You may have heard that there’s a Simpsons movie coming out soon. As part of the marketing scheme, they’re temporarily rebranding a dozen 7-Elevens as Kwik-E-Marts, 11 in the States and one in Canada. As an erstwhile convenience store resident, and moderate 7-Eleven delinquent during high school, Apu’s naturally one of my favourite characters. (Best Simpsons moment: Apu entrusts the Kwik-E-Mart to his pre-teen nephew Jamshed, who immediately whips out a shotgun longer than himself, freezing Jimbo and friends in their tracks.) The nearest to me is in Mountain View - seriously tempted to make the drive just to see if they stock Chutney Squishees. For friends in Vancouver, it’s not immediately obvious that the sole Canadian version happens to be in Coquitlam! Rather odd they picked such out of the way locations.

Busy weekend here. Susan and I dressed up for the Ratatouille wrap party on Saturday, this year at the Masonic Temple in SF. Started early for us since she had singing dress rehearsal in the afternoon. The Pixar singers outdid themselves this year; there were the usual speeches (Brad Bird had some moving things to say); then we got to see a hilarious featurette about motion capture which I hope will make the DVD, the new short Lifted, and finally the movie itself. I was seeing it for the first time (as usual, I avoided reels) and it was quite wonderful. Storywise, easily in the top three of Pixar’s output to date, and artistically and visually amazing. Congratulations to everyone on the Rat production crew.

No pictures yet. I took lousy ones, so I’ll have to hope the photographers circling the post movie soirée took some decent snapshots of the two of us in our fancy clothes.

Unfortunately we had to leave the wining and dining early - I had an early Sunday morning to prepare for (an all day chamber workshop at the College of Marin to get to). Sorry to those we missed at the party!

I can’t claim credit for the original idea; someone else did a Star Wars themed version over on RPGnet, in this thread. I just thought Kill Bill was a better fit. Click image for the full version (1287 x 765, 313Kib).

Incidentally, crazy42’s quote is exactly what was mailed to my Nintendo DS while playing Final Fantasy III last week.

Got better excuses?

Just finished The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell - you may know her better as the voice of Violet in the Incredibles. It’s a good read. In her essay on Al Gore’s nerdiness, she references an anonymous commentator on slashdot.

Furthermore, geeks tend to be focused on very narrow fields of endeavour. The modern geek has been generally dismissed by society because thier passions are viewed as trivial by those people who “see the big picture”. Geeks understand that the big picture is pixellated and their high level of contribution in small areas grows the picture. They don’t need to see what everyone else is doing to make their part better.

Indeed. Today’s geeky topic: Transformers. My bio says I don’t get excited about giant armored robots - that’s generally true, unless they’re the kind that turn into cars, planes, and cassette players. The Transformers cartoon was on right after school every weekday when I was a kid in grade one. I’d risk punishment on a regular basis by trying to sneak in an episode instead of doing what I should have been doing, which was practicing piano. Mom was at work, so being caught was determined by when sisters got home from school. One memorable day, unbeknownest to me, Roz had stayed home from school and had been asleep til she was woken by the sound of laser fire emanating from the television. From that day forward, I learned to check the rest of the house for stray family members when I got home.

At some point some kind relative gave me a real Transformer: Mirage, the Formula 1 racer whose schtick in the cartoon was that he also could turn invisible. For a few days I was cool with my fellow classmates Trevor and Marco, who between them owned Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Jetfire, and a small army of Autobots. Then Aaron broke Mirage in half, took him away to “fix”, and never returned him. Then I accidentally broke Trevor’s Ironhide, pissing him off enormously. Then moved away from Canada to Taiwan with Dad, came back after a month with Mom, and we disconnected basic cable; and that was the end of my Transformers toy phase as a kid.

A few years ago, flush with disposable income, I got back into Transformers when the Robots in Disguise line came out. This year I’ve really gotten back into collecting Generation One characters as well as Takara’s Binaltech line. Of course this means I’m finding myself looking forward to Michael Bay’s live action adaptation that comes out next year, although my fellow geeks seem to be up in arms about certain.. liberties.. taken. Here’s a case in point: Penny Arcade’s comic from Monday. To this I have two rejoinders.

