….aaaaaaaaand we are BACK! Episode 6 of the Nerd Lunch podcast has the group discussing the first two Star Trek Next Generation movies; Star Trek Generations and Star Trek First Contact.
We are literally all over the place with our discussion but it’s clear one of us doesn’t like First Contact and none of us really liked Generations. Come see why…
Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.
Okay, time to “wrap up” my end-of-the-year “wrap up”. Last week I posted my annual Movie Board articles featuring the best and worst movies of 2010. I’ve been doing those lists since 2007. Starting last year, I added The Book Report reviewing all the best books I read throughout the year. Today is the 2010 Book Report.
During the year, I keep a Google Spreadsheet logging all the books I read. Here’s a screenshot and link to the spreadsheet.
Google Spreadsheet containing my book log.
The spreadsheet tells me I read 62 books this past year. That’s about 10 more books than the year before. I read a lot more graphic novels this year as opposed to last year which accounts for the increase in books. Those graphic novels can be read in an afternoon, so it pumps up my book totals. Plus I read several Young Adult books that took only a few days to read.
I also did a lot of re-reads this past year. I re-read 6 or 7 Star Wars novels I hadn’t read since the 90s. I also re-read the final Harry Potter book. Every once in a while I get in a kick of re-reading books I loved but haven’t read in years. After two or three years, you’d be surprised how much you forget about the story. It’s like reading the books again for the first time. But I will not include any books I re-read in this list. Only books I read in 2010 for the first time will be included.
Anyway, on to the list. Here’s the best books I read in 2010 in no particular order.
Jack West, Jr series by Matthew Reilly – I found the second book, Six Sacred Stones, in a box of books my buddy Dr Mike was getting rid of a year or two ago. I read the back and it sounded good, so I took it. Mike mentioned he thought there may be a book before it because he felt he was missing some of the story when he read it. I searched Paperbackswap.com and found out he was right. So I ordered the first book, Seven Deadly Wonders and read both books back to back. And I loved them. The story is very much part Indiana Jones, part Da Vinci Code and part National Treasure. The action is very fast paced. I had read two other Reilly books, Area 7 and The Contest, before this and they were equally as awesome. Reilly really can write fun action books. The story centers around Jack West Jr, an Australian military solider and his international and eclectic team who discover that a supernatural event will soon cause the end of the world and set out across the globe, uncovering clues to find out how to stop it. That’s a really high level explanation, but you get the idea. The third book in this series, Five Greatest Warriors, was just released in paperback on Dec 28. I read it last week. Unbelievable. I love each one of these books. The first one, Seven Deadly Wonders, is the best, followed closely by Six Sacred Stones and Five Greatest Warriors which are tied. Such good reads. I am concerned though. The final page in FGW actually says THE END. I don’t know why you’d start a series counting down from 7 and then not finish it because the story in Book 3 ends with no cliff hanger. However, Reilly has stated he has other ideas and if he continues Jack West’s story, it’ll count down to 1. I’m glad, because I adore these books and want more. I may have to continue Reilly’s other book series about a special forces soldier code named Scarecrow while I wait.
Demonata series by Darren Shan – I was recommended this series by my brother-in-law’s brother-in-law (brother-in-law once removed?) Anyway, he knew I liked Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak series so he told me to give this series a try. And I did. And it’s awesome. Very dark and sinister, Shan is building up a very interesting world of magic and demons. The story is kind of in depth and builds over the entire series so it’s tough to nail down a synopsis for you without ruining anything. But the world is dark and the demons are horrific. Know that so far I’ve read books 1 – 3 in this series and I plan on reading more. So far the series sits at 10 books.
Last year I wrote a two part article talking about long defunct breakfast cereals. They were both a very big hit. Dark Roasted Blend and The National Review Online picked them up and it exploded onto a bunch of other blogs after that. If you missed the first two parts of this article:
Read Part I here.
Read Part II here.
A big thanks to my friends Jackie and Steve for actually suggesting this topic to begin with. Now, let’s take another stroll down Grocery Aisle 7c and examine a bunch more extinct breakfast cereals.
Freakies cereal was created in 1971 by Ralston-Purina and lasted until about 1977. However, despite most of the general public not really remembering it, the sloppy man-love for this cereal among cereal box enthusiasts is insane. These boxes are traded heavily amongst collectors with the Cocoa Freakies box going for around $800. I honestly don’t remember it, but there are a lot of people who do and would shell out truckloads of dough for certain boxes. Here’s a commercial for Freakies.
Quisp and Quake were introduced back in 1965 by the Quaker Oats company. They were usually marketed together as rivals in much the same way as Baron Von Redberry and Sir Grapefellow. The characters and animation for the cereals and commercials were done by Jay Ward who also created Rocky & Bullwinkle. The commercial even uses some of the same voice talent as Rocky & Bullwinkle. Check out a Quisp commercial here (you see Quake at the very end). In 1970, Quaker ran a contest promotion to see which cereal was more popular. Quisp won and Quake quietly left the shelves. However Quake would resurface later in the even more queerly named Quake’s Orange Quangaroos. Quaker was totally committed to the whole ‘Q’ thing. See a Quangaroos commercial here. Retro boxes of both Quisp and Quake have been released to certain markets in the past few years.
Okay, everyone. We are finally here. We are at the point where I glance up at my 2009 Movie Board and try to figure out what were my favorite movies of 2009. For those scoring at home, here’s the Movie Board for this year:
As you can see, I saw 53 movies that were released in 2009 (and therefore are eligible for the Oscars). Some of those movies were in the theater (the majority of them, actually) and some were at home on Blu-Ray. That’s 4.42 movies per month. Up from last year. Also, I was able to top 50 movies for the first time since 2007. So, I’m excited about that. Last year my total was 49, so I was a bit irked I didn’t make it. This year, I’m back, baby!
