Welcome back to your week end round of links and random musings!
Item: I’m giving away a copy of “The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe 1982-1994″ on ToyBender.com. So if you’re into G.I. Joe toys (and if you read this blog there’s a good chance that you are) go over there and enter.
Item: I’ve fallen back in love with The Venture Brothers. Hot damn, I need all the DVDs. All of them.
Item: Babette and I signed the lease on a new living quarters. We are excited, though it means no more mooching off my parents. I really do think that my destiny lies in leeching, because I’m really good at it.
Item: There’s going to be a Viewmaster movie. I like that Hollywood doesn’t get the fact that we love the toys that have stories behind them, not just because they are toys.
Item: So it looks like DC comics is going to replace Supergirl’s panties with bicycle shorts. I’m not made that they are de-sexualizing her, I’m mad because fucking bicycle shorts don’t go under skirts. Seriously though, if they put bicycle shorts on her I have a feeling it’s going to be just as bad as the headband she wore in the ’80s. It’s not going to hold up well, fellas.
My buddy Shawn got to go to the last E3. One of the greatest things about going to a convention like E3 is the “booth babes” who are there to attract perverts to at least pretend to be interested in what they are selling. Here are a few that were captured in the wild and put on Digital Monkey Box:
This is seriously the hottest “booth babe” I’ve seen.
If there was anything that could have saved the Elektra flick, it would have been more dancing and stripping. Though… that would mean nude Jennifer Garner, so I guess scratch that.
From the folks who brought us the first rude awakening of Optimus Prime comes Heavy Metal Fight. Optimus Prime and Megatron will fight one on one gladiatorial style, but would Megatron cheat? No way! The Decepticons never cheat!
What I love about Dr. Smoov’s videos is he perfectly captures the spirit of the characters while augmenting them slightly. The way Starscream keeps going on about his powers is priceless. And foul mouthed Optimus Prime? Why wasn’t he in the movies?
Artist Ryan Berkley went ahead and painted some great images of Masters of the Universe characters (He-Mans to you non-nerds) in their old age, complete with a little reflection on their past. In a word: Awesome.
Star Wars Shop.com has some exclusive prints that are fantastically and geeky awesome:
The above print is entitled, “The Twins” and is by artist Craig Drake. They are reminiscent of the classic art of Patrick Nagel, whom I know most from his art being printed in Playboy Magazine. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, perhaps this will jog your memory:
Anyway, The Twi’lek females are the Swedish bikini models of the Star Wars universe. They’re a rare breed of alien that isn’t entirely human, but for some reason the head tentacles aren’t completely unacceptable. I could get past the tentacles. If these were Mon Calamari twins, then it would be a different story entirely.
As cool as this is though, I can’t justify spending 50 bucks on a print. 25 and I’m sold, but 50? Come on. Of course, I’d totally accept this as a present. Huh? Huh?
Why break up a streak? In the spirit of all the Transformers this week, I’ve picked the first episode of the classic Transformers cartoon for our Saturday Morning cartoon pick:
Of course, Transformers was a syndicated cartoon and not a classic Saturday Morning toon. In fact, syndicated cartoons is what killed Saturday Morning cartoons. Who cares though? Transformers!
I just got back from seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and I must share some thoughts. First of all, I just want it out there that I was actually afraid I was going to like it. You see, the geek community is hardcore into bashing this thing and I feel that if you like it you’ll feel the full force of nerd hatred against you. I still went in with a fairly open mind, hoping that Michael Bay and company would surprise me. They didn’t.
I will admit that the movie wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn’t like getting vomited in the face or childhoods being raped or anything of that stupid shit nerd bloggers and forum posters spout so easily. No, it was just a bad movie. The loose plot worked to keep the action moving and as far as action was concerned there was enough robot stuff to keep a child entertained, but if you’re looking for anything more than that you’ll be sorry. What really hurts Revenge of the Fallen is it’s constant reaching for the lowest form of laugh or thrill possible. I expected at any moment for there to be a wrestling match to break out just for the hell of it. Any kind of joke you can think of in order to get the cheap laughs of the dumbest people in the audience was there which included and was not limited to: vomiting, scenes of pot brownie hilarity, an old robot farting a parachute, male dogs humping each other, a robot humping a leg, and a pair of robot testicles. There’s even a little person thrown in just because we all know that midgets are fucking hilarious. Any time someone laughed at these kinds of jokes, I felt like I might have been watching the Ass movie from Idiocracy. And if you think people are exaggerating the racist twins, they aren’t. They’re minstrel caricatures of African Americans. They might as well looked like this:
And in fact it could be argued that they looked a little worse.
There were some good points in the film, I’ll admit. But it was so watered down with this hose of horrible “comedy” that it’s hard to sift down to anything good. They could have easily cut thirty minutes out of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen without losing anything of value. Even the action scenes became tiring when you couldn’t tell who the fuck the good robots or bad robots where, because they all look the same. Combine this with about fifty shots of characters running away in slow motion and the constant use of 360 pans around characters, it gets old very quickly.
If you’re on the fence about this, just rent in on DVD or Blu-Ray and keep your remote in your hand so you can liberally fast forward.