First. Watch The Island, Bay’s most recent directorial effort. Susan and I did this weekend courtesy of Netflix. It is a movie which can at best be tenously classified as science fiction. It very vaguely raises serious ethical questions and then dashes them in favor of highly prominent product placement. Whatever: that is not the point of a Michael Bay movie. It is to see finely choreographed violence and explosions and general preposterous mayhem. People falling from the top of skyscrapers with bullets fired from above and from below and surviving while shit blows up all around them. Now imagine giant robots causing said preposterous violence and general mayhem - animated by some of the best in the business (Bay recently bought Digital Domain) - and you see what I mean. To what other director would you entrust the franchise? Brian Singer would give us finely nuanced character development. Hello, we already know this is a battle between one-dimensional cartoonish villains and equally one-dimensional cartoonish heroes, who needs motivation? We really just want to see people, buildings, etc caught in the crossfire blown to smithereens, and how they’re going to pull off the CGI for cars turnin’ into bots and vice versa.

Second. The original Transformers cartoon is really quite craptacular. I acquired the complete Transformers series on DVD on the cheap, the Pexland International box from China. Watched a few of these and was struck by how bad it was. This is a cartoon designed to sell toys, and it shows. For example, here is an excerpt from the second episode. The Decepticons have just attacked a dam and the Autobots have of course shown up to defeat their nefarious plans. At some point, Optimus Prime finds himself hanging on for dear life at the mercy of Megatron.

Megatron: “Any words?”
Optimus: “None you’d want to hear, Megatron!”
Megatron: “Nothing can stop me now! Not even you!”

Thich would be more worrying if we hadn’t just seen Optimus and all the other Autobots flying. Not in a previous episode, but literally two minutes before this very scene. Far be it for me to debate Optimus on combat tactics, but Megatron should really know better than to think stomping on Optimus’ fingers is really going to get him anywhere. Incidentally, I’ve noticed Optimus really has difficulty with terra firma. Four episodes in and the guy keeps falling into water, rolling off cliffs, and so on. When he finally gets aborne via the aid of a rocket pack he gets shot down almost immediately. Some leader he turns out to be.

Back to episode two. While Optimus is still hanging on, the show cuts away to fan favorite character, Starscream. Starscream usually turns into a fighter jet and fires a “null ray”. He’s also Megatron’s snivelling second-in-command.

Yes, Starscream appears to be a crackshot with a .. slingshot. All that firepower and he goes for the Bart Simpson approach. The point is, if Bay’s movie isn’t true to the cartoon, it’s because the cartoon sucks. If Optimus is still a truck - who cares if it’s a Peterbilt and not a Mack? - and things still blows up - it’s still getting my nine bucks. Especially if the inevitable toy tie-ins are decent.

I was thinking about Bacon numbers a couple of days ago, and noticed an article about Erdös-Bacon numbers on Wikipedia. Then I realised that if you scrunched up your eyes, squinted very hard, and somehow equated “actor” with “visual effects person who got credit on a movie”, I had a finite Erdös-Bacon number. With an Erdös number of at most 5 (one chain being P. Christensen, D. Salesin, L. Guibas, B. Aronov, and of course P. Erdös) the question is computing the Bacon number. I claim a link to Holly Hunter (from the Incredibles, of course) who was in End of the Line with Kevin Bacon. 5 + 2 = 7! Success! Okay, a very questionable result, but I’ll take it.

Susan wins (as usual) with an Erdös number of 4. Hmph.

My sister has a more legitimate claim to a Bacon number (also 2) since she appears (as a moving unrecognizable blur, if I recall) for a few frames in the otherwise deplorable movie Timecop (with Brent Woolsey, who was in Trapped with Kevin Bacon). I believe she’s one of the string quartet musicians who leave a restaurant before the bad guys show up and shoot up the place. Really. Unfortunately I don’t think she got credit for being a paid extra, even though they filmed her playing cello for a couple of days.

