Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Graphic Novel Review | "Doctor Who" #1
"Legends tell of the planet Gallifrey, born before the dark time, home of the most powerful beings in the cosmos.
By harnessing the powers of a black hole, they traveled in time. They became benign gods of the universe.
Learned and responsible, they observed the universe, understanding causal effect, and monitoring and protecting the fragile web of time.
But there was a war. A terrible, devastating war, which they were party to...and in one second, Gallifrey, the time lords, a many planets, systems, and galaxies were consumed. Gone forever as the universe itself collapsed. "
What would you do if you were the only survivor of this great race of Time Lords from Gallifrey? What if you were The Doctor - one who can instill fear, respect, love and admiration all at once? What would you do to carry on your heritage and protect the time stream from the many demons out there?
Go on a hunt for the best chocolate milkshake in the known cosmos, that's what!
With the success of the BBC television series, Doctor Who is back in business - albeit in the color panels of a graphic novel series from IDW publishing. This series follows the escapades of the 10th doctor and his companion, the Brit Martha Jones, in the "Time and Relative Dimension in Space" (TARDIS) vehicle shaped like a London police box.
The storytelling and art are typical - tongue-in-cheek humour interspersed with some interesting gadgets, trans-dimensional villains, and of course the really tough choices: "Dark or Milk?", "Belgian or Swiss?" - milkshakes that is.
Not everything is fun and milky joy for the Doctor and his companion of course - they must face off against a villain, Sycorax, intent of collecting the Doctor to use him as prey for Sycorax's clients who like to hunt species on the verge of extinction. Sycorax himself is the paradigm of elegance, exuding class with menace, all the while mouthing lines such as, "Sycorax strong, humans weak, that is why we rock!"
This new graphic novel adaptation of the classic Doctor Who series keeps the spirit of the original television series and books alive. It has enough gadgetry, humour and thrill to keep us involved. The book ends with a bit of a cliffhanger in London. While this was the first of the series, I would definitely love to get my hands on the remaining books.
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Labels: doctor who, gallifrey, graphic novel, IDW, martha jones, review, tardis, time lord
Graphic Novel Review | "Therefore Repent" by Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam
"The Rapture is the name given to a future event in which Jesus Christ will descend from Heaven,"
What if the rapture went from being mythology to reality? So if you were living a "saintly" life as deemed by God, you would be led into heaven by the Son of God himself. If the rapture event came to pass, and if you were one of the folks left behind, how would you feel? Would you feel like a complete schmuck for either not believing in Christianity, or worse, being a Christian and not living a "saintly" life?
"accompanied by the spirits of all the saints of God, both from the pre-incarnation period and after, who have passed on prior to this event,"
"Therefore Repent", released in the United States by IDW publishing, is set in such a world - in a time after the Rapture has taken place. Those that remain, either were not "invited" to join in, chose to remain, or worse, could not get outdoors in time to be drawn up into heaven! People left behind either spend their time in "repenting" and trying to lead good lives so that they are part of the rapture the next time around, or just watching the world go to hell.
"and then the bodily remains of these saints are transported from the Earth to meet the Lord and be rejoined with their corresponding spirits in the air."
Before you go, "not another one of those morality tales telling us that we should live good lives for the promise of heaven, etc." read on a bit. Matters are not as they seem and there is more to the rapture event than meets the eye. Munroe and Sam have some sharp wit running through the story, and particularly towards the end, where everything is revealed. They are able to twist a morality tale into one with sharp humor and witty undertones. Along the way the story takes somewhat weird turns, such as talking dogs, ravens, third eyes, commando angels, and a real kinky method for email transmissions. 
"Immediately after this, all Christians alive on the earth are simultaneously transported to meet the Lord and those who have preceded them in the air. "
They all push you towards the climax that will leave you either really laughing your head off, or forcing you to think deep and do some soul searching as regards religion, life, etc. - worse, it could make you do both!
The art is in stark black and white with some great paneling. It brings out the mood for the book depending on what your mood is - dark undertones for a gloomy world, or a representation of the dark humor that is prevalent throughout the book.
