Post Weekend Open Thread…

Updated on September 12, 2011 By Ken Begg 19 Comments

After years and years, I finally ended upon the occasional work a weekend day schedule. So can’t complain, but of course the first time I did it, it was the very rare time that the Portage Guys were running their sci-fi movies in the middle of the month. So I was working rather than watching Yog Monster from Space and Land that Time Forgot in a theater. (The latter, by the way, I saw as a tot at the Pickwick Theatre, which stands about 200 yards from where I type this now.)

Ah, well, lots of stuff in October, so I’m covered there.

Sunday, went to my brother’s house and watch the first Bears game, which was actually a pretty good effort. Man, though, they have to work on getting a touchdown once they get into the red zone.

Watched Great Food Truck Race last night, which I only mention because one of the teams cheated and had to be booted off the show. I mean actually cheated; they added personal monies to the till to inflate their ‘sales’ totals. The irony being that they wouldn’t have come in last place if they hadn’t done that, so they got kicked off the show for nothing. Still, kind of weird. The guys left the show bitching that they were called out on this and made “to look bad.” Yeah, no duh.

Sadly, that was about the extent of my weekend. How about you guys?

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  • Toby Clark

    Highlights:

    * Watching the new Doctor Who episode Night Terrors – well written and pretty effective, but probably one of the weakest of the season in terms of humour and scares.

    * The Jon Pertwee serial Planet of the Daleks. I’d been led to believe it was a boring overlong rehash of most of Terry Nation’s earlier Dalek serials. I was not misinformed. There were one or two good moments, though, like the conversation between the Doctor and Codal about courage in part 2.

    * Evangelion marathon – the first six episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, with the first of the Rebuild movies playing alongside it for comparison. Really amazed me how much of the script and storyboard were repeated, line for line, shot for shot. I can’t say Evangelion 1.0 is better than the series, but it certainly doesn’t suffer too much for telling the same story in a running time over half an hour shorter. Toji, Kensuke and Hikari’s reduced screentime is probably my biggest complaint, except maybe the absence of “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” from the soundtrack.

    * Watching the first few episodes of Bleach again – gotta say, I’m not a big fan of the English voice cast, though it could certainly be worse. Hopefully they’ll get better on Disc 2.

    * Rewatching the first episode of Kamen Rider (1971), since I’m as yet unable to find the second. The fansub wasn’t the one I watched before, and the translation was only barely coherent.

  • Ericb

    I watched “For All Mankind” a documentary about the Apollo Moon missions. The filmmaker (who had access to 80 hours of NASA footage) took a rather novel approach to the material. Rather than a conventional historical narrative using an ominiscient narrator describing the events of each individual mission he recreates the feel of a journey to the moon by mixing footage from all the missions and arranging them by the leg of the journey they were on using only the voices of the astronauts themselves (both the actual communications between the astronauts and mission control and later reflections of the astronaut at the time the film was made [1989]) as narration. Powerful and breathtaking stuff full of images I’d never seen before. The commentary track, with the filmmaker Al Reinhert and astronout Eugene Cernan, was great too. Reinhert wisely let Cernan do most of the talking. It was so beautiful that I watched the film twice in one sitting first with the orginal film and then with the commentary track and didn’t get bored.

  • Gamera

    Well, I watched ‘Starcrash’ again :(

    ‘For All Mankind’ sounds awesome- thanks for the head’s up Eric. And as a Who fan I still need to see about 2/3rds of the episodes.

  • Marsden

    I finished watching my whole remastered Star Trek DVDs and started my Animated set. I really liked how they did the cg and the picture is really brightened and clear, I’ve seen things I never noticed before and I’ve seen all of these about a billion times. Seriously, if I could add all the times I watched them on late night cable, it’s got to be over 100 times each, what that says about me, I’m not sure and probably don’t want to know. Anyway, out of 79 shows there were only 3 times I thought the old SFX were more effective, everywhere else it was at least as good or much better. Incredibly better in some places, the Doomsday Machine Planet Killer episode is really a stand-out with the new cg. Normally I don’t like changing things just to change them but I think they did an excellent job.

    BTW, the three times are: Tommorow is Yesterday, the cg ship against the “real” sky background didn’t look right. I think cg’s greatest limitation is when it interacts with a non cg and the difference is noticable. A full cg shot can be beautiful but the edges in a partial shot are still a bit of a problem.

    The Romulans’ shots in The Deadly Years were a reuse of the new shots of the Klingon shots from Errand of Mercy. It’s a really good graphic in Errand of Mercy, especally since there was None in the original, but replacing the existing shots of the Romulans in this episode represents a loss, I think. The ships were an improvement but the shots were not.

    Last one is in Day of the Dove, the shot of the exploding Klingon ship was good, but I actually like the old version better (when they bothered to show it! I’ve seen a lot of cuts that removed the old ship explosion.) The aproach of the ship and then the indications of the explosions on board are well done and the explosion itself is good, but I liked the less chunky fade explosion.

    So, bad: 0 ,not that good: 3, good and better: too many for me to count.

