Monday, August 03, 2009
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Matt Earns his Black Belt!
Leaguers, it is with great pride that I announce that League-Pal Matt Mangum has earned his Black Belt!
Matt punches some fool in the ear
Matt's quest for the Black Belt has been going on several years, and culminated this weekend in a 3 day marathon session of kicking and punching things (ie: people). Jamie, Patrick and I joined Matt's lady-friend, League-Pal Nicole, to watch today's sparring and belt ceremony.
Leaguers will know that I, myself, once mastered the ancient art of strip mall Tae Kwon Do, so I know a little about what Matt's been up to, although my program was nowhere near as intensive. The League will cop to the huge amount of respect we have for anyone who puts in the effort I've seen out of Matt and the work I saw today.
We haven't seen Matt this happy since he landed Hannah Montana tickets
But the unsung hero of the day was the erstwhile towel and water-boy who bravely stood by his pal, ready with a sip of H20, or ready to mop sweat from Matty's brow.
The League: Towel Boy
All pics courtesy Patricio Sanchez
Matt punches some fool in the ear
Matt's quest for the Black Belt has been going on several years, and culminated this weekend in a 3 day marathon session of kicking and punching things (ie: people). Jamie, Patrick and I joined Matt's lady-friend, League-Pal Nicole, to watch today's sparring and belt ceremony.
Leaguers will know that I, myself, once mastered the ancient art of strip mall Tae Kwon Do, so I know a little about what Matt's been up to, although my program was nowhere near as intensive. The League will cop to the huge amount of respect we have for anyone who puts in the effort I've seen out of Matt and the work I saw today.
We haven't seen Matt this happy since he landed Hannah Montana tickets
But the unsung hero of the day was the erstwhile towel and water-boy who bravely stood by his pal, ready with a sip of H20, or ready to mop sweat from Matty's brow.
The League: Towel Boy
All pics courtesy Patricio Sanchez
Green Lantern: First Flight
There's a lot of good in the new DCU Animated film, "Green Lantern: First Flight", but one can't really help but find it hard not to wish WB Animation would let these movies run another 20-30 minutes longer to flesh out the story. For this viewer and comic dork, the movies don't give enough time to allow for the details that (a) fans would appreciate, (b) are part of the character's appeal and charm, and (c) probably would help a bit with what feels like 20 pounds of plot crammed into a 5 pound bag. Its understandable during the first few forays into the format, but at some point, it seems like DCU Animated would take a step back and try to figure out how to improve upon their process.
As a DC character with 50-odd years of history behind him, Hal Jordan, The Guardians, and the Green Lantern Corps are one of the more complete mythologies in the comics-verse. As a kid, I remember starting to uncover GL with Emerald Dawn and the GL series which followed (but which went off the tracks almost immediately as DC refused to let the series return to its conceit of Hal Jordan as one of 3600 space policemen). But the pieces were there. Hal, power batteries, Kilowog, a Guardian or two, and the rings... All kind of fascinating stuff. In high school I had a plastic GL ring that glowed in the dark, that I remember leaving in my window so it would always glow a bit at night.
And in watching the film, while I feel they absolutely tried, and that they did a pretty darn good job of making a movie people might enjoy, it was pretty clear that the parties responsible were not GL fans. It's not that they don't like GL, its that they seem to have just not really soaked in GL long before making their movie.
I'm not particularly wound up that after the canon (and required) transfer of the ring from Abin-Sur to Jordan that the team didn't stick to any known canon (be it Silver Age, Emerald Dawn I, or Johns' reinterpretation). But I do want to point out: There were no actual Lanterns in the Green Lantern movie. Not one.
As near as I can tell, somebody decided that the actual Lanterns/ charging device which each individual Corps member is assigned with their ring, would mess up the story they were trying to tell, and so just omitted them for narrative expediency. Not since Alan Rickman uttered "I AM the Half-Blood Prince!" have I been so underwhelmed by how pre-existing material was handled.
It's a single example, but I think a fairly telling one.
I do think it would have behooved the DCU Animation team to stick closer to Johns' reinterpretation of the GL mythos, as the cartoon feels dated even as one watches it, even with Sinestro in his Sinestro Corps togs instead of the classic Blue and Black.
The plot basically fast forwards through Hal obtaining the ring and speeds past Carol Ferris and Ferris Air in order to cut to the chase, but once you're there, the plot (skewed as I may personally find it) is well executed. For those of you not weighed down by GL comic history, it's an engaging tale of a rookie on the learning curve. And maybe the story is a bit tighter than what I think of when I ponder a character like Sinestro or Ch'P.
