Vacation's End

It seemed like it was going to be an OK day.  Yeah, we had some snow and bitter cold, but the online road reports said the highways were OK.  But it didn't warn me about those city streets.  Nothing more frightening than being in bumper-to-bumper traffic and your turn's coming up, so you start hitting the breaks and turning the steering wheel, but you don't slow down or turn.  But I made it through the city in one piece.

What was so important that I had to brave such city streets?  Well, the first weekend in January is the traditional end of the whole Christmas vacation season, so I was hot to spend some gift cards.  Movie geek that I am, one of my gift cards was for Cineplex, so I figured it was finally time to see The Hobbit:  The Battle of the Five Armies.

The Hobbit was pretty good.  I have the same general complaint that I have with the entire Hobbit trilogy, and that is, when they expanded a single novel into a trilogy, you can really feel the padding.  At 2.5 hours, The Battle of the Five Armies is the shortest of the trilogy, but I was still checking my watch a few times wondering when they'd get one with it.  I remember coming out of the theatre after the second film and thinking, "But what's left?  Bard the Bowman kills Smaug, we have the Battle of the Five Armies, and that's it!"  And that's pretty much what happens in the film.  I'm a little miffed that Bard killing Smaug kind of becomes a James Bond-style pre-credits sequence, when it would have made a much better end to the second film, but whatever. 

As I'm sure I've blogged before, I love The Hobbit and have read it several times, but have never been able to plow through the incredibly-dense The Lord of the Rings.  So when I saw some of the large scale battles in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, I was always thinking, "Oh, I hope we get to see the Battle of the Five Armies done like this someday."  And we did.  And it was magnificent. 

I give it a solid 3 out of 4.  As always, the complete review is over on the main site.

Didn't do much else in the city besides see the movie.  I wanted to spend some Christmas cash on a new Otter Box for my iPhone.  For those not in the know, an Otter Box is a protective case to keep the phone from getting damaged.  Otter Box has the reputation as being the most durable in the world.  A co-worker actually ran over his iPhone with his car.  The Otter Box was destroyed, but it did its job and the phone was fine. 

I must have dropped my iPhone one too many times as my Otter Box was starting to get pretty beat up and most of the little trap doors that cover the headphone jack and such had snapped off.  The hope is to save my pennies and when my cellphone contract is up this fall, I'll upgrade my 4S to a shiny new 6.  Or, since Apple seems to announce the new iPhones in the fall, maybe by the time my money is saved up and my contract is done, they'll have unleashed the 6B or whatever on the world. 

And, of course, one of my gift cards was for Best Buy, so it was time for new Blu-Rays.  I picked up the latest movie version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Yeah, the movie sucked, but I love TMNT.   As many other critics pointed out, about the only thing they got right in the film was the Turtles themselves.  Well, at least their personalities.  Still not crazy about their hulking new design.

And that was it.  Headed straight home after that.  After slip-sliding around one too many street corners in the city, I was thoroughly and completely done.  Bring on the new year!

CanCon Movie Time!

So if you're ever looking to waste some time, one of the most interesting places to do it is at the National Film Board of Canada website.  If you've never visited their website, or downloaded their award-winning app, the National Film Board has spent the past few years digitizing literally thousands of their films and making them available streaming online for free.  It's great if you ever have fond memories of some of their cartoons, or feel nostalgic for Grade 3 movie day.

When I'm feeling nostalgic, I start looking up some of their Vignettes.  Remember these?  They seemed to dominate TV throughout the 1980s.  These short films, between 1-5 minutes in length, always highlighted a unique aspect of Canadian history or culture, and ran on TV in between the programs.  They were very much the forefathers of the beloved Heritage Minutes.  Of course, the most famous and most beloved one is the Log Driver's Waltz.  But in my last bout of nostalgia, I looked up the one detailing the history of the Bluenose.

Canada Vignettes: Bluenose 1921-1946 by Richard Todd, National Film Board of Canada

The way it's all in black and white, with a doom and gloom narrator, it almost seems like a 1940s newsreel.  And I always found the end so sad, seeing the wreckage of the once-mighty ship, just sitting and rotting off the coast of some island.

Now it's really interesting to compare this to the Heritage Minute about the Bluenose, which takes half the time to construct a tale of high seas adventure.




It's an interesting contrast.  How do you want to remember the ship...as a wreck rotting on a reef, or as the legendary racing and fishing schooner?

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Many many years ago, I blogged that most museums and interpretive centres seem to have a little theatre that shows a short film about the history of whatever it is the museum or interpretive centre is dedicated to.  "Why don't they sell that film on DVD in the gift shop?" I mused in my blog.

