I did.
 |
| Pretty good present each and every year |
Film. Comics. Sci-Fi. Superheroes. Pulp. Noir. History. Superman. 20th Century Archaeology.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Merry Christmas!
I did.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Happy Christmas Eve!
PREPARE THE MILK AND COOKIES!!!
The Big Man is coming!
Merry Christmas Eve, Signal Corps!
May your Christmas be jolly and bright!
Now get out there and listen for sleigh bells.
The Big Man is coming!
 |
| This dude is totally wasted |
May your Christmas be jolly and bright!
Now get out there and listen for sleigh bells.
 |
| everyone in this picture needs less sugar |
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The Dug and I watched (and Tweeted) the Prequel to "Santa Buddies"
So, you may recall that last year The Dug, K, Jamie and myself watched and reviewed Disney's 9th or 10th installment in the Air Bud series, Santa Buddies. No longer about a lively golden retriever who can shoot free throws (because this was an actual thing, and it was kind of neat), by the time Santa Buddies rolled around, the original Bud is out of the picture and The Buddies, his offspring, are now CGI'd little monsters who have been in space. In Santa Buddies, they meet Santa, Santa Paws and Puppy Paws.
Read here. Or, you know, here.
Well, today we watched Disney's Buddies-free Prequel to Santa Buddies and live-tweeted the movie. And had a cocktail or three.
You can read our review at One Wall Cinema!
Read here. Or, you know, here.
Well, today we watched Disney's Buddies-free Prequel to Santa Buddies and live-tweeted the movie. And had a cocktail or three.
You can read our review at One Wall Cinema!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Merry Christmas from The Signal Watch
 |
| This is pretty much my optimal tree lighting ceremony |
Merry Christmas from all of us at The Signal Watch!
I am expecting limited posting for a few days to spend time doing Christmas-type-stuff (The Dug and K will be here in a few hours!), but I also wanted to get out ahead of the curve and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas as you head off to your respective destinations and settle in for a festive Yuletide Season. (What is a Yule, anyway?)
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| I'll be honest, my idea of a good Christmas does not include being covered in mice. |
Its been a fantastic year here at our house, and its been a great year getting back into the swing of things with this site. We hope you've enjoyed our return to blogging (which, I hear, is now a dead use of technology. I'm retro!).
I like to think this is a season for giving, so I'll make two quick suggestions for a couple of international charities to give to this Christmas, as I know you're all good to your local charities, already (right?).
 |
| Ms. Brooks thinks giving to charity on the holidays is a great idea |
In the past few years, the Christmas Story which comes back to me again and again is that of the 1914 Christmas Truce, when German and British soldiers put down their arms and their differences and took time to remember what it was that they had, instead, in common. Soccer, carols, battlefields and the knowledge that under other circumstances, they'd be sharing tobacco and stories, and not hurling bullets at one another across an apocalyptic landscape.
Call it a miracle. Call it an act of humanity at its finest. Its what should be.
I hate to send you to Wikipedia, but they have a detailed synopsis of the event.
How odd and strange, and yet... exactly what it should be that the better parts of our nature should know that we can live better with one another, no matter what we hear about those on the other side of the battlefield, or what those who have something to gain from division and anger have to tell us. If only for one day.
Peace on Earth. Goodwill.
We wish you a very Merry Christmas. Here's to you and your loved ones!
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| now dash away, all! |
We'll be back at blogging cruising speed after the Holiday.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Tron: Legacy - That is a whole lot of somethin'
SPOILERS
No, seriously. If you haven't seen the movie, run away now.
I didn't wait 28 years to see a sequel to Tron. I was a kid when the movie was released, and only the word-of-mouth hype machine that existed back then let me know that Star Wars would have sequels. "Franchise" wasn't thrown around a whole lot, but I was kind of aware that Jason and I liked the movie more than our peers. I was the only kid I knew with a Tron lightcycle toy and Flynn action figure and we may have been the ones most interested in chucking frisbees at each other (and you know what's a tough translation? BMX bikes as light cycles).
