WONDERFLONIUM: Do Not Bounce

Youtube Roundup

2009-10-24T19:58:01Z

I know I keep linking to these chicks, but I can't help it: they amuse the crap out of me.

Who said it? Kanye or Hitler?

"It's not that easy of a game!"

More Youtube stuff:
A quad wolf 'suiter (one of Beastcub's suits) ends up playing with a dog. Speaking of which, how freaking awesome is this unicorn suit?

Jumping Spider vs. Mouse Pointer. I've played this game with zebra jumpers that have wandered onto my computer screen. Jumpers will chase laser pointers, too. They're so adorable.

THIS SPIDER CHASES PEOPLE. AAAAAGH!

Important safety video for Hallowe'en: Zombies In Plain English. "A flaming zombie can be even more dangerous than a regular one."

Speaking of safety, FORKLIFTS. Warning, hilariously gruesome. The last shot involves a forklift with a headless operator riding off into the sunset with hapless bystanders speared on each fork.

The Call of the Moors

2009-10-22T17:36:29Z

There are plenty of people out there that put "wet dog" on the list of "generally awful smells of the everyday world", but I've always kind of enjoyed that smell. Maybe because the dogs I've been around are, when wet, also clean wet dogs.

I bring the subject up because the fluffy colliewog at my feet was treated to a bath yesterday, the very instant I got home from work. There is, of course, a reason: on Tuesday, we borrowed eclipsegryph's Honda (the Goose) and drove to Occidental to visit summer_jackel and her collection of collie-like things. Which was the perfect remedy to a not-so-great morning, it turned out.

We went up to Blind Beach, just south of Goat Rock, on a beautiful fogged-in afternoon. It was spectacular in a way that doesn't quite translate into words or photos. My camera completely failed to capture the smell of the wet sea breeze, for example, or the crashing surf, or the fog ripped to streamers by the huge stark rocks.

So I took a hell of a lot of pictures of dogs, instead.

Apparently, kelp smells really interesting, if you're a dog.

Apparently, Luck smells really interesting, if you're an intact male puppy who hasn't encountered a lot of neutered boys.

I think little Coba may be in looooooove, even though Luck makes faces at him when his back is turned.

Rogue keeps the boys in line with the power of The Tail.

However, even Rogue the Supreme High Dictator-for-Life knows who's really in charge.

Little (or "little") Bliss Like Chaos is six months old, and he shifts back and forth between Noble Collie and harebrained puppy about seven times a minute. There are flashes of the dog he will become, but... definitely, definitely a puppy. A really, really tall puppy.

Who may not resemble an aardvark any more, but who definitely invites comparison to a creature composed of graceful and ungainly in approximately equal measures, with a beautiful top gear but a lot of really awkward low gears, and with a tendency to excavate nests in pebble beaches.

I present: Bliss Like Albatross.

Also, Rogue.

DOWN IN FRONT, DOGCHILD.

And one last slice of Collie Mk. 1 and surf.

It was a beautiful day at the beach, not least because Jackel and I and the collies had it entirely to ourselves. Of course, "cool and wet" is my favorite type of weather, and there's a vitality to the mist of northern California that I can never seem to get enough of. I can understand how the redwoods thrive on the stuff. The tide was coming in, and I (and the dogs) got surfed a few times -- Jackel bounded nimbly onto adjacent rocks to elude the water, but I love the feeling of the water surge, and the way my feet sink into the sand. Well worth being a bit chilled and damp for the rest of the day (note to self: must do this again, but bring extra pants).

After the beach, Jackel took me a hop, skip and a two-minute drive from Goat Rock, where there's an Indian restaurant with a view of the Russian River. Jackel can (and does) speak to the quality of their tandoori chicken*, but does not recommend the fish and chips. The saag paneer is NOM NOM NOM, although I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to discreetly establish whether I had spinach in my teeth (smooth, Kyn. Real smooth).

Later on, there was wine, kitties, and David Attenborough.

Oh, and chickens. PEEP PEEP PEEP.

* Heh.

COLLIEPALOOZA

2009-10-21T06:24:32Z

Whoosh!

2009-10-13T21:03:41Z

(I actually drew this in 2004, but I still feel the same way about rain.)

"Well, there's spam-egg-sausage-and-spam, that's not got much spam in it."

2009-10-13T00:57:54Z

Dear Deer [video]
Kimono's Townhouse [webcomic sorta thing, only with My Little Ponies, adorable homemade sets, and nerd humor]
If Twilight Was Ten Times Shorter and a Hundred Times More Honest
This Party Just Took a Turn For the Douche [video]
Regretsy
Awful Library Books
Gives Me Hope

Son of a beach!

2009-10-12T00:26:30Z

THROW IT THROW IT THROW IT THROW IT THROW IT

Imma get it!

HURK

THROW IT AGAIN! THROW IT THROW IT THROW IT...

Unfortunately, after a few tosses, this happens.

Seriously. Yuck.

WELL IF YOU'D JUST THROW IT HIGHER I WOULDN'T EAT SO MUCH DIRT

THANK YOU!

ILU

In Honor of National Coming Out Day:

2009-10-11T19:11:18Z

...I still don't see how my sexual orientation, assuming I have one, is anyone's concern but my own, and possibly, my prospective partner(s). Sorry.

I keep getting spiders in the mail!