The last real vacation I took was about five years ago.  I went to an old college friend's wedding in Calgary, and took a few days to head out to Banff National Park.  One of the sights I saw was the Cave and Basin Hot Spring.  Once a bustling swimming pool and health spa, it is now an interpretive centre and historical site, detailing how the discovery of the hot spring, and the formation of a government department to look after and administer it, led to the creation of Canada's national park system.  Being an interpretive centre, they have a little theatre that shows a little film about the history of Banff.  And, of course, the film wasn't available on DVD in the gift shop.

So imagine my surprise when I searched for "Banff" on the National Film Board's website, and discovered that the Cave and Basin film was an official National Film Board production, and available for multiple repeat viewings on their website.  And if I really still want to buy it on DVD, I can do so from the National Film Board's online store.

So here's the little film you'll see if you ever find yourself at the Cave and Basin in Banff:  Steam, Schemes, and National Dreams: The Story of Banff National Park.

Steam, Schemes and National Dreams by ONFB, National Film Board of Canada

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And now we conclude our broadcast day.  Customary to do so with the playing of the national anthem.  In their "recently added" section, the National Film Board had a music video for the national anthem that looked quite familiar.  And then it dawned on me.  When I was kid and just got cable, one of the channels was the PBS station out of Detroit.  To acknowledge their Canadian viewers, when PBS concluded their broadcast day, they would run this film for O Canada!  I thought it was something those PBS producers whipped up, but no, it's an official National Film Board production.

And as the National Film Board website points out, the recording of O Canada was the one made for the 1976 Olympics.  So every time Canada one a medal, this was the recording of O Canada that played.

O Canada #1: National Anthem: 'With Glowing Hearts' by Ted Remerowski, National Film Board of Canada

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Sleepy Hollow

Here we are again with Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly watching and viewing of one of the many films I own.  The time, we peek in on one of my favourite directors, Tim Burton, and his 1999 film Sleepy Hollow.  This shows up in my notes at February 17, 2014.

News from Markworld: December 2014

 As always, I'm blogging my Christmas card letter, so folks whom I may have drifted away from who may be googling my name one night can also know how I'm doing.

Good day,

‘Tis I, Mark Cappis, once again including a nice little form letter in this Christmas card to let you know what’s been going in my life, especially in this year, 2014.

As always, writing this letter is difficult for me, as I can’t figure out enough ways to say “nothing.”  My life is still rather quiet and uneventful.  I get up, go to work, come home, watch a lot of TV.  That’s it.  My apartment doesn’t allow pets, so I can’t even get “crazy cat guy” on the go.

Work is still going fine.  As you may recall from last year’s letter, I am the afternoon show host and music director for 97.9 the Range in Westlock, Alberta.  (“Music director” at a radio station is the guy who actually picks the music the station plays, for those not in the biz.)  Well, there has been a notable addition to my duties.  In my little cluster of radio stations, 93.5 Prairie-FM in High Prairie switched to country music.  So the Company said, “Since we’ve already got a perfectly good music director for country music, let’s have him do both stations!”  So I do the music for both 97.9 the Range and 93.5 Prairie-FM now. 

Not much else of note happened.  I won a contest and got to be on TV.  CTV Edmonton was having a contest to give away tickets to the Indiana Jones exhibit at the Telus World of Science.  For the heck of it, I entered, and for the heck of it, I won.  Part of the prize was I got to go sit in the studio audience for CTV Edmonton Morning Live’s special Indiana Jones show.  That was a lot of fun!  Haven’t used my free tickets to go see the exhibit yet, but I’ll probably do that first thing in January.

And I’m still quite active on the social networks, if you ever want or crave more frequent updates as to the nothing that goes on in my life.  I finally brought back my podcast, too.  That ran last year from January until June, when things started getting busy at work.  Looks like things will be getting quiet again in January, so I’ll be able to launch the 2015 series really soon.

As always, my social media map:

Main site:  www.chaosinabox.com

Blog:  chaosinabox.blogspot.com

Facebook:  facebook.com/officialchaosinabox

Twitter:  @chaosinabox

YouTube:  youtube.com/mcappis911

Instagram:  instagram.com/chaosinabox

Google+:  google.com/+MarkCappis

I’m on LinkedIn, too, but I’m still new to that and figuring it out.  And I got my Ello invite the other day, but I’m not there yet.

Oh, and I got a new printer, too.  Which is why you’ll see this card has a nice printed label instead of being addressed by hand.  I may have lost some of that hand-made quality, but my wrists are thanking me.
And that’s all from my tiny apartment in Westlock, Alberta.  Have yourself a Merry Christmas, and all the best in 2015.

