Sunday, July 23, 2017

The Movie of Countless Easter Eggs

A while back I wrote a review of the book Ready Player One. It will not be long now until we get the movie adaptation.

You can see the trailer for it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiK2fhOY0nE

I enjoyed the trailer, but was disappointed that it did not give any hint of the story. The action was good and we were given a flood of the visual effects. We are given the most basics of the world. The problem is anyone not familiar with the book will not know what the movie is about.

I also found it interesting that most of what we see in the trailer does not appear in the book (unless I am misremembering something). While I loved those scenes, I am wondering how they fit into it all. I have never been a purest when it comes to the source materiel. I've seen great adaptations done that have taken great liberties from the original souces. So that is not bothering me, I just want to see more so I know the story is there.

No matter what, Ready Player One will undoubtedly have more Easter eggs in it than any other movie.  You couldn't do the movie right without that. The book had so many geek/pop culture references to begin with. Any movie of it would have to go beyond that with all they can do in the background now days. The only limit would be making sure they have the rights to do it and with a movie like this, being produced by Spielberg, most of those companies are going to be fine with allowing it.

My predictions are that when all is said and done, we will be talking hundreds, is not thousands of Easter eggs. It most likely will be a movie you have to watch over and over again just to catch half of them. Now they just need to make sure it is watchable enough for that to be doable.

With the trailer alone, we most likely already have people setting up web pages to point out the few dozens Easter eggs it that alone. And each new trailer from here on out will most likely just add to that list.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

I'm Hot For The Doctor

So the big news today is that the 13th Doctor will be Jodie Whittaker (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2092886/), our first female Doctor. I am binge watching Broadchurch today in order to get familiar with her

I have no problem at all with the idea of a woman playing the Doctor, outside of the idea of finding the Doctor attractive, which does feel a little odd after a life time of male Doctors. I am ready to see what direction they take this change and how this alters the dynamics of the series. There is no doubt this is a big change that will attract attention, both positive and negative.

Everything I have seen so far personally has been people all for this and ready for a female Doctor. Of course that is the crowd I associate with.  I have heard reports that I do not find surprising, just disappointing, that there has been those who have a negative reaction to this news.

Found this pic for anyone looking to read comments about the casting:


Regretfully chances are real good that you could get bingo in no time at all on twitter today.

Hopefully the new series will be here next year and we can see how effective a female Doctor can be.

Monday, July 3, 2017

And My Army Grows

If you didn't know, I am a bit of a Star Wars fan, and I do a little collecting here and there.

I also have an army of R2-D2s


And there are more of them in other displays, as well as packed away because I am unable to find room to display them.

R2 has always been my favorite character and he is so easy to merchandise. I love it when I run across a new piece that corresponds to me having money (It is annoying how those two have to come together).

This last weekend I was at Denver Comic Con, which I always enjoy. As of late for various reason I have not been picking up pieces too often, so I was not going out of my way to look.

But on my last trip through the dealers room, I stopped to look at a booth selling Japanese merchandise of all manner.

And I found this guy:






It is an R2 on a bottle cap. The bottle cap itself does not have any groves on it, so you just place it over the opening. Not sure how they were distributed, as there is not really a practical way to have them on the bottles at the stores. Would be interesting to look up that info. I have a bunch of them that I picked up years ago with mostly episode 1 characters on them, but this version of R2 is far cooler.

Always a good find when you can pay a couple bucks for a piece that is not easy to find here in the states.

Update: Did some quick research and learned that in Japan the bottle cap figures are sold via gashapon, or what we call gum ball machines here in the states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon