Tiger & Bunny - "All's Well That Ends Well"

Spoiler Level: Low- Medium

I've been trying out a few new anime titles here and there, but in general have found my interest is mostly in either the classics (such as Space Pirate Captain Harlock, now officially available from Toei and Crunchyroll), or updated versions of the classics (such as Galaxy Railways.  Hmm, maybe I'm only into Leiji Matsumoto stuff?)  I tried out the first episode of Aquarion but it didn't grab me, and I've had so many other things to watch that I haven't really been looking for anything new, especially in the anime department.  While I no longer resent anime like I used to, I can't say I've really been interested in it either.

Tiger & Bunny might just change all that.  I tried it out based on the recommendation of Captain JLS, who's also been a little burnt out on the anime scene, so I figured if it was good enough to get him hyped then it must be worth checking out.  And it definitely is.

Tiger & Bunny tells the story of a future where super-powered people (referred to as NEXTs) have been around for 45 years. So how does society react to this?  By putting them on reality television, of course.  And not just a documentary-style Cops-type reality show, oh no; "Hero TV Live" is a competition show, with points awarded for the number of villains captured, people rescued, and various other game show factors.  Each hero has a sponsor whose name is proudly emblazoned on their costume, and sponsors include Bandai and Pepsi.

And the first episode did something an anime show hasn't done for me in a long time-- after the first episode, I wanted to see what happens next.  That's what good anime should do.

And Tiger & Bunny has another edge to it-- it's being simulcast in Japan and in the US, courtesy of Viz, on their website vizanime.com.  Fresh, new episodes are legally being made available every week, subtitled in English, the same day they air in Japan.  Ha!  Take that, ya bit-torrenting bastards!

I don't know how long they intend to leave each episode up, but as of this writing this episode is still available at http://www.vizanime.com/ep/3149-all-s-well-that-ends-well.  It has limited commercials, but (a) that's totally worth it for same day release, and (b) it works with the format of the show, since the show is about a tv show.  If you've ever liked anime and/or reality shows, you should definitely check it out.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Ron Jones Project

Wow!  Apparently, I'm not alone in feeling that some of Next Gen's best musical scores came from Ron Jones.  As I mentioned in my TNG review last Monday, I discovered Vol. 6 of Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Ron Jones Project when looking up links for "The Icarus Factor" on Amazon.  The fact that it was up to six volumes made me curious about what exactly it was and how many more volumes were out there.  Well, apparently it's only every single music score he made for Star Trek!

The series runs for twelve volumes, covering all the music from Jones's 42 episodes during the shows first four seasons.

And the best part?  You can cherry-pick 'em.  Amazon, iTunes and eMusic all offer each track on all 12 albums as individual downloads. I started out building my own "best of" collection, but I'm discovering the more I hear the more tracks I want to get.  I may wind up with all 12 volumes before I'm done after all.

And I know I'm working against myself here, but I've got to recommend eMusic as the way to go.  eMusic is a monthly subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee and get a certain amount of downloads per month.  They started out doing more independent music, but have gone much more mainstream over the last few years.  The down side (if you're a more casual music listener) is that you are making a monthly commitment; the upside is that it is significantly cheaper.  All the tracks I bought through eMusic cost me $0.49 each as opposed to $0.99 at the other sites; the albums cost $5.99 as opposed to $8.99.  Yeah, yeah, I get a cut from Amazon if you click through using my links and I get nothing from eMusic, but I have to point out the best option when I see it.  I'll never get this monetizing thing right...

So, here's all the links to all the albums.  As I said, in addition to eMusic and Amazon, they're also available on iTunes.  Enjoy!

Source Code

Spoiler Level: Atomic.  There's really no way I can discuss my thoughts on this movie without giving away several key elements of the plot.  And for once, I'm only a week behind when it was released.  So only read on if you've already seen it or if you don't care what you learn!  And if you do care-- this is a great movie.  Go see it.  Okay, you can go now.

