I grew up watching Godzilla movies. My favorites were the terrible ones where he fought King Kong and a robot Godzilla. The original Godzilla was kind of serious. Well, as serious as a story about a thirty story tall monster can be. 1954’s Godzilla King of the Monsters was a strange movie. Watching it now I can easily see the countless times Raymond Burr was wedged into the story and doubles were used for the actors in the original film. These are all shots with Raymond facing the camera and whoever he’s talking to has their back to the camera.…
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The World’s End
Imagine the best day of your life was the time you and your pals went on a pub crawl-only you never actually finished the crawl? So many years later you decided to give it another go. This is the basic setup for The World’s End. Our heroes want to do the Golden Mile, going from pubs The First Post to The World’s End. For most film makers this would actually not be a bad movie. Old mates getting together and pining away for the good old days. But Simon Pegg is not most film makers, so about halfway through the…
Man of Steel
Superman is still an icon figure, but Man of Steel shows what happens after 80 years of random writers and artists taking their best and worst shots. Man of Steel is mix tape of Superman Greatest Hits with a little bit of everything tossed in for good measure. It wasn’t bad, but it was a little long winded on aspects of Clark Kent’s story that I have to believe anyone with a pulse is already familiar with. I really liked the look of Man of Steel, until he actually put on the cape and became Superman. Man of Steel feels most like a…
After Earth
I like Will Smith not because he’s Will Smith, but because he starred in a lot of great movies. I’m a bit less impressed with Will Smith’s blatant nepotism to promote his son as a movie star and not impressed with Jaden Smith at all. And this is a Jaden Smith film, he got top billing over his father and the title. After Earth was an OK movie, it’s greatest weaknesses being director M. Night Shyamalan and it’s star Jaden Smith. Sony has done an amazing job of hiding any connection M. Night Shyamalan has to After Earth, but there…
Nowhere Boy
There’s an alternate universe where John Lennon moved to New Zealand and never met Paul, George, and Ringo. It’s a small bit of the story in Nowhere Boy, where we spend a couple of years-more or less-in the life of a young John Lennon. We see flashes of genius and flashes of idiocy. We see signs that say Strawberry Fields and hear John’s Mum sing him a song about a hooker named Maggie May. We see the Quarrymen and John’s first flash of jealousy when he met Paul McCartney. For the most part, we see John Lennon as a normal…
The Testament of Sherlock Holmes
I’ve had a weakness for adventure games since the dark ages of Zork and Planetfall. Computer games have come a long way, though I sometimes mess the simplicity of text adventures. The Sherlock Holmes games have been fun, the puzzles occasionally impossible, and Sherlock’s usual comment of ‘It is simplicity itself.’ after a difficult task is a bit silly. The Testament of Sherlock Holmes follows the same general pattern of the other games in the series, but it seems a little easier to me. We start off with Holmes and Watson sitting around 221B Baker Street when word of a…
The Long Earth
Earth is a great place, but there are just too damned many people cluttering up the joint. But not to worry, because a standard issue mad scientist has a solution-he found a way to Step into one of the infinity of parallel universes we are surrounded by. The Long Earth is a post apocalypse book without that whole bothersome apocalypse thing. All writers are solitary beings, it comes with the territory. So just about every writer has fallen in love with the idea of a world devoid of all those annoying people who distract them from getting their work done. …
Looper-Karma is a Bitch
Image your a low level lowlife working for the Mob. Only you live about twenty years in the future. About thirty years after that, time travel will be invented and the only people who will use it are Mobsters. Instead of doing something cool with the tech, like say, going back in time and stealing all of Hitler’s artwork or beating Sutter to Sutter’s Mill, the Mob sends back people they don’t like so they can be killed in the past. This is where you come in, your a Looper and you kill people and get rid of their bodies…
Shipping and Selling on eBay
I’m trying to make a few bucks selling stuff on eBay. I’ve been doing this off and on for several years. I’ve narrowed my eBay focus down to mostly Hawaiian Shirts and the odd book and antique. I’m not selling rare and expensive stuff, a great sale for me is about $50 and an average sale is around $10. But I do make a bit of money doing this, which is more than can be said for my other online attempts at making money. But the world of eBay is an odd one. People who buy stuff on eBay seem…
Battle:Los Angeles
“Battle: Los Angeles” is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. ~Roger Ebert Any movie that Roger Ebert hates that much has to have something going on for it. One of the problems with watching a lot of movies is that you reach a point where no new movie is ever going to be as good as the movies they made in the Glory Days-whenever you happen to think those glory days might be. Another problem with watching a lot of movies is that very soon realize that its all been done before. Battle:Los Angeles was a standard issue cgi/sci-fi movie with…