SHADOW PUPPETS

   This is probably going to be the most problematic to adapt to screen. It's got some of the best action in the series, romance, and a lot of tough decisions regarding which plot lines to place focus on. Since they more or less all come to a head in the next one, easier said than done. Aside from that, the film is liable to attract a great deal of controversy based on subject matter alone, which we'll delve into below.

THE GOOD:

1. It more or less opens on Peter springing Achilles from Chinese captivity. If that's not an awesome promise for the rest of the film, I don't know what is.
2. John and Theresa decoding the bizarre spam email they both received and realizing Achilles's plot.
3. Storming the compound, and Bean shooting Achilles in the eye! Awesome!
4. The Wiggins going back up into space, to what was once the Battle School. That's bittersweet, an awesome visitation of the first movie, and top that with all the intrigue that goes on there.
5. Virlomi inspiring the Great Wall of India, the new flag of India.

THE BAD:

1. There's a lot of military and political maneuvering. A book can take all the time it wants to explain these, but in a movie it flies right past you. Unless they want to make the movie longer or something, but there's already a lot going on.
2. Having Vlad meet Petra and Bean in the park where Chopin is playing. It's a lovely scene, and wants to be turned into a movie, but it's going to be one of the first things to go.

THE UGLY:

1. The Caliphate stuff, where Alai is Caliph, probably won't be all that controversial. But you never know, and the fact that you never know could also get controversial. This controversy may break the move. Hopefully not.
2. Anton could either be a great or terrible character in this one, depending on how he's played. He was an awesome part of Ender's Shadow, a Hannibal Lecter figure where he had to speak in riddles out of necessity. Now he still does that out of habit, but now he, a geneticist, says he wants to have children even though he is not attracted to women. I had always seen that as an admission of asexuality, but others have seen this as OSC somehow making a dig against gay people. See how that could be controversial? Speaking of...
3. This inspires Petra gets all chickified, wanting desperately to have babies with Bean. This is kind of important to the plot, and it pulls us through the entire thing, but it wouldn't be very good onscreen.
4. And then, because Bean's got genes that would have his children lead miserable existences as genus freaks with life-threatening cases of the giantisms, there's some abortion! Granted, the destruction of the zygotes are faked by Achilles, who wants those genetically gifted children for himself, but still, you had us going...

Talk Like Whatever

   Arrgh avast ye swabby scurves. Shiver my dead man's pieces of the black spot. Yo ho ho and a bottle of booty... mmm.

   You know what? Talk Like a Pirate Day kinda sucks. It really does. I don't care what the internet thinks. It's bad in concept and bad in execution. Instead, there should be a... Talk Like Ben Stein Day. Yesss. Okay, from now on, Talk Like a Pirate Day is now Talk Like Ben Stein Day.

Thumb War

   Ha ha, eat it, animals!

Ocean's 25

What's up, you guys? I'm Matt Damon. I'm here
to tell you a tale about a dear
old friend of mine. His name, in case you have
not guessed, is George Clooney. Others in staff
include Nic Cage, Bruce Willis, Steve Carell,
and the entire cast of Ocean's Twelve.
(Plus that thirteenth guy in Ocean's Thirteen.
No wait, Bernie Mac's dead, add Charlie Sheen.)

So, now that Danny Ocean has his crack
team of thieves, he will go and he will hack
the code for getting past the doors of that
new Vegas casino, the Fancy Cat.
Along the way, he'll have to pull eight bank
heists, steal a helicopter, and a tank,
intercept all of the video feed,
impersonate several officials, weed
out the traitor, and deal with secrets from
his past. Can our hero do it? That's dumb.
He's George Clooney! He can do anything!
Now sush down, and I, Matt Damon, will sing
--or at least tell in verse-- how awesome it
is. Okay, so, one day, George and Brad Pitt
were sitting and talking about the good 
old golden thiefy days when you could
break into a bank or casino
whether it be in Vegas or Reno
and it would actually break the bank.
You have modern technology to thank
what with these ATMs and digital
transactions credit cards, original
ways to stack the odds are impossible.
The only way is through un-boss-able
teenage hacker punks. Then George realizes
that he may have a few more surprises
up his sleeve. He tracks where the Fancy Cat
gets its money, and then- imagine that!-
He writes a bunch of bouncing checks to the
eight banks, so they'll all crash, and then he
goes to check out the Fancy Cat's own vault,
past the security. He finds a fault
in the passcode system: anyone with
military I.D., and this is no myth,
could get past it. So he steals a tank and
helicopter before the code is scanned.