" All are transformed into immortal bodies like Jesus' body, often referred to as the "resurrection body".
It is a good read - something that definitely forces a double take on organized religion and also makes for a good laugh. It is interesting that the book starts with a quote from Revelation 2:16:
"Therefore Repent! If you do not, I will come to you soon and fight against them with the sword of my mouth"
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Labels: book review, graphic novel, IDW, jim munroe, rapture, revelations, salgood sam, therefore repent
Friday, February 29, 2008
In memorium...
Rest in peace. Your progeny still carry the legacy forward:
Friday, January 11, 2008
Book Review | Graphic Novel "Unbeatable"
Is a nightmare just a dream gone wrong, or does the cause lie somewhere else? What if you wake up in a padded cell and then slip into endless nightmares day after day? Nightmares that don't make sense. Nightmares that have you dying day in and day out. How do you get out of the cycle and try to make sense of what is going on? How do you stop yourself from going insane? Wait a minute...what if you are already insane?
Matthias Wolf's first effort at a Graphic novel titled "Unbeatable" starts off really well. It shows a young man in pain, waking up in a padded cell with no memories of what has transpired. Before he realizes it, he is launched into dream after dream where all he does is fight the most famous warriors in history with a predictable outcome -- his death at their hands.
The book is slick -- well crafted images, great start with the plot unwinding slowly at times but with large leaps and bounds at other times.
He remembers growing up in a small town, his first crush, his mild mannered father who guides him along the various pitfalls of life that only a high-schooler can experience, when things seem to go wrong in seemingly small ways.
His father, the epitome of non-violence breaks loose and unleashes his 
fury and is then immediately paid a visit by a mysterious person whom he recognizes, but our protagonist has never seen before. A "creature" is helped in his escape from a highly secure facility who then rampages across the countryside and finds our hero's girlfriend as a victim after he has been knocked unconscious. To top it all, he wakes up in a padded cell with no memories and gruesome battles and deaths to follow.
The storytelling and art are great, with styles reminiscent of manga artwork -- somewhat comic, yet deadly serious. The coloring is fantastic - invoking exactly the kind of mood and feelings that the author intended.
The only problem I had was when the plot unwinds towards the end -- it seems too sudden and too convenient. While there are no doubts in the reader's mind as to what has been happening, perhaps a couple of more pages and panels could have been dedicated to explaining the concept in a more careful manner.
All said and done, this is a great first effort and if there is a sequel (or even other titles from the same group) then I shall definitely like to get my hands on it.
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Thursday, January 10, 2008
Book Review | Complete Graphic Novel version of Clive Barkers "The Great and Secret Show"
Did you ever get the feeling that there is something other than what seems "real"? A vague feeling of undercurrents in everyday life? That something lies beneath the surface, and yet cannot be seen, heard or touched? What if that something is a source of unimaginable power and yet we cannot know of its existence?
The real scary part -- what if by being at a particular point in time or place you chance upon the existence of this seemingly endless source of power and worse, misery?
Clive Barker is a master of horror. He can weave stories around you while you are busy concentrating on something else -- concentrating on something as dull as a post office clerk working in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere becomes somewhere for Randolph Jaffe the aforementioned post-office clerk. He becomes aware of something called "the art" which can help him gain access to a mystical sea known as "quiddity". To gain access to this source of supposedly infinite power, he calls upon Richard Fletcher to help him. Fletcher, through scientific (or other) means, is able to find a way through to the "art".
Here begins a battle for control of the art -- a battle that calls upon huge resources of power and energy from Jaffe on the one side and Fletcher on the other...a classic good vs evil battle.
But, is that what this book is all about? Does it come down to that overabused concept of good vs evil? 
The answer: doesn't everything come down to that quintessential question? Choices must be made in life and sometimes those choices are black and white. What you choose defines you and if you are the source of great power, then it probably defines an entire generation, if not more. Barker is able to conjure up these ideas by having his chief characters fight it out over various realms of the real and unreal. But his genius is the fact that he doesn't leave the storyline at such a simplification.
