Weekend
Friday
I saw the Fantastic Four movie.
I really don’t know what everyone is complaining about. For what it was; a romp, it was a good one. Granted, the screenplay/direction could have been a little more, I dunno, deeper, but there were a lot of characters and relationships to establish and develop in those 2 hours and it did very much reflect the feel of the comic. The FF just happens to be a happier, more well-adjusted group of super heros. I certainly don’t consider my 10$ wasted in any way. (I kind of feel like when the reviewers were all panning the “Lost in Space” remake for being cheesy. Dude, it was “Lost in Space”. What were you expecting?) Maybe the reviewers were raised on that crappy TV show rather than the comic? Maybe the reviewers just don’t like super hero movies that aren’t gothically dark and depressing? (Several comparisons were made to the Batman Begins film, but I would like to point out that while “Batman Begins” addresses a single character, the “Fantastic Four” had to address five.) In any case, I enjoyed it.
I was an X-Freak, not a FF-Fan, so I was only exposed to them casually as various crossovers and miniseries brought them into contact with the X-Men. From what I can see, they got the characters just about right with the exception of Dr. Doom, whom they changed allll around.
A long on-going discussion topic among the Marvel-ites (fans of the Marvel Universe which contains Spiderman, the X-Men, Fantastic Four, the Avengers and so on) is who is the better villain Dr. Doom or Magento? Both characters have been portrayed as noble or craven, depending on whom was writing them and how much they liked the characters. Magento has the nobility of pain from his childhood experience in Auschwitz and his unrelenting drive to protect mutant kind through mutant supremacy. Dr. Doom has…himself.
First of all, he doesn’t have any super-powers beyond his brain (he does wear a mask, but that it to cover the scarring of an experiment gone very bad). He posses a genius topped only, and I do mean only, by Reed Richards, a fact that drives him absolutely up a wall. There is some tragedy involving his mother being a gypsy and entrapped in hell, but Dr. Doom’s main goal (beyond showing up Mr. Fantastic) is to run the world because he honestly feels he would do a better job at it. He wasn’t in charge of a corporation, he was the absolute ruler of a postage stamp sized country in the middle of Europe, but his subjects enjoyed a very high standard of living, almost zero crime, fair justice, education and so on. He was a dictator, not a despot. So he kind of throws a monkey wrench into the stereotype of a villain and makes one question what rights would one trade for comfort and security.
And he does ask Sue to marry him every once in a while, but that’s also just because he wants to one up Reed.
Anyway, beyond screwing with that character…which I kind of see non-comic book audience members having a hard time buying. I thought they did a great job, especially with the cornerstone of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm’s friendship, which is one of Marvel’s greatest creations. Ben Grimm being the heart of the team and the humanizing influence in the pedantic Reed Richards life. Johnny Strom was exactly as he was early on in the Comic run: brash, arrogant, rather childish and Sue was….
On the DVD Extras for X2, Chris Carter (who wrote the X-Men through some of their most famous stories) commented that before his generation came along, women super heros in comic books were girlfriends. The Wasp was Ant-Man’s girl friend, Marvel Girl was Cyclops girl friend, Sheena was Ka-zar’s girl friend, and the Invisible Girl was Mr. Fantastic’s girl friend. (And they were all models, I guess that was to impress upon the reader they were attractive. *chuckle*) By the time the movement that created characters like Storm, Ms. Marvel, Spider Woman (whom had nothing to do with Spiderman), and Dazzler, Sue was already married, so it took a while for the authors to get around to really boosting up her character beyond just being “Mrs. Richards/The Invisible Girl”, who whined about wanting to go shopping, to being “I don’t need your protection Reed, now get out of my way!”, The Invisible Woman. The film did a nice job of finding a balance between the two.
Tho’ I did find it amusing that they introduce her as a geneticist and it never comes up again. *chuckle*
I will say this though, in the 15 years of reading comics, I never considered Reed Richards as a “handsome heroic type”.
Ladies, Reed Richards is HAWT!
Damn.
Now I will have to go buy the Horatio Hornblower series.
Damn. :D
(I bloody well don’t care how handsome he is, I am still not watching that goddawful King Arthur crap.)
