So I got around to starting the Sprawl Trilogy from William Gibson again. I’m pretty sure it was at least 10-20 years ago when I last read them – and I was likely 10 years late then (I can remember people in high school talking about the books but I was still reading very old-school sci fi at the time, Heinlein, Clarke, some PKD, etc.)

What’s interesting in reading Neuromancer again is of course seeing where the predictions went (yes, no or TBD) as well as how well it holds up generally. On the one hand, there are some things in there that sort of came true – the rise of the Internet and computer networks being completely pervasive in our society is certainly true, even if the execution is less Lawnmower Man and more Amazon.com (sadly). But the widespread use of body modification is still far from as frequent as described here, The Sprawl is still yet to happen (although I’m sure there are plenty of pockets already formed) and the world isn’t run surreptitiously by AI’s – yet. Nor are there ‘orbital nations’ either run by fringe ethnic groups or covert/eccentric large family corporations (again – yet). Certainly between these books, movies like TRON and shows like Max Headroom – there were a number of entertaining, predictive thinkers back then. And to some degree, there’s still fear out there of AI’s taking over (see The Matrix series, The Teriminator series – there are others) – but at present the bigger risk seems to be from our own species, a la Orwell. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out for better or worse in the coming years.

For me, however – back to the second book, Count Zero. Stay tuned!

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new promo video for the show. Also, the site has been updated – the excitement begins!!!!!

http://nwpinballshow.com/

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So recently I remembered an old X-Files episode written by William Gibson (of cyberpunk fame) and Tom Maddox – Kill Switch. You can watch the whole thing on Vimeo here. Rather than spoil the plot (wikipedia linked earlier will do that if you read it), i will simply say this is an engaging and taut story definitely ahead of its time (originally broadcast on Feb 15, 1998). If you ever worry about Cold War technology, Skynet or the like, you should like this a lot.

Last night, I watched the second, later Gibson episode – First Person Shooter. This one aired on Freb 27, 2000 and did well ratings wise, even winning two Emmys. But while it’s well made, I found it fairly predictable (helps having the vantage point of watching it almost 11 years after broadcast :)) – and overly melodramatic. This episode is very similar in plot to a certain 1993 first-person shooter videogame we’re all familiar with (because it all but started the whole genre) but in some ways, less interesting. I’ve never been a huge fan of shooter videogames to begin with, so that may have biased my take too, not sure. This episode was in the Seventh Season of The X-Files, in case you want to rent it to watch.

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watched the original TRON last night. Given how recently we saw the sequel, it was good to go back to the original for comparisons.

1) I missed the nuance of ‘clu’ in the original until this time. You may remember early on when Flynn is trying to hack the MCP (before he goes ‘into’ the computer himself) he has a tank running around with a program that looks like him – that’s Clu – seen far more prominently in the sequel of course. Sadly the ‘loose bit‘ seen here (and a bit later) didn’t make the sequel….

2) LIked the far more prevalent Recognizers here. In the sequel, they basically get one scene early on, and that’s kinda it. Here they are much more a part of the plot, including when Flynn steals one and flies it (not entirely successfully) to the I/O tower to meet Tron and Yori. The Recognizers for me are one of the definitive icons from TRON, and I wish they had done far more with them in the sequel , doh!

3) They make far more effort to tie together the computer world, the human world, and the relationship between the two here. Which of course ends up as background in the sequel, but if they hadn’t done it the sequel would be extremely confusing (rather than just sort of).

4) The plot holds together decently – there are some slow spots, yes – but on balance, it sets up the villain(s) well and then provides several good guys to battle them in various ways (although not really explaining what the MCP ultimately wanted to ‘do’ once it infiltrated all the computers in the human world – wait for the rise of/fight Skynet? :))

5) I am still amazed at the lameness of the critics slamming this movie in their reviews of the sequel. It is patently obvious most of them never watched it, or were too young for the original (and then never watched it priot to the new one), and/or simply don’t get it, period. Yes, many ideas from this movie have been done later and arguably better in other ways, but TRON showed the way and visually has a style all its own (doesn’t hurt having Syd Mead and other renowned artists/conceptual designers setting a pretty high bar, either).

This movie is not Citizen Kane – and perhaps by today’s standards it looks kind of dated – kerewin commented more than once on the ‘lame special effects’ – which I have to counter with ‘dated’ – they aren’t lame! And maybe you had to grow up at that time during the earlier ‘rise of the computer’ in our daily lives vs. now. But seen vs. much of what has come later – and especially how lame at least half of the vaunted Star Wars movies have been and the third Matrix movie, etc. – there’s certainly plenty of room out there for an alternate vision. Viva TRON!

