Link of the Day [7.03.14]

Links of the day don’t usually show up this late, but this can’t wait for tomorrow because it doesn’t match the celebratory mood. Nor can you wait for the weekend for this because no one would read it. It wouldn’t be read even this evening, but it’s going up anyway.

Sailor Moon is coming back. I haven’t really followed it. I’ve read the first couple chapters of the manga. I haven’t seen the original anime, but its being redone and will start broadcasting on the 5th.

Today’s link will give you an over view of the anime. It’s a good explainer not just of Sailor Moon, but of the “Magical Girl” (Mahou Shoujo) genre. Learn it. Know it. Live it. And once you do, you can graduate to Madoka whence we’ll talk.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/sailor-moon-the-explainer/

Link of the Day [7.01.14]

Because I need to step up my blogging game, here’s a post about visualizing algorithms. I think its rather cool, but YMMV.

I haven’t written much because no one’s been reading. I also need to write code. More code rather than blog posts. Need to write iOS code. Need to just code. I like this about algorithms though. It’s all about the code.

http://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/

Edge of Tomorrow

If you like to see Tom Cruise die horrible deaths over and over again, then Edge of Tomorrow is right up your alley. The movie is best thought of as the bastard son of Groundhog’s Day and The Battle of LA with Tom Cruise forever running into horrible deaths.

This movie evokes many other movies beyond Groundhog’s Day repeat until you get it right premise. There’s Aliens with the sergeant played by Bill Paxton leading the rag tag group of soldiers with a large ‘Tank’ type and a ‘Vazquez’ type as well. Then there’s Matrix with the Mimic enemy looking like the tentacle bots. For me, it reminded me of the Endless Eight debacle from season 2 of Haruhi.

Nice movie. Failing at the box office. You’ll catch this on HBO in December. It could be interesting. It could be non-boring. It’s a summer movie. At least it isn’t Transformers.

3 of 5 stars.

Blind

Strange dream this morning. No, not about that girl. Nor the other one. But about a girl. More likely, girls in general.

I was in a golf cart at some golf course with my mom driving. She was driving haphazardly giving no courtesy to the players out on the course. A group on the tee was trying to hit us as we drove. I watched ball after ball come lazily drifting down at us. They were all nice drives.

At one hole, my mom knew one of the players. He asked the usual stuff of me: age, work, married or single. When he found out I was single, he said he I was just right for his daughter.

So, I ended up on a blind date. Which starts off with me waiting at some family restaurant. The waitresses know I was waiting for a girl on a date, so were harassing me in the way women tease men. I ordered a drink.

Next thing I knew, my date was there. We exchange pleasantries and begin to order. I try to order something that doesn’t require me to use my hands. No shrimp! Maybe a plate of chicken. We place our order and have another drink. I would need to go use the toilet. I excuse myself, the waitresses giggle, and I head for the bar which was where the toilets were located.

I would run into people making sure that my date went alright. Cousin Bob and Cousin Gigi in her silly floppy hat smoking cigars at the bar. CapitolSwell hanging out. I finish and head back.

She had people there making sure her date went alright. Her dad, her sister, her brother, and her brother’s girlfriend who was annoying. She was hysterical that they were going to break up and quickly dashed from the table with the brother giving chase. There was a plant on the table that made it difficult to talk to anyone at the table. I tried to move it with no success.

I’m there at a table waiting for the food to arrive on a blind date with a girl whose family is occupying most of the table. We haven’t even begun a discussion.

Then I woke up and wondered why I had such a dream.

Dad Was Right

Always listen to your father.

He told me many things. I was always sceptical.  I was also hard headed and didn’t want to listen. I can do it my way. I didn’t need his advice. What does he know?
Turns out a lot. My dad was smarter than me. Knew me a whole lot better than I knew myself. His advice was a lot better than my insincts. He knew. 
I should’ve listened to him from the start. I’ll admit now, his advice was always better. Happy Father’s Day. 