Source Code is directed by the same guy who directed Moon?!? I didn't realize that until just now when I got the poster image.  Well that explains a lot.  Both are very human stories about one man whose life isn't what he thinks it is, who are being controlled by people without their knowledge, and who eventually take their lives into their own hands, irregardless of how overwhelmingly the odds are stacked against them.

Captain Colter Stevens is an unwitting participant in an experiment.  He's being sent back in time, where he arrives in the body of teacher Sean Fentress on a doomed train in Chicago, a train that was destroyed by a terrorist earlier that morning.  Colter's job is to figure out which one of the passengers planted the bomb.  He only has the last eight minutes of Sean's life to accomplish this-- and if and when he fails, he'll be sent back to try again, and again, and again.

It's Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day, but with a deeper twist.  Because Colter isn't just going back in time.  When his mind is linked up with Sean's, for those eight minutes he's creating an entire new alternate reality, separate from his home reality-- a reality that those running the experiment call the Source Code. Any changes he makes there have no effect on his original timeline, but since history is the same in both worlds, he can explore the world inside the Source Code in depth and bring back information on the terrorist so he can be caught before he strikes again in the original reality.  But what about those other quantum realities he's created?  Do they only exist for eight minutes, ending when he dies, or do they continue on without him?

The more time Colter spends on the train, getting to know the people on it-- especially Christina, the beautiful girl sitting next to him-- the more determined he becomes to find a way to save them all. It's hard for him to accept that even if he saves them inside the Source Code, they'll still be dead when he returns to his original reality.  On his final attempt, he no longer cares-- he just needs to save them all in one reality for his own conscience's sake. And he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, as that reality continues on, with him now getting to live out the rest of his life with Christina.

Except there's one person he didn't save-- Sean Fentress. Colter may not have meant to, but he's now quite literally stolen Sean's life.  Now, sure, Sean was going to die anyway, but what about Sean's friends and family? One of the subplots of the film is about Colter trying to reach his father when he goes back in time, since he hasn't been able to contact him while he's been a part of the project, and it's a very moving part of the film.  But what about Sean's father?  Colter isn't going to know a thing about him or any of the other people in Sean's life.

The film also raises another intriguing point when it's revealed that since Colter came from the original reality (let's call it Reality A), in the altered reality he now lives in where he rescued everyone on the train (let's call that one Reality B) there's no need to send him.  Therefore Reality B still has a Colter waiting to be sent.  Now let's follow that for a moment-- Reality B now has two Colters. So when Reality B has a crisis where they can use Colter-B, Colter-B will begin creating new realities just like Colter-A did.  Colter-B will be sent into a different person's body, since it will be a different crisis, and the odds of Sean Fentress being in both crises are unrealistic. So let's assume that, being the same man of ability, emotion and conscience, he succeeds in the same way that Colter-A did in creating a Reality C that continues on.  This Reality C's divergent point would have started with both Colter-A and Colter-B in it, so Colter-B would now be living out his life in another person's body, leaving no need for that universe's Colter to have been sent... meaning there would now be a universe with three Colters!  And so Reality-C wouldn't launch their program until a third crisis came along, resulting in the cycle happening all over again. And again... and again... and again.  How long until there's enough Colters existing in one reality that he ends up meeting one of himselves? Would the Source Code Project even realize the full implications of what they were doing before they'd altered the entire human race into alternate versions of one man?

This is all the stuff I found myself thinking of after the movie ended.  And that's what makes this movie great.

Space Academy - "Castaways in Time and Space"

Spoiler Level: High

Well, that was a plunge straight down in quality.

Commander Gampu and Laura are exploring a black hole, when they get sucked in.  Except here a black hole is simply a blank spot in space that has no reflective properties.  And they don't really get sucked in by gravity so much as they pass through a force field surrounding the black hole which damages their ship.  Anyway, from there they crash land on a planet inside the black hole, and it's up to Laura's brother Chris, Tee Gar and loner Paul to rescue them, but first they have to get past a giant reptile monster.

This episode is written by Samuel A. Peeples, who also wrote the classic second pilot for Star Trek that succeeded in getting the show picked up, as well as an episode of the animated series.  As such, I wouldn't have expected him to fail Astronomy 101, but, well... there it is.  He also does a lot of technobabble which sadly sounds like stuff just being made up without any thought to whether it means anything or not.

