First, let's get my squeeing out of the way. I absolutely LOVED this movie. Love <3<3<3!!! I went into the theater with high expectations. I was not disappointed. It ticked ALL of my likes. Cap, you are my favorite superhero evar!! <3<3<3

*cough* *ahem*

( Attempted coherency... )

There's other stuff I loved, but the above covers most of the big things.

Incidentally, this reviewer's posts? I agree with all of it. ^_^

The novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. The author is a marine biologist and the book has a lot of bio jargon and stuff in it (that went straight over my head), even though it's technically a sci fi. Not a happy ending book, but interesting to read.

Web serial novel Worm was pretty heavily recommended on a forum that I frequented. It's a LONG, character driven, gritty version of the urban superhero genre. Also a somewhat downer ending in some ways as well, though not the same way as Blindsight. I haven't actually had a chance to read through it myself, so all I know of the plot/characters comes from the mess of fanfics it's inspired.

With This Ring - Self insert fanfic crossing over with the Young Justice cartoon. I thought it's pretty good, actually. It's a WIP, but the author has been pretty good about updating daily so far. (The forum can often get horribly laggy during afternoon/evening hours though.)

(more as they come to me...)

I hate this trope. I really really do. I hate it more when it shows up in science fiction.

( [rant] )

One final thought. Do you know what I want to see in a modern sci-fi story? The covert SpecOps team rescuing the brilliant scientist from a luddite (super-)villan who wants to destroy the scientist's knowledge/research, so that said scientist can publish their findings to the world and improve life for everyone. Bonus points if the Snarky!Commando refutes the villain's claims that humanity "is not ready" for the horrors that said discoveries will bring, by pointing out humanity already has existing technologies that is more readily weaponized, and yet seems to be doing just fine. Is there any of that around?

I was going to write something long... but looking back on my previous posts I decided to do something short and to the point for once. So, here are some thoughts about the various cities I visited on this trip:

Safety:

The two cities that I felt the safest was in Lucerne and London. This is despite the fact that there's often not a bobby in sight (not counting the guards in the funny hats which are more of a tourist attraction than crime deterrent in London). Now, London, this was explained away by our tour guide as due to the fact that every inch of the city is covered in security cameras (due to former issues with IRA bombings) such that you can't sneeze without being caught on tape, much less commit a crime. Lucerne...I have no idea why you can feel safe in a city that goes pretty much lights out at 7 PM even if you are alone walking the streets after dark.

Paris and Italy, despite often having armed troops in public locations (seriously, are you under martial law or something?) gives me the jeebies if I'm ever not with the group. These are also the two places that multiple tour guides warn us about. Paris is apparently a city where you need to be careful of being mugged. Italy is just a nation of pickpockets and swindlers. Given that several tour members fell prey to the swindling, and almost fell prey to "pro" pickpocketing... it is kinda scary.

Bathrooms:

Lucerne had the best bathrooms hands down. Of course, that's probably cuz it had the least population, including tourism. Paris and London are okay when it comes to cleanliness, but the restrooms are often either require or "encourage" mandatory donations. >.>

Italy is the worst, especially Milan and Rome. Many of the toilets in the public restrooms there don't even have the bench part of the toilet, just the underlying bowl. That's just... ugh. I'd take even the squat toilets of China from 10 years ago over some of those.

Ambience/Architecture:

Personal opinion time...but I think pretty much all the post-renaissance stuff is overly gilded and tacky. That just leaves Lucerne and the older parts of Rome. The Roman ruins are fun from a historical perspective. But personally I like the quaint calmness of Lucerne

General Annoyances:

* Breakfasts in European hotels suck; don't hold any expectations unless you're paying exorbitant prices for the gourmet experience.

* Every freaking country has a different outlet format. Apparently if you buy a set of international adapters, you get like 7 different ones for Europe. This makes no sense to me - why would you unify your monetary system but not the electrical things bought with said money? Wouldn't this make it hell to buy any kind of equipment/appliance that comes with a plug from a different European country? WTF.

* Hot water is an alien concept unheard of in many European shops. Including the ones that serve tea.

* There's nothing all that special about 99% of the ice cream shops (gellateria) in Italy. You just need to find that one store which offers unlimited number of tiny scoops of every flavor in the shop on a single cone for an affordable price. That is, I've heard of such a thing. Never seen it with my own eyes though.

