Mmmm... sacra-delicious!

Yes, this IS a bas-relief of The Last Supper by daVinci rendered in tasty, tasty chocolate for the Easter holiday. Found at a local, handmade candy shop in my 'rents town.

The Original Five Fonts

"I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person."(Or rich enough, either.)

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:0bb6a07c-c829-4562-8375-49e6693810c7&showPlaylist=true&from=shared" target="_new" title="Laptop Hunters $1000 &#8211; Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion">Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 &#8211; Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion</a>

Despite yesterday's rant, occasionally an commercial comes along that I actually, well, not "like", but find to be clever and non-annoying.

And I really like this new Windows commercial, with a woman shopping for a laptop with speed, a good keyboard, and 17-inch screen all under $1000. It really shows how most non-techie people actually shop for computers.

Sure, I'll spend time searching online, reading reviews, and virtually building different configurations before buying a new rig. I do this for all tech purchases except for those under about $40.

I'm always amazed at people wheeling a cart stacked with a computer, monitor, and printer out of Best Buy, because I don't think that is the "smartest" way to buy a computer. They probably could have found a better deal online buying the CPU one place and the monitor another, or in a smaller store, or with a custom build.

However, the truth is most people buying a computer don't really care about these things. They perhaps have one or two tasks they want their new computer to do (e.g., surf the net, word processing, digital photos), and really don't care about most of the other features. They're more concerned about the price, getting the computer right now to take home (as opposed to the month & hassle it took to finally receive my new rig), unpacking it and pressing "on". This commercial demonstrates that perfectly.

Wishing a Plague on Comcast Town

There are few media-related things that irritate me more than television commercials. To avoid them, I watch everything through a TiVo buffer, and hit the "mute" button on the remote when watching "in real time" (e.g., baseball, news, the Battlestar Galactica finale). This is odd to some people, but I've been doing it for years and years. In the days before TiVo, I would videotape programs and watch them an hour later just to blast through the commercials. I'm exposed to enough advertising every single day, so any little bit I can avoid provides a bit of serenity.

Now, I'm also not a huge fan of Comcast, the local cable monopoly provider. They are expensive, sometimes technically wonky, have less-than-good customer service, and often creepy contracted home technicians. Furthermore, since I work/live in Philadelphia, I'm constantly exposed to the architectural eyesore of their new HQ, the "Comcast Tower". (Although, truthfully they do have some interesting art and video walls inside the building.) However, until Verizon wires more neighborhoods withFiOS, Comcast is what we're stuck with if we want to watch television on a physical television.

Combine my dislikes of television commercials and Comcast, and you get an intense loathing for their new ad campaign, "Comcast Town", a mashup of animation and live actors. The residents of "Comcast Town" all wear disturbing, dead-eyed looks while they sing directly at the camera, detailing what's so great about Comcast services. It's unnerving, as if they've had their personalities removed and replaced with corporate-speak. It particularly annoys me that one of the "residents" walks past a shuttered building that magically turns into a record store. Aren't digital downloads (legally purchased or illegally swiped) putting record stores out of business? If Comcast is promoting its fast-loading cable internet service, shouldn't the commercial show a record store going out of business instead?

The annoyance of the visuals in "Comcast Town" commercials pales in comparison to the audio track, an original song performed in the flat, twee, "charmingly childlike" style of Kimya Dawson. While I'm usually willing to give most styles of indie music a chance, this twee shit has got to die a quick and painful death. Immediately. It was somewhat avoidable when it was limited to "quirky" movies like Juno, but now that it's moved into major corporate commercials, I fear this style will start spreading and other companies will adopt it.

When these "Comcast Town" commercials come on and I'm unlucky enough to be watching in real time, and unable to find the remote quickly, I run screaming from the room, stuffing a cat in my ears. What's worse is that the twee song is now being used on the news-traffic-weather radio station, the one commercial station I ever listen to at all. Driving into a traffic jam is preferable to having to endure these commercials.

Give me Swedish death metal, bad contemporary country, throat singing, static, anything else.

JUST MAKE THE TWEE STOP. (And bring FiOS to my block, too.)

(Note: See the commercial and C+ "Ad Report Card" here.)

Friday Night Fictions (of a Scientific nature)

This past Friday was a very good evening of science fiction, with new episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, and the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.

Some tardy thoughts on the evening.

