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Ponderings For 2009-12-18

Submitted by GuyGG on Sat, 12/19/2009 - 12:59am
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  • RIP: Dan O'Bannon. For those of you unfamiliar with O'Bannon, he's most famous for co-writing Alien. He also wrote or co-wrote films such as Total Recall, Blue Thunder and Lifeforce. However, his best undiscovered gem remains the early John Carpenter student film turned low budget theatrical release, Dark Star. The 1974 film not only features O'Bannon as co-writer, but one of the lead actors (Pinback), a voice performer (of the bombs), and other various production crew credits. In honor of the death of O'Bannon, I watched Dark Star and Alien this evening. It ain't hard to see the influence of the screwball Dark Star on what would eventually become Alien. I'm sure I've watched Dark Star at least a dozen times over the years. It's kind of wild to consider how much unanticipated impact the film indirectly had on the sci-fi genre (and comedy for that matter). It's got a Douglas Adams sense of humor, before Adams would break onto the scene. So farewell, Sgt. Pinback.
  • Oh, and not to overlook - RIP: Roy E. Disney.
  • The Guild has put out a fun set of fake Christmas toy promotional videos.
  • The new Iron Man 2 trailer is flat out awesome. Definitely looking forward to that one. It's one of my most anticipated films of 2010. Tron Legacy is obviously number one on the list. Number two is actually a mini-series - The Pacific (HBO's follow-up to Band Of Brothers).
  • Jack Bauer Interrogates Santa Claus. Classic.
  • The Morgan Freeman chain of command
  • The fun of trying to do automated directions in a place like India.
  • Hurray! The return of the Weeping Angels!
  • And yes, I saw Avatar again tonight (this time in non-IMAX 3D), but I'm dragging my feet on getting the review posted. It will definitely show up at some point tomorrow (Saturday).

Ponderings For 2009-09-01

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 09/01/2009 - 11:59pm
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Ponderings For 2009-08-16

Submitted by GuyGG on Sun, 08/16/2009 - 11:59pm
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  • OK, so I totally suck. I was on vacation all week, and meant to get a lot of content added to the site while I was lounging about, but I ended up busying myself with a number of other things. Tied up much of Fri/Sat down in Indianapolis at GenCon, primarily to do some Heroscape gaming.
  • However, the primary reason I wanted to do a quick post here today was to mention the debut of season 3 for The Guild to us non-XBox Live folks (the XBox Live members get to see it a week earlier). If you don't know what The Guild is, it's a fantastic web series based around a group of WoW gamers (the eponymous "guild"). The show started from next to nothing and has grown over time in production quality and viewership (achieving XBox sponsorship for its second season). It's a hilarious, very well written and wonderfully performed little gem of a series. I've been looking forward to the start of the new series. I have the DVD's for the first two seasons, which have plenty of fun extras on them (great commentaries, etc). Even if you're not a gamer (I'm not), it still works brilliantly. I know enough online MMO gamers (I'm related to one) to know most everything they talk about in the show, but even if you didn't, I'm sure it would still be very enjoyable. It's much more about the characters than it is about gaming. You might also have noticed that I added a banner graphic for The Guild website to the top right of the main page of this site. I never do paid advertising kinda stuff - this is one I added cause it's something I wanna promote. Anyway, a hilarious, cool new music video titled "(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar?" debuts to the mainstream to kick off the new season tomorrow (Saturday the 17th) and the first episode of the 3rd season kicks off on 8/25.
  • On the same topic of The Guild and web series, you really should check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (if you haven't already), from none-other-than Joss Whedon (and a couple other Whedon siblings). It's the now Emmy nominated web series that is utterly fantastic, and also stars The Guild's Felicia Day (who stars in, created, writes and produces The Guild).
  • Speaking of Felicia Day, if you've checked out the recently released DVD or Blu-Ray of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse season 1, you got to see the bonus episode that also stars Felicia Day (she has ties to Whedon going back to her recurring role on the last season of Buffy).
  • And speaking of Dollhouse, I really look forward to season 2, which will hopefully pick up on viewership to keep the show alive beyond the 13 episodes of the second season ordered so far. Season 1 started off a little weak, but really hit it's stride half way through and became fantastic by the end. It has officially found its footing, and I really hope it'll survive. If you haven't checked it out yet, by all means do check out the nice DVD or Blu-Ray set for it. And like I said, while the first handful of episodes aren't bad, they don't reveal the brilliance the show will achieve during the later half of the season, so give it a little while to hook you.
  • Oh, and one other reminder. Free tickets for the IMAX 3D preview reel screening of James Cameron's Avatar (on "Avatar Day" on August 21) become available at noon (PST) tomorrow (Monday the 17th) at the official site for the movie. It's my most anticipated movie for the rest of the year, and I'm very anxious to check out the preview reel (assuming I manage to score tickets for myself tomorrow).

Ponderings For 2009-06-13

Submitted by GuyGG on Sat, 06/13/2009 - 11:59pm
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  • I don't think I'd gotten around to recommending the fantastic online web series The Guild before. I'm a big fan of the show, and honestly can't believe I haven't mentioned it here until now (I happen to have the season 2 DVD playing as I type this, which made me realize that I hadn't put in a plug for the series yet). It's a hilarious show written, produced and starring the great Felecia Day. It's not too hard seeing some of the influence The Guild had on Joss Whedon's fantastic Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (beyond the obvious fact of it also starring Felecia Day). I look forward to the upcoming season 3 of The Guild. If you haven't seen them, head on over to the site, and you can watch them all online.
  • If you wanna check a file you suspect for a virus, try running it through VirusTotal.com and it'll check it against tons of popular scan engines. Pretty cool.
  • You know, I was glancing at the fall network schedules and realized how much NBC sucks at this point. As yet, I've got no specific interest in any of their new shows (though I haven't done a good eval of the upcoming new shows for the fall quite yet). And as far as returning shows for the fall, the only great one that I really care about is 30 Rock. Heroes is hit-or-miss, but is one I do watch. And that's it. If you know me, you know that I watch tons of shows. I don't think I've ever looked at NBC's schedule before and could only come up with 2 shows that I watch (and Heroes is one I pretty much just watch when it comes out on disc at this point). What makes things worse is NBC's incredibly boneheaded decision to cancel Medium, which was the best show they had. Thankfully, CBS snapped it up immediately. Never mind them cancelling the great My Name Is Earl, also with little reason. Earl was rumored to be picked up by TBS, but they recently announced that it wasn't going to happen. Sad to see a series as hilarious as Earl die so unexpectedly. So, NBC, you suck. You've got a long way to go with the new fall shows to make me think otherwise.
  • I was watching the DVD of Contact on Wednesday (it's one of the movies I toss on fairly regularly), and I was thinking to myself how great it would be to have Contact on Blu-Ray in high def. In one of the cooler instances of timing, I saw the announcement by Warner THE NEXT DAY that it was getting just such a release.
  • Tomorrow, I will be posting a brand new music video edit to the site. It's the first one I've done in a couple years. The big step forward with this one is it's the first one I've done in high def. I will post a flash version that'll be watchable on the site. I'll also post a download of the full high def version, in at least one form (and possibly a second, so you'll have a choice). It started off as a crazy experiment, then ended up eating a large chunk of the last couple weeks of my time. Full notes and info to be posted along with the video tomorrow. I'm also going to try to get previous videos I've done posted in the near future.
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