So what does racing fan do on a weekend off?
Watch racing of course.
Saturday
My friend and I hustled ourselves over to the Irwindale Speedway for a 6 event night: Legends, Mini Stocks, Super Stocks, Super Late Model (x2) and Dodge Super Trucks. It was a good night with some great racing. Legends and MiniStock don’t excite me all that much, they have so little power they have to run on the interior of the track. But the Super stock race got a little too exciting as after two cars got into in turn four, a couple laps later seriously got into it in turn one, the result of which was deliberate a full throttle backwards slam into the passenger side and a near brawl.
The real racing started with the Super Late Models who had two 50 laps races separrated by a 50 lap truck race, now this is where things got fun. Some real driving. Watching these series I can see what the traditional fans mean by “real racing”, it’s much tighter, several groups going three wide into the corners and some real tricky moves, saw a lot of splits and dives into the corners. During the truck race the guy who won, the 33, got the lead while he was battling out for third. The fourth place truck, the 20, who had been in the lead for the first 18 laps or so, was trying to put the squeeze on the 33 between himself and the 2nd place truck into turns one and two, but coming out of turn two, the 33 popped out on the outside like a cork and shot down the straightaway taking the lead. Damn that was neat!
I love trucks. :D
During the course of the first race Super Lates, someone’s tire flew off coming out of turn two and almost completed the lap by itself. The whole crowd booed the track worker who came out and tried the catch the tire, but it ran away from him again, much to the crowd’s delight.
Racing is different, very much apples and oranges. I think the stuff you see at smaller tracks like Irwindale is closer to the racing you used to see on the Winston Cup circuit, but I don’t begrudge either set of fans their kind of racing. As I observed before, because competition is so close in those upper divisions, it requires a lot more finesse and skill for the driver, though not as exciting to watch for the fans, but the traditional hard racing definitely is worthy of respect as well.
I will however, have to yield to my inner wuss and get a pair of earplugs (I wear the scanners during the Big races). I know it’s not considered proper, but I do enjoy hearing. :)
Sunday
When I arrived home from the races in the extremely wee hours of Sunday, I found that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince had arrived on in my mailbox. (Thanks Mom!) Putting Quicksilver aside, I dove into Harry straightaway and after taking a break to sleep for 4 hours finished it a little after noon on Sunday.
****SPOLIERS****
My first impression is I would not give this book to an 8 year old. Things are getting darker as the conflict with Voldemort accelerates. Much of the pure whimsy that graced the first books is gone. The world is established and Rowling is focused on the characters and the plot rather than introducing something new for the audience to discover. And you had better be up on the plot. This was the first time I had picked up one of these books and wished I had reread the series before hand, certainly HP: Order of the Phoenix. I got through it no problem, but there were names that came up that should have known exactly who they were rtather than being dim figure on the edge of my memory. Rowling’s gift for characters really shines here as many of the characters you got to know before hand show up for brief appearances and you are just dying to spend for time with them (Lupin was always my favorite) as well with Snape. No matter how much she hinted that he was rotten through and through, you believed so much in Dumbledore, that you had Dumbledore’s faith in Snape and were shocked by his betrayal.
That aside…this book fall very easily into an archetypal voyage from boyhood into manhood. Harry is 17 and takes on more responsibilities, both within the school and within his relationships both with Ron & Hermione as they moving inexorably towards love and Ginny Weasley (wink). Learning how to handle and balance all of those responsibilities as an adult. Dumbledore’s, who has always been Harry’s father figure, death at the end of the book is Harry’s final turbulent launch into manhood. The plot is excellent, but Rowling’s always is. There is so much little stuff going on here and there, one can sometimes get the feeling this book is simply taking care of details wrapping up Order of the Phoenix and getting ready to launch into the last book. As the results of the battle show it is far from so.
The final book promises to be very interesting, as Harry and the OOP are sort of operating outside the purview of the Ministry of Magic without Dumbledore to protect them and there are far too few members to undertake the quest this book lays out for them safely.
*****SPOILERS END******
Good stuff, very good stuff.