Hail Hydra!


Mark Cappis

Fishing in the Discount Bin - That Thing You Do!

Here we are again with Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly viewing of some movie I own, only for me to sit and blog and rant about it.  This time out, we're doing Tom Hanks' writer and directorial debut, the 1996 comedy That Thing You Do!.  This is in my notes at February 16, 2014.

Sunday Morning Movie Stuff

Well, yesterday, it was off to the city to do some Christmas shopping.  I won't tell you my usual tales of big city adventure, though, as it mostly involves stressed out Christmas shopping, and you are no doubt currently living your own version of that tale.  I hope, though, that you are finding time in the stress to take a moment for yourself, as I did when I wandered into a movie theatre to finally see Interstellar.

Christopher Nolan, the man behind the last trilogy of Batman movies and Inception is back with a science fiction epic about wormholes and distant alien planets.  How awesome does that sound?  As it turns out, it's very awesome.  Much like Gravity last year, this is a sci-fi epic that sought to root itself in real physics and the real science of what may be residing out in the vastness of space.  And much like Gravity, I was in awe at how they managed to capture the vastness of it all.  I almost regret not paying the extra to see it in IMAX, because if I got that overwhelming sense in just a regular theatre, I'm sure IMAX would have melted my brain.

In the not-too-distant future, humanity is dying out.  Planet-wide plagues have left food scarce.  Cooper was once one of NASA's best and brightest pilots, but when NASA was dismantled so its resources could be used feeding the world, Cooper became a farmer.  But a mysterious presence in his daughter's bedroom leads him to the secret bunker where the remnants of NASA continues working.  Out near Saturn, a wormhole has been discovered, leading to life-supporting planets in another galaxy.  Cooper is soon implored to lead the expedition through the wormhole, find the astronauts who've been sent ahead to survey the planets, and begin laying the groundwork for a colony.  Perhaps humanity can be saved by moving it to another planet.  Will Cooper survive the mission and return home to his family?  Or will his daughter be forced to continue his work?

In a way, Interstellar tries really hard to be this generation's 2001, only with a more linear plot.  The vastness of space...the big science ideas...and for the most part, it works.  It's incredibly tense and exciting when you see what can really happen out there.

The only thing that I really didn't buy was the ending.  After all the real science, the ending got a little too "wibbley wobbley timey wimey" for my tastes.  But, you'd come this far, you may as well see it to the end.

I enjoyed it quite a bit.  3.5 out of 4 nibs.  The full review is over on my ol' website.

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Well, with all the trailer goodness we've had over the past few weeks, what with Star Wars and Jurassic World and all, it only made sense that eventually one would come along that I'd great with a resounding "meh."  And that trailer is for Terminator Genisys, the big reboot to the Terminator franchise.

I've never been too crazy on the idea of all these Terminator sequels.  The first one and T2 form this wonderful 2-part story, full of awesome action and just enough weighty sci-fi concepts to push it over the top.  I went to the theatre to see Terminator 3 back in the day, and while it was enjoyable, it really didn't bring anything new to the table.  I was excited about Terminator Salvation because a prequel about the future war is something I'd craved for ages, but again, I walked away thinking that it really didn't offer up anything new.

And sadly, in this first trailer for the reboot, I'm not seeing anything new.  Kyle Reese is once again sent back in time to protect young Sarah Connor from a Terminator, sent back in time by Skynet in a last-ditch effort to win the war against humanity.  But when Reese arrives in the past, it's not the past he was told about.  Rather than a meek waitress, Sarah Connor is already a hardened soldier, and her adopted father...is a Terminator.  Reese must get to the bottom as to how and why the past has already changed, while staying true to his mission of protecting Sarah Connor.

Alan Taylor, the director of Thor: The Dark World is directing it.  Emilia Clarke is the new Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney is the new Kyle Reese, and Arnold Schwarznegger is back as the Terminator.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Lee Byung-Hun as the new T-1000, as I thought he was pretty cool as Storm Shadow in the live-action G.I. Joe movies.  Oh, and the Doctor himself, Matt Smith, is in it as well.




Terminator Genisys, in what's hoped to be the start of a new trilogy, hits theatres July 1.

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And of course, there was the big James Bond announcement.  We have the title of the next James Bond film!  In November 2015, James Bond will return in...

Spectre.