2009-09-15T19:17:39Z

And it was a beauty. I'm still working on what the hell exactly it was, but it was very slow-moving and docile, and I was able to handle it without drama -- which would rule out "any kind of agelenid or lycosid", if this passivity wasn't also possibly a result of crawling onto the mailbox last night for some shelter and then broiling in the morning sunshine until I came home from work. Anyway. Less talky, more pretty:

The spider in situ, as I found it on the mailbox:

Evicted from the mailbox, gently encouraged onto a piece of paper:

I named it Shiny. Guess why.

A photographer in Colorado has (much nicer) photographs of the same type of spider, if you're curious. It was like a delicate little living piece of jewelry, when I had it walking over my hand. Gorgeous. I'm so happy to have seen it, even if I end up throwing my photos at BugGuide.net and yelling "HELP!"

EDIT: Definitely an argiope of some sort. See the legs? The eye pattern was pretty orb-weaverish, too, although I can't get a decent photo with the Olympus. Subadult A. trifasciata seems most likely, a spider dear to my heart -- see the userpic? Full version here.

Yep, it's a real one this time, so don't go looking under the cut if spiders make your skin crawl. And definitely don't go looking at the site I tripped over while trying to identify my little silvery friend: Unnecessary Carnage, brought to you by What's That Bug. Years ago, I stopped counting the number of times I've been called over by a co-worker or family member to examine a pile of chitin and goo: "I found this enormous bug! What is it? Is it poisonous? Are there more of them?"

To which the only possible reply is usually "If you don't know what it is, why the fuck did you smash it? AAAAAGH!"

At this point, I have selasphorus and eclipsegryph trained out of "squash first, ask questions later", but it's probably a good thing that I found the mailbox beauty first. The USPS guy has a squisher's eye.

Bliss Like Aardvark

2009-09-07T20:48:46Z

This weekend was the first weekend I haven't had to work for quite a while, and was characterized in approximately equal parts by drama, angst, woe, and AWESOME. Since a) this isn't that kind of journal, and b) I'm not in that kind of mood, I'll focus on the highlights:

summer_jackel came by on Thursday after my Emo Moment(tm). There was grilled meat, Dancing Coyote Verdelho, and Bliss Like Chaos, her five-month-old rough collie puppy who has acquired a truly amazing collection of nicknames during his short life so far. So soft and sweet and snouty, awww.

On Sunday, Jackel came by again for the Redwood Empire Kennel Club Dog Show, conveniently held within walking distance of my house. Unfortunately, it was a late enough start that we missed most of the judging, but we hung around for groups and BIS, and only made fun of poodle clips a little bit, bloolark, honest.

Little Chaos was pretty wiped out by dog show day. Sing it with me now: Dead puppies...

...aren't much fun.

No, seriously, behold the growth of Snoutface the Aardvark Dog.

Two months ago:

And yesterday:

Coba is shocked. Shocked.

summer_jackel makes an excellent dog-show buddy. Also, she has really wonderful dogs. </gushingpraise> So much so that I'm thinking seriously about getting a little lurchervark of my own, a delusion that yon jackel is quick to encourage. :> We shall see.

Additionally, on Saturday, eclipsegryph and I went to Davis for nomful Chinese foods with gracious hosts tenaya_owlcat and seabhacson. Tenaya gave me her spare copies of Jaqueline Carey's two most recent, which I enjoyed thoroughly, although the Kushiel's Whatever series slide a little further into the "guilty pleasure" section of my library with each installment. :>

* Foreleg growth plates, for those unfamiliar with that particular Kyn-ism.

Livejournal = fridge door.

2009-08-20T15:36:48Z

The Nintendo DS has a goofy little animation program, AND the ability to connect to the Internet, so I made a bunch of these last night. Of course, I realize that a number of people who read this journal are professional animators and/or in animation school, whereas my animation experience is mostly of the "defacing paperback margins" variety.

It's still fun, though!

~~Going to dog show, BRB.~~ Not going to dog show. Have another flipnote!

It Came from the Bargain Bin IV: Attack of the Fifty-Foot Bargain Bin

2009-08-18T21:58:01Z

First of all: I TOLD YOU IT WAS A COMEDY. So nyeah. Plus, it's that time again.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

*** = I'd watch it again.
** = Pleasantly surprising.
* = So bad, it's good.
- = So bad, it's AWFUL.
-- = Unpleasantly surprising.
--- = KILL IT WITH FIRE.

The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon (2008) [-]
"When they credit the special effects designer before the director of photography, you know you're in trouble." -- eclipsegryph, watching the opening credits.

This film is a pile of Anachronism Stew, even before the Mayincatecs show up, but that's really the least of its problems.

The Fiendish Plot: So, uh, there's these archaeologist/adventurer guys in some alternate version of the American Southwest, looking for... stuff. One of them wanders away from the main expedition in pursuit of A Theory that the ancient Egyptians were building cities in Arizona: he's totally wrong about this, but he does find a lost ~~city~~ ~~temple~~ bunch of dudes in loincloths hiding in a digi-cave, after all of his men have been eaten by an Unspeakable Monster (I guess). Meanwhile, Archaeologist Dude's daughter is nagging the rest of the expedition to go look for her dad. We are swiftly introduced to The Love Interest, the Really Ruthless Guy, the Comic Relief, and some Redshirts.

So they all go into the desert to look for Missing Archaeologist Dude. They quickly discover His Dead Horse, played by what appears to be a horsehide thrown over a chair (I wish I was kidding), and his journal, which indicates his direction of travel. Oh, and there's some Movie Quicksand, played by a hip-deep puddle, too. This was when I started screaming at the TV screen.