* Beware the pickpockets and guard your purse carefully. Do not make any form of eye contact of do anything to acknowledge random street vendors coming up to you and try to shake your hand/take your picture/stuff things in your hand. If you do, expect to pay or have a escape route/scapegoat handy.

* Prices are horrendous all around, and that's even before you convert to USD. I try not to think too much on it in order not to spoil what's supposed to be a fun vacation.

So the third and last beta weekend has closed out. Only a little more than a month to go until the head start of release.

This weekend I put most of my time on playing an asura thief and sylvari ranger. Stopped at level 15 on the thief, having completed both Rata Sum and Metrica Province. Ranger ended up at level 23 by the end of the weekend, having completed The Grove, Caledon Forest, and about 70% of Brisbane Wilds. Also created a norn guardian and human elementalist just to view the racial armor, but didn't actually play either of those.

( Anyway, on with the review... )

Pics and videos will be out as I sort through them. If anyone knows of a simple and free software that can clip unwanted bits out of the start/end of avi files, or merge together multiple vids into one, let me know.

This'll be short cuz I'm falling asleep at my desk here. Messed around with the various options, skills, traits panels. Took another look at pet stats. Played some ranger, some ele.

( Read more... )

Images will need to be cleaned up since I took some UI stuff for reference. Will probably not be putting them up til Monday.

It was getting too long as an addendum on the previous impressions post, so I'm moving it to it's own entry. (This list will grow as more things occur to me.)

( snip for length )

First of all, I saw both of these as an in-flight movie and not on the big screen, so I guess any CGI or SFX that was made to have them look cool in the theater was probably lost in translation. I'll mainly be commenting on the other aspects of the movies than how they look...

X-Men was great, just like everyone said it was. The pacing was fast paced, the plot carried you along with every tide, the fact that you knew who was going to end up on which side didn't detract from the suspense of how things are going to get there.

The plot was... ok, it was pretty standard comic book. Let's not talk too much of plausibility of the bad guys' plan. There are also some other visible plot holes, but they don't detract too much from the movie. The more important plotline of Xavier finding young mutants in need and becoming a mentor to them was nicely done.

The characterization was...wow. They did an awesome job with the two stars – Xavier and Magneto (nobody cares about the villain). I especially like that they managed to give Xavier some depth instead of cardboard xerox of MLK Jr., let him have some flaws that make so much sense on him, and yet still make him the goody two-shoes guy. Magneto was more uneven if looked at overall, but he certainly had quite a few moments that really made the guy shine.

Most of all, there was chemistry between the two of them that just sizzled, arguably even better than frickin' Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen playing off each other in the previous movies. I can certain see where all the slash fics are coming from, because there are so many emotionally heavy scenes between the two of them that just make you go "Oh my god they are so totally doing it behind everyone's back."

The rest of the cast is good too (except the dragonfly-girl which made me go "bwah?"). Mystique is great. Banshee is great. Havok is great (though I wonder how they're going to tie him into continuity with Cyclops). The villains were...not that great, but nobody really cared about them.

Three thumbs up for X-Men First Class.

Next, we have Super 8, which unfortunately did not live up to the hype. I was expecting horror. I was expecting sci-fi. I was expecting more than just 3 frickin' scenes with the alien that the plot is supposed to be centered on.

Instead, we got barely pubescent teen drama, with all the you like her, I like her, she likes you, our parents don't want us to talk to each other... GAH. If I wanted a relationship chick flick I wouldn't be going to something billed as sci-fi/horror!! Who the hell wants to see barely-teen soap operatics in their sci fi?!

Aside from the kids who are pretty much living out of Lady Luck's pocket, everyone else... sucked. The deputy guy who was Romeo's (can't remember the kid's name) dad--nothing made me care about this guy thoughout his angst and dysfunctional relationship with his son and the later turnaround; whatever. I barely got what the hell was going on with the other guy that was Juliet's dad (I can't remember her actual name either). The other kids in support roles were annoying and utterly transparent in their roles for the movie. The alien, as mentioned before, was largely absent. The military – bleh, so annoyingly one dimensional it makes me long to rewatch Stargate instead. And everyone else was pretty much cardboard/fodder.

FYI: Horror is not randomly killing people out of the blue. That's just playing people for the shock value. It is not horror if we don't evey care about 100% of the people killed.

Worst of all, the climax was an utter anti-climax, and then it just skips to the end credits. W. T. F. Who wrote this crap?

Two thumbs down for Super 8.