    Some other stand outs are the Klingon ships in Errand of Mercy, the Romulans’ ships in The Enterprise Incident, in Tomorrow is Yesterday the Enterprise flying around the sun looks good, a lot better that Star Trek 4 actually, the Tholians’s ships and their “web”, most of the battle sequences, and finally some of the expanded backgrounds that used to be matte paintings were updated and improved especially in The Way to Eden (yes, that one.) They tried to make the planet look like a wonderful place on the set but with the new backgrounds dropped in the planet Eden really looks wonderful, it really enhances the irony of how dangerous it actually is. The new background of Vulcan is really good from Amok Time but they switch off of it a little too quickly but it’s nice, and we have pause now so I guess it’s not a problem. Remember the old days of pausing a VHS and trying to see anything clearly? Ha.

    Sorry if my post is too long, Ken. I rarely have anything worth mentioning and I was extremely pleased with the product, something I haven’t been in a long time.

  • Tork_110

    I watched Rex Grossman unleash the dragon. It was glorious.

  • Ericb

    Tork, “unleashing the dragon”? Are you a KSK fan?

  • Saturday, I rehearsed with the band in prep for this weekend’s MonsterFest in Merced.

    Sunday, I watched The Thing From Outer Space and John Carpenter’s The Thing after the football was done. My Bucs lost and were defeated.

  • JoshG

    A bit off topic but Turner Classic Movies is showing “Wicked, Wicked” this Friday at 3:45 AM.

  • Reed

    Call me when Rex punches the shark.

    I played through Warhammer 40K Space Marine, which was an incredibly good looking shooter that was fun but short and had a horrible ending. Tip for anyone trying to create a “franchise”: You need an ending that doesn’t suck to get people interested in the next installment.

    Also finished playing the new Deus Ex game, which I thought was fantastic and has an ending that doesn’t suck. The game provides 4 possible endings, and let’s just say that when I watched all 4 of them the things that they extrapolated from events really drove home that the game was created by Canadians. Some of the conversation dialog is really good. There is one bit where I framed a cop that was done so well I felt sleazy.

    Watched several Babylon 5 episodes. Worked on my guitar. Finished reading The Midnight Mayor, which I liked to begin with and ended up hating a lot. It’s about a sorceror in modern London who becomes the city’s mystical protector.

  • Rock Baker

    A friend of mine talked me into starting a blog, so I’ve been laying the ground floor of that. Saturday I posted my thoughts on It Conquered The World as compared against Zontar, The Thing From Venus.

    Got to see The Egg And I again, thanks to Pop picking up the first two Ma and Pa Kettle collections. Watched some of those Sunday. By the third of fourth film, they brought in John Grant, so the films take on an Abbott and Costello vibe, including reworking some of the boys’ routines. Good stuff.

  • The Rev.

    Didn’t watch much. I caught Alien Opponent, which was pretty goofy. It’s one of those movies where the makers were trying to make a bad movie, or at the very least were quite aware of what type of movie they were making. Some of it’s a bit obnoxious (blatant winking at the audience), but some of it is genuinely clever (a couple of tropes are turned on their heads) or funny. There are a few nods to other movies, but most are comparatively subtle. There’s one that’s very blatant, but the movie referenced is one I like enough that I can’t blame them too much for it. Roddy Piper seemed to be enjoying himself, and I in turn enjoyed him. Overall, it was a fun bit of time-passing, but I don’t know if I can recommend it due to the mean streak it exhibited towards the characters. Some of them may deserve it, but some do not. Overall, it kind of left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially in light of the overall comedic and light tone.

    I had thought I’d get the T-Fest write-up to Ken this weekend, but it got delayed. However, he’ll have it by the end of the day. After that, it’s in his hands.

  • Tork_110

    Not so much a KSK fan, as much a fan of that particular meme. I’ve seen it elsewhere, and if we get more Good Rex, I bet it goes mainstream.

    You’re talking about a fanbase who knows it’s not going to win a Super Bowl as long as Dan Snyder lives. We’re used to watching washed-up, overpayed free agents. We’ll grab onto a gimmick if we have to.

  • Ericb

    And Dan Snyder is so young. You have my sympathy.

  • Toby Clark

    Gamera: I’m not much better, actually, my last count is 280 episodes out of 783 (including erased serials, which I count if I’ve heard to the full soundtrack on CD).

  • fish eye no miko

    Toby Clark said: “Watching the new Doctor Who episode Night Terrors”

    Actually, the newest episode was “The Girl Who Waited”. Are you watching on BBCA?

    “GWW” was great; pretty much all Amy and Rory, which I loved. I really like these two, and I’m rather pissed off by some of the crap Moffat has put them through just to get his Mary Sue character into the show as often as freaking possible.

  • Toby Clark

    Fish Eye: I watch it on ABC 1 in Australia, and we’re a week behind.

  • Ericb

    Who’s Moffat’s Mary Sue?

  • Toby Clark

    Ericb – he would appear to be talking about River Song, though I don’t see her as such, and not a bad one in any case.

  • Ericb

    I’ll take Moffat’s stuff over Russel Davies’s romcom melodrama anyday.