Bits & Bobs - 5th Edition

Bits & Bobs collects some of the cool things around the interwebs that I think are noteworthy and worth your time but don't necessarily fill up a full blog post or news item. On with the show...

BACK TO THE PILOT TRAINING GROUND

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Quick, get in close enough to take a picture of it for the recon mission -- without crashing into it. It's like landing a plane on the aircraft carrier in the NES Top Gun.

Remember the countless hours spent in a DOS environment trying to get X-Wing up and running on your Dad's work PC? I do, I must have spent hours upon hours trying to get all seven of those discs to install only to find that the sound card he had wasn't compatible and I'd have to play without sound. Regardless, so many days and nights were spent behind the controls of an X-Wing fighter in LucasArts' X-Wing simulator. Later on, they released a CD-ROM version for the Mac that I ate up with a spoon, but unfortunately it hasn't worked on any of my computers (along with the fantastic Rebel Assault games) for years. Enter GOG.com who swiped up the rights to X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and The Secret of Monkey Island and are offering them through their DRM-free download service. Good news right? Bad news is that it's Windows only for X-Wing and TIE Fighter for the time being. Check it out here!

GET READY FOR PHASE THREE FEATURING...

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Unless you somehow completely managed to avoid the internet all day yesterday (or any of your friends that are vaguely enthusiasts of popular culture), you probably already know that Marvel held a big Apple-like event at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, CA yesterday to announce their movie plans through the year 2019. The biggest surprises of the announcement were the revelations that a Captain Marvel film (based on the most recent and awesome Carol Danvers version of the character) is on the way, and also that the next Avengers film will be a big two-parter revolving around Thanos and his killer hand modeling. And the whole thing is going to kick off with a new Cap movie loosely inspired by the Civil War event. So who wants to update that intense info-graphic of the tentpole movie slate for the next ten years?

TERMINATOR: PARENTHOOD

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This week's Entertainment Weekly has a cover story on the upcoming Terminator reboot/reimagining, Terminator: Genisys (which I still can't spell the subtitle of correctly without looking up). In it, they reveal how this new film fits into the continuity and how a new incarnation of Sarah Connor has been raised by... a Cyberdyne model 101? According to the article: "Sarah Connor isn’t the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton’s steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991’s T2. Rather, the mother of humanity’s messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion." Interesting. Apparently it has James Cameron's seal of approval, but we'll see how it all shakes out next July.

IDW's Ghostbusters: When Dogs and Cats Lived Together

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...and we still have hot thermal mugs and balloons for the kids.

For a while, as Ghostbusters sat in a limbo state following the height of its popularity in the late-80s, comic book creative teams were constrained to one-shots and brief four-part minis that often were over by the time they just started heating up. One of my biggest complaints among all the Ghostbusters comics that have been released over the last 10 to 15 years is that you could feel the perimeters of the mini-series weighing against them. IDW's "Past, Present and Future" by Rob Williams had amazing potential and reminded me of the Real Ghostbusters stories that I still hold as my favorites - but without the space to really get its stride, many elements of the story felt far too rushed. Like a five-star meal that you had to wolf down in twenty minutes.

But for 36 amazing issues, IDW Comics and the creative team behind Ghostbusters were able to do something that hadn't been done since NOW Comics' run in the early 90s (and to a more productive but often forgotten run in the UK by Marvel Comics): a lengthy story split into two volumes, Erik Burnham, Dan Schoening, Luis Delgado, and Tom Waltz were able to craft one of the longest Ghostbusters stories told in comics in nearly 30 years. The ongoing series brought back several familiar faces but also expanded the world by introducing several new characters that have now become mainstays like Ron Alexander, Melanie Ortiz, and a love interest for Winston in Tiyah Zeddemore. And with an opportunity to breathe, Burnham was able to write an intricate arc where he could introduce elements that didn't pay off for several issues (or in some instances, took on whole new meaning by the time you hit Volume Two's Issue 20).

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Don't worry, Zee - all you have to do is challenge Death to a best of seven board game challenge to regain life in the comics universe.

But, as they say all good things must come to an end and it was announced in June that the series' big event Mass Hysteria would wrap up the on-going series, at least for now. And I started reading the first couple issues of Mass Hysteria, it became clearer and clearer that the creative team was crafting not just a fantastic bookend for their on-going series, but for the Ghostbusters franchise in general. If you start with Volume 2's Issue 13 and read to the end of Issue 20, the result is a meaty comic event worthy of its hype.

What a better way to highlight everything that makes the series great by revisiting the original story and turning it on its head with the introduction of Gozer the Gozerian's vicious sister, Tiamat? And no, she's not just coming to the Earth to inexplicably destroy it like all the popular villains of the 80s, she's back to prove a point. That where her brother had failed, with the same pieces, she could succeed. 

