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I’ve been reading the Watchmen comic books, since there’s a movie coming out soon.  I saw the trailer during “The Dark Knight” last weekend, and had no idea who any of the characters were. Apparently, I took a hit to my geek cred because I’ve never read the series, which collectively is regarded as one of the best graphic novels ever.  Time Magazine even recognized it as one of the “100 Best English-Language Novels”.  Not bad for a comic book!

I’m about three issues into the twelve, and it’s an interesting story.  Watchmen may have been the first title to delve into the human flaws that exist in people, especially costumed avengers (a common practice among today’s anti-heroes in comics).   If masked adventurers protected the public, wouldn’t it be possible that one or two would be alcoholics or sociopathic killers?  Watchmen goes into these details, across two generations of heroes, while contrasting them against the changing times of America over the decades.

I especially like the metafiction that accompanies each chapter.   The first three end with printed excerpts from the memoirs of the first “Nite Owl”, previously retired. His book, “Under the Hood“, is a tell-all of the personal lives of his crime-fighting group, the “Minutemen”, which disbanded in 1947.  He describes his childhood and upbringing, then his break into crime-fighting outside of the law.  This helps to flesh out the character beyond the confines of the plot of the comic.

“Under the Hood“, fictional in real life but non-fictional in the Watchmen universe, also outlines how the political climate of America changed over time.  It goes from loving costumed heroes in the 40’s to loathing them as vigilantes in the 50’s, how it loops back again to the point where new crime-fighters appear in the 60’s.  And then back again when declining public sentiment causes the government to outlaw them in 1977.  Oh, and America won the Vietnam war and Nixon served five terms as president.

Now that I’m caught up on the back story, I’m looking forward to seeing the Watchmen movie when it comes out in March of 2009.  I’m also looking forward to finishing the series.  I’ve always enjoyed comic books, so I’m surprised that I’ve never read this one.  Probably because it was a DC title and the characters were not included in an ongoing canon (that would make them easy for me to skip).  Similar to “300″, I’d like to see how they adapt this comic to the big screen, and by that I mean IMAX.

Netflix has a star-based ratings system that goes from one to five, one being that you hated a particular movie, and five being that you loved that movie.  That sounds pretty straightforward, but it’s very subjective.  I doubt that most people put a lot of thought into this.  They see a good movie that kept them entertained for an hour while they enjoyed their popcorn, and immediately throw five stars at it. Will they even remember the plot tomorrow?  No?  Then don’t give it five stars!  They should give it three stars, to show that they enjoyed it, but it didn’t change their life.

Here is how Netflix suggests that you rate movies:

1. Hated it
2. Didn’t like it
3. Liked it
4. Really liked it
5. Loved it

That’s all well and good, but I am more objective in my ratings system.  Granted, whether or not I liked a movie is entirely subjective to me, but I try to rate each movie on the same scale.  Few titles will get five stars from me.  To get five stars, I would want to own that movie.  Keep in mind that I have a small, very particular, DVD collection made up of movies that have moved me.  I rarely watch the same movie twice.  No time for that.  I’d have to really like a movie to see it a second time, even on DVD.

Here is how I judge Netflix movies:

1. Shouldn’t be watched by anyone, ever
2. Didn’t enjoy it
3. Enjoyed it, might remember the plot tomorrow
4. Would recommend it to friends, might watch a second time
5. Near and dear to me, would buy it for my own DVD collection

While grading students in my class at Indiana University, I asked my mentor professor if it was normal to give “A”s to everyone in class.  He told me that grades should ideally be distributed in a bell curve, with a few students getting As at the bottom of the curve, more getting Bs as you go up, the majority getting Cs at the top of the curve, then back down the curve to Ds, and just a few getting Fs at the bottom again.  The ratio of As to Fs should be relatively equal, as should the ratio of Bs to Ds.  There are benefits to this type of grading system, but there are also shortcomings.

I don’t generally grade this way in my classes (most people get As, with a few slackers getting Bs, and the one kid who never shows up gets an F).  However, I think that the bell curve distribution is useful to keep in mind while rating movies.  You can’t quote every movie word-for-word (five stars), and you won’t walk out of every movie in disgust (one star).  In fact, the majority of the movies that I’ve rated on Netflix have gotten three stars.  Unrealistic movie ratings would throw off the curve.  I wish that more people would adopt a more solid method for rating on Netflix.

There was a recent episode of Doctor Who where he, Martha and Donna ended up on an uninhabitable world with a group of humans battling a group of fish people (called the Hath) in an underground city.  The Doctor gets his hand stuck in a gene sampler and ends up with a daughter or something.  The really interesting part, for me, was that both sides of the subterranean conflict, both human and Hath, were fighting to possess a mythic weapon of unimaginable power.  The Doctor discovers that it is actually a device that terraforms planets, or takes dead planets and makes them habitable.  That sounds a lot like Project Genesis to me.