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Watched the anime Vexille (note: major spoilers in the Wikipedia link!) tonight, post-skiing. Vexille, named after one of the main characters, tracks the story of a completely isolated (diplomatically, physically and technologically) Japan; a malevolent plot courtesy of the internationally known Daiwa Corporation (makers of all kinds of advanced androids and robot tech); and the US Navy S.W.O.R.D. commando team sent to infiltrate Japan to figure out what’s going on after breaking up a secret meeting in the Colorado mountains. This show is kind of a mixed bag, however, for the following reasons:

1) The animation, done by the same team that did Appleseed, is good. I still think, however, that Appleseed was considerably more dazzling overall in appearance than this movie. Sometimes the visuals are very stunning, and other times they seem like the animated intro’s to a PS2 game or something (the ones you always skip past by hitting ‘X’ repeatedly so you can get to playing the actual game?). Also, in some ways this movie’s look seems to directly mimic Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in a number of scenes also.

2) There are parallels in the plot between Vexille and Appleseed too – I won’t reveal them to avoid spoiling it, but on the bright side, this movie doesn’t have the heroine shouting ‘Briareos!’ over and over again like Appleseed does.

3) The Jags (metal-seeking ‘worm whirlwinds’ in the Japanese wastelands) are obviously a Dune sandworm ripoff, plain and simple.

4) The characters (excepting possibly Maria) aren’t really developed well, if at all – they are pretty flat and one-dimensional.

5) Finally, one of the last battles between Vexille and Kisaragi (Daiwa Corp’s resident mad scientist) is pretty unbelievable.

Wikipedia references other reviews that call out Vexille for going over ground already covered by Ghost in the Shell – I agree with that in some ways, but Vexille put a reverse twist on the whole ‘man vs. machine’ debate (central to many of these similar anime) which had potential but became fairly formulaic in the end, not unlike the recently reviewed Sky Crawlers. The quest for better anime goes on!

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So while my wife was stuck working yesterday, I watched 1982’s The Thing – yep, another John Carpenter movie. While I’m not much of a horror movie guy – this one, being just as much about sci-fi in most ways, is a bit of an exception.

So a few interesting trivia – the movie is a remake of a 50’s monster movie by the same name. But here, the story is much closer to the original short story by John W. Campbell – ‘Who Goes There?’ But if you’ve read any HP Lovecraft, you will recognize Campbell’s story as being more than a bit derivative of his novella ‘At The Mountains of Madness‘. And fans of the X-Files (1st movie) will also remember a flying saucer in the Antarctic at one point in one of the movies also – not sure whether inspired by any of these stories/movies or not, but it’s there.

Finally, the most silly far-fetched reference I can think of is in Godzilla: Final Wars, where at the start of the movie an advanced submarine about to be destroyed by Godzilla ‘buries’ him far beneath the ice by blowing up an ice cliff over his head – later in the movie they are forced to blow him out of there to save Earth (because in the meantime, aliens have taken over all the other crazy Kaiju monsters and now seek control of mankind, too). Of course, Godzilla literally ‘walks’ (ocean depths notwithstanding) to all these various cities on different continents, defeats the other monsters, then helps a crazy team of Japanese kung-fu mutants (led by an even more ridiculous American soldier who looks like the white trash cousin of GI Joe) defeat the aliens and save earth.

But back to The Thing – this movie’s closer adherence to the John Campbell story means far more gore and tougher special effects than the 50s movie. At one point a guy’s head melts off and turns into a spider to run away – great stuff! Basically a shapeshifter alien infiltrates an American Antarctic research base and begins killing/imitating everyone – the Americans start to fight back, led by Kurt Russell, but it’s a tough battle. Wilfred Brimley (who now largely sells life insurance on tv) is the scientist who figures out what’s going on (but then weird stuff happens).

If you haven’t seen this movie, rent it sometime – but not for kids, definitely – unless you want to be up all night with them crying. The cast is great and the atmosphere of the flick really creates a sense of what it would be like to be isolated in a research base like that while being stalked by a killer – who could look like anyone!

oh and yes, Merry Christmas! 🙂

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Well, the day finally arrived, and we saw TRON: Legacy tonight. Given that there’s already quite a few reviews out there (here, here, here, here and here for starters), I will add my two cents as well.

