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angelophileThings are up and down at the moment. Tired this morning - I'd go as far as to say exhausted, but not had my caffiene intake yet so that might have something to do with it.
Dog's looking a bit more spritely again this morning. Slept in my room again and actually managed to go through to about 6.30 before waking me up. Previous night I was up about 3 times with her. Over the past few weeks we've been up an average of 5 or 6 between us.
She's still not eating though, although she's drinking milk and water now. Vets today hopefully. She's looking a bit more like she'll survive another night at least.
Pretty upset about it as you can imagine. We've had her... not sure if it's 11 or 12 years now. Never fun to lose a pet and even worse to see her in distress. But this morning she was up to her usual tricks. Legs stiff from sleeping all night and not working this morning, so she staggered around my room like a drunk, crashing into things. The fact some mornings she can hardly walk, she's been having fits, and she's stopped eating, none of it very positive.
Anyway...
Was fairly busy over the weekend, even despite the dog nursing. Saturday and Sunday both I had to work on this poster I designed for the local amateur theatre company which they wanted majorly altering. I didn't mind that, but it did take a while to do. Fiddly.
Aside from that, Saturday afternoon I spent helping my sister and her new boyfriend move a couple of couches into her new(ish) apartment. The 2 seater we got up the stairs without -too- many problems, though it was heavy as all buggery, but the 3 seater was the problem. Old apartments, stairs go up in 3 levels. First attempt we got the couch jammed half way up the stairs. tried again and jammed it trying to turn it on the stairs. We figured we needed to do some minor demolition and disemble a couple of shelves that were blocking our way in the lobby. That helped and we got the couch up to the second landing without any problems. Then got well and truly jammed trying to get it around the corner. Were there for a little while easing it bit by bit before we finally managed the last part. My arm's completely buggered though now.
After that, decided since I was over this way I might as well go grab a meal and a movie at the local mall/out-of-town development type place. Good meal, then went and saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Would have prefered Underworld but it had stopped showing apparently. Comments on the film below.
Today's my dad's birthday, so yesterday we went out for a meal in the evening. Lovely meal, good company. Enjoyed it a lot, nice to get a bit of family time. Bang goes the diet, but tough, if I don't put anything on this week I'll be content and if I do, oh well.
Caught up a bit on comics. I'll cut my comments to avoid spoilers, so be warned.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was entertaining enough, but nothing special. Much like the comic, the film was one of those ideas that's great, but isn't that entertaining as a film or book. