Finally!

My Starblazers review is up over at IRateFilms.Com.  They made a whole new "TV" section for it. 

Check it out:

IRateFilms.Com: Starblazers, Quest for Iscandar

Movie Review: Aloha, Scooby Doo!

I’ve got two girls at home—one princess, 6, and one would-be paleontologist, 5—and I’ve been trying to wean them off of Disney for a while now.  I mean, the princess movies are okay, but they aren’t what I’d call empowering.  They don’t teach much in the way of self-reliance.  And I want my girls to at least get some exposure to heroes who kick ass.  Or, at a minimum, resolve their own problems in a way that’s more proactive than waiting for their respective princes to arrive.  Hence last week’s showing of Starblazers: The Quest for Iscandar (Disc 1).  Thankfully, my younger daughter, the would-be paleontologist, has taken a decided interest in Scooby Doo.  So this week, I streamed an older Scooby direct-to-DVD movie off of Netflix for her called Aloha, Scooby Doo!

Of the Scooby direct-to-DVD movies that we’ve seen, Aloha, Scooby Doo! is easily the most traditional in terms of its plot and structure.  The gang is out someplace doing something that’s fun and basically touristy, in this case visiting Hawaii as part of Daphne’s swimwear design business, when they run into a monster-mystery.  Aloha’s monster is the dreaded Wiki Tiki, a radical native Hawaiian surf zombie dedicated to scaring beachgoers on behalf of the local surfing scene’s racial purity.  Which is to say that the Wiki Tiki wants to keep the beach for locals only.  And as you might expect, wackiness ensues.

For better or worse, Aloha, Scooby Doo! is exactly what you expect it to  be.  The story plays out over a little more than an hour, during which time it strictly follows the beats of a typical episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You?  This gives time for any number of chase scenes—in a cave, at a luau, out in the pipeline, through the jungle—and all of that is fun.  Several of the set pieces are clever, and the usual sight-gags abound.  Certainly, my daughter liked it.  She bounced up and down, pointing and screaming at the TV almost the whole time.  Well, that’s why we watch, right?  As for me, I’ve always loved the goofy visual comedy of Scooby Doo, and I knew what I was getting myself into when I turned the movie on in the first place.  The only part that I found annoying at all was the mechanic of the eventual reveal.  Put simply, setting that scam up would’ve cost twice what the crooks were looking to clear via its execution.  But, y’know, that’s a common problem in adult crime thrillers, too.  At least Scooby Doo has the grace to be up front with its goofiness.

Aloha, Scooby Doo! is a fine addition to a generally entertaining and inoffensive series of kids’ TV movies.  If you or your kids are fans of Scooby Doo, and you enjoyed the traditional story structure of the original TV show but wish they’d made more episodes, then Aloha, Scooby Doo! is for you.  We’ve seen four or five of these Scooby movies now, and while I can’t say that this one was the best, it certainly wasn’t bad.  I enjoyed it, my daughter enjoyed it, and we got it for free via Netflix live streaming.  I don’t know what else you could ask for out of a Scooby Doo cartoon movie than that it entertained Emma and me on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Reviews: The Dresden Files

You may or may not know this, but Changes, the newest book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, comes out on April 6^th.  In honor of this momentous event, I’m reviewing a pair of Dresden-related products this week, Butcher’s own original graphic novel (OGN) Welcome to the Jungle and the Sci Fi Channel original series The Dresden Files. 

In many ways, this week’s reviews are all about expectations.  This is to say that I was super-excited when I saw Welcome to the Jungle at the Westport library, but despite—or perhaps because of—my anticipation, the book itself was disappointing.  Meanwhile, I didn’t expect much from the TV show, but y’know, so far that’s been excellent.  But let’s start with the book:

Look, I really like Butcher’s prose.  He has an amazing grasp of Scene and Sequel structure that keeps his stories moving, and his work is terse, witty, and evocative in spots without ever being overwritten.  Plus, the man has a solid sense of humor and an utter reluctance to take himself seriously that I find both appealing and entertaining, a fact that’s doubly impressive considering that it never undermines his story’s inherent tension or drama.  If anything, the fact that our Hero is a little guy in a big world heightens the suspense.  After all, the world is rarely on the line, so that means that pretty much anything can happen.  Often, it does.

With that said, the witty prose just didn’t translate in Welcome to the Jungle.  Instead, I thought it was often redundant with the images in the book and generally lacking in the kind of cynical self-reflection that makes the Dresden novels so damned entertaining.  On top of that, the artist didn’t do my man any favors.  If you’re gonna write a book about a down-on-his-luck PI, then you have to make him look like he’s down on his luck.  You can’t simply draw him straight out of the superhero playbook and then surround him with beautiful and sexy role-players who look like they might start grooving on him at any moment.  That’s not the way the world works, nor is it the way the base novels portray their protagonist.  Because look: people hate the guy who gets the girls.  And in any event, our Hero Harry is definitely not that guy.  That’s not even how the story’s written.  But that’s the way it’s drawn, leading to all manner of unfortunate chaos, confusion, thematic dissonance.