Finally, I’d just like to launch my biggest complaints about the film. Mildly spoilery:
A while back I posted a video of Optimus Prime of the Transformers fame waking up to a world he didn’t understand. It was hilarious. Now there’s another video of Optmius Prime waking up that is just as funny. Like last time, I’ll provide a bit of a background. When Hasbro breathed new life into Transformers they ditched the fun cars, planes, and robot looking dinosaurs and went with more “realistic” looking creatures. Some love what was known as Beastwars, but there’s no account for taste. Anyway, Beastwars takes place in the future of the Transformers, while having characters with similar names. In this episode the good guys ended up going back in time and waking up Optimus Prime. Enjoy!
Friday means two things: The return of the weekend which is kind of irrelevant when you’re unemployed and your weekly Friday Roundy Uppy. I bet you’re excited, right?
Item: I’m going to see Transformers tonight. This is the first time in my life I was wishing I was going to see a romantic comedy instead of a movie based on a toy.
Item: Remember that Watchman director’s cut that was promised to appear in theaters? Well it’s showing up in four cities for one whole week. Yeah, I can’t help but think that if Watchmen would have been a lot bigger hit that the re-release would have been a lot bigger than this. Frankly, I don’t need to see it in a theater ever again. Just get me a Blu-Ray and I’m fine.
Item: I mentioned this on Twitter, but I watched a dinosaur show that was so boring that I had to change the channel. How is that even possible? I mean, you’re dealing with one of the most awesome subjects on Earth. How can you fuck that up?
Item: Babette found me a Captain Marvel from the DC Universe Classics line at Wal-Mart yesterday. I can’t believe she found one in the wild, but I can believe she picked it up, because she’s awesome like that. I now really, really have to find her an Artemis.
Item: Running my own little toy store is fun, but I wish I had more sales. I’m going to blame the economy. I’m also going to blame the state of Wisconsin for their slow ass response on the seller’s permit. Seriously, where is it?
Item: K-Mart is labeling itself as the Transformers headquarters, whatever that means. For me, it meant getting a cool Transformers T-shirt featuring the old school Transformers on it for six bucks. Perhaps you should check out your nearest K-Mart… if you have on around.
mundAIM is the creation of a Mr. Jacob Baake who in addition to being a crime fighting unicorn is also a spectacular comic book colorist who also has some groovy illustration skills. His coloring work has appeared in many places, most notably in the pages of Hector Plasm and Popgun. mundAIM features real life IM conversations between Jacob and his friends that are a dozen times funnier than your average Garfield strip at worst and pure Comedy Gold at it’s best.
Yeah, yeah, you are already tired about hearing about how great Michael Jackson was even though two days ago he was the butt of a million jokes. Look, whatever you thought about the guy let’s get one thing straight: Captain Eo was freaking awesome:
In case you’re not familiar, Captain Eo was a 3D movie staring Michael Jackson shown at Disney’s Epcot center for many years. I was lucky enough to see it before it dissapeared and I can report that it was really cool. I actually saw it almost before it was done, in fact at that time Michael Jackson was certainly not cool, but even with the tarnish on Michael Jackson’s celebrity star it was a cool little 3D flick. Not only where the 3D effects cool (I’m a sucker for 3D), but the story has Jackson as the Captain of a spaceship who battles an evil alien Queen. What isn’t there in there that a young nerd wouldn’t like? Okay, maybe I had some bad taste back then, but I still liked Captain Eo even though it had a lot going against it by that point.
Captain Eo, good luck on your adventures into the great beyond.
A fan of Robot’s PJs recently likened this place to the Playboy Mansion. I’d say that he was correct if the Playboy Mansion was less classy and a lot more nerdy. In order to bring it closer to the infamous mansion, we’ve got some super fake boobs today. Fairly recently porn star Bianca Beauchamp dressed up like the Silk Spectre II from the Watchmen film and got all naked. I shouldn’t have to tell you that the pictures after the “More” tag are not safe for work.
I don’t like to be one of those nerds that gets super nerd rage over the stupidest stuff from unreleased films, but as I’ve stated before what I’ve seen from G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra on the whole has not looked good. There really hasn’t been that much to impress fans of the Joes and all this emphasis on the “Accelerator Suits” and the new footage of a Wayans brother falling on his ass in comedic fashion hasn’t helped any.
All this negative press somehow was overshadowing the possible awfulness of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Part of the reason is that people actually liked the first flick despite it’s flaws and perhaps had hope that this one would be even better. But as time has gone on some things have popped up on the nerd rage radar that has some fans not so excited. Take for instance Devastator’s balls or the gold tooth racist robot twins. This things do not bode well and so far things aren’t looking so hot as far as reviews are concerned.
If I would have to guess which is the shittier summer flick, I’m going to go with G.I. Joe. While I didn’t like the first Transformers movie as much as some other fans out there, I did find it entertaining and at least not vomit inducing. I have some slight hope that the cringe inducing moments will pass by quickly and be overshadowed by some neat robot parts like the last film did. So far the only things G.I. Joe has going for it that might be worth watching are anything with Snake Eyes and any moment that Destro is on screen. Other than that, I’m not holding out much hope for the Joes.
Side Note: It’s scary that never in my childhood dreams did I ever think that there would be both a live action Transformers movie and G.I. Joe movies showing in the same summer and I would be dreading seeing them both equally. Am I in nerd hell?
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