Although I've often recommended it to friends who are fans of the Terminator franchise, not many of them watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Which is a shame, because after a rough Season 1, the show finally gained sentience with the introduction of new characters (Shirley Manson as an evil T-1000), the further development of others (Brian Austin Green as Derek Reese), and John Connor finally starting to accept his fate and growing a damn spine. Throughout Season 1,emo-ish Thomas Dekker as future resistance leader John Connor was the weakest aspect of the show, unable to keep up with mom Sarah (the lovely Lena Headey who looks awesome in a beater while brandishing a B.F.G.) or Terminator Cameron (strange little girl Summer Glau). Midway through S2, Dekker started grasping his character, and in this latest episode - "Today Is The Day, Part 2" - finally got it, for lack of a better term. Between questioning Cameron's programming, confronting Jesse for her murderous actions, and just the everyday weight of being the savior of the planet, John finally collapses, crying in Sarah's lap. There's only three more episodes left in this season (two of them with titles from Springsteen songs, for some reason), and I'm curious to see what will be resolved and what will be left open for next season. If there is a next season - here's hoping that Terminator: Salvation creates some interest in the show. If you haven't been watching T:TSSC, there are a few episodes up on Hulu, and the first season is on DVD.

Creator Joss Whedon was right when he plugged episode six of Dollhouse - "Man on the Street" - as "the one to watch". After five less-than-impressive (but still with interesting bits) episodes, the series has found solid footing. This episode focused on more than just Eliza Dushku's often-nearly-naked character of Echo, instead tossing out more secrets and clues about the Dollhouse organization (20 houses in all, located around the world), the rogue active Alpha, the existence of "sleeper" actives, and extremely disturbing sexual abuse of the actives by their handlers. The storyline about a software developer (well-played by guest Patton Oswalt) hiring an active on the anniversary of his wife's death every year so he could show "her" the new house he bought was oddly moving, and introduced the idea that people don't only utilize actives for nasty, dirty sex or other illegal activities. Demoted FBI agent Paul Ballard (former BSGer Tahmoh Penikett, and OMG, more shirtless/pantsless scenes pls, k, thks) finally got a lead on the existence of the Dollhouse through a message embedded in an ass-kicking Echo. This episode actually had layers, much more than the Echo-only focused stories of the first five. I'm taking this as a good sign, since Buffy the Vampire Slayer improved when it started to focus on more than just Buffy. Hopefully, Whedon & Co. will be allowed to continue in this direction. I'm not abandoning Dollhouse yet. (Although maybe the opening credits and commercial bumpers will start to feature more than shots of nearly naked Eliza?)

Finally, a few thoughts on the Battlestar Galactica series finale, which has already been recaped and discussed on many, many other blogs. (Here's a good one by Annalee Newitz.) I'm not going to recap the final episodes, nor really slice, dice, and analyze them. That will be done enough in the upcoming months and years by frustrated cultural studies PhD candidates.

Overall, I found the first hour or so to be spectacular television that kept me yelling at the screen "ohmygod they are NOT going to do, ohmygod, ohmygod, they just rammed into the colony". It was also admirable how they finally came full circle with various characters' dreams about the opera house over the entire series by resolving it in the CRC CIC. The riot that ensued after the "resurrection transmission interruptus" was phenomenal. It was quite satisfying to watch Chief Tyrol choke the life out of Tory after he learns she had airlocked his wife Cally, as well.

After Starbuck jumped the ship to the Earth (as we know it, anyway), and the survivors found it to be more than habitable - quite lovely, even - the show screeched to a halt in comparison to the previous hour. The writers felt the need to give some sort of resolve to every major characters' story. I found myself looking at the clock constantly - really, 40 more minutes? 35 more minutes? The survivors abandon technology, send the remaining ships into the sun (mentally piloted by Anders, poor guy), spread out over the earth and colonize. Tyrol exiles himself to what sounds like Greenland. Roslin shuffles off the mortal coil, Bill buries her and starts building their cabin. Kara disappears along with any explanation of why her character existed at all. Baltar and Capricasix are off to plow some fields. No mention if Doc Coddle found a way to easily cultivate tobacco for cigarettes. Helo, Sharon, and Hera live happily every after...

... and we then flash forward 150,000 years to a news report about finding the common human ancestor in the bones of the "Mitochondrial Eve", and Angels (?)Baltar and Original Six tut-tutting about the current state of the world, pondering if a machine/human conflict could happen again. There's some discussion about a "god", although Original Six admonishes "it doesn't like to be called that". Cue "All Along the Watchtower" and a montage of congestion, commercialism, homeless people, and robot technology.