Voila, he's in. So! You've seen him steal
from eight banks, and the chopper and tank, and deal
with his past. He's impersonated dudes
and looped the video, breaking into
the vault. But, wasn't there this other thing?
It was on lines sixteen and seventeen.
Oh, yeah! He had to weed out the traitor!
Who could be this mysterious satyr?
I've got to admit it. The traitor is me.
I, Linus Caldwell, am the Bourne Identity.
But don't worry, it's safe, everything's cool:
I lost my memory and now clean the school.
(Good Will Hunting, in case you couldn't tell.)
"What's up with these film mashups?" you ask. Well,
Let me say this: I've moved to Bollywood to break a leg.
Oh crap! I just got shot by Daniel freaking Craig!

So, what's the moral of this tale, where Bond... James Bond,
assassinates Jason Bourne? What's the deal? Where's the magic wand?

The moral, children, is something you can bear to face:
Sometimes Hollywood is a pretty messed-up place.

Dead Tropes

   They should bring back deathtraps, gosh darn it! I've haven't seen a good deathtrap since... sheesh... I don't think I've ever seen a good death trap. Is it one of those things that people make fun of despite the fact that it was never played straight to begin with? Superman, for example, only ever changed in a phone booth twice, both in the Max Fleischer cartoons, both times stating outright that it was an unusual thing to be doing, but that he was in a hurry.

   But death traps should be played straight. There ain't nothing funny about them.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, September 13, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Offstage Voice 1: Yeah! Tang!
Offstage Voice 2: Woo-hoo!
Offstage Voice 3: Go! Go!
Offstage Voice 1: Yeah! Coke!
Offstage Voice 2: Rock on!
Offstage Voice 3: Yeah! Out of sight!
Offstage Voice 1: Alright! Ovaltine!
Offstage Voice 2: Choc-o-late milk!
Offstage Voice 3: Woot! Woot!
Offstage Voice 1: Hawaiian Punch!
Offstage Voice 2: Yeah!
Offstage Voice 3: Go! Go! Go!
Offstage Voice 1: ...
Offstage Voice 2: ...
Offstage Voice 3: ...
(Remember, Kids... Don't drink the Kool-Aid.)

But Will It Work?

   Conception versus execution- how to tell how it will work. You get an idea and you get to write it, and it sounds so cool in your head, but you know that they say there's a difference between how something looks on paper and how something looks in reality. Costume designers for superhero films can attest to this.

   With writing things down, there's just no way to tell how that's going to work out on the paper. Some ideas your thoughts rambled on about, but are easily compressed into a few short sentences on the page, though you spent so much time thinking about it. And other thoughts, the thoughts you think aren't much and won't be much on paper, turn out to be extremely expandable, with new points to go off of and to expound upon. How to tell which thought is which? Beats me. But if I do figure it out, then I've already got this here to expand off of. So that's a win.

SHADOW OF THE GIANT

   Achilles is dead, but Bean, Petra, and Peter all have to deal with the effects of his actions.

THE GOOD:

1. Opening up in a diner with Hot Soup. Bam, it's Ben Kingsley. He hands Hot Soup a pen, which he reveals to be actually a dart gun by calling it the Mandate of Heaven. There is just so much awesome with that.
2. Find the embryos! 
3. The ending sequel hook with Randi.
4. Virlomi, after proving how crazy awesome and dangerous she can be in the last one, gradually succumbs to her own propaganda, and goes insane.
5. The jeesh stuff is also cool.
6. The adorable scene with the letter tucked into the diaper, and the addition of "I love you" to it.

THE BAD:

1. Achilles is dead, which is sad because he was rad. All Peter has to go up against now is the entire Asian theater. Speaking of...
2. Some have argued that revealing how Peter came into power takes away some of the excitement and mystery of just knowing he became Hegemon of Earth as Locke.

THE UGLY:

1. Virlomi dreaming of her old friend Sayagi, who didn't make it out of rebelling against Achilles alive in Shadow of the Hegemon. I'm not sure how big a part he's going to play in that movie, which is what concerns me.
2. How much to connect the ending of this to Shadows in Flight and Ender in Exile. Do we just focus on its own story, or delve further into that?

Cap'n Dog

   ...That's not his name. Cap'n Dog, it's, not hit name. He is a dog, but he's... he's not even a captain. Just, he's a dog, and he's from Cap'n Patches. So I called it, Cap'n Dog. More, descriptive, than anything else.

   Once again I exhibit a pretty keen eye for textiles, but a somewhat two-dimensional conception of  anatomy... Check out that face! The right arm also kind of feels forced, but it's just tangencies in weird places, cancelling out the depth illusion... If I ever do a more polished version, with inking and coloring and everything, that'll get tidied up... it's kind of a minor piece, though, I'm not sure if it would be worth it...

   I think I will do that, actually; this one's got just too good of a base to let those three or four surface missteps utterly mar it...