Scene: Desert, midday. OUR HEROES are trudging along the scrubland, doing various impressions of Hot and Tired. Cut to WATERHOLE. REDSHIRTS 1 and 2 race toward water, and splash in up to their waists, but do not attempt to drink any of it.
REDSHIRT 1: [standing still] I'm sinking!
REDSHIRT 2: [also standing still] Oh, no! I'm sinking, too!
LOVE INTEREST GUY: It's quicksand! Hold still! We'll try to pull you out! [He reaches for nearest REDSHIRT] I can't reach! Let me find a stick!

ME: First, quicksand does not work that way. Secondly, there's a rope attached to your saddle. Of the horse? That's right next to you?

RUTHLESS DUDE: [ruthlessly] We'll just have to leave them behind. There's no way to pull them out.
LOVE INTEREST GUY: There must be a way to save them! Help me with this branch! [They furiously tug at a branch while REDSHIRTS sink deeper. Up to, say, their navels. Still not moving, except to sink.]

ME: THERE'S A ROPE RIGHT THERE. IT'S BEHIND YOU. I CAN SEE IT FROM HERE. GET THE FUCKING ROPE!

They do eventually grab the rope and pull the redshirts out, but damn. That scene is also a fairly good summary of the Moral Of The Story, such as it is. Every single scene in which they both appear has Love Interest Guy putting himself at risk to save others, while Ruthless Dude ruthlessly argues that it's everyone for himself. Never mind that all of this peril could be easily avoided if anyone sat and thought for five minutes.

The film, as a result of either 1) shockingly poor editing or 2) no one giving a fuck, is also a bit indecisive about Who's Really Dead: there are three different characters who get dramatic off-screen deaths, only to reappear later and either hand-wave the scene away or never mention it again. Nothing about this movie makes any sense, and the disjointed plot is underscored by rather slapdash filmography. Items, costume elements, and even makeup effects appear in one scene and have vanished by the next; scenes begin, reveal nothing new about the characters or plot, and then end abrubtly. Additionally, the script was quite obviously sectioned into portions labeled Action, Dialogue, or Special Effects, since no scene contains more than one of those elements. I have no doubt this made shooting easier, but it's clunky as hell.

Oh, also, Quetzalcoatl is a savage dragon-beast who eats people's hearts.

I enjoy watching bad movies for their own sake, in a lot of cases, but this one was just a waste of time. It's boring, disjointed, and lazy. Even lazier than Fire Serpent, and that's saying something. Nevertheless, it only gets a "-". Offend me (Zombie Nation), annoy me (18 Fingers of Death), make me laugh with your tenuous grasp of physics (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), but for fuck's sake, don't BORE me.

Mutant Chronicles (2009) [*]
Starring: Ron Perlman, Devon Aoki and Thomas Jane, but not John Malkovich, even though his name features prominently on the box.

I will say this much: in contrast to most of the sci-fi B movies I watch, especially the ones I write about here, it appears that everyone involved in Mutant Chronicles actually had "make a decent film" as their goal. The actors took their roles seriously, the director and DP probably took the time to speak to each other, and the special effects studio was obviously hoping for their big cinematic break with this one. Love and considerable effort went into the making of Mutant Chronicles.

Unfortunately, there's a fine but important line between Sweeping Melodrama and Unfettered Narm, and this movie is so Narmtastic that they might as well have called it Narm: The Movie. Practically every dramatic moment gets blown so far wide of the mark that it's hard to stifle the yowls of mirth long enough to hear the dialogue (which is a problem, because this DVD also suffers from a lack of English subtitles). It's entirely plausible that I missed key elements of the plot because I was snickering too hard, so the story I'm about to relate might not actually be as incoherent as it sounds.

Anyway! There are mutants, and they are chronicled!* The chronicler is Samuel, the... leader(?) of a secret brotherhood kind of ancient religious order thing, whose sacred calling is to protect an enormous seal somewhere in the desert, which itself conceals an ancient machine that produces mutants. Anyway, it's now either the Distant Future or an Alternate Reality, where the world as we know it has split up into four superpowers (which should shorten the "memorize countries and their capitol cities" portion of social studies class considerably). Some dickheads are holding a World War 2 reenactment on top of the seal, and naturally, they break it. Whereupon a lot of mutants - read as "very angry people with forehead appliques and a pointy arm" - rush out of it and generally Fuck Shit Up. Various mooks have time before the evacuation vehicle arrives to die horribly of stabnation to the face, and a character Sacrifices Himself Heroically so that Thomas Jane's character - Our Hero - and his "what happens in the trenches stays in the trenches" comic-relief boyfriend can escape.

There's a hilarious bit of Narm that I really can't allow to pass without comment where the shuttle-thing rescuing the guys takes off. The Heroic Sacrifice Guy yells "NOOOOOOOOOO!" and the pilot yells "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and the rescued guys yell "NOOOOOOOOO!" and the film cuts lovingly between them so we get a double-"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" each. Shatner cubed!

Not much else happens for a while. The movie is really in love with its special effects, which isn't a bad thing by itself, but irritatingly, the plot grinds to a halt every time one of them appears. It's as bad as the Star Wars prequels for "now everyone be quiet while this vehicle slowly retracts its thingaprongers and switches on its lightmajigs and rumbles ominously and finally eventually takes flight" cinematography. The vehicles, buildings and weapons digitally added to the film have kind of an interesting steampunk/technodecay aesthetic that I appreciate, but if you aren't using your special effects as part of your story, I'm sorry to have to tell you that Ur Doin It Rong.