This makes me very happy.  At the end of Skyfall, I said I felt like that the James Bond reboot that began with Casino Royale was finally complete.  We had a new M, Q was back, Moneypenny was back....everything was back.  If only they could bring back James Bond's arch-enemy Blofeld and his terrorist organization known as SPECTRE.

Long story short:  due to some legal wrangling over ownership, the James Bond producers actually lost the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE.  But, last year, after years of negotiations (and with all the involved parties who took it personally having finally died off), they were able to reacquire the rights.  So, for the first time since 1971, it looks as though James Bond will finally be doing battle against his arch-nemesis.

Along with the poster and the title, this official plot synopsis was revealed:

A cryptic message from an unlikely source sets James Bond navigating the layers of a sinister organisation known as SPECTRE. As M continues fighting political pressures that threaten the future of MI6, Bond draws closer to uncovering a hidden truth that threatens to destroy everything he has fought to protect. 

The cast was revealed, too.  Alongside Daniel Craig back as Bond, our villain is known as Franz Oberhauser, played by Christoph Waltz.  His henchman is Mr. Hinx, played by Dave Bautista.  For our new Bond girls, we've got Monica Bellucci as Lucia Sciarra and Lea Seydoux as Madeleine Swann. 

Filming begins on Monday for a November 6, 2015 release. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Alien Resurrection

Time for Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly blog about some movie I own.  We finish our voyage through the Alien franchise with Alien Resurrection.  This shows up in my notes on January 26, 2014.

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky Balboa

Well, we're at the end of my journey through the Rocky franchise as we get to the only Rocky movie that I've seen in the theatre, Rocky Balboa.

The Peanuts Movie Trailer

While I`ve had a lot of fun blogging about the new crop of trailers over the past week, there's one that's been going by with not much notice that I've wanted to talk about, and that's for The Peanuts Movie.

Charlie Brown in animation is a subject that's always fascinated me.  Almost 50 prime time animated specials, 4 theatrically released features films, an 8-episode mini-series, and a Saturday morning cartoon.  Can you think of any other comic strip that's had as successful a career in animation?  I'm pretty certain, thanks to the cartoons, I was fully aware of Charlie Brown and Snoopy long before I knew it was a comic strip.

When I was a kid, Fisher Price made this toy.  You'd get these 1-minute long movies on these big yellow cartridges.  You'd plug the cartridge into the special movie viewer, turn the crank, and watch the movie.  I got it for Christmas when I was 4 or 5 years old, and it was my favourite toy, and no doubt started my path to movie geekdom.  And one of the cartridges I had was a Snoopy one.  Woodstock was on a raft in stormy seas, but it was eventually revealed he was just daydreaming in his bird bath.  Snoopy pulls him out and dries him off with a blow dryer.  That was it.  My first exposure to Charlie Brown in animation.

And then there were the TV specials, which I'd watch occasionally.  It wasn't until college that I really started appreciating the pathos in A Charlie Brown Christmas.  And when I was a kid, I did have a friend who had A Boy Named Charlie Brown on VHS, and wound up watching it a lot over at his place.  I caught a bit of it on TV a few months ago.  Since it was made in the 1960s, I forgot how the animation got a little...psychedelic in places.  

So, as you can see, nothing but heaping waves of nostalgia when I learned that this new, CGI movie is in development.

Apparently, Charles Schutlz's son and grandson came up with the story idea back in 2006 and began shopping it around Hollywood.  They eventually found a home at Blue Sky Studios, the animation studio responsible for the Ice Age and Rio franchises.  Steve Martino directs, and he gave us the Blue Sky films Ice Age: Continental Drift (aka the fourth one) and their adaptation of Horton Hears a Who.  In fact, it was Martino's adaptation of Horton Hears a Who that won him the gig, as the Schultz estate was impressed with his faithfulness to the original book.  I should mention that the Schultz estate does have complete creative control over the project, to maintain faithfulness to the characters.

And faithfulness does seem to be a key word in the production.  The producers have also acquired the rights to Vince Guaraldi legendary jazz scores to the various TV specials to be used in the film.  Bill Melendez, who directed the vast majority of TV specials and original animated films until his death in 2006, will once again be voicing Snoopy and Woodstock thanks to archival recordings.  And the voice cast was announced last week, too.  Following the tradition of the franchise, all the voice actor are age-appropriate kids. 

I just can't get over the animation in this trailer.  Even though it's modern-day, 3D, computer animation, the pains they've gone through to make it look like Charles Schultz's original 2D art is astounding.  The music, the voices of Snoopy and Woodstock, everything works great to successfully pull on the nostalgic heart strings.

Then the present day pop song strikes up and we get some 3D Snoopy vs. the Red Baron action and something about it starts feeling a little bit off. 

