Anyone who knew me as a kid knows that I was downright obsessed with Transformers approximately between the ages of Sesame Street and Power Rangers. So it was with great joy that I’ve been picking up the remastered seasons of Transformers that Shout Factory has been releasing. I have an issue with the fact that they released seasons one and two before they released the super awesome complete set with Matrix of Leadership packaging and seasons three and four won’t be available till April. I’m thinking they went to the George Lucas school of DVD releasing. Speaking of evil ways to steal a nerd’s money by fucking with DVD releases, did you hear that the initial Lord of the Rings blu-ray release will only be the theatrical versions? So you’ll have to buy two versions, or just wait the extra year for the extended cuts. Seriously, and they wonder why we pirate things!
But anyway, I digest! How was it to relive my childhood? It was fantastic! I mean, at first I was a little worried because they weren’t as OMG! Amazing! as I remember. But once I got past the three part series premiere, things really got good. I mean, yeah, it’s super cheesy and very obvious that this show’s sole purpose is to sell toys, but they do a damn good job at it, and the stories aren’t anything to thumb your nose at. But half the fun is seeing how silly it is. I mean, at one point the Decepticons lead the Autobots into a quicksand trap and the Autobots are all but doomed and Megatron is like “Laserbeak, wait here and make sure they sink!” ::Flies Away:: Seriously, Megatron? You have the Autobots trapped and you’re gonna leave their fate in the hands of a flying cassette tape? It reminded me of the Family Guy: Blue Harvest quote: “What, are we paying by the laser now?”
Another fun part about watching the series is seeing the origins of the Transformers and their backstories. Most of my Transformers viewing from the past ten years just comes from the original 1986 movie, so it’s nice to see how the Transformers came from Cybertron, and the creation of the subgroups like the Dinobots, Insecticons, and Constructicons (that’s where the toy selling aspect of the show comes into play full force). It’s also cool to see a lot of the Transformers I completely forgot about since the original group totally got the shaft when the movie came out because they had to make way for new toys characters. So it’s nice to see characters like Sideswipe, Wheeljack, Cliffjumper (voiced by Casey Kasem who sounds like Shaggy), Sunstreaker, and a bunch more that I had either forgotten about or don’t even have any recollection of. All in all, it’s been really fun, and I’m looking forward to rewatching the entire series.
Is there anything you loved as a kid and rewatched recently?
So I finished reading Batman: Year One and Batman: Arkham Asylum last week. Year One was a fantastic read. I loved how the book belonged to Jim Gordon just as much as it did to Batman. I also loved the old school artwork and how it felt like they just went back in time and fine-tuned the origin story rather than updating it entirely. They certainly kept things simple like how I imagine comics to be in their dawn, but still managed to give everything enough depth to be captivating. I can see now why Year One and The Long Halloween would have been the most influential books when they developed the new Batman movies.
Arkham Asylum on the other hand was a complete disappointment. I can appreciate what they were trying to do, but it was just too far out, and the artwork was too interpretative that it wasn’t very enjoyable. The basic story would have been great, Batman is sent to Arkham Asylum to deal with his rogue gallery who have taken it over. But half the characters were unrecognizable (Clayface, anyone?) that I had to read the wikipedia page for the book just to figure out what I had finished reading. And don’t even get me started on the Joker’s dialogue, which was nearly impossible to read. Some of the artwork was cool to look at, and the Harvey Dent stuff was interesting, but other than that, I was totally disappointed.
Now I’m reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is awesome so far. I’ve never read the original Pride and Prejudice, but I know the BBC version well enough to know the story and most of the familiar lines of dialog, which makes the added zombie mayhem so much more enjoyable.
Today me and my parents went for a walk through the Bayard Cutting Arboretum which is just a few minutes from our house. It was so nice to be outside enjoying the fresh air and soaking in sunlight on the first nice day we’ve had in a while. Here are some pictures:
I can’t believe my parents actually agreed to do that tree hugging picture. I’d call them dorks, but it was my idea. Such a fun, relaxing day!
Okay, so I saw this post over at Jezebel that will surely make some people around here’s heads spin, and I’ll just leave it at that because I don’t want to incur the wrath of certain somebodies. But I’d like to discuss a different song. Does the song According to You by Orianthi bother anyone else as much as it bothers me? The lyrics go:
According to you I’m stupid, I’m useless,
I can’t do anything right.
According to you I’m difficult, hard to please,
Forever changing my mind.
And then:
But according to him I’m beautiful, incredible,
He can’t get me out of his head.
According to him I’m funny, irresistible,
Everything he ever wanted.
Um, how about according to you? What do you think of yourself? Why is this whole song based on what other people think of her? Don’t get me wrong, the song is totally catchy, and I generally leave it on if it comes on the radio, but I think it wrongly gives the impression that it’s a strong girl power song (given the tough rocker chick way it’s sung) when it’s pretty much exactly the opposite. Okay fine, later on she does sing:
According to me you’re stupid, you’re useless,
You can’t do anything right.
Um, okay, but you’re still not letting us know that you think you’re awesome too. And if she thinks this person is so stupid and useless, why was she dating him in the first place? That just doesn’t make sense! And frankly, pop songs need to make perfect sense like they did in the good old days of Slave 4 U. Now I know not every song has to be super girl power to the extreme (given my adoration of Slave 4 U, you should already know that) and this is the only song I know from Orianthi, so I’m not placing judgment on her, just the song. I think it just bothers me that the song is trying to come across as one thing, but the lyrics are saying another. ZOMG did I just write a music post?