So there's a bunch of that, and then the plot appears. It sounds like this: "Take a crack team of crazy people down into the mutant hole to shut down The Machine. With an ancient bomb handed down through the generations. That's missing its fuse, but I'm sure you'll find it down there somewhere, it's only been a thousand years, anyway off you go". John Malkovich appears for two minutes, but is of very little use. Meanwhile, the population of Earth (well, the population that's rich and powerful enough to acquire government evacuation passes) is evacuated to, uh, Mars. Just in case? I dunno. Leaving the poor and noninfluential to be stabnated by mutants.

I'd mention the characters, but there's really very little to say about them. With a little more fleshing-out, they could have aspired to two-dimensionality, but as it is, they're pretty much just lines, indistinguishable from one another. Even their backstory is thrown out in the narration (the "chronicle" aspect), instead of in dialogue. Sigh. The cast overall, as I mentioned before, did a decent job with really very little to work with (o hai Princess Nuala and Miho), but seriously, the movie should have paid less attention to its dynamic matte paintings and more attention to its goddamned characterization. Everyone is basically interchangeable, no one has a story arc, and they're all dead at the end of the movie anyway except Our Hero, who, despite saving humanity**, is still half-mutated and sitting at the bottom of a very, very deep hole. He'll probably commit suicide. Everyone else in this movie (starting with the guy in the first scene) resorts to suicide suspiciously fast.

Overall, pretty much what you'd expect. Not good, not awful, only slightly embarrassing for all concerned. Ron Perlman I still love yoooou.

Black Sheep (2007) [***]
Tagline: There are forty million sheep in New Zealand... and they're pissed off.

This film combines classic elements of vampire, werewolf, and zombie horror flicks... in a story about genetically engineered sheep. Stay with me here: it's so freaking perfect, the only thing that surprises me is that it's never been done before. Look, have you ever seen a flock of sheep? Up close? Forget the puffs of fleecy whiteness scattered over the hills, and think instead of slack, drooling jaws, vacant expressions, bedraggled hanks of untidy wool dripping with unspeakable excretions, the damnèd bleating, the smell: yeah, I can totally see it. RUN! THE SHEEP ARE COMING!

The genius inherent in conceiving of the Sheepocalypse aside, and my known affection for the quirky horror-comedy genre acknowledged, Black Sheep is mostly a good blend of outrageous, hilarious, and horrifying. The effects by Weta Workshop are, as you'd expect, fabulous, and it does my old-school heart good to see animatronics in a monster flick again***.

Of course, it's a comedy at heart, which probably gives away the ending: in order for our heroes to actually win, the Ultimate Showdown kind of slides off the believability scale (hey, having the climactic moment concealed as a fart gag worked for Shaun of the Dead), but the dénouement makes up for a lot. I'm cheating again, since I actually paid full price to add this to my DVD collection instead of properly fishing it out of a bargain bin or renting it from the WTH? section of Hollywood Video, but I hate to wind up on a "meh".

* Which might rate a "well, obviously" from most people, but if you watch as many terrible movies as I do, you learn to appreciate titles that actually relate in some way to the story. Yeah, Zombie Nation, I'm lookin' at you.
** Only. Not. Sure, y'all destroyed the mutant-making machine, but, uh, there are a fuckton of mutants still roaming around loose, and all the people in control of armies have buggered off for Mars. Enjoy being stabbed, remaining Earthians!
*** Now, I loves me some digital effects, but with a creature feature? Putting something in the scene for the actors to, you know, react to is always, always better. It just is.

THIS JUST IN: LJ = Twitter.

2009-08-15T02:46:12Z

I liked District 9 a lot. More later? I dunno. UNRELATED: I have three pounds of discount squid sitting in my freezer.

WHARRGARBL.

2009-08-13T18:55:14Z

This WHARRGARBL is brought to you by eclipsegryph and the letter K.

Kalu makes fabulous faces.

Writer's Block: Fantasy Sports

2009-08-04T19:13:42Z

Imagine you manage a coven of baseball-playing vampires. The Cullen family is really strong this year and you want to bring in a ringer. Which currently active MLB baseball player do you sire?

Submitted By seannau

View 502 Answers

In the alternate reality of Twilight, I would have to assume that all professional baseball players are vampires already, since "being really good at baseball" is apparently all Stephenie Meyer's weak, watery version of vampirism is good for.

Oh, and the Kevin Costner movie was called Field of Glitter.

Continuing the theme of "bald-headed birds are adorable":

2009-07-31T02:33:56Z

Bald-headed species of songbird discovered in Laos.

"Bald bulbul" is hard to say.

"The secret ingredient is otter!"

2009-07-28T22:43:49Z

Incidentally, on Saturday, we went to the San Francisco Zoo, and took many pictures. selasphorus has posted all the good ones already (she doesn't let the new camera out of her sight), but I have . . . more! From slightly different angles!

Presented linkety-style for your convenience, because there's a crapton.

