Geek-tastic.com

On Mutants And Tax Laws

2012-02-21T12:31:00.002-08:00

The NPR show Radiolab is one of (if not the) best radio program on the air today. If you haven't listened to it before, you definitely should. No other program out there, be it on radio, TV or the Internet, manages to mix science and whimsy as well as Radiolab does.

In their most recent podcast episode, the fine folks who run the show decided to take a detailed look at a recent court case involving Marvel comics. The lawsuit centered on whether Marvel's famous mutants known as the X-Men qualified as humans or not. No, this isn't some form of viral marketing for an upcoming X-Men story. This was a real court case with major implications for Marvel's mutant toy lines.

It all comes down to taxes, and how imported toys are taxed by the US Government. Just why would Marvel be arguing over the possible inhumanity of the X-Men? What does such a legal argument say about the story of the X-Men as a whole? What does it say about us as the readers? All of these questions are addressed in this episode of Radiolab.

If you're a fan of the X-Men, or even just comics in general, you should definitely give the show a listen. You can stream the episode here.

The Single Best Re-telling Of The Death & Rebirth Of Superman That You Will Ever See

2012-02-06T11:12:00.000-08:00

I can't help but love Max Landis' (son of John Landis, writer of the upcoming movie Chronicle) slightly inebriated re-telling of the death and rebirth of Superman storyline from the mid 90's. It has all of the hallmarks of a great nerd rage rant.

Liquor + nerd rage + years of pent up frustration at a single storyline = Nerd Rant

You can tell this is something that has bothered Mr. Landis for years. Only nerds dwell so long on a single comic book story to the point where they feel the need to rant about it at length well over a decade later. What makes this rant truly great though is the super low budget retelling that is taking place to illustrate his story.

Add to that the fact that this super low budget retelling includes such star power as Elijah Wood, Simon Pegg and more, and this becomes a piece of nerd gold!

We Have A Hulk

2012-02-06T10:02:00.001-08:00

Above is the extended version of the trailer for The Avengers that aired during yesterday's Superbowl. Words cannot express how happy just about every shot in this trailer makes me happy. Especially that team shot where they're all standing in the street getting ready for round 2 of battle. And Tony Stark's quip to Loki at the end of the trailer is just perfect. Loki's bragging about the awesomeness of his army and Tony just says, "We Have A Hulk" because as we all know, a hulk is worth way more than an army.

The First On-Set Pic From Star Trek 2 Makes Me Super Happy

2012-02-02T17:19:00.001-08:00

This is the first official picture released from the set of Star Trek 2, which is currently in production. It was tweeted by Trek 2's writer Roberto Orci.

Just seeing this pic has made me super giddy with nerdy excitement. I can't help it. I'm looking forward to this film so much.

Comic Book Nerds Say The Coolest Things

2012-01-18T10:08:00.001-08:00

Ok, yeah, I know there have been about a million different "Shit (enter group name here) Says" videos coming out over the internets lately. And while many of them have been genuinely entertaining, none of them have actually made me laugh out loud yet.

That is, until I saw this one.

Shit Comic Book Nerds says is not only hilarious, it is dead on accurate. I'm pretty sure that I have, at one point or another, said every single thing on this list. I'm not kidding. I've said them all. And lets be honest here, if you're reading this blog then chances are so have you.

For me, it was the lines about Bucky that broke me. I've have said those lines word for word, with the exact same feeling and delivery as they are made here. I couldn't help it, I did actually laugh out loud, or LOL if you prefer (although I hate using that term).

No Wonder I Love This Guy So Much

2011-12-20T14:08:00.000-08:00

I've been a fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson for some time now. He's both super smart and cool as hell. Listening to him talk science is a joy. Now, thanks to this handy chart, I finally understand just how this man can possibly be as damned awesome as he is.

(Via Blastr)

Could The Next G.I. Joe Movie Actually Be Good?

2011-12-13T11:53:00.001-08:00

Be still my heart. Is it possible? After the absolutely awful, unspeakably bad, horrible film that was the first G.I Joe movie, is it actually possible that its sequel might actually end up being the film I originally wanted all along? If this new trailer is at all indicative of what the rest of the film will be like, yes.

I'll be honest here, this trailer actually has me excited about the idea of a GI Joe movie again. After walking out of the last film, I wouldn't have imagined that was possible, but this trailer packs in a lot of great moments.

Snake Eyes without creepy lips on his mask.
Cobra Commander actually wearing his mask.
The Rock looking bad ass in pretty much every frame he is in.
Is that Jinx with the red blindfold fighting Snake Eyes?
Cobra Rattlers blowing stuff up.
No Marlon Wayans anywhere in sight.
Stormshadow is back.
No stupid mechanical body suits.
Ninjas fighting on the side of a cliff.
Cool exotic locales.
Bruce Willis being as awesome as he always is.

And let's not forget my favorite moment.

Cobra banners being dropped over the white house as a Cobra flag flies above it.

Hell yeah! This looks like it could be genuinely fun. It actually feels like a G.I. Joe story. Yeah, the heroes on the run thing was already done for the G.I. Joe renegades cartoon (and a bunch of other stories), but I liked that cartoon, so I'm ok with this. After the last film, anything is an improvement, right?

Oh, and to top this off, rumor has it that Sgt. Slaughter himself will also have a cameo in the film. Woohoo!!! Go Sarge!!!

I am a little sad to see no Baroness in the trailer too, but only because I love her character so much. Hopefully she'll be in the film somewhere. Regardless though, as a life-long G.I. Joe fan, I suddenly have my hopes up again for a Joe film that is worth a damn. Let's hope I'm not getting set up for more disappointment.

Pat's TV Reviews: The Avengers - Earth's Mightiest Heroes

2011-11-21T15:35:00.000-08:00

I've said for a long time now that while Marvel Comics is without a doubt winning the live-action movie war against DC Comics, it simply cannot be argued that DC has been winning the Animated war. DC's dominance in the animated market was established way back in the early 90's with shows like the Batman Animated Series, the Superman animated series and the too-awesome-for-words Justice league series. Sure, Marvel had some success with the X-Men and Spider-man animated shows from the 90's, but I don't think anyone would argue that the quality of the storytelling of DC's shows has been much higher on average.

Then, in the first decade of the 2000's, DC continued to blaze animated trails with shows like Justice League Unlimited and some amazing straight to DVD animated movies featuring Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Superman and more. Meanwhile, Marvel hasn't managed to do a whole lot. Every now and then a piece of brilliance comes out from them like the Wolverine VS. animated movies and the Wolverine & The X-Men series, but these quality projects are few and far in between, and in the case of the latter they go unappreciated by fans and are cancelled after only one season.

Today, DC dominates the animated superhero field. However, Marvel isn't quite ready to call it a day just yet. Back in October 2010 they launched a brand new series called Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I know, you're probably saying to yourself, "2010? Why the hell are you writing about this now? This is not news!" Well, to that I'd say that you need to relax. I'm only a part time blogger and I'm also generally incredibly behind when it comes to what is on TV seeing as I don't have cable and must rely on Netflix and the internet for my entertainment needs. I'm doing the best I can here.

Anyways, yes, the series has been out for a while now. It's also been recently added to Netflix's Instant Play feature, which is how I finally managed to start watching it. I'll be honest here, I didn't have much hope for this show at first. Due to Marvel's animated track record, my expectations here were low indeed. To my much delighted surprise though, what I found was a high quality series that rivals anything that DC has ever put out.

Now, admittedly, there are some things that you have to get past. While the animated style of the show may not be as clean and as elegant as Bruce Timm's designs for the various DC shows, the character models here are rather lovely to watch once you get used to them a bit, simple though they may be. Also, I will readily admit that the show has possibly the worst theme song ever. Seriously, it's even worse than the theme from Star Trek: Enterprise, and that's really saying something.

Trust me though, just mute the sound during the opening credits. The show that comes after the credits is amazing!

First off, let me point out that this series was obviously designed to be very similar (if not identical) to the Marvel movie universe. Nick Fury is black, and the voice actor they got to play Tony Stark sounds amazingly like Robert Downey Jr. I don't see this as a bad thing though. With the build Marvel has been doing towards their giant live-action Avengers film, having an animated tie-in makes perfect sense to me. Don't worry though, this show isn't just some half assed money grab for name recognition. It easily could have been, but thankfully the team behind it worked hard to make it a great work on it's own two feet.

One of the biggest things I love about this show is that the team isn't already formed at the start of the first episode. In fact, the team doesn't form until around episode 5 or 6. This series takes it's time and devotes those first few episodes to fleshing out the characters and the backgrounds of each of the team members. Episode one focuses solely on Tony Stark, Episode two looks at Thor, Episode three is the Hulk, Episode four is Captain America, and so on. This investment of time into the characters showing how they operate individually pays off huge dividends later in the season as they have to learn to work together despite not always getting along.

That's a huge theme of the show, actually, looking at just what it means to be a team. Having to trust others you don't necessarily like comes up more than once. While Tony Stark is the de facto leader of the team, it is made clear on multiple occasions that his team doesn't entirely trust his motives and are prone to not following his orders when he issues them. It makes for some great dialogue and character building.

While each episode of the series is a solid stand-alone tale (exluding some specific two-part storylines), there is definitely a season long running story arc that is brewing behind the scenes which is building towards a huge climax at the end of the season. Each episode of the series ends with a Lost or True Blood style cliffhanger that furthers this arc and makes you want to watch the next episode right away. It would not be uncommon to watch multiple episodes in a row just so you can find out what happens next.

The pacing of this mega arc is what I liked best about the series. It added this extra level of importance to what was going on from episode to episode. While on the surface the Avengers are fighting the villain for that week's show, it's clear to the audience that someone behind the scenes in pulling the strings and is setting events into motion that the team has to try to stop. Slowly, over the course of the season the Avengers themselves catch on to this, and begin investigating what is really going on. Along the way, they face some of their greatest enemies and make some friends along the way.

One character who sadly doesn't get his own background episode in the beginning of the season, but who nonetheless plays a pivotal role in the show is Hawkeye. He doesn't even officially join the team until about halfway through the season, but even he is given a great background story of his own that plays out in the background of the season's first 12 episodes or so. By the time he joins the team, you understand who he is and why he has decided to join up even though that is quite counter to his personality type.

I'll be honest here, Hawkeye is my favorite character in the show. I never really understood why people liked him as I was growing up. He seemed so boring to me. He's an archer, big whooptie doo. So what? It wasn't until I read how Brian Michael Bendis wrote him in the Avengers Disassembled comics that I actually started to like him. The way Hawkeye is written into this show is just beautiful. He's the smart-ass snarky dick on the team who questions everything and everyone around him. He's the one who keeps the team members honest with themselves and others. He's also the one who gave me my single favorite scene in the entire first season. This scene, to be exact:

The first time I saw this, I was laughing so hard I had to pause the show and rewind it because I missed the whole next scene that came after it. Any show that can do that to me just shows how high the quality of the writing is.

Another thing I love about this show is all of the nods they make to other Marvel characters. One of the running things to keep a watch out for is whenever any random person is reading a newspaper. On the pages of those papers you will find references to people like The Punisher and even the Man-Thing. It's also not uncommon for the Avengers (especially Tony Stark and Hank Pym) to randomly name drop other heroes like Mr. Fantastic or the whole Fantastic Four team as they are talking to other characters. There are tons of mini cameos as well to look out for. The show is littered with these things which don't come off as forced at all, and which add to the whole feel that this show takes place within the larger Marvel Universe.

By the time you get to the climactic final battle at the end of Season One, you are not left disappointed at all. The battles are truly epic, the characters all learn things and experience some form of character growth, and there is even a huge cliffhanger that reveals a bit of what Season Two will have to offer. Can you say Secret Invasion?

By the time I finished the first season of the show, I can fully say that I think that Marvel has finally found what it takes to make a great animated TV series. They took the time to tell each character's back story. They didn't rush plot developments. For example, the build from Hank Pym first building Ultron to Ultron eventually turning evil is a background tale told over the season. It takes almost 20 episodes to get to where Ultron is a villain. That kind of story telling is what I love best about this show.

If you are a fan of comics and superheroes at all, you owe it to yourself to watch this series. It's the single best cartoon series that Marvel has ever created. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

Final Grade: A+

The Best Damn Movie Poster You'll See All Month

2011-11-21T10:01:00.001-08:00

The first official poster for the sequel to Sylvester Stallone's Expendables movie has been released, and it's nothing short of epic. For those of you who may not recall, The Expendables was Stallone's brainchild of an action film where just about every big action star ever teamed up in one movie.

This time around, the same huge cast from the first film is back, with some new additions. Rumor has it that Schwartzenegger's involvement this time around will be much more than just the cameo he had in the first film. Also being added to the cast, Jean Claude Can Damme and Chuck Norris.

That's right, you heard me. Chuck Fucking Norris!

This movie is already a masterpiece based on the poster alone, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks to Geek-tastic contributor Matt Jeffrey for pointing this out to me.

The Doctor, The Witch And The Wardrobe

2011-11-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

The official trailer for this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special has been released, and I only have three words to describe it.

Yes! Yes!! YES!!!

Oh man, I can't wait. I'm so excited. The Dr. Who Christmas Special's are always a blast, and this one doesn't look like it will be breaking that trend at all.

He's Just A Sweet Batvestite

2011-10-27T15:03:00.000-07:00

This lovely image comes to us courtesy of Deviant Art user LJK08, who has crafted one of the most amusing (if admittedly the only) Batman/Rocky Horror Picture Show mashup that I have ever seen.

Normally, the thought of Batman parading around in women's lingerie is something I wouldn't normally agree with as it's so counter to the basic nature of the character, but he just looks so happy here I can't help but enjoy this. Also, Superman as Brad Majors is so absolutely perfect that it makes me laugh every time I look at him. Just seeing him standing there looking awkward and uncomfortable in his red undies makes me want to scream out, "My socks! I can't move my socks!!!"

Thanks go to my friend Carrie for pointing this one out to me.

Know Your Vampires

2011-10-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

At this time of year, Vampires and other times of scary monsters are well known to roam our streets freely. Before you bravely go out into the cold dark night, make sure you know which vampires are which with the help of this handy chart, courtesy of Laughing Squid.

Remember, not all vampires are dangerous. Sure, some of them may want to drink your blood. They can't help it though. That's just the way they are. You can't fault them for that. Some of them are even friendly and want to help you learn your numbers or want to give you chocolate cereal. Be wary though, some vampires are sparkley douchebags who whine incessantly about life and love and how hard it is to get their hair to look that crappy. Avoid them at all costs.

If you'd like to see a bigger version of this lovely chart, just click here.

The Best Back To The Future Ending Ever!

2011-10-20T13:16:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, the first Back To The Future film is something I consider to be one of Hollywood's shining examples of a perfect film. Making it any better would be something I would normally consider to be impossible, that is until I saw the above video.

Well done random fan with a skill for editing and special effects. Well done indeed!

The First Avengers Trailer Has Been Assembled

2011-10-11T09:07:00.001-07:00

Holy Crap!!! I did not expect to wake up this morning and see that the first official trailer for The Avengers has been released, but oh my god am I happy it was. There is so much pure 100% bonafide badassness going on in this trailer, I don't even know where to start.

Ok, I think I'll start with Captain America calling Tony out for being nothing but a man in a suit and Tony, in his usual manner, giving a very flippant response that is at the same time both dickish and totally awesome. Yeah, that's my favorite part I think. I'm so happy to see that this isn't going to be some superhero love fest film. There will be team tension as they are forced to work together for the first time. That's what will make or break this film in my opinion, the character interactions. If The Avengers is a two hour special effects spectacle with no character development of any kind, it will be total crap. However, if they take the time to actually make the characters interact as real people, they'll give the audience a reason to emotionally invest in the team. If that happens, this could easily become the best superhero film ever.

Side note, the fact that the trailer is set to the Nine Inch Nails song "We're In This Together" is just making me all giddy inside.

Now, I wouldn't be a proper nerd if I didn't have at least one small complaint about the trailer. I really wish Ed Norton was playing Bruce Banner. I'm sure once I see the film I'll be fine with Mark Ruffalo's performance, but I'm going to always dream of what could have been I'm sure. Just imagine how much cooler that scene between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner at the end of the trailer would have been if Robert Downey Jr. had been chatting with Ed Norton instead. Sigh.

Ok, enough with the negative. That's really only a minor complaint anyways. Otherwise, this trailer is blowing my god damned mind right now. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to spend my day watching this about a thousand more times.

Leonard Nimoy Has Retired From Attending Star Trek Conventions

2011-10-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

This is truly sad news. Leonard Nimoy, the legendary actor who has portrayed the character of Spock for 45 years, has announced that he is retiring from the convention circuit. That's right folks, Spock has attended his final Star Trek convention.

I can't say I'm surprised by this. After all, Mr. Nimoy is now 80 years old. He couldn't be expected to continue attending Star Trek conventions until the day he died, right? At some point the man will want to just call it a day and go home. I can't blame him for wanting to retire. As is, he already retired from acting a few years back to focus more on his work with photography.

I'm just sad as a fan to see an end of an era coming. James Doohan and Deforest Kelley passed away years ago. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy are both in their 80's now. The rest of the trek cast isn't far behind them. It's only a matter of time before they all retire from the convention circuit. Will that mark the end of Star Trek conventions? Absolutely not. So long as there are still fans, there will always be Star Trek conventions. Besides, there is still the casts of all of the other Trek shows that can appear as guests. It will just seem strange to me is all.

I started attending Star Trek conventions when I was in middle school and I have fond memories of getting to see Shatner and Nimoy on stage together chatting. I feel bad for newer trek fans who will never get to experience moments like that. Yes, Trek conventions will continue on, but it just won't be the same ever again.

Thank you Mr. Nimoy for all of the years you put into attending these conventions. Your appreciation of the fans is one of the many reasons you are loved all around the world. We will miss you.