But it leaves me feeling cautiously optimistic.






The Peanuts Movie hits theaters on November 6, 2015. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer

Upon the announcement that we'd be getting our first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens by the week's end, I couldn't help but flash back to an earlier time in my life when I was counting down to a Star Wars trailer.  It was another wintery November, but back in 1998.  I was still going to college, and lucky for me, the dorms had been wired into the campus computer network over the summer...and it's high speed Internet.  Thanks to that, it was absolutely no problem to download the first teaser for Episode I.




One of the main lecture halls had even been outfitted with a projector that summer, so I politely asked one of my professors if we could use it after class one day to see that trailer on the big screen.  It still stands as an excellent trailer...which made the resulting film and the entire prequel trilogy just the tad more disappointing.

I've been saying for a few years now that I couldn't help but feel burnt out on Star Wars.  After watching the abysmal Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie, I just threw up my hands and said, "I'm done!"  I've been told that the resulting series gets better than the movie, and even though I tried to binge watch it on Netflix, I got bored and wandered off about halfway through the third season.  It just seemed like Star Wars had nothing new to offer me.

And yet, when Disney bought Lucasfilm two years ago, and announced Episode VII for 2015, you couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement.  George Lucas had long been declared the scapegoat for how poorly the prequels turned out.  Would new creative talent really be the answer? 

From what I gather, a lot of directors actually turned down the job, fearing the pressure that would come with doing a new Star Wars films.  One of my favourite directors, Brad Bird, was an early contender, but Bird's official reason for declining the offer was to finish up his new film Tomorrowland.  The one who finally rose to the challenge was J.J. Abrams, whom many felt would be a good choice, as his Star Trek reboot had long been branded a Star Wars ripoff anyway.

Very little about the plot and characters has been revealed at this point.  We know that Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford are all back as much older and wiser versions of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo.  With five confirmed actresses in key roles, it already has more female characters than the entire original trilogy.  Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi back in the day, is back, co-writing alongside Abrams.

Many are praising the look of the trailer for focusing on the new characters and not nostalgia, but I disagree.  The nostalgia is there in spades.  The familiar sight of X-Wing fighters, skimming across the surface of a lake.  An R2-droid, but he has what looks like a soccer ball for a body.  And many online are describing a swell of emotion upon seeing the Millennium Falcon fly again, taking on two TIE fighters, but this time over a desert instead of in the depths of space. 

Much fuss is being made over the new lightsaber, and how it has two smaller blades shooting out the bottom, forming a hilt.  Many question its practicality.  But then, how practical was Darth Maul's double-bladed lightsaber?  Would you not accidentally cut off your own arm if weren't careful with that?

So the nostalgia's in the trailer.  It's taking the very familiar, and presenting it in new contexts and a new light.  Unlike the prequels, which emphasized the new.  This is saying, "Hey.  This is everything you loved, but in a new light."

Yeah, I've watched this trailer a dozen times now.  Am as I excited as I was on that wintery November night in 1998, when I was the Episode I teaser for the first time?  No...I don't think anything will ever top the excitement I felt back then.

This feels new, and different, yet familiar.  There's not so much excitment, but cautious optimism.  I've been down this road before, so I'm trying to avoid heartbreak once again.

But seeing X-Wings in flight again just looks amazing.




Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theatres December 18, 2015. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Alien 3

Fishing in the Discount Bin once again, where I watch a movie I own and blog about it.  Way back, last January, I picked up the Alien franchise from a discount bin, and I've been re-establishing my nerd cred by watching them.  Today, we get to the third in the franchise, Alien³.  This was originally watched and blogged about on January 25, 2014.

Jurassic World Trailer! Oh, and Strange Magic, too.

With my main focus for the summer blockbusters of 2015 being on Avengers: Age of Ultron, and a new Star Wars and a new James Bond, I keep forgetting that we're also returning to Jurassic Park.

Even though the third one kind of underwhelmed way back in 2001, rumours of a fourth film have persisted for years.  And, a couple years ago, Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Universal Studios finally got their stuff together to make it happen.  Spielberg's just producing, though.  For our director, we have relative newcomer Colin Trevorrow, who gave us the 2012 indie time travel film Safety Not Guaranteed.

Back on Sunday night, we got a 15-second preview of the trailer.  I don't know why, but that 15 second preview gave me goosebumps.  I've never been able to put my finger on why, but I just love the Jurassic Park franchise.  It's dinosaurs!  Who doesn't love dinosaurs?  And in that 15-second clip, to hear the classic Jurassic Park theme played slowly and hauntingly on a piano...beautiful.