First, the good:

1) Music and effects are great. The look and feel of ‘the grid’ is as unique as ever (just like it was the first time around in 1982) and Daft Punk provide a great soundtrack. They apparently even got a cameo as the DJ’s in the nightclub where Sam Flynn and Quorra go to meet the mysterious ‘Zeus’ (who turns out to be a semi-albino Willy Wonka sans top hat, but I still liked him anyway). The light-cycle scenes are very cool, again, just like last time, and it was great to see the Recognizers get their moments in the sun again too (although they aren’t really as ‘malevolent’ as in the last film).

2) Jeff Bridges generally is good, although they don’t really give him enough to do IMHO. Yes, he’s the central character (in more ways than one) but barring the opening narration, we don’t see near enough inside his head – and that’s a real missed opportunity. And Bruce Boxleitner is even more in the same boat, given that he’s a sideman as before, despite being the namesake of the two movies (Tron).

On to what didn’t work as well:

1) On the one hand, I give them props for not making the movie into one action scene after another (a la the second and third Matrix movies) at the expense of storyline and character development. Despite what some of the reviewers above may think – the original TRON really tried – if you are paying attention while watching it, and had the benefit of growing up back then – to really imagine what it would be like to ‘live inside a computer’, and came up with a unique vision of that, which has influenced a LOT of movies since, the most obvious being The Matrix but there are plenty others.

But in attempting to get inside the characters more, you have give the audience more to go on. There is a scene where Sam talks to Quorra about Flynn’s book collection – but they don’t explain why she likes the books or thinks they are important? By the same token, yes, Clu (Flynn’s self-created perfectionist computer doppelganger) is Flynn’s opposite number (in misdirected megalomania) but even so, he’s never ‘evil’ the way the MCP and Dillinger were in the original. In that movie the MCP ultimately is calling the shots in BOTH the digital and human worlds at one point? The villains here just don’t compare in that respect.

2) Flynn’s hideout brings back a lot of Blade Runner (an original TRON contemporary, it was two years later, flopped about as badly at the time and since has influenced everyone else to an equal if not greater degree) in its look and feel to me. And the scene where Flynn, Quorra and Sam are eating dinner is reminiscent of near the end of 2001 where Discovery astronaut Dave Bowman is eating dinner/rapidly aging in the Louis XIV dining room – all that white on white.

3) As discussed with fellow moviegoers after seeing it, the big ‘Clu rally’ scene where he reveals his plans is right out of Lord of the Rings, with Christopher Lee rallying the Orcs and monsters to attack as they stamp their weapons and yell (not like this type of scene doesn’t happen at least once or twice in each LOTR movie, for that matter :)).

And this brings up my continual point about supervillains – why? When General Zod and his buddies kicked everyone’s ass in short order in Superman II, they were then seen lounging around the White House with nothing to do? They had already beaten all the lame humans, taken over the US (and of course by implication the world – helps when you make the movies in Hollywood that you can imply that) and are bored out of their gourds until Superman shows up to give them something to do?

So what was Clu going to do if he managed to pull an ‘Agent Smith’ and get back to the ‘real world’? Smith was similar – what was he planning on doing? After killing Neo and turning everyone in The Matrix into duplicates of himself, then what? Here there is lip service paid to Clu/Flynn’s vision of ‘perfecting the system’ – but they don’t really explain what that means or why it ultimately ‘twisted’ Clu in the end?

4) The scene of Flynn talking to Clu (near the end) about where things went wrong – I hate to point this out, but it really smacks of Keanu confronting Patrick Swayze at the end of Point Break, with the speech and how ‘Bodie’ can’t be caged, etc. – that movie is cornball from the word go (despite otherwise being great entertainment) – but if you agree with my point (and you may not), it makes Flynn’s self-confrontation somewhat less effective.

5) The son of the original movie’s Dillinger/bad guy is wasted here – they have but one scene with him (played by an uncredited Cillian Murphy, making the waste DOUBLE because he’s always such a great bad guy) – I was half-expecting a weird twist where it is shown that Dillinger’s son is ultimately behind Clu’s betrayal, not Flynn’s vision of perfection. And then it might have made some weird attempt by a ‘revived’ MCP worth trying in turn? In any case, it could have been very cool.

6) In an earlier post, I noted an article where apparently the Pixar guys were brought in to discuss plot and character with the director and writers. Not sure if it did any good here, or whether they actually took the suggestions and used them? To me, if someone like Brad Bird is giving you free advice on a movie – you TAKE it! It would be like being a newbie actor and having Dustin Hoffman, De Niro or similar in a bit part but on the set for a week or two – I’d be hitting them up or trying to learn by osmosis, hello? Just sayin’.

