A quick review of

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152

[Amazon][I got mine from Comic Quest]

The official description:

Mouse Guard is comic book written and illustrated by David Petersen. Each mini-series is six issues long and published by Archaia Studios Press as well as a collected hardcover edition [sic]. Villard will be publishing the softcover edition of Mouse Guard Fall 1152 in 2008.

In the world of Mouse Guard, mice struggle to live safely and prosper amongst harsh conditions and a host of predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed: more than just soldiers that fight off intruders, they are guides for common mice looking to journey without confrontation from one hidden village to another. The Guard patrol borders, find safeways and paths through dangerous territories and treacherous terrain, watch weather patterns, and keep the mouse territories free of predatory infestation. They do so with fearless dedication so that they might not just exist, but truly live. Saxon, Kenzie and Lieam, three such Guardsmice, are dispatched to find a missing merchant mouse that never arrived at his destination. Their search for the missing mouse reveals much more than they expect, as they stumble across a traitor in the Guard’s own ranks.

- “Mouse Guard: Fall 1152″ is about…
… mice living like people in a medieval setting. Aside from this, everything else is so-far realistic (their “monsters” are wolves, snakes, etc.  No fictional monsters).

- This review is based on…
… reading the collected paperback.

- My background stuff on this is/are..
… comics. I first got wind of it when I ran into a news item regarding RPG being developed based on the comic. The title “Mouse Guard”, plus the nicely drawn image of 3 mice that looked like RPG characters piqued my interest (that’s basically the pic on the left).

- It’s similar to…
… nothing I’ve previously seen.

- It reminds me of…
… a mature kid’s book. The plot, though not overly simplistic, is not overly complex. However, people, or rather mice, die here, folks.

- The aesthetics are…
… cool! I loved the art!

- The cool thing/s is/are...
… the art! It’s what got me interested in the first place.
… the characters. The art and the way the characters behave in given situations shows a lot of personality (if not depth).
… there are no humans! I didn’t want a Stewart Little, and I didn’t get it! No mouse/human interaction. In fact, there appears to be no humans in their world at all!

- I didn’t quite like…
… that there was no magic. I was expecting LOTR in a mouse world setting, which I erroneously assumed to include magic. There was none.
… that the main villain’s motivation didn’t feel well developed.
… that most of the characters, though well characterized, seem thinly developed. It may be too much to ask for, though, since this is the first in a somewhat action oriented comic series.
… the fact that it was too short!

- Overall…
… I like it! It’s a bit on the short and shallow side, but it has charm and personality, so like it. I hope that the motivations for each character gets deeper as the series progresses. I’m looking forward to the next mini-series.

- My final recommendation on Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 is…
… get it if you like the art.
… get it if you want a simple story in that setting with a twist.
… don’t get it if you’re expecting heavy magic or a human/animal relationship type story.

- Don’t forget…
… it has medieval mice with non-fictional “monsters”!

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Iron Man is all over the place!  It’s already the 2nd best opening for a non-sequel (Spider-Man still at #1) and the 10th largest all-time opening!  But is the movie any good?  I’m very pleased to say it is!

I’m not all that up-to-date with the comics, so I came into the movie with less background than, say, Spider-Man, X-Men, or Batman.  The plot is not that deep, so I’ll spare you the potential spoilers.  All you need to know is that Tony Stark is a tech-genius, multi-billionaire, playboy who doesn’t care much of the misery his weapons company creates until he comes into an encounter which will change his point of view, and happen to force him to develop the armor.  The rest is armor development, romance, various conflicts, and the said armor in use.

At arms length, this sounds like typical super-hero movie fare.  Yes it is, but it does that focused job beautifully!  Robert Downey Jr. does a superb job playing Tony Stark.  The quirks, character flaws, behavior, and character transformation all come through as authentic, entertaining and believable, no small feat for a super-hero movie.  The Iron Man (or Iron-Mans) are well done, you will never get bored looking at them and you’ll be waiting for what it can do next.

The biggest surprise for me was the Gwyneth Paltrow’s portrayal of Pepper and the treatment of the whole love-interest thing (I guess there always MUST be a love-interest, oh well).  Typically, female love-interests in superhero movies are either hapless victims who need rescuing (and who are the greatest source of inspiration/inner-power for the hero) or gung-ho master’s of their own domain who are at par with the hero, if not superior (at least prior to the hero’s “final inspiration moment”).  Pepper, on the other hand, although obviously instrumental in Tony’s life, is NOT the sole object of Tony’s existence.  She’s an assistant, no special fighting skills, no hidden powers, just the assistant who genuinely cares for the lead and who does what she can to help out.  Hapless victims get annoying, and gung-ho love-interests are fun, but this time, the relationship is kept somewhat real.  I was fully expecting Gwyneth to be annoying, instead I found her very refreshingly convincing in her role!  Kudos!

