re going to see if the kitties like. We’re going to start out mixing it into their Iams dry food, but hopefully we can wean them off the Iams completely, very very soon. The food we’re getting is from an outfit that grows its own ingredients rather than buying them in bulk from, oh, say, Menu Foods, especially since it seems as though damn near everything Menu is putting on the market is either already on recall, or is about to be recalled. The fearsome threesome have checked out just fine so far, and I’d like to keep them that way.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code Funny Stuff Home Base Television & Movies

Road tripped

Tomorrow we’re headed to Little Rock to have Those Other Tests done since we had some alarming markers show up on the baby blood work. It’s funny how one of our local hospitals builds a whole extra wing supposedly devoted to the best pre-natal and natal care in this part of the state…and yet, still, you can’t do jack without heading out to Little Rock or Tulsa. Thanks to everyone for their well-wishes and advice on the tests – believe me when I say that your experiences and stories are pure gold at this point. Tonight we have to take Jan’s vehicle – or, as I’ve always called it, Happy Wagon Of Death 2K3 – to leave it with the dealership in Rogers to fix tomorrow so she can be back to delivering the mail out of it Wednesday. I swear to God, everytime she turns the wheel even slightly, it sounds like an angry, asthmatic Wookiee is screaming out his rage from below the vehicle; the dealership is hopefully going to make whatever fixes or remove whatever Wookiees are applicable. Happy freakin’ life day. On the way, we’re going to try to stop in Fayetteville so I can snap some pictures of the R2-D2 mailbox that’s up there. I can’t believe there’s actually one in Arkansas.

No haircut yet; I may just have to tie it back and tuck it under tomorrow. I’ve really gotten out of that habit when my hair gets long. Adrian Paul, I ain’t. Instead, my wife and I spent Sunday night preparing prodigious quantities of food and then wolfing 90% of it down. I did the steaks and she did…well…all the stuff that actually tasted good. She even did the brownies, though at one point she cracked an egg open…right over the drain at the sink. In it went. We both stopped and looked at each other like “WTF?” She’s said that both her mother and her sister have warned her that expectant mothers apparently start donating brain cells to baby in large quantities during pregnancy, and I guess I really didn’t grok what that meant until I watched that perfectly good egg go from the shell straight into the garbage disposal. Just between you and me, I’m gonna milk that moment of comedy gold for months to come.

Hopefully everyone likes the latest main menu illustration for the site; as time consuming as these things are (that one was a 3:00am special), I’ve been trying to look for ways to tie everything together conceptually, even if I have to just flat-out invent the connection. 😆 (On the other hand, the process I was using to treat the pictures made Evangeline Lilly look positively hideous, which is something that takes quite a bit of effort, so my apologies there.)

And speaking of Lost…spoilage ahead if you haven’t seen it: … Read more