So my first thought is: how can we tie in the Star Trek universe with the Doctor Who universe so that there are Klingons searching here for the Genesis Device? Wouldn’t it be cool if Birds of Prey showed up above the planet, and we end up with middle-age Kirk joining up with Doctor Who to keep their quarry out of the wrong hands (all of them). I can just see Christopher Lloyd saying: “So, Doctor Who, you won’t give me the Genesis Device?” Zap! Jenny gets the Klingon disruptor and that’s it for her recurring character.  Kirk howls, “You killed my son!” The Doctor cries, “You killed my daughter!” Great stuff. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as my little fanboy brain-wanderings went. Neat idea though.

I watched the 2004 CGI remake of “Appleseed” (1988) last year and found myself under-impressed.  The animation was good, but the story was so long-winded that you wait for all the boring talking to end so that you could see the next fight scene.  “Appleseed Ex Machina” (2007) stepped up both the animation and the action from its predecessor, but it did away with most of the explanatory dialog. So, no twenty minutes scenes of smurfs describing the intricate details of metropolitan clone replication management.

The thing that sets this one apart from any other anime was that John Woo was involved as the producer.  John Woo is a legendary director of action movies, know for his use of slow-motion action sequences and lots of shell casings hitting the floor.  The gunplay and action scenes were top-notch.  Although his style is often immitated, you could really tell that Woo was directly involved.  The artists mention in the DVD features how Woo’s ideas were integrated into the film. He would study the storyboards and point out where his style would benefit the story.

The animation in Ex Machina was ten times better than the 2004 version (which was still pretty good).  All of the environments were photo realistic and special attention was paid to the details of every backdrop.  The panorama shots were beautiful, such as the wide view of the city-nation, “Olympus”. The characters models were “toon-shaded”, so they were 3D but had the appearance of two dimensional drawings.  Best of all, the animators finally nailed down the “angry face”, which has plagued computer animated characters in the past. 

The real coup of this anime was the range of emotion.  John Woo was again credited for adding emotional impact to the story.  Deunan and Briareos, the leading pair of the Appleseed movies, have never been closer.  The voice acting brings a lot of the emotion across, but again the facial animation has really improved as well.  Examples of this would be a memorable funeral scene that was very sad and a gathering of friends at Briareos’ bedside after he is injured.  So it’s not all bang-bang action, there’s some meat to this story.

Overall, I was very impressed with the improvement in quality in this series.  It’s definitely on par with many of the summer blockbusters, many of which are mostly computer generated anyway.  I actually waited a while before watching this sequel, thinking that it would be more the same, but I was pleasantly surprised. I would recommend this episode over the previous Appleseed movie, as it stands alone well, retelling a high-level version of the saga.  Of special note: Only one follow the speeding bullet effect was used in this movie.

The theater got pretty full at the “Death Note” live-action movie, since it was limited-release and only had two showings. I was surprised at how friendly and talkative everyone in the audience was.  I had a nice conversation concerning Japanese horror cinema with the couple in front of me. They were 15.  The entire audience was mostly teens, but some had brought their parents with them.  The parents that weren’t in attendance were all waiting outside in their cars.  I noticed a lot of cars running in the parking lot, with older faces scanning the crowd coming out of the theater.

So the question becomes: Am I too old to be there?  I’ve always loved 80’s cartoons, especially Transformers, because that’s what I watched when I was 12.  I discovered anime in college, and I’ve seen a lot of Japanese animation and J-Horror videos since then.  I dig giant robots.  But I’ve never interacted with the fan base, as I do with Transformers.  I really like anime, but I didn’t know that the core audience is too young to drive yet.  Technically, I’m old enough to be their father. It makes me think twice about attending an anime convention, but maybe I’m just being silly?

I don’t get this impression when I go to Botcon, since it’s full of other adult enthusiasts.  I suppose that I shouldn’t let it bother me.  I’ve currently got the last five episodes of “Blood Plus“, four episodes of “Death Note”, and three episodes of “Witchblade” on my DVR, waiting for my spare time.  Netflix is shipping me “Appleseed: Ex Machina” today, and there are several other sets in my queue.  I guess that if I’m not too old to play with my toys, then it’s OK if I watch Japanese cartoons every now and then. 

I went to see the Death Note live-action movie on Tuesday night. It was pretty good, and followed the storyline of the animated series closely (skipping over bits to cut down on run time). The CGI was used sparingly, which is not surprising for a Japanese release. The special effects were mostly used for the scenes with “Ryuk“, the God of Death, but there was also the ubiquitous follow the flying bullet shot. The movie emphasized Light’s utter ruthlessness more than the anime.  If you thought that Light could be a sociopathic murdering genius, then the movie confirms your suspicions.

The movie didn’t cover nearly as much of the story as I thought it would, only up until episode 9, since the end of the movie saw the first meeting between “Light Yagami” and “L“.  I think that the sequel will need to follow the manga (comic book) version of the story instead of the anime.  First, the anime has way too many episodes to cover them nine as a time.  Second, the manga has a final confrontation between L’s group and Light, whereas the anime goes on after L is defeated. One of them is going to have to die in the sequel, so I’m betting that the manga version will play out.