Chef

Chef is Jon Favreau returning to a smaller, intimate movie. It is the story of a highly celebrated chef caught in a bind serving a menu he doesn’t believe in because he’s trapped in a restaurant that is not his. Favreau plays the chef who has a meltdown, gets fired, and has to pick up his pieces thanks to his ex-wife. He finds the menu he finally believes in in Cuban sandwiches served from a food truck which he drives from Miami to LA. This drive redeems him as a person and a cook. It also redeems him with his son who accompanies him. They reconnect over cooking and the food.

This movie seems to be Favreau addressing his role as a filmmaker. He was a hotshot as a writer with Swingers then moved onto the big stage by directing Iron Man 1 and 2. Did that move cost him his auteur status? Did the knocks against Iron Man 2 make him freak out? Perhaps, but to address it Favreau returned to a smaller movie which he wrote and directed.

When I watched this movie, I had already had dinner. With scenes of cooking, it made me want to have another meal. Don’t watch this if you hadn’t eaten yet. Don’t watch it if you have. It’ll make you hungry.

3 of 5 stars.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

In the X-Men movie universe, they never had the Dark Phoenix Saga. Therefore without Jean Grey, there is no Rachel Summers. Without her and her telekinetic powers in the X-Men movie universe, the filmmakers of X-Men: Days of Future Past substitute Kitty Pryde as the mutant to send Wolverine back in time.

Right there is all that’s wrong with the X-Men movie universe. No Dark Phoenix, Wolverine as the main protagonist of Days of Future Past, Kitty Pryde having some kind of weird telekinetic power, Weapon X program in the 70s, Bolivar Trask as the mark, young Mystique. Just plenty of things that are not like the comic I know.

The only hope I had for the movie was seeing Jean Grey alive again. And Cyclops! But I was secretly hoping for Madelyne Pryor and sometime later — Inferno!

3 of 5 stars.

This Is 10

This is Ten Years!

Not sure if you read my tenth anniversary post, but it has been 10 years of blogging fun. I have to post this screen cap to celebrate, and to have a reminder of the beauty that is the Registry at 10. Before it gets all ugly.

210168 / End of the road

Adios and thanks for all the fun driving.

I traded her in for a truck. It’s my first time riding high on a gas guzzler. The new one’s different. It’s a boy. Tommy.

I may be making a mistake here. We’ll see in a few months what will be happening to the bank accounts. I’m already sad that I no longer drive a Volkswagen. I’ve been driving in one for my whole driving life. Now I’m not, and I have this big truck. What!

Good bye good girl. It’s been fun…

Godzilla

I was expecting the latest Godzilla to be a reboot of the original, Gojira. Instead I got a “Godzilla versus” film. This one is Godzilla versus MUTOs, Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Objects.

The movie starts in the Philippines where a mining operation finds a large skeleton of something, but they unleash two MUTOs into the world. The first one finds its way to a Japanese nuclear power plant with Brian Cranston and Juliette Binoche as scientists worried about the seismic activity heading their way. The second one is stored in the US. These are not Godzilla. He seems to hang out in some far off land waiting for MUTOs to show up. I can’t wait for the sequel to see “Monster Island,” because I want to reference that classic Simpsons line: it’s actually a peninsula.

The MUTOs destroy Japan then head to America destroying first Honolulu then San Francisco. Godzilla follows them in order to stop them. He’s Nature’s exterminator. He kicks ass and shoots radioactive breath. He stomps and stomps, and doesn’t care for humans.

Neither does the movie. Humans and actors didn’t matter. It was just about big kaiju. I wanted to see kaiju; I got kaiju once more. Except it wasn’t so awesome. The action was there, but kaiju versus kaiju isn’t as satisfying as kaiju versus giant robot.

The humans weren’t so memorable. I couldn’t care about them. And their issues: trying to get home, trying to justify their craziness, trying to reunite with loved ones. Eh. Just give me kaiju.

Godzilla is a summer movie. Will it be the biggest, baddest of them all? We’ll have to find out. Here comes summer.

3 of 5 stars.