Time marches on, and, of course, for most folks Tron had fallen off the cultural radar. Nerds had been saying for years "oh, what they could do now with CG", but the original process of the movie is so little known and poorly understood, that I sort of just admired the original for what it was. I have fond memories of the summer when The Admiral waved his hand at the dinner table and pronounced "Enough. We're not talking about Tron anymore at the dinner table." As an adult, I now have fonder memories of Cindy Morgan in a helmet running around The Grid.
I do own the movie on DVD. It's some sort of super-collector's pack thing, meant for the hardcore Tron fan. I'm not sure I meet that description, but I did find the movie interesting on a lot of levels.
Like everyone else, when I saw the first test footage for the new movie, I did that whole "hold your breath, is that what I think I'm seeing?" thing.
So did I enjoy the new Tron? Sort of. I mean, its an absolutely beautiful movie. Somebody put a lot of love into that thing. Its an immaculately realized vision of a fictional world, at least from a set-designer's point of view.
I have to believe that the final cut was either completely butchered by producers into a nonsensical mess or the producers turned in a trilogy, tried to shoot it, and lost sight of the forest for the trees once they needed to trim the running time down to a length that wouldn't test the sitting-powers of the 18-40 age bracket.
A colleague who attended the movie with me commented that he "wasn't looking for a story" when he went to see Tron, and I am hard pressed to argue that going to see Beau Garrett walk away from the camera (in 3D!) is worth the price of admission. Or, you know, the prettier set pieces with light cycles, etc...
Essentially, the movie just doesn't make sense. There's just not enough explanation, really, of almost everything, to hold the thing together, let alone maintain an internal logic.
Whereas the first movie was sort of an over-extended allegory for freedom and artistry versus the despotism of corporate management for software, the new movie begins exactly where that thought left off, with Encom now 30 years on and a fight for the soul of the company lost to a Jobs-like (interestingly, not a Gates-like) Chairman who has taken the OS and made it "the world's most secure" rather than the most innovative. But it sort of totally forgets about this concept and goes for some DC Comics Earth-2 invasion thing that lacks motivation, an explanation of what will happen, or a narrative build.
This throughline of open source versus corporate greed, which is true to the first movie and completely relevant today, and would have made for a fine allegorical little story within "The Grid" as freedom overcomes tyranny, gets inexplicably shelved in the second act and a whole new problem begins for our hero.
Part of me was sort of self-aware that Steve Jobs does, in fact, sit on the board for Disney, the film's producers and distributors, and wondered if that hadn't had a chilling effect on the whole production.
Now... In watching the original Tron, I never took the adventure in the movie literally, not even as a kid. I assumed it was sort of a metaphor for what was happening within the computer, and I don't think I'm necessarily wrong about that reading. I could understand a "program" was being tested "inside the grid" to see if it held muster as it was absorbed into the MCP. But Tron: Legacy makes it very clear: No, seriously, there's a whole civilization of nano-things living inside your computer, like sexy, glowing sea-monkeys.
That, in some ways, sort of makes the movie a whole lot... dumber. I mean, that might have played in 1982, but when you're walking around with a phone in your pocket with more computing power than the entire system that got the Eagle to the moon... well... It's like telling me my TV is really a bunch of different elves putting on plays behind a magical mirror.
As an allegory, I could assume that some thought wento every decision that was made about "well, X actually means Y, so when a lightcycle falls off a wall, its going to de-rez..."
Under this model we could understand if a "program" needed "more power to run" and water was power, or accessing the users was actually Allan taking advantage of a hack in the MCP. But then to see Flynn sitting around in the new movie eating asparagus?* It poses so many questions...
What I found curiously irksome was that the world of the movie deals in physics as we know them on Earth (which the first movie suggested didn't really apply in Computer Land). Part of the magic of the first Tron was seeing "oh, when a lightcycle crashes, here it just sort of... ends." And, yes, of course a digital light cycle turns at 90 degree angles, and of course the landscape is made of hastily rendered polygons.... So during T:L, I knew the producers had kind of missed the point when they showed the Recognizers (the sort of arch-shaped ships from the first film) using thrust. I don't want to see gears turning wheels in Tron. That's missing the point, it would seem. If you have a cargo loader, why isn't it a representation of a loader, just sleekly moving along a track? Why the need to build in mechanical efficiencies? Especially in a world we're told was built to be "perfect"?
