38th Birthday- All The Present I Need

Life is so full of hurry and hustle 
Sometimes I think it's passing us by 
The days are like hours, hours like minutes 
I'm caught up in it till I look in your eyes 
And to my surprise I find there is a heaven 
Timeless and real, making me feel 
Free and alive 

You touch me, you kiss me, and time has no meaning 
I'm on a rocket to some other zone 
Baby, you thrill me - whatever you're doing 
Don't think of stopping until we are light-years away 
All alone, cause I want to keep this 
Treasure for my very own 
Your talent for love 

Lyrics by Lorraine Feather (?)

R.I.P. Robin Williams

Alien, madman, genie, father, robot, drunken sailor, clown, human wreckage, king of the moon.

When my wife told me last night that we lost Robin Williams, the news felt like a quick punch in the chest.

He's been in our entertainment lives since we first became mesmerized by dancing colours on screens. He was the soul of my 52nd & 89th favourite movies (Disney's Aladdin & Bicentennial Man). As a dramatic actor, he showed me about being human. As a comic, he taught us that everything was mockable- "Humour. Ark! Ark! What a concept."

We're going to miss him, and this is going to hurt for a while. Shazbot.

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

I've been looking forward to the Guardians of the Galaxy movie all year. and yesterday I found nothing to disappoint! High praise, really, whenever I get my hopes up about such events they tend to collapse pretty easily. (I'm looking at you, Disney's John Carter. Not literally looking at you, that would require watching you again.)

The characters are splendid. Our villains are creeps of the first order, our heroes are a fun bunch of ne'er-do-wells, who deep, deep, DEEP down, would rather be Er-Do-Wells. Excellent renderings & voices of the horrible/adorable Groot and Rocket (first seen in broad Xandarian triple-daylight) make it very easy to buy into their brand of hyper-reality. Drax, Gamora, and Star-Lord are awesome, just totally spot-on. This is very much the sort of all-outer-space all-the-time action I was wishing for with the live-action Green Lantern movie. (I don't want every comment I make to be bashing something else, but GOTG has quickly become one of my hundred favourites. Sorry, Speed Racer, my former #100, you're probably back on the second-stringers list...)

The sense of humour, way-groovy soundtrack, and whiz-bang big-badda-booms make for an utterly ideal summer flick to enjoy with friends. A cynical heart in just the right place. Maybe you should see it twice before you buy the Blu-Ray! Just sayin'.

I'd like to think the takeaway here is twofold: "Nobody is 100% a dick." and "Life's giving us a chance to give a shit."

Movie Review: Project Moonbase on DVD (MST3K Experiment #109)

Where does the time go? Consider: as I finish out my 37th year on this wacky globe, it seems all too brief a span, yet 37 years was long enough to turn a cutting edge science fiction film of 1953 into the Mystery Science Theater 3000 mockery fodder of 1990. I'm speaking, of course, of Project Moonbase.

I watched several DVDs this weekend while my wife was on holiday before starting her new job. This was one of them! Yes, dear followers, in the distant future year of 1970, women have jobs too! Yet as America's brave men reach out for the moon, so do they also reach out to spank any gals who might imagine themselves beyond their station! Space station, that is!

Outer Space is treacherous, unknown territory, so everyone should don Head Condoms and summer shorts for protection. Please, no walking on the walls. In case of Foreign Spies, be advised that they may be spotted by their ignorance of rudimentary baseball trivia and feeble combat skills.

And when it comes to ladies, they may be colonels in the space force, pilot risky and expensive vehicles, and even be addressed as 'Madame President'- but woe betide us all if they should carry higher rank, engage in sex without marriage, or dare to bravely dream beyond their limits.

The screenplay is partly credited to Robert A. Heinlein, so I partly know who to blame for the lecturing and condescension. And the sense of adventure! This is hilariously outdated but it's still fun on a bun. Not least from the quips of Joel & the Bots.

It was a mildly interesting confluence of events in that I am reading all of Heinlein's novels (3 and a half to go!) and watching DVDs hoping to reduce my collection in my regularly scheduled bookstore trading event with my pal Bookmonkey. Perhaps a form of recycling... in that you can have my copy of this movie if Wee Book Inn chooses to take it off my hands.

Even if they don't, it's good news for everyone- America hasn't got a woman president or a base on the moon but we've all learned so much about... uh... I forget where I was going with this. Gender Equality? Science? Anyway, good news for me- my wife has a job again.

