davextreme

May 31

Sherlock Holmes in Published order

For reference.

May 21

May 19

Hey, Did I Miss Anything?

Dan Harmon, on being fired as showrunner for Community’s fourth season:

Why’d Sony want me gone? I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have. They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business.

May 14

How Pixar almost accidentally deleted Toy Story 2. (via)

May 13

Transformers (2007) - Just The Transforming, a super cut of from MIchael Bay’s movie. Even this is barely watchable.

May 11

Crete was once swarming with tiny mammoths

The newly identified Mammuthus creticus has been identified from previously misattributed bones and new research, and this tiny mammoth would have stood just 1.13-meters-tall at the shoulder.

May 7

Pentagon Quit The Avengers Because of Its 'Unreality'

It seems silly, but it actually did bother me that Fury’s bosses were generic guys on oddly high tech monitors. Why not just some Joint Chiefs-looking dudes in a room together? This is what the White House situation room actually looks like. It’s a really famous photo, and it shows that it’s just a room in a government building with fluorescent lighting. I get that the council was there to provide a reason for stuff to go down later in the film, and that perhaps it makes sense not to specifically say whom Nick Fury works for, but the council just seem far to generic for me.

And in the movies universe, SHIELD definitely is a US government agency, right? Coulson is a generic man in black. He wouldn’t be FBI but is clearly part of a new agency that doesn’t even have an acronym as of Iron Man. They wouldn’t be military since their job is not to defend against/attack a foreign military, but it seems pretty clear Fury’d report to someone like the Director of National Intelligence.

Yub Nub

The Incomparable podcast has just wrapped its six-episode series on the Star Wars trilogy. I recommend listening to the whole series (ANH parts one and two, ESB parts one and two, RotJ parts one and two). You’ll probably come away with an enhanced outlook on some stuff even if you’ve seen the movies dozens of times.

Listening to the Jedi episode made me want to talk about the change of the “Ewok Celebration” song at the end of that movie in the special edition. There are in-story reasons why many of the changes in those editions were unwise, such as altering a character (Greedo shooting first) or messing with the tone of a scene (comedy pit droids coming right after Owen and Beru’s deaths). There are cases where the changes just weren’t done with much taste (computer-animated dancers replacing puppetry). But I think even more egregious (aside perhaps from Greedo) is that, for those of us who grew up watching the originals, the changes mess with how and why we (re)experience the films.

We rewatch old movies for I’d say two reasons. One, if they’re good movies, we want to gain a new appreciation of them. And two, for nostalgia. Watching Star Wars, you can’t help but fondly remember being a kid and running around with a Wiffle Ball bat pretending it was a lightsaber. We show them to our own kids because we want to see that same excitement in their eyes and vicariously be a kid again. Music is one of the things that our minds associate most strongly with memories. The song you and your future wife first danced to. A hit that was on the radio a lot the summer you got your driver’s license. So here we are, watching Return of the Jedi, the end of the trilogy that we watched over and over and over as children, and we come to the finale, and the music has changed. Instead of the silly Yub Nub song, there’s some orchestral piece playing. Worse than all the other incidental changes through the films, this is the one that really takes me out of the experience. I’m supposed to be celebrating with the characters, and I’m rewatching the movie to help recapture that childhood joy, and instead the filmmaker is actively reminding me that, no, this isn’t the movie I loved as a kid. It’s changed. I’ve changed. I’m older now, and I can’t go back to that feeling, that excitement, ever again.

Then, to just really drive it home, Hayden Christensen shows up as Anakin.

I spent Sunday afternoon trying to figure out what makes Avengers so remarkable. Here’s what I think it is: there have been so many disappointments lately. The Star Wars prequels. The later seasons in Lost. The ending of Battlestar Galactica. The Matrix sequels. I very clearly remember watching the first season of Lost as it aired and thinking, “they can’t possibly keep this going, can they?” And of course they didn’t, because it’s hard.

Avengers is the sort of thing that my friends and I really did muse about as kids. We literally did talk about how cool it would be if they made a movie for each of the characters that lead up to a team-up film. Then Marvel Studios started doing it, and Iron Man was actually very good. Then the other movies weren’t quite as good but definitely fun. Then Avengers comes out, and it’s better than all of them. How often does that happen? I guess Lord of the Rings did it, but it’s very rare and wonderful when it does.

May 5

“I’m not crazy about that character and I’m getting tired of playing him.” Chevy Chase, in this short interview I sort of love about Community with Vulture. He’s not entirely wrong. His involvement is what got me interested in the show in the first place, but he’s never had much to do. I’m a big fan of 80s Chevy Chase (as well as Community) but it’s true that it’s not his type of comedy.

“The Beasties claim to have “more flavor” than Fruit Stripe, which isn’t much of a boast, since Fruit Stripe gum is notoriously weak.” This and 169 other explanations of references in Beastie Boys songs at The AV Club.

May 3

The Prius V and Its Entune System

I’ve been meaning to write something up about the iPod integration on my 2011 Camry Hybrid. (Very short version: it works okay.) Here’s David Pogue on Toyota’s newer software.

May 2

“The current plan is for Grant and me to do 12 issues to wrap up his Batman super story, then I think the book will continue much like Batman & Robin has. But I really think it’s a little early to be asking these questions. The first issue hasn’t even come out yet and all you guys want to talk about is what happens in number 13! ;D” Batman, Inc. artist Chris Burnham. Batman Inc New 52: Ongoing or Limited Series?

May 1

Here’s a neat set of moments from Grant Morrison’s Batman books. In Batman 664, Batman meets a young prostitute, Ellie, and tells her to call Waynetech for a job. In 701 (wearing his back-up mask), he sees her again, who says she did get the job. In Batman, Inc. 6, you see her at the reception desk. (via)

Thrillbent

Mark Waid’s new digital comics initiative, Thrillbent, launched today. The first issue of Insufferable is up now. John Rogers has a post on the Waid’s blog on how to read the comics. In the browser you can just use the left and right arrow keys, or you can download a PDF and read it on an iPad.

Waid worked very hard to think of the best way to do comics digitally, and I like the results. As Rogers says in his post, they’re aping the page size of Warren Ellis’s Freakangels. Ellis is also a fellow who expends a lot of thought about the format, and I think it’s the right call. The whole comic fits nicely on a landscape iPad screen or in a desktop web browser, rather than being the height of a standard which would require scrolling. This way, the artist can be reasonably sure you’re taking in the entire page at once.

All in all, I like the idea and am excited to see where Thrillbent goes.