What really makes this episode tough to watch, however, is Ric Carrot's acting as Chris.  He's got to show angry determination to not give up the search for his sister, but it just comes across as the actor trying too hard.  He was actually a fairly prolific actor in the 70's, and this show's actually fairly late in his career, so it's kind of surprising that he comes across so poorly.  Brian Tochi, on the other hand, does a very good job as Tee Gar, coming across as sincere and believable. 

Ty Henderson has a lot to do as Paul in this episode, and he does a decent job.  This episode marks Paul's official introduction to Blue Team.  Paul was seen in the previous episode, but he stayed behind in the control room and mostly spoke to Commander Gampu.  He has one scene where he's speaking to the rest of the team, but he refers to himself as just "Academy Control" and his signal is broken up. So even though he was already there, he wasn't part of Blue Team yet. The story of Paul's learning the moral that it's better to be a part of a team than to only care about yourself is played a bit heavy handed, but it's okay for children's fare of the time.

I continue to enjoy the model shots of the Space Academy and the Seeker, and the visual effects for the black hole itself worked well.  The monster is so bad it's good.

But overall, I'm hoping the rest of the series is more like the previous episode and less like this one.

Primeval - Series 1, Episode 3

Spoiler Level: High

The earliest nightmare I can remember having was when I was around four years old.  My family was driving our station wagon across a big grassy lot. We were driving to a giant, round water tank, where we were going to go swimming.  I climbed the ladder up the side of the tank with my parents behind me, eager to get in the water, but when I reached the top and looked in there was a giant alligator swimming in the surface of the water coming right at me.  I woke up and ran to Mom & Dad's bedroom, and was afraid of alligators and crocodiles for years after that.  And yet despite that, I wasn't scared of the prehistoric crocodile monster in this episode at all, and actually thought it was pretty cool, in a "woaaah, did you see that thing?!?" kind of way.

I relate this story only to drive home how much I really, really, really hated the spiders in the previous episode.

I'm also very happy to see the Helen story arc advancing so quickly.  This is the kind of thing that it would have taken Smallville all year to get to.  Sometimes less is more.

I'm also glad they didn't trivialize the soldier who accidentally swam into the Anomaly.  (Oh, and you would think if Helen has been traveling through these things for the last eight years, she would have come up with her own name for them, wouldn't you?) And while I don't remember if they went ahead and let the poor innocent girlfriend take the fall for her boyfriend's death, I have to wonder if that's the smartest tactic for keeping the story quiet.  I mean, isn't she just going to get on the stand and insist he was eaten by a giant crocodile? Okay, so people might think she's crazy, but won't that make the press run with the story even more?

Typing "crocodile" so much is making me miss Hostess Chocodiles.

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No link for Chocodiles.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - ''Wookie Hunt''

Spoiler Level: High

Wookies versus Trandosh- ans!!  Hot damn!!  You know, every now and then this show fulfills my fanboy dreams.  The "Expanded Universe" has always said that Kashyyyk and Dosha were in the same system, and that the two races were mortal enemies because the Trandoshans liked to capture Wookies for slave labor.  And here we get to see a bunch of Wookies kicking Trandoshan butt!  Awesome!!

This story really showed how Ahsoka has come into her own over the last three years.  It seems to me she's ready to become a full-fledged Jedi Knight.  It would also make sense, because it would then mean that Anakin and Ahsoka would start going on separate assignments all the time (something they already toyed with at the beginning of this season) and it would feel a little more believable that there's no mention of her in Revenge of the Sith.

So, all in all this has been a pretty interesting season-- we did a lot of bouncing around in the time line, brought in Darth Maul's brother, met Tarkin, and explored Anakin's destiny.  All in all, a very enjoyable year.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - ''Padawan Lost''

Spoiler Level: Medium

The Clone Wars returns for a two-parter to close out its third season, as Ahsoka is kidnapped during a battle by a group of Trandoshans to be hunted down for sport.

This episode is great for fleshing out Bossk's species, and works all the better for not having Bossk in it.  Bossk was the second ever Star Wars action figur mail-away figure offer, so he's something of a special character for me, and it really bugged me that the show had him speaking Basic.  I'm okay with some Trandoshans in general speaking Basic, I just don't think Bossk should be one of them.  So here we get a good dozen new Trandoshan characters, some who speak Basic and others who just do a lot of cool hissing and growling, which is what I always felt the Trandoshan language should be, so I'm very happy.

The Trandoshans are generally known as slavers, and while they don't do any slaving here they certainly have the same disregard for any sentient life other than their own.  By capturing and hunting so many other races for sport, it still plays into the same mindset, not to mention creating so many creepy background scenes of others they've hunted.  Check out the Wampa hide:

 

Which brings me to another point about this episode-- the animation looks almost painted.  It gives the whole thing a very exotic look.

I'll be back tomorrow with part two, the season finale!

Star Trek: The Next Generation - ''The Icarus Factor''

Spoiler Level: High

Now this episode is what separates The Next Generation from Voyager.  It's a character episode from start to finish.  No alien life forms taking people over, no mysterious diseases, no red alerts.  Just pure, 100% character drama.

Riker is offered a command of his own for the second time, which (if he accepts) would take him to the remote Vega Omicron system for an extended mission.  His adviser on the assignment is his estranged father, who also just happens to be an old flame of Pulaski's.  Meanwhile, Wesley, Geordi and Data are trying to figure out what's got Worf so cranky, which turns out to be due to his reaching the tenth anniversary of his Age of Ascension and not having any other Klingons around to celebrate it with.

It's pure Trek space opera, with character development galore.  We get to learn more about the Klingons, we get to actually meet a parent of a main character, and we get a lot of great character moments (such as when Data tries to tell Worf he has friends who cares about him, and Worf belows "Begone! ...sir.")  What makes this episode work so well is the chemistry between the characters.


I don't want to turn this into a Voyager rag session, but its very format -- being stranded on the opposite side of the galaxy-- made it tougher to do episodes like this.  Sure, you could still do a story like Worf's (if anything, it might work better with it being impossible to be able to celebrate with other Klingons), but there's no chance for parents or old flames to come on the show, and thus help flesh the characters out.

I love Ron Jones's music.  Every time the musical score stands out to me, it turns out to be by Ron Jones.

So all in all, this is the kind of episode that makes Next Gen fun.

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When setting up the links for this episode, I discovered there's entire soundtracks of Ron Jones's Trek music! I'll be buying this puppy.

The Adjustment Bureau

Spoiler Level:  High

This is the first time I've walked into a movie cold in a long, long time.  All I'd seen about it was the promo poster pictured here, and the only thing I'd heard about it was that it was written by Phillip K. Dick.  Those two items were enough to get me to go see it. To be completely honest, I even kept forgetting the name of the movie I was going to see. That can be the best way to see a movie sometimes, because everything comes as a surprise.

David Norris is a politician running for Senator from New York, when two major things happen to him-- he runs into a woman he feels destined to be with named Elise, and he stumbles across an organization that controls what's Really Going On.

The Adjustment Bureau is following a Plan, and we mere humans aren't supposed to know anything about it.  Now that Norris knows, he needs to keep his mouth shut about it and just go back about his life.  Which he seems like he'd be willing to do, except for the fact that the Plan calls for Norris and Elise to never see each other again.  And that's the part Norris can't accept.

From there the movie becomes an action thriller, with Norris trying to find and build a life with Elise again while constantly evading the Bureau's efforts to keep them apart yet not being able to explain why he's doing the things he's doing. 

The film raises lots of great questions about predestination versus free will.  Earth is obviously someone's experiment, 6.91 billion people with their own capacity for free choice, all subject to random chance, yet at the same time all being subtly manipulated without their knowledge, steering individuals to make the choices that the Adjustment Bureau wants them to make.  Exactly who and what the Bureau are is never fully explained, although it's clear that they've been guiding humanity since its inception, under the guidance of the Plan laid out by the Chairman.  Is the Chairman God, and are the Agency His angels?  Possibly; if nothing else, they're most likely the cause of humanity's belief in God.  Are they something more sinister?  Possibly; how can anyone deny two people true love and still be good? But the Plan all seems to be for the greater good of humanity, so they're definitely not evil. It doesn't just ask if we really have free will, but more importantly, do we deserve it?