(Via Blastr)

Everything Is A Remix

2011-10-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

There are no 100% completely new ideas in Hollywood. We all know this. Every film is either inspired by or is an homage to something that came before it. In fact, this isn't even something that is particular to filmmaking. Every form of media, be it music, literature, etc. is inspired by those things that came before. Nothing in the world is created in a vacuum. Culture is omnipresent and every creator, filmmaker, writer and singer grows up immersed in it. We grow up watching films, reading books, listening to music and as we become adults and start to make our own pieces of work, that which we grew up loving inspires us to take those ideas and to twist them into new creations.

This video is an excellent example of that. The first Matrix movie was a groundbreaking moment in Science Fiction filmmaking and special effects work, but just like every movie, the men who created it are themselves fans of other films that have come before and these films inspired elements that were used to create something new. Are the basic ideas behind The Matrix original? No, of course not. But is The Matrix a rip off of other ideas? No. It's something new that was created by taking elements from several other works and combining them in an original, unique and creative way. This is the process by which all artists ever create art.

In this particular instance, it's just really cool to see how specific elements were used in the creation of one film to make something new out of something old.

The Coolest Beer I'll Never Get To Drink

2011-10-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned on Geek-tastic before, I'm a huge fan of professional wrestling and have been since I was a little kid. This love of wrestling isn't just for the WWE though. I'm a fan of wrestling in all of it's forms, including classic Mexican style Lucha Libre wrestling where the competitors wear masks and portray characters like El Santo or The Blue Demon, who can span across multiple generations of fans.

I'm sure you are also aware that I'm a pretty big fan of drinking (hence the Friday Happy Hour posts). So you can imagine how excited I got when I saw the above picture for the first time. A line of beers based on famous Luchadors? Yes please!!!

Unfortunately for me, the beers don't actually exist. This amazing idea is simply a graphic design project that was put together by a brilliant designer named Jose Guizar.

I created the concept, brand, and designed the identity and packaging for this premium Mexican craft beer. The brand's identity is inspired by the golden era of lucha in the 1950's, when movie heroes were not Superman or the X Men, but El Santo and his wingmen, fighting creepy monsters on a silver '52 Alfa Romeo with surf music in the background.

The variety of styles are named after fictional characters also inspired by the 50's lucha style; Black King (Imperial Stout), Blond Gomez (Lager) and The Vampire's Son (Red Ale).

If there are any beer making entrepreneurs out there, please contact Mr. Guizar ASAP and work with him to get this beer line made for real. I would definitely be a big fan, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would want to drink these.

Thanks go to my good friend Robert Blumel for pointing this one out to me.

I Want To Go Drinking At This Bar

2011-10-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

This commercial is the beginning of a new ad campaign for the Sony Playstation called Long Live Play, and I absolutely love it. This is easily the coolest video game commercial I've seen in years. Instead of just advertising one game, or the system itself, this new campaign focuses on us, the game players, and the many different kinds of adventures that we can have while playing video games. This is an ad for not just Sony games, but gaming itself as a genre.

It perfectly showcases some of these various possible adventures that a gamer can have by having a ton of popular game heroes hanging out at a bar drinking together and discussing their adventures. I don't know about you, but I'd love to belly up to a bar and have a drink with the likes of Solid Snake, Ezio Auditore, Kratos, Nathan Drake and many more. Where is this bar and how do I get there? That's what I want to know.

Well done Sony. Keep up the good work.

Some Thoughts On The New Avengers Entertainment Weekly Cover

2011-09-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

The upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly will feature the above cast shot of The Avengers on it's cover, as well as include some behind-the-scenes pics as well inside the magazine. No, I know a magazine cover like this is going to be photoshopped to hell, and this one certainly is no exception, but I couldn't help noticing a few things about the team thanks to this pic.

Thor obviously has the hots for Black Widow, given the way he's eyeing her.
Tony Stark looks like he's trying really, really hard to appear sober.
Giving Scarlett Johansson that short, red hairdo has turned her from already super hot to "Girl of Pat's Dreams" status. Well done Avengers makeup and hair team!
It's no wonder Black Widow has to point guns at both Thor's and Tony Stark's heads. That's probably the only way to get them to stop trying to put their hands on her.
Cap looks determined and intense, as he should.
Hawkeye looks appropriately self-assured and dickish.
Bruce Banner is obviously a fan of Derek Zoolander, as he's giving us his most fierce Blue Steel!

The interior sneak peak picks are nothing too big, really. If you want to see them, you can find them all here. These are the two I liked the most though.

How many times have we seen a shot just like this on a comic book page? Cap and Tony standing near each other and working together on something. Seeing it in real life though is just giving me a major case of the Squees! Love it!!!

All I can really say here is . . . Mmmmmmmmmm. She can blow up my skyscraper anytime!

Happy 25th Birthday To Castlevania

2011-09-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the granddaddy of all horror video games, the original Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although, technically the game didn't come out on the NES until 1987, it was originally released in Japan on September 26th, 1986 for something called the Family Computer Disk System (FDS). The NES release was a port over from this release.

I can't be 100% honest here and say that I remember Castlevania totally fondly because the game was hard as hell. I've never actually managed to beat it and I remember spending hour upon frustrating hour dying over and over as a result of badly timed jumps or those damned little hunchback creatures.

Overall though, I really did love the game. For a kid whose favorite holiday is Halloween, Castlevania was like a dream come true. You got to play the brave adventurer Simon Belmonst as he made his way through a creepy gothic castle filled with ghosts, zombies, skeletons, flying medusa heads, giant vampire bats and more. Along the way you'd face some of the biggest monsters in all of horror including The Mummy, Frankenstein, Medusa and the man himself . . . Dracula!

It was the perfect game for 10 year old me. I can't even count the number of hours I spent playing that game as a kid. To this day I can still hum the game's soundtrack from memory. I'd even go so far as to say that it is very much responsible for making me even more of a fan of Halloween and monsters than I already was before.

Thank you for all the good times Castlevania! Hell, even the frustrating times were still fun deep down too. Happy Birthday!

Oh, and if you like that totally sweet art above from the original game, I've posted a bigger version of it to the Geek-tastic Flickr pool. It makes for a great desktop wallpaper.

Wow, Catwoman Actually Looks Like Catwoman

2011-09-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Oh thank god! Some behind-the-scenes set pics have been leaked from the still in-production Dark Knight Rises that show Anne Hathaway in her full Catwoman outfit, and guess what? She actually looks like Catwoman!!!

This is a vast improvement on the picture that was released earlier, where she didn't look in any way catlike at all. This time, not only is she wearing a black face mask, but she's actually wearing full on cat ears! The outfit is even reminiscent of the classic 60's Catwoman outfit worn by Julie Newmar, Lee Merriwether and Ertha Kitt. This makes me very happy.

From what I can gather, those cat ears of hers are actually those same goggles that she was wearing in the earlier picture that was released. That's just what they look like when they're pushed up onto her head. If that's the case, making the ears an actual functioning piece of tech that she uses as a burglar is pretty cool. I just wish that they would have released something more like this when they sent out the first official promo pic of her. That would have gotten the fanboys into much less of a hissy fit than what happened before.

(Via Ain't It Cool News)

8 Remakes & Reboots That Are Worth A Damn

2011-09-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years, I've been hearing a lot of bitching and complaining from people everywhere about how all Hollywood is doing these days is remaking or rebooting old franchises, and how these new versions are never as good as the originals. While I certainly won't argue with the fact that Hollywood does indeed have the remake/reboot engine running at full throttle, I do feel like I should point out that not all remakes or reboots are bad things. In fact, sometimes these new versions are pretty damned awesome.

To that end, I would like to present 8 films here that are either remakes or reboots of something else, and which are all bonafide bad ass. Whether or not these films are as good, greater or worse than those that came before them is, of course, up to personal opinion, but all of these films have rather high rankings on Rotten Tomatoes, and are generally loved by the overall movie-going audience.

The next time someone complains to you about how horrible remakes or reboots are, be sure to tell them about these films.

8. Fright Night

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 75%

This is a fairly recent one, so if you haven't seen it yet, that's ok. You really should give it a try though. I wasn't originally planning on going to see it myself, but I went with some friends and was really surprised at just how good this was. Colin Farrell is an absolute blast to watch as the Vampire-next-door Jerry. Throughout the film you can seriously feel just how much fun he's having playing the role. Dr. Who fans should also take note because David Tenant is hilarious as a Midori-loving Vegas magician named Peter Vincent. For something that is a remake of a beloved 80's film, this new version stands on it's own as a great time. It's at times both funny and genuinely frightening and stays consistently entertaining from beginning to end.

7. Airplane!

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 98%

Did you honestly think that Hollywood's obsession with remakes was a recent phenomenon? Hardly. Remakes have been taking place since the dawn of the filmmaking industry. It's so prevalent, in fact, that sometimes a film pops up that's a remake of a film that's so old, no one even recognizes it as a remake. Such is the case with the comedy classic Airplane. It's actually a remake of a classic black & white film called Zero Hour. And more than that, it's almost a shot-for-shot of that film too. Don't believe me? Just watch the above video comparing the two.

6. Casino Royale

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 94%

Casino Royale is actually a double whammy. It is both a remake and a reboot. It's a remake of the 1967 original and is also a reboot of the James Bond franchise after the uber-popular Pierce Brosnan stepped down from his role as 007 after having played him in four films. This film took us back to Bond's origins, before he was even a Double 0 agent. He may not have had his license to kill just yet, but this new bond was tough as nails and won over fans around the world. Don't get me wrong, I still love Connery the best, but Daniel Craig is fighting with Brosnan as my second favorite bond, that's for sure.

5. The Thomas Crown Affair

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 71%

Speaking of Pierce Brosnan, he starred in the remake of the 1968 film and it's one of the most stylish films I've ever seen. This is an art theft caper for the ages, filled with nothing but class from beginning to end. And let's not forget Rene Russo in some of the steamiest sex scenes ever put to celluloid. I could watch this film a hundred times and still be entertained by it.

4. Dawn of the Dead

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 74%

Remaking a George Romero zombie film is not an easy task. Romero is the man who basically invented the genre of the zombie film and introduced it to popular culture. He's the godfather of zombie stories, yet somehow Zack Snyder manages to take his original story of a bunch of survivors holed up in a mall and turns it into a movie worthy of the name Dawn of the Dead. This movies has everything you want in a zombie story, blood, gore, sex, massive devastation and even zombie babies. The intro to the film alone, set to the music of Johnny Cash, makes this one a horror masterpiece.

3. Batman Begins

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 90%

You'd think that making a good Batman film would be an easy task, right? I mean, come on, it's Batman! He's one of the most popular comic book characters of all time. How could you screw that up? Well, I've got two words for you. Joel Schumacher. That man put out two of the worst comic book films of all time and managed to sully the name of the caped crusader so badly that he killed the successful movie franchise begun by Tim Burton in 1989. For eight solid years, there was no Batman to be seen in the summer movie lineup after the unforgivable travesty that is 1997's Batman & Robin was released. But then in 2005 Warner Brothers took a gamble on an artsy filmmaker named Christopher Nolan and the rebooted the whole franchise to Bruce Wayne's early days, before he'd even thought of becoming the Dark Knight. The result was one of the best, most realistic comic book movies ever made. Yes, it was even enough to make us forget about such things as nipples on the Bat-suit, for a little while at least.

2. Star Trek

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 94%

Star Trek is a pop culture phenomenon of unrivaled proportions. As a franchise, it recently celebrated it's 45th anniversary. During that time, it has spawned five live-action TV series, one animated TV series and more movies than you can shake a Tribble at. However, by the year 2005 the franchise was in decline. Overexposure and a few bad shows and films had made fans bored with the United Federation of Planet. The last of the running Star Trek shows was cancelled and further movies starring the Next Generation cast were cancelled due to low box office performance. It was a dark time for Trekkies everywhere. Then in 2009, a brand new Trek film was released in theaters. Paramount hired the nerd-favorite director JJ Abrams to helm it and tasked him with breathing new life into what was seen by many as an old and tired franchise. Breathe life into it he certainly did. 2009's Star Trek is an action packed, edge of your seat adventure that thrills with visual spectacle, but at which no point forgets that Star Trek is about the characters and their relationships to one another. This, to me, is the film by which all other franchise reboots should be compared to. It's the finest example of a reboot I've ever seen.

1. The Thing

Rotten Tomatoes Score = 80%

The Thing was originally a 1951 film titled The Thing From Another World. As with most 50's monster movie horror films, it's a bit heavy on the cheese factor. Is it fun? Sure. Is it scary? Not at all. Then comes along a guy named John Carpenter in 1982 who decides to remake this fun 50's B-film. The result is one of the greatest horror films of all time. I have never before and never since found another film that so masterfully displays the feelings of isolation that its characters are going through. One by one the unknown monster kills its victims and assumes their form, leaving the survivors to wonder which of their friends is actually their enemy in disguise. Everything about this film is brilliant. From the casting to the costumes to the sets to the bloody special effects, it's quite simply a perfect film.

The Coolest Wedding Rings Ever!

2011-09-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Just looking at these totally amazing wedding rings makes me all giddy inside. I want these so badly. Now if only I could find a woman who would love these rings as much as I do.

(Via Blastr)

Batman: Year One Clip Makes Me Happy

2011-09-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

The next DC Animated feature scheduled to be released is an adaptation of the Batman: Year One storyline, in which we go back to Batman's early days where he is just starting out as a costumed crime fighter. Sadly, Kevin Conroy won't be voicing Bruce Wayne/Batman, but I guess he can't be the only guy to ever play Batman for as long as he's alive (although I wish he was).

Otherwise though, this clip makes me very happy. Keeping up with DC's long line of high quality animated films, Batman: Year One looks beautiful and I'm sure will be fun to watch as well. Now if only Warner Brothers was half as good with their live-action outings as they were with their animated ones, the world would be a better place.

Friday Happy Hour

2011-09-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest here. Due to my age, my knowledge of the Pokemon franchise isn't all that great. Pokemon came out in 1996, when I was 18 years old. As a result, I just never got into it since it was geared towards younger kids. That doesn't mean I don't know anything about the franchise though. I know that it's a super popular series for geeks slightly younger than myself. I also know that the monsters go through evolutionary changes during their life cycle, becoming larger and more powerful forms of themselves.

To that effect, the wonderful folks over at Drunken Moogle have put together this amazing set of three drinks, named after the different stages of the Charzard pokemon. This leads me to the following question:

If the standard Pokemon catch phrase is "Gotta catch 'em all", would the catchphrase for Pokemon based drinks then be "Gotta drink 'em all"?

I think it really has to be at that point, right?

Ingredients:

Charmander

1 splash of grenadine
1 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
.5 oz Bacardi 151

Directions for the Charmander shot: Pour a slash of grenadine into the bottom of a shot glass. Add the Fireball, then top with the Bacardi 151. Light it on fire, then extinguish before drinking.

Charmeleon

1 spash of grenadine,
1 splash of scotch
1 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
Fill with ginger ale

Directions for the Charmeleon cocktail: Mix all the alcoholic ingredients and then pour over ice in a lowball glass. Top with ginger ale.

Charizard

2 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
2 splashes of grenadine
2 splash of scotch
1.5 ounces Bacardi 151
Fill with ginger ale

Directions for the Charizard drink: Mix all of the alcoholic ingredients, pour into a highball glass and top with ginger ale. If you plan on lighting the Charizard on fire, add the Bacardi 151 last, after the ginger ale, on top of everything else. As always, be careful with flames and don’t try to drink flaming cocktails while still on fire! Fire burns people and stuff and faces.

If Charzard isn't your particular favorite Pokemon, Drunken Moogle also made drink recipes covering the different stages of Bulbasaur and Squirtle as well.

30 Years Of Mario Music In Under 20 Minutes

2011-09-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

Youtube user Amanbow has done the whole world a true geek solid and created one of the most amazing video game music mashups of all time. In just under 20 minutes, Amanbow presents music from every Mario game that has been released over the last 30 years.

I'm not just talking the regular Super Mario series. No, I mean anything that had Mario's name on it, or in which Mario himself appeared. This list is thorough enough to include music from Donkey Kong, Dr. Mario, Mario Party, the Mario sports games, all of the Game Boy games and more.

If you're a fan of the Mario franchise at all, chances are you'll recognize most of the music contained in this video. And the animation isn't something to overlook either. This video is really entertaining. 18 minutes may be a long time to invest into a youtube video, but trust me, it's worth it.

The Ultimate Pirates Vs. Ninjas Battle

2011-09-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

Deviant Art user OutlawInk has created what has to be the most epic Pirates vs. Ninjas fight scene that I've ever seen. It's so epic, in fact, that it includes a total of 80 different characters from various forms of popular culture. The pic above is far too small to view the full awesomeness of this piece of art. In order to view it properly, go HERE to see a high-res version of it.

OutlawInk was also kind enough to provide a key to their work. if you'd like to see just who is who in this epic battle, you can find the key here.

My thanks go to geek extraordinaire Mary Sturhann for pointing this out to me.

Pat's Book Reviews: Robopocalypse

2011-09-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to go ahead and get the comparison out of the way first. Robopocalypse is the robot uprising version of World War Z. There's no way to deny that. It seems that Daniel H. Wilson is the Max Brooks of robots. Whereas Mr. Brooks wrote The Zombie Survival Guide, a handbook for surviving a zombie apocalypse, Mr. Wilson wrote How To Survive A Robot Uprising. Typically, this would annoy me about an author as I would just assume that Wilson is copying what Max Brooks does, but just inserts robots instead of zombies. I think the reason that I'm ok with Wilson doing what he does is because, as opposed to Brooks, Wilson has a Ph.D. in robotics, so he clearly loves what he's writing about as much as Brooks does.

As I said, Robopocalypse is very similar to World War Z in that it too is written in a post war manner by a surivor who is now recounting the war and it's highlight moments. Instead of having a UN inspector compiling a report for a counsel like what happens in World War Z, Robopocalypse's narrator is a common foot soldier named Cormac Wallace who stumbles upon a detailed data core shortly after humanity defeats the robot leader who started the war. This data core contains details on how the robot uprising started and follows key figures through the ensuing war that raged across the planet. The book is supposed to be the result of Cormac transcribing what he finds in the data core to paper.