Four teenage girls frolicking in a countryside are raped by the "spirits" of both Jaffe and Fletcher -- to impregnate them so that their progeny can continue the battle. Yes, that's correct -- both of them fall to the level of raping the young girls. Here's where the gray comes into the battle. No one side is "pure" anymore. They are both willing to do whatever it takes to win. Does the end justify the means? That is what both sides seem to believe in this tale...
Well, guess what - eighteen years later, their progeny answer the "call" and come out on one side or the other. Or do they? What if they don't want to take the roles chosen for them by their powerful fathers? What if they are attracted to each other?
A whole host of characters go in and out at a dizzying pace in the story. We can see that Clive Barker did not intend for us to sit still and follow single lines of thought. There are subplots within subplots. For instance, who is the woman in the desert? Who is this Kissoon character really, and how is he able to exist in a single moment over and over? What happens if Quiddity is breached?
Do not worry -- Barker and his host of characters have answers to 
everything in this first (and yet complete) book in the "Art Trilogy".
Adapted into the graphic novel version by Chris Ryall (who adapted "Shaun of the Dead") and Gabriel Rodriguez (who adapted "George A Romero's Land of the Dead") the storytelling reaches new heights. IDW has a history of great titles, and this is definitely one of the top graphic novels from their stable. The artwork and visual images evoked in the adaptation heightens the understanding of the original story and also makes us involved in the sequence of events. It is extremely difficult to put down and makes for fascinating reading. I now want to get my hands on the second book in the "Art Trilogy" -- "Everville", or even its graphic novel adaptation.
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Friday, December 14, 2007
Customer service woes...
What is it about interacting with customer service that seems to drive us over the edge? Is it the incessant lack of logic and rationality that we have to face from time to time? No matter which industry (telecom, credit cards, insurance, you name it) the same problems keep creeping up all the time.
The standard answer of "the system says so, hence, it must be true" must be intentionally designed to bring out the maximum frustration among the customers. I have often been tempted to reply, "you know I am fairly competent in Computer Science and I know that the system is only what you put into it. It does not have a life of its own," but held off from doing so, if only to avoid the metaphysical discussion that would inevitably follow about "the system" having a life of its own!
Then it seems like the first person you speak to about your problem cannot help you, because the rules don't allow them to do anything about your situation. "But for a low fee of $14.95 we can ensure that you do not receive additional penalties!"
Most people will probably hang up, pay the additional fees, seethe about how they got screwed over and then forget about it -- until their next tryst with a customer service rep, when the horror starts all over again. Some resourceful people will actually record their experiences and force the company to pay them back. Interestingly, the companies still do not learn!
I had a recent experience with AT&T customer service. Here's the history:
- I was supposed to get a certain discount, every month, since July of this year
- as of last month (November) they hadn't credited me with this discount
- my bill was over $100
I complained. They said they would look into it but with complete skepticism, as if I was lying about it. They called the actual store I got the plan from and then came back, in an apologetic tone, stating that the credits would be applied and my bill would be reduced to what it should be. I then get a call this month stating that my cell phone service would be disconnected for not paying the $100+ bill. I called them back and asked what about my credits and guess what I heard?
"What credits?"
Imagine that. Long explanations all over again, part of which included the following statement from their rep,
"sir do you use your phone for voice service?"
My incredulous response: "can you please repeat?"
Them: "do you make or receive calls from your phone?"
Somehow I felt that this might be a parallel universe where the meaning of a cellular phone was somehow different! Anyways, after much plodding I was assured there was a mistake and that they would credit my account, etc. etc.
I ask: "should I just go ahead and pay the balance to ensure that my account will be valid?"
Response: "not required. We will fix this matter. Call us back in a couple of days and we'll see." End of call.
10 minutes later, my cellphone service has been...you guessed it -- disconnected! I call back from another phone and try to explain the situation
Response: "Sir, your phone has been disconnected due to non-payment. Unless you pay the amount in full we cannot restore the service. Of course, there is an additional charge of $36 to restore your service!"