Eh.  To tell the truth, I’ve seen this problem with a lot of the art out of the various Dabel Brothers’ adaptations.  With the Dabels, the story always looks like it came out of what I call the Top Cow House Style, a storytelling mode entirely dependent on fanboy lingerie fantasies and their occasional fangirl equivalents.  And again, that style can suit—sometimes.  For example, it worked wonders with the Anita Blake adaptations.  But it’s rarely appropriate to the subtler world of losers-made-good who tend to inhabit so many sci fi and fantasy genre stories. 

Case in point: the pic on the left is from Top Cow’s Aphrodite IX.  On the right is from the Dabels’ adaptation of Patricia Briggs Cry Wolf:

Oddly, where the graphic novel went wrong—and this despite Butcher’s personal involvement—the TV show got it right.  Why?  I think it’s because the TV show succeeds in making Harry Dresden look like Harry Dresden.  He’s a broke, down-on-his-luck working stiff, and the show goes to pains to show this.  For example, my man can’t afford a real magic staff, so he uses an old hockey stick.  Brilliant!  Different from the books but entirely appropriate given the character they’re trying to create.  Plus, Harry is a guy with a sordid past but a heart-of-gold.  Again, this is something that the show takes pains to show.  That, plus a heapin’ helpin’ of narrative wit and a smattering of plot drawn from the various early novels are more than enough to keep the TV show entertaining.

“So,” you’re thinking, “where I can I find this TV show?”  Well, it’s available for live-streaming on Netflix, which is where I found it.  Alternately, you can go to Blockbuster and rent the DVDs.  Sadly, there’s only a single season’s worth of watching, but it’ll at least keep you going through the first half of this summer’s ocean of summertime reality television.  The graphic novel, on the other hand, seems to have been pretty successful.  It’s out in hardcover, and I’ve seen it in a variety of local libraries and bookstores.

Back in the Saddle

So it’s Monday after the big storm and the even bigger birthday party over the weekend, and I’m headed back into the office for the first time in a week.  Feels a little strange to be back on my routine, but it’s good, too.  Don’t get me wrong: it was nice to take a little break from the normal.  But at the same time, I got off my routine, had to put my game and my tri training on hold, and was generally at a standstill with my life all week.

If you’re wondering, my daughter Emma’s 5^th Birthday Party was a whopping success.  We had it at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, CT, our local zoo, and while I think the zoo folks in general could have been a little more accommodating, I also think the kids had a good time.  The party was short and to the point—and we managed to have the party without destroying our house in the process, which is a bonus when you’re dealing 5-year-olds.  On top of that, the kids all got to see some really cool animals.  The zoo has a pair of tigers which are right near the carousel building where we held the party, and then, too, the party’s main attraction—aside from Emma and the carousel itself—was a giant blue-tongued gecko that everybody got to pet.

After we got home, I loaded up Scooby Doo: Where’s My Mummy on my laptop via Netflix, and Emma, Hannah, and I sat down to watch it.  And I gotta say this: Emma LOVES Scooby Doo.  Hannah, on the other hand, had started to feel a little under the weather while we were at the zoo, and with that in mind, Where’s My Mummy was just too much for her.  She got scared (of Scooby Doo!) and eventually started crying—and she’s 6!  After the movie, I put her down for a nap, and that seemed to help, but she still had nightmares, eventually crawling into bed with my mother, who was in town for Emma’s birthday.

The other news of the weekend is that I finally got my bike back from the shop and got back into the saddle.  It seems that when I did my 8-miler two weeks ago, I pulled a muscle in my lower back and groin, and after running on it on Thursday last week, I was pretty sore.  So getting my bike back was key, especially since the pounding of running was making me hurt worse.  So Saturday afternoon, I headed out for a little ride, putting in about 13 miles and basically taking it easy.  That seemed to help.  Sunday I headed out again, this time for about an hour and twenty minutes, which was even better.  Sunday evening I felt better still, but I’m still sore, and at this point, I’m starting to think that I have a real injury and will have to do real recovery if I want to get better.  Argh.

Meanwhile, racing season is right around the corner.  So I need to get better ASAP.  There’s a little duathlon I want to do in late April and then a 10K in early May and a much bigger duathlon at the end of May.  Bottom line, I don’t have time to be foolin’ around with no injuries.

In other news, the Sellswords finally defeated Scylla the Black Dragon.  It was touch-and-go there for a while, but as is often the case with upper-Heroic Tier characters, they started using their Daily powers and turned the tide pretty easily.  That said, they don’t know what’s coming next.  It’ll be interesting to see what they do now since they’re pretty much out of super-powers. 

Cue the evil laugh: Muwahahahaha!

Film Review: The Hurt Locker

My wife Sally and I finally got around to watching The Hurt Locker over the weekend, and I thought it was a pretty good flick.  I enjoyed it.  I don’t know that I thought it deserved to win Best Picture, but it was a good film.  It succeeds at being entertaining while also making its viewers think, and that’s no mean feat.

