I watched A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi over the past couple of days (while I’ve been drawing, of course) and after having watched Revenge of the Sith, the end of Jedi has a little bit more of a punch.
Also it made me want to watch all my episodes of Samurai Jack.
Tomorrow is the free Drexoll 24-hour game-a-thon at the Marpole Curling Club. What possible reason could you have not to go?
Last night Taylor, Mike Jackson, Nathan, Marlo and I played Spaceship Zero (Web of the Space Bee). It was my playtest for the Cloud City gaming convention this coming weekend. Some of the bits went pretty much exactly as planned, but as always, lack of proper pacing is my downfall. We probably would have gone for another 2 hours (after the prescribed 4 hour block) to finish the scenario properly at the rate we were going, so I’m going to have to make sure I don’t dawdle on periphery when I run it next time. Marlo said that this adventure and the last one (Bring Me the Head of Dr Quisling) were her two favourites so far, so that’s good, and it looks like I’ve made a SSZ convert out of Mike.
Chris Woods’ birthday party weekend was full of gifts to me. He came to my place to pick up Marlo, Stewie and me. We drove to Chilliwack and shopped around for games for his new XBOX. The pick of the litter was the Godzilla game, for which I proceeded to slip away from many social expectations throughout the party. I saw my brother, Tara & Jordan, Bob & Karen and spawn, Josh and his gal, Tasha and Chris’ parents. Birthday dinner was tacos and I ate constantly, including cake and ice cream. We slept over and on Sunday we drove out to Metrotown to watch Revenge of the Sith. My biggest complaint was the child who sat next to me and kept idly caressing my arm with his fingers as he fidgeted during the non-action parts of the film. I won’t say anything else about the film on this blog for the time being, because I know certain people are holding out before they watch it, except I really want to watch episodes 4-6 in a row, right now, and that the acting was far better than eps 1 and 2. Then they chauffeured us home after a late dinner at Denny’s. It was so satisfying for me to watch Sith with Chris & Marlo, my closest friends and definitely the two biggest Star Wars nerds that I know. It was perfect! We even got good seats, and only the occasional baby “wah” from the back of the theater interfered with the enjoyment of the movie. But that’s the price you pay for going to the cinema, along with the obligatory, “let’s show up to the theater at the last minute so that we can scour the theater for the three disparate remaining seats in the dark, so that everyone else who arrived 90 minutes early so they could get a good seat are too distracted to enjoy the first scene of the movie.” Chumps! The only bad news is that Marlo left her umbrella in Chilliwack, and the whereabouts of her cute brown cardigan is at present a mystery. So if you see it, grab it! Marlo will no doubt post on her blog the many photos we took of the weekend.
I got a book in the mail from Germany. It is all in German, and it’s all about Star Wars. It has Chris Woods’ painting of the band in the Millennium Falcon and a little card in it that says “thanks.” It was totally unexpected, but very interesting to flip through and try to decipher. There’s a two-page spread of fangirls dressed in the Leia slave girl outfit.
I watched all of the episodes of the Clone Wars cartoons recently. I had the first ten on tape for a while, but Teletoon has been airing the last 15 lately. It’s actually getting me pretty fired up for the movie. I went to starwars.com and looked at all the little commercials for ep iii as well. I sure hope it’s good. Or at least as good as Attack of the Clones, I don’t think that’s too much to ask. I heard Kevin Smith gave it a good review, but considering I hated Dogma, I’m not taking that too much to heart. Anyway – Clone Wars. Pretty good. The animation is good all around. It’s pretty clear that they used computers to animate the ships, but it’s clear because they move so fluidly, not because the style is different. Like in Futurama, the computer animated object style matches perfectly with the traditional animation. I wish they’d do that on Justice League.
The one thing that bugs me the most in the cartoons is that the jedis seem overpowered, and their abilities are a little inconsistent with the films. Yoda, for example, uses the force to smash a big droid battle cruiser (the things that landed on Naboo and carried the droid army) into another one. Mace Windu piloted a droid ship by punching his hand into it and using the wires as reins. Stuff like that.
One thing that cartoons often fail at is interesting fight scenes – like sword fights. You just don’t get the ballet-like …what’s the word I’m looking for? Not orchestration. Anyway, that’s one thing that Genndy Tartakovsky seems to be pretty good at (see Samurai Jack). Sometimes (and not just in cartoons) you can clearly see what’s going on in the fight, but it’s too static. Other times the fight is dynamic, but you can’t tell what’s happening (like in movies where the actors actually have no fighting skills so they just use quick edits and CG). Tartakovsky uses interesting angles and interesting environments and interesting moves, all mixed up, and it’s good. It suffers a little bit from G.I. Joe syndrome, in which droids get mowed down but clones rarely get hit, but it’s not too bad. You do get the sense that living things are killed, which is what war is all about.