I tried to reason with her and then got this response: "as a one time courtesy to you we will remove the $36 connection charge, but you must pay the balance in full!"
I ask to speak to manager/supervisor, who tells me more of the same but then I'm forced to pay half of the balance to get my service back. Apparently they will apply the credits in due course and everything will be adjusted.
Then comes the best part of the whole incident. As I'm waiting for the half payment to go through, the supervisor tells me,
"Sir we are not charging you the $36 fee as a one-time courtesy only! In the future, if you are disconnected, you must pay that fee"
Me: "you do realise that this happened because your people made a mistake?"
Her: "Sir, I do realise, but I am warning you that in the future this should not reoccur from your side."
Me: "but you still do realise that it wasn't my fault and that your people messed up?"
Her: "Sir I understand, but I'm just laying the ground rules and expectations for future dealings!" (who speaks like this in real life???)
Me (mixed exasperation with attempt to not laugh into the phone while trying hard and somewhat succeeding to keep my voice at an even tone): "Ok, now I am laying the groundwork hoping that your people will not screw up my bill and then charge me for it, cancel my service and attempt to charge me for reconnecting it -- while it was the fault of your personnel, all the time!"
30 seconds of silence on the phone and then,
Her: "thank you sir. your payment has been approved. Would you like to take down the confirmation number?"
Still no admission of guilt.
While it was exasperating that they had made a mistake and were continuing to do it even after I thought I had cleared it with their reps a month ago, the really annoying part is where they're condescending to me. The supervisor and the rep before acted as though they were doing me a favour! They did not really admit to something being wrong from their side, and yet were insisting that they were fixing the errors only as a "one-time courtesy." This is the whole attitude that annoys me. That and coupled with the fact that the first person you speak to is typically of no help. I think their job is to just stall and see if you go away. If you don't, then they put you on hold for a long time and then come back asking, "sir, are you still there?"
I have realized that the best way to get something worthwhile done after a couple of minutes of explaining it to the first rep, is to ask to speak to the supervisor. And failing that, ask to speak to their supervisor. Finally you do get to someone who can help and finally will. There was that one time though that one person said that I can't talk to anyone else simply because there is no one above him. I expressed surprise that I was speaking to the CEO of the company and that how nice it was that he was actually responding to customer calls! Well, sarcasm worked in that case and he transferred me to his boss who finally solved the problem.
So after many years of frustration in dealing with customer service, I finally believe that it is a cleverly designed system - a system to keep people out, where only the persistent ones get their problems resolved. So the next time, perhaps ask to speak to the supervisor directly and spare yourself the task of reducing your lifespan trying to explain the problem multiple times.
Oh and definitely record the conversations. Absolutely. You never know when it might come in handy.
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Saturday, December 08, 2007
Book Review | Graphic Novel version of Richard Matheson's "I am Legend"
So who decides if you are human? Is if enough that each person holds on to the unshakeable belief that he or she is human? What if everyone else thought that you were not one of them? Does that shake your beliefs or do you hold onto them with a vice-like grip -- afraid that your last attempts to stave off insanity must mean that you must hold these beliefs closer than ever?
Richard Matheson's "I am Legend" forces us to ask the question - if everyone else on the planet is alike and you are the only one who is "different," then who is really human - you or them? What if all of them were bloodthirsty vampires out to kill you? Every single one of them! Since you are obviously in an abject minority, does it really matter that you believe that they are "freaks"? Does it give you the right to decide that their lives are not worth it and your is more important?
These questions hit home; uncomfortably so in fact in this book. When it is in the stark black and white that is the graphic novel adaptation from IDW by Steve Niles and Elman Brown, there is no question that this is not just any other "cool" vampire book.
This book will dispel any preconceived notions about graphic novels or vampire stories. The protagonist is not a muscle-bound super-smart guy who uses cool technology and martial arts moves to bring down vampires. Robert Neville is just another small town guy who has suffered the loss of his wife and daughter to the vampire manifestation (or is it a "virus"?) and has to survive being hunted down every night. He's neither good looking, nor does he have a technology expert helping him hunt vampires. He does so the old-fashioned way -- shaping wooden stakes from planks and putting up garlic cloves everywhere.