I don’t know what it means either, but it’s the two words that popped, side by side, into my head while staring into the freezer before dinner. State of mind indicators?

Caught “Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” at the Cinerama on Friday. It was good but ultimately unsatisfying, since I had such high expectations for it. I first saw Wallace & Gromit in “A Close Shave” at a Spike & Mike’s festival a decade ago, and at the time thought it was one of the most wonderful pieces of animation ever put on film. The shot where Gromit’s motorcycle sidecar careens off the cliff only to be saved in spectacular inventive fashion left me in stunned, awed delight, which persisted for the rest of the sheep chase and the showdown at the factory - and I was just revelling in the storytelling aspect; subsequent endeavours both in computer animation and claymation have distilled in me a proper appreciation of how hard the process itself is. (Geeks who revel in all things process-related should definitely check out Creating 3-D Animation: The Aardman Book of Filmmaking by Sibley and Lord; it’s light on practical detail but it’s still a nice read about Aardman. After that, pick up more hardcore texts on stuff like armatures or model-making at the SIGGRAPH bookstore; I’ve always seen them deeply discounted there.) I rewatched all three shorts again and “A Close Shave” and “The Wrong Trousers” still hold up after repeated watchings as fantastic storytelling; which is why I was disappointed with “Were-Rabbit”. The story felt stretched, and though I don’t want to say that Aardman should have kept the characters in a half-hour short format, the last third of the film felt draggy and forced. The humor left me with dry chuckles but no out and out laughter, and the film’s climax felt like it had been done before (no surprise; the planes looked like they were recycled from “Shave”). I think what I most missed was that aforementioned moment of delight where Gromit brilliantly gets out of a jam (perhaps in conjunction with one of Wallace’s inventions, perhaps not). There’s at least two of these in “Shave”, one in “Trousers” during the train chase, and I’m hard pressed to come up with even one in “Were-Rabbit”. I feel like I’m slagging the film, but I’m not; I really love those two characters, I liked the film enough, and just had unreasonably high hopes that were sadly not met.

Watched hockey on television for the first time in over a year on Saturday - NHL only shows up on CBC in my cable lineup, so it’s going to be a once a week habit for me. It was the Vancouver vs Edmonton game. While I appreciated the lack of clutching and grabbing and the faster paced game (courtesy of the new NHL rules) it was disappointing to see Bertuzzi and Chris Pronger keeping a restraint on their more physical style style of play. (Okay, Bertuzzi is a goon, but he’s still *our* goon.) And of course, after mouthing off about the new NHL rule that I detest most - ties ultimately determined by shootout - the first game of the season I watch ends up in a shootout! My shootout apathy dates back at least to the gold medal hockey match between Canada vs Sweden in the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. Watching Sweden tie it up in the last few seconds of regular play, tie Canada in the first best-of-five shootout, and then break the hearts of millions of Canadians in the second shootout, has pretty much left me down on that system. This was repeated four years later, but in 1994 Olympic hockey was still amateurs only, and as a result much more fun to watch, so in 1998 I didn’t care. It doesn’t help that Cloutier (Vancouver’s goalie) obviously still panics under pressure, helping lose it for Vancouver. Hockey games should go into overtime periods as long as it takes, even during the regular season. I want to see players collapse on the ice from sheer exhaustion after five consecutive periods, dammit.

Since I got Dungeon Siege 2 out of my system (summary: prettier, very dumbed down Diablo 2), and while the energy lasts, it seems you’ll get more blog entries from me. I don’t know why I bother, since my weblogs clearly indicate I get more traffic when I don’t write, and I’ll lose the rest of the audience with today’s topic: comic book movies.

Okay, it’s a geeky, nay, nerdy topic. However, my coworker Brian and I make attempts to go out and watch most comic book movies that come into the Cinerama, and X-Men and SpiderMan didn’t suck that badly, right? So just think of this as a movie discussion. Movies with lots of CG effects. See, it’s work related.