TV Review: Sliders Seasons 1-5 on Netflix

If there was ever a need for a blog post demonstrating an appalling waste of the precious gift of life- here it is!

What? You've never heard of Sliders? The brilliantly conceived Tracy Tormé SF series of 1995 that collapsed like a disused wormhole into the David Peckinpah crap-fest of 1999? Well, you don't have to watch it! Not like I had to.

YES, I HAD TO.

Just like settling back into a nice, harmless Netflix obsession, when you step into a wormhole in search of scientific discovery, you take a mighty big risk. Wanna be guillotined on live TV by Donny Most? 'Cause that's one of hundreds of terrible icky ends you might come to... and no one from your home world will ever find out!

SPOILERS! First of all- don't watch it. Like the poorly-explained mental mystics who appear all too often in this series... Heed My Warning! If you must... stop after Season 1. Seriously. It doesn't get better. Cheesier, cheaper, more heartbreaking. Never better. If you JUST CAN'T STOP... please save your sanity with the hilarious reviews on Earth Prime. 

Season 1- Has excellent ideas, comedy, jeopardy, adventure... and gets you very attached to a haphazard little family who are all about to die horribly, without purpose, and usually offscreen. 
Season 2- Shark. Jumped. Network interference making a hash of continuty and reason. 
Season 3- Utter madness. Season 3 actually cost a human life (stunt performer Ken Steadman) for a tepid stew of '90's film pastiche. 
Season 4- Starts to show purpose and promise again... pisses it all away in the last three episodes. 
Season 5- When the original cast is all replaced- that's when the magic happens!

My mistake was treating it as alternate history SF when suddenly telepathy, dragons, and sorcery crop up. And just as I'm thinking "Fantasy's good too..." very quickly explosions replace any coherent thought at all! Just as I'm thinking "Well, I like explosions..." they can't really afford that! So it's down to horror. Horror of war, horror of alien nazis, horror of being lost and losing your mind. The pompous voice of Professor Max (John Rhys-Awesome) Arturo silenced by Roger Daltry. Wade (Sabrina The Teenage Lloyd) Welles sentenced by sadistic (I guess you'd call them) "writers" to an ape-man "breeding camp" (the only fate worse than season 3 itself). Quinn (Adorable Kid from "My Secret Identity") Mallory is somehow sort-of-but-not-really fused with another actor or something mumble mumble and ends his life literally just trailing off like this sentence. Last and Least poor Colin (My Brother was in "The Invisible Kid"!) Mallory- Nobody Knows! Best case scenario: amiable Amish guy was "spread like a very fine jam across an infinite number of universes". 

And just as you're thinking "At least I kind of like horror..." there's the indignity. It's just not working at all. What a lot of these parallel worlds have in common is soul-crushing boredom. In the last episode I'm staring at a handful of people I never liked (Boobs McGee, Shrugging "Science" Girl, and Hazy Von Hair Gel) while watching Rembrandt ("Better Than The Material") Brown slide into an unresolved cliffhanger to be mourned forever. A catastrophic level of sloppy, disjointed, implausible storytelling with no sense of follow through. But Quinn took his shirt off a lot!

Guest appearances from Mark Allen Shepherd, Conner Trineer, Tommy Chong, Jerry Doyle, and Peter Jurasik cannot save it. A couple of gems like "Worldkiller", "New Gods For Old" and MAAAYBE "Requiem" are all I can recommend after Arturo's death (which was where I was once forced to stop watching by circumstance and must now admit I was better off.)

Maybe it's a waste of the potential, but if I had sliding technology my fantasy would be to see a world where "Sliders" was actually well executed!

Now, if you'll excuse me- Netflix is infinitely deep & I must start shotgunning Hercules and Xena.

TV Review: Star Wars Clone Wars

'Star Wars The Clone Wars' ran from Oct 2008 to March 2013, and last week I finished re-watching it from the beginning so I could enjoy the "Netflix Exclusive" Season 6 "The Lost Missions" in context. Should I start a review with a spoiler? It's awesome. You may now fall over dead from Not Surprised!

The animation is absolutely beautiful, and to the extent that I understand such things, the editing and direction are splendid. Within the constraints of the programme, the writing is usually very good. Specifically, the stories are vignettes sandwiched between the known events of Star Wars Episode II and Episode III (and possibly also between the wipes in the 15th MINUTE of Genndy Tartakovsky's 2003-2005 Star Wars: Clone Wars Volume 2). (ALL of which I loved and will brook no complaints about, no matter how reasonable those complaints may be.)  Very few things in life transport me back to childhood quite like Star Wars, and that's a special pleasure.

