there will NEVER be Nest in ANY house I live in, though….! And two of the crappy Micro$oft ones will be replaced by something far more important (AmigaOS and FreeBSD)….

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Thankfully not for a long while but every so often, you remember….this is still funny though 🙂

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Finally saw this last night, it’s been on the list for quite a while, ever since we saw Kung Fu Hustle several years ago.

Great movie, usual Stephen Chow touches (humanity of poor people looking to just survive, obviously ‘evil’ over-the-top villain, silly situations, motley crew of heroes) – and many of the same actors as seen in the other movie.

Basically Stephen Chow is an all-but homeless guy seeking to further the ’cause’ of kung fu in any way he can, while his brothers are seeking to survive in various capacities (all but one aren’t successful either) – when he meets a washed up former soccer star, the two form a soccer team from his brothers and a rival neighborhood gang, and take on the best in China on the soccer field.

And you see typical kung fu movie wire work, twisted for humor (and applied to soccer) with a touching subplot involving a local steam bun baker girl – and some nods to Michael Jackon’s Thriller video in at least two ‘dance scenes’ – fun time! If you like soccer (or kung fu) and don’t take your movies too seriously – you will love it!

Other voices:
Rotten Tomatoes
MetaCritic

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time to sing the Doom song!

It’s official: Oni Press is partnering with jhonenv and nickelodeon for an original Invader Zim comic, arriving this July!

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What a great dog. Very sadly no longer with us. I made an 11×17 calendar of him in PDF format you can see at this link. If you are interested in getting your own printed copy, let me know (you can download and print yourself too, np – but note the file is 130mb, so pretty big due to the oversized images). Printing it like I did costs about $35 all told at Kinko’s – which is why I could only afford to do one for Dawniel – if you see her anytime soon, check it out in person – it came out really cool, actually.

B, RIP – you were one of a kind.

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Somewhere, Terry Tate is smiling….Was he a Star Wars fan?

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So Amazon is trying to get on the ‘online studio/streaming’ bandwagon with a number of new pilots – most of which I haven’t paid attention to, but The Man in the High Castle is of particular interest, given that it’s based on a PKD book, one for which he won the Hugo back in the 60’s.

This the story of an alternate history where the Axis won WWI and divided up the world (specifically the USA for the plot of the book) between them. The story flips between the East Coast (dominated by Nazis), West Coast (run by the Japanese) and a central ‘neutral zone’ (I think it was called the Colorado Free State in the booK).

After some stupid tech issues, I finally got the video to run – the first episode is free, although it does make you log in with your Amazon account. Not sure if they are doing a miniseries (like the initial return of BSG was before it became a full-on series) or trying to extend the original story beyond that of the novel, but it’s an interesting start, and well-made so far. I liked the several Seattle ‘architectural cameos’ in it – nice touch, Bezos – and I liked that the actors aren’t big names – for a series like this, I think that in many ways detracts from the story, especially with an ensemble cast.

Definitely interested to see more – although now I may need to take a spin back through the original book too, as it’s been so long since I read it. Hoping they do this justice like A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report or Blade Runner – and NOT like the recent adaptations of The Hobbit (for which JRR T must be doing backflips in his grave about now) but time will tell….here’s a clip:

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this is one of the most surreal things i’ve ever seen – and I love it! This is (obviously) done by Aardman Animations, the creators of Wallace and Gromit (CHEESE!) and Chicken Run – but this is way, way weirder and harder to follow than those. Which is yet again, why I love it. Apparently there are about 26 episodes, and the series is already 15+ years old? How did I miss this? Off to watch some more…:)

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came across this earlier this week – apparently they spoofed Samurai Jack on the more recent Duck Dodgers series – you can watch it here on YT – just fast forward to the 10:25 mark….this still has Mako in it (voice of Aku in the original) – it was done the year before he passed away…..

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So Kerewin and I recently watched the third of these BBC movies, Salting The Battlefield, to finish the trilogy started with Page Eight and then Turks and Caicos. These were BBC ‘tv movies’ – we watched them on PBS.org via Masterpiece, for those inclined to check them out.

So these are spy thrillers, in my view the first two are pretty good, the third not quite as. Bill Nighy is the star here but in each movie there are several around him definitely providing interest. Ralph Fiennes knocks another ‘you really want to hate him’ role out of the park, he’s such a good bad guy (not as over the top as Voldemort or Harry from In Bruges, but there are definitely elements of both in his portrayal of the British PM).

And these are a bit lower-key than say, a Bourne movie, and not as complex as Tinker Tailor was (not sure of any movie that fits that bill). Still, they are probably far more realistic as regards plot and setting by contrast.

It was also obvious that the writers are definitely making both a direct and indirect commentary on the increasing British spy state as having grown out of the Bush years and why it just keeps on growing to this day – most notably in the third movie. What ends up happening to Johnny and the others is not as predictable as you might expect – but then again, this isn’t Hollywood either.

Check them out!

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