I saw the Fantastic Four movie.
I really don’t know what everyone is complaining about. For what it was; a romp, it was a good one. Granted, the screenplay/direction could have been a little more, I dunno, deeper, but there were a lot of characters and relationships to establish and develop in those 2 hours and it did very much reflect the feel of the comic. The FF just happens to be a happier, more well-adjusted group of super heros. I certainly don’t consider my 10$ wasted in any way. (I kind of feel like when the reviewers were all panning the “Lost in Space” remake for being cheesy. Dude, it was “Lost in Space”. What were you expecting?) Maybe the reviewers were raised on that crappy TV show rather than the comic? Maybe the reviewers just don’t like super hero movies that aren’t gothically dark and depressing? (Several comparisons were made to the Batman Begins film, but I would like to point out that while “Batman Begins” addresses a single character, the “Fantastic Four” had to address five.) In any case, I enjoyed it.
I was an X-Freak, not a FF-Fan, so I was only exposed to them casually as various crossovers and miniseries brought them into contact with the X-Men. From what I can see, they got the characters just about right with the exception of Dr. Doom, whom they changed allll around.
A long on-going discussion topic among the Marvel-ites (fans of the Marvel Universe which contains Spiderman, the X-Men, Fantastic Four, the Avengers and so on) is who is the better villain Dr. Doom or Magento? Both characters have been portrayed as noble or craven, depending on whom was writing them and how much they liked the characters. Magento has the nobility of pain from his childhood experience in Auschwitz and his unrelenting drive to protect mutant kind through mutant supremacy. Dr. Doom has…himself.
First of all, he doesn’t have any super-powers beyond his brain (he does wear a mask, but that it to cover the scarring of an experiment gone very bad). He posses a genius topped only, and I do mean only, by Reed Richards, a fact that drives him absolutely up a wall. There is some tragedy involving his mother being a gypsy and entrapped in hell, but Dr. Doom’s main goal (beyond showing up Mr. Fantastic) is to run the world because he honestly feels he would do a better job at it. He wasn’t in charge of a corporation, he was the absolute ruler of a postage stamp sized country in the middle of Europe, but his subjects enjoyed a very high standard of living, almost zero crime, fair justice, education and so on. He was a dictator, not a despot. So he kind of throws a monkey wrench into the stereotype of a villain and makes one question what rights would one trade for comfort and security.
And he does ask Sue to marry him every once in a while, but that’s also just because he wants to one up Reed.
Anyway, beyond screwing with that character…which I kind of see non-comic book audience members having a hard time buying. I thought they did a great job, especially with the cornerstone of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm’s friendship, which is one of Marvel’s greatest creations. Ben Grimm being the heart of the team and the humanizing influence in the pedantic Reed Richards life. Johnny Strom was exactly as he was early on in the Comic run: brash, arrogant, rather childish and Sue was….
On the DVD Extras for X2, Chris Carter (who wrote the X-Men through some of their most famous stories) commented that before his generation came along, women super heros in comic books were girlfriends. The Wasp was Ant-Man’s girl friend, Marvel Girl was Cyclops girl friend, Sheena was Ka-zar’s girl friend, and the Invisible Girl was Mr. Fantastic’s girl friend. (And they were all models, I guess that was to impress upon the reader they were attractive. *chuckle*) By the time the movement that created characters like Storm, Ms. Marvel, Spider Woman (whom had nothing to do with Spiderman), and Dazzler, Sue was already married, so it took a while for the authors to get around to really boosting up her character beyond just being “Mrs. Richards/The Invisible Girl”, who whined about wanting to go shopping, to being “I don’t need your protection Reed, now get out of my way!”, The Invisible Woman. The film did a nice job of finding a balance between the two.
Tho’ I did find it amusing that they introduce her as a geneticist and it never comes up again. *chuckle*
I will say this though, in the 15 years of reading comics, I never considered Reed Richards as a “handsome heroic type”.
Ladies, Reed Richards is HAWT!
Damn.
Now I will have to go buy the Horatio Hornblower series.
Damn. :D
(I bloody well don’t care how handsome he is, I am still not watching that goddawful King Arthur crap.)