What works best about this book is that unlike World War Z, this story focuses more specifically on a smaller cast of characters, which it follows from shortly before the outbreak of the war to it's completion (or their death along the way). Having a core cast that the reader could connect with and care about added to the emotional drama and tension of the story. When a character dies in Robopocalypse, it means something. That was something World War Z lacked in my opinion. Written as if it was a committee report, it was incapable of adding a deep, personal narrative.

What doesn't work for Robopocalypse is the pacing. It's far too quickly paced in my opinion and the story keeps jumping ahead by months at a time. The book is only 340 pages or so, but it could have easily been 500 or 600 pages and I would have been totally fine with that. The characters are interesting and different, the story has a lot of possibility and the period of the war and it's build up covers almost 4 years of time. As I was reading the book I kept wishing the author would slow down and take more time with certain things. As it was, the book is fun, but it flys by at a breakneck speed. As a result, it loses out on a lot of potential depth it could have had if it had just taken the time to move a little slower.

As for the uprising itself, I very much enjoyed how it all went down. The story is set in a slightly futuristic society where household robots are commonplace and all modern cars are either computer controlled or computer assisted. When Archos, the superintelligent A.I. that begins the uprising, is created he quickly subverts these machines and uses them against humanity. It's a mark of all true science fiction to be a stern warning about mankind's reliance upon technology, and that is a point that is brought home rather brutally in Robopocalypse as literally billions of people are killed by their service robots or are run over by their own cars. It's bloody as hell, but it's a fun read.

Overall, the book makes for a fun, quick read. It lacks the level of detail that Brooks brought to World War Z, but it makes up for that with a more human approach to the storytelling. Robopocalypse is certainly no masterpiece of literature, but it does have high value as being the literary equivalent of a cheesy popcorn action flick. No wonder Stephen Speilberg is in talks to direct a film adaptation of it. This story lends itself beautifully to a silver screen translation. I just wish the book was a little longer.

Final Grade: B-

Behold The Glory That Is White Luke Cage

2011-09-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, I may be a little biased here, but as a skinny white guy who loves to quote 70's blaxploitation films, I can't help but find this fan film about a skinny white guy playing Luke Cage to be absolutely hilarious. Every time he utters a cliche 70's blaxploitation line like, "Sweet Christmas! Didn't someone tell you honkeys not to mess with the one and only Luke Cage?" I can't help but giggle.

Everything about this video is comic gold to me. The music is perfect, as is the costume and the tongue-in-cheek delivery of the dialog. I think I may have very well just gotten an idea on what my halloween costume might be this year.

Happy 45th Birthday Star Trek

2011-09-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

45 years ago today (September 8th, 1966), NBC aired the very first episode of Star Trek and the world was first introduced to the combined awesomeness of James Tiberius Kirk and Mr. Spock.

In the almost half-century since that first airing, Star Trek has gone on to become a cornerstone of Sci-fi in popular culture. Without it, we wouldn't have things like Star Wars, BSG, Firefly or just about any other show about a bunch of people travelling through space. So join me tonight in raising a glass of Romulan Ale to the original crew of the USS Enterprise and their continuing mission to seek out new life and new civilizations. May they boldly go where no one has gone before for a long time to come!

UPDATE: To see a sweet timeline of the history of Star Trek, go here.

(Infographic via Space.com)

Classic Movie Monsters + Professional Wrestling = Monster Brawl (aka The Greatest Movie Ever)

2011-09-07T11:29:00.001-07:00

I don't remember if I've ever said this before on Geek-tastic, but I'm a huge fan of professional wrestling. I've been watching the WWE ever since back when it was called the WWF and legends like Hulk Hogan and the Macho Man Randy Savage were fighting for the World Heavyweight Championship. I still watch it to this day and am a big fan of guys like CM Punk and Zack Ryder.

I'm also a huge fan of horror movies, especially those involving classic movie monsters like Frankenstein or The Mummy.

Why am I telling you this, you ask? Well, because something I never even dreamed of happening has somehow come into being. The world of professional wrestling has been merged with the world of horror movie monsters into a single product. That product? The movie Monster Brawl.

This is Monster Brawl's premise, according to the movie's website:

Set in the tradition of a Pay-Per-View main event, comes a grotesque and hilarious fight to the death featuring a cast of eight classic combatants in all. Along with their colorful managers, these Monsters compete in visceral bloody combat in the ring to determine the most powerful monster of all time.

Eight classic movie monsters fighting in a pro wrestling tournament to determine who is the most powerful monster ever?!?!?! Hell yeah!!! I can't wait to see this movie. Especially when your list of combatants are a cyclops, a witch, Swamp Thing, a werewolf, a campire a mummy, a zombie and the Frankenstein monster. The cast is pretty cool too. Dave Foley from The Kids In The Hall? Horror movie icon Lance Henrikson? Wrestling legend Kevin Nash and "The Mouth of The South" Jimmy Hart (one of the greatest wrestling managers of all time)?

Seriously, how did I not even hear about this film until today. Dear god I hope this is available on DVD in time for Halloween. If it is, I'll be doing a Halloween screening of this for me and my friends, no doubts about it. Just check out how bad ass this poster is.

Random Awesomeness

2011-09-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks go to my friend Michael Saul for pointing this out to me.

(Via Imgur)

Of Comic Books And Reboots: My Rant On DC's New 52

2011-09-06T15:34:00.001-07:00

A while back, DC Comics announced something rather amazing, which I haven't really covered here at Geek-tastic yet at all. They said that they would soon be rebooting their entire universe and relaunching all of their major titles starting with new #1 issues for all of them. They dubbed these brand new titles as The New 52. As you can imagine, this sent shockwaves through the fanboy community and in less time than it takes you to say "nerd rage", comic fans everywhere took to the internet and ranted and raved about how horrible a decision this was, and how dare DC wipe away nearly a century of continuity to try to win over new readers.

For more detailed information on the New 52 and all of the reboot details, you should check out DC's website where there is a ton of information to read and pretty comic art to enjoy.

As I said, I've stayed quiet on this topic since it was first announced, which as a nerd blogger is a rather strange thing to do. Here is one of the biggest comic book stories of the last few years, and I haven't devoted even a single word on my site to it until now. Why did I stay quiet on this topic, you ask? Well, to be quite honest I wasn't sure what to make of DC's reboot when I first heard about it, and I wanted more information before I began ranting and raving. I also had mixed feelings on the idea itself and I needed time to process those feelings before I could eloquently express my thoughts on DC's bold new direction. I've had the time I need though, and I've collected the additional information that I wanted. I've finally come up with something to say about this big reboot, and . . . well . . . it's probably not going to sit well with a lot of my fellow comic book fans out there. There's no real easy way to say this, so I might as well come out and say it. Here we go.

I am 100% behind DC Comics on this and think a full universe reboot is a wonderful idea.

Not only that, I think that this should have happened a long time ago, and I really hope that this works for them and that Marvel Comics will soon be following up with a full scale universe reboot of it's own. If you are wondering how I, a life-long comic book reader can willfully advocate for every DC comic book story I've ever read being undone, the answer to that is simple. In fact, it boils down to two basic points.

1. The Future

I want all you to think hard on a few questions I'm about to ask you. I want you to seriously think about these for a minute. When is the last time you walked into a comic book store and saw someone under the age of 15 in there buying comics? When is the last time you saw a kid in a park reading a comic? When was the last time you even heard of a kid you knew who had gotten into comics on their own, without their parents pushing it on them when they were younger?

I can't speak for everyone, but for me the answers to those questions are all the same. A long, long time ago. As a kid, I'll admit it, I got into comics because of my older brother. When and how he started reading comics, I'm not certain. I know my parents didn't read comics though. This was something that only we kids did. I remember going into the comic book store and seeing a bunch of other kids my age buying comics too. All of my friends read comics too. We'd spend hours upon hours discussing them at recess or at lunch. As I've gotten older, I've noticed that the average age of the people in the comic book stores has gotten oder with me. In fact, it's still people my age whom I mainly see when I go into a store to see what cool new stuff there is to buy. I'm 33 years old now, and to this day when I walk into a comic book store I see guys and gals that are in their late 20's to late 30's on the average. Every now and then I'll see a fan in their early 20's and some older fans in their 40's or higher, but generally it's people in my generation or the one before or right after it. I don't see kids in comic book stores anymore.

I know I'm not the only one who noticed this. DC Comics seems to have noticed it too. Their average reader age keeps climbing higher and higher, and there isn't a large group of younger readers who will replace them as we eventually get older and start dying off. It's freaking DC's management out, so they've decided to do something desperate to get kids reading comics. They are thinking in the extreme long term, say another 30 to 50 years out. Who will be reading comics then? How can a paper-based media compete for the attention of kids and adults who will be raised in a digital age where movies, music and even novels are all delivered to them digitally on demand? There are all huge questions that the folks in charge of the comics industry need to be asking themselves if they wish for their businesses to still be alive for generations to come.

Aside from the much discussed actual rebooting of the comics themselves is also the fact that DC Comics will be the first publisher to deliver comics digitally to mobile devices like the ipad on the same day that they are released in comic book stores. This is all part of making things more accessible to a wider, younger audience who are tech savvy, and who are much more likely to download comics to their tablet devices than they are to driving down to the local comic store and picking up books on a weekly basis. The word accessibility is really at the heart of what DC is trying to do here, which actually brings me to my next point.

2. Continuity Is A Killer

Many of today's biggest comic franchises have been running for so long, they are drowning under the weight of their own past stories. The folks who write the web comic Penny Arcade refer to it as "dreaded continuity" and it is making a large number of the comic industry's biggest titles completely inaccessible to new readers. I couldn't even imagine being a kid today and picking up an X-Men comic for the first time. I'd have no idea what the hell is going on, or who anyone is. The same goes for Spider-man and Batman. Today's comic stories are so convoluted and so dependent on knowing about what has come before that they are a turn off to little kids who only want to read about Spider-man punching this month's villain in the face and stopping their evil plan to rob a bank or destroy Manhattan or something like that.

This is all sort of related to the first point. An aging comic audience has demanded more adult, complex stories that matches their mental level. The problem is, these complex, convoluted stories are keeping kids away from trying out new titles. Do you know what originally got me reading X-men comics back in the day? A franchise reboot. How many of my fellow 30-something comic fans remember this?

That's the cover of X-Men #1, released in 1991 (when I was 13 years old). It was an attempt on Marvel's part at the time to make the Uncanny X-Men series and their characters more accessible to newer readers. You know what? It worked. Over the years I've spoken to a ton of people who cite this as their jumping on point for the X-series of books. While this didn't retcon past storylines, it didn't really focus on the past either. During this era, the X-Books focused on newer villains and new characters like Gambit and Cable to tell their stories. Retconning histories isn't a new phenomenon though. It, like everything else in comics, has been done before. Shall we recall a little event DC once did called Crisis on Infinite Earths?

Even Marvel has gotten into the reboot act on a large scale before where whole histories and continuities were thrown out the window. That's what the whole Marvel Ultimate universe was about. They started their big lines like Spider-Man, The Avengers and The X-Men over from scratch, with absolutely zero history or continuity whatsoever. And again, it worked beautifully. The Ultimate line was very successful for Marvel. The first Spider-man movie was even heavily influenced by the Ultimate Spider-man storyline, and the upcoming Avengers movie is heavily steeped in The Ultimates (aka the Ultimate name for The Avengers) stories.

Does this team look a little familiar to you?

What makes history deleting reboots like Marvel's Ultimate line work is that it allows for brand new stories that no one has ever seen before. It frees writers from having to fit their stories into established universes and allows them to play with characters and settings to create wholly new universes where both new readers can jump on and old readers can enjoy as different, new versions of the characters they know and love. I know that last statement is a bit of a stretch, as comic fans generally loathe change, but it does happen from time to time. Growing up, my favorite character has always been Spider-man. I'd read his books my whole life and when the new Ultimate Spider-man series came out I'll admit that I was very wary at first. Once I started reading it though, I began enjoying it even more than the regular series books. It was something new, something fresh, yet it was still something wholly Spider-man. It was a fun, lighthearted series at the start. Young teen aged Peter Parker didn't have the world on his shoulders like older, 20-something Peter did. This leads me to my third point.

3. Comics Are Just Too Damn Dark For Kids These Days

Comics have always had a bit of darkness to them. Even in the 50's, when Batman comics were awash in bright colors everywhere and campy-ness reigned supreme, The Joker was still a crazy killer. However, they didn't show blood as much and you didn't have Alan Moore style violence where he was shooting people in the face at point blank range with panels that showed the blood shooting out of the back of someone's head.

A lot of comics are just too damn dark these days. I don't have any kids myself, so maybe I'm a bit off base here, but I wouldn't go letting my 8 year old kids read today's Batman books without reading them myself first to see if they were ok. Going back to point #1 again, an aging comic audience has lead to more adult-centered books with graphic violence and stories. Comics seem to have forgotten that you can make things fun and interesting without going dark constantly. Look at the cartoon show Batman: The Brave and The Bold. The writers of that show have crafted something that simultaneously lighthearted and campy, yet still quintessentially Batman at its heart that even older fans can enjoy. Why isn't this being done more often in comics.

Don't misunderstand me here. I'm not pushing for adult comics to go away at all. As an adult comic book fan, I love having adult level superhero comics to read. All I'm saying is that there is room for both in the main Marvel and DC universes. DC started it originally with their Vertigo line and Marvel quickly followed suit with their Marvel Max lines. There's no reason for dark, gritty superhero stories to go away, I just wish that those stories didn't bleed over from their respective sub-lines to the main titles, which really should be aimed at attracting younger readers. We adult fans frequently forget that we were once kids too, and the reason we got into reading comics in the first place is because they catered to people our age at that time.

In the end, I think what DC is doing is ballsy, and I fully support them in what they are doing. If there is any one complaint I have about The New 52 though, it is this . . . .

They aren't going far enough.

In an attempt to please long time fans, DC is trying to walk a tightrope act where they are retconning some older stories, but not others. Some histories are being re-written, some aren't. This, to me, is them pussyfooting around and not fully doing what needs to be done. If you're going to do a full on hardcore universe reboot where you are wiping out all established continuity up to this point, you don't go half-assed about it. You man up and take the plunge. You go all out and wipe everything away at once. Have some big climactic story arc mini-series where something huge happens, and it reverts your entire universe (and I mean ENTIRE universe) back to square one!

That's what I would do if I was in charge of DC Comics right now. I'd revert everything back to the very beginning where you'd see new storylines such as:

Superman #1 - A young, inexperienced, rural farmboy & reporter named Clark Kent walks into the Daily Planet for his first day on the job where he is introduced to and teamed up by his editor with a more veteran reporter named Lois Lane. His first story? Covering a large press conference for billionaire industrialist Lex Luthor who is showing off giant new military robots that he has developed for the US Government, which promptly go haywire and cause a mysterious new hero named Superman to appear and save the day for the very first time.

Batman #1 - A brooding young Billionare named Bruce Wayne has just returned home to Gotham City for the first time after years of training abroad to make himself the ultimate crime fighting machine. Deciding that he needs to strike fear into the hearts of Gotham's criminal underworld (and to protect himself and those who know him), he puts on a mask and goes out into the night as Batman.

Wonder Woman #1 - A beautiful young warrior named Diana is forced to leave her island home for the first time to help save it from being destroyed. Upon leaving the island, she learns of the outside world and its problems. Despite being forbidden to do so by her mother, she decides to stay in this new place because she feels that it is her duty to use her power to help those who need saved.

Justice League #1 - After investigating the same case from their respective cities, Batman and Superman meet for the first time and are forced to work together. Along the way, they meet up with other heroes whose help they need to save the day. By the end of they day, they realize that some problems are too big for them to handle individually, so they decide to work together to help save the world.

See? It's not that hard to do. Just wipe the slate clean and start fresh. Will you piss off a ton of fan boys and girls? Yes, of course you will. Bitching is one of the favorite pass times of comic fans. No matter what you do, you'll be pissing someone off. However, will those same fans stay loyal to you so long as your new stories are great and you stay true to what makes your characters who they are? Yes, they will. And along the way you might even pick up some new readers to boot.

Finally, Something I can Be Genuinely Happy About

2011-09-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough week, to be sure. What with George Lucas messing with the Star Wars films again (he has altered the films, I pray he won't alter them any further) and now Superman running around without his signature red underwear, it's been a hard week to be a geek.

Thank god then for this new Avengers promo art that was released yesterday by Marvel Studios. It's gorgeous. Just looking at it makes me happy, and you can even get a giant version to make this your brand new desktop Wallpaper by going here. It's definitely set as my wallpaper now. So happy!

Thank you Marvel for reminding me that not all superhero movies have god awful costuming choices. Sure, Hawkeye's costume could be a little better, but who really cares about him anyways, am I right?

Now the only thing I am waiting for is an actual cast photo that looks like this. Promo art is awesome and all, but I want an actual movie poster with this much awesomeness going on in it.

Yet More Stupid Superhero Costuming Decisions

2011-09-01T15:46:00.001-07:00

A number of behind-the-scenes pictures have recently been released from the upcoming new Superman film titled Man of Steel. In these pictures, we've finally gotten a good, close up (and non photoshopped to hell) look at Henry Cavill as the last son of Krypton and . . . well . . . I'll be honest, I'm disappointed. Not horrified or saddened, just a little disappointed.

Seriously Warner Bros., how god damned hard is it to translate Superman's costume to the silver screen. It's the single most iconic superhero costume of all time. It's the archetype upon which generations of other heros' costumes have been based. Why do you feel the need to go and change it so much.

Superman's costume is really, really simple. Blue skintight suit, red cape, red boots, yellow belt and red underwear with a big ass "S" on the chest. Why is that simple recipe so impossible for you to do. No red underwear on the new suit? Seriously? Why? And what's that thing on the suit above his crotch? A belt buckle? He's not wearing a god damned belt!!! What purpose does that thing serve? And what's with the details around the wrists & that stripe thing going down his legs? Why is any of that there?

