X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Recently I watched the latest installment in the X-Men movie series, X-Men: Days of Future Past.  You can creep my twitter profile for the short version, but where's the fun in that?  Read on (sort of spoiler-y I guess)...

Let me start off with the best part of the movie: Magneto as played by Michael Fassbender.  All of the sequences involving him (either taking part of the action or just in the action) are excellent.  The best sequence is from the end - and I'm definitely not spoiling the contents of that scene, because it's worth experiencing.  A close second would be Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique.  She also had some very strong scenes in the film, and without spoiling it, was very central to the plot.

Now then...there were some weaker moments, as I alluded to on Twitter.  The worst moments: Wolverine piping in with "...but I know someone who can help us!" when they run into a road block.  To be fair, I think this only happens twice, but the overall characterization of Wolverine is actually not very strong.  To me, he comes across as much more emotional than we've seen in any of the previous movies.  Yes, he's shown some strong emotions (other than "GRR!  I'm angry!") in the other movies, but in this one he almost seems sentimental.

That's not the character we know; however one could argue that this decades-long war against the sentinels with deaths of all his friends has changed him.  I would buy that argument if maybe we'd seen a movie set completely in the future (or the present? I know it's supposed to be the future in the comic book, but it's a little muddy in the movie).  It does help that we see some of the mutants get killed in horrible ways in the opening sequence - it helps cement the idea that this is a terrible state of affairs for mutants.

I also feel that James McAvoy's Professor Xavier recovers a little too quickly from his depression.  I feel like this should have been a more important part of the plot, but it's not handled with much grace.  On the other hand, I think this is a third strong point I found in the movie - James McAvoy.  I won't say too much - I just liked his performance in the movie.

I would definitely watch this movie again and anticipate the day it arrives on home media.  One thing to note if you were let down by X-Men 3 - this movie pretty much wipes its events out of the movie series canon.  I liked parts of X-Men 3 but I feel like that was a good move; unfortunately the movie also undoes some of X2, but it's unclear exactly how much of that has been undone.

The next X-Men movie should be pretty good - it's supposed to be set in the '80s, so none of the "old" trilogy actors should be appearing in it (though wouldn't you think that James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are still a little too young-looking in the '80s to pass as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen?).

My All-Time Movies List

For some reason, I found myself thinking about the movies I watched over and over as a kid; the movies that, no matter how many times I'd seen them, I could always pop in when I was bored.  These are the movies that I watched when I was sick; when I was home all summer; on weekends.  These are the movies that I want my kids (when I have them) to watch as they grow up.

The movies aren't in any particular order - I just listed them as they came to mind.  Most of these movies were recorded from TV, and were watched complete with glorious '80s commercials.

Back to the Future
What can I say about this movie?  What can I say about any of them?  As kids, we watched this from a VHS tape, recorded from some TV channel I can't remember.  I should point out that I'm referring primarily to the first movie, not the entire trilogy.  We never had Part II or III on tape, but we watched the hell out of the first one.  It's an easy plot for a kid to wrap his head around.

The Star Wars Trilogy (1977-1983)
The unfortunate thing about this trilogy is that I'm unlikely to ever find copies of the original, unedited versions (without going on eBay finding the DVD copies that were released a few years ago with the original theatrical versions) in high definition, because this is how I grew up watching them.  I think that I would definitely want to show my kids these versions, and I'll do my best to make sure that happens.  I think there's a lot to be said for using physical special effects instead of computer generated crap.

The Karate Kid Part I and II
This one's a funny one for me; I remember watching both of these movies quite a bit - mostly the first one - but I really prefer the second one.  The problem is, our copy of the second one got messed up in the recording.  Oh well!

Bigfoot
This is an obscure one, and I've never seen it available in any media ever, anywhere, except our one VHS tape that we recorded from TV.  There are probably a dozen movies by the same name, but in this case I'm talking about the 1987 made-for-TV film starring Candice Cameron Bure.  Yes, starring DJ from Full House.  I think the only other bigger stars in that movie were Colleen Dewhurst and Joseph Maher.  Have you even heard of them?  Yeah, exactly.  Okay, actually, the father, James Sloyan, appeared in a few Star Trek episodes (TNG, DS9, Voyager), so there's at least one "famous" character actor in it too.  Look, it's a great movie, and you should watch it.

The Great Muppet Caper + A Muppet Family Christmas
I think my favourite of these two is The Great Muppet Caper, but both are excellent films (the latter is made-for-TV I think) that showcase The Muppets at the height of their amazing-ness.  While last year's The Muppets was great, I don't think it can ever top The Great Muppet Caper - even though it may have matched  it in tone at least.

Ghostbusters
Another of the great '80s films, I probably watched this one just as much as the Star Wars movies.

I'm sure there are more that I'm forgetting, and likely will come to mind after I hit "Publish".  But if I only remember these movies, that's still one pretty great list to show my kids.  There's only one modern movie I can think of that I would add to this list - and it's Moneyball.  It seems like a strange choice, but I just finished watching it for the umpteenth time, and I'll likely watch it again and again.  It's become one of those movies, like those listed above.

I didn't really have much of a point to this post, just stuff I wanted to share.  Got any movies that you watched over and over in your childhood?  I'd be interested to see what any '90s kids watched too.

Disappointment - With a Positive Outlook



Picture shamelessly stolen from Lifehacker

The Machine of Death Volume 2 Submission Deadline has come and gone (it was 00:00:00 July 16th 2011).  Unfortunately, I did not manage to get anything put together for a submission - that's the disappointment part of this post.  I would have loved to put something into contention to get included in a really cool anthology, but I just didn't find the time to put into writing it (and I am purposefully distinguishing "finding time" and "having no time").

