Movie Review: Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

Well… to start off, Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight was fairly accurate to the novel. I haven’t read the novel for a good 10 years or so, so I’m a bit fuzzy, but it brought things back to my remembrance, and nothing seemed too out of place.
It’s a pretty typical Dungeons and Dragons style story with a whole gambit of characters: Half-elf, Barbarian, Cleric, Dwarf, Halfling (or Kender in this case), Mage, Knight, and a Fighter. They get into trouble, a quest is given to them by a unicorn and then by the king of the elves, the leader doesn’t want to be the leader, they win the battle, but the war continues on. Yup… that sounds just like the D&D campaign I was playing 10 years ago, except we had a monk that could punch a guy’s spine out with his bare hands. (Though he missed the spine by a few inches, and punched through the guy’s heart instead… same outcome.)

The animation was… how should I put this? Crap. It really was. Strawberry Shortcake cartoons have better animation than this. It was very similar to the animation in the D&D cartoon from the 80’s, but I think even that was better. What was very odd though was that all the dragons and draconians (which are different than goblins) were CG 3D animation, which looked really clean and cool… but made the cell animation look that much worse. When I first heard that they were making this movie, and it was to be animated, I pictured TMNT and thought, yes… this is going to be really good animation. Alas… I was disappointed. There were also a lot of gratuitous cleavage and butt shots, which just seemed silly and very out of place.

The voice acting was really well done however, and I thought Kiefer Sutherland as the mage Raistlin was an excellent choice. His voice was kind of how I imagined it would be: a little rough and gravelly. Xena… I mean Lucy Lawless was the Plainswoman Cleric, and Michael “Lex Luther” Rosenbaum was the reluctant leader Tanis Half-elven. They did some good voice acting, and it was hard to tell it was them. All the other voices seemed to be well cast too.

All in all, I give this movie 3.5 outta 5, because as for story and acting, it was really good. The animation was really lacking though, which is really unfortunate in this day of superb and cheap animation.

As an aside, I am reading Dragons of Dwarven Depths, which is a new book that takes place between Dragons of Autumn Twilight and Dragons of Winter Night. The movie summed up Autumn Twilight excellently, and so I am not lost while reading this new book. (Though I don’t think any editors read this book, and if an editor DID read it, he/she needs to be fired. More typos then I’ve ever seen in a book, and they even forgot that the Kender had given his knife to the Fighter’s girlfriend before she left on a solo adventure… I’m really disappointed on the editing front.)

So today, the temperature dropped down to -34 Celsius. For any yanks reading this blog, that would be -29 Fahrenheit. With the wind chill it felt like -41 Celsius (which is pretty much -41 Fahrenheit). I guess I should feel lucky, because yesterday it was only -29, but felt like -46 with the wind. And yes, because we are crazy Canucks that live in Edmonton, we still made it to work. My daughter didn’t get to kindergarten yesterday because there were 3-foot high drifts blocking the exits out of our parking lot. Anyway, here’s something odd that came up on the government of Canada’s Weather page…


Notice that the “forecasted” low for today is -28 and the forecasted high is -28? Yet, it’s -34? Notice that none of the other lows drop below -28? Is that coincidence or is their program broken and won’t recognize anything below -28. Anyway, I thought that was weird.

Happy Birthday Lego! Part 2

This is a fun time line of Lego's life, stolen from gizmodo.com.

If you look at the guy on the box in the 50th Anniversary set... he's the kid that appeared on the first set Lego made 50 years ago. And it was the same set! Neat, huh.

Happy Birthday Lego!

Yay!!! I guess. Today marks the 50th Anniversary of the World’s Favorite Building Material. No… not concrete. LEGO! This continues to be my favorite toy, despite the fact that they still have yet to match the Canadian Dollar with the US Dollar. Anyway… as Google reminded me today…
…Happy Birthday you crazy interlocking brick that never gets boring.

New Star Wars Lego Sets for 2008

So Lego has released its list of what Star Wars sets are coming out for 2008, and I must say I’m a little excited. I’m also a little bit nervous.

First off, they have already released a picture of the rerelease of the AT-TE, which for the uninitiated is the 6 legged walker in Attack of the Clones, The Clone Wars, and Revenge of the Sith. I already own this set, so I won’t be getting this new one. Actually it looks to be pretty much the same, except that this one comes with a STAP, where as the one I got 5 years ago (HOLY SMOKES!!! Has it really been that long???) came with a burgundy Speeder Bike, which shows up in Battle Front, and the Novelization. Anyway, I’m happy with the set I have.

What gets me excited (and nervous) is this. The list included a TIE Defender, which is pictured here. The TIE Defender is from the old MS-DOS video game TIE Fighter, and it was the ultimate TIE ship. It had a hyper-drive and shields, and if I remember correctly was more maneuverable then the TIE Interceptor. This ship just looks mean as well, and if it does come out this summer, I will be picking it up as soon as I see it in stores. The thing that has me nervous is that on one list someone has that set (7678) listed as a Droid Gunship, which the TIE Defender isn’t. I just hope that they made a mistake, and it truly is the TIE D, because… well… Boromir says it best...

Does Jack Ryan really need Tom Clancy?

This was just quoted this weekend on Dark Horizons.

In late 2006 came word that Paramount Pictures was planning to continue its successful Jack Ryan action franchise with a fifth film that would NOT be based on one of Tom Clancy's books.

Well, why not? I mean, Sum of All Fears wasn’t based on a Tom Clancy novel either (even though it shared the title). At the beginning of the commentary on the DVD, Tom Clancy says “Hi, I’m Tom Clancy, the author of the book they didn’t read.” How much more evidence do you need? They changed the villains, the location, the age and marital status of Jack, his position in CIA… at least they set off a Nuke at a football game, but they even screwed that up. Just sad…

“Clear and Present Danger” was just barely based on the book. Why did they make the Captain of the Coast Guard ship a woman? In the book it was a grizzled old sailor who had internal dialog about how there’s a new girl recruit on his ship now, and they have to have a female head (toilet), and times they are a changin’. I guess that just wasn’t PC enough for Hollywood… anyway.

Was Sum a good movie? Sure. Was it a Tom Clancy / Jack Ryan movie? No… not really. So why not make more movies with the Jack Ryan name? Because the Tom Clancy books were good… up until the Bear and the Dragon (that one was just lame). The couple of books that turned up afterwards were alright in my opinion… but I digress. The movies that come out with Jack Ryan in them have just gotten worse and worse. Red October was great, Patriot Games was really quite good, though in the novel he doesn't kill Sean Miller, and I've already discussed the other two. IF they make another, it's going to be so awful... well... it really can't be worse than Sum of All Fears, and I guess they wouldn't be pretending to be basing it on a novel....

If a new Jack Ryan movie comes out, and it doesn’t even have the title of a Tom Clancy novel attached to it, don’t go see it. If it DOES have the title of a Tom Clancy novel, you probably shouldn’t see it either, because it won’t be based on any novel that he wrote. They will just pretend it is. Send stupid Hollywood a message, stating that we won’t put up with garbage just because you pretend it comes from a good source.

What I'd really like to see is someone brave enough to make “Debt of Honor” and be faithful to the story and fly that 747 into the Capital Building… it’s not like it’s going to give the terrorists any ideas, and I think it would put a very real context into the movie, like yeah… this really could happen again, and what are we doing to make sure it doesn’t. Anyway… that being said, I really hope they don’t make any more Jack Ryan movies, because they are so changed and watered down, they are truly pathetic. This goes for John Clark as well, in my opinion.

The Terminator Timeline has Been Terminated

Ok, so “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” just came out yesterday on TV, and I gotta say that I was very impressed. It had some really good action scenes, and some excellent effects… well, make-up at least. And it even tried to add some realism to the action (Read: Kevlar put in the back of the Lazy-boy). However, what it did not try to do was figure out the timeline.

As it stands right now:The Terminator took place in 1984. Fine, no problemo.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day took place in 1994. Fine, no probl… wait a second. You expect me to believe that John Connor is 9 (he would have been born in 1985) in T2? Eddie Furlong was 13 when he acted in that movie, so everyone figured that John Connor was approximately the same age.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines took place in 2004. Ok, John could be 20 or 23 or whatever in that movie… it works out.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles starts in 1999. Fine, no probl…. Wait a second. In T3, Sarah was said to have died of Leukemia shortly after Judgment Day was supposed to have happened. Hmmmm. Well, let’s just pretend that John was lying, and that Sarah was in hiding, or off the grid (because her coffin did not contain her body). But then they jump to 2007 and… wait… doesn’t the war start in 2004 as per T3? Did they just decide to ignore T3 and start the franchise over at 1999? I’d be ok with that, however, here’s something that they can do to make EVERYTHING work out.

Instead of hard-coding the year in the movies and TV shows, they can just asterisk them, and I use the following as an example.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day takes place in 1994. Because it was the best movie, that will stay firmly in place. John is 13. Thus, The Terminator can take place in 1***. Any year you want… 1874? Sure, but that makes no sense, so for now we’ll make the variables 980 so it takes place in 1980. Remember that she was pregnant, and probably wouldn’t have had John until 1981.

After T2, we now have Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it starts in 1***. Now, in T3, she was said to have died shortly after Aug 29, 1997 (Judgment Day). If instead of dying, she just dropped off the grid for 2 years, then low and behold, we can make those variables 999, and it works! Hey! Look at that! So in 1994, John was 13, and 5 years later, he’s 18. And can still be in High School! Grade 12!

Then they jump ahead to 2***. To make things easier, we can call it present day, so they don’t really have to invent or down grade technologies, so the variables can be 007. 2007!

Now that we have variables, T3 takes place in 2***. Right now, let’s say that John was 23 in T3, which is 5 years from the Pilot of Sarah Connor Chronicles, so the variables are 012. T3 now takes place in 2012. But these dates are not hard and fast. They remain variables, so any changes that come up (in either upcoming episodes of Sarah Connor Chronicles, or the upcoming trilogy staring Christian Bale as John Connor) can be easily dealt with, because any dates that show up should be 2*** from now on. Just put in the date that makes sense for the timeline.

There I just fixed it. The Studios can send me money.

Lego Pricing Rant

Some things, I just don’t understand. The new Star Wars and Indiana Jones Lego sets were released yesterday, and guess what! They are on average 1.4 times the price as those sold in the States. Why is this? We are at par with the US dollar, should we not have the same buying power as they do? I can understand the older sets staying at the same price, but why aren’t the new sets priced to match. This bugs me. Lego does have a few sets that are “on sale” that match the US price, but only a few, and not the one that I really want for my collection, which frustrates me even more.

I went into Toys R Us last night, and found 2 sets that I wanted. The prices were not listed on the shelves, so based on the piece count, I guessed that they would be $40 and $55 respectively. I went to a price checker, and they were $55 and $70 respectively. When I checked out the price on the US Lego page, I found that the first was actually $40 US and the second was $50 ($5 less than I thought it should be). Why this discrepancy? Why won’t the distributors match the prices? I would have bought both sets for $90, but I put both of them back because $55 is too much for a set that only has 390 some pieces. 10 cents a piece is perfect, though Canadian distributors feel the need to charge 14 cents. Grrrr. It makes me mad.

Oh, and they only had 1 Indiana Jones set, and of course, not the one I was going to buy! We Canadians always get the shaft in the toy department, it seems.

Note the difference in price!