The regular voice cast are appealing (special mention: Matt Lanter since he's the best prequel Anakin actor yet) but the guest performer highlights included luminaries such as Clancy Brown, Jim Cummings, Greg Cipes, Phil LaMarr, Jon Favreau, Seth Green, Michael York, Katee Sackhoff, Tim Curry, Simon Pegg, and David Tennant. Also, for authenticity: Peter Mayhew, Ahmed Best, Anthony Daniels, Daniel Logan, Mark Hamill, and Liam Neeson. (They were not hurting in the vocal department.)

One complaint I've heard is that it's kid stuff. (This is completely true. Kid stuff tends to be awesome!) I feel like it manages to offer plenty of shades of meaning, but then again the villains have names like Cad Bane. Or, for colour, Dooku and Durd. (Something smells stinkowiff...)

Lok Durd is a voluminous slimy alien voiced by the effervescent George Takei. "You are now under the protection of the Separatist Alliance," Durd intones at a cuddly old monkey-man. "I congratulate you on your good fortune." Followed, inevitably by "Ransack this dung heap!"

I can't give much credence to the idea that "utterly disposable" armies of clones on one side and droids on the other means there's no-one to care about! Ridiculous! To the programme's credit I not only felt sorry for many of the "heroic" clones- but even now and then for the "evil" droids. Still, apart from the cannon fodder, there's a galaxy of other characters to adore and despise. Only YOU will know how to feel about Sy Snootles after this...

I'm probably the wrong gender to comment, but I will say that the series had better roles for females (i.e. Ventress, Tano, and Offee- seen above) than any previous Star Wars, and that Katie Lucas is a much better writer than the nepotism would first suggest.

Picking a favourite episode has proven impossible. In general, seasons 2 and 4 were strongest and season 6 perhaps the most uneven, but Yoda fans will be richly rewarded in the final arc ("Voices/Destiny/Sacrifice") for slogging through a couple of episodes about banking deregulation. (Seriously? For kids!)

So, at last, some highly arbitrary special mentions: Favourite Ship Battle: "Shadow of Malevolence". Favourite Jar Jar Story: "Bombad Jedi". Favourite Hot Mess: Ziro the Hutt's Mama. Favourite cameo from '80's Nelvanna cartoon "Droids": R2-KT. Favourite Monster of Mass Destruction: the Zillo Beast. Story Arc With The Least Pay-Off: Darth Maul's Resurrection. (I know he's cool- but to what END? Most adorable youngling in "The Gathering": Gungi. Most Futile Death: three-way tie: Gregor/Tarpals/Fives.

Disney will get their chance, and no doubt their efforts in "Rebels" and Episode VII will be the best that ever was! We'll soon see. Always in motion is the future...

Movie Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Say, now I KNOW it's Christmas once again! Because I hear the pitter-patter of little elf feet...

What? Not Buddy the Christmas Elf, nor even the Gremlins of Kingston Falls, but Orlando 'Legolas' Bloom and Tauriel 'Kate From Lost' the Red-Headed Step-Child. Who doesn't want some light-footed elves prancercising their way across white-water Donkey Kong barrels? The Elf Driver's Waltz Pleases Nerds Completely!

I have to admit, there are times when 'The Hobbit Part 2' feels a little like Second Breakfast- a little too much of a good thing. But then it'll lurch back from its drunken wanderings and find the path through Mirkwood again. I'm consoling myself with the belief that they've left plenty of material for the third film, which I'm also as eager as anything to see in 2014.

This does what you paid for (and thanks again to my buddy Ron for the ticket!) with cunning action sequences, bombastic music, stunning natural vistas, strange and wonderful creatures, and more. It's a great way to kill an afternoon. See it with friends as excited as mine and you'll really be in for a swell time!

Stephen Fry as the Master of the Lake-Town of Esgaroth is a particular treat, because Stephen Fry doing ANYTHING- (including reading the entire indicies of 'The Silmarillion') would be a particular treat.

All the returning characters do great work- Bilbo, Gandalf, Radaghast, Old Dwarf, Fat Dwarf, Proud Dwarf, Hot Elf, Haughty Elf, and The Elf who Makes Pies and Raises the Dead. Plus you've got that lizard in a human suit Benny Batch delivering the creepy goods as the BIG BAD!

And lastly, I'll try my best, but I think I'm always gonna pronounce the titular dragon's name as "smog"... not "s-miaow-g".