Decomposing Train

I can’t say that I was ever that connected to him as anything other than a name on a book cover… Yeah, I played AD&D when I was a kid, but I branched out to other (and better, in my opinion) games quickly after getting introduced to role-playing games as a concept. I knew who he was only vaguely, in that he had “invented” Dungeons And Dragons… but it is much the same as Noah Webster = Dictionary, at least for me personally. He was highly regarded by a lot of people, though, and Websnark does a fair job sumarrizing Gygax’s impact on popular culture here.

We went to see Iron Man at the movie theater the other day. My review: Don’t over-analyze, and it’s pretty darn good. Probably one of the better of the genre that I’ve seen so far.

Of course, I have not seen any of the Spider-Man movies yet. And X-Men 2 is still #1 of the recent crop of Marvel flicks, in my opinion. Why are DC-based movies generally so much better than Marvel’s offerings? I collected Marvel comics almost exclusively when I was a kid, but the movies they make… ugh. The first FF4 movie was so bad that I fast-forwarded through nearly an hour of it. The Ang Lee Hulk movie was so awful we booed it when the credits rolled.

This quote from Wired pretty much sums up Ang Lee and why his version of the Hulk sucked:

When Ang Lee was in the process of directing his botched, pretentious take on Marvel’s The Hulk, the art-house filmmaker said he was trying to make “a gourmet meal out of American fast food.” At that moment, summer moviegoers should have known they were in for an overwrought, ponderous waste of ticket money.

For the record, I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, and I think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is about 90 minutes longer than it needs to be.

The “new” Hulk film looks like it might be a little more bearable, but the trailers make it obvious that the CGI is going to stick out like a sore thumb. What is up with the crappy CGI in films nowadays? Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End had some of the most god-awful CGI I’ve seen in a movie since the 80’s (i.e. the mini-Depp hanging out in Jack Sparrow’s beard).

Ok, enough rambling. The point is this: I was surprised to learn that Eddie Campbell once drew Iron Man, although not too, too surprised. The man has done a lot of work over the years.

We’ve finally made it to Louisville, and the new apartment seems nice. It was 95° in Louisville yesterday, so the A/C was working overtime to cool the joint down. It’s nice and cool in here now, though, thank god.

It had to have broken 100° in South Carolina on Friday, when the movers were packing up our stuff. It has been a grueling week, and the heat just makes everything worse.

In other, non-whinging-about-moving-house news, we went and saw the new Indiana Jones movie a couple of weeks ago (I just hadn’t had the chance to talk about it because of the moving house stuff).

I can safely give it a “Meh.” It was okay, but not great. I didn’t have high hopes, but I expected something… more? It might be better on repeat viewings. At the moment I would rank it tied or just-slightly-behind Temple of Doom.

The List, in order of favorite to least favorite, is of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, and The Temple of Doom or The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And bear in mind that I like Temple of Doom. A bad Indiana Jones movie is still better than a good “new” Star Wars movie…

As Brian Posehn said, “the new Star Wars movies don’t just suck compared to other Star Wars movies, they suck compared to other movies that suck.”

Ok, so I have only just this evening finally gotten around to watching Batman Begins.  I liked it.

I am sure other people have already written a ton of fluff about the movie, so I won’t bother.   It is a good film, though.  Probably the best superhero and/or comic book movie I’ve seen in a long while.

I will definitely be going to see The Dark Knight in the theater.