Antz

   Noticed something heartbreaking on the Antz poster. Antz came out more than a month before a Bug's Life, but they were different enough to avoid any questions of being cheap-knock offs of one another. Maybe? Either way, Bug's Life is a terrible movie anyway.

   But, look, right there, behind Z.

   Yeah, they both came out in 1998. At least it didn't take place in the future, like X-Men or A.I.. It's not like anyone knew what would happen.

Thusly a Deviant

   For those of you as impressed with Cailin's art as I am, you can check out some of her stuff on deviantART here, where she goes by the name of Avvaeccus (Ah-vay-shus.) She hasn't been on in years, at press time, which is more than a year ago when I scheduled this so maybe that's changed. http://avaeccus.deviantart.com/

   I'm kind of toying with the idea of getting a deviantART (or something) myself. I've got a blog because it's more solitary, and so you're kind of separated from everything so there's more emphasis on yourself, but, as part of a group, there's actually a greater chance of being found because people know to look.

Lampy's Adventures in Political Correctness

 

 

   That poor lamp can't do anything right. He deserves it, though, is the thing. He got what was coming to him.

   I just love the idea of a lamp being told that lamps can't have a sexual orientation.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, September 6, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT: 

Collin: In 

(Meanwhile, in an alternate universe in which "the Shubdubs" is the coolest name for a band ever...)
Collin: fact, the "boy" in the name El Niño refers to baby Jesus, as the phenomenon was first reported around Christmastime by Peruvian fisherman in the late 1800s.
La Niña, El Niño's counterpart,  (associated with colder-than-normal sea surface levels rather than warmer-than-normal ones) was discovered and named as recently as 1985.
ENSO, (El Niño-Southern Ocillation [sic]), while called simply "El Niño" in popular usage, actually refers to not only the El Niño-La Niña cycle, but also the cycle of Southern Ocillation, [sic] an ocillation [sic] in air pressure between the tropical Eastern & the Western Pacific Ocean waters.
Low atmospheric pressure tends to occur over warm and high pressure occurs over cold water, in part because deep convection over the warm water acts to transport air.
Also, the Shubdubs is the coolest band name ever.

Crab Ponies

   I am so sorry. Just, in keeping up with all the bizarre minutiae on the internet, I'd be remiss if I did not report this.

   It's like the absolute overcute big-headed stylization of Generation 3.5, taken far beyond its logical conclusion and transplanted into Generation 4. Crab Ponies. So far I've only seen Apple Jack and Twilight Sparkle crab ponies, but I think that's enough, right? The following video has been described as a succinct summation of the internet: 

   And crab Twilight marching, in .GIF format (because .GIFs rule):

inkbunny.net

   As far as I can tell, the phenomenon has nothing whatever to do with this, headcrab ponies:

blackrathmar.deviantart.com

   I hope you're happy, internet. I hope you're happy.

The Countdown

   In honor of the Ender's Game film coming out November 1 of this year, I've decided to do a series of posts leading up to the big event, once every Friday for all the Shadow books and the Ender Quartet, breaking down what a big-screen adaptation could look like. All the books in the series (okay, not like the Earth Unaware stuff, and I've yet to read Shadows in Flight, and if they were to adapt Ender in Exile I'm pretty sure it'd be as a television series (ooh, how cool would that be?) and plus I've got no place to fit those into the schema so I'm not going to bother.)

   Using my hip insider's knowledge of the film industry (and by that I mean that one time I interned at that indie movie) I'm going to offer up speculations about what would be good, bad, or ugly to translate to screen. Counting down from the Shadow books, starting next week, all the way to Ender's Game which I'm timing to coincide with the film's release.

   I just hope they don't change the release date on me. Man, would I look foolish then.

George Clooney!

   George Clooney. Awesome, right? Handsome, charming, good actor. Except... Except his name is George Clooney. Think about that for a second. It just occurred to me. First of all, his name is George. George. We tend to overlook a celebrity's name, as some celebrities fit their names perfectly (there ain't nobody Meryl Streep-ier than Meryl Streep) but we've just sort of lived with George Clooney long enough to think that his name fits him, when really it doesn't. We're accustomed to associate a celebrity's name with that celebrity. Bill Murray. Clooney! That's not a name! Cloooooney. But, when combined with George, there's some magic there that makes him this sexy white tiger.

   Brad Pitt! There's a sexy exiting name for a sexy exiting celebrity. Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise. Yes. Matt Damon, okay. Matt, definitely, Damon, sure.You know who doesn't fit this? Hugh Grant. I guess I just sort of see him as being this Cary Grant sort of figure, but then I actually see him on screen and I think oh. He's so young. Shouldn't he be in his 80s or something? Hugh Grant is a terrible name for a celebrity. Hyoo. Grrrant.