The trailer was supposed to come out on Thursday, but got bumped up to Tuesday.  I think the move-up in the time table had to do with the announcement that we're getting our first Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer on Friday, and that'll soon be the new king of Trailer Town.

Well, without further ado, are you ready to return to Jurassic Park?




First up, I totally geeked out at the end when we saw our hero riding the dirt bike in the middle of the herd of velociraptors.  I read Michael Crichton's literary sequel, The Lost World, as soon as it came out back in the mid-1990s.  There was a motorcycle/velociraptor chase in the book's climax, and I was upset it didn't make it to the movie.  So it looks like we're finally seeing that on the big screen!

And I also liked the bit with feeding the great white shark to the giant aquatic dinosaur.  No doubt a tip of the hat to Spielberg's legendary hit Jaws.

The trailer kind of confirms the plot that's been circulating online for a while now.  It's 22 years since the original incident at Jurassic Park.  InGen, the company that actually cloned the dinosaurs, was bought out, and under new management, John Hammond's dream finally became a reality.  But, tickets sales are starting to slump, and the novelty of actual, living dinosaurs is wearing off.  So, to create a bigger star attraction, those wacky geneticists start combining dinosaur DNA to create a bigger, badder, Franken-saurus.  And, because it's a Jurassic Park movie, it escapes and starts eating people.  

Chris Pratt, fresh from saving the universe as Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, is here as Owen, the game warden at the park who gets nervous at the thought of this Franken-saurus.  Bryce Dallas Howard is Claire, the park's manager.  The only returning character from the earlier films is B.D. Wong as Dr. Henry Wu, the geneticist who actually clones the dinosaurs.

My only complaint is that some of the CGI of the park itself looks a little too generic "future city."  But that being said, I'm actually kind of jazzed.

Jurassic World hits theatres on June 12.

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And while I'm talking trailers, here's one that came out about a week ago that wasn't on a lot of people's radars, but it caught my eye.  It might very well be George Lucas's final movie.  And that's Strange Magic.

About 5 or 6 years ago, I read a blurb that Lucas was developing an animated film about fairies.  At the time, the rumoured director was Kevin Murnoe, fresh off directing the CGI TMNT film (which, IMHO, is the best Ninja Turtles movie).  And that was all I heard, until the trailer came out last week.

The director, in the end, is Gary Rydstrom, who'd been circling directing an animated feature for some time.  Rydstrom started his career as a legendary sound designer at Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, where he won Oscars for creating the sound effects for Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan.  He started getting involved in animation when he did the sound design for Pixar's first crop of films, including the first two Toy Stories and Monsters, Inc.  From there, he directed the Pixar shorts Lifted and Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation.  He also directed the English dubs of the last crop of Studio Ghibli films, including The Secret World of Arietty and Miyazaki's swan song The Wind Rises.

The official plot description is a little strange, describing it as a jukebox musical (that means it's a musical where all the songs are familiar pop songs) loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, as various fairies, goblins, elves and imps do battle over a magic potion.  George Lucas himself gets a "story by..." credit, and that's why I'm saying this could very well be his final film, as now that he's sold Lucasfilm to Disney, he's probably chillin' on a pile of money and not doing much filmmaking anymore.

The voice cast includes Alan Cumming, Evan Rachel Wood, Kristen Chenowith, and Maya Rudolph.  The animation studio that actually did the animation was Lucas's Lucasfilm Animation Singapore (which Lucas formed to do the animation for Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and Lucas's legendary special effects house Industrial Light and Magic (whose only other animated film is 2011's Rango).  So while the voice cast sounds great, and the animation looks gorgeous, the entire trailer has me going, "I don't know about this...."

I just may go when it comes out, because I am mildly curious.  Strange Magic hits theatres on January 23.

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky V

Continuing my voyage through the Rocky franchise, we come to the one I'd been dreading to watch, Rocky V. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Aliens

Here we are again on Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly viewing of a movie I own.  Apparently, I broke a co-workers heart with last week's entry on Alien.  He read that, and then came to me the next day, "Dude, does that mean you're watching Aliens tonight?  I love Aliens!  Can I come over and watch it, too?"  That's when I had to break it to him.

For those just joining us, when doing Fishing in the Discount Bin, I'm working about six months ahead.  I watched this movie and jotted down this entry about six months ago.  That's why, in these intros, I always put down the date I originally watched the film and wrote my rant.  It was primarily to explain why you'd be reading entries about Christmas movies in July.

