Here I thought I was the only one who loved FF: Spirits Within. I think most people watch it expecting Cloud Strife and Sephiroth, and are furious to discover it is something completely different. The strong Pagan themes of Animism and the Earth itself being a living - and divine - being also undoubtedly turn off many Christians as well (yep, the first page of a Google search got me a link describing it a "spiritual nightmare", and another describing Wicca and its associated worship of nature being evil and Satanic).

I've actually watched that Final Fantasy film too, advent children, I think? Wasn't as good. *Shrugs*

I was probably expecting something along the lines of one of the games the first time I saw it, but if there was any disappointment it didn't last long. Even on just a technical level, it's a magnificent film. Throw in the story and the characters, and you'd really have to try not to like it.



Probably only the die-hards get put off by that.

But that point of view though: Worshipping nature? Evil! Exploiting and destroying nature? No problem! *shakes head in dismay*

I loved Advent Children as well. It is not a movie to take seriously though. I view its over the top action even for anime is being semi satirical. It is a fun popcorn movie. Sony released an updated version of it - Advent Children Complete - that includes some extra footage. It is much better than the original, as it makes what is going much more clear, especially the nature of Geostigma.

I just discovered a neat show called Legends. Starring Sean Bean. And for once that really means he is the star, and not just in ten minutes of it while it focuses on someone else. Plus he lived through the first episode! Most shocking.

It is a spy series, in which Richard Sharpe Sean Bean plays an undercover agent who is so good at getting into his roles that he forgets to get out of them. The first episode has a one and done plot with a home-grown U.S. terrorist group. But it also introduces a larger story arc in which Bean learns that he may not be who he is, thanks to a shadowy and ruthless conspiracy. Plus, Sean Bean!

I also just discovered that Sean Bean will be starring in a new show called The Frankenstein Chronicles. Set in 19th Century London, he plays a police inspector who discovers the body of a girl. Actually several girls. The body is made up of multiple parts of different girls all stitched together. I think we can guess where this is going...

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Oct 15 2015, 02:32 AM

I loved that show. Obviously everything Sean Bean does is absolute gold, but this one was super duper.

You picked a good time to start watching it. Season 2 comes out pretty soon.

Just watched Suckerpunch.

What can I say, I've got a soft spot for the film.

I just discovered another little gem. I watched the first two episodes of No Ordinary Family today, and found it absolutely delightful. Michael Chicklis is The Dad, and thanks to watching him in The Shield, I keep expecting him to snap and start killing people at any moment.

Julie Benz is The Mom, and I am really enjoying seeing her as well, I liked her a lot in Defiance as well. The funny thing is she did nothing for me back when she was in Buffy, except for a couple of episodes where she turned human, and was dying of syphilis (that she contracted before becoming a vamp). She was really good in that one part. Then she went back to being a vampire and became all one-dimensional. Back then I thought it was just a lack of talent on her part. But maybe it was just uninspired writing by Joss Whedon instead. Or perhaps she just needed time to develop as an actress?

In any case, so far, so fun. Between this and Legends I have gotten really lucky in tv shows these last few days.

Just finished watching Emperor's Ghost Army on Netflix. It is from NOVA, the PBS series about science, history and other interesting stuff. This particular episode covers the archaeological work being performed on China's Terracotta Army. 8,000 terra-cotta soldiers were buried in three pits to the east of the burial mound of Qin Shi Huang. I've been interested in this site ever since I played a puzzle-adventure game called Qin, based on the archaeological discoveries taking place.

This episode talked about the individuality of the warriors, which I found to be so amazing. Each warrior was unique, with his own expression and facial structure. How did so many individual characters come into being over a period of less than 40 years? The level of detail in each figure is amazing.