For those just joining us this year, or for those that like reliving the past, check out my favorite movie picks in my Movie Board articles for 2007 and 2008. I myself like to look back every year before I write this article, just to get in the movie pickin’ mood.
This was a really good year for movies. I saw a metric TON of good flicks in 2009. I really had a hard time getting this list down to my favorite movies of the year. As usual, I’m just picking my favorite five. My own personal “best” list. You may agree, you may disagree. Regardless, I’m right, so pipe down and prepare to be told what 5 movies rocked my world this year.
Okay, 2009 movies, let’s do this.
Star Trek – Blew my ass away. I’d take a picture of my ass to prove it to you, but you wouldn’t see anything but a blank space, because it was BLOWN AWAY. I saw this movie twice in theaters because I had my ass kicked so incredibly hard the first time, I had to go back to be sure it wasn’t an illusion. And it wasn’t. I laughed and cried (yes, I f’n cried) at all the exact same spots on both viewings. Then, my dad gave me the movie for Xmas and I watched it again on Blu-Ray and was reduced to a blubbering, laughing mess for a THIRD TIME. THIS MOVIE IS FANTASTIC. I can’t place this movie high enough on the list to get across how much I love this movie. JJ Abrams gets it. Orci and Kurtzman get it. The actors get it. This movie was Star Trek, warts and all. I know some people were bitching about the plot holes and time travel, but I invite those haters to SHUT THEIR CHEETOS HOLES. If you have watched any of the original series episodes from the ’60s (which I’ve been doing) then this movie fits right in. I put this movie up there with Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country as my favorite Star Trek movie. I balled when George Kirk died. I laughed and pumped my fist when Kirk beats the Kobayashi-Maru. I marveled at the final battle with Nero. I couldn’t have asked for a better Star Trek movie. PERIOD. Best. Movie. This. Year. Take that to the bank, haters.
District 9 – I read a lot of the press for this movie before it opened. A small sci-fi film from South Africa produced by Peter Jackson and written/directed by a little known but talented guy named Neill Blomkamp. I knew most of the movie is done in a mock documentary style about aliens that have come to Earth. That’s about all I knew, but it looked like a really clever idea and I was excited to see it. I had no idea what I was in for. Fantastic. This movie blends CGI, practical effects and live action in an unbelievably seamless way. The aliens are all CGI, but they are REAL. This is no Jar Jar Binks, my friends. Also, even though it’s only used for the first 2/3 of the movie, the mockumentary structure really works. This is just a wonderful sci-fi movie. Some of the movie review guys on the Internets that I respect even put this in their best of the year. Devin over at CHUD put it #4 in his top 15 of the year and both Massawyrm and Harry Knowles over at Aint It Cool News put it #1 on their lists. I absolutely agree. This movie deserves to be seen. It’s awesome. I can’t recommend it enough. Hopefully we’ll see a nomination for Special Effects as well as Best Screenplay (fingers crossed).
This is the long awaited Part II of my look back at highlights of the Season 1 of Star Trek the Original Series. I posted Part I back in September. However, thanks to AWESOME-tober-fest, I couldn’t get this one posted until now.
To refresh everyone’s memory, after the awesome JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek back in May, I wanted to watch the original TV show episodes again. I’d seen a few episodes in reruns, but never really sat down to watch the episodes back to back. I wanted to see if they are as good as I remember. And since the first two seasons were recently released on Blu-Ray, I thought it was no time like the present (Season 3 will be released on Blu-Ray December 15).
Last time I looked at three of the best episodes from the first half of Season 1 of the Original Series (Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Enemy Within and The Corbomite Maneuver). Here are three more episodes from the middle of that season.
The Menagerie (Part I and II) — The first and only 2 part episode in the original series’ 3 year run. This episode makes extensive use of the unaired pilot, The Cage, to tell its story. I imagine Roddenberry walked into the writer’s room and announced, “Dudes, I went on a bender of coke and whores this weekend and totally forgot to write this week’s episode. Any ideas?” So the writer’s cobbled together this episode using a minimum of new footage and letting the old pilot pad out the run time. This episode is okay, but it reminds me of the ’80s sitcom device of the “flashback episode”. The events of the pilot, within the context of this episode, are said to have happened 13 years prior when Christopher Pike was the Enterprise captain and Spock the science officer. In the new footage, Spock hijacks Kirk’s Enterprise to bring Capt Pike (now blonde and a paraplegic due to an accident) back to Talos IV, the planet visited in the pilot. Spock gets court martialed while the Enterprise makes the journey and clips from almost the entire episode of The Cage are screened during the court proceedings. In the older footage, Pike gets trapped on the planet Talos IV and the aliens residing there put him in a type of zoo for observation. The aliens use holograms to make Pike feel more comfortable by making him believe he’s living a different life, even going so far as to give him a hot chick to mate with. Pike, not being Kirk, is outraged that the aliens would try to make him comfortable with a cool, imaginary life and then also have the temerity to give him hot women in which to have copious amounts of sex so he sets out to destroy the entire observatory/zoo. Many, many years later, in the new footage, after having become a quadriplegic, Pike is totally fine with living a fantasy life with lots of hot chicks so works with Spock to break every Federation rule and bring him there, even risking Spock’s career for his own comfort. After seeing this episode I have no desire to watch the full pilot. I’ve probably seen 90% of the footage anyway. And the actor who played Pike in the pilot, Jeffery Hunter, didn’t return for The Menagerie, hence Pike being an invalid, blonde mute (it’s like they didn’t even try to make him look the same) in the new footage.
Nerd Lunch articles
Cavalcade of Awesome 