So, to my co-worker, I'm sorry you missed my Alien binge-watch by, wow, 10 months.  I'm working 10 months ahead now.  Anywho, time to continue the journey with Aliens.  I watched Aliens and wrote this ramble on January 19, 2014. 

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky IV

So I'm finally scratching the Rocky franchise off my cinematic bucket list, and now we get to one of the most beloved and most memorable of the series, Rocky IV.

Fear

Maybe it's my old age.  Maybe it's a shade of PTSD from when I hit that deer almost 2 years ago.  Maybe it's because the first real cold spell of the year always brought out a raft of car problems in my old Dodge Neon that I could barely afford to fix.  But for the past few years, whenever that first snowfall comes, I start to get really, really, really nervous about driving.  Especially driving into the city.  What if I break down on the side of the road when it's -40 out?  What if I slide through an intersection into oncoming traffic?  With everything that can go wrong when you drive in the winter, most winter days I feel more like just hunkering down on the couch rather than going out.

But I like to watch movies.  And movie theatres are in the city.  Suck it up, soldier.

And so, this past Saturday, with a bundle of nerves as my co-pilot, I headed into Edmonton.  There were a few things I needed, and a movie to be seen, so I was off.  I recently had the tires rotated and some leaky tires patched up on my car, and ever since then, the acoustics have been off.  My car just doesn't sound right.  I'm certain everything is fine, and it's just because the tires are different now, but it's enough to drive up my paranoia.

But I just turn up the music to drown out the sounds of the road, and just keep moving forward.  Having been binge-watching the Rocky franchise on Netflix, I spent the 99¢ to get Gonna Fly Now on iTunes.  A good, inspirational tune for when things are rough.  Yeah, it's cliched, but cliches become cliches because they work.




I've said before that I tend not to fret about spending too much money in the city if I buy at least one thing I genuinely need.  Lucky for me, this was a day of mostly things I need.  Now that winter is here, and I'm sliding off the boots and switching them out for shoes more and more, the socks wear out quicker.  So I bought some new socks.  And then some pants I liked were on sale, and some shirts I liked were on sale, and I just kind of lost myself.

From there, did a quick browse through Best Buy.  I always feel kind of sad when I walk out empty-handed, but there's really not much on my Blu-Ray shopping list right now.  From there, it was a hop, skip, and a jump to my beloved West Edmonton Mall.

The Mall is currently undergoing some renovations, and there's nothing wrong with that, although it does throw off my routine somewhat.  Down in the food court, they got rid of the fountain that used to be there, replacing it with a sunken seating area.  I decided to eat my lunch down there in order to take in the new ambiance, and I quickly had kudos for the Mall as to what they have down there.  They have cellphone charging stations.  Electrical outlets that also have USB ports built in, so you can plug in your wireless devices and charge them up.  Now that's a public service in this day and age.

Browsed through the Mall for a bit.  I decided I may as well start working Phase I of my Christmas shopping into the day.  As I blogged in the past, I tend do my Christmas shopping in 2 phases.  Phase I is just browsing and window shopping, getting ideas as to what to get people.  Phase II is when I've got that stuff figured out and actually buy the stuff.  Lots of others must have that idea, as the Mall is starting to fill up with the holiday shoppers.  I think I saw the ad somewhere that yesterday was when Santa made his big arrival at the Mall.  We may roll our eyes, but the Christmas shopping season is here.

Finishing my browse, I glanced at my watch and saw my movie was about to start.  I usually don't eat at the movies anymore.  With my preferences for matinees, I just find that I'm full from lunch.  However, now that I'm all bundled up in winter gear, I found that browsing in the Mall dehydrated me somewhat, so I hit the snack bar to grab a frosty beverage and some Twizzlers.

So what film was I heading off to see?  Well, with my love of Disney and superhero movies, you just know that Big Hero 6 was on my radar for this holiday movie season.

When Disney bought Marvel Comics about 5 years ago, everyone started wondering if this meant we'd get some Disney animated films based on classic Marvel characters.  Everyone was surprised when Disney animation dove into the Marvel archives and surfaced with Big Hero 6, a barely-remembered mini-series from the 2000s.  That was a time when anime was starting to dominated cartoon line-ups, so Big Hero 6 wound up being Marvel's interpretation of many of the superhero tropes from Japanese pop culture.  There was a guy who turned into a Godzilla-like monster, a boy and his robot, a Sailor Moon-esque "magical girl," and such-forth.  So what did Disney do with this?

