saturday post about geekdom

Ah, I'm so glad I'm good at posting on my blog. Right.

Anyway, just a quick few geek culture things I wanted to parse my brain on.

Avatar - Saw this a few weeks ago and have been mulling it over in my head. I think in the end I did enjoy this movie. The whole "Dances with Smurfs" schtick people lambast it with may be valid, but it kind of misses the point. Avatar is a tech demo released under the guise of a movie in order to make back the costs of creating the technology. Luckily for the viewers, it is making those costs back and more, so we can look forward to seeing these technological innovations more and more in the future. And as less time will have to be spent developing them, more can be focused on plot and story in the next ones.

Sherlock Holmes - Like a lot of films I've seen over the past few years, I enjoyed this one a good bit when I saw it. The more I think about it though, the more it loses its luster for me. I still think it was a good film, and I am looking forward to the inevitable sequel if only because of the mastery of their craft shown by Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. Well that and the production values of creating a gorgeous Victorian London. In the end though, the movie just felt empty to me. Despite the strong acting, I didn't walk away from it feeling anything about the characters or the film itself. So in the end, I'm glad I saw it, but probably won't go out of my way to catch it again.

Last Night on Earth - This isn't anything new really. LNoE has been one of my favorite board games for a long time, but I ran through three different scenarios with it the other night. What I love most about it is how it so nicely combines the adventure game genre with what is essentially an assymetrical war game. And does it all without bogging down for hours on end.

But yeah, trying to just get back into the swing of things here. So later.

Japan is the weird

Finally getting around to starting things up with AI here. Had a couple of ideas bouncing around to start with, but a talk with a friend this morning reminded me of something. Mostly just how weird Japan is. I mean really, sometimes this stuff just gets to be a bit too much.

For example:



Okay. So the army, sorry Japanese Self-Defense Force, jeep is chasing around this giant swordfish/mosquito hybrid monstrosity. A little weird yeah, but there are plenty of old black and white horror films with equally odd concepts. But wait, there's more. Now the swordsquito has a giant shark helping it. We're all doomed.



Speaking of doomed, here we have faux-cannibalism. I'm really not entirely sure where to even begin with this one.



Finally for today in Japan the weird, we have Hello Kitty contacts. Now, I've seen plenty of strange contacts for cat's eyes or making your eyes completely what or whatever. But now we actually have Hello Kitty's head sitting on someone's eye ball. Really Japan, really?