Trains, Banes, and Hobbitsesss...
Long story short: It works! The roadbed looks pretty nice, the track went in without too much wailing and gnashing of teeth, though I do need to get more than three lengths of flex track if I want to do this again without cobbling other track bits together. Hooked up with a power pack that's surely far too fancy for my needs, both candidates for the Christmas Tree Express got moving, eventually. Apparently, if you leave engines to sit for a year or so, they are a little sluggish to start and one needs to bone up on having them properly lubricated, which will be my next task. That and actually suspending the whole mess from an actual tree, which is where we see just how lucky an improvisational engineer I am.
On to the big trailer release of the week, that of The Dark Knight Rises. Let me start by saying that I've no idea what the final Batman movie will be like, but given the previous two I think we can at least expect a decent film. Quite often, movie characters based on ones from other media have to be taken on their own merits, as many changes are made for brevity, practical or budgetary reasons, or just because someone wanted to put their stamp on them, resulting in a new-ish persona that's okay so long as the liberties taken work within the new story structure (usually). The trailer bits with Bruce Wayne and Alfred look promising, offering a bit of bat-drama, along with a shot of what looks like a bearded and incarcerated Bruce. Nolan's done a decent job thus far with Batman, though I wish he hadn't killed off Two-Face and I wish he'd made Bale pick a different "bat-voice." That said:
- Bane's coat still looks weird to me. Unless his first victim was a guy in Montana cutting wood in a snowstorm, I can't see many cosplayers going for that look. I was kind of hoping we would mostly see Bane amongst shadows or in dimly-lit areas, which can make most costumes look cool and sinister. The final telling will be what Bane is actually like (if he can be understood under that mask) when he's not setting off bombs or throwing punches.
- The football field collapsing as bombs explode beneath it makes me think of an old Zucker movie instead of Batman. The player running at the camera and then looking back just seemed to add a "sad trombone" to the scene for me. It's something I'd expect from a Roger Corman knock-off of "The Sum of All Fears." This isn't the first time we've seen a villain try to sabotage a football game in Gotham, though the previous one was on the small screen.
- Catwoman comes off pretty well, but we hardly see any of her. The motives she seems to have sound inspired by current events, but they also tend to go with her "steal from other crooks" sentiments when in graphic novel form. It's worth noting that in the aftermath of "The Breaking of the Bat" in the comics, Catwoman declines an offer to team up with Bane because of what he did to Batman. Maybe that'll be an eventual double-cross motive for her in the movie?
- An Easter Egg to go with the nitpicking: Catwoman appears to be wearing the pearl necklace that Bruce's father gave to his mother in The Dark Knight. Assuming it was stolen during the shooting of his parents, recovering the necklace would make a nice Batman short story.
Again, not having seen the rest of the film, I can't say if this trailer is representative of the majority of the footage, but I sure hope there aren't this many daylight scenes. I've always thought that unless a superhero has some pretty godlike powers to draw upon, appearing at high noon makes them look pretty goofy. Bane, Batman, and heck, even the prisoners look less threatening in broad daylight. For a similar effect, check out the classic fan trailer for a mythical film (TV series?) called Grayson. Superman looks okay in the sunshine, even with the ocean surf hitting his legs. Robin? Not so much...
Wait, did I say that was the big trailer release of the week? I meant the one for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I fully expected to see a dragon by the end, but they picked a more appropriate and chilling creature from Tolkien lore to finish with. I'm getting chills just thinking about the five to ten special edition DVD collections this thing is going to cause. :)
And now, baseball vs. a movie. If you're like me (and I know I am), you often confuse films with national league baseball teams, finding yourself sitting in a stadium, bewildered that what you thought was going to be Pirates of the Caribbean turned out to be the Pittsburgh Pirates. So goes the logic in a trademark spat between the Atlanta Braves and Pixar over the title of their next movie, Brave. This also implies that moviegoers might mix up the Scots with Native Americans, computer-rendered characters with real people, and manager Fredi González with Billy Connolly. I really hope this is due to someone looking for an easy settlement check, because if they truly believe in this dispute, something is severely wrong with someone's grip on sanity.
If you or someone you love can't remember what toys were like before Nintendo, Pokemon, and Angry Birds, then feast your eyes on the 1972 Kenner toy catalog. I used to love looking at these things, and I was always intrigued by the whittling/carving toys that required no skill whatsoever to produce a figurine of some kind. While I didn't ever own the Snoopy toothbrush set, I did (and still do) have a Snoopy Soaper, along with one box of the soap-grit that science had yet to replace with a liquid version. The race car toys still look kind of cool, too, though the only SST rip-cord toy I ever had was one of the many "Evil Knievel" motorcycles. Eventually, Atari came along and everything kind of became a blur until today...
And speaking of video games, the Steam Holiday Sale has started up. It took me a while to figure out that they did away with having a nice, succinct page of what was on sale with descriptions (or even the freakin' names) of the games in favor of a slideshow-thing you have to scroll through. If you want to see the day's offerings, mouse over to the left-hand side of the main window featuring something on sale, and an arrow-bar should appear, allowing you to browse. There's been nothing I can't live without yet, but the sale is still young.
While I play wallet defense along with the rest of you, here's some other things that will perhaps drown out the siren song of cheap digital thrills:
- There might yet be time to construct your custom chocolate dice mold before your holiday get-together, so get cracking!
- AT&T has given up trying to buy T-Mobile.
- From the "so funny I wish I'd thought of it" file comes the greatest Ricardo Montalban greeting card ever.
- If you're a Bruce Campbell fan, you now have even more reason to see Sam Raimi's Wizard of Oz movie.
- HBO canceled a bunch of shows yet kept one with just over 250,000 viewers. I'm all for supporting shows that are good in spite of ratings, but where was this attitude with Carnivale?
- Even though it's a YouTube link, it's audio-only from a comedy panel show called "So Wrong It's Right." If you've got about seven minutes, you can hear comedian Lee Mack and Charlie Booker have a bit of a debate about the merits of Twitter.
- If you've got a microwave you don't think you'll be using for food anymore, you could use it to smelt metal.
- What more needs to be said than Boba Fett crochet hat?
- Anyone who has seen Eddie Izzard's bit about dials on toasters and showers knows that (language warning) they lie to us. At least with showers (the ones with dual knobs) there might be a solution.
- While mourning the loss of Kim Jong Il, let's not forget his contributions to the giant monster movie genre. Why isn't this on SyFy?
- And now, the Ukranian folk version of Highway to Hell. It's pretty catchy, actually...
- There are toys that have "learned" some rudimentary things from their owners before. How about a toy robot that learns from everyone else who has one?
- There's a browser-based MMO called Worlds in Time starring the Doctor. And you, of course. It's available on a preview basis, though it's supposed to go live sometime soon.
- I think it's pretty safe to say that Systems Admins aren't born the way they are, they're carefully molded.
- If there's too much total holiday cheer in your internet these days, try Draka 2, No More Christmas. It's the return of the vampire-spider-thing as he tries to make more of his kind out of the festive folk who cross his path.