And this is where the film's strength lies.  It's a fun action movie with unusual motivations that make you think and wonder, and I use wonder in the sense of both being curious and of being in awe of something bigger than you.

Green Lantern

Spoiler Level: High

Anyone who knows me knows I don't believe in or advocate illegal downloading, but when I read last night that a work print of the upcoming Green Lantern movie had been leaked to the web I had see it.  Everyone who knows me knows I have become a HUGE Green Lantern fan over the last decade, and I don't think I've looked forward to a movie this much since Phantom Menace, so I had to download this and watch it ASAP.

Perhaps I should have learned from history.  Sadly, this movie makes Phantom Menace look like Empire Strikes Back.

Ryan Reynolds does a fine job, and the special effects that were completed in this print looks decent, but the changes they made to the Green Lantern mythos are just so far off the mark that it makes me long for the days of the Incredible Hulk movies, where Daredevil was a ninja and Thor was two people.  Yes, it's that bad.

I can handle some changes, like Hal Jordan being more manic and cocky than he is in the comics, becuase (a) the character needs to grab mainstream audiences and that's what's popular, and (b) Hal's personality got changed around a lot depending on who was writing him anyway.

Long-time readers know I've always been understanding about changes for a new medium, but the changes here are pointless at best and insulting at worst.  Oa is no longer a planet, it's a now a pocket universe on a "higher plane of existence." I guess so it's easier for the Guardians (who are now also green) to watch the entire universe at once.  Green Man looks nothing like a, well, green man anymore.  Why?  What's the point of that? If you were so in love with your new design, why not just make him a new GL?  Then there's Kilowog, who Dennis Haysbert plays with a Scottish accent.  Well that's just great, a big mostly-green stubby-eared CGI guy with a Scottish accent. Kilowog has become freakin' Shrek! And Sinestro is gay, and constantly hitting on Hal.  Not in a funny, played-for-laughs kind of way either, but in a creepy, look-how-you-can't-trust-this-guy kind of way.  Now Sinestro doesn't become a bad guy yet in this movie, but anyone who knows anything about Green Lantern knows that Sinestro is Hal's number one nemesis, so that combined with the way he's portrayed here makes it come across as homophobic. And I'm all for gay rights and equality and visibility (hell, I'm a card-carrying member of the HRC) but giving Sinestro an extended gay love scene was just too much.

For what it's worth, Hector Hammond is portrayed as a total perv yet totally straight, which I guess was their attempt at doing a balanced portrayal.  And it is consistent with the way Hammond's been portrayed by Geoff Johns in the comics, so at least they got something right. 

Oh, and the musical score sounds like screeching cats.  Literally.  It sounds like James Newton Howard took a dozen cats, stretched them out on a rack and started whacking them with a mallet in a demented desire to get each one to yowl at a precise pitch. What the hell is up with that?  Didn't John Williams totally kill the "space sounds bizarre and eerie" approach in the 70's?  If they're trying to go retro, it doesn't work at all.  Then again, I didn't like the musical score to the Battlestar Galactica remake either, so what do I know.

Other than all that, the film has potential.  Like, say, in the way that Attack of the Clones was an improvement over Phantom Menace.

Lastly, I want to point out that this is exactly why you shouldn't download movies.  This is just a work print, so with some carefull editing (is there time for reshoots?) what comes out in July might not suck this bad.  And it could be that being such a big Green Lantern fan, my expectations were just too damn high. But if you absolutely, positively think you can not wait like I thought I couldn't, then here's the link to the bit torrent for the Green Lantern movie.  But don't say I didn't warn you.

So all in all, it's probably better to not pay any attention to this post anyway.

UPDATE:  April Fools!  I actually like Phantom Menace.