If you have haven’t seen the movie yet, it’s the story of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team stationed in Iraq.  When the team’s leader is killed just a few weeks before the team itself is scheduled to rotate back Stateside, Sergeant First Class William James (not to be confused with the 1970’s pop singer, Rick James) becomes the new team leader, and since Sergeant James seems to be a wild-man who actively LIKES disarming bombs, well, wackiness ensues. 

Actually, although this plot point is significant, it’s also one of the few things that I don’t think the movie does very well.  Which is to say that at the start of the movie, EOD’s Standard Operating Procedure is to dispose of bombs by blowing them up rather than disarming them.  This is in line with actual practice.  Why?  Because disarming bombs is both slower and more dangerous than simply blowing them in place.  So when SFC James comes in, and we see him out there clipping wires and doing his thing, we’re sort of left wondering what’s going on.  Is he disarming the bombs because he’s an adrenaline junkie, or is it because he thinks that disarming the bombs is a better method for some reason?  Did most viewers even notice the difference?  Unfortunately, although the movie hints about it a bit, we never get any of James’s philosophy on the matter, and I found that to be more than a little weird since he struck me as the kind of non-commissioned officer who’d have a million different little philosophies on life and a straight-up willingness to talk your ear off about them.  Also: why does he hate the robot so much?  Is it because he just likes the danger of getting up-close-and-personal or because he thinks the robot doesn’t do the job correctly?  Again, there are only hints—and not very many.  Still, by the end of the movie I think the filmmakers have come down firmly on the side of James’s emotional instability, and at least for me that didn’t ring true.  How can a mentally unstable guy consistently succeed in a high-pressure job like bomb disposal?  Personally, I don’t think he can.  And more to the point, I think it’s obvious that James is a very committed man.  He’s committed to the Army and to the cause of the Iraqi people.  We see this several times.  He is obviously NOT crazy.  And yet we’re still left to wonder—a lot—about his emotional well-being.  And that’s just not the plan at all.  Commitment and even enthusiasm for a dangerous job are not at all the same things as emotional instability.

A more common knock on The Hurt Locker is that it doesn’t get the details correct on the tactics of its subjects.  This is the critique that you see from veteran’s groups, the one set of critics that generally did not like the film.  And while I’m sure that the vet critique is accurate—I mean, who can imagine a three-man EOD team actively hunting snipers while the infantry units next door stand around watching?—I also think this critique misses the point.  Look, Hollywood simply does not understand the military.  Have you seen Avatar?  The last battle sequence in that movie is so silly as to be actively laughable.  In fact, I think James Cameron probably WAS laughing when he wrote that crap.  Oddly, the ONLY movie of 2010 that had any clue at all about military tactics was Transformers: Rise of the Fallen.  And that movie was panned by everyone for being convoluted and unrealistic!  Heh.  As if a movie about giant transforming robots could ever be considered realistic.  But seriously, Transformers got a few things right.  For example, its tank commanders know enough to use their main guns’ range to create standoff from the enemy.  For Hollywood, that is incredible realism.  Anyway, the most probable reason that Transformers looks so good in its battle sequences is that it was made with the active participation of the U.S. military.  The Army will help you with these things if you pay them to.  Meanwhile, the makers of The Hurt Locker went it alone, playing instead by the seats of their pants.  And yeah, their movie suffered for it.

So then, The Hurt Locker is a good movie but not a perfect one.  Was it the BEST movie of 2010?  That’s obviously up to the individual.  For me, I think it was about on par with Avatar.  While The Hurt Locker tackles some serious subject-matter, it does so in an oft ham-handed way that took me completely out of the story at times.  Much the same could be said for Avatar.  I thought Avatar was cool but preachy and at least twice as ridiculous as anything I’ve seen in a good long while.  In fact, Avatar’s last battle scene is right up there with the Ewoks and the Imperial Scout Walkers of Return of the Jedi in terms of its sheer absurdity.  But still… good movie.  Fun.  Sexy blue people are three kinds of awesome. 

That said, I still like the Transformers.  It’s simple math: Transforming Robots + Megan Fox = Blue People on Flying Dinosaurs.  I mean, District 9 was also a very good film, but it just can’t match that level of sheer mathematical awesomeness.  Plus, Transformers hewed amazingly close to its original source material, never mind that the source material itself was incredibly obscure and totally unnecessary.  Actually, given the sheer wacko-weirdness of something like the Autobots’ Matrix of Leadership, I think you have to give T:RotF bonus points for including it.  They certainly didn’t have to.  

Bottom line, Transformers: Rise of the Fallen was my personal Best Picture for 2010.  And no, I don’t give a crap what the Academy has to say about that because they’re all just a bunch of self-important jerk-offs anyway, and I think even they would admit as much.  Plus, if their Best Picture includes an obvious Scooby-Doo reference like “Let’s split up, so we can cover more ground” but then fails to come through with either transforming robots or big blue boobies or even a dog named Scooby Doo, then I don’t see that they have anything to complain about.