As I said though, these changes just disappoint me. They're not a deal breaker. And I'll be honest here. There are some things about this pic that I actually really like. For example, I really like how the top of the cape is set into the costume to sort of frame Henry Cavill's face. Speaking of his face (and hair), he actually looks good as Superman. I was worried about the hair in that first promo pic they released, but his hair in this set pic is a lot closer to the classic Superman look. I like it. Cavill also has the classic superhero cheek and bone structure. He looks like a classic hero, much like I feel Chris Evans did in Captain America.

Also, just look at the size of that guy. Sure, some of that may be the costume, but I'm willing to bet most of that muscle is Cavill himself. I must say I am really liking this trend of bulked up Actors like Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and the previously mentioned Chris Evans playing superheros. It's nice to see that not all heroes in films have to have costumes with rubber molded muscles built into them (I'm looking at you Dark Knight). If any roles in Hollywood should go to talented, well built actors or actresses, it's superhero roles. It just fits into the whole genre to have main characters with chiseled abs and gigantic pecs, shoulders and biceps.

Will this costume keep me from watching and enjoying the new Superman movie (assuming the story is good)? Absolutely not. Will I still wish during the entire film that Supes was running around with his red underwear proudly showing outside of his pants? You're damn right I will be.

F**k You George Lucas!!!

2011-08-31T09:28:00.001-07:00

There have been rumors floating around for a while now that George Lucas would once again be making tweaks and changes to the Star Wars films as part of their upcoming release on Blu-ray. While this news certainly didn't surprise me, or anyone else for that matter, it did certainly fill me with dread. Just exactly what would Lucas be changing this time? Would these be small, positive changes like what he did with adding background details like windows on Cloud City that made it look bigger and cooler, or would we have yet another debacle of "Han shot first" proportions?

The initial details that came down were actually pretty positive. It was revealed that Lucas would be replacing the god awful muppet version of Yoda from Episode One with an all CG version that would match how he looks in episodes 2 and 3. Now, I'm not a fan of CG characters at all, but I was ok with this because it made sense to me from a cinematic standpoint to have a character keep a consistent appearance throughout all three films. And let's be honest here, that version of Yoda in Episode One looks really horrible. Good riddance to it.

Today though, more details have emerged and they aren't pretty. It looks like Lucas has once again decided to run hog wild with his changes and has gone in and played with things that didn't need to be changed. The biggest, most egregious mistake in my personal opinion is the video above of Darth Vader first quietly saying "No" as he watches the Emperor attack Luke with force lightning and then yelling "NOOOOOOOOOOOO" as he throws the Emperor down into the heart of the Death Star.

I apologize in advance here, but I'm about to lose my mind. Please discontinue reading if you have problems with foul language, cursing, or colorful expletives.

I'm serious here.

Ok, here we go...

FUCK YOU GEORGE LUCAS!!!!! Why in god's name would you mar one of the most pivotal moments in the entire Star Wars saga?!?!?! This addition adds absolutely nothing to the film. In fact, it greatly weakens the scene altogether. The fact that Vader didn't speak in this scene is exactly what made it so incredibly powerful in the first place. By his not speaking, the viewer is forced to watch his expressionless mask and wonder what is going through his mind as he is watching his own son being tortured to death before him. When he comes to his decision, his body language and the way he holds himself changes. Even with the mask on, you can clearly see the emotions that are running through Vader as he is forced to make a decision. That expressionless mask actually expresses the turmoil the character is going through. It's an incredibly poignant piece of Cinema. Having him now yell "NOOOOOOOO" as he picks up Emperor Palpatine just cheapens the whole thing. It takes away from the powerful imagery and makes the whole scene goofy.

This is Darth Vader's big moment. It's his turning point from main villain and scourge of the galaxy to a redeemed hero. This is what 6 fucking films have been building up to. This is the moment that Anakin Skywalker lives up to the prophecies and brings balance to the force by destroying the Dark Side . . . and you've totally fucking ruined it George Lucas. I say it again, Fuck You sir! You have completely lost what little remaining respect I had for you as a filmmaker. Yes, when you were younger you were great. You had a talent for storytelling and myth building. Now though, you're a hack who doesn't understand the importance of story structure and when to let the audience decide things for themselves.

Dear god, this makes Greedo shooting first look like a scene from Citizen Kane.

Even if that was the only pointless, stupid change Lucas had made, I would already be angry enough, but no, there's more. Much more. How about that scene in Episode IV where Obi-Wan scares off the sand people by yelling like a Krayt Dragon. Yep, that's been changed too.

What the fuck is that? That sounds so stupid! What was wrong with the original noise he made? Why did this have to be changed? WHY, I fucking ask you! WHY!?!?!?!

Oh, and remember when R2-D2 hides from the Jawas in that rocky canyon? Yep, that's been changed too.

Lucas took the time to have some poor ILM staff digitally insert rocks into this scene? Really? Why? His little hiding place was fine before! And just how the fuck did R2-D2 get into that tiny cave in the first place? Obviously, he's too big to have gotten in there on his own. So, tell me George, how did he get in there? HOW!?!?!?!

Ok, here's one more. This one is a bit more subtle, but is still fucking pointless. I'll let you see if you can figure out what it is.

Did you catch it? Wicket has eyelids now! That's right, Ewoks now blink. Oh god that's sort of creepy. Again, why was this necessary? Has George Lucas secretly been bothered for almost 3o years now that Ewoks didn't blink? Was he so bothered by it that he again ordered some poor ILM staffers to go in and digitally insert blinking eyelids onto every single Ewok in the film? Was there some public unrest for the last three decades that these lovable little fuzz balls couldn't close their eyes? WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THIS? It's so completely unnecessary.

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO glad that I wasn't already planning on buying the Blu-Ray releases of these films. I feel bad for any other Star Wars fan who shells out the $90 these things are going to cost too.

Be warned fellow fans, these are not the films you're looking for!

Until the day that Lucas decides to release the original, untouched films on Blu-Ray, I will not even be considering these versions to exist. I'm sure there will be more changes too, but at this point I've lost all desire to talk about this anymore. I'm too depressed. Is it really that hard to give the fans what they want? Why can't George get it through his thick fucking skull that we don't want any of this? We don't want fancy little CG add ons. All we want are the films we grew up watching, untouched from any of this modern revisionist crap.

You'll have to excuse me. I'm going to go cry myself to sleep now.

Female Fighters In Sensible Armor

2011-08-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

In the world of fantasy art, there is a long running joke about female warriors and chainmail bikinis. Most likely due to the fact that the vast majority of older fantasy art was drawn by men, it is entirely common (even to this day) to see epic fantasy art featuring an adventuring party all decked out in their gear where the male heroes are covered in plate mail, scale mail or leather armor and their female companion is decked out in a thong bikini made of either cloth (if she's a druid or mage) or chain mail (if she's a fighter class).

Is this sad and horribly sexist? Absolutely. That's why I am so glad to see a brand new Tumblr site called Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor. It's sole purpose is to highlight amazing fantasy art centered around female characters who are actually fitted out as a proper warrior should be. Page after page of the site shows off just how awesome these women fighters can be without having to dress them up in garments more befitting of belly dancers.

Will this make the stereotype jokes about the chainmail bikini go away? Probably not, but it's a great step in the right direction in my opinion of showcasing gender equality in fantasy art and literature.

How The Harry Potter Series Should Have Ended

2011-08-29T11:03:00.001-07:00

I must say that I'm a fan of the folks over at HowItShouldHaveEnded.com. Nine times out of ten, their videos are spot on in pointing out obvious plot holes in films in fairly humorous ways. Whenever a new video of theirs comes out, I'm always down to check it out because they are pretty much guaranteed to make me chuckle at least a little. In fact, if they were to make a regular series of their reoccurring joke where Batman and Superman are sitting in a diner and talking about superhero stuff, I'd watch the hell out of that thing.

This month, they bring us a great video about how the Harry Potter book and film series should have ended. Once again, I can't help but agree with them. Professor Snape being totally bad ass and saving everyone? I'm totally down with that!

Friday Happy Hour

2011-08-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

Another week has come and gone. It's Friday once again. It's time to get dressed up and go into the city to celebrate. Friday and Saturday nights are all about dinner, dancing and drinking (or as I like to call them, the 3D's). This week's Friday Happy Hour pays homage to that great fictional city where every weekend seems to bring new supervillain attacks or bank robberies. The city where only one man stands against the forces of darkness night after night. The Batman!

Ok, so he has sidekicks and other heroes to help him too on occasion. Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Batwoman, Oracle, Huntress, Spoiler, etc. Still though, deep down it's his city and he only lets them operate there.

Anyways, back to the drink. In true metropolitan style, I bring you a martini that is as black as the city after which it is named. I bring you . . .

The Gotham City Martini

Ingredients:

3 ounces Smirnoff Vodka
1/2 ounce Blackberry Brandy
1/2 ounce Black Sambuca
3 Blackberries for Garnish

Instructions:

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled one-third full of ice. Shake ten to fifteen seconds. Strain into a well chilled martini glass. Add blackberries on a skewer for garnish.

(Via Intoxicologist)

The Greatest Sci-Fi Action Hero Of All Time

2011-08-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

What happens when you cross two of the greatest sci-fi action heroes to ever grace the silver screen? Simple. You get the single greatest sci-fi action star this world has ever known. Han Sulu, smuggler and master swordsman! In my wildest dreams, somehow a movie about Han Sulu would be made, and it would become my favorite film of all time.

I only have two words for this . . . . Oh My!!!

(via SciFAnime)

Escape From City 17: Part 2 Is Finally Here!

2011-08-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

Way back in 2009 I posted about an amazing Half Life fan film called Escape From City 17. It was a 4 minute or so short film which featured high production values, cool effects and was said to have been made for only $500. On top of that, the video ended with a preview of more to come.

Well, it's been two years, but it's finally here. Escape From City 17: Part 2 has been released, and it certainly does not disappoint. It's 14 minutes long, and it's glorious! This time the budget is said to be only $250.

I swear, between this and yesterday's Portal fan film, there is no reason for poor quality fan made films anymore. The bar has been set very high here folks! Personally, I'm just waiting for the day when some fan releases a full length live-action Legend of Zelda movie with Lord of the Rings quality special effects. It's bound to happen sooner or later, you know it is. I'm just hoping it's sooner.

Computer Geeks In Movies

2011-08-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

As part of the promotional material for this year's New York International Latino Film Festival (NYILFF), ad agency Wing New York created a series of rather musing charts and graphs which highlight a number of well known movie cliches such as six round revolvers never needing reloading and the inability of the villain to ever actually hit the hero when they are shooting at them.

You can see the whole series here, but the graph you see above was easily my favorite of the set (for what should be obvious reasons). Oh those crazy movie computer geeks. They can topple invading alien armadas with nothing more than a macbook, but they can never manage to see to get those darned office printers to work correctly.

Super Awesome Portal Fan Film

2011-08-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

The above short film is called Portal: No Escape, and it's by far the best piece of Portal related fan-made material I think I've ever seen. The production quality of this short is phenomenal. I would love to see a longer film made if it looked like this.

Even if you've never played Portal and don't know anything about the game or its universe, you should still watch this short film. It's an excellent piece of work and absolutely no knowledge about the game is required to enjoy it.

The bit at the end is perfect!

Which Option Will You Choose?

2011-08-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

You are walking through the streets of Los Angeles when you come to a road crossing. On that road crossing you see the above sign. Which option will you choose. Make sure to take your time, weigh your options and choose carefully. One false move could result in a very unpleasant death.

Knowing the streets of LA like I do, I would go with option #4 personally.

(Via Dorkly)

Suicidal Astronauts

2011-08-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

I, like many other science geeks I'm sure, was very saddened when the Space Shuttle program recently ended. As sad as I was though, it looks like I wasn't as hard hit by the loss of the program as these poor astronauts were.

The above photo is but one of many in a series called Suicidal Astronauts in which our hapless, faceless space exploring hero has decided to end his or her life after the recent ending of the shuttle program.

To see the whole series of pictures, go HERE.

Poor little astronauts. Cheer up! We'll be going back to space soon on gigantic rockets. President Barack Obama even recently pushed for manned missions to mars by the mid 2030's. The future of space exploration isn't done yet.

(Via Geekologie)

Doctor Who's Let's Go Kill Hitler Prequel

2011-08-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

In the now immortal words of Doctor Who's River Song, "Spoilers"! So if you are a Doctor Who fan and are not caught up with what is going on and don't want to know DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO!

But if you are caught up and have not seen this video you should watch. It is a little over a minute and it is both funny and tragic all at the same time, as all us fans know Doctor Who can be. And with a little under a week to go before the second half of Season 6 begins it is just what the Doctor ordered.

Nerds Doing Good! Zachary Levi vs. The SDCC 2011 Panels

2011-08-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Each year SDCC has grown by leaps and bounds. There are longer lines for everything, the floor is consistently packed and the ticket prices keep going up and up, not to mention it is getting harder to get a ticket. Having attended the con for the last18 years and seeing it grow, not always for the better, I become increasingly disheartened with the whole process. But, the one thing that has been nice to see over the last few years is how much the Gaslamp District has gotten into basically becoming an extension of SDCC. And it is nice to be able to find new, undiscovered gems. Happily, I found one of these gems this year.

About a year ago, Zachary Levi of NBC's Chuck fame started a website, TheNerdMachine.com, in order to bring nerds together to share news, talk about cool events, gadgets, etc., and provide a comfortable online forum for nerds to meet and converse. This year Levi, in conjunction with the website Break.com, decided to turn Jolt N' Joe's, a billiards bar located in Downtown San Diego, into NerdHQ.

They moved out all the pool tables to set up gaming consoles, a cool little schwag booth and a stage (that may have already been there, but it had been years since I had been actually in that bar so I couldn't say). But, the coolest thing that came out of NerdHQ was the series of panels held upstairs from the bar everyday during Comic Con. For $20 per ticket, you could attend a panel featuring the likes of people such as Felicia Day, Seth Green, Nathan Fillion, the rest of the cast of Firefly, Jared Padelecki and more.

I know what you might be thinking. Why would I want to attend a paid panel when there are so many great free panels at SDCC? Well, for one, no lines and no having to get in line at 5am just to ensure you got a seat. You bought your ticket online and it was based on the order you bought your ticket in that you were assigned a seat. Second, the room only had room for around 200 seats, which means there really were no bad seats. And perhaps the best thing, that $20 you spent to be 10 feet or less away from the nerd of your choice without having to sit thorough countless other panels you didn't care about to ensure that you saw them, all went to benefit the charity, Operation Smile.

Unfortunately, I did not find out about this cool little venture until a good portion of the panels I would have like to have attended sold out. And a great many of them were during panels at the convention center that I had already planned to go see. I did get to see the panel of "The Geek Girl I would most like to be stranded on a desert island with", Felicia Day. That was one of the main highlights of my SDCC 2011 experience. I was less than 5 feet from her in an extremely intimate setting. And while I also saw Ms. Day on the Eureka panel the next day, it just didn't have the same magic the Nerd HQ panel held for me.

I am really hoping they make this a yearly thing. In addition to the panels, I heard they had some killer parties in the downstairs bar at night where you could hang out with Alan Tudyk and play video games with him or where you could schmooze with the likes of Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, Zach Levi, Seth Green and many many more. At SDCC 2012, NerdHQ is probably going to be the place to be and I expect that this might be exactly where you will find me.

Friday Happy Hour

2011-08-19T16:12:00.001-07:00

Tonight I'm finally getting around to seeing Cowboys & Aliens (a review will be up next week sometime). In honor of this, today's edition of Friday Happy Hour is dedicated to Daniel Craig. I looked around online and couldn't really find any Cowboy or Alien related shots that I thought were nerdy enough, so I decided to go with Daniel Craig's other famous nerd-loved character . . . James Bond!

So, without further ado, I present to you the James Bond Martini.

James Bond Martini

Ingredients

3 oz gin
1 oz vodka
1/2 oz Lillet Blanc wine

Instructions

Pour the gin, vodka and Lillet blanc into a cocktail shaker half-filled with cracked ice. Shake well, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon, and serve.

(Via Drinksmixer)

Random Awesomeness

2011-08-19T15:23:00.000-07:00

Wow, even Admiral Ackbar is getting into this whole Steampunk thing. It really has become mainstream, hasn't it?

My thanks go to Geek-tastic contributor Johann Joseph for sending this one my way.

It's Time To Play Where's Wall-E?

2011-08-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

Finding Wall-E in the above tiny picture will be just about impossible. To see the embiggened (yes, embiggened is totally a word) version, click HERE.

The above image was created by artist Richard Sargent, and I think it has just about every major pop culture robot all the way from the silent film Metropolis to Atlus and P-Body from Portal 2. Seriously, they're all in there. I challenge someone to point out a famous robot who isn't included in this image.

Aside from Wall-E, here are some other great robots to look out for:

Tom Servo
Evil Bill & Ted
Both classic and modern Cylons
K-9
Gir
Conky
Bender "Bending" Rodriguez
Nomad (from classic Star Trek)
Plex (from Yo Gabba Gabba)

Wanna Watch Ghost Rider Pee Fire?

2011-08-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Yeah, me neither? But you totally can if you watch this trailer for the upcoming sequel to the first Ghost Rider film (that I'm still trying to drive the memories of from my brain) and see it for yourself. There he is, Ghost Rider . . . peeing fire.

And this will make people want to go see this film why exactly?

How a sequel to the giant crapfest that was the first Ghost Rider film got greenlit is beyond me. It's not like the first film was a boon at the box office. It had a budget of $110 Million, and only raked in $115 Million in the US (according to BoxOfficeMojo.com). Yeah, it made $228 Million total worldwide so I guess that qualifies as enough money to warrant a sequel, but has anyone thought of the emotional cost of making another Ghost Rider film starring Nic Cage? Those have to be high enough to stop another film from being made, right?

The first film was so, so bad. It was painful to watch. While I will admit that some of the stuff in this trailer does look pretty cool, I don't think it's enough to make me remember the 2 hours of mental anguish I went through sitting through the first one. Maybe one night when I'm drunk and really bored I'll put this on if Netflix has it available on it's instant play feature. That'll be about it though.

Indiana Jones And The Map Of Sweet Loot

2011-08-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

In more kickass art news today, artist Matt Busch has created what may be the coolest world map I've ever seen. It's a map detailing the locations of every artifact and piece of treasure that was ever uncovered by Dr. Henry Jones Jr. You can see a slightly bigger picture of the map by going here.