This post is going to be as much of an explanation as to why my blog has been sucking lately as it will be a review of the latest graphic novel I read. Anyway, I realize my blog has been sucking lately. It’s not anything I don’t know. There are hardly any original posts, and all I seem to be doing is posting a bunch of reviews of crap you guys don’t give a shit about. I’m just in a bit of a rut. Professionally, my job comes to an end in December, so I have to find something new before then. Home life is frustrating because there are always people there. I know, crazy right? Like, who are these people and why do they want me to call them Mom and Dad? But this weekend I paid off my final grad school loan (GO ME!) and now all I have left is a bit of undergrad to go. I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and that’s a good thing. And romantically, ha, that’s a joke. This is all a roundabout way of saying I have a severe case of grumpypants (some people may even call them the poor me’s, but those people are mean) and can’t muster the energy to put the proper time into my blog. So once I get out of this rut, I’ll be better, I promise. In the meantime, please be patient.
So I finished the graphic novel Batman: Hush the other day. It was really good. Not as great as The Long Halloween or The Dark Knight Returns, but still really good. I liked that this was more of a canon series, that was built into the Batman mythology, more so than the previous Batman graphic novels I’ve read. It was good to learn more about the previous Robins and see Nightwing in action as well as Huntress and Oracle (who I previously only knew about from the short-lived Birds of Prey TV series). I loved the interactions between Batman and Catwoman, which were the most in depth I’ve seen so far. The story itself I found a little lacking. Even though the mystery kept me guessing, and I fell for the red herring they threw me about halfway through, I just wasn’t as riveted as I felt I should have been. But it was still a decent mystery. All in all, a good read, but not great. The artwork was top notch though (the women’s boobs were enormous and I felt downright dirty reading this on the train) and they were it was all breathtaking.
Next up is Batman: Year One.
Every time an argyle sweater rips, an angel dies and crashes to the Earth in a fiery blaze.
R.I.P. Purpley Argyle. Survived by countless other multi-colored brethren. Services to be held by the nearest waterfall à la Boromir. Send flowers donations to Craig. Meh, who am I kidding, I’ll probably still wear it. You can still send donations though.
I finished the last season of Babylon 5! You will never have to sit through another review of this damn show you don’t watch ever again! That is until I start watching the supplementary movies that they also released, but I’m gonna wait some time before I watch those so I can remember the series as it was. So how was it, you ask? Well, as you may remember, I was super worried about this season for two reasons: 1) Since the makers weren’t sure they would get a fifth season, they wrapped up a lot of the storylines at the end of the fourth, so what would there be left to tell? 2) I had heard a lot of the cast wasn’t around for the fifth season due to scheduling conflicts. Well, the first one wasn’t a problem since there were still a lot of loose ends to be tied up so everything flowed in this season and nothing felt like they were stretching things out. And the second one wasn’t nearly as severe as I led myself to believe. The only one really missing was Ivanova and although she was one of my favorites, I enjoy everyone else so much that she wasn’t too missed. And I was glad that the makers didn’t force her replacement Captain Lochley onto us like “Here! She’s just like Susan! Like her!” The transition flowed really well between characters, and Lochley’s role wasn’t large enough to be annoying, and she was likable and interesting enough.
So yeah, there were still plenty of stories to tell this season. I’m gonna get a little spoilery here so watch out! I always enjoy the two stories they seem to tell every season. It’s a nice way of telling larger stories that span over a series of episodes, but without lasting all season and stretching things out too far. This season’s major two storylines were the telepaths (or the Kenny G convention as I like to refer to them) and the Centauri war. I won’t get into too many specifics here, but I think they did an excellent job of wrapping everything up. There were only a couple of things I was disappointed in. One being that Bester never got his comeuppance. He was such a good villain throughout, but there wasn’t any closure between him and Garibaldi, which was disappointing. Another being the end of the Londo and G’Kar storylines. I always assumed that the actions being taken during the show’s final seasons were a way of avoiding all the fates shown in the season 3 episode of War Without End, but it turns out that they weren’t avoided and what happened in the Cetauri throne room is really what ends up happening. Plus what happened when G’Kar and Lyta (who finally got interesting at the very end) went exploring? It would have been nice if the finale brought their stories back into it, but I guess that’s how they wanted to tell things. Besides, I really don’t want to complain about the finale because it was spectacular! The final two episodes were amazing! I pretty much started crying at the end of the second to last one when the music swelled as Lochley and Sheridan saluted each other and kept doing so until the final scene of the last episode. It was all just so beautiful and a wonderful end to a wonderful show.
Here’s the latest trailer for the upcoming The Last Airbender movie. It features a bit more dialogue than what we’ve seen in the previous teasers.
Looks really good so far, I’m just a little worried it won’t have the same magic as the original cartoon. I have a feeling it will be a bit too serious and not have the fun and humor of the original. But I guess being taken too seriously isn’t the worst thing that could happen to it. It’s much better than not being taken seriously enough and turning into another stupid kids movie. Plus I’m not sold on the actors appearances (except for Aang, and they’re not showing any of his dialogue yet, so he could be terrible) and Zuko’s scar isn’t nearly prominent enough. Oh well, I’m still excited.