So what does it all mean? That current humans descended not only from ancient humans, but ancient robots as well? That at one point we actually possessed advanced technologies (including advanced space flight) that we willingly abandoned for civilization's survival? Be kind to your artificial technologies or they too may revolt someday? The conclusion of BSG didn't irritate me as it did some people, I thought it to be a reasonable ending, except for the loose end that was Starbuck.

When the inevitable mega-DVD set is released, I look forward to re-watching the entire series from a different critical viewpoint, knowing the conclusion. This show will be severely missed, even with the "parallel history" movie from the Cylon P.O.V. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, and the "prequel series" Caprica coming this fall, which just seem like afterthoughts to cash in on the success of the original.

Well, at least they probably weren't laid in China.

(Hopefully, anyway.)




Spotted at Giant supermarket.

Please, please, please just make it stop. I am a self-identified Disney hater. You'll never get me into one of their parks, and admit that I feel kind of queasy when watching anything on ABC or ESPN. There are so many things wrong with the Disney empire - evil copyright extensions, child labor violations in factories making their products, the whole "every girl is a princess" mentality, the pillaging of the natural landscape of Florida, the blanding of childrens' entertainment, the list goes on - do they freaking need to put their characters' images on eggs? Seriously? The recent South Park episode "The Ring" is more true than I thought. I'd have to suppress the urge to slap anyone upside the head who buys these.

Syfy? Rly?

Earlier this week, NBC Universal announced the "rebranding" of the Sci Fi Channel to the linguistic nightmare "Syfy", with the grammatical debacle "Imagine Greater" as a tagline. (That's actually worse than Apple's "Think Different".) The changeover is expected to take place in July, assuming that the marketing geniuses change their minds.

"Syfy" is a terrible, laughable, absurd moniker to rebrand the Sci Fi Channel. A commenter on the io9 post about the name change said it best: "It sounds like an Australian Navy nickname for Syphilis. Oh doc, I went to Thailand on leave and I think I picked up an nasty case of SyFy." (Pronounced "siff-ee".)

The rebranding doesn't matter anyway, since the whole network becomes useless tonight at 11PM EDT, after the credits of the final Battlestar Galactica roll. It was the only show keeping the network afloat the past year or so, with the cancellation of various Stargates. The Sci Fi Channel, or Syfy, or whatever it wants to call itself is a pale, emaciated shadow of what it had been, and what it could have become. It hit the skids in 2007 when it started airing professional wrestling, and accelerated its downhill slide adding paranormal shows, pure horror movies with no science fiction (or even fantasy) elements (like the Saw series - yeck!), WCG Ultimate Gamer, and, oddly enough, reruns of Joan of Arcadia. This network doesn't need a rebranding, it needs an pre-colonoscopy strength enema.

If you want proof of how far Sci Fi Network has fallen from its original ethos, browse this collection of Sci Fi Network schedules all the way back to 1992. Check out April 1996: The Ray Bradbury Theater, Max Headroom (!!!), Quantum Leap, and a mix of other old genre programs. Or how about January 2000: Star Trek, Hercules, Earth 2, theatrical movies (heavily edited) like Lair of the White Worm and Army of Darkness, and the much much missed Mystery Science Theater 3000. Paging through these old schedules, it's obvious that there was less reliance on show marathons (which seem to be an afternoon standard for the network now).

Of course, in the early days of the network there were no original series or movies, hence the reliance on old, expired shows and movies. However, when the Sci Fi network's original series consist of dreck such as The Scariest Places on Earth, reruns of Night Gallery and Sliders are much more appealing. Ditto for their original movies, most of which are more amusing in concept than in execution: Frankenfish, Mansquito, Flu Bird Horror. Why not show the John Sayles-written Alligator instead? (However, I did enjoy Alien Apocalypse starring Bruce Campbell and filmed largely incompetently in Bulgaria of all places.)

But Sci Fi or Syfy or whatever the hell it wants to be called doesn't even have to completely regress to its programming schedule of fifteen years ago. Since it's owned by NBC Universal, it has an enormous amount of material to pull from. They could be "repurposing" shows owned by their other networks, for example, Chuck and Heroes from NBC. Instead of canceling the excellent The 4400 from USA Network, it could have been transferred over to SciFi . What about all the old films in the Universal movie studios vault? When Fox inevitably cancels Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse, why not pick them up? Why don't you do remote broadcasts from science fiction and comic conventions, as does G4, a video game network? Hell, why don't you pick up MST3K re-runs again to introduce it to an entirely new, younger audience?