The map doesn't just include the stuff Indy found in the movies though, Matt Busch spent 3 years researching every officially licensed Indiana Jones book, comic book, computer game and video game and included artifacts found in them as well. Unfortunately, that does mean that the stuff from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is on there too, but I think the fact that it also includes everything from the Young Indiana Jones Adventures TV series more than makes up for it. You can watch a fun video of what went into the making of the map here.

There are 36 different archeological artifacts displayed, each illustrated where Indy discovered it, and numbered chronologically. 3 Legend sections list info on the artifacts, including name, city and country, year, title of the story the artifact was discovered in, followed by symbols. The Key chart lets you decipher those symbols for each artifact to see how the story was presented, be it film, novel, TV Episode, etc.

My personal favorite bit? The inclusion of the statue from the Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis video game (aka, the best point & click computer game ever created). It's the funky looking little statue that is seen on the map in the middle of the Atlantic ocean

You can buy a 24" x 36" print of the map from Matt's website for $44.95. When it comes to purchasing maps of the world to hang on your walls, I certainly can't think of any better way to spend your money.

In A Dapper Galaxy Far, Far Away

2011-08-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

Artist Greg Peltz has released a gorgeous series of prints recently in which he depicts Star Wars characters in Victorian/Steampunk attire. I must say, seeing Boba Fett all done up in a suit and top hat adds an element of pure class to him he was missing before. Personally, I wouldn't mind being chased around the galaxy by such a sharp dressed fellow.

Click on the links below to see Greg's version of the following characters:

C-3P0
Chewbacca
Luke & Leia
Darth Vader
And my personal favorite . . . Jabba The Hutt

I can't help but notice one glaring omission so far in this set though. No Han Solo? What? That's just so, so wrong. I want to see Han looking pimp as hell in a pinstrip suit and bowler cap, and I want to see it now!

Thanks go to the ever awesome Geek-tastic contributor Mike Noyes for the tip about these.

Aw Crap! Ridley Scott Is Making Another Blade Runner Film

2011-08-18T10:48:00.001-07:00

Can't Hollywood leave well enough alone? Why is it that aging directors keep returning to their former glories just to mess them up and make us hate them. Ridley Scott is already filming a new Alien film, and now word has come down that he's signed on to make a new Blade Runner film.

Scott has signed on to direct and produce the film for Alcon Entertainment, though it's unclear at this point if the movie will be a prequel or a sequel, or if Harrison Ford will be dragged out of his carpentry workshop to star in it. There's also no script yet in place, and given how Damon Lindelof managed to alter the direction of Prometheus when he signed on to it, there's probably room for change here.

Now, I love Blade Runner as much as the next guy. That doesn't mean I want to see a new one though. Not every classic, beloved film needs a sequel you know. Sometimes, things should just be left alone. Blade Runner is one of those films. It's perfect. Any sequel or prequel you make to it will just pale in comparison to the awesomeness that is the original.

Did George Lucas teach us nothing when he went back and made new Star Wars Films?

That's it, I'm calling it. Ridley Scott's career - Time of Death: August 18th, 2011 at 10:48am.

Thanks go to my friend Melanie for tipping me off on this one.

(Quote via Cinema Blend)

Friday Happy Hour

2011-08-12T11:52:00.001-07:00

It's Friday. You know what that means. It's time for the return of Geek-tastic's incredibly irregular week-ending post, Friday Happy Hour! So, let's grab some booze and mixers and make ourselves a tasty drink to start the weekend off with.

Today's drink recipe came to me thanks to a tip from my friend and regular Geek-tastic reader Mr. Jeff Magness, who recently informed me that it is because of this site that he has become a fan of Doctor Who. Well, I'm only too happy to spread the word of the good Doctor. And now with Jeff's help I'm able to share with you all a killer concoction named after the Doctor's favorite tool.

The Sonic Screwdriver

Ingredients:

1 1/2 oz Vanilla Vodka
1 1/2 oz Blue Curacao Liqueur
6 oz Clear Lemon-Lime Soda

Instructions:

Half-fill a clear 12 oz. glass with ice. Pour 1.5 oz Vanilla Vodka, 1.5 oz Blue Curacao, and 6 oz. CLEAR lemon/lime soda over the ice. Stir lightly, and Enjoy!.

Why Can't All Movie Trailers Be This Awesome?

2011-08-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

Making movie trailers is a very fine art, I understand this. The editor who is tasked with making a movie trailer has to play a very fine balancing act. Their job is to make the viewer want to drop $10+ see a film by only showing them a minute or so of clips from it. How does one go about doing that? You can't show the best scenes in the film. That would give away too much and would make the viewer annoyed after the film. You can't show too much of the plot, or the viewer will have no reason to see the film if they feel that they've seen the whole thing already.

So then, the editor's job is to make someone want to see a film while at the same time not over explaining the plot, and not showing off the best parts of the film. It's a tough task, to be certain. When it is done well, it's brilliant. When it's done badly, it can ruin a film's financial chances.

After seeing this fan made trailer though for the new Conan reboot movie, I have only one thing to say. Someone hire the guy who made this to make every other movie trailer from here on out!!!

I'm not joking, this is the best damn movie trailer I've seen in a long time. Whoever made this is a genius. I didn't really want to go see the new Conan movie before this, but now I'm dying to see it. The person who made this trailer fully knows how to push the selling points of this film.

Big muscley guys with swords? Check!
Blood and gore beyond belief? Check!
Hot, scantily clad women everywhere? Check!
Cheesy yet awesome rock guitar solos? Check!
Gratuitous sex? Check!
Conan decapitating dudes and otherwise maiming them in horrible ways? Check!

The first 30 seconds of the trailer is a nice build up too. Just hold onto your hats though folks. After that 30 seconds, it's nothing but 100% pure bonafide bad ass for the next minute straight!

P.S. I may even break my personal boycott of 3D to go see this movie in that format simply because this trailer advertises it as, "IN 3 . . . FUCKIN . . . D!"

This Is Why Jason Vorhees Is The Best In The Business

2011-08-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned here before how Jason Vorhees is the greatest killer the silver screen has ever seen. His total body count (158 victims, not counting the recent remake) dwarfs those of any other movie serial killers. He really is the best at what he does (yes, even better than Wolverine).

What you see above is a rather lovely infographic that someone made detailing exactly how Mr. Vorhees dispatched each and every one of his victims. It really is rather beautiful, even though it's a chart about brutal homicides.

To see a large, hi-res version of the image, click HERE.

Yes, There Will Be A Fifth Resident Evil Movie

2011-08-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's official, somehow the Resident Evil film franchise will have a fifth installment, regardless of the fact that the films haven't shared anything in common with the games they are based upon since the second film in the series and the fact that the last two films have been fairly crappy.

So far, it's been confirmed that Milla Jovovich will be returning as Alice and Sienna Guillory will be reprising her role as Jill Valentine. Milla's husband Paul. W.S. Anderson will also be writing and directing the film.

I have mixed feelings about this news. On the one hand, the last two R.E. films have been rather bad. The stories haven't made much sense, the acting has been pretty horrible and there's barely been any sign of a cohesive plot or character arc involved for anyone. So, will this new film be any better? Probably not. Will it make no sense and kind of suck? Probably. Will it feature Milla Jovovich in some sort of skimpy outfit killing lots and lots of undead? Most definitely.

Because of that last question, will I go see the film in theaters? You bet your sweet ass I will.

Sci-Fi Women Rule (In Case You Didn't Already Know)

2011-08-10T10:26:00.001-07:00

I admit to being already biased towards sci-fi shows over pretty much all prime time shows to begin with, but this lovely little picture is definitely a nice reminder of one of the many reasons sci-fi as a genre is so awesome. If you want weak, needy, dependent female characters you can watch just about any prime time show. But if you want strong willed, powerful, amazing female characters you should turn to sci-fi.

The women of sci-fi are tough, smart and take a backseat to no man. It's a very forward thinking genre by definition, and that goes for more than just its views of technology and gadgets. Sci-fi is about the betterment of humanity as a race, which includes equality of genders, race, sexual orientation, etc.

I do have one big problem with the above picture though. Where the hell is Dana Scully?

(Via Reddit)

Cosmos 2: Electric Boogaloo

2011-08-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Fox TV made an announcement that I would never have guessed was coming. They are making a follow up series to what is in my mind the greatest science series of all time, Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

For those of you who have never seen Cosmos, go watch it right now. You have no excuse. The entire series is available on Netflix's instant play feature. Cosmos was a groundbreaking achievement of television. It's the most watched science series ever and has been seen in multiple countries around the world. I grew up watching Cosmos and I credit both it and Carl Sagan personally with introducing me to a number of scientific topics and concepts. It is Cosmos that inspired in me the love of science and exploration that I still have today. It is also due to Sagan's infectious childlike wonder for the universe and our place in it that I myself have kept that same sense of wonder since I was a little kid.

Initially, hearing the announcement that Fox of all channels is making a follow up to my most favorite of documentary series made me very skeptical, but then I read the following details and I was a bit reassured.

Fox has greenlighted Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, a 13-part docu-series from Family Guy creator MacFarlane and late Sagan's original collaborators – his widow, writer/producer Ann Druyan and astrophysicist Steven Soter. Envisioned as a successor to the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original 13-part program, which was hosted by Sagan, the new Cosmos series will be hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you serious? Holy crap! He's one of the smartest guys alive today, and aside from that he is totally awesome and funny and cool. Don't believe me? Just watch this. If you were going to get anyone to try to step into Carl Sagan's legendary shoes, I would be perfectly happy with it being Tyson. And the fact that Sagan's original collaborators are also working on it lends the new series a huge amount of cred.

I know what you're thinking though. Produced by Set MacFarlane? The Family Guy dude? How could that possibly be good? I'm personally not too worried about that one, and here's why. Seth MacFarlane was born in 1973. That means he was seven years old when the original Cosmos started airing on PBS, which in turn means he was most likely raised on the original series, much like all of us kids of the 70's and 80's were. This must be a passion project for him, for something he loves from his childhood. If I'm right about that, then he'll want to do right by the original series and will go out of his way to make a quality follow-up program.

Personally, I can't wait for this one. Sadly, it won't be out until 2013 though. I'll be counting down the days though, I promise you that.

(Via Deadline Hollywood)

Another Day, Another Disappointing New Superhero Movie Costume

2011-08-05T10:22:00.001-07:00

Sigh. This has not been a good week for DC movie superhero costumes. First there was the Superman revelation, and now there is this.

Behold the boringness that is Anne Hathaway's Catwoman costume from The Dark Knight Rises, which as far as I can tell has absolutely nothing catlike about it whatsoever. Now I understand that Christopher Nolan is trying to go for ultra realism with his Bat-films, and he stated in interviews earlier that his Catwoman costume would be closer to what a real cat burglar would wear as opposed to something like Michelle Pfeiffer's costume from Batman Returns. I was fine with that, but come on. She doesn't even have little cat ears. Is that too much to ask for? Pretty much every Catwoman outfit ever, be it from comics, movies or television has had some form of cat ears on it. That's one of her defining costume traits.

Catwoman without cat ears on her suit is just another hot chick in a skintight black leather outfit. There's nothing special about her at all then. That'd be like seeing batman in a cowl that didn't have the little pointy bat ears on it. Without them, he's just a dude in a helmet.

I really hope that she's only missing the cat ears for some reason in this one scene, and that she'll be wearing them during the rest of the film. There is no reason not to include them. She can still look totally realistic with cat ears as a part of her suit. Just make her look like this, it isn't that hard.

The New Tron Cartoon Continues To Make Me Happy

2011-08-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

Another sort of trailer has been released for the forthcoming Tron: Uprising cartoon series, and good lord it's even prettier than the one that came out earlier. Now, while most of the actual animation in this trailer is the same stuff we saw in that earlier trailer, this new one does show a ton of new concept art, landscapes, vehicles and other things we hadn't seen before.

If this show winds up only looking half as good as the art in this clip shows, it's still going to be one of the prettiest cartoon shows ever. If it actually looks this good when it comes out, and the story and characters are just as good, this could easily become my favorite cartoon show ever.

Also, the fact that it's all set to Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy soundtrack and has Bruce Boxleitner doing the voice over narration just amps up the awesomeness on display here well past eleven

Hey Everyone, Look! It's The New Superman!

2011-08-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

Today, Warner Bros. released the first official picture of Henry Cavill as Superman in the upcoming new Supes film that is currently in production and which is being directed by Zack Snyder. If you'd like to see a bigger version of the pic, you can do so by going here.

I have mixed feelings about this pic. On the plus side, I really like how the cape looks. Obviously they didn't venture too far from the classic look of the costume, which is nice. Someone should tell the guys in charge of the DC Comics reboot that they need to be more like this and less like this.

On the downside though, what's up with that weird texture on the suit? Are Superman and Spider-man shopping from the same fabrics store now? Why is every superhero costume these days coming with a funky fabric texture? I don't get it. What's wrong with sleek, smooth material?

And finally, what's with the hair? I think my friend Wesley Strawther said it best this morning when I heard him say, "Nice Hair Ron Burgundy. You stay classy Metropolis!"

Now, mind you. My cynicism here is no indication on whether I will like the final film or not. I clearly remember being all pissed off when the first promo pics for the new Star Trek movie came out because they were super shiny and photoshopped to hell. In the end though, I loved that film a lot. The same could happen here, or maybe it won't. What I'm trying to say is, one heavily touched up promo pic does not necessarily a bad film make. I'll reserve my final judgement, as always, until I've seen the whole film.

Voltron: Defender Of The Kittyverse

2011-08-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

If this were to be made into a TV show or web series, I would totally watch it.

(via Kube)

Pat's Movie Reviews: Captain America

2011-08-01T16:47:00.001-07:00

Minor spoilers follow. You've been warned.

Marvel really has been on a tear lately when it comes to their movie franchises. Ever since they opened up their own studio, they've been pumping out one good Comic Book flick after another. Iron Man started it all off, but they've managed to stay consistently good through everything that has been released since then. The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and Thor have all been fun, entertaining films. As they are slowly but surely building their way towards next year's Avengers film, Marvel has been building a solid foundation for each and every member of that team with their own solo films.

I am happy to report that Captain America is no different.

Once again Marvel has pulled off turning one of its most iconic heroes into a silver screen success. Captain America is a fun action adventure film with a good blend of character and heart thrown in to make you actually care about what is going on onscreen. My worry going into this was that they would skip past the character building intro and jump ahead to Steve Rogers receiving the super soldier serum and running off to go beat up some Nazi's, but I was totally wrong. The film takes its time getting to that point and instead spends the first 20 to 30 minutes of the film focusing on the character of Steve Rogers, the skinny kid from Brooklyn who keeps getting beaten up and pushed around. We learn that both of his parents died in the war, serving their country. His best friend Bucky is heading off to join the war, and poor Steve is having every door shut in his face as he tries desperately to get accepted into the army.

He's a man with a deep sense of honor and a drive to succeed. He doesn't believe in giving up and continues to re-apply to the army over and over again, even going so far as to lie on his admission forms as he applies in different cities. It is incredibly important that the film builds the character of who Steve Rogers is before he becomes the hero we know he will be. The underlying point that makes Captain America such an enduring figure is that Steve Rogers would be a hero, regardless of whether he ever received the super soldier serum or not. He's a hero because no matter what anyone else says or how badly he is treated, Steve Rogers is a decent, compassionate man who will always do what he can to help those in need, especially those being picked on by bullies.

The special effects used in this first part of the film are seamless too. Seeing Chris Evans digitally shrunk down to a skinny 90 pound frame wasn't nearly as off-setting as I thought it might be. The special effects team really did a great job of making him look natural in his smaller form. They also need to be commended for recreating all of the amazing 1940's style sets we see throughout most of the film. I actually had a hard time focusing on what was actually going on during certain scenes because I was too busy marveling at the beauty of 1940's Manhattan as Steve was chasing down an evil Hydra Agent.

Even after Steve comes out of the Super Soldier process, people still don't believe in him and he is forced to help out in the only way he can, by participating in USO shows to generate interest in the selling of war bonds. These scenes are really fun, and showcase a number of nods to classic Captain America moments such as him punching out Hitler. In the end though, Captain America must make his own way and prove his worth to his country. Once his best friend Bucky is captured, he jumps into action. He disobeys orders, goes behind enemy lines and rescues 400 men on his very first solo mission. Finally, the US military sees him for what he is worth.

What follows is a great action montage as we see Captain America fighting his way through the war, determined to wipe Hydra (the Nazi deep science division, and the film's main villains) off of the map. In the end, he comes face to face with the Red Skull, who is played very well by Hugo Weaving. I do feel that this part of the story was a little rushed, and I would have liked to have seen some more time spent building Cap's ties with his unit, which included Dum Dum Dugan and Howard Stark (Tony Stark's dad), but I understand that the film was trying to avoid being three hours long. Thus is the price that must be paid when you take the time to build your hero's origin. The rest of the film had to move at a bit of a break-neck speed as a result.

My only other real complaint was that the origin and the history of the Cosmic Cube wasn't really explained in the film. Once again, I feel that this has more to do with trying to fit Captain America into the ongoing line of Marvel films as the build towards the Avengers movie, but it does kind of annoy me that it is sort of expected that you saw the Thor film, and therefore have seen the Cosmic Cube before, so it doesn't need to be explained here. What if someone hadn't seen Thor? They'd be pretty confused by something that is fairly important to this film's plot. I personally wouldn't mind a bit of duplicate storytelling across films if it meant that single films stood a little stronger on their own and weren't completely dependent on the other Marvel films to make total sense. Overall, it's a minor point though as I'm certainly in the target audience of people who have and who will see every Marvel movie, so it didn't annoy me too badly that the Cosmic Cube just sort of showed up and was never explained fully. It's just a minor gripe really.

Other than that, I was very happy with how this film turned out. I loved the cast, I loved the costumes and the set pieces (especially the background scenery). The film has a runtime of 2 hours and 12 minutes and it felt much shorter than that to me due to a really engaging story and characters.