1. I didn't know the SF zoo had one of these in their collection, but it's true: they really do have a whangdoodle. Really. Right there behind that weird plant thing.
2. It's hard to tell what's going on here, but I can assure you that this young giraffe and ostrich making faces at each other across the fence was hilarious indeed.
3. The "African Savannah" exhibit, with visible species labeled.
4. Hey eclipsegryph, check out those babes.
5. Adorable Waldrapp ibis. I think all nekkid-headed birds are cute, apparently.
6. A species not on exhibit at the Primate House.
7. I like flamingos, but the smell downwind of their briny splash area was a bit eye-watering.
8. The art of stealth.
9. . . . words fail me. Just click.
10. The world's ugliest (and tallest) prairie dog.
11. Adorable meerkats with adorable little penises.
12. Toulouse the turkey vulture is holy crap really thirty-seven years old. He sits calmly on his perch and preens. Which is what he's doing in the picture, even if it may look as though he's shielding his eyes from Eclipse's shirt.
13. Morty is three, and disdains the platform.
14. Tyr the Swainson's hawk is tiny and pointy.
15. This is a merganser. They're known for, uh, mergansing.
16. Coatimundis! Tremble before the power of snooze.
17. Tiger salamander leers at you from the undergrowth.
18. Ruddy duck is feeling blue.
19. Totally awesome bird-eating spider.
20. Hey iatro there's a whip scorpion!
21. Great Hornbill of
22. I love ground hornbills. Really a lot. I even have a stuffed one that I cuddle with at night, and that took some finding, let me tell you. Unfortunately, I can't enjoy their stately-yet-hilarious antics at the zoo without having to elbow past the "wow, what an ugly bird! C'mere and look at this ugly bird! What're those, tumors? Duuuuude!" Ingrates. Incidentally, he's coming to kill you for trying to seduce his woman. LOL.
23. Penguin barbershop quartet practices their breakaway hit titled "YONK YONK YONK YONK!"
24. Odd-toed ungulates deserve love, too. Have a sexually-frustrated rhino and a sexually-frustrated Baird's tapir. (Ah, spring, the time of year when a rhino's fancy turns to love and WHY ARE THE WOMEN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A GODDAMNED FENCE? RAAAAGH! TAKE THAT, BOULDER! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!)

So that was fun. But I still like the Oakland zoo better.

Linkety.

2009-07-27T00:31:23Z

Really interesting felt sculpture. Teddy bear natural history, commentary on overdomestication, all interesting shit. I like her figure studies best, though. Evocative.

As with all the neat sculpture I find on the Internet, this came up in a Google image search for something else.

Like: a mechanical cheetah. Scroll down to watch it run, and to see similar pieces.

And: some really fantastic leatherwork, including a dragon backpack, a Cthulhu mask, and some wicked paw shoes and gloves

Additionally, bird.

2009-07-21T18:50:05Z

I let Ninja out as soon as I got home from work this morning, and instead his usual routine of partying on top of his cage, he took it into his little blue head to FLY FLY FLY OMG FLY around the house for a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't get any in-flight shots, but this is almost worth it. After the better part of a year with full wing feathers, he's still not an expert aviator. He can cirle, turn, accelerate, decelerate, ascend, and descend competently, but he only has one landing style, and it rhymes with "gnash". At least he usually manages to aim himself for something soft. Curtains are a favorite, but while I was cleaning his cage today*, he managed to stick a landing on top of the curtain rail.

Hi Bird says "Hi!", by the way.

INNOCENT FACE!

Following the Innocent Face up there, Ninja decided to check out upstairs, and got a little too interested in the cat5 cable that leads to the XBox 360. BACK IN YOUR CAGE, DEMON.

Additionally, the hot weather is taking its toll on the mammal pets. Specifically, it causes them to make DURRRRRRRR faces.

DURRRRRRRRR LUCK

DURRRRRRRRR OLLIE

* Flighted parrots, even accident-prone ones, get into less trouble than you'd think. Nevertheless, Ninja's closely supervised when he's flying.

Good Idea / Bad Idea

2009-06-29T00:47:58Z

Strangely, I've spent a notable portion of the past two days at the theater.

Exhibit A: J.J. Abrams's Star Trek.
Exhibit B: Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Seeing these movies back to back sort of invites comparison, and considering how, uh, different they are, the format that springs immediately to mind is Good Idea, Bad Idea from "Animaniacs".

What to include in your "teaser" to hook your audience into the story before the opening credits roll:
Good Idea
Action, explosions, familiar names, dramatic music, lives in peril, desperate heroics, Important Plot Points That Will Be Recalled Later.

Bad Idea
Was that a tiger? In Egypt?

How to introduce characters with whom your core audience is already familiar:
Good Idea
Bones (to Kirk): "My wife got half the planet in the divorce. All I've got left are my bones."

Bad Idea
Optimus Prime (to General Whatsisbollocks): "I am Optimus Prime blah blah blah Autobots blah Decepticons blah blah blah ancient times blah blah energon blah [ten minutes of chalky exposition] blah...."

How to gently let the pendantic section of the fanboy contingent know they're not in Kansas anymore, and that it's unreasonable to expect the new version to be exactly like the source material in all respects:
Good Idea
Spock: "Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the U.S.S. Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party."
Uhura: "An alternate reality."
Spock: "Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been if the time continuum was not disrupted, our destinies have changed."

Bad Idea
Wolverine: "Nice uniforms."
Cyclops: "What would you prefer? Yellow spandex?"*

How to show you're taking the internal consistency of your story seriously, despite the fantastic setting:
Good Idea
Employ a continuity editor, and at least hand-wave the really outrageous science stuff, if there's no rational explanation.
Scotty: "Huh. I never would have thought of space as the moving object."

Bad Idea
Have robots drool, vomit, fart, and weep for the sake of "comedy"; be unable to calculate that five minus one plus one is five and not six; dramatically rip the top off of Khafre's pyramid (that's the really distinctive one which still has its casing stones, for non-geeks) at Giza, but don't worry about having the same pyramid, intact, in the background of subsequent shots; etc., etc., etc....