The physics of a stall for airplanes can get pretty complicated, but there's a scene were the engines stall during a climb in a dogfight, and it felt so... weird. Does the thing have an engine? Does it not compensate for the digital winds? I... It just asked so many more questions than it answered, and somehow having these glowing jets behave like common aircraft just didn't work.
But, again, one would also assume computer programs don't eat asparagus (let alone all the parts of agriculture that would have to occur to have fresh aparagus in Tron land), and there the program was... at dinner. Dinner? I....
The movie also dodges some complications modern technology would bring into the equation. Flynn's make-believe world seemingly does not have internet access (and Flynn's disappearance seems to predate Tim Berners-Lee getting other people to get onboard with this whole crazy hypertext idea), let alone massive global networks, all of which would have been interesting concepts.
The villains plot, of course, makes no sense and seems to lack in motivation. And you kind of wonder why anyone would stop him. If the program has the ability to learn (and he does, that's demonstrated), let him go nuts and go out to the real world on his own. Help him out! (A) It would have to be pretty interesting to see what would happen, and (B) he's not going to get too far toward a nefarious plan before the practicalities of living in the real world would slow him down.
He's sort of the Professor Chaos of movie villains, but Kevin Flynn is terrified of the guy.
There are, of course, all kinds of other practical issues that come up in the movie when you consider that it hangs on the fact that it doesn't pay any attention to computing past 1985. It also doesn't bother to explain how any of this was programmed/ built into existence, all of which would have been nice, but seem to have been killed during the editing process.**
I have to assume dangling plot threads around the titular Tron, the actual Encom Corporation, and the iffy promises of the first act will get sorted out in Tron II: 2. Maybe. If they spent an hour just dealing with the issues set up in this movie, I think I'd be happy. As it stands, right now I'm a little baffled.
Oh, the kid who plays Sam Flynn is fine, I guess. He walks with a weird trundle that's, like, super obvious thanks to the circuit lines, and he sort of had "angry" as his full range, but... He's also given some clunky lines that Jamie described as "a little Jake Lloyd", so, you know, your mileage is going to vary.
Because, really, this is the Jeff Bridges show much more than a showcase for the kid.
I got a little short changed on my Boxleitner, and I'm a little confused why they didn't try to do more with what they had there (and that is clearly not Boxleitner in the Tron gimp suit for much of the movie). And no Yuri? Bad form, Tron movie.
All of this said, its a very pretty movie, and I think if the first Tron didn't weigh so heavily on the mind, it would be fairly easy to see how people could buy into this (they seemed to not even blink at the ridiculous plot holes The Matrix, so....). I recommend seeing it in 3D on the big screen, because it is that kind of movie. But also know, its not exactly going to astound you at every turn.
The visuals are relentless and almost always fascinating. There's some neat little bits in there that manage to show rather than tell, and I think anyone could appreciate what they were at least trying to do with the skyscapes, wide open gamegrid, the crazy outfits and toy-friendly world of the whole thing. And as I think a lot of that takes a front seat, you know, you might get something out of that. I did.
But expect for it to feel like the first act.
*Asparagus?
**why Kevin Flynn had to die if Clu died made no sense whatsoever and needed at least a phoney-baloney explanation
No, seriously. If you haven't seen the movie, run away now.
I didn't wait 28 years to see a sequel to Tron. I was a kid when the movie was released, and only the word-of-mouth hype machine that existed back then let me know that Star Wars would have sequels. "Franchise" wasn't thrown around a whole lot, but I was kind of aware that Jason and I liked the movie more than our peers. I was the only kid I knew with a Tron lightcycle toy and Flynn action figure and we may have been the ones most interested in chucking frisbees at each other (and you know what's a tough translation? BMX bikes as light cycles).