In many ways, its sort of "Training Day" by way of GL Corps, and that's somewhat accurate to the comics. It's a good tack to take, provides for a bit of intrigue, but GL fans will feel the tick of the clock hands and WB Animation's self-imposed time limits in cutting out any mention of Korugar and the realization of Sinestro's view of the world. That doesn't mean that it doesn't work in the movie, as Sinestro jumps from Corps Member to Antagonist, but the motivation doesn't stick quite as well.
The animation is excellent. It relies on the work of our neighbors from across the Pacific from time-to-time, and often just goes ahead and looks like anime, but I think that's actually pretty great. Its 2009, and if you can't appreciate a little anime in your movie, well, more's the pity. The design work on the costumes completely worked for me, and 90% of the character design. I did NOT like the re-design on Kanjar-Ro, from sharkish freak to semi-generic squid/ bug aliens (but do not get me started on how much I liked the re-design of the Weaponers of Qward). But Ch'p, Kilowog, Arisia, etc... and the Guardians looked great.
The pacing is dead on, the voice acting was very good, even if Kurtwood Smith as Kanjar-Ro was almost distracting in its Kurtwood Smith-ness. I do feel that Meloni was a good choice for Hal Jordan and that Victor Garber is an excellent choice for Sinestro.
I appreciate the work director Lauren Montgomery pulled off with the movie, and I'd be curious to see what she'd do if time and money were available on a Pixar-like scale. She's working with enough constraints to befuddle Mister Miracle, and she's still able to produce work that's setting new standards for storytelling and animation in the long, tough history of super-hero animation.
In the end, GL is often a comic-dorks' comic. Like Superman, its full of obscurities that only readers and fans will know (I only know, roughly, 1/3rd of the Lanterns' names I could know). But for folks coming fresh to Green Lantern, its a sort space opera/ fantasy. If you're looking for science in the science fiction, you will be deeply disappointed. But if you're looking for space-faring, interplanetary adventure, I honestly think the movie works pretty well.
As a DC character with 50-odd years of history behind him, Hal Jordan, The Guardians, and the Green Lantern Corps are one of the more complete mythologies in the comics-verse. As a kid, I remember starting to uncover GL with Emerald Dawn and the GL series which followed (but which went off the tracks almost immediately as DC refused to let the series return to its conceit of Hal Jordan as one of 3600 space policemen). But the pieces were there. Hal, power batteries, Kilowog, a Guardian or two, and the rings... All kind of fascinating stuff. In high school I had a plastic GL ring that glowed in the dark, that I remember leaving in my window so it would always glow a bit at night.
And in watching the film, while I feel they absolutely tried, and that they did a pretty darn good job of making a movie people might enjoy, it was pretty clear that the parties responsible were not GL fans. It's not that they don't like GL, its that they seem to have just not really soaked in GL long before making their movie.
I'm not particularly wound up that after the canon (and required) transfer of the ring from Abin-Sur to Jordan that the team didn't stick to any known canon (be it Silver Age, Emerald Dawn I, or Johns' reinterpretation). But I do want to point out: There were no actual Lanterns in the Green Lantern movie. Not one.
As near as I can tell, somebody decided that the actual Lanterns/ charging device which each individual Corps member is assigned with their ring, would mess up the story they were trying to tell, and so just omitted them for narrative expediency. Not since Alan Rickman uttered "I AM the Half-Blood Prince!" have I been so underwhelmed by how pre-existing material was handled.
It's a single example, but I think a fairly telling one.
I do think it would have behooved the DCU Animation team to stick closer to Johns' reinterpretation of the GL mythos, as the cartoon feels dated even as one watches it, even with Sinestro in his Sinestro Corps togs instead of the classic Blue and Black.
The plot basically fast forwards through Hal obtaining the ring and speeds past Carol Ferris and Ferris Air in order to cut to the chase, but once you're there, the plot (skewed as I may personally find it) is well executed. For those of you not weighed down by GL comic history, it's an engaging tale of a rookie on the learning curve. And maybe the story is a bit tighter than what I think of when I ponder a character like Sinestro or Ch'P.
In many ways, its sort of "Training Day" by way of GL Corps, and that's somewhat accurate to the comics. It's a good tack to take, provides for a bit of intrigue, but GL fans will feel the tick of the clock hands and WB Animation's self-imposed time limits in cutting out any mention of Korugar and the realization of Sinestro's view of the world. That doesn't mean that it doesn't work in the movie, as Sinestro jumps from Corps Member to Antagonist, but the motivation doesn't stick quite as well.