At least... that's what we're originally led to believe her motivations are as the series starts.

Rather than sitting down to read the Mass Hysteria event starting at Issue 13, if you plow through the entirety of IDW's on-going Ghostbusters series starting with September 2011's Issue #1, the result is one of the most satisfying Ghostbusters stories as a whole to date. Just as Dan Schoening would jam-pack each book's artwork with winks and nods to Ghostbusters lore, Burnham jam-packed each issue with storytelling elements that wove in and out throughout the duration of the run. Like any good on-going series, elements are introduced in 2011's Issue #1 that pay dividends 30+ issues later.

Naturally, everything in the series has been building to Mass Hysteria: the technology, the characters, even some of the trials that the characters have been through influence the story of the IDW Ghostbusters. In fact, with Tiamat, Ghostbusters is finally given its trickster Loki-type character, a being that exists only to mess with the well-being of our heroes because she takes pleasure in seeing them squirm. Forget bringing about the end of the world, forget finding a child to live again, this is a malicious god that sees all of the pieces on the board as her playthings and she's not afraid to admit it. Sure, as Fritz mentions in his review, it's a clever plot device to bring back a lot of familiar faces. But it's also a clever way of showing how those faces could have been used in different ways to different results (and the effects seeing many of them have on our leads).

The event (and one could argue the entire on-going run) also brings the Winston Zeddemore character to the forefront, something that so rarely happens. We learn more about him, see him in his personal life, and see him fall in love. There's a sorrowful but wonderful moment in Issue 16 where the four leads come across their future selves in what they believe to be a Tiamat trick or a temporal anomaly. The scene ends with an ominous tone for Winston that sets up a heroic moment for him when it becomes clear the only thing that can stop Tiamat is a human sacrifice. While Fritz in his analysis of the final Issue 20 believed that what ultimately ends up coming of Winston's sacrifice was a clever plot device to reset the characters back to status quo for what may come in future runs, I actually felt that it was one of the most devastating and bold choices that Burnham and the creative team made for the series. With Winston's arc in the on-going, you see how much pride he takes in his relationship, and you see him struggle to make it work given his choice of profession. And here, the only answer to save everyone that he's come to know and love is to sacrifice himself - and he quite literally does sacrifice his life for the greater good. But Tiamat proves that mere stream crossing and simple human sacrifices aren't going to be enough to contain her and she instead accepts what would ultimately hurt him the most: this relationship that he's poured his heart and soul into over thirty-six issues.

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...that cold-hearted snake. (Hands a quarter to Paula Abdul for her reference royalties)

In the closing pages of Issue 20, you're left with the wind knocked out of you because the storytelling has been so effective that you genuinely feel the loss. It's ironic that seeing Winston grip the live wires to sacrifice his life didn't nearly have the same impact that seeing him regain consciousness and finding that Tiyah doesn't even remember his face hit me like a sucker punch. I know in comics that death is only temporary. But I know that this is a story that's left unfinished, because now with all of the hard work that IDW has done to grow the Winston character across all these pages, we now have a genuine grip on who he is, what makes him tick, and ultimately what will hurt him the most. And it's happened to him. Winston, the boy scout who was only in this for the steady paycheck, is now a flawed character. And that's amazingly intriguing to me. How will he deal with this? What will this weight on his shoulders ultimately cause in change to him?

In a book that's grasped the humor of Ghostbusters so well through its entire run, the left hook that ending gives you is some damn good writing.

Proof that Issue #20 is a bookend not just to the IDW on-going series but also a chapter of Ghostbusters in general are the last two pages: a wonderful tribute to the end of the first film which shows an extreme knowledge of the franchise. Again, just a punctuation at the end of how lucky we are to have gotten a series for fans by the fans - it could be viewed just as a device. A simple, "Hey look, we did the same thing they did at the end of the first movie!" But when you know the reasoning that "Onionhead" was added to the end of the first film (by Joe Medjuck's admission, it wasn't to tease that a sequel was on the way, it was a gag. It was just a joke. That after all these guys had been through, there was still work to be done). After all the characters in the book had been through through this run, after all the creative team had been through - the long hours, the extreme pressure from the fan community, and the normal rigors of getting a comic book out on time on a month to month basis... there's still work to be done.

Bits & Bobs - 4th Edition

Bits & Bobs collects some of the cool things around the interwebs that I think are noteworthy and worth your time but don't necessarily fill up a full blog post or news item. On with the show...

HEAR THE AMAZING "CLOCKTOWER PART 2" LIVE

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As part of the upcoming 30th Anniversary of Back to the Future, Universal is planning a re-release of the film in theaters with a very special difference from the original 1985 film: a live orchestra will be playing in time to the action on screen creating a live concert/viewing experience. Composer Alan Silvestri has composed an additional 15 minutes worth of music to accompany the film. Along the same lines, UK based Secret Cinema has plans to bring its live event to Los Angeles to celebrate the 30th anniversary as well. You can read a recap of my experience at the version in London here.

TRUST THE FUNGUS

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Fans of the cult-favorite (but famously unsuccessful) live-action adaptation of Super Mario Bros. with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo will be happy to know that Second Sight Films is releasing the film on Blu-ray. A new remaster of the feature is the centerpiece, with exclusive special features including an in-depth behind the scenes documentary that Second Sight created in conjunction with the Super Mario Bros. Movie Archive fan site. The Blu-ray release was originally slated for March of 2014 but looks to hit stores in the UK this November. What does that mean for folks in the US? Unfortunately the disc is region locked to the UK (Region 2), so you'll need a region-free player in order to view it (much like the recent release of Joe Dante's The Burbs from Arrow Films, which has an abundance of cool special features and a new HD master, but is UK only). Hopefully Disney will capitalize on bonus features already being in the can and release the disc in the US soon.

GET A GOOD DOSE OF OXYGEN TO GET THROUGH THE WEEK

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Rebel Force Radio has an amazing podcast program called Star Wars Oxygen, which is essentially a masters class on the John Williams orchestral score throughout all the films. Hosted by Jimmy Mac and Former LucasArts Sound Designer David W. Collins, each episode focuses on a particular section within one of the Star Wars films on a granular level. This week, Episode 11 was just released focusing on the source music of Return of the Jedi (all of the "in-world" music as heard by the characters in the film sourced from an element seen on screen like a certain Rebo band). But if you have the time, or the ridiculous commute like I do, definitely start back at Episode 1 where the team dissects A New Hope, then Empire Strikes Back and helps you hear the score of Star Wars in a whole new light. The show is available on iTunes by searching Rebel Force Radio or by clicking the link above.

Capaldi's "Twelve" Is Growing On Me

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"Clara! Did I leave the gas on?"

In the modern-era incarnation of Doctor Who, when the Doctor regenerates or a new companion joins the adventure, it's almost like being a new kid and starting at a new school. Who are these people? How should I react to them? Why does everyone look so funny to me? It's a big adjustment period where you get a feel for things and if you get comfortable, it's a wonderful experience. In the rare instances where you don't get comfortable (see: Martha Jones and Donna Noble), it can be a bumpy ride.

Dammit I loved David Tennant and Matt Smith. The two of them exuded a charisma with a hint of danger that made the Doctor a compelling character. I still feel a bit indifferent toward Christopher Eccleston and I have a feeling it's because he never had that time to settle in and find the character. But when Peter Capaldi first came out of the gate, I had worries that he'd be more akin to Eccleston in terms of my feelings toward him rather than those other two lovable scamps we've been spoiled with over the past several years. Capaldi was playing surly, the character was confused and uncertain who he was and why (apparently a common side-effect of Time Lord regeneration), and his relationship with Clara seemed strained to the point where you wondered if there would be any chemistry there at all.

But over the past couple episodes (two weeks ago's Caretaker especially), how Capaldi is going to handle his Twelfth Doctor has become incredibly evident and I'm really liking it. In fact, during this past weekend's episode "Flatline", my wife turned to me and essentially said the same thing: "You know, Capaldi is growing on me."

Where Matt Smith played the role with a child-like wonder and a bit of a manic charm, Capaldi's Doctor reaches back to David Tennant's portrayal of the character and shows him capable of being cold and mean. While he still has the infusion of humor that keeps the energy up, there are hard decisions that Capaldi's Doctor makes where he doesn't even bat an eye - where you would have seen Smith's Doctor play it with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I don't see Capaldi's Doctor taking up residence in a town called Christmas and making toys for all the kids, like Eleven did. He'd call them all a bunch of "pudding brains" (my favorite Twelve-ism so far) and be done with it.

Similarly, as Capaldi settles into the role, we're really getting a sense of his dynamic with Clara. There was an extreme disconnect between the two of them in the first couple episodes of series eight but now their relationship seems well-defined. It took Clara's realization that this Doctor was not the same man that she had jumped into a time stream for, even going so far as to casting him out of her life, then mysteriously showing back up in the next episode for one last hurrah in "Mummy on the Orient Express", perhaps one of the biggest puzzling moments so far this season. After such a hard line drawn in the sand, did Clara have a change of heart and agree to have one last adventure? It seems there was a passage of time there that needs explanation. Whatever the reasoning, I was glad to have Jenna Coleman's Clara on that train as it was one of her strongest episodes of the season (right behind "Flatline" which was also a good showcase of what she can do in the show).

At any rate, with three more episodes to go in this very short series it feels like we're going to just have gotten to know Twelve by the time we're waiting for a Christmas Special and Series 9. And now that the guy has grown on me, it's going to be a hard wait indeed.