Time marches on, and, of course, for most folks Tron had fallen off the cultural radar. Nerds had been saying for years "oh, what they could do now with CG", but the original process of the movie is so little known and poorly understood, that I sort of just admired the original for what it was. I have fond memories of the summer when The Admiral waved his hand at the dinner table and pronounced "Enough. We're not talking about Tron anymore at the dinner table." As an adult, I now have fonder memories of Cindy Morgan in a helmet running around The Grid.
I do own the movie on DVD. It's some sort of super-collector's pack thing, meant for the hardcore Tron fan. I'm not sure I meet that description, but I did find the movie interesting on a lot of levels.
 |
| No matter what, I do not love Tron as much as some other people |
So did I enjoy the new Tron? Sort of. I mean, its an absolutely beautiful movie. Somebody put a lot of love into that thing. Its an immaculately realized vision of a fictional world, at least from a set-designer's point of view.
I have to believe that the final cut was either completely butchered by producers into a nonsensical mess or the producers turned in a trilogy, tried to shoot it, and lost sight of the forest for the trees once they needed to trim the running time down to a length that wouldn't test the sitting-powers of the 18-40 age bracket.
A colleague who attended the movie with me commented that he "wasn't looking for a story" when he went to see Tron, and I am hard pressed to argue that going to see Beau Garrett walk away from the camera (in 3D!) is worth the price of admission. Or, you know, the prettier set pieces with light cycles, etc...
Essentially, the movie just doesn't make sense. There's just not enough explanation, really, of almost everything, to hold the thing together, let alone maintain an internal logic.
Whereas the first movie was sort of an over-extended allegory for freedom and artistry versus the despotism of corporate management for software, the new movie begins exactly where that thought left off, with Encom now 30 years on and a fight for the soul of the company lost to a Jobs-like (interestingly, not a Gates-like) Chairman who has taken the OS and made it "the world's most secure" rather than the most innovative. But it sort of totally forgets about this concept and goes for some DC Comics Earth-2 invasion thing that lacks motivation, an explanation of what will happen, or a narrative build.
 |
| A powerful argument for running Linux |
This throughline of open source versus corporate greed, which is true to the first movie and completely relevant today, and would have made for a fine allegorical little story within "The Grid" as freedom overcomes tyranny, gets inexplicably shelved in the second act and a whole new problem begins for our hero.
Part of me was sort of self-aware that Steve Jobs does, in fact, sit on the board for Disney, the film's producers and distributors, and wondered if that hadn't had a chilling effect on the whole production.
Now... In watching the original Tron, I never took the adventure in the movie literally, not even as a kid. I assumed it was sort of a metaphor for what was happening within the computer, and I don't think I'm necessarily wrong about that reading. I could understand a "program" was being tested "inside the grid" to see if it held muster as it was absorbed into the MCP. But Tron: Legacy makes it very clear: No, seriously, there's a whole civilization of nano-things living inside your computer, like sexy, glowing sea-monkeys.
That, in some ways, sort of makes the movie a whole lot... dumber. I mean, that might have played in 1982, but when you're walking around with a phone in your pocket with more computing power than the entire system that got the Eagle to the moon... well... It's like telling me my TV is really a bunch of different elves putting on plays behind a magical mirror.
 |
| this is living in your Apple IIe |
Under this model we could understand if a "program" needed "more power to run" and water was power, or accessing the users was actually Allan taking advantage of a hack in the MCP. But then to see Flynn sitting around in the new movie eating asparagus?* It poses so many questions...
What I found curiously irksome was that the world of the movie deals in physics as we know them on Earth (which the first movie suggested didn't really apply in Computer Land). Part of the magic of the first Tron was seeing "oh, when a lightcycle crashes, here it just sort of... ends." And, yes, of course a digital light cycle turns at 90 degree angles, and of course the landscape is made of hastily rendered polygons.... So during T:L, I knew the producers had kind of missed the point when they showed the Recognizers (the sort of arch-shaped ships from the first film) using thrust. I don't want to see gears turning wheels in Tron. That's missing the point, it would seem. If you have a cargo loader, why isn't it a representation of a loader, just sleekly moving along a track? Why the need to build in mechanical efficiencies? Especially in a world we're told was built to be "perfect"?