In the city of San Fransokyo (a mash-up of Tokyo and San Francisco), we're introduced to Hiro Hamada, a science prodigy who finished high school at 13.  Fascinated with robotics, he now makes his money hustling in back-alley robot fights.  One day, he visits his equally-prodigious brother Tadashi at the university lab where he works.  This really sparks Hiro's imagination, and he begins applying himself to get into the university.  He makes it with his invention of microbots...tiny thought-controlled robots that can do pretty much anything you imagine.  The project gets Hiro in...but there's a fire in the lab which destroys his microbots and kills Tadashi.  A few months later, a villain appears, using Hiro's microbots.  Hiro deduces that someone stole his tech and started the fire to cover it up.  Accompanied by his brother's greatest invention - a health care robot named Baymax - Hiro convinces the rest of Tadashi's friends to weaponize their projects and become a superhero team to bring Tadashi's killer to justice.

This is just a fun movie, if it does fall into some of the regular cliches of the superhero genre.  But it's so fun.  And I love the characters that make up our 6 heroes.  It really does make me long for the days of when Disney's latest animated epic spawns a Saturday morning cartoon, because we barely get to know any of the other heroes outside Hiro and Baymax, and I would have liked to see them developed more.  And, even though the connection to Marvel has been really downplayed (much to the anger and annoyance of some Marvel fans), they still manage to work in some of Marvel Cinematic Universe hallmarks such as a gratuitous Stan Lee cameo. 

Yup.  It was just fun.  I give it 3 out of 4 Nibs.  A complete review is up over on the ol' website.

Oh, and as has become Disney tradition now, it starts off with a new animated short film.  This one is called Feast.  It's a relationship as told from the point of view of a puppy and the table scraps he gets fed.  It is unbearably cute.

With the movie done and my artistic soul fulfilled, it was time to head home.  But not before one last stop was made.  I was getting the warning lights on my printer, so it was time for that most valuable commodity of all:  printer ink.  $70 for the ink cartridges for my printer.  But, since I bought my printer brand new back in January, and only now is it running low on ink, $70 for a year's worth of ink is a pretty good deal.  Besides, I'll be sending out Christmas cards soon.  I've got mailing labels I'll be printing up this year, so my wrist will be thankful for that.

I returned home, once again able to drown out the different sounds of my car with the Nerdist podcast.  And when I made it home, I sat down to watch something very special.  Back on Tuesday, the 1966 Batman TV series was finally released on home video.  I don't own it yet, because it's a $200 set (if you're thinking about a Christmas present for me), however a friend did buy it, and he was kind enough to give me the code for the digital copy.  So while I don't have the discs, I can watch it streaming from the cloud.  With this in hand, it was finally time for closure.



One of my earliest conscious memories of television is watching a rerun of Batman  on the old Sunday morning TV show Switchback.  There was one cliffhanger that haunted me to this very day.  In this episode, the Penguin attempts to go straight, but Batman and Robin suspect it's a charade.  The Penguin is holding a carnival to raise money for charity, and Batman and Robin begin snooping around.  But, the Penguin gets the drop on the Dynamic Duo!  The Penguin strings up Batman and Robin behind the shooting gallery and then, out front, makes a friendly wager with Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara.  If they can hit the bulls-eye, the Penguin will make a generous donation to charity.  But, behind the targets, are the tied up and helpless Batman and Robin.

Yup, that's the deathtrap in this one:  the Penguin is going to trick Commissioner Gordon into shooting Batman!

That cliffhanger haunted me for years.  Probably because the unconscious Batman and Robin, strung up behind the shooting gallery, their feet gently swaying, looking as though they'd been hanged, was such a haunting image.

So, after seeing this episode of Batman at the tender age of 4 or 5, I finally got my closure.  How did Batman and Robin get out of this one?  Well, even though they looked it, they weren't unconscious.  They were able to lift their feet in the air, and deflect the bullets with their steel-toed boots.  The impact dislodged the Batknife that Batman kept concealed in his glove, which he was then able to use to cut himself and Robin free.

Closure.  The end.  Batman got out of his jam, and I survived a wintry trip to the city.  It's a fear I'm going to have to get over soon, as the winter blockbuster season is here, and holiday shopping needs to get done.  I'm thinking about taking the first week in December off to focus on that stuff.  Thanks to proper planning, careful incorporation of stat holidays, and just a plain ol' workaholic nature, the Company tells me I've used only three days of my three weeks of vacation time in 2014, and they'd like me to get more off the books before the year's end.  The fear of snowy roads and wintry city streets is something I'll continue to face before things are done.

Fear, for the most part, is a good thing.  It keeps us awake.  It keeps us alert.  It keeps us from doing stupid things.  But you know what they say about good things:  you can have too much. 

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