In short, why didn't NBC Universal actually consider their (potential) audience, an audience that is smart, well-educated, and spends money on non-essential items like electronic gadgets, big heavy graphic novels, and deluxe DVD re-issues when rebranding ? Fans of speculative fiction entertainment (science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, etc.) are a ripe market willing to spend money. For example, 4-day passes for San Diego Comic-Con in July 2009 are already sold out, Saturday passes are half-sold out, and all the official hotel rooms were gone hours after being made available. Sure, it's a smaller market than say, mommies or sports fans, but one you can't afford to ignore in this craphole economy.

The sick joke in all of this is that it doesn't really matter what Sci Fi Channel rebrands itself as, since most of its viewers have long moved on to viewing programming on the internet (either streaming or Bittorrent) or DVD. Hulu (co-owned by NBC Universal and News Corp. (Fox)) currently "broadcasts" a better collection of science fiction programming than SciFi . They have episodes of current shows like Dollhouse, Heroes, and Chuck, they have old syndicated programs like Swamp Thing, Total Recall 2070, and the television version of Weird Science (originally on the USA Network). Plus, Alf! (OMG! Alf! I know what I'm doing all weekend! After all, there's no more BSG...)

Hurm.

Synd-e's Journal: March 7th, 2009. King of Prussia, PA.

Standing in orderly line a little past 8AM on Saturday for a 9AM IMAX screening, chewing Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints instead of my usual multiple cups of morning coffee. Don't want to miss anything due to a moment of human urgency. Line composed of geeks in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, plus occasional teenager with Dad. Not thrilled to see at least four kids under the age of six in the queue. Consider drugging kids up with antihistamine and locking them in the car. Nice warm day out, they wouldn't freeze. It's probably a sure bet that those sprogs will be having nightmares for weeks about the noise, the fire, buckets of blood, and huge blue wang on Dr. Manhattan due to selfish dads who had to see the movie as soon as possible.

Doors open. Moving inside. Centered seats obtained.

If I group of latecomers ask me to move down so they can all sit together, I'll look up and whisper "no".

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

In all, I enjoyed the adaptation of WATCHMEN (a solid "B" effort, maybe even "B+"), although it was not without flaws. I feel as if I'm breaking some sort of sacred geek law by admitting I liked the film adaptation of WATCHMEN. Since I've never wanted to be part of a club that would actually have me as a member (thank you, G. Marx), I've no shame in saying I thought it was a solid film, re-watchable, and worth owning when it is released on DVD (apparently in July, in a fully tricked-out director's cut, in time for San Diego Comic Con).

Full disclosure: I was not disturbed by the violence in WATCHMEN, and I'm a person who watches few (if any) splatter or horror films. While I wasn't disturbed, I wasn't enthralled. The violence simply had little impact on me. Yes, I looked away a few times, but was never completely horrified. My indifference to the film's violence (and yes, it is extremely violent and not for everyone) is due to knowing the novel well. It's difficult to be scared or disgusted when you know what to expect.

Here's my P.O.V. of the film, less synopsis, more highs and lows. (Yes, there are SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! here for the few people who stumble upon this blog who haven't read the novel.)

Positives

Casting
Jackie Earle Haley embodied the psychotic Rorschach to frightening perfection. Masked or not, he created a completely damaged, relentless, sick fuck of a vigilante. The sequence where he ceases to be WalterKovacs and permanently becomes Rorschach is bloody and horrifying, but completely justifiable in his mind. Haley was a smart choice for this part. He's not a huge man (more wiry than bulky), not movie-star attractive, and really embodies the "exhausted yet still angry at the world" quality of Rorschach.

Likewise, Jeffery Dean Morgan was able to flesh out the role of Eddie Blake, aka Comedian well. He has less screen time to develop his character than Haley, but still created a completely distasteful bastard of a man. While it's probably veryun -feminist and incorrect for me to admit given some of his character's actions, damn damn damn, I still found Eddie Blake downright charming at times - especially when gunning down JFK.

The rest of WATCHMEN was not cast nearly as perfectly as these two roles, but better than in most Hollywood fare. Patrick Wilson embodied the broken, impotent Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II with a flabby, charming softness. Malin Akerman was a little bit too young to be Laurie Jupiter, who is about 35 in the novel. Carla Gugino was sharp as mom Sally Jupiter. Matthew Goode was not nearly arrogant enough as Adrian Viedt, unfortunately. I was not impressed with Billy Crudup as Jon Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan, aka the naked blue guy. However, I never really thought the character of Dr. Manhattan was constructed well in the novel, either. A friend made an excellent observation: If after the accident Jon possessed such otherworldly powers such as experiencing time all at once and the ability to deconstruct and move matter across space and time, why would he deign to be with humans anymore at all?