So what does racing fan do on a weekend off?
Watch racing of course.
Saturday
My friend and I hustled ourselves over to the Irwindale Speedway for a 6 event night: Legends, Mini Stocks, Super Stocks, Super Late Model (x2) and Dodge Super Trucks. It was a good night with some great racing. Legends and MiniStock don’t excite me all that much, they have so little power they have to run on the interior of the track. But the Super stock race got a little too exciting as after two cars got into in turn four, a couple laps later seriously got into it in turn one, the result of which was deliberate a full throttle backwards slam into the passenger side and a near brawl.
The real racing started with the Super Late Models who had two 50 laps races separrated by a 50 lap truck race, now this is where things got fun. Some real driving. Watching these series I can see what the traditional fans mean by “real racing”, it’s much tighter, several groups going three wide into the corners and some real tricky moves, saw a lot of splits and dives into the corners. During the truck race the guy who won, the 33, got the lead while he was battling out for third. The fourth place truck, the 20, who had been in the lead for the first 18 laps or so, was trying to put the squeeze on the 33 between himself and the 2nd place truck into turns one and two, but coming out of turn two, the 33 popped out on the outside like a cork and shot down the straightaway taking the lead. Damn that was neat!
I love trucks. :D
During the course of the first race Super Lates, someone’s tire flew off coming out of turn two and almost completed the lap by itself. The whole crowd booed the track worker who came out and tried the catch the tire, but it ran away from him again, much to the crowd’s delight.
Racing is different, very much apples and oranges. I think the stuff you see at smaller tracks like Irwindale is closer to the racing you used to see on the Winston Cup circuit, but I don’t begrudge either set of fans their kind of racing. As I observed before, because competition is so close in those upper divisions, it requires a lot more finesse and skill for the driver, though not as exciting to watch for the fans, but the traditional hard racing definitely is worthy of respect as well.
I will however, have to yield to my inner wuss and get a pair of earplugs (I wear the scanners during the Big races). I know it’s not considered proper, but I do enjoy hearing. :)
Sunday
When I arrived home from the races in the extremely wee hours of Sunday, I found that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince had arrived on in my mailbox. (Thanks Mom!) Putting Quicksilver aside, I dove into Harry straightaway and after taking a break to sleep for 4 hours finished it a little after noon on Sunday.
****SPOLIERS****
My first impression is I would not give this book to an 8 year old. Things are getting darker as the conflict with Voldemort accelerates. Much of the pure whimsy that graced the first books is gone. The world is established and Rowling is focused on the characters and the plot rather than introducing something new for the audience to discover. And you had better be up on the plot. This was the first time I had picked up one of these books and wished I had reread the series before hand, certainly HP: Order of the Phoenix. I got through it no problem, but there were names that came up that should have known exactly who they were rtather than being dim figure on the edge of my memory. Rowling’s gift for characters really shines here as many of the characters you got to know before hand show up for brief appearances and you are just dying to spend for time with them (Lupin was always my favorite) as well with Snape. No matter how much she hinted that he was rotten through and through, you believed so much in Dumbledore, that you had Dumbledore’s faith in Snape and were shocked by his betrayal.
That aside…this book fall very easily into an archetypal voyage from boyhood into manhood. Harry is 17 and takes on more responsibilities, both within the school and within his relationships both with Ron & Hermione as they moving inexorably towards love and Ginny Weasley (wink). Learning how to handle and balance all of those responsibilities as an adult. Dumbledore’s, who has always been Harry’s father figure, death at the end of the book is Harry’s final turbulent launch into manhood. The plot is excellent, but Rowling’s always is. There is so much little stuff going on here and there, one can sometimes get the feeling this book is simply taking care of details wrapping up Order of the Phoenix and getting ready to launch into the last book. As the results of the battle show it is far from so.
The final book promises to be very interesting, as Harry and the OOP are sort of operating outside the purview of the Ministry of Magic without Dumbledore to protect them and there are far too few members to undertake the quest this book lays out for them safely.
*****SPOILERS END******
Good stuff, very good stuff.
posted by KiplingKat | 7:08 PM
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