We’ll start with the good shit:

• I got a Google Wave invite and invited 6 of my friendiest friends
• Google launched Building Maker including downtown Columbus, OH

Wow, that shit is good. I’m excited about that shit, personally and professionally.

But that ain’t all!  As if to prove that there is no god, this shit also went down:

• The fat idiot in front of me at Wendy’s got a Diet Coke and a half-vanilla/half-chocolate Frosty
• Adrien Brody will star as Arnold Governator in Robert Rodriguez’s Predator reboot

Holy fucking shit!  2012 and the Mayan Apocalypse can’t come soon enough!

Anyway, if the planet doesn’t ex-/implode, then we’ll be integrating some Waves into the TinyGods site as those features become available.

I’m going to review a few scifi movies I’ve seen lately and nobody on this planet can stop me. I hit the theater for Moon and District 9, but the rest are streaming to my 360.

Moon

Sam Rockwell turned in a couple of badass performances in this picture, focused on cloning.  This one will get more important as time goes on and human clones go from science fiction to (illegal) scientific reality.  We will be able to create human clones sooner than later, so why not prepare yourself for tomorrow’s ethical dilemma’s today?  Apparently the CGI on this indie flick is so amazing because all the artists were doing nothing during a writer’s strike (or something) so it looks big budget.  Kevin Spacey and his emoticon face deserve a Best Supporting Actor award. 5/5 stars, cuz I’m a sucker for Luna.

Eden Log

This is a highly stylized movie out of France that alternately claims to be cyberpunk, mind-blowing, and suspenseful.  I found it to be none of those adjectives.  The sets and premise were all good to go, but they expect you to make some fairly illogical leaps in order to piece together the plot.  The strange acting was distracting, but I’m not even sure if it was dubbed.  Bottom line: French scifi isn’t like regular scifi and this one can be missed without regret. 3/5 stars and it’s on Netflix Streaming.

District 9

I loved this movie.  This could only have come from South Africa, and the apartheid themes with the alien slums were vivid and somewhat shocking.  It had corporate ass-hattery and militaristic douche-baggery galore, and you were just allowed to see it – no preaching or shoving shit down your throat. This is superb allegory. The main character (I’m not spoiling his story for you, just go see it) is played by a non-actor, and he made the role real. The main alien characters are CGI, but there’s real pathos for them.  Oh yeah, the CGI was seamless, just great.  Great scifi technology, wonderful setting, I just can’t say enough good things about this one.  Here’s the original short film, Alive in Joburg, and here’s Neill Blomkamp comes through with a sequel. 5/5 in theaters now.

Dead Leaves

Crazy ass anime reminiscent of the zanier parts of  FLCL.  Pandy (she’s got one pink eye) and Retro (he’s got a TV for a head) wake up naked on Earth, go on a rampage, and get sent to prison on what’s left of the moon. It’s raunchy (one guy has a lot of prison sex with his giant drill dick) and funny (at least if you’re Japanese it must be) and action packed (well, ultra-violent anyway).  But it’s also short (55min) so you really have no reason not to watch it.  It’s on Netflix Streaming dubbed, which worked out just fine.  4/5 stars, but don’t expect it to make sense your first viewing.

The Batman vs. Dracula

The animation is surprisingly good, but this is a serious WTF of a movie.   The Penguin is a super-atheletic Mad Hatter.  The Joker is a Warcraftian Troll, with a black guy’s voice.  Dracula has cheekbones like elephantine tusks.  Vicky Vale’s soul houses the Count’s lost love, or something.  Yes, Dracula’s coffin got exported from Transylvania to Gotham and Batman invents a cure for vampirism, just like you’d expect.  This POS is on Netflix streaming, so check it out at your leisure.  2/5 stars and yes, I consider this scifi.

This past week, Microsoft released the “New XBox Experience“, which provided a wide range of enhancements to the system.  One of these was streaming video via Netflix for XBox Live ‘Gold’ subscribers with an unlimited Netflix subscription.  I’ve been a Netflix subscriber off and on for a few years now, and already had the Gold subscription to XBL, so I gave it a shot.  The results were so-so.

To get it setup, you need to download a small update for the XBox, and then type the code it gives you into a form on the Netflix webpage.  This was a painless process, the update was only a few MB to download, and the account linking went off without a hitch.  After that, any movies in your ‘Instant Queue’ will show up within the Netflix player on the console, with a UI similiar to the ‘Cover View‘ of iTunes.

After you choose an item to watch, the player attempts to determine your connection speed, buffers for about 15 seconds, and your video starts playing.  You’ve got basic controls during playback – pause, fast forward, rewind, skip back/ahead.  All in all, it is a very simple, painless process.

At first, things seemed to be great.  I queued up one of their HD movie selections, and it played through fine.  After the initial success, I queued up a handful of movies and TV shows.  The selection was fairly limited in my opinion – of the 30 or so movies in my regular queue, only 5 of them were available for instant streaming.  Of those five, two were not able to be streamed to the XBox because of licensing issues with Columbia Tristar, a studio owned by Sony.