How to set up and pay off a running gag:
Good Idea
"You cheated." / "Time travel, changing history... that's cheating."

Bad Idea
A dog humping another dog / a robot humping someone's leg.

How to let your audience know that your main villain is not merely a monster of the week, but Serious Business, and the world as we know it is in peril:
Good Idea
Capt. Pike: "This is Captain Christopher Pike. To whom am I speaking?"
Nero: "Hi, Chris. I'm Nero." *commits genocide, takes off for Earth*

Bad Idea
Have him talk in a really mean voice.

How to use specialized camera work to create a sense of tension and action:
Good Idea
Use quick zooms and wobble to give a hand-held/gritty-reality feel to very carefully staged effects shots, "Firefly"-style.

Bad Idea
Shoot everything from a crane. Or a trolley. Or roller skates! EVERY CAMERA MUST BE MOVING, DAMNIT, EVEN IF NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

How to make a raunchy joke, but keep it suitable for a PG-13 audience:
Good Idea
Uhura: "And here I thought you were a dumb hick who only had sex with farm animals."
Jim Kirk: "Well, not only."

Bad Idea
Simmons: "Enemy nutsack sighted!"

When to drop the soundtrack out of your movie for dramatic effect:
Good Idea
When something explodes in space.

Bad Idea
Sometimes, at random, when anything explodes.

How to designate characters as comic relief:
Good Idea
Zany accents and snappy dialogue!
Scotty: "What? Are you from the future?"
Kirk: "Yeah, he is. I'm not."
Scotty: "Well that's brilliant! Do they still have sandwiches there?"

Bad Idea
Zany accents and racial stereotypes that are offensive or annoying, depending on context!
Sam (holding out Cybertronian symbols): "Can you read this?"
Skids or Mudflap: "Read? Nuh-uh."
Mudflap or Skids: "We don't really do much reading."

How to set up the final climactic battle sequence, where everything miraculously goes right for Our Heroes, without undermining the seriousness of their peril:
Good Idea
Scotty: "Okay, if there's any sense to the design of this Romulan ship, I'll be beaming you into the cargo bay. Shouldn't be a soul in sight."
(Kirk and Spock are beamed into Engineering, where a bunch of surprised-looking Romulans are staring at them and reaching for weapons.)

Bad Idea
Michaela: "How do you know this will work?"
Sam: "Because I believe it."

How to please the old-school fans with the end credits:
Good Idea
Get a full orchestra to do the original theme music.

Bad Idea
Nickelback.

I think the real lesson here is never start a "yo' momma" fight with a half-Vulcan.

* Fine, I can't blame Michael Bay for that one. I still hate it, though.

And on the day the words 'flimsy excuse' were redefined, we stood in awe and watched.

2009-06-19T22:08:55Z

I am so tired. I think I can rule out the possibility of taking a midday nap for the forseeable future, though.

You guys, there is a Nanday conure in my bathroom. What do I do?

If you picked "Scratch her head until the end of time," you are correct! Everyone, this is Matcha: Matcha, everyone. She's not staying, but she needed to get sprung from the shelter and ltdead was kind enough to drive her here. She's an awfully nice little bird, considering. Needs some work on manners, but I'd bet money (if I had any) that it's a lack of socialization, not a lack of inclination to socialize. selasphorus deduced that her leg band identifies her as a Petsmart baby, which would explain a hell of a lot.

RANDOM CONVERSATION OF RANDOM:

"Kyn, I'm in the mood for a movie, and I need you to pick one out."
"Okay," I replied, with enthusiasm: I'm good at picking out movies. "What kind?"
"Something surprising," eclipsegryph said. "Not suprising in itself, like 'wow, I thought this movie would suck, but it's actually really good*', but which contains a surprise with the plot or characters. Not random, though, nothing really surreal."
"You want a movie with a plot twist?"
"Maaaaybe," he allowed, "but it has to be good. Not 'the butler did it' or 'and then it turns out they were twins' or 'he was dead all along'" -- I quietly wrote down No M. Night Shyamalan -- "but something you don't see coming. Except that it was there the whole time. You know what I mean?"
"Okay, so I've got: surprising but not in a surreal way, twisty but not in an ass-pull way, totally unexpected but also brilliantly set up, and good." I wrote all this down dutifully. "Give me a bit. I'll find something."

A little while later: "Eclipse, was it you or selasphorus who said they had never seen Donnie Darko?"
"It was selasphorus."
"Dammit!"

And later: "Have you seen Brazil?"
"I think so. Was that the one with John Goodman?"
I added Has not seen Brazil to my notes and shifted it to the "Possible" column, even although it was probably a violation of the no surrealism clause. Then a thought struck me, like a fumbled Wii remote inevitably strikes the television screen: "What about The Usual Suspects?" I asked, handing him my VHS copy to scrutinize.
"I think I've heard of this," he said. "It turns out Kevin Spacey is Kaiser Sose, doesn't it?"
"But have you seen it?" I repeated.
"Well, no... but it won't surprise me if I already know how it ends, right?"
I suppressed a laugh that would probably have come out, if not Evil, certainly well beyond Chaotic Neutral. "Believe me, you'll still never see it coming," and I popped the tape into the player.

It's a terrible burden, being right all the time.

* You gotta be specific. Between the two of us, we've seen a lot of movies like this.

Incidentally:

2009-06-17T14:26:07Z

On my last ICFTBB entry, it occurred to me that there's another way I could post these mini-reviews. Since they're so short, I write them and then sit on them, to post in lots. However, I could just as easily post one at a time.