Then it moved on to the weapons that these warriors were buried with. While the wooden parts are gone, the bronze portions remain. The arrowheads and attached tangs were made from differing alloys of bronze, with the tangs containing around 3% tin, making for a softer, more flexible shaft, perfect for fitting inside the longer bamboo shafts, and the heads around 20% tin, creating hard tips that could punch through three layers of hardened leather, thick silk, heavy felt and a chest wall and still have enough force to poke out of the victim's back. The bronze swords were themselves beautiful blades, and I thought of one of my characters, a Korean wanderer who spent time in Han China learning how to make her own deadly dao. Dae Jin would have loved these swords - the craftsmanship was incredible. It was also determined that these weapons - arrows, crossbows, halberds ("gi" I believe) and swords were all sharpened to incredibly keen edges and never used in battle.

Lastly it talked about the organization of the labor force that built the site and created all these incredible artifacts. Qin society, as it was described in the show, felt strongly reminiscent of Mao's Communist China - with small groups working together, each spying on each other, reporting not only actions we consider crimes - theft, murder, etc, but also incompetence and failures. Early Communist China was also organized similarly, with villages forming small cells, or conclaves, each with a headman that reported to a regional supervisor, and so on up. It was interesting, and made me wonder if this early Chinese social organization, which persisted for over 2200 years, made it easy for Communism to envelop China before democracy had a chance to establish itself.

A very interesting, and enjoyable, hour of history, archaeology, and craftsmanship. Just my cup of tea.

I have that in my instant queue! It is just a matter of getting to it. There is an episode in another history show out there about the terracotta army as well. I forget exactly which series it was part of. Maybe Secrets of the Dead?

I added Legends, along with a whole bunch of other shows, to my Netflix queue. So I don't know yet when I'll get around to it. Right now I'm running around so much that I'm limited more or less to the shorter single episode shows (like the Emperor's Ghost Army I mentioned earlier).

But I re-watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey because I am rereading the book and I wanted to compare the two side by side. So far here are my thoughts:

The Dwarves have real personalities in the movie, I really liked how each one of them is so distinct from the other. I haven't seen that so far in the book, except for Thorin Oakenshield the big hero guy. I also liked how they added some serious baggage to Thorin that wasn't there in the book.

I loved that the ponies got names! And that Elrond had a bit more to do in the movie than in the book.

But most of all, if it's possible to fall in love with an evil villain, then I have done so. Azog the Defiler is so real, so flesh and blood, so alive, he practically leaps off the screen in all his Evilness to me. The subtle expressions, the sidelong glances, the body language are so vivid it's hard to believe that he is CG.

Don't get me wrong - I really loved the way they did the Uruk-hai in the LOTR - each one was an individual, and each one had a distinct personality, even though they didn't have much of a dialogue and I can't honestly recall if they had names or not. But none of them had the subtlety of Azog, and his vitality in The Hobbit. To me, he is more vivid and more evil and scarier than either Saruman or Sauron in LOTR. I'm glad they took the license with The Hobbit the way they did - they took what I recall as a simplistic story and embellished it with prejudices, vengeance quests, and foreshadowing (hello, Legolas! And little Gimli, as yet a little tyke!).

I really liked the little bit of extra time they spent on the Orc leaders in the Hobbit films. Azog really steps up in the films as an interesting adversary, as does his lieutenant Bolg.

Some of the Orcs in the LOTR films had names, though I don't think they were ever spoken aloud. The big bad Uruk captain in Fellowship was named Lurtz. He did not have a whole lot of personality, beyond looking really cool and badass (kind of like Darth Vader, just without the bonus of James Earl Jones' voice). The Uruk who took over for them after Lurtz was killed was named Ugluk, and of course it was Grishnákh who wanted to put a maggot-hole in Merry and Pippin's bellies.

The latter two were in the books. Lurtz was a completely new creation for the films.

I in the middle of a Star Wars movie marathon. I started with the prequels, and just finished Revenge of the Sith this afternoon. Boy those were really rough, and those Anakin / Padme scenes just cringe-worthy. I still wonder how much different those films would be if Lucas had hired someone other than Hayden Christensen to play Anakin. Not that it would have saved the movies, as even a talented actress like Natalie Portman (who was just phenomenal in The Professional) could not do much with the poor script Lucas gave her.