7) Yet another movie where the 3D is largely ‘meh’. I really don’t think it adds much of anything – you’re already in a huge screen, big sounds, special effects. etc. – it’s not like this is the Star Trek holodeck where you’re ‘in’ the action directly or something – I think the whole 3D thing is eventually going to go the way of the original Cinerama process, if more slowly.

8 ) It’s weird how much of the last 20 minutes or so of this movie are nearly identical to the first one. They have a big getaway on the Solar Sailor; the Recognizers and bad guys chase them; they get to the portal and have a big shootout. Here there is a bit of speeching at the expense of action (in the first one, Sark turns into a ‘giant’ (with the help of the MCP) and is about to crush Tron permanently when Flynn hacks the portal and ‘ends’ the MCP for good). If only the speech had told us more…..

Ultimately for a sequel like TRON, this is a good question to ask – how much of the original movie do you pay homage to while (trying, anyway) to craft a new story? Or do you? The recent Incredible Hulk movies (having seen none of them) were all but back to back remakes (notwithstanding the 70s TV series) within 5 years of one another?

All in all, I’m glad I saw it, but like so many movies (e.g. parts of Matrix 2 and most of Matrix 3, among others) – there’s a lot of missed opportunities here. It was definitely better than Avatar though, although it may have cost even more to make ($237M for Avatar vs. an est. $300M for TL)?

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Oh, if only. 🙂

Finished this book today, very entertaining read and right up my alley. It is a ‘generic superhero’ story (meaning no Marvel, DC, etc. ‘traditional’ superheroes in there) – not *too* far removed from The Incredibles, but not focused on a family or played near as much for laughs as TI was.

The story is told from two first-person points of view; the perspective of Dr. Impossible, the smartest/greatest/most powerful/you get the picture supervillain of them all, and Fatale, a female cyborg and most recent new member of The Champions, the current ‘Superfriends-like’ group who protects the world from villains like him. Both characters are developed far more than the rest of the others – either villain or hero – but the others are pretty interesting too, as their origins and back stories are revealed throughout the book.

While this book has more than a few similarities to the ‘traditional’ superheroes of yore (The Avengers, The X-Men, and even the far more cheesy Saturday-am ’70s cartoon Superfriends) it also invokes the more nerdy tastes of The Watchmen in more ways than one. It also goes further than most traditional hero stories in that these heroes and villains inhabit a world with TONS of heroes and villains, most with superpowers (and several charlatans on both sides to boot) – the only series I’ve seen that implied this were the X-Men movies to my knowledge (world ‘full’ of mutants beyond the X-Men themselves).

I don’t want to spoil anything – of course this book has the usual superhero story touches (supervillain is bent on taking over the world, crazy technology, freak accidents that create superpowers, etc.) – all the right stuff. If you liked The Watchmen (graphic novel, movie or both), or other superhero/comics, you will like this story. In other words, you’ve seen this story before in other forms, but this is yet another page-turning way to tell it, and is pretty darn good. Enjoy!

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less than a week now – getting stoked!

Seattle Cinerama

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Saw Inception last night (yes, we were a bit slowww in getting to the theater on that one) at the cheap seats. What a GREAT movie! Sure, it was obviously influenced heavily by The Matrix (as to both the ‘bullet-time’ slow-mo filmmaking and to some degree, the dream-premise behind the movie itself) but it’s yet another great movie by Christopher Nolan (who has already made two better Batman movies than ALL the previous ones combined!).

And another nicety – this was one of the only recent movies where they don’t explain the entire movie plot in an over-long trailer shown for weeks beforehand (which is why I’ve been avoiding TRON trailers like the plague until it debuts in a few weeks). Even though you see some pivotal sequences in the Inception trailer – there’s little to no way you’d figure out the plot from them given how the basic premise is very different than you’d expect, and that seeing them in isolation without knowing what is going on – doesn’t help. Kudos again to Mr. Nolan!

I also liked that Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t given the ‘center of everything’ to the exclusion of the rest of the cast – as is often seen in movies where there is a ‘big star’ surrounded by either up-and-comers (here, Ellen Page and even more so, Cillian Murphy) veterans (Michael Caine – is he now going to be in all Nolan’s movies? :), Tom Berenger) and comparative newcomers (the rest of the key cast). This is definitely a movie where all the key players largely play against one another time and again throughout the movie, and it really *works*.

If you can (and haven’t yet seen this movie), see it in a theater or at a friend’s house with a big home theater system – you will be thankful. This is one of those movies that definitely makes far more impact on a big screen.

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