He has to constantly fight his all too human urges -- fires within his loins for instance. This is a facet that keeps him tottering on the edge. Whether he will give up all attempts at humanity and rape a female in sleep or if he can control himself -- are positions that he must constantly evaluate and painfully so. He does try to attack the problem analytically to understand the "scientific" issue of vampirism even while facing failure from time to time.
Is he right in trying to preserve his ideas of right and wrong? Does he have the right to kill vampires in their sleep? Are they now the "humans" on the planet and he an aberration? How does one man fight an entire planet?
The movie adaptation with Will Smith will have a tough time keeping up -- not just with the original book, but more so with this "visual" adaptation. They already seem to have started on a wrong note by making the protagonist "Dr." Robert Neville - trying to infuse some sort of intelligence to tackle the problem. Well, I won't prejudge the movie until I see it, but the graphic novel adaptation sure does look like a tough act to follow.
If you haven't read this book, then well, you should! And it is also a good book to show those people who believe that graphic novels are for prepubescent teenagers to salivate over hot babes/superheroes in tight costumes. This book shows that quality graphic novels can achieve a level of storytelling that is often hard to beat.
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Thursday, November 01, 2007
Bill vs Bill.
Bill O'Reilly vs Bill Maher that is.
No, this is not a post where I compare the two - one supposedly a battle-weary veteran holding fort for the "fair and balanced" news network and the other holding up the bastion of the liberal left against the "evil" right wingers. This is not one of those situations where I find which one is better and say that the other one should shut up.
On the contrary, I find them to be incredibly alike! Yeah, that's right, alike! Hmm...somewhere in both worlds (the liberal and the conservative ones, for clearly, they occupy different planets) heads are popping and hearts are giving out simply because I'm writing this, nay, even thinking about it!
Well, surely I'm mistaken, they say. I must mean that O'Reilly and Maher are exact opposites of each other - why look at their shows, their views, their guests, etc. They cannot be alike - it must be an error of judgement on my part. Perhaps I'm a one of those left-wing liberals trying to bring down a straight-talking, shoot from the hip TV host. Perhaps I'm a right-wing, conservative who is trying to bring down a straight-talking, shoot from the hip TV host. Hmm, now what could be common among those two statements?
Let me get rid of the subtlety and sarcasm to just get down to the point. They are both biased, stick to extremes on their own sides, push their own left-liberal/right-conservative agendas, trash talk about and talk down to people they don't agree with and bring up hypothetical situations about the attack on the right/left.
They both take pot shots are each other (well, at least of late I've seen Maher do that to O'Reilly and I'm sure the other Bill can never resist a brawl). I mean think about it - they're both preaching to the choir, and increasing the division between their respective audiences. During a time that bipartisanship is supposedly at its height, what are 
they doing but fanning the flames? And they each blame the other side for doing the exact same thing that they themselves do. While O'Reilly claims that the media is left-leaning and they're baby-murderers and terrorist-supporters, Maher claims that O'Reilly and his kind are right-wingers who lust for oil and are...yup, you got that right...baby-murderers and terrorist-supporters!
The more I think about this, the more similarities I find between the two. They can always bring up hypothetical situations (or get guests who will do it for them) which supposedly can put the other side in a "tight spot". Come on - they're hypothetical for a reason - they are artificially constructed examples that can probably never occur in real life! If they could and did occur, then you wouldn't have to ask these questions would you? The answers would be fairly obvious!
I think such "media-types" are more to blame for the problems and "fear psychosis" in today's society - at least definitely more than their targets, the politicians they like to slam. While politicians and other people in the news are expressing their private opinions, whatever they may be, such talk show hosts are the ones who are pushing these views onto the public, in what is probably a pathetic attempt to boost their ratings. And I believe that this is the worst thing to do - take side and play divisive politics without real convictions - just for increased ad revenues!