The physics of a stall for airplanes can get pretty complicated, but there's a scene were the engines stall during a climb in a dogfight, and it felt so... weird. Does the thing have an engine? Does it not compensate for the digital winds? I... It just asked so many more questions than it answered, and somehow having these glowing jets behave like common aircraft just didn't work.
But, again, one would also assume computer programs don't eat asparagus (let alone all the parts of agriculture that would have to occur to have fresh aparagus in Tron land), and there the program was... at dinner. Dinner? I....
The movie also dodges some complications modern technology would bring into the equation. Flynn's make-believe world seemingly does not have internet access (and Flynn's disappearance seems to predate Tim Berners-Lee getting other people to get onboard with this whole crazy hypertext idea), let alone massive global networks, all of which would have been interesting concepts.
The villains plot, of course, makes no sense and seems to lack in motivation. And you kind of wonder why anyone would stop him. If the program has the ability to learn (and he does, that's demonstrated), let him go nuts and go out to the real world on his own. Help him out! (A) It would have to be pretty interesting to see what would happen, and (B) he's not going to get too far toward a nefarious plan before the practicalities of living in the real world would slow him down.
He's sort of the Professor Chaos of movie villains, but Kevin Flynn is terrified of the guy.
 |
| Our antagonist |
I have to assume dangling plot threads around the titular Tron, the actual Encom Corporation, and the iffy promises of the first act will get sorted out in Tron II: 2. Maybe. If they spent an hour just dealing with the issues set up in this movie, I think I'd be happy. As it stands, right now I'm a little baffled.
Oh, the kid who plays Sam Flynn is fine, I guess. He walks with a weird trundle that's, like, super obvious thanks to the circuit lines, and he sort of had "angry" as his full range, but... He's also given some clunky lines that Jamie described as "a little Jake Lloyd", so, you know, your mileage is going to vary.
Because, really, this is the Jeff Bridges show much more than a showcase for the kid.
I got a little short changed on my Boxleitner, and I'm a little confused why they didn't try to do more with what they had there (and that is clearly not Boxleitner in the Tron gimp suit for much of the movie). And no Yuri? Bad form, Tron movie.
All of this said, its a very pretty movie, and I think if the first Tron didn't weigh so heavily on the mind, it would be fairly easy to see how people could buy into this (they seemed to not even blink at the ridiculous plot holes The Matrix, so....). I recommend seeing it in 3D on the big screen, because it is that kind of movie. But also know, its not exactly going to astound you at every turn.
The visuals are relentless and almost always fascinating. There's some neat little bits in there that manage to show rather than tell, and I think anyone could appreciate what they were at least trying to do with the skyscapes, wide open gamegrid, the crazy outfits and toy-friendly world of the whole thing. And as I think a lot of that takes a front seat, you know, you might get something out of that. I did.
But expect for it to feel like the first act.
*Asparagus?
**why Kevin Flynn had to die if Clu died made no sense whatsoever and needed at least a phoney-baloney explanation
Stay Up Late or Interrupted Sleep? Lunar Eclipse Tonight!
I think I'm just going to stay up late, but this evening will see a total lunar eclipse around 12:30 AM Central time.
I plan to see this as a sign that the gods are angry with us, and use this as an excuse to smite the non-believers.
For more info on the Eclipse, check out the Star Date website.
I plan to see this as a sign that the gods are angry with us, and use this as an excuse to smite the non-believers.
For more info on the Eclipse, check out the Star Date website.
Coen Bros.
Somebody asked which Coen Bros. movies I had seen and not seen, and which one I did not like.
Good questions.
I am mostly just "in" when it comes to the Coen Bros. I stumbled across Miller's Crossing and Raising Arizona around the ages of 14 and 16, and it was my first understanding of anything resembling auteur-ship.
At the end of the day, I think these guys are at their best when they work in the crime mega-genre, which is more or less where they work most of the time. And of late, since Big Lebwoski, I kind of keep my mouth shut about their movies for a day or so, because I want to wait for the movie to sort itself out a little more in my head. Most certainly Blood Simple is noir, and Miller's Crossing is pure American gangster picture. I'd argue that the Coen's played with noir with Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and that's where they're excelling. They've dropped some of the post-Sam Raimi early career eccentricities for more nuanced story-telling, and I don't mind the switch.