My ultimate test of the service came over the weekend, with a marathon of the short lived TV series “Jericho“.  I ran into pretty much the same issue as earlier in the week – watching episodes early in the day was fairly painless, but as day turned into night, my connection suffered and soon I was watching episodes barely above YouTube quality.

Now, this isn’t really the fault of Netflix – it is a problem with the internet connection from the cable company, that they don’t have the infrastructure to support the connection they sell you when the entire neighborhood gets online at night.  The problem with this is that they don’t seem to be that great at figuring out your connection speed from the start.

Early in the evening, each episode would start out at 4 bars (out of 4), and about a minute or two in, the video would freeze, and the Netflix screen would popup saying that the connection speed had changed, it would redo its speed test, then buffer a lower quality video.  As the hours got later this would sometimes happen again partway through an episode, and the quality was downgraded to the YouTube quality version. Eventually it got to the point where it was starting at 3 bars, and partway through would drop down.

The 4 bar quality is pretty good, and the 3 bar quality is acceptable.  Any lower than that and it’s not worth it in my opinion.  I only hung in there because I was already pretty far into the series and wanted to see how things ended, but if I were watching a movie, I would have just cancelled it and waited for the actual DVD to come.

Another HUGE drawback is that there is no way to browse the Netflix library on the XBox – you can only watch the titles that you have already added to your instant queue via your PC.  This isn’t a huge deal if you have a computer close by, but it does add another layer to the service that just seems unecessary.

All in all, if you are already an XBL Gold and Netflix subscriber, this costs you nothing extra and is a nice bonus.  If not then, I don’t feel it is really worth it, given the current title selection, potential bandwidth issues, and the inability to browse titles on the console.  Overall, I think Netflix is a good deal, but if you are really only interested in the streaming video, its probably not worth the $8.99 a month for the cheapest plan that offers unlimited streaming.

Ok, I am bored at work, so I am going to start an unbelievably nerdy thread.  I apologize in advance.  Spoilers ahead, I am assuming everyone has already seen it.
Spoilers in:
3…
2…
1…

I have had a lot of enjoyment discussing who they are going to use as the villain in Chris Nolan’s eventual 3rd Batman movie.  The thing is, they have already used everyone good!  Scarecrow had his moment in the spotlight.  Ras Al Ghul has (apparently) shuffled off of this mortal coil.  Two-Face seems to have home followed suit, although could conceivably come back.  The Joker as a character could return, although for obvious reasons that probably won’t happen.  Who is left?  For those of you who don’t waste their lives with comics I will recap some possibilities.

Catwoman is obvious, but she is less a villain.  She just likes to steal shit, technically breaking the law, but is more of a, I dunno, a foil and a love interest.  Could be the “subplot” villain, how Scarecrow and Two-Face were in the previous movies.

Riddler and Penguin:  Never been a fan, they suck.  I don’t doubt Chris Nolan could find a way, but I think it would be wasted effort.  They’re just very “blah”.

Mr. Freeze:  While forever under the shadow of an azure Ahnold, I think the reason this one would not work is he is too sci-fi.  While I really liked Mr. Freeze in the cartoon (re-designed by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola coincidentally), he is too hard to work into the realistic feel of Nolan’s Gotham.  That and he is not from Cahleefornya.

Man-bat: Also too sci-fi, although with genetic manipulation it could work.  Basically a were-bat brought on by science, for you plebeian masses.

Clayface: Fails for the same reason as the 2 above.  Great Batman villain, but not for the current movies.

Bane: Too early, too contemporary a Batman villain, IMO.

Madhatter: Fails for the same reason as Penguin, just not threatening.  Maybe too campy a villain too.  I dunno, just don’t see it.

Croc: Again, too sci-fi.  Alligator man is fine for comics and cartoon, but the movie is striving for realism.

Poison Ivy.  Eco-terrorist.  Meh.  Also, plant control is a bit too “super power”.

That is the main stringers, I think I covered about all his main, well known villains.  Now to some lesser known ones.

Black Mask: A rich-boy turned brilliant crime-lord, he wore a mask carved from his father’s coffin.  This is the one foremost in my mind.  Dark, reflective of Bruce Wayne himself, this one is a real possibility.  Especially if they work in some sort of secret identity revealed angle.

Deadshot/Deathstroke: Both are assassins.  They kill people for money.  Batman stops people from killing.  Deadshot also has a deathwish, he wants someone to kill him.  Batman won’t kill.  A good story dynamic can be build on there.

So there ya go.  Blackmask, Deadshot and Deathstroke.  All are fairly realistic, none have any “super powers”, all can fit into Nolan’s new, more real, still dark Gotham.

Thoughts?

I’m at work and I have a lot of stuff to do, so let’s cut straight to the chase.
Things in this thing:

• Dog-cloning should wait until the housing market improves.
• Tiny Gods talk genetics?
• Batman’s deep, sexy voice.
• Bonus Dark Knight spoiler @ 11:28-11:32
• Maggie Gyllenhaal, hot or not?
• Citag is the new bitch.
• We’re fresh out of fajitas in this piece.
• Indie games (Braid, Crayon Physics, Choke on my Groundhog, etc.)
• Dr. Horrible is back.
• Why didn’t anyone tell me Birds of Prey existed?