Here is a good example (and probably a rare one) of the two having a conversation...the interesting thing to note is that they still take pot-shots at each other. O'Reilly starts of by claiming that Maher has all these left-wing nut jobs on his show and then gets a good response about O'Reilly being the one who supposedly "plays it down the middle". Towards the end, Maher takes a shot at Guilliani for being a "cross-dresser" and O'Reilly takes him down, and rightly so, by asking him about what the clothes have anything to do with it.
Hmm, am I beginning to sound like them? Am I doing to them what I claim they do to others? Perhaps, but at least I'm doing it to both sides and to be honest, I have yet to see some ad revenue, and now that I've managed to piss off both sides, I doubt if I will see any.
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Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Movie Review | Transformers doesn't disappoint...all that much
I have, of late been reading the webcomic, "Least I Could Do" by Ryan Sohmer and Lar DeSouza. It is quite funny and really hits the spot especially if you are a twenty-something who has grown up in an urban environment. I had particular reason to think back about one recent strip as I was heading off to watch the "Transformers" movie by Michael Bay...
My thoughts exactly! Having watched a lot of the Transformers cartoon series when I was young, I was really 
apprehensive about the movie, especially since the trailers didn't seem to be really very interesting. And the part that I was most worried about - it's being directed by Michael Bay! Come on, he has Armageddon and Pearl Harbor to his credit! Even though the former was a huge hit and collected millions in the box office, I found it to be a dismal joke. So while expectations were not very high, I was hoping that my pre-analysis would prove to be wrong and that the movie would blow me out of my seat, and luckily for me, that did turn out to be the case.
First off, let me say that the movie is an out and out action 
blockbuster - the action hardly ever lets up and makes for one thrilling joy ride after another. It starts with a bang and then keeps up a fast breakneck pace. So, the only reason you would get bored, is if your idea of a night at the movies is sitting at home watching a Freddie Prince Jr. movie marathon in your pink pajamas with a batch of tissue paper!
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie because it has all the ingredients for a great summer blockbuster -- great action, fantastic special effects, fast storytelling, nostalgic memories of weekends spent watching the Transformers cartoons in our childhood, hot women, great cars and a bit of wit! Yes, that's right - they have some intentionally funny moments, at least in the first half of the movie. Most of the funny incidents and one-liners come from the unwilling protagonist played by Shia LaBeouf. He's a bumbling idiot who is always picked on by the jocks and can't seem to make women notice him, even if he spent many years studying in the same classroom with them. He gains centerstage attention because he unwittingly obtains the directions to a source of great power - something that two robot armies, who have been waging war for millennia, have been seeking for a long time.
The "Automatons" and the "Decepticons" are the good and bad guys, respectively. The former are trying to prevent the latter from achieving their goals - of taking over the Universe, presumably. Earth becomes the staging point for their battle, because "Megatron", the leader of the Decepticons has crashed here thousands of years ago and him and a vital instrument are missing and are the central objects of an intense 
struggle and search by the others. They have the ability to transform themselves at will and take on the looks and behaviour of any machinery -- from cars to stereos to army vehicles to aircraft to even cell phones. Some of these robots have been on Earth for many years, trying to understand the nuances of human civilization all the while searching for their objective. One, "Bumblebee" in particular, has the mission of protecting our hero.
So this is the perfect setup for Robot armies to invade the Earth and then start pounding each other without any regard for human life or property. What results is a carnage of intense violence and breathtaking action and special effects sequences. The camera work is also a delight to watch and some of the slow-motion sequences add a nice touch to the movie. There is one particular scene, shot in slow motion, of a car transforming itself into a robot while jumping over a shocked woman and at the same time trying to avoid missiles being fired at it. The scream of the woman, slowed down while still retaining a high pitch brings in a touch of humour to the entire situation.