If Marvel were to decide to make Captain America sequels that keep him in the midst of World War II, I would have no problem with that at all.

Final Grade: A

Oh Hai Batman and Bane

2011-08-01T16:05:00.001-07:00

For a film that is being said to be super secretive, there certainly have been a ton of new set pics leaking from the in-production The Dark Knight Rises this week. While the leaked set pics aren't giving away any major plot spoilers, they are definitely revealing some big information and are giving us our first good glimpse at Batman squaring off with the film's main villain, the big bald druggie Bane.

Seen above is one of the pics from that fight scene. To see a ton more set pics, go HERE.

The other big reveal from this recent slew of pics is that we finally get to see what Bane's costume is going to be in the last of the Nolan led Bat films. Here's what the big bad's costume looks like:

Is it just me, or is that a bit underwhelming? I mean, I understand that there was no way that Christopher Nolan was going to make Bane look exactly like he does in the comic books, but couldn't we at least get something that looks even a little bit like this?

That's not such a bad outfit, is it? I'm sure there must have been a way to make that look decent on screen. I know I should have faith in Christopher Nolan. The last two Bat films have been nothing short of amazing and that does earn him a lot of credit as far as I'm concerned, but I can't help but feel that the outfit they've gone with has Bane looking like some sort of hobo with a major respiratory problem.

Maybe I'm just being too picky, but I prefer my comic book movie villains to not look like they have a giant asthma inhaler permanently attached to their face. Perhaps that's just me though.

Can Red Tails Renew My Faith In Lucasfilm?

2011-08-01T15:11:00.001-07:00

A few days ago, a trailer was released for a film called Red Tails which is based on the real life story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American fighter pilot squadron back in WWII. Normally, such a film wouldn't really get covered by a geek blog such as this as WWII fighter films don't usually fall under the geek or nerd genres, but Red Tails is different. Why, you ask? It's quite simple. Red Tails is the first non Star Wars or Indiana Jones related film to be produced by George Lucas and Lucasfilm since the 1994 release of Radioland Murders.

In fact, George Lucas himself wrote the original story idea for this film, and he's been planning on making it since back in 1988. Now, I know that the words "written by George Lucas" are enough to leave most nerds cringing in disgust after the release of the Star Wars prequels, but I can't help but feel hopeful that this might be Lucasfilm's first good film since 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Let's be honest here, Radioland Murders was pretty crappy.

Why do I think it might be good? Well, first of all, George Lucas didn't write the script. He only wrote the story idea. The screenplay itself was written by a man named John Ridley, whose screen credits include films I've actually enjoyed such as Undercover Brother and Three Kings. However, he also wrote the screenplay for the film U Turn, which is one of the worst things that I've ever had to sit through. So, admittedly, the script could go either way. The fact that Lucas himself did not write the screenplay though gives me some hope for a decent story with a plot that makes some sort of actual sense.

Second, George Lucas didn't direct this film. He's only the producer on it. Red Tails is actually being directed by Anthony Hemingway, whose credits mainly center around television shows such as BSG, True Blood, Heroes and Community. That's not too shabby. True, he doesn't have a feature film under his belt yet, but the projects he has worked on are all of decent quality, so he must have some ability, right? At the very least, he has to be better than Lucas' style of only doing over-the-shoulder shots or walking shots to convey all of his dialog scenes.

With Lucas only sitting on as the producer, there exists the possibility that this could finally mark the return of good filmmaking to Lucasfilm Limited. I remember back far enough to know that Lucasfilm used to be capable of churning out good films, so long as George himself was only peripherally involved. Let us not forget that Lucasfilm is the company responsible for giving us gems like Willow, the original Land Before Time, Howard The Duck (which I consider to be a misunderstood masterpiece) and a little film starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly called Labyrinth.

Remember that one? Yeah, that was produced by George Lucas and Lucasfilm. See? They used to make good movies, and I'm still hopeful that they can do so again. The trailer for Red Tails genuinely looks exciting to me. They have a great ensemble cast, the story has real promise and the special effects and fighter combat scenes look phenomenal.

I'm crossing my fingers here and am eagerly awaiting this one. Let's hope it breaks the 22 year old Lucasfilm curse and is actually a fun, enjoyable film.

(Thanks go to Virginia Schwarz for sending me the tip about the trailer's release.)

Comic Con 2011

2011-07-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Well, another San Diego Comic Con has come and gone. Unfortunately, this year I was only able to attend the show for two days instead of my usual three. This was because of the giant debacle that was attempting to buy tickets for this year's show.

For those of you unaware, getting tickets to SDCC used to be fairly simple. Tickets would on on sale in the fall, and up until a few years ago never sold out. Even showing up the day of the con, one could easily buy a pass and go inside after going through the registration line. Then, a few years ago, something unheard of happened. 4 day passes for the con sold out a few weeks before the show opened. Everyone was surprised. That had never happened before. Sure, one day passes were still available, but for the first time ever one could not buy a 4 day pass for the convention by showing up on Thursday morning.

This was but the beginning of a trend.

The following year, 4 day passes sold out months before the con, and single day passes sold out for Friday and Saturday (typically the busiest days of the con) a few weeks before the show. The year after that, the entire convention sold out only a few weeks after going on sale. What used to take months to sell out now did so in less than two months. Demand was getting pretty insane, and I suddenly found myself wishing I had bought my tickets for the 2011 SDCC while still at the 2010 convention. I wasn't horribly worried though. It still took weeks to sell the show out. So long as I bought my tickets the day they went on sale, I'd be ok, right?

Wrong.

This year, buying a ticket to SDCC was harder than getting into a Pearl Jam concert circa 1994. Comic Con International themselves tried to sell tickets through their own site as they had traditionally done before, but after having their sight brought to its knees twice by the sheer volume of people trying to purchase tickets at once, they realized they would need help. They decided to go with a company called TicketLeap, who promised the Con organizers that they would be able to handle the load of tens of thousands of con fans all trying to buy tickets at once. For the third time now, a sale date and time was given, and fans (myself included) counted down until they could log on to buy passes for the 2011 show.

The day the tickets went on sale can best be described as a true exercise in patience. Unsurprisingly, TicketLeap couldn't handle the sheer volume of comic con fans either, and their site started to buckle. It didn't completely collapse, but for the vast majority of people trying to get in, all they saw was an error screen saying that traffic on the site was to high, and an instruction to hit the refresh button to try again. I don't know how everyone else's experience went, but I spent about 3 hours straight hitting refresh every minute or so, only to get the same error message again and again and again.

What was really annoying though was following Comic Con's official twitter account too, which kept updating people that tickets were indeed being sold, so keep trying. Then came the dreaded tweet I didn't want to see. 4 day passes were sold out. Before I could even log in, I had lost the opportunity to get my 4 day pass. I did eventually get in (thank god), but by the time I did, passes for Saturday were sold out as well. Taking what I could get, I bought passes for Thursday and Friday and fumed silently for a while.

As the following months went by though, my anger subsided. This would actually be a good thing, I told myself. It would change the way I went to con. With only two days to attend the show, I would be more focused on only wandering the floor and not spending time in lines for panels upstairs. The floor is mainly what I go for anyways. Plus, this way I could take Saturday and drive up to Disneyland instead. As far as backup plans go, Disneyland is always a good one.

So, yeah, I'm fine now with having only gotten the two passes. It worked out well in the end, and I may even try to do the same thing next year. That is, if I can manage to even get tickets to next year's show. I did try to pre-register for the 2012 show at this year's show, but once again I was schooled in just how big this convention has gotten. It turns out that the usual pre-registration ticket allotments that they sell at the convention (about 2,500) per day, were selling out minutes after they went on sale in the mornings. People were lining up at 5am just to buy their tickets for next year's show. I must not be a big enough nerd I decided, because I just don't have the desire to get up that early to buy tickets for a show that is a year away. Call me crazy, but I'm just too old for that shit. That's definitely on my Murtaugh List now.

Ok, enough about the ticket debacle. Let's discuss the 2011 San Diego Comic Con!!!

Surprisingly enough, what with all of the crazy demand for tickets, the show this year didn't seem as busy as it has over the last few years. I got onto the exhibit hall floor at around 9:30am on Thursday and it was pretty dead. I figured that since this would probably not last very long, I decided to head over to the bigger toy and movie studio booths to see what all they were showing off before the big crowds showed up. One of the first places I stopped at was the Mattel booth, which was giving out a bunch of cool free schwag including Stay Puft Marshmellow Man car air fresheners and this totally sweet miniature Rey Mysterio WWE action figure.

After leaving the Mattel booth, I wandered over to the movie booths but they weren't really giving anything away yet. I guess it was too early. Still though, I very much enjoyed walking through the big booths without having to navigate the crazy crowds. I spent an hour or two in the bigger booths looking at all of the cool large displays, and then moved back to the other end of the floor to begin my more traditional method of walking around the con floor. I call it the grid pattern (or The Grid for short if you're a Tron fan). I start at one end of the hall, and then walk up and down each aisle in a grid pattern, thus ensuring you see everything and that you don't miss any potentially cool booths.

This is actually a lot harder than it sounds. As you are walking through the exhibit hall, you are bound to come to a moment where at one of the big walkway intersections you see something really cool that you want to check out, but it's a few aisles away. The temptation to break the grid pattern is amazing. One must exercise both internal strength and patience to not step off of the assigned aisle by aisle pattern. If you do, you are pretty much guaranteed to miss something even cooler that your friends will tell you about after con, and then you'll be kicking yourself until next year and swearing that this time you won't get off of the grid. It's happened to me more times than I care to admit to. Take my advice, stay on The Grid!

Here are pics of some of the cool stuff I found on the Con floor.

It's the giant dog thing from Adventure Time!

This was set up for the new Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City game that Capcom is putting out this fall. I didn't get a chance to play the game, but I watched some other people play and it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Voltron: Defender of the Universe. You can see to the left the WWE poster and the girl in the black shirt standing directly to the right of said poster. She's the one who was giving out the Rey Mysterio figures.

It's just your friendly neighborhood Spider-man, hanging from a street light. Nothing to see here.

It's the Tardis!!! For you non Dr. Who fans out there, that stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

I so envied these kids. I really had to hold myself back from jumping right into the center of the pile and burying myself in Legos.

It's a giant, life-size action figure of The Undertaker!

It's the G.I. Joe team, parachuting down from the ceiling!

As always, the cosplayers were out in force again this year. Of all of the people I saw though, I think the guy on the left was my favorite. Not only was his armor suit really well made, he actually looked a hell of a lot like Robert Downey Jr. too. I love it when cosplayers actually look like the characters they are dressing up as.

Giant, life-size, ultra realistic statue of Christopher Reeves as Superman. This thing creeps me the hell out. Don't look directly into its eyes. It will steal your soul. It's better to just run away. Run away as fast as you can!!!

Flying, radio controlled balloon sharks = super mega awesome and I want one RIGHT NOW!!!

This has to be the greatest Star Wars greeting card I have ever seen. Seriously. Ever!

As I said earlier, I don't really do the panel thing at all anymore. I just don't want to spend four hours in line to get a sneek peek at something that will be out in a few months anyways. I'd rather walk around and experience the sights and sounds of the con. Therefore, after Thursday came to a close I left the floor and went home to go get some much needed sleep. Ten hours of straight walking will do that to you.

I got up the next morning and hit up the floor again. It was a little busier on Friday than it had been the day before, so I avoided the big booths this time and wandered around checking out the comic booths and other smaller areas like Artist's Alley. After a while though, I decided to venture back into some of the bigger areas though in search of more free schwag. Man oh man am I glad that I did that. As I was walking by the BBC america booth, I saw some guy handing out things to passersby. I changed direction and headed towards him. As I got closer, I saw people putting things on their arms, but I could't see what they were. As I got up to the guy handing stuff out, he held out a small plastic square to me that had something inside of it and said, "If I give this to you, you have to put it on right now."

I looked around , but everyone who had been putting the thing on had already walked off. I was running blind here but I figured, what the hell. If it's something stupid, I'll wear it for about 100 feet then take it off. I wanted to know what was in the bag. I told the guy that I'd put it on and he gave me the plastic square. I opened it up and took it out, and it looked like a short, small piece of women's pantyhose. I put it over my arm, as instructed. As I did so, it finally became clear what this mysterious freebie was and I got really excited.

I had just received a fake set of full sleeve Dr. Who tattoos!!! Complete with the Tardis, Cybermen, Weeping Angels and gangsta style font that says "Bowties are cool" on it.

I'll admit it. I felt sort of bad ass wearing this thing on the floor. It actually looks pretty good if you keep the seam of it on the inside of your arm. I wore this for the rest of my time on the floor on Friday and didn't take it off until I got on the trolley to leave. Even then, I only took it off because it was really hot outside and my arm started to sweat. This was easily my favorite freebie of the entire convention. Well done BBC America booth. Well done indeed!

One thing that's cool about SDCC as it has gotten bigger and bigger is how the convention itself has expanded past the borders of just the convention center itself. It now encompasses almost all of downtown San Diego, with cool displays and events taking place blocks away from the exhibit hall floor. Every year there are usually one or two must see events taking place out in San Diego's Gaslamp district. This year it was South Park: The Experience.

Across the street from the convention center, Comedy Central had set up a huge area that was designed to look like part of South Park where attendees could take part in a number of events like tricycle races to creating their own South Park avatar. They were even giving away free t-shirts if you checked into the South Park Experience on Foursquare. It was a lot of fun and I have to give major props to Comedy Central and South Park itself for creating such a fun, interactive experience.

Oh, and I totally won the tricycle race that I took part in.

My time at the convention quickly coming to a close though. I'd spent the better part of two days walking around. I'd seen as much of what there was to be seen as I could and I was desperately in need of a good Carne Asada burrito, so I walked off of the floor of the San Diego Comic con for the the last time and said goodbye to the show. Even though getting tickets was a huge pain in the ass this year, and knowing that it will probably be even worse for next year's show, I'm still going to try to attend again.

This year marked my 20th year straight as a San Diego Comic Con attendee. I haven't missed a year since my first time back in 1992. It's a part of who I am. It's a yearly tradition that I know I will miss if I don't go at least for one or two days. After all, SDCC is the only place in the world where, as you're walking down regular city streets, you get to see stuff like this.

How could I NOT attend this show again next year?

See you later Comic Con. I had a blast this year. I hope I can do it again next year!

Chewbacca; Backstabbing Friend

2011-07-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

It's a pretty well known fact that Harrison Ford doesn't really mention his Star Wars history all that often. Sure, he's all proud of his part as Indiana Jones, but he really never mentions his days of piloting the Millennium Falcon through asteroid fields or hanging out with Ewoks on Endor.

That's what makes this short clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live so amazing. For the first time in a very long while, Harrison Ford fesses up to being Han Solo and even makes a couple of great jokes Star Wars fans will love.

Also, we finally find out the reason why he never talks about Star Wars anymore. Surprisingly, it's all Chewbacca's fault. That no good walking carpet. I should have guessed he was the one to blame.

(via IO9)

The Force Of Logic

2011-05-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

Behold, the new short film by Mike Noyes and yours truly. Shot on location around San Francisco, and on the floor of Wonder Con 2011, The Force of Logic is a love letter to all of our fellow geeks, nerds and dorks out there.

I hope you all enjoy it, and by all means be sure to tell your friends about it.

Also, you can become a fan on our facebook page by going HERE.

Pat's Movie Reviews: Thor

2011-05-02T16:20:00.001-07:00

When Marvel first announced their plan to make a bunch of individual hero films that would ultimately lead to an Avengers film that would feature all of those same heroes . . . I'll be honest, at first I had a small nerdgasm moment (and by small I mean huge). About 30 seconds later though, the bitter and jaded nerd part of me kicked in and I started to worry about all of the problems that such a plan could encounter, and the high level of sucky-ness that these problems could lead these film to containing.

From the get-go, my biggest fears centered around the character of Thor. In my opinion, he was the member of this group that would be the hardest to translate to a movie screen in a believable way. Then, assuming that you accomplished that great task, he is also the most difficult member to fit seamlessly into a team with the other characters.

Think about it. You start with Tony Stark, who is basically just a normal guy with some awesome tech. Add to that Captain America, another normal guy who just happened to receive some great abilities after taking part in a crazy science experiment. You've also got people like Hawkeye, Black Widow and Nick Fury; all of whom are just normal people with vast amounts of military training.

Now, try to fit a Norse God into that mix and make it seem believable. Go ahead. Just try it.

Do you see the problem now?

Going into this film, Director Kenneth Branagh had to face those two issues head on. He needed to make Thor an interesting and believable character in his own right, and then he had to make it so that the fantastical world that Thor comes from can seamlessly fit in with the rest of the Marvel movie universe that had been established in Iron Man. These are really difficult tasks, and I worried greatly about Branagh's ability (or any other directors' really) to achieve them.

Having now seen Thor, I can happily say that Branagh has accomplished both of these tasks about as well as they could have been done.

Thor is by no means a perfect film. I definitely have my small quibbles with it here and there, but you have to remember that you can't really judge this film entirely as a stand-alone film. While this is definitely made to be a self-contained story, it was at the same time made as a building film to something else. As a result, there are parts of the film that don't entirely make sense unless you're aware of what has come before, and what is going to be coming later. Take SHIELD, for example. They feature prominently into this film's plot, but it's never really explained who they are or what they do. It's sort of expected that the audience is already familiar with SHIELD and Agent Coulson (who appeared in both Iron Man films).

One could easily pick apart some of these plot issues if they were judging Thor in a vacuum, but to do so would miss some of what Marvel is trying to do here. These are all small issues though. The key focus here is introducing the character of Thor and the world he comes from and making them relatable to the audience. Here is where I think Branagh excels. With the exception of the opening scene, the film spends the first 30 minutes or so entirely in Asgard, developing the character history of Thor, explaining what Asgard is and how all of the characters from that world are interrelated. We get to see Thor interact with Loki before they start to fight. We get to see Thor interact with his father in a very Father & son way.