Another thing that impressed me is the voice acting. Not that the dialogue was particularly amazing (it was good), or that the delivery was bone-chilling, but that considering that Anthony Daniels was the only original voice from the films the voices were well cast. Yoda sounded like Oz, Windu sounded like Jackson, and Anakin sounded like Christensen – only better! They also introduced General Grievous, who [SPOILER SPOILER] will be in the movie and who is a jedi-whoppin’ cyborg sith.
At work, all of us had to sign a non-disclosure agreement about the new Harry Potter book. We’re not allowed to open the boxes or look at the insides until the release date, which is a little silly. I guess if anyone asks me to pick 10,800,000 copies of Blood Prince I can say “screw you, I signed a piece of paper promising I wouldn’t. I’m going home”
The Cloud City gaming convention is at the end of the month. I know you want to go…and you can! So buy a ticket. I’ll be running 2 games of Spaceship Zero. www.vancouvergamingguild.com
Tonight we played part 2 of the 2nd episode of the D&D cartoon campaign. Billy the barbarian came sort of close to dying, as the two-headed lava dragon and the collapsing castle threatened them all. Afterwards we watched the “Servant of Evil” episode that it was based on and compared the two experiences. I know exactly what episode I’m going to run next, and it should be even better, but I won’t get to it until after Cloud City.
Marlo, Stewie, Taylor and I went to see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at the new Paramount Theater downtown. The theater is so-so. They have a Taco Bell and a KFC and all manner of unpleasant fast food options, with the added attraction of the employees still trying to get the hang of their new jobs. I bought a bubble tea, which was about 50 cents too expensive (for the size) and harbored too much ice for this sailor. The theater seats were good. All in all – it’s no Tinseltown.
The movie was great. Lots of fun. Sam Rockwell’s performance made me realize how much of a one-dimensional character Zaphod Beeblebrox is. That’s not to say that Rockwell’s performance was bad. It was good. He did as much as he could with the role, I thought. Ford Prefect kind of took a back seat to the Arthur/Trillian angle. That’s not really a complaint, just a surprise. Like Marlo, I wasn’t thrilled with the design of Marvin. I thought it was almost anime in design, and out of place, but I tolerated it well enough. I really liked the design of the Vogons, the graphics on the guide itself, and all the stuff with Magrathea was highly enjoyable. The falling whale voiced by Bill Bailey is a modern classic. I was also greatly gratified that the used the original music for the opening credits. Now every time I see one of the HHGTTG books at work, I start whistling it. 7/10. Wished it was longer.
Oh yes, and Marlo and I both brought our towels to the theater.
At the last Star Wars Celebration, George Lucas announced plans for a live action Star Wars spinoff TV series. I actually think this is good news. Look what happened with the backlash of Phantom Menace – things got a lot tighter in Attack of the Clones. To wit, very little Jar Jar. Am I using “to wit” properly? Anyway – I think there is a new hope (pun intended) in a more or less separate medium and story. It’s a chance to wipe the slate clean, make some better casting choices than in eps 1-3, and hopefully send the directing chores out to somebody competent. As a storyteller, Lucas is not bad. As a creative visionary, he’s great. Hopefully enough people have been yelling at him that he’ll start to wise up.
“I’m going to get it started and hire the showrunners and all of that, then I’ll probably step away.”
Hopefully that ‘probably’ becomes a ‘definitely’.
Of course if Revenge of the Sith is worse than Attack of the Clones, my optimism may sag. But still – even if this TV series does suck, so what? It will join the ranks of the ewok adventures. The franchise has already been pissed on so much, I don’t really see how much more damage could be done. I look forward to the opportunity of seeing more old British actors mucking about in star destroyers.
Today while drawing I watched both episode I and II. I just found out that they’re playing the first 20 episodes of Clone Wars (the cartoon) on Teletoon this weekend, so that will be a nice little uh…bonus. I noticed things I had never noticed before in Attack of the Clones, which was strange. I wonder if in a few years George Lucas will decide to digitally replace Hayden Christensen with a better actor. Seriously…I was watching the scenes between him and Natalie Portman and wishing I was there because even I could breathe more life into his role, and he’s probably had a lot more acting experience than I.
Has everyone seen the alternate ending to Empire yet? http://www.yakface.com/clavius/ESB.mpg