Advantages of posting one at a time: more entries more often, obviously. Disadvantages: most of these entries are likely to be really short. QUICKLY, TO THE POLLS.

View Poll: It Came From the Bargain Bin: Post Format

Upcoming titles that I have watched but not yet posted reviews for: MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS, FLU BIRDS, MERLIN AND THE WAR WITH THE DRAGONS, WAR BIRDS, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, RISE: BLOOD HUNTER.

It Came from the Bargain Bin III: Son of the Bargain Bin

2009-06-17T01:17:34Z

Mostly I'm posting to justify my spending a significant portion of the past two days making one of those customized mood themes you all have. Drawing teeny condors in Paint is more fun than you'd think. Oh, and one eagle: for predatory, I had to ask lanakila to stand in, because Condors Don't Do That Sort of Thing.

BAD MOVIES AHOY!

Previously, on It Came from the Bargain Bin.

Look, I told you I was behind on these. And they're fun to write when I'm feeling snarky, so, without further ado, the Dragon Extravaganza edition of ICFTBB: if there's a shit movie with a dragon on the box, I've probably seen it.

*** = I'd watch it again.
** = Pleasantly surprising.
* = So bad, it's good.
- = So bad, it's AWFUL.
-- = Unpleasantly surprising.
--- = KILL IT WITH FIRE.

Fire Serpent (2007) [---]
Directed by: John Terlesky
Starring: Nicholas Brendon (o hai Xander), Randolph Mantooth (<--best name EVER)
Excuse: It was William Shatner's idea.

I can just see Shatner scribbling this one on a napkin and handing it to a flunky. "Hee hee hee," he chortles Evil-Kirkishly to himself. "An ALIEN made of FIRE from the SUN! That can possess people and make them do its bidding! This is going to be SO COOL! And there can be a government agent working to bring about the apocalypse by LURING THE BEAST to the military's stockpiled oil reserves, and only a volunteer firefighter can stop him! YES!"

Except that it somehow ended up made for television with about a thirtieth of the budget it needed to be convincing: the pyrotechnics are, in fact, slightly less impressive than some of the things I remember doing as a fifteen-year-old with unlimited access to gunpowder*. The complete lack of conviction that the special effects demonstrated didn't need to soak into the entire movie -- I've seen keen acting and sharp editing do more with less -- but it did. Everyone involved with this turd appears to have been just marking time and awaiting their paychecks. The editing is notable for its exceptional disregard for continuity: the movie is so packed with scenes where characters run from one scene to the next -- or even one angle on the same scene to the next -- and suddenly have entirely different clothes, hair, or weapons, it's like one of those Sunday-comics "find twelve things about the second picture that are different!" puzzles. So there's some entertainment value in that, at least.

This movie doesn't actually deserve the three-dash "KILL IT WITH FIRE" rating; it's more bland than anything else, and certainly nowhere near Zombie Nation's acknowledged standard of suck. On the other hand, if you're going to kill anything with fire, might as well be a Fire Serpent.

Dungeons & Dragons (2000) [-] AND Dungeons & Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005) [**]

Yes, you read that right: the sequel was better. Believe me, the first left a hell of a lot of room for improvement. For one thing, vast quantities of the plot (such as it is) of Dungeons & Dragons appear to have been cribbed from, of all things, The Phantom fucking Menace, and if you're going to rip off George Lucas, you're pretty much boned from the start, as you obviously can't tell a good story from a bad one even if it slaps you in the face and wriggles... hmm. Now that I think about it, that kind of reminds me of the other terrible movie that had Jeremy Irons and computer-generated dragons. What the hell was it called? I forget.

Anyway, the writers apparently thought the title was plenty of dungeons and/or dragons for this movie, since absolutely no effort was made to include anything from the actual role-playing game. It's a blah quest fantasy with a blah plot centered on a blah McGuffin that looks as though someone sent away three box tops and $2 shipping to possess it, and as for the characters... Jeremy Irons hands in a performance as a villainous mage that probably should have had a "D--, see me" scrawled on it at some point, as when he wasn't being Utterly Bland Exposition Guy, he was clearly copying off of Jafar's villainy notes. The less said about anyone else, the better. When you kill off your Comic Relief Guy to show that the villain is Srs Bzns and the test audience laughs, cheers and applauds? You're doing it wrong. Thora Birch, who as I dimly recall has some chops somewhere, also appears in this movie as ~~Amidala~~ The Brave Young Empress.

So, is the sequel good? Well, objectively speaking, not really; but in comparison with the first D&D movie, it rocks. If nothing else, they actually remembered to include some D&D this time: the character archetypes, the traps, the monsters, and even some of the action sequences are clearly taken from actual games. You can almost see the dice rolling, and they don't always roll luckily, which made both eclipsegryph and I squeal with delight in two places, the second one being a teleportation spell where the mage casting it definitively rolled a critical failure.

So it's cheesy and a little too long for its content, but if you find yourself in a position where you absolutely MUST watch a D&D movie (if you lost a bet, say, or as punishment for an offense too minor to warrant community service), plea-bargain your way in to seeing the second one.

Netherbeast Inc. (2007) [***].
Starring: the original host of "Blue's Clues", the guy who did the Bill Clinton impersonations for "Saturday Night Live", the delinquent from The Breakfast Club, the Jay who wasn't Silent Bob, and Dave Foley. I'm telling you this up front, so you don't distract yourself from the movie the way I did by trying to remember who the hell all these vaguely-familiar people are.