The second half of the movie starts to become a bit cliched though - while the action still remains at a top level, the 
storyline and dialogues seem to take a serious nosedive, often times bordering on the nonsensical. The dialogues between "Optimums Prime" (the leader of the good guys, Automatons) and "Megatron" (the leader of the Decepticons) become cheesier and cheesier as the action seems to get hotter. Its look as though the scriptwriters and directors got caught up in planning and writing up all the action sequences that they seemed to have forgotten that a movies must also have dialogues and at the last minute patched in cliched, typical dialogues from various disaster movies. Lines akin to "these fragile humans do not deserve to exist", and "they must make their own choice", or even the spiel about how we are a "young race" who must "find our own way" and "our way of life needs protecting", etc. are uttered far too often.
Then there seems to be the whole idea of all the bad guys disguising themselves as authoritarian vehicles - either police cars of military vehicles (helicopters, tanks, military 
trucks, etc.) while the good guys get to be cool sports cars, road trucks, pickups, etc. In fact, most of the bad guys are military vehicles. Is Michael Bay trying to send "subliminal" messages about the current war and political situation? Is he trying to state that the military and the government are bad? Is this a dig on the military-industrial complex, perhaps? Oh, the subtlety! Surely no one noticed this as it was not thrown on their face a few hundred times! While directing good action sequences seems to be Bay's forte, subtlety and smartness surely doesn't seem to be.
Of course, the cast and their so-called acting wasn't very great either. Except for Labeouf, everyone else seemed to be labouring through their roles and acting in a bemused sort of way - since they must now act with non-existent actors all around them (the special effects, robots, etc.), they seem to be finding it difficult to adjust eye and body movements to obtain a natural effect. What results 
is a loss of sync between the live actors and the CGI. While Megan Fox was the eye-candy for the movie, she did have a decent role and performed admirably well. Rachel Taylor, with her thick Australian 
accent, was a bit irritating as the "special advisor" to the defense secretary. She doesn't seem to know anything about the tech stuff that she was talking about, which kind of lets her off the hot seat a bit, as much of the tech stuff didn't make sense anyways! Ok, ok, I agree - in a movie about self-transforming robotic aliens waging war on Earth, technical correctness may not always be the thing to look for -- but lines like, "can you hotwire this computer to connect it to that ancient morse code generator so that it could send morse code" and then pointing to and picking up the computer monitor was not even funny - it was plain pathetic!
There were also definite gaps in the storyline and it seemed like they were in some sort of a rush to get the movie done and out this summer. Seems like they couldn't "transform" a bad script into a good one.
Of course, the most glaring point of the movie was the garish 
product placement - from the Panasonic SD card to all of the GM vehicles. Phew! It was in-your-face and hard to ignore. I'm not against product placement if it is done in style. Hey, they need money to make the movies and if companies will shell out money so that they get a couple of seconds of showtime, then let that be the case. But there must be some limits -- in once scene, Rachel Taylor's character removes the SD card from a computer and holds it for a second while showing it to the camera instead of doing whatever she intended to do with it. Oh, then there was the over-abundance of GM vehicles. One would think that the only 
vehicles that the world ever had were made by GM! But the plus side of this was all the cool cars that were shown - especially the new Chevy Camaro and the Pontiac Solstice. Both transform into some really cool robots, and the transformations are as much fun to watch as the action sequences.
Well, I could say that this movie is worth a watch and it does provide sheer entertainment - at least for the guys and geeks everywhere. If you were a fan of the original cartoon series and action figures, then it is a must watch, but be prepared to switch your brains off for a while, and ignore the bad acting. Apart from that, you might enjoy it, thoroughly.
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Friday, June 22, 2007
Gone Marbles.
Matthias Wandel has created a binary adder that uses marbles! Here is a video demonstrating how it works.
If nothing else, it look real cool.
Original link via Makezine.
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Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Mugger to "muggee"
A would-be thief in the western German town of Aldhenhoven found the tables turning on him, when he tried to mug a cab driver.
Excerpts...
After the 20-year-old stole the driver's wallet, a scuffle broke out between the two, in which the cabbie not only recovered his property but also took his attacker's wallet
...
The driver then locked himself in his taxi and called the police, who were amazed to find the mugger waiting patiently for them on the curb next to the vehicle when they arrived.
"He wanted his wallet back," a police spokesman said.
Well, the next time you decide to steal from someone, make sure he's not a German cabbie.
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