Title Sequence
A beautifully constructed five minute montage that summarizes a lot of the novel's expository material without shortchanging it. I so completely loved the notion that the Comedian was behind the assassination of JFK, too. It's been posted andyoinked from a bunch of sites over the weekend. Try here, maybe you'll still be lucky.


Overall "look" and construction
While some critics complained that it wasn't necessary to replicate panels from the comic exactly in the film, excessive even, I really enjoyed the transition from page to screen. Sure, there were many panels duplicated exactly from the novel, but I argue it was done beautifully. One in particular has stayed with me, from Chapter I, of Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II, sitting defeated in his underground workshop pondering the Comedian's bloody smiley face pin in one hand, glasses in the other, costume behind him. He just appears so defeated, exhausted, and dejected that you can feel it. This panel transferred so well to celluloid.

The dirty, grime, and desolation of New York also translated well from comic panel to film frame. And I'll admit that it was just damn fun to try to spot all the little details from the novel in the film. The fight scene between Laurie, Dan, and the Topknots was particularly well filmed.


Negatives

The last half-hour of the film was really a muddled mess. It felt rushed, unfortunately. The final fight scenes between Veidt and the remaining heroes were also much expanded from the novel, which lessened this scene. In the novel, Veidt takes down Dan and Rorschach easily, almost casually. The film pointlessly expands this. The resolution between Sally and Laurie is also shortened, and omits a scene that, while not crucial, provides nice closure for Sally. This last half-hour may be improved in the director's cut.

The prison and prison riot sequences could have used a smidgen of editing. These were the only scenes that I felt dragged on too long.

I don't agree with A.O. Scott's assessment that Dan and Laurie's boot knockin' (and yes, it is completely hot that she leaves her boots on) as the "... year’s hands-down winner of the bad movie sex award, superhero division", but fully support his plea of "... can we please have a moratorium on the use of this song [Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"] in movies? Yes, I too have heard there was a secret chord that David played, and blah blah blah, but I don’t want to hear it again. Do you?" (Here's a list of where it's been used/abused.)


Thoughts on the Squid-free Conclusion...

As an identical adaptation of the source material WATCHMEN is of course a FAIL, as the fanboys have been crying for months, ever since they learned there would be no squid. And, truthfully, after another re-read of the novel last week, I myself started getting... concerned. How could there be no squid? Spotting the mysterious island was what got Eddie Blake (aka Comedian) killed! It's the lynch pin of the novel! Cobbling together all the little clues - the Max Shea biography, the article on artist disappearances in The New Frontiersman, even the four-legged chicken - is a huge part of the book's appeal! Should I boycott? Should I join the book's author Alan Moore in "spitting venom all over it"?

Of course, I did none of those things, but instead tried to go in with no expectations and an open mind.

Truthfully, yes, I did miss the anal/vaginal squid that brings on the destruction of New York City.

Zach Snyder and the writers should have taken on the challenge of somehow keeping it in the script, even if it led to more expository verbiage. I also feel that the film really didn't accurately reflect Adrian in Chapter 12 of the novel, where at least he does feel a slight bit of regret for murdering half of New York City. Grudgingly, I've come to accept the fact that a one hundred percent identical adaptation was just not possible on film, at least not the film the studio wanted.

I've accepted that what's important is not how New York (and in the film, many other cities) is destroyed but why. Fanboys will debate novel vs. film for years on end, but for me (at least for now, my thoughts may change over subsequent viewings and time), I feel satisfied by this adaptation. No, not one hundred percent satisfied, but satisfied enough, which is about all I can ask from any studio film released during the past twenty years. After all, I still have the novel to continue to depress and screw with my mind whenever I want.

"Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone."

Updated AGAIN to add: Hey, try it here.

UPDATED TO ADD: Well, that was fun while it lasted. Bastards.



A perfect example of why they should give out Academy Awards for title sequences. Amazing. More so if you know the novel, but still amazing on its own. Be sure to watch it full screen by clicking that little box with the four arrows at the bottom of the clip.

Poor little blog...

Oh, my poor, neglected, long-suffering blog. Between work, the flu, and a sudden obsession with The O.C.*, I haven't updated either SPCHQ or Syndicate Consumption as much as I should. Expect updates on both this weekend, especially after screening WATCHMEN: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE, complete with Dr. Manhattan's stories-high cerulean junk. I may also finally spew out my thoughts on Octo-Mom, although that's old news by now. But, good bile never gets old.

* Stop laughing.