So what's with the positive outlook?  Despite my disappointing results with writing so far (I haven't even been doing daily prompts, as was my intention), I still feel like I'm being creative and productive.  And that's despite being in the process of taking my house apart in advance of a September 1st move.  Here's why I feel so creative:

• In the last week and a half, I've written a review of Titanic II, as well as an off-the-cuff piece about Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Ricky Romero.  I really liked how both pieces came out.
• I feel like Alternative Airwaves is going in a good direction; I'm on a bit of a haphazard posting schedule for the summer (in part due to the move), but I'm doing my best to stay on top of things and pump out what I think is a unique take on the music I'm linking to
• I actually feel motivated to write & produce new content; while I haven't actually done that as yet, this can only be a Good Thing.  Actually, this blog post really is a result of feeling motivated - I just felt like writing something.

tl;dr: I'm really itching to write about anything.  I should take this as a sign that I should practice my music writing skills (that is, writing about music, not writing music) and also find new things to write about on a more regular basis.  I've said a long time ago that non-fiction writing seems to be my bread and butter, and right now I really want to do more of it.  Time to get busy!

Android on the iPod Touch?

I was browsing a forum sometime last week (this forum: Notebook In Hand) and there was a topic about iPhone / iPod Touch owners.  I mentioned that I had an iPod Touch "1G", and that while I was looking for an upgrade, it was still serving me quite well.

That triggered a response of "Well you should jailbreak it!  AND install Android!"

Wait, what?  Android on an iPod Touch?  What a crazy world!  It turns out that it's fairly simple to do this, so last weekend, I fiddled around with my iPod, and, lo and behold...

Now don't get me wrong - this is not a very functional version of Android.  It doesn't make calls, but it does connect to wifi perfectly fine and you can browse the web, etc.  But it's slow.  Way slower than the iOS.  And it overheats and causes the iPod to shut down. 

But it does one thing very well: it gives me the opportunity to play around with Android in a way that's sort of similar to using a tablet.  And it's not permanent, as I can switch back to iOS very easily.

And it ALSO speaks to my penchant for doing geeky things with my devices, like installing Android on a platform not designed for it.  Woohoo!

Bloggable Topics

Last night, I finished a complete draft of my nefarious "Pocket Watch" story!  And in actuality, it's not about a pocket watch anymore.  It's quite different.  It's also quite weak - but the point is that the story is on paper (well, computer) and just needs some editing.

Some other stuff:

• I finally got a hold of the last three episodes of Battlestar Galactica - look for some reviews, probably around March
• I finished watching Dexter!  I didn't know the last season was only 12 episodes.
• I have a review to type up of that Star Wars book that I finished less than a month ago
• I have some things to say about Kevin J. Anderson
• Currently I am reading John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars and am enjoying it.

So look for all that and more coming this month on my blog.

Wil Wheaton is (maybe) my muse

I think what got me excited about the whole aspect of self-publishing and getting something out there was always Wil Wheaton (yes, THAT Wil Wheaton) and his attitude about the Internet and just putting things out there because we can.  So of course leave it to Wil to inspire me AGAIN to get back to working on my writing project.

He's just released a new sci-fi short story (which I will read & review when I get the chance) called Hunter.  It's a pay-what-you-want type of release, meaning you can download it to your heart's content and pay nothing, or you can spread the good karma and donate.  This story is DRM-free in multiple formats, so you can do whatever you want with it - up to and including sharing it with others.

I'm currently struggling to figure out how I can load it onto my Blackberry Kobo app, but sadly I think that app is pretty well locked down.  I have a PDF saved on my Dropbox (sorry, not in my public folder - I donated to the Wil Wheaton fund to get my copy of Hunter), so I think I can at least read the PDF on my phone.

I personally donated $1.00, based on this little bit from the page for Hunter:

If I sold it to a magazine, I'd probably get around $125 or so (assuming I could get the SFWA professional rate of five cents a word. I figure that at least 125 people will want to read this, so if all of them donated a dollar, I'd feel really good about this, and I'd be able to do it again in the future.

Essentially, I've taken my fair share of free stuff from the web and I want to start giving something back.  In this case, it's a small donation for a short story.  I've since heard that people are donating $2.00 on average, but $1.00 is still a respectable contribution.

tl;dr - this is making me want to release my short story compilation as a pay-what-you-want thing.  I was considering it anyway, but this has finalized that decision.

Slight Interlude

I read / heard about this today: George Lucas is buying up film rights for dead movie stars.  It seems that the intention is to use them in movies, or commercials, or something.  Either way I was reminded of this (slightly), and wanted to share:

The Critic, "Dr. Jay"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr1Jm5cK2b4 (Part 1) (skip to 4:50 if you don't want to watch the whole thing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFD47bTQs_o (Part 2)

Machine of Death

I have some posts to type up about my NaNo training but I thought I'd take the time to do some promoting of a book!

I'm not sure how many of you read Dinosaur Comics (if you don't, you should - it is a fantastic comic!), but five years ago the Machine of Death project was kick-started thanks to this comic.

Now, the book is available over at Amazon.com - and right now it's on sale for less than $10!

They're trying to get the book to #1 on the sales chart, so I thought I'd do my part in helping to promote it.  It is a really cool book with an awesome premise, and is very collaborative in nature. I thought I'd share :)