   Does this only work with males? I couldn't tell you the difference between Penelope Cruz and Penelope Lopez (there is a Penelope Lopez, correctly? Yes? Alright.) Well, there's the aforementioned Ms. Streep, as well as the whole "complete the sentence" thing with Megan Fox. (Complete the sentence: Megan...)

   (See, you said "is a fox," didn't you?) So there's that. And men get to star in thrillers while females are stuck with interchangeable romcoms. But for females, for the most part their names aren't part of their identity. More of a handy label more than anything, that allows us to know which one we're talking about. "Oh! She was in that one with Johnny Depp that no one went to go see, and she was Fox in Wanted, and she was married to that d-bag a few years back. Yeah. Major hottie." See? The only reason I knew of the existence of Penelope Cruz is because she's somehow not related to Tom Cruise and they were in a relationship previously.

Colsen

   Agent Phil Colsen was set up heavily in Iron Man 2 in a part that didn't contribute to the story much at all but paid off in Avengers. Watch Avengers, then in Iron Man 2 it makes us glad to see more of him in retrospect. Since he died. And also, hey look it's the guy from that TV show! So, in conjunction with those, his part in Iron Man 2 is pretty major. But, in the film itself? Not much. His part didn't advance the plot forward. Very much, if at all- there's certainly not anything he does that couldn't have been done by a character we didn't have to take the pains to introduce. He was just more baggage in a (however long this movie was; I'm too lazy to look it up) movie. But, it foreshadowed. So all in all it was well done.

   Compare that to Jean Gray, who didn't have to sacrifice herself at the end of X2. She could have stayed inside the plane. But she didn't. If you look closely, though, there's a glow there. It foreshadowed her transformation into Phoenix. This was thrown out the window for X-Men 3.

   Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, twin mutants who are also Avengers, can appear as Avengers as long as they're not explicitly mentioned as mutants (X-Men films being a Fox property.) I'm not sure why I'm bringing this up now, but I spent hours of research just to get that kernel of fact, so I'm using it, darn it! I guess to connect the two franchises?

   At least they've got the rights to the other Avengers.

Einstein's Riddle

   Albert Einstein is said to have given a riddle. He who solves it, it is said, proves an IQ in the top two percent, and is thus fit to join Mensa. Well, okay, entirely anecdotal Einstein. Let's say we've got five houses, all in a row. I guess there are people living in those houses. This much is known of them.

1. The British person lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green homeowner drinks coffee.
6. The man who smokes Pall Mall keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Bluemaster drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

Question: Who owns the fish?

   All right. We can immediately rule out the cat owner, since fish in a home with cats in it would not last long. Nor dogs, for that matter. They'd probably just knock that fishbowl over. We know that it's neither of the bird owner nor the horse owner, so the fish owner must be the one remaining. Answer: the fish owner is the one who does not own birds, cats, dogs, or a horse. Elementary.

   Gee, what a stupid question. Mensa can suck it.

Déjà Vu (Film)

   Déjà Vu is a really really good movie, you guys. Forget all of the other time travel movies. None of those others have got a car chase IN TIME, meaning he's chasing a car in the past so he can track it while he's still in the present!

   There's kind of a problem with the timelines, though. The time travel science can't seem to make up its mind. (And most of the criticism levied against the film was in its portrayal of post-Katrina New Orleans...!)

   The explanation: multiple trips through time, by multiple Dougs. There's a really neat diagram on Wikipedia that explains all of this, but it's kind of too big to fit here, so I'll just link it. Link. I hope you get that. It may or may not be in danger of coming down, since it may or may not be original research on the part of... hold on... User:Wildonrio. Citation needed, and all that. But, hey, it's a good theory, and I'm saying so now, all of that is how I think it went down, so you can cite this!

   But Eric, you may say to yourself, wouldn't that be a paradox, Wikipedia citing you citing Wikipedia which itself cites you? To which I say: yes it would. But there sure aren't any paradoxes in Déjà Vu.

“…A DIFFERENT AIR, A KIND OF COUNTRY LOVE-SONG THAT HE MUST HAVE LEARNED IN HIS YOUTH BEFORE HE HAD BEGUN TO FOLLOW THE SEA.”

And I would climb up o’er the mountains

And I would die a violent death

If I could fly up above these city walls

I’d love you with my final breath

But I understand

That there are people out there

Please try and understand

That there are people out there

Trying to stay alive.

Trying to find some love,

Sweet love.

And all we can do to survive

Is try and stay alive,

Try to find some love.

And all we can do to survive

Is try and stay alive

Try to find some love.

Oh-oh.