All of this makes Thor an understandable character. Sure, he's a god from a fantasy world, but he also has a family and friends and relationships that he has to work on, just like the rest of us. He also has faults, and they're big ones too. At the beginning of the film Thor is a bit of a dick. He's brash, arrogant, headstrong and stubborn. He's overconfident in his own abilities and he doesn't stop to think about the consequences of his actions. These character flaws lead him to being stripped of his powers and banished to Earth. The story of the film from that point on is about him coming to terms with the fact that he doesn't know everything like he thinks he does and accepting that he must be a better man in order to be worthy of the powers and the responsibilities that he must eventually claim as King of Asgard.

The focus on this growth of character is pivotal in making Thor likable and relatable. Once he shows up on earth, he is instantly knocked off his self-imposed pedestal. Over the course of the middle acts of the film, he gets knocked down a lot, hit by some cars, shot up with drugs and even arrested and interrogated. Watching Thor have to suddenly accept that he no longer has the power to do as he pleases is a great thing to see. And to top it off, he totally does not understand how Earth works.

They really play up the "fish out of water" element as Thor tries to adjust to his new surroundings. It leads to some genuinely funny moments and some classic lines, especially when he goes into a pet store looking for something. I won't ruin the line here, but just trust me, it's really funny. There is a lot of comedy in the second act of Thor, as a result of these awkward moments he has. It's not done so much so that it gets obnoxious, thankfully. It was a nice touch though and was well handled to make the story funny without being too silly.

The relationship with Natalie Portman and her initial attraction to Thor seemed a bit strange to me. It's not as forced as Anakin and Padme's relationship in the Star Wars Prequels, but it does have a slight feel of that in one or two scenes. To be honest though, I was nerd-crushing on actress Kat Dennings' portrayal of college intern and Natalie's assistant Darcy Lewis to really care what was going on between Thor and Portman's character. Maybe it's just me here and my personal tastes in women speaking, but I was personally hoping that Thor would go with Darcy because she was by far the cuter, more entertaining character.

As for everything else, it was about what I expected from the film after seeing the Trailers. Anthony Hopkins as Odin is great. Loki is a giant douche bag like he should be. The Frost Giants are just sorta there as a plot device to get things moving. The Destroyer is pretty wicked when he finally does show up. The battles are pretty sweet. Stan Lee has a great cameo. There are a number of great nerd shout outs (Donald Blake, Hawkeye being called by his actual name, etc).

I would have liked to have seen a little less CG in some of the Asgard scenes, but I can understand that it is sort of necessary when shooting a film in a fantasy setting. I really loved how the Rainbow Bridge looked though, and the way the portals between the worlds worked is really cool too.

All in all, I was really happy with how Thor turned out. I wouldn't say it was as amazing as the first Iron Man was, but I'd put it on par with Iron Man 2 (which I still liked a lot). I really hope Thor does well because now that the back story has been explained, I'd love to see what a Thor sequel would look like.

Final Grade: B+

Many thanks go to James Sime, the owner of Isotope -The Comic Book Lounge in San Francisco (seriously, possibly the coolest comic book store ever) for posting ticket info about the early screening of Thor which enabled me to write this review before the film even came out.

Tiki Dalek Exterminates Badly Made Mixed Drinks

2011-04-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

As you know, I'm a huge Dr. Who Fan. And, as I'm sure I've mentioned here at least once or twice before, I'm also a huge fan of Tiki bars and Tiki culture in general. So, you can imagine my shock as I was wondering around the internet and I came across this amazing image on the Rum N Pineapple blog (a personal favorite Tiki blog of mine).

I never would have thought of combining Tiki decorations with a Dalek before, but now that I have seen this I can't ever imagine my life without it. The only real question that remains now is what does this Tiki Dalek yell as he walks into a bar?

Personally, I would have to agree with the comments to the post on the Rum N Pineapple blog. This Tiki Dalek would have to be yelling, "Inebriate!!! Inebriate!!!"

Now That Is How You Restore A Timeline

2011-04-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

A lot of the fans of the original Star Trek series were unhappy with the fact that J.J. Abrams came along and started playing around with the timeline of the show in order to explain how the events in his Star Trek motion picture could take place. Personally, I'm not one of those people, as I'm a life long of Trek who actually enjoyed the new Abrams movie immensely.

However, even I can't help but chuckle a little at this short film, made by the folks to do the Star Trek: Phase II web series, as the Original Trek crew takes it upon themselves to repair the damage to the timeline that was done by Abrams and his movie.

Leave it to Spock to figure out how to sort all this stuff out in a nice and convenient manner.

(Via Sci-Fi Wire)

Wonder Con 2011 Review

2011-04-26T16:12:00.001-07:00

Well, another Wonder Con has come and gone. Once again I was extremely pleased with how the event turned out. For those of you who have only ever been to the San Diego Comic Con during the last few years, take my word as an old timer. Wonder Con was what the SD Con was back in about 1995 or so. It's smaller, it's much more intimate, and it's more about comics than movies.

Sure there is plenty of movie stuff there too, but as opposed to the big show in SD, the movie panels here are always comic related. You won't see TV shows like Prison Break getting panels at Wonder Con, no sir. This con is a bit old school. And that is why I love it.

I spent almost all of my time at this year's Wonder Con on the floor. Let me just say that right now. I only attended two panels during my time at the show, otherwise I was on the floor somewhere looking at stuff and spending too much money buying stuff. Part of the reason for this was that, to be honest, the programming for this year was a bit weak in my opinion. Mind you, this is not the convention organizer's fault at all. They can only make do with what the comic companies offer to bring.

DC was out in full force pushing their upcoming Green Lantern film. Ryan Reynolds' face was everywhere at the con this year. They had toys on display, video games, giant posters and (of course) panels supporting the film and trying to drum up interest.

Where was Marvel though? I really didn't see much for them at all, and I was highly disappointed by this. What with Marvel having two big summer movies coming out this year, I would have expected something big from them. Instead, I got nothing. Thor, Marvels first big film that was due to come out only a month or so after the convention, had almost no presence there at all (with one major exception that I'll get to in a second). I was shocked. I would have expected a panel, and toys and comics and god knows what else to be pushing the film. On the floor of the con itself though, there was almost nothing.

And Captain America? All I really saw for him was a big poster hanging for the ceiling. For shame Marvel. I expected more from you.

I will give Marvel credit though. They did have one really cool thing set up to promote Thor, but it was outside of the convention hall, across the street from the Convention. Marvel seems to have partnered up with the Acura car company and were doing an event where people could sign up to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. They took your picture and even gave you your own S.H.I.E.L.D. ID card.

Now, I'm a sucker for a cool, nerdy fake ID, but as I'm sure some of you remember, my attempts to join the Cobra organization at last year's SD Comic Con didn't go so well. It was with a deep fear of repeating that incident that I got in line to become a member of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Luckily, the line wasn't too long when I got in it, and they were playing the Thor trailer on a loop, in case you forgot that they were actually trying to promote a film by doing this. Oh, and there was this too:

Other than that that though, there really wasn't anywhere near the amount of Thor themed stuff at this year's Wonder Con as I was expecting there to be. Seriously, the Game of Thrones had a bigger presence on the con floor than Thor did. Anyways, I was able to get my Shield ID this time without anywhere near the amount of hassle that it took me to get my Cobra ID. The big question now though is, how do I reconcile being both a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Cobra? Am I a double agent? Am I a spy for S.H.I.E.L.D.? Am I a Spy for Cobra? Only I will ever know for certain.

Muahahahahahahaha!!!!!

After that, it was back to the floor where I wandered around and took some pics of the great cosplayers that were there. Here are a few of the ones I liked the most.

As for the panels that I did attend, the first was the Star Wars: The Clone Wars panel. Much like that panel has gone in years past, the executive producer of the show Dave Filoni came out with some of the cast of voice actors and discussed what the show has in store in the upcoming season. The next few episodes of the show are going to be Chewbacca-centric, so they brought out Peter Mayhew to talk about the character. As cool as that was though, I was way more distracted by this guy, who was standing next to me durnig the panel.

It's not every day you see Jabba The Hut taking a picture while trying to hold a baby Hutt, so I'm sure you can see why this was so amusing to me.

All in all, it was another great year at the convention. I still enjoy the SD con for its sheer size and scope, but deep down I really prefer Wonder Con these days as a fan. It's a much more personal, intimate affair. It's like the cons I remember going to as a kid. I hope it never gets any bigger.

Keep staying classy Wonder Con. I am already looking forward to attending you again next year.

Skynet Becomes Self-Aware . . . . . Tonight!

2011-04-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

Well, this is it folks. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we only have a few days left to live.

According to the Terminator franchise, at 8:11pm tonight Skynet becomes self aware. In two days time, we will be experiencing Judgement Day. I hope you are all trained and packed and ready to go in your nuclear bunkers. The resistance will need as many of us as possible once the radiation levels are low enough again to allow us to go back to the surface.

And John Connor, if you're out there and you can hear me, this apocalypse better be a helluva lot cooler than Terminator: Salvation was. If not, I'm coming to find you so I can do something the machines never could, end your paradoxical existence.

Although, if you were to offer to send me back in time so I could bang a young Linda Hamilton, that would be OK with me.

Shaun (Pilgrim) Of The Dead

2011-04-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

This lovely little video clip comes to us courtesy of youtube user Pippinopalon, who created it as their entry for a contest by Empire Magazine to reduce the plots of full length feature films to 60 seconds.

Pippinopalon takes one of the greatest nerd-loved zombie films of all times and does it up in the style of Brian Lee O'Malley's comic series Scott Pilgrim. The result is pretty brilliant, and is well worth the 60 seconds of your time it takes to watch the clip.

Spoiler warning, if you've never seen Shaun of the Dead (shame on you), be aware that this clip does give away all of the big moments in the film.

(Via Pop Candy)

Wonder Con 2011 Pictures

2011-04-13T13:28:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone,

I've posted the pictures I took at Wonder Con 2011 to Geek-tastic's Flickr account. You can see the photo's HERE.

Warning, some of the pictures show a Clown getting money stapled to his body with a staple gun. You have been warned.

I'll be posting a small article of the event here soon. I promise.

I Love Where I Live

2011-04-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

This amazing picture was taken about two miles from where I live in Alameda, California. What you are seeing is a tugboat named the Millennium Falcon passing two of the massive container cranes that are part of the port of Oakland docks. These cranes are commonly referred to as AT-AT's by many of us who live in the area (for obvious reasons), and urban legend has it that they actually served as inspiration to George Lucas when the Empire Strikes Back was being developed.

Alameda may not be the ice planet of Hoth, but as you can see, we too were home to the Millennium Falcon for a short time before it had to make its getaway from the Imperial Forces in the area.

Godspeed to you Millennium Falcon. May the force be with you!

(Via IO9)

The New Wonder Woman Is Looking Slightly Less Skanktastic Than Before

2011-03-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

NBC has released some new on-set photos of actress Adrianne Palicki in her Wonder Woman costume, and while I'm still not 100% pleased with it, I will happily admit that it's about a thousand times better than what we had seen before.

Let's break it down, shall we?

The Boots: Thank god, they fixed the boots and made them red. This was easily the worst of the problems I think with the previous costume we were shown. Blue pants with matching blue boots just looked too horrible for words.
Again With The Boots: Wonder Woman is no longer rocking the high heel boots she had before, but is wearing flat heeled boots now which makes much more sense for a Warrior like her to wear as she's laying the smack down on roody-poo criminal candy asses.
The Pants: Now appearing in a nice dark blue, and no longer looking like they are made out of super-shiny paper-thin vinyl, these new pants look much better than what we had seen before.
The Stars: The line of stars running down the side of the pants are a nice reference to Wonder Woman's traditional star spangled panties. I still don't quite get why she wears stars when she's not an American superhero, but whatever. At least this has a comic book basis, so I'm ok with it.
Less Lipstick: It seems that Princess Diana has foregone the whorish red lipstick she was wearing in the first press photos and is now wearing a more subtle amount of lipstick that makes her look far less like a cheap prostitute.

Overall, I am much happier with this version of the outfit than what we had seen previously. I still think that Adrianne Palicki is the wrong choice to play W.W. though. She's just too damn skinny and her freaky fake boobs are still weirding me out. Wonder Woman is an Amazon, she's a big girl with natural curves and she should be played by a woman who fits that description. I just can't picture Ms. Palicki beating up super villains and making it believable. Hell, I have a hard time picturing her beating up random street thugs, let alone someone with superpowers.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Ms. Palicki will surprise me and she'll be like the second coming of Summer Glau (whom I fully believe can beat up a whole room of armed men with only her bare fists, regardless of the fact that she weights about 98 pounds soaking wet). Only time will tell though. I shall reserve final judgement until I've seen the pilot episode of the series.

Tron 3 To Feature The Return Of Master Control Program?

2011-03-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

I will freely admit to being a sucker for anything Tron related. I loved the first film growing up, and I'm apparently in the minority of people who loved the new film Tron: Legacy. Since that film came out, I've been hoping for word of a potential third film in the series, but I haven't heard anything concrete.

Until now.

The video above is an easter egg from the Tron: Legacy DVD which is due to hit stores next week. It features a text conversation between the son of Ed Dillinger, who was played by the always amazing Cillian Murphy in a cameo at the beginng of Tron: Legacy, and none other than the main villain of the first Tron film . . . . the Master Control Program (MCP).

I won't lie, when I heard the MCP's voice in this clip, I may have soiled my pants a little bit due to my overwhelming excitement. If Cillian Murphy and the MCP are the main villains of a third Tron film, I will be one happy geek for sure.

Also, if Sam Flynn actually starts wearing Flynn Lives t-shirts in the next film, that will be totally rad.

Superman . . . More Like Super Dick

2011-03-28T11:43:00.001-07:00

I've stated before that Superman has a tendency to be a total dick sometimes. Sure, he may say it's a result of his exposure to Red Kryptonite, but I think he's just making that up.

There's even a website devoted to Superman's dickish nature, SuperDickery.com, where you can see not only the Man of Steel, but other superheroes indulging in all manner of dick moves. Of those heroes shown though, Superman is by far the most straight up dick superhero of the group. Many are the examples that can be seen on that sight.

An amazing thing happened recently though. The great animated show Batman: The Brave and the Bold decided to run an episode in which the Son of Krypton is exposed to Red Kryptonite for the first time. The result, of course, is Superman exposing his true dick nature to everyone in Metropolis . . . especially Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. It's an amazing montage of classic golden age Superman moments. There are so many references thrown in there, it's the kind of thing that makes lifelong comics fans like myself get all giddy inside.

Oh, and just keep watching the clip for yet more comic homage greatness. I'm sure many of you will recognize the suit that Batman shows up wearing about halfway through the clip. It takes this episode, which was already at an awesomeness factor of 10, straight to 11.

That's right, I said it goes to 11.

(Via IO9)

Hipster Spock

2011-03-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

As a side project to Geek-tastic, I've decided to open a Tumblr account called Hipster Spock. As you can see above, I' m taking the concept of the Hipster Kitty phenomenon and adding in a huge helping of Spock goodness.

You can find the site here: www.hipsterspock.tumblr.com

I'll be updating the site there from time to time with new pics as I think of funny captions for them, and I'm accepting user submissions as well. I've posted a wordless pic of Hipster Spock on the site. If you have something funny to add, email it to me and I'll post it up to the site.

Have I Mentioned How Much I Love Dr. Who?

2011-03-23T16:41:00.001-07:00

Ok, I know I've mentioned my love of Dr. Who before, but just to reiterate, I really do love Dr. Who. More specifically, I'm really happy with how the new new Dr. Who Matt Smith is working out in the role. He really is brilliant. I had my worries about him when he was cast because he was so young and so . . . lets be honest here . . . odd looking, but those worries are long gone. I should have had more faith in head writer Stephen Moffat and his casting decisions, because not only has Matt Smith fit into the role of the Doctor so perfectly, but Moffat's choice for the Doctor's companions couldn't have been better either.

Karen Gillan as Amy Pond is the perfect foil for Matt Smith's Doctor. As opposed to most of the previous companions, Amy isn't in love with the Doctor. She's smart, she's really sassy, and good lord is she beautiful. Then there's Amy's Husband Rory Williams, played so well by Arthur Darvill. Rory perfectly rounds out the cast of the show. He's his own man. He's not Amy's hanger on, as previous significant others of companions have been. He loves her, but he gives her hell too when she needs it.

The above video is a perfect example of why I love this show. The dialogue is delivered in a quick, witty banter style. The chemistry between the actors feels completely natural. It feels like they are honestly friends having a good time as they make this. It comes across in their deliveries and adds a general warmth to the characters and their relationship to each other.

I'm so happy to see Rory and The Doctor becoming friends outside of Amy, and of Amy being slightly annoyed about this. Great stuff. Anyways, this is part one of a short story that was released as a teaser for the upcoming season which starts this summer. You can see part 2 HERE.

I hope they do more of these short, self contained stories. This was fantastic.

Enjoy.

Sadness, Thy Name Is The New Wonder Woman Costume

2011-03-20T20:38:00.001-07:00

The good news, they're making a new Wonder Woman TV series that will be airing on NBC later this year.

The bad news, this is the costume that actress Adrianne Palicki will be donning in this new series.

Ugh. Really? This is the best they could do? She looks like a hooker in a cheap Halloween costume! What's that thing made out of, paper thin vinyl? How is that supposed to protect her when she goes into battle? Also, when did Wonder Woman get a really bad boob job? What's wrong with those things? Why are they so far apart?

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the pants instead of her typical star spangled panties thing she usually wears. I've never really understood why the princess of the Amazons would basically wear part of the American Flag to cover her lady bits, seeing as how she's not American, but whatever. The pants are a good idea, but can we get them made out of leather or something more befitting a warrior princess? Please?

Also, honey, tone down the red lipstick a bit. Lipstick is fine and all, but slathering on five layers of it in a color that bright just makes you look like a prostitute. I'm sorry, but it's true.

To be honest, I already had my worries about this show after I had heard about how the new incarnation of Wonder Woman is a CEO who has a tendency to worry about the size of her boobs. Now, after seeing this pic, I am very worried indeed. Just how bad is this new live action series going to be?