My only minor gripe is that you really really want to see the armor in action a lot more.  It’s not that the armor ain’t in action (it was objectively adequate given the story), it’s just that it isn’t in action all the time.  This was a similar feeling I had with the 1st Spider-Man movie, you only really get to see Spidey in action in the later parts.  The thing is, the armor in action is just so cool that you really just want to see it all the time, even though Robert Downy Jr. does excellent acting outside of the armor.  Also, I wish the final-battle scene wasn’t “underpowered”, I’d really have loved to see a long long continuous booster/repulsor/missile/armor battle.  They had that, but it was a bit short for me.

Aside from this, everything else is great!  The movie appears to be doing quite well with ticket sales, and it deserves to be.  There are quite a few hints on franchise expansion, the obligatory Stan Lee cameo, and, if you listen closely, you’ll hear renditions of the old Iron Man cartoon theme song.  Also, you really have to wait until the after credits scene.

To sum this Iron Man movie review, WATCH IT!  And when you do, don’t forget to WATCH THE AFTER CREDITS SCENE!!!

[update]

After doing so well in the box-office, I’m not surprised that Marvel would annouce a sequel, and then some (see the Pipeline segment).

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I’ve never been a sci-fi reader. Sure, I’ve read some here and there, but most of my sci-fi exposure has been with movies and TV, not books. A quick look at my humble library confirmed it… I had no sci-fi books (I do remember having the Admiral Thrawn trilogy at my old home).

I decided to rectify the situation in the 3rd quarter of 2007 by attempting to get into the genre. I read top lists, checked reviews, and asked around (though I knew relatively few sci-fi readers personally). The book Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card constantly sprang-up, and knowing that any book I chose at that point would be as good as any other, I decided to get that.

Ender’s Game is about a super-genius boy named Ender Wiggins (yes, the name sounds pansy) who at a young age was forced into a special training school to prepare him in his role as “protector of humanity”. The book starts off with the “I am a genius and thus I am bullied” theme, followed by the “government/military handpicks you as ‘The One’ that may ultimately save all humanity” theme, and then Ender is whisked to the “top secret training school where all elites are trained for the ultimate conflict”. This part is where most of the book’s pages are dedicated to.

In this “school for the elite”, Ender faces more of the same as well as the task of proving his salt, gaining acceptance and respect, and the slow revealation of what “The Man” expects out of him in the end. With each positive thing that happens to Ender, something else goes wrong or a new plot twist is introduced (which kinda reminds me of the “Princess Sarah” anime).

I’ll stop here and let the rest of the story take it’s natural course, but I would like to state a major point in this review… those last two paragraphs pretty much describe the bulk of the book. The events are individually interesting (at least some are), but overall, things just seem to be your run of the mill coming of age story. It’s not that it’s entirely predictable (some parts are, some aren’t), it’s just that when all is said and done the whole thing feels thin.

The journey, however, can be quite engrossing. I can immediately see how nerds in their childhood can relate to Ender, but the empathy goes just a tad further than that. As you grow older, you tend to lose the connection with the youth, forgetting what it meant to be young. If you think about it, Ender’s serious and thoughtful demanor is not simply due to his way-above average intellect (athough it partly is), it’s more of how the younger ones see the world and what they hold dear. Adults may find it unlikely or silly that a boy would think of the things Ender did, but they do. Kids see things differently, and most of us saw things the same way at one point or another in our young lives (on the assumption that you’re one of the so-called relatively ‘old farts’ like me).

Which leads to my other major point… it is this aspect that makes the book special in spite of the weaknesses I mentioned earlier. What the book lacks in sophistication of plot, it makes up for in empathy. It’s not extremely well done, but it was enough to keep me reading, urging me to get to the next page and see what will happen next, being by Ender’s side in his endeavors.

This type of storytelling, however, is not for everyone by definition. Not all people will be able to relate to Ender, and thus the book may ultimately fail on them. To those who do empathize, the plot/story will matter less than the ongoing experience, and thus the book may be successful. If all you’re after is plot and story… well… there’s not much of that in this book.

If you read the preface/introduction, Orson Scott Card acknowledges that Ender’s Game was originally a short-story converted to a novel, and it shows. Some plot aspects are cliche, some parts feel like fillers or were forced. The core story that is Ender’s “coming of age”, however, will draw some of you into a trip down memory lane where you will reminice in your own similar plights, celebrate with him in each triumph, and root for him to succeed with each challenge. This will not happen to all of you, but it will to some.

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I came into the movie knowing it’s gonna be a handycam film like Blair Witch. It wasn’t enough to prevent me from feeling like I just came ashore after taking a less than gentle tugboat ride in the sea.

For those who don’t know yet, Cloverfield is a monster movie. The movie is set in New York where a group of friends are slowly exposed to various calamities caused and eventually leads up to the source of all the chaos. I saw on TV that the director wanted to create a uniquely US monster, since Godzilla, Mothma, et al didn’t exactly originate there (where did King Kong come from?). When I first heard about it, I thought it was great. I haven’t seen a giant monster movie seen King Kong, and I was excited to see something new on the prowl.

