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Spockcation 2009: Preparing for Spock’s Arrival plus I’m on Twitter

Posted in movies, Star Trek, technology, Twitter with tags movies, Spockcation 2009, Star Trek, technology, Twitter on April 14, 2009 by Paxton

Hey, everyone, with the impending release of the new Star Trek movie in May, the toy blog eclectorama is hosting what it’s dubbed as Spockcation 2009. A 12″ figure of Spock is being sent across the country to various blog owners in order to be photographed in various cities. I was chosen as the representative for Florida. So, at some point, I’ll have Spock come my way and I’ll get to take a bunch of fun pics with the little guy. Can’t wait.

Anyway, today, April 14, is the kick off day for Spockcation. The tiny Vulcan is heading to Canada for his first stop. Here’s Spock’s itinerary.

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The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Pt II

Posted in advertising, Batman, breakfast cereal, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags advertising, Batman, breakfast cereal, commercials, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on April 3, 2009 by Paxton

Allrighty, here’s Part II of the discontinued cereals article. If you missed Part I, click here, my friends, otherwise, let’s walk back down Aisle 7c (Nostalgia) and take a look at some more forgotten cereals from our childhood.

Burgen, flurgen, murgen…BORK BORK BORK!! The cereal with the nonsense name. Swedish Chef was one of the more popular Muppets, so it’s not surprising he got his own cereal. This was released in the late ’80s and the commercials for it were produced by Jim Henson, right before he died. Here is one of the commercials.

What if you want a breakfast food that looks like other food? I mean, why eat donuts for breakfast when you can have cereal…shaped like donuts? Or waffles? Or ice cream? These cereals remind me of that Jim Belushi skit on SNL where he’s an Olympic athlete that eats “Little Chocolate Donuts” for breakfast. See that skit here. Here are cereals based on donuts, including a Dunkin Donuts branded cereal. I actually remember each of these.

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Twilight: The Art of making vampires lame

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, reviews, Twilight, vampires with tags movie review, movies, pop culture, vampires on March 24, 2009 by Paxton

So, Twilight came out on DVD this past Saturday. I’ve had people ask me to read the book or see the movie because they want to know what I think. I’m told I would love the books and/or movie because I love fantasy/sci-fi books. Well, as a litmus test, I decided to watch Twilight the movie to decide whether I will continue on with reading the books (I got the first book for Xmas). I admit, I do love vampires (they are, appropriately, AWESOME) and I do enjoy teen fiction, so this should be a good fit.

So I be-bopped on over to Blockbuster on Saturday afternoon and was able to pick up a copy (one of many left on the shelf) of Twilight on Blu-Ray. Interesting, because I would think that more copies would be gone from the shelves based on the popularity of this movie. Conversely, the movies Role Models and Sex Drive were gone completely from the Blu-Ray stacks. I had to pick up these last two in Standard Def (disappointment already). Anyway, the wife and I ordered pizza and popped Twilight into the DVD player.

Here’s what I thought: Awful. Terrible. Horrible. I realize I’m about to piss off the collective throngs of Team Edward, but it’s got to be said. This movie is terrible.

Even my wife didn’t enjoy it. She didn’t hate it like I did, but she said she preferred the movie Watchmen to Twilight, and to me, that speaks VOLUMES about the enjoyment level of this movie. Acting, script, the portrayal of the vampires in general. Just plain God-awful. Stephanie Meyer takes what’s awesome about vampires, rolls it up into a tiny ball and wipes her ass with it. Then she sets it on fire and pisses all over the ashes. Everything I love about vampires is stripped away and made into the Harlequin Romance version of vampires. And Edward Cullen, is the Fabio of this fable. They may as well have cast Fabio as Edward.

harlequin twilight

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Weekly Geeks – 2009 – 10 – Worst book/movie adaptations

Posted in books, Jumper, movies, Weekly Geeks with tags books, movie review, movies, Weekly Geeks on March 17, 2009 by Paxton

Weekly Geeks has really been on a role lately with some very good topics. Last week was the favorite author quotes and this week they want you to discuss what, in my opinion, is the worst book-to-film adaptation ever. Here’s the challenge:

Worst movie adaptations: The recent release of Watchmen based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore got me thinking about what I thought were the worst movie adaptations of books. What book or books did a director or directors completely ruin in the adaptation(s) that you wish you could “unsee,” and why in your opinion, what made it or them so bad in contrast to the book or books?

This is an interesting topic because people can really get bent out of shape when their favorite books are supposedly done “wrong” on the big screen. To me, a book-to-film adaptation has to be taken as something completely on its own. The movie can be a good movie on it’s own merit, but also still adapt the source material poorly by changing the story or characters. To me, that’s still a win. If the movie makers take the source material and make an interesting movie, then I’m happy. I figure, if the movie is good, maybe it will entice people to check out the source material for themselves. That is a big win, because now more people will read the book and get the author’s original vision. But if the movie turns out, on its own, to be a bad movie, then you have people turning away from the original source, and that’s bad. So the question is really this; Is the movie bad, or is it just bad because you care so much about the source material you can’t separate the two? It’s the classic “chicken and the egg” syndrome.

So, having said this, I think, for me, the movie that is a poor adaptation of its source book, regardless of its merits as a movie, is Jumper.

I saw this movie without any knowledge of the book, or that there even was a book. I enjoyed the movie as a whole, even though there were flaws. Hayden Christensen isn’t great as the main character. He’s a little whiny and immature. I loved Jamie Bell’s character of Griffin and the entire concept of people born with the ability to Jump. So, overall, this was a good action movie with nice special effects. Then I find out it was based on a series of books. I was intrigued.

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Quick history of Watchmen and a review of the movie

Posted in comic books, movies, pop culture, reviews, Watchmen with tags comic books, movie reviews, movies, Watchmen on March 12, 2009 by Paxton

Okay, I convinced Steph to come with me to see Watchmen last night. Wednesday nights are sometimes our impromptu movie nights because the theaters tend to be devoid of annoying teenagers talking on their cell phones and to each other. We saw Iron Man this way and it can be a pleasant experience.

I’ve had several people ask me what I thought of this movie so I thought I’d do a semi-movie review. I’m also going to talk a bit about the graphic novel because I’m guessing the majority of you may not know the history behind it. It’s interesting how big a release this movie became considering the average movie going patron may not really know who or what Watchmen is or where it came from. So before I talk about the movie, let’s just do a quick recap about where the story of Watchmen came from and what it’s about. If you just want the movie review, you impatient sonova-bee sting, then skip down to that section.

Watchmen was a twelve issue comic book limited series released in 1986 and 1987 by DC Comics. It was written by legendary writer Alan Moore who also wrote other famous limited edition comics League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. Moore is notorious for being extremely anti-establishment and has preemptively dis-owned the movie versions of all of his comic novels. Alan Moore’s idea was to take a hard look at superheroes and portray them as normal, flawed human beings. Moore based the story in our reality, albeit a slightly altered one in which superheroes existed. In keeping with our reality, even though the characters are called superheroes, only one character displays obvious supernatural powers. The appearance of these heroes has altered the outcome of certain historical events including the Vietnam War, which we win with help from the heroes and Richard Nixon’s presidency which is extended because of the win in Vietnam. Moore would use this setting to deconstruct the idea of superheroes as benevolent crime-fighters and show that they, too, are susceptible to the human traits of selfishness, greed and murder.

Watchmen graphic novel