I, initially, didn't really groove to The Big Lebowski, but a week later, I feel like I'd given it time to marinate, and the whole "it's classic noir, just with a completely detached protagonist" joke the Coens were laying down finally really caught on the gears.
Similarly, the more I think about A Serious Man, the more I like that movie, too (and I read it as sort of a modern, Minnesota-based Book of Job).
Anyway, here's a fairly complete list, omitting movies where I think the Coens were only loosely involved as executive producers.
I should note: The two Coen Bros. movies I did not see came out when I lived in Arizona. The cinemas in Chandler absolutely would not have carried a Coen Bros. movie. It was a lot of Hillary Duff, Disney movies, whatever... but that's part of how I missed them. Also, again, when movies come out at Christmas, its very hard for me to get out to see them.
At the theatrical release, neither The Ladykillers nor Intolerable Cruelty were terribly loved either by reviews or word of mouth, and I just never bothered.
True Grit - plan to see it
2009 A Serious Man - seen it
2008 Burn After Reading - seen it
2007 No Country for Old Men - seen it
2004 The Ladykillers - did not see it
2003 Bad Santa - only producers on this, but I finally saw this last Christmas, and its really good
2003 Intolerable Cruelty - did not see it
2001 The Man Who Wasn't There - this is the one I didn't like, but I saw it
2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? - seen it
1998 The Big Lebowski - seen it
1996 Fargo - who didn't see it?
1994 The Hudsucker Proxy - saw it for my 19th birthday in college
1991 Barton Fink - seen it
1990 Miller's Crossin - seen it
1987 Raising Arizona - seen it
1984 Blood Simple - seen it
Good questions.
I am mostly just "in" when it comes to the Coen Bros. I stumbled across Miller's Crossing and Raising Arizona around the ages of 14 and 16, and it was my first understanding of anything resembling auteur-ship.
At the end of the day, I think these guys are at their best when they work in the crime mega-genre, which is more or less where they work most of the time. And of late, since Big Lebwoski, I kind of keep my mouth shut about their movies for a day or so, because I want to wait for the movie to sort itself out a little more in my head. Most certainly Blood Simple is noir, and Miller's Crossing is pure American gangster picture. I'd argue that the Coen's played with noir with Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and that's where they're excelling. They've dropped some of the post-Sam Raimi early career eccentricities for more nuanced story-telling, and I don't mind the switch.
I, initially, didn't really groove to The Big Lebowski, but a week later, I feel like I'd given it time to marinate, and the whole "it's classic noir, just with a completely detached protagonist" joke the Coens were laying down finally really caught on the gears.
Similarly, the more I think about A Serious Man, the more I like that movie, too (and I read it as sort of a modern, Minnesota-based Book of Job).
Anyway, here's a fairly complete list, omitting movies where I think the Coens were only loosely involved as executive producers.
I should note: The two Coen Bros. movies I did not see came out when I lived in Arizona. The cinemas in Chandler absolutely would not have carried a Coen Bros. movie. It was a lot of Hillary Duff, Disney movies, whatever... but that's part of how I missed them. Also, again, when movies come out at Christmas, its very hard for me to get out to see them.
At the theatrical release, neither The Ladykillers nor Intolerable Cruelty were terribly loved either by reviews or word of mouth, and I just never bothered.
True Grit - plan to see it
2009 A Serious Man - seen it
2008 Burn After Reading - seen it
2007 No Country for Old Men - seen it
2004 The Ladykillers - did not see it
2003 Bad Santa - only producers on this, but I finally saw this last Christmas, and its really good
2003 Intolerable Cruelty - did not see it
2001 The Man Who Wasn't There - this is the one I didn't like, but I saw it
2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? - seen it
1998 The Big Lebowski - seen it
1996 Fargo - who didn't see it?
1994 The Hudsucker Proxy - saw it for my 19th birthday in college
1991 Barton Fink - seen it
1990 Miller's Crossin - seen it
1987 Raising Arizona - seen it
1984 Blood Simple - seen it
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