On the plus side, the gadgets were nice to look at. I loved seeing the Pre-X-Wings, and Pre-Ties in Revenge. As well as the Pre-Lambda class shuttle. Seeing the Tantive IV back when it was shiny and new was cool as well. I think the art department did a fantastic job of creating the fore-runners of all the ships and devices we were so used to in the original movies. They looked really neat, and you could see how they would evolve into the X-Wings, At-Ats, and so forth.

The clones also stole the show for me. Granted, a lot of that is from watching The Clone Wars tv show at the same time, which has several episodes that puts the spotlight on individual clones such as Fives, Echo, Rex, and of course Cody. I have always felt really bad for them, since they are essentially slaves. No one ever asked them if they wanted to fight, or gave them any option to do anything else. The tv series reveals it was literally treason (well desertion, essentially the same thing) for a clone to try to get out.

That always disturbed me about the prequels. So too did the whole nature of the Clone Wars. It was clones on one side fighting droids on the other. It feels like a war fought by proxy, where the people on both sides seem to have no real skin the game, because in the films at least, it seems that none of them are on the front lines. Except for the Jedi of course, and the Geonosians in Attack Of The Clones. I know the logic behind it all, Palpatine needed to be able to control both sides of the conflict in order to use it to gain power in the Senate. But I really wonder why no one - especially the Jedi - ever seemed to feel the wrongness of using the clones like that.

This is made even more glaring in The Clone Wars tv show. Here we see the Jedi showing true compassion for the Clones and forming friendships with them. The very first episode with Yoda and a group of clones was really outstanding in this. Because it was clear that to him, they were not just objects to be used and cast aside once they were broken. They were people - individuals - and he treated them so. They had value. In fact, you can see how the influence of the Jedi on the whole effects the clones for the better. Yet at the same time Yoda and the other Jedi ruthlessly threw the clones into the meatgrinder of the war, in order to spare the non-clones of the galaxy the same sacrifice. Somehow the clones lives were less valuable than anyone else's, obviously because they were clones, and not freebriths.

I can kind of get it. The Jedi are taught not to form attachments. They don't fear the loss of their friends. They ask nothing more from the clones than they do of themselves. They make the very same sacrifices, and die in battle right beside the clones. Just joining the Jedi Order means surrendering your freedom to live your life as you choose. But I think my point is, that the Jedi at least had an option to choose that for themselves. Count Dooku was a former Jedi. Which implies that it is possible to leave the Order. The Council was not going to train young Anakin at first either. So just being force-sensitive did not mean one was automatically entered in the ranks. The clones OTOH, never had a choice in the matter.

But I am really going off on a rant. I also really like how in the tv show the clones refer to themselves as Brothers. Plus the actor playing them/Jango in the films looks really cool. And I love Dee Bradley Baker's voice in the tv show. For me, the clones are the real stars of the prequels.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Oct 26 2015, 03:24 PM

My condolences. At least the worst is over now.



Personally, that kind of bugged me. TIE fighters were such a huge step down from what was in the prequels that it makes them completely nonsensical. Also, what happened to R2-D2 between the trilogies? They ripped out half his systems!



It popped up a lot in the books set during the Clone Wars, one of the reasons I love the Republic Commando books. They present it as a lack of choice scenario: As much as the Jedi feel for the clones, the Republic has no other army(and I cannot tell you how much this absurd premise being glossed over by the prequels annoys me) and the clones do want to fight, for the most part anyway. But of course, that doesn't come across in the films.