First, see previous thoughts. By the way, I am wiser now: yes, Spawn truly sucks. (On the other hand, I think Judge Dredd isn’t such a bad movie.)

Which gets us to today’s headline: “Marvel to Finance Up to 10 Films”. If you’re a moderate fan of comic book movies, like me, this could be good news - until you read the list of characters. Ant-Man gets his own movie? Black Panther?? For those of you who aren’t familiar with the characters involved, allow me to elucidate. By the way, nearly all of this was from memory, except for the roster of the Avengers, where I cheated. It’s alarming how many of my brain cells are devoted to storing this crap.

• Captain America: super soldier, created using experimental serum by the military, frozen in iceberg since WW2, is revived in current day to battle the Red Skull, a Nazi super criminal bent on world domination. Weapon of choice: indestructible shield made of vibranium (imaginary metal in the Marvel universe), painted red, white and blue, thrown like a discus. Annoying side kick named Bucky during the WW2 era who didn’t get frozen; Captain spends much time moping about this. Needless to say, costume is flag like (inexplicably, with superfluous wings near head which serve no functional purpose). Of all these movies, this has the most potential, but only if played for sheer ironic value.
• The Avengers: random collection of super heroes fight random super menaces. Roster has included Giant Man I, Giant Man II, Iron Man V, Iron Man IX, Demolition Man, Gorilla Man, Machine Man, Sandman, Swordsman, Swordsman II, Wonder Man. Oh wait, that’s the C list, not even the B list. So the movie’s roster should have one or more of Ant Man, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Iceman, Spiderman, the Hulk, Captain America, Wolverine, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman.. er, wait, don’t they already have their own movies? I think that leaves Thor and, um.. Moon Knight.. okay, this should just be the Thor movie and we’ll leave it at that.
• Nick Fury: eyepatch wearing, cigar chomping military freak heads up S.H.I.E.L.D, secret government covert ops. I want to say that the enemy was C.O.B.R.A but I think that was some other cartoon series. Oh yeah, it was H.Y.D.R.A. Silly me. Nick Fury was most notably played by David Hasselhoff in recent history, and I can fully attest to how bad that was. Doesn’t that send up red flags of some sort?
• Black Panther: benevolent dictator of small landlocked African nation guards sacred vibranium (see above) mound against interloping foreign governments eager to build super weapons using vibranium. Super powers definitely didn’t involve turning into a giant cat as far as I recall. Suit was made of vibranium. Claws too. Did I mention the vibranium mound? Yep, this comic book character was all about international trade deficits in mineral resources.
• Ant-Man: scientist Hank Pym invents Pym particles which have size changing properties, and uses them to a) become the superhero known as the Ant-Man (whose super power was being ant sized with human strength. AND THAT’S IT. The talking to ants thing came from the helmet), b) shrink his wife into the superhero known as the Wasp, c) decide being ant sized isn’t all that and becomes the super hero known as Giant-Man, d) retires, e) comes out of retirement and becomes the giant-sized super hero known as Goliath, f) accidentally creates super criminal robot (Ultron?), g) accidentally becomes the super criminal known as the Yellow Jacket. I think there were some other episodes in his career that I’m missing but clearly this has movie plus sequel stamped all over it. Oh, and one of his arch nemeses was Egghead. Um, yeah. Would be even amusing if any part of the movie features a psychologist’s office.
• Cloak & Dagger: okay, so it’s the early 80s and Nancy Reagan needs to impress upon the youth of America that drugs are bad. Surely there had to be a better way than to have a pair of superheroes who got their powers through.. abuse of designer drugs. I think Cloak was the guy with the, uh, cloak and the dark powers, and the Dagger was the girl with the very large dagger-shaped cutout on her uniform who threw daggers made of light. Just in case you had trouble telling them apart.
• Dr. Strange: white man gets magic powers from Tibetan monk known as the Ancient One. Clearly this is a role Steven Seagal was born to play.
• Hawkeye: ex-carnie with questionable fashion sense wears purple uniform, carries bow and arrow to defeat enemies. No super powers. Basically Marvel’s answer to the Green Arrow, but the Purple Arrow just didn’t sound heroic enough, I guess.
• Power Pack: some pack of superkids; vaguely recall one of their superpowers was turning into a rainbow. (Again. I’m not kidding.) I believe this was for the under-8 set. All this from reading a tattered copy of issue #1 in a dentist’s office a very long time ago.
• Shang-Chi: okay, so I have to admit didn’t know who Shang-Chi is. Google search later: “Master of Kung Fu”? Nope, didn’t read that comic. Wow, I thought the only token Asian in the Marvel universe was, um.. ah, Jubilee! Had to think about that one for a long time. (Psylocke is currently Asian but she doesn’t count, because she was born white, and no, don’t ask; it doesn’t make sense to me either.) Somehow, it’s only fitting the only other noteworthy Asian is a martial arts expert, ’cause that’s all we’re good at, yo.

So yeah, it’s pretty much guaranteed - these movies will suck.

I took the bus to the Cinerama yesterday. A clean cut guy, in his fifties or sixties, who was on his way to Westlake Mall to take part in a protest was earnestly discussing his experience in the Vietnam war, why he had to speak out against the situation in Iraq, and his plans for moving to Powell River (which is on Vancouver Island, in B.C).

I cheered up some by watching the Incredibles again, although it was marred by people who clearly ignored the PG warnings and brought their very young kids. People, it’s PG for a reason, and the label doesn’t justify your kid bawling for ten minutes in the middle of my movie.

On the way home, two men came on the bus just before Aurora bridge and started loudly discussing how the current Bush administration should start focusing on Muslims who live in the states instead of overseas, where “focus” is my euphesism for something much cruder and more despicable. Noone on the bus said anything, one of these men sat next to me so I kept my mouth shut. Whatever goodwill I was feeling evaporated instantly. Thankfully I only had three stops to go.

Spending the weekend in a black funk; not just for the above reasons, mind.

As I wait for builds at work, I occasionally update an informal list of entirely CG animated films. I was doing this today (reminded by tomorrow’s release of Shark Tale) and updated what I knew of the CG movie releases for 2005 (most of these dates are from IMDB, these aren’t state secrets):

• Valiant (Vanguard Animation) - March
• Robots (Blue Sky Studios) - March 11
• Foodfight! (Threshold Digital Research Labs) - May
• Madagascar (DreamWorks) - May 27
• Chicken Little (Walt Disney Pictures) - July 1
• Over The Hedge (DreamWorks) - November
• Cars (Pixar Animation Studios) - November 4
• Delgo - A Hero’s Journey (Fathom Studios) - unknown date

Looks like it’s going to be one heck of a crowded schedule. By my reckoning, more movies will be released in the single year 2005 than were released in the three years from 2002 to 2004 (this year’s crop including Shrek 2, the aforementioned Shark Tale, The Polar Express, and of course our very own The Incredibles). 2006 looks just as busy, with at least nine movies that I know of. So much for this CG animation thing being a fad.

I just found this out this past weekend the house has another completely separate line to the sewer. I found out in the ugliest way possible: laundry/kitchen water backed up into the basement. It was tree roots again. I already had Roto-Rooter in to clear the other line earlier this year and was all smug that I’d actually done some maintenance to prevent a repeat of last year’s disaster (which I don’t seem to have blogged about - the main sewer line backed up and destroyed a lot of the vinyl tile I’d put in a scant few weeks earlier) - and now this occurs again. Fortunately I caught it early enough to prevent any real mess. I’m all for redundancy in many things, but having two entirely separate lines connecting my house to the sewer sucks.

I half-jokingly predicted at the office that Nemo would rake in $65 mil over the opening weekend. Well, it currently looks like it’s on track to surpass that.

Kudos to everyone at Pixar for an amazing five successful movies in a row.