Everybody in the world saw the new ”Iron Man” movie before I did, and it was unanimously decided that it was great.  Normally, I wouldn’t go to see a movie at a theater, because I hate theaters, but I was persuaded by the chorus of excellent reviews from my peers.  And it turns out that we were both right: Iron Man is a great movie, and there is no reason good enough to attend a movie theater. 

I’ve been watching this anime called “Death Note” for a while now, and I really like it. It’s about this college student, Light Yagami, who suddenly finds a way to kill people only by writing their names in a notebook. He’s a certified genius, so his master plan is to use the notebook to wipe out all criminals, thus creating a Utopia in Japan, with himself as the ruler. The notebook is actually a Death Note, which are normally carried by “Gods of Death” in the spirit-world. Once Light activates the Death Note, he inherits himself a God of Death, “Ryuk”, who walks him through the myriad rules associated with the Death Note. The plot actually gets pretty deep, and there are lots of twists and turns along the way.

What I didn’t know is that there was a live-action Death Note movie made in Japan in 2006. This would seem like the kind of thing that would go straight to video here in the States, but it turns out that it is making a limited run at select theaters. I watched the movie trailer online and it looks like they might be able to pull it off. I believe that this one will be a set-up for “Death Note 2″, giving this one a cliffhanger ending, but I’m still interested to see how closely the movie follows the anime. Luckily, the limited run is in English, and it sounds like the voice actors from the American version of the TV show did the dubbing. It will be at the Showplace 12 in Schererville on Tuesday and Wednesday only, so I think that I’ll be going.

Every year, the voice actors that show up for Botcon put on a script reading.  The script for this year was called “Bee in the City”, written by S. Trent Troop and Greg Sepelak.  I don’t normally like fan fiction, but this one was very well written and funnier than anything else I’ve watched on TV lately (except maybe for “The Big Bang Theory”).  The script is full of running gags and Transformers fan in-jokes, and it’s great to watch voice actors work behind the scenes. 

The story itself was a blatant ripoff of the current Transformers Collectors Club comic plot, where a few Transformers are transported to the bureaucratic “Transtech” dimension.  The plagiarism is forgivable in this case, since the main characters were from the new “Transformers Animated” series.  Bumper Robinson plays “Bumblebee“, Tara Strong plays “Sari Sumdac“, and David Kaye plays “Optimus Prime“, as well as a cameo of fan favorite “Beast Wars Megatron“.  Everyone loves to hear Kaye do Megs.

Joining the professional voice actors was Chris Ho and Anastasia Matejka, who both won a contest of amateur voice actors to be on the panel.  Chris did a dead-on “G1 Shockwave“, most impressive. Marty Isenberg, senior story editor for the Animated series, also played a role.  Chris had someone videotape the reading and uploaded it to YouTube in three parts.  I’m so glad that he did, since I missed all of the Botcon panels on Sunday because we left early. This is an awesome script reading and really shows why Botcon is so much fun.

There was a scene in last week’s Battlestar Galactica, “Six of One”, where “Caprica Six” brought two Cylon Centurions into a meeting room.  The ones, fours and fives were all represented there, and they tell her to get lost.  In reply, the two Centurions open fire on everyone present while Six watches. The whole episode had Cylons double-crossing each other, culminating in this massacre.

This immediately reminded me of the hit job scene in “Pulp Fiction“, in which Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta are sent to kill some people that crossed Marcellus Wallace.  “Jules” goes into a diatribe of “Ezekial 25:17” every time he whacks somebody. I’m thinking, “How cool would it be if the Cylons recited that same line before gunning everyone down?” I might even be able to get ”Cavil the Cylon” to play the entire “Brett” role in post-production.

So I decided to make it happen.  First, I located a copy of the Battlestar episode online and set it to download. Second, I located a recording of the scene from Pulp Fiction in MP3 format.  Once I converted the file into WAV format, I was able to use a free Vocoder program to make the speech sound like the classic Cylon voice.  I just needed to merge the two and perhaps juggle some scenes to allow more time for dialog. This would have been sweet.

I say “would have been” because I failed miserably.  There were several problems. First, the copy of the episode would not open in Adobe Premiere Elements.  It crashed the program repeatedly. While trying to figure out how to work the Vocoder, I located and downloaded a second copy, but it didn’t work either.  I even tried to split the files up into smaller pieces, in case Premiere was having trouble opening larger files.

Then the Vocoder output would not load into Premiere either, and it would only play in “Media Player Classic”. I updated my audio and video codecs, but no luck there either.  It took forever to get the Vocoder program to work properly, so I was in no mood to try another tactic.  So I gave up. Too little return for too great an investment. Maybe someone with more video talent than I will take up the cause?