Then I learned that the movie was gonna get a the handycam treatment. I prayed that it wasn’t going to be a hurlfest.

Unfortunately, it pretty much was.

From the get go, the audience it given a taste of how shaky the camera would be. I’m not so sure about the others, but it wasn’t steady enough for me, and I knew things would only get worse. I was fortunate enough to have a tougher stomach for this than my SO and our friend, but that didn’t it really doesn’t pay to keep your eyes glued on the screen all the time.

Hudson, or ‘HUD’ is the cameraman for most of the movie (HUD, get it?), and he’s actually the most paradoxical part fo the movie IMO. On one hand, I really feel that they could’ve made HUD’s handycam movements less realistic and the film would actually be more watchable. On the other hand, HUD, as a character, was actually one of the things that made you want to stay and watch (or listen) through the whole movie.

To be fair, I did find a couple of things well done. All the shots that were supposedly from TV news cameras seemed real. The monster in question wasn’t hidden all the time (although it’s far from being well exposed either). There was also a particular scene that I thought was excellently executed, the camera wasn’t so bad at the time, and the tension/panic really came through (this isn’t at the latter of the film).

Overall, Cloverfield’s still a hurlfest. It does have gems here and there, but it will depend on your constitution if you can get to those parts. Admittedly, I myself am not sure if those gems are worth the almost 2 hour ocean boat ride. If you do decide to see it, here’s a tip: if they’re running up stairs or running/walking from nothing in particular, there’s probably nothing interesting to see, so you can just listen and keep tabs with your pheripheral vision until someting worth looking at does come up.

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It’s 01:18, I just got home from watching the 2.5 hr robot-fest that is Transformers.

Simply put, it might very well be the greatest movie of the year!

I haven’t watched anything that put me at a loss for words in a very long time.  I haven’t enjoyed a movie this much since 300.  The movie is just so satisfying in so many levels that it has surpassed the fulfillment I had in 300.

Now that I got that out of the way (for now), I’ll mention that the story was average.  But if you think about it, I really can’t imagine how you can make talking robots from outer space that turn into cars and other vehicles any more plausible than how this movie did it.

Effects?  I’m simply speechless.

I’m sure I’ll find flaws in the movie eventually, but this does not change the fact that I loved this movie so much that I am actually considering watching it again in the big screen (a very rare thing for me).

A MUST WATCH!!!

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“Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords” is basically a RPG (role-playing game). You pick a class, equip your character with stuff, take on quests, fight baddies, level-up, assign points to your stats, etc. Combat, however, is executed by playing a Bejeweled type puzzle.

Your level and equipment determine your HP (hit-points), and your class mainly determines what spells/techniques you can execute in combat. You stats affect how effective various aspects in combat, fire affect red pieces, water affects blue pieces, etc. In combat, you and your opponent take turns swapping adjacent pieces on the board to make Bejeweled style combinations. The pieces you combine determine the various aspects of combat. Damage is mainly dealt to your opponent by combining 3 or more skulls together.

The elemental pieces, in particular, provide you with “mana”, which you use for casting spells or executing techniques (like dealing damage, destroying certain pieces or shifting mana, etc). Even the amount of cash you get (and experiences points also, I think) at the end of combat are affected by the pieces you play on the board.

The structure and navigation system of the main map is similar to the Tactics type games where you basically just choose where you want to go. On the way, you may encounter some baddies which you’ll have to dispatch. As you go along and accumulate wealth, aside from purchasing items and equipment, you may also opt to improve your citadel (or house) to gain extras in the game, like mini-games (perhaps similar to the fairy world aspect of Breath of Fire III). The game also supports multiplayer, so you can pit your character and puzzling skill at other.

The demo only allows you to play until level 7, so I wasn’t able to see the game through to the end. I’m a bit annoyed that the game is currently planned to be released only for the DS and PSP (which is strange since the demo is for the PC). Given the variety of puzzles in Puzzle Pirates, I was a bit surprised that you could only play the Bejeweled like combat. But then again, they did manage to put enough twists in the Bejewled style game to make it interesting and competitive. Before this game, I couldn’t imagine how you could make Bejewled competitive, but they pulled it off nicely. Perhaps they put in some other puzzle games in the mini-games available in your citadel.

I like what I’ve seen in the demo, it makes me actually think about getting a DS just to play the game. Given that they have a demo for the PC, I think (and hope) they decide to release a PC version in the future. Regardless of where it’s available right now, this game looks very promising. If you have a DS or PSP, this is a good game to check out. For now, I’ll just keep on dreaming for a PC version.

Here are some more screen-shots:

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www.darthvid.com

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I watched “Letters from Iwo Jima” again, this time with my dad (I thought that my dad would appreciate this more than “300″). I was expecting that I wouldn’t be as moved the second time around, but it turns out I was just as moved as the first time I watched. Now, however, I could afford to squint a little in the few scenes which really disturbed me.

To me, this is a sign of how well the movie was made. It’s not often I’d watch a movie again, and even less often that the movie will have the same effect on me the second time.

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