Considering Lucas' disdain for the Expanded Universe, it's ironic how much work it does patching up his plotholes and mistakes



I actually think it feels worse than a war by proxy, simply because we're never presented any particular reason to actually care who wins. We know next to nothing about the CIS, only that they're fighting the Republic, we know it's a manufactured conflict right from the start, and we already know the outcome of the whole war, so it just becomes meaningless. It's just setting, nothing more than background for a badly written romance story necessitated by the original films, and a hamfisted attempt at making Anakin Skywalker a hero.



This is something else patched up by the Expanded Universe; The Darth Bane books. By the time the Clone Wars kicks off, the Republic has spent the last thousand years being subtly manipulated by the Sith. The Jedi were bound more tightly to the Republic(just look at the difference between the Clone Wars and the Mandalorian Wars referenced in the Knights of the Old Republic games, where the Jedi Council refused to participate in the war.), and were thus ensnared in its slow corruption, mired in the dark side by a slow acclimatisation to it. They became part of the power structure, little more than an arm of the Senate, and were forced into the war.

So it wasn't so much the Jedi code, or the way they indoctrinate new members(because let's face, that's pretty much what they do; taking them from their parents when they're very young, raising them to think and act a certain way, to suppress emotions and avoid attachment), as the fact that they're too divorced from everything around them, and that they've fallen from what they should be.

And the problem with the notion of simply leaving the Order is that the focus on Dooku implies a very secific reason for leaving. It's only in the books that we see Jedi leaving the Order in protest of the use of the Clone Army.

It's also worth noting that in the original Star Wars films(and in my opinion, the real ones ) that the Jedi were portrayed more as neutral, rather than as good to Palpatine's evil. I mean, Yoda and Obi Wan's plan was to turn Luke into a weapon to slay his father, keeping him ignorant of the fact in order to use him. And it's suggested that if Luke fails they might be able to use Leia instead. Really, the whole perception of Jedi vs Sith as a conflict of good vs evil is mostly the fault of the Expanded Universe. In the original films it's more evil vs neutral, as a facet of the Rebellion vs Empire battle of good vs evil.



Btw; I got next to no real sleep last night, so I'm not sure I'm as coherent or concise as I was aiming for.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Oct 26 2015, 10:34 AM

Today it was a New Hope's turn in my Star Wars-athon. Still a fun movie after all this time. I just love the brief two second or so shot of the Rebel Starfighters flying around Yavin on the way to the Death Star.

Also into season two of the Clone Wars tv show. This is my second or third time watching, but I only just noticed that Waxer and Boil had a picture of Numa painted on their helmets. That was a really nice touch. The episode in Season One that introduced them and Numa was one of my all time favorites in the series. It was the first time we saw the clones fighting for something really tangile - innocent people caught in the war - rather than just the idea of "victory" and push-pins on a map.



This post has been edited by SubRosa: Oct 27 2015, 01:42 AM

In the middle of Empire Strikes Back today. I forgot how many classic lines this movie has. You can tell Lucas did not write the screenplay!

For some reason I have been imagining the Porn Star names of the Star Wars Universe. I think it is Kit Fisto that got me started. I mean, his name is just begging to be used in Porn! I can just imagine the following:

Kid Fisto (whose specialty would obviously have to do with his last name... )
Princess Lay-Ahhh
Babe-A Fett
Jango Fetish
Lando Coxrissian
Darth Daddy
Luke Skyhumper

That is hilarious! I can tell it was made with KOTOR.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Oct 28 2015, 01:28 AM

One thing I am really loving about watching the original trilogy again is the music. It is just outstanding. And the same music I am used to hearing in so many Star Wars games, like Tie Fighter, X-Wing, Jedi Knight, KOTOR, etc... Every time I hear those familiar tracks, I find myself going back to so many memories.

Obi-Long Kenobi
Anakin Skywalker only needs a couple of letters in his first name
Jabba the... Ugh, I need mind bleach
Talon Hard
D3-P0?
Wild Katarn?
...

A person could spend way too much time thinking about this

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Oct 27 2015, 10:24 PM

I have that with both the music from Oblivion and from Super Mario Bros.