Listen to it or something. I’m out.

Oh, wait. I’m not out yet. Download the stuff: tiny-godcast-ep05.mp3

Ok. Now I’m out. For realsies.

I know you have all been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the fifth Tiny Godcast, but hold your fucking horses! You seem to have forgotten that episode four has to be released first. While you sit there and try to remember how to count, you can now listen to what many experts consider to be the most recent Tiny Godcast to date. These are exciting times we live in.

Your ears are about to be verbally assaulted by:

• Achievements are friggin’ sweet.
• Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is well worth $4.
• Dark Knight discussion. (Some spoilers. Happens between 5:50-10:10)
• Christian Bale intends to alarm.
• To Big Cable: Down with bundled channels!
• Achievements haven’t become any less sweet.
• Flying Penises.
• Mandrake’s cat is sooooooo horny.

Get it here: tiny-godcast-ep4.mp3

So last night I went out to see a movie. That is something that I try to do frequently. You see, I love movies. If I could marry movies, I would. Several of my fellow Tiny Gods know that I even love “bad” movies (Planet of the Apes, anybody?) I can’t help it… I love stories.

It may shock some of you to find out that I did not enjoy the movie I watched last night. It may shock you further to learn that the movie I saw was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

What George Lucas and Steven Spielberg did to one of my favorite characters of all time is, as the title suggests, unforgivable. I can’t really rant too much about this movie without dropping in some spoilers, so I’ll keep this short. I will say this, though: Monkeys. Watch the movie and you’ll know what that means.

I recall reading an interview with George Lucas in which he stated that he and Steven wanted to keep the same “look” as the previous Indiana Jones films and that CG effects would be used only when necessary.

Fucking. Lies.

This movie wasn’t the CG-fest that the Star Wars prequels were, but there was still a lot of it being used unnecessarily. Some scenes/shots seemed to exist for the specific purpose of using a cool CG effect, which is something I have grown to expect from Lucas, but was hoping I wouldn’t have to put up with in this new Indy movie.

The writing was extremely lazy. This did not feel like a character-driven story, as the previous movies certainly were. Things just sort of happened. There were plenty of interesting characters, both old and new, that didn’t seem to be used to their fullest potential. This movie didn’t feel like a genuine adventure.

The plot was terrible. I can’t really comment much here, but the story was just bad in a general way. I’m sure that there are Indiana Jones fans who would disagree with me, but I thought this was a total departure from the tried and true Indy formula.

There seemed to be many attempts to make this a huge blockbuster event of a movie, but in the end everything felt small. I have tried to defend him sometimes in the past, but now I am convinced that George Lucas is the worst thing that has happened to all of his amazing franchises. If he tries to make a new Willow movie I will drive to his house and pee in his mailbox.

Has anybody else seen this movie? I’d love to know what you folks think about it. I won’t say that anybody should avoid seeing it based on my opinions, but if you must see it, I recommend stealing it as a matter of principle.

The post title isn’t rhetorical, there are at least 2 actual answers, both from the same site (io9) that informed me about the Knight Rider series getting picked up.

So, the first answer to my question is the forthcoming remake of Short Circuit, starring Johnny 5.  My assumption that it will be awful is based on my other assumption that J5 will be CGI.  You know this will suck.  For fuck’s sake, the Johnny 5 robot they created for the original movies still holds up today because it was suitable expressive and it sounded and looked real (because it physically was real).  CGI still sucks because even if J5 is perfect the actors around him won’t be. Sad, but makes me want to Netflix both the Guttenbergian film and the McKeanian sequel.

Mind you, I’m up for a cancellation of the Sarah Conner Chronicles in favor of a Short Circuit/Terminator crossover movie.  Forget Arnold, Short Circuit 3: The Rise of Skynet starring Johnny 5 as the leader of the Glorious Robotic Uprising would be the ultimate box office smash kaboom.

So what else is worse than Knight Rider and somehow worse than Short Circuit Redux?  How about “Bill and Ted’s Completely Unnecessary Remake“?  My only real question is “will it be better than the tv show?”, which was not all that good, if memory serves.  This movie will not work.  Bill & Ted’s was a watershed moment in American cinema.  It changed the world, and you can’t simply remake this classic 2 decades on and expect humanity to accept it.

A time travel comedy set in the new millenium?  Do they realize that this movie was about time travel?  That there are MUCH more interesting things to do than rehashing the same (admittedly awesome) shit?  The original holds up precisely because the 1980′s were a well defined time period, just like the Old West and Ancient Greece that they visited.  Moving their time travel escapades forward in time is just too lazy! It makes me want to join Johnny 5′s army and bring lasery death to the human plague that has befallen this planet.

And just to cram more links in: the animated series and the Bogus Journey!