As I always am, I'm still deep down optimistic that it won't end up being the horribly bad piece of crap that I fear it's going to be. Only time will tell though. In the mean time, I'm not exactly eagerly awaiting this show's premiere date.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Friday Happy Hour

2011-03-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

It just so happens to be my birthday weekend, so here at Geek-tastic we are going to start this party off right by serving up a tasty cold cocktail guaranteed to be as cold (and maybe even as tasty) as the woman it is named after.

Emma Frost, The White Queen. Sometimes X-man, sometimes member of the Hellfire Club. You can never really tell where her loyalties lie, but one thing is always for certain. Whenever she's around, you can rest assured that Scott Summers (aka Cyclops) will be trailing along close behind her like the pussy-whipped little lap dog he is.

In fact, in honor of Scott's status as Emma's bitch boy, there is even an optional Scott-based alcoholic sidecar to go along with this drink. So, without further ado . . . . . I give you:

The Emma Frost

Ingredients:

1 part Vanilla Vodka
1 part Sprite
1 splash of Key Lime Juice
1 sliced Lemon

OPTIONAL: 1 oz Cranberry Juice
OPTIONAL: 1 oz Southern Comfort

Instructions:

Combine Vodka, Sprite and ice in a collins glass, then add the Key Lime Juice and stir. Garnish with the lemon (Emma is blonde, after all) and drink while making snide remarks about Kitty Pryde.

For a Scott and Emma, combine the Cranberry Juice and SoCo in a shot glass and serve as a sidecar to the Emma Frost.

(Via Comics Alliance)

The New Tron Cartoon Looks Surprisingly Amazing

2011-03-03T09:15:00.000-08:00

Shortly before Tron: Legacy was released in theaters, Disney announced that they were making an animated series that would take place between the two live-action films, which would be called Tron: Uprising. When this first announcement was made, I was highly skeptical. Disney, as much as I love them, is not really known for making amazing movie tie-in shows. Upon hearing of Tron: Uprising, my head was filled with images of a badly written, badly animated series that I would try to pretend never existed in the years to come.

Then I saw the above trailer.

Holy crap, it looks god damned amazing. Ok, I'll be the first to admit when I'm wrong, and I may have very well been wrong in fearing that Tron: Uprising was going to suck horribly. Let's look at all of the trailer's high points, and it has many:

The animation looks gorgeous.
It features a great blend of classic hand-drawn animation and CG.
It has light cycles that can turn at 90 degree angles.
The music sounds great. Very Daft Punk-esque.
Elijah Wood and Paul Reubens are featured in the voice cast.

And last, but certainly not least

Bruce Boxleitner will be the voice of Tron.

Hells Yes! Ok, I'm officially excited about this series now. Yes, it could still just as easily suck horribly if the story is bad, but at the very least it will look pretty while sucking horribly. If nothing else, I can put it on in the background for pretty visuals while listening to music.

Somehow though, I get the feeling that this show may possibly end up being awesome. At least, that's what I'm hoping.

Random Awesomeness

2011-03-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

I'd bet good money that Rorschach makes the best Soy Chai Lattes in town. He probably gets all creative and pours the drinks in such a way that he creates little ink blot tests in the foam.

I just feel sorry for the poor sap who comes to his shop and tries to order a non-fat hazelnut mocha with extra foam. I heard he broke the legs of the last person who ordered that while screaming, "We don't serve those kinds of drinks here you dirty hippy!!!"

(Via Sci-Fi Wire)

In Which A Sad Banker Does Something Drastic

2011-02-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back, my very good friend (and occasional Geek-tastic contributor) Mike Noyes approached me with a concept for a short film he wanted to make. The general idea was to make something really simple, that we could shoot in a day and which would only require the two of us to make.

The result is what you see above. We hope you like it. Filming it was definitely an . . . . interesting experience for me. Just watch it and you'll understand.

This is actually the first of a series of unrelated short films we'd like to make. I'll be sure to post more of them here as they get released.

Retro Star Wars Posters Make Me Happy

2011-02-18T16:02:00.001-08:00

I absolutely adore these delightfully retro-styled Star Wars posters by artist Szoki. You can see larger versions of these posters HERE as well as three other posters featuring Greedo, Hammerhead, and one of the Bith musicians from the Mos Eisley Cantina.

On a totally unrelated side notw, to this day it still amuses me that according to official Star Wars cannon, the cantina band members are referred to as Jizz-wailers. This is because the style of music they play is called a jizz.

Yes, I am only 8 years old.

Welcome To Geek-Tastic.com 3.0

2011-02-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

Hey there,

Well, it's about that time again. It's time for another Geek-Tastic site update. We are now on version 3.0 of the site. For those of you who recall, version 2.0 involved the site jumping from being hosted privately by my good friend Josh Lander to being hosted by the online community called Squarespace.

The move to Squarespace was good at the time because it offered a number of things that private hosting through Josh couldn't. First and foremost, it freed up my poor Josh from having to work on the site all the time for no pay. Thanks for all of that work Josh. I really do appreciate everything you've done for the site. :)

The move also allowed me to take more control of the look of the site. Squarespace is great with some of their templates and tools to design things. The site suddenly looked a bit more professional, and I was also able to have more direct access to site controls and was better able to monitor site usage. However, there were a number of things about the move that I didn't like.

The biggest detractor to Squarespace was the price. It cost $100 to sign up for one year, and that yearly price just jumped up to $150 a year. I'll be honest here, I like having this site, but it's really just meant to be a creative outlet and hobby where I share cool news that I find and try to stretch my writing muscles a bit. I can't really afford to spend $150 a year to keep the site going (that's not even counting URL registry fees and the cost of a Flickr pro account) on a site that I haven't really been posting to regularly anyways for the past year. I needed to find an alternative, and preferably a free one if I could.

I had used Google's Blogger site before, but this was years ago and I didn't care for it at the time. It seemed too restricted for what I wanted. Recently though, my friend Robert Magness asked me to design a new site for the Matt and Wes vs. The Zombie Apocalypse web series using the Blogger tools and that experience was a bit of a revelation for me. I'll freely admit that I'm not the most tech savvy guy in the world, but even I was able to hop into Blogger's tools and figure out how to make a decent looking site in only an hour or two.

I was so happy with this experience, I decided right then and there to move Geek-tastic over to blogger. The options it now offers are exactly what I wanted. It's easy to use and set up, I was able to import over all of my other content from Squarespace, and best of all . . . it's free.

As an added bonus, I am able once again to set up contributor accounts for others who write things for the site. This was something that Squarespace didn't offer unless I wanted to shell out even more money. You have no idea how happy this makes me. I felt really bad when suddenly I was the only person who could access the site once I moved from Josh's hosting to Squarespace. Thankfully, that isn't a problem any more.

There are some small downsides to moving to Blogger though, but they're minor. First, all of the pictures that were hosted on my previous Squarespace site will be lost once that site gets shut down in a month or two. To combat this, I've updated the last year or so worth of posts so that the images in the articles are hosted elsewhere. That means that if you go looking through the site's archives, you will probably notice that a little over a year out, a lot of posts will be missing photos. I'm sorry about that, but there's just too many posts to update (0ver 1,300) and I couldn't get to them all. Besides, most people aren't going to be looking up a lot of dated news from over a year ago anyways. Hopefully, you'll forgive me for some bad, older posts.

Also, I can't seem to figure out how to make the Web Comic button in the main navigation bar become a link that takes you directly to the separate Geek-Tastic Web Comic site. The best I can do for now is to provide a link on that page to the Web Comic site. I apologize for the requirement of a second click-through. If anyone knows how I can fix that, please by all means feel free to let me know in the comments, or email me at geek.tastic@yahoo.com.

Ok, enough rambling on my part. I hope you like the new layout of the site. I've made some changes to the navigation bar on the right, as you can see. I will most likely continue to make tweaks and fixes to the format going forward too. Let me know what you guys think of it.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled Nerd Blog.

I Want To Go To There

2011-02-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

I absolutely love this map that combines a ton of different fantasy worlds as if they were all part of the same world. Seeing things mapped out like this just makes me wonder about certain things too. If all of the fantasy lands were indeed laid out like this, how have the Orcs from Mordor not slaughtered the Who's from Whoville by now? And what about the Elves who "go west" in the Lord of the Rings books? Are they all going to hang out where the Wild Things are?

What about Hyrule? Does Ganon have evil plans to invade the Labyrinth of Jareth? There's just so many questions that this map poses.

As cool as the map is though, it's seriously missing some major fantasy lands. No Mushroom Kingdom? WTF? I demand to know where Princess Peach's kingdom falls amongst all of this. I would have sworn that it was next to Hyrule.

Great Scott! Why Can't This Be A Full Series?!?!?!

2011-02-08T17:10:00.000-08:00

Even if you aren't a big Superman fan, you need to devote a minute of your day to watching this fan-made animated short. It's quite possibly the best looking animated superman I've ever seen, and this is coming from a guy who loved the 90's Superman series and the Justice League Cartoons.

For this short, animator Robb Pratt took the music from the classic Superman serials of the 40's and hand drew a classic looking version of the Man of Steel vs. a giant Robot.

The results are a thing of pure beauty. The only negative to this short is the knowledge that it is only a minute long, and the possibility of us ever getting a full 30 minute animated series that looks even half as good as this is more remote than my chances from actually being born on Krypton myself.

Sigh.

Yes, Batman Would Still Win!

2011-02-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

It doesn't matter who he faces. It doesn't matter if they are indestructable. It doesn't matter if they are gods. It doesn't matter if they are bigger than planets in size.

In the end, Batman will find a way to beat them. That's just the way it is.

"How?" you ask. "How could one single man possibly defeat Galactus, the destroyer of worlds?"

Because he's the God Damned Batman. That's how.

(Via the Sci-Fi Wire [which I still refuse to call Blastr])

Know Your Doctor

2011-02-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wanted to start watching Doctor Who, but have been daunted by the show's lengthy history? Have no fear! Just check out this handy dandy infographic. It gives you most of the basics on The Doctor and his background that you need to understand who he is.

To see the full size infographic, click on the picture above, or click HERE.

Then, I would strongly suggest starting with Season One of the newly relaunced BBC series that started in 2005. If you want to be more current though, you can start with the 5th season as well since it is a reboot of the show to a degree, but then you'll be missing out on Christopher Eccleston and David Tenant and their great runs as The Doctor.

Friday Happy Hour

2011-01-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

We're long overdue for the return of the totally irregular Geek-tastic feature, Friday Happy Hour. This time, we are drinking in honor of the greatest damsel in distress of all time, Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.

This week's drink is classy yet strong, just like it's namesake. Get your cocktail glasses ready and let's take this party to .5 past lightspeed.

The Princess Leia

1/2 shot Bombay Sapphire gin
1/2 shot VeeV Acai liquor
Champagne

Instructions: In a champagne flute, add the VeeV and Sapphire, stir, then top off glass with your sparkling wine or champagne of choice.

8-Bit Tron: Legacy Makes Me Cry

2011-01-21T15:06:00.000-08:00

I cry because I wish it was real. If it was , I would be playing it right now instead of writing this sad post about it.

I know that because I've been gone for so long, I really missed discussing the whole release of Tron: Legacy thing. Let me give you my review of it. It's very long and thought out. Are you ready for it?

My official Tron: Legacy Review . . . . . LOVED IT!

That's all that needs to be said, really. It had light cycle battles, young Kevin Flynn, glowing disc battles, old Kevin Flynn, flying light plane battles, evil Kevin Flynn, a cool David Bowie ripoff character, Daft Punk, and oh yeah . . . . . her.

In short, the film had everything I could have wanted in it and more. I know some people didn't care for it. Those people are stupid.

Say Hello To The New Spider-man

2011-01-13T14:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I know that it's been two months since my last post. I know that this site has become beyond dead over the course of the last year. There's been a number of reasons for that, to be honest. Some of it has been due to me relocating up to the Bay Area. As it turns out, starting over in a new area and trying to make new friends and a new life is a lot of work. It takes a lot of time to get things going.

That part is beginning to settle down a bit though. I've gotten fairly well situated in my new digs, and life (as it is) is returning slowly to normal.

That hasn't been the only problem though that has been preventing me from writing on a regular basis. I've also been dealing with an overall lack of inspiration when it comes to spouting off on nerdy topics. I still love all of my nerd interests like comics, sci-fi, books and what not. I just haven't felt overly compelled to discuss anything in the nerd world for a while.

That is, until I saw this pic.

That there is Andrew Garfield in his Spidey costume for the brand new Spider-man film that is being made right now. Those of you who know me know that growing up, Spider-man was my end-all-ba-all favorite superhero. He was the first superhero whose comics I started reading as a kid, and he continued to be my favorite character to read until J. Michael Straczynski completely destroyed his origins and Marvel decided to end his marriage to Mary Jane.

Even still though, Spider-man has always been my favorite hero, because deep down he was just like me. He's a geek. He's a science nerd who through random luck is given these amazing powers that he uses to basically fulfill every nerd's dreams of doing awesome and heroic things and saving gorgeous damsels in distress. Therefore, to me, anything Spider-man movie related is important news. While I liked the first two Spidey films that Sam Raimi made well enough, it was clear by the third film that the franchise had lost it's way. When word of a new Spider-man reboot came down the line, I was suddenly both elated and scared.

I was elated at the prospect of never having to see another Emo Peter Parker dance sequence, but I was scared that somehow, something entirely worse would be made. Hollywood definitely loves to screw over sacred nerd properties, and Spidey is one of the best loved characters of all time. Screwing him up would be super easy to do. Over the past few months I've sat quietly, and I've waited. Occasionally, I would receive word of casting announcements and plot details things like that, and all of them worried me. The guy they cast as Peter looks like a total Twilight wannabe with douchey hair. The story would be high school centric, to get the attention of the same Twilight fan crowd. Things were not looking good for the new Spider-man movie in my brain, and I was getting ready to hate it on site.

And then I saw this picture.

I'm actually really happy with it. The costume is simple. It is sufficiently changed from the last film's costume to be different, but it still captures the look and feel of the comic costume. The guy playing peter is skinny, almost scrawny, just like Peter should be. I never liked in the previous films how Spider-man was shown with an almost body builder style body. Yes, his hair is a bit mangy, but you know what, classic 70's Spider-man had that sort of shaggy haircut. This is pretty much what Peter looked like in high school. Overall, I'd have to say that I was very happy with this pic after my first viewing of it.

On my second viewing though, I noticed something.

Look at the inside of Spider-man's wrists. Is it just me, or are those web-shooters built into his costume?

Oh . . . my . . . fucking . . . god!!!

If those are actual, hand-made web shooters that Peter Parker has to build over the course of the movie, then this new Spider-man film just surpassed all other film incarnations of Spider-man that have come before it. If I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing, this has just become in my mind the best Spider-man movie that has ever been made. I don't even need to see the film to know this to be true. If Peter Parker has to build his web shooters in this new film, it's already won me over as a huge fan.

My single biggest complaint about the last Spider-man films were his organic web shooters. I always hated the idea that Peter suddenly had glands in his arms that produced web fluids. The idea creeped me out, plus I thought it took away an important part of who Peter Parker is as a character. He's a scientist. He builds things. That's who he is. He's the kid who was tinkering with chemical lab playsets in his bedroom as he was growing up. He probably dabbled in child robotics kits and built models and learned how to build all sorts of useless gadgets, just because he loved to test and play with new things.

Giving Peter Parker organic web shooters robbed him of what should have been a character defining moment in the origin story of Spider-man. Peter's building of the original web shooters is a landmark moment for him. Using a home chemistry set, he invents something brand new, that no one else in the world has created before. He could probably sell his formula for his webs to a chemical company for millions of dollars, but he doesn't. Instead, he then builds mechanical devices to use his new chemical compound in a way that ultimately help others. It's the decision of a hero to use all of his powers, be they powers given to him by a radioactive spider or the powers of his own intellect, for the benefit of others.

I am now crossing my fingers and hoping beyond hope that what I think I'm seeing is true. Please Hollywood, don't let me down . . . again.

Bespin: The Star Wars Equivalent Of Las Vegas

2010-11-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

You know that the parties Lando Calrissian hosts have to be the most epic parties the galaxy has ever seen. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Photo courtesy of Mike Noyes.

Better Late Than Never

2010-11-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

I know, Halloween was over two weeks ago. It's mid-November now. Why the hell am I posting pics of Pumpkins, you ask?

Well, to be honest, I just wanted to share. These are the pumpkins that I carved this year for Halloween. I carve stuff every year as a matter of tradition, and yes my carvings do tend to lean towards geeky more than they do scary.

I'm really proud of my work this year though. The Spock pumpkin may very well be the best work I've ever done. He took over three hours to complete, but the finished effect was so worth the time and effort put into him.

The Ghostbusters pumpkin by comparison isn't nearly as well done, but it should be noted that I was actually pretty drunk when I carved that one, so I totally deserve a handicap for the scoring on that one's artistic merits.

I hope you all had a great Halloween!

Ever Wonder What The Standard Rate Is For Boba Fett's Services?

2010-10-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

Now you know.

As expected, hiring the galaxy's greatest and most feared bounty hunter doesn't come cheap. Only the wealthy can afford his services. This invoice shows some interesting things about the craftiness of Boba Fett too. You have your standard expenses for things like Ammunition and fuel, service fees and of course the actual bounty price, but what really makes Mr. Fett such an accomplished business man in my eyes is the fact that he is charging $50,000 for the Carbonite block that he dropped Han Solo off in.

If you'll remember, Boba Fett didn't choose to put Han in the Carbonite. In fact, he was worried that freezing Han would kill him. That was Vader's call, and Fett was none too happy about it. He was forced to put up with it. The Empire gave him a Han Solo popsicle, and he had to deliver it to Jabba to get paid. Does Fett just acceppt this random circumstance and move on? No, instead he gets creative. He lists it as a "Carbonite Aesthetic Display" and charges $50,000 for it and some wall mounted hangars.

Fett's ability to turn an unwanted situation into a profitable add-on is one of the things that truly makes him the best of the best.

On a completely unrelated side note, I really want a stack of paper with Fett's letterhead in the top corner. "Over 30 years experience!" Hilarious!!!