This is going to be a difficult one to describe, I can see that already.

I knew I had to see this movie, because the first line on the back of the DVD box was "Shaun of the Dead fans rejoice!" which always strikes fear into my heart. The weird little conjunction of gore, action, comedy, and dramatic storytelling that usually gets labeled as a "horror comedy" is possibly my favorite movie genre, and it's also one that's insanely difficult to carry off really well. In no way helped by the period when Scary Movie sequels and knock-offs were crawling out of the walls. This kind of movie tends to either win my affection forever (Black Sheep) or exceed my pain tolerance (Stupid Teenagers Must Die, and I never know in advance which way it's going to go. There are a few reasons for this.

Obnoxiously, the Hollywood/American filmmaking concept of "parody" is usually the six-year-old playground version: exactly the same as the original, but slower and exaggerated, while making a funny face. It's easy to lose interest in that sort of thing: hard enough to relate to the characters in a slasher flick or monster-horror film anyway ("No! Don't go in the basement, you simp! Or if you do, at least take an extra flashlight and a weapon, and if you hear a noise and it turns out to be the cat, RUN FOR YOUR FUCKING LIFE!"), and even worse when they're obviously not taking the story seriously themselves. Shaun of the Dead and Slither work because their characters are still taking the danger seriously, even while acknowledging the absurdity of their situation ("Don't use the 'zed' word?" "What?" "The 'zed' word! Don't say it." "Why not?" "Because it's ridiculous!"**).

So, in that sense, Netherbeast falls closer to the Shaun end of the spectrum than the Scary Movie end, for which I am grateful. That's pretty much where comparison ends, however. This movie owes a hell of a lot more to Office Space than Shaun, and even that is a comparison forced by the reluctance of the Invisible Pigeonholing Committee who write box copy to describe something without trying to sell it to people who like something else.

The movie either suffers from or is gleefully enhanced by a serious case of Our Vampires Are Different, depending on your perspective. As a direct result of this, its narrator, Otto, spends a lot of time explaining what exactly is going on, in a complicated pile of backstory involving Alexander Graham Bell and organ transplants. (There's actually a plot-derived reason for why the narration sounds like a PowerPoint presentation, which fills me with glee.) This movie is vastly more dialogue-driven than plot-driven, so if you're the kind of person that enjoys that sort of thing, you may very well end up owning a copy of this one.

* Great parenting, there, Mom. By the way.
** For fun, the Slither version of this exchange:
Jack McCready:"Where is the Mr. Pibb? I told your secretary to pack Mr. Pibb. It's the only Coke I like. Goddamn Brenda exploding like a water balloon, worms driving my friends around like they're goddamn skin-cars, people are spitting acid at me, turning you into cottage cheese, and now there's no fucking goddamn Mr. Pibb?"
Bill Pardy: "Jesus Christ, Jack, let me get right on it!"
Black Sheep version:
Experience: "What is wrong with you?"
Henry: "Ovinophobia, my therapist calls it."
Experience: "What's that mean?"
Henry: "It's the completely unfounded and irrational fear that one day exactly this is going to happen!"†

† I told you I love this genre.‡

‡ Incidentally, reading Terry Pratchett in excess of the daily recommended dose (see your physician for details) may cause dry mouth, watery eyes, and a tendency to footnote your footnotes.

You fool! You don't know the power of Styrofoam!

2009-06-13T02:58:50Z

Yesterday, my house was invaded by knee-high sheepdogs.

Outlaws Cobalt Gambit, AKA Coba, AKA "The Parfait", is a sweet confection of puppy that you just want to top with a cherry. In case you don't get enough of Coba on summer_jackel's own journal, he's migrated into mine.

He mostly wandered around a lot, looking surprised at things, and I helped him learn the crucial show-dog skill of nosing into people's pockets (sorry, Jackel).

Translated from the original Smallcollie, this posture and expression means "Why the hell are you so tall?"

He comes as a bundled package with Rogue, who is the softest and silkiest sheltie who ever did shelt. She's sharpened to a distinct point in front.

Rogue believes that by horning into the foreground of every picture, she might be mistaken for Lassie. This very nearly works, except for the forced-perspective headache.

Despite his nonchalance in that photo, I believe Captain Woe actually enjoyed (or, at least, didn't object to) having the littledogs over. He even tried to initiate a game of ball with Coba (who was politely puzzled at him), which, if you knew my dog, would blow your mind. I'm so proud of my boy. Unfortunately for him, being around dainty little Shetland sheepdogs makes him look sort of coarse and unrefined, like the clunky beta model next to sleek new technology. Poor scruffy bulbous-nosed Collie 1.0.

In summary, shelties are awesome. And Jackels are pretty awesome, too, even if their taste in movies leans occasionally toward the atrocious. (Not that I'm complaining.)

DOGGLE UPDATE: Feeling Much Better, Thanks, So Please Stop Harassing Me With The Camera

2009-06-06T02:01:35Z

On Sunday, he couldn't even pick up that ball. Getting to play a quick game of catch with him in the backyard today makes me tremendously happy.

So cute, the birds wear beards.

2009-06-05T04:10:46Z

Sometimes I really wonder what a bird's sense of taste is actually like. I was out of juice to use as conure bribes, so I gave Firefly a little tiny bit of lemonade. He touched it with his tongue and flipped his wings so hard in surprise that he almost went over backwards - before going straight in for more.

Also, his favorite word this week is "Weird."