The animation is excellent. It relies on the work of our neighbors from across the Pacific from time-to-time, and often just goes ahead and looks like anime, but I think that's actually pretty great. Its 2009, and if you can't appreciate a little anime in your movie, well, more's the pity. The design work on the costumes completely worked for me, and 90% of the character design. I did NOT like the re-design on Kanjar-Ro, from sharkish freak to semi-generic squid/ bug aliens (but do not get me started on how much I liked the re-design of the Weaponers of Qward). But Ch'p, Kilowog, Arisia, etc... and the Guardians looked great.
The pacing is dead on, the voice acting was very good, even if Kurtwood Smith as Kanjar-Ro was almost distracting in its Kurtwood Smith-ness. I do feel that Meloni was a good choice for Hal Jordan and that Victor Garber is an excellent choice for Sinestro.
I appreciate the work director Lauren Montgomery pulled off with the movie, and I'd be curious to see what she'd do if time and money were available on a Pixar-like scale. She's working with enough constraints to befuddle Mister Miracle, and she's still able to produce work that's setting new standards for storytelling and animation in the long, tough history of super-hero animation.
In the end, GL is often a comic-dorks' comic. Like Superman, its full of obscurities that only readers and fans will know (I only know, roughly, 1/3rd of the Lanterns' names I could know). But for folks coming fresh to Green Lantern, its a sort space opera/ fantasy. If you're looking for science in the science fiction, you will be deeply disappointed. But if you're looking for space-faring, interplanetary adventure, I honestly think the movie works pretty well.
Swedes Rock Out
Jason posted this video from Peter, Bjorn & John, and it got me thinking about Swedish rock I've enjoyed.
Saw these guys on Colbert this week:
I used to be into these guys in college. Not sure what happened to them.
Also, The Cardigans.
And, screw you guys. I like Abba.
(and that outfit the guitarist has on is exactly what Jason wears to court, btw)
Saw these guys on Colbert this week:
I used to be into these guys in college. Not sure what happened to them.
Also, The Cardigans.
And, screw you guys. I like Abba.
(and that outfit the guitarist has on is exactly what Jason wears to court, btw)
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Folks on Vaycay
My parents are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Mid-West in general on vacation. The KareBear is a UP native, from a small town outside of Marquette (which isn't really a huge city, but its got a university and whatnot). She returns there very frequently, usually once every year or so to wreak havoc upon unsuspecting Yoopers.
The Admiral also got to attend the EAA AirVenture (aka: The Osh Kosh Air Show), one of the biggest airplane-dork conventions in the country.
Anyhoo, The Admiral sent me some pics, so I thought I'd share.
The KareBear will be shocked to learn that someone put an enormous body of water behind her while she was looking away.
Just as The League gets as giddy as a kid full of sugar when at a comic shop, so, too, does The Admiral geek out at a good air show
The Admiral also got to attend the EAA AirVenture (aka: The Osh Kosh Air Show), one of the biggest airplane-dork conventions in the country.
Anyhoo, The Admiral sent me some pics, so I thought I'd share.
The KareBear will be shocked to learn that someone put an enormous body of water behind her while she was looking away.
Just as The League gets as giddy as a kid full of sugar when at a comic shop, so, too, does The Admiral geek out at a good air show
Scariest Thing You Can Go As This Halloween
Not sure how you're going to scare the be-jeezus out of everyone this Halloween season?
They've made a Kate Gosselin wig (that's the Kate of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" fame). Oh yes. They have.
Here.
The name of this product? The "Eight is Too Much Wig". Ouch.
I cannot imagine what it must mean to Kate that, for a good chuckle at parties, people will now be dressing as her for Halloween. Or what that means for her now ex-husband. And kids. But I have to think that unless you're Elvis Presley or the president, its kind of a sure sign that maybe life is very publicly not working out for you.
So, you know, I very much look forward to you guys getting your "That League Guy" mask with official Superman T-shirt for Halloween 2012 or so.
Thanks to Jamie for the link
They've made a Kate Gosselin wig (that's the Kate of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" fame). Oh yes. They have.
Here.
The name of this product? The "Eight is Too Much Wig". Ouch.
I cannot imagine what it must mean to Kate that, for a good chuckle at parties, people will now be dressing as her for Halloween. Or what that means for her now ex-husband. And kids. But I have to think that unless you're Elvis Presley or the president, its kind of a sure sign that maybe life is very publicly not working out for you.
So, you know, I very much look forward to you guys getting your "That League Guy" mask with official Superman T-shirt for Halloween 2012 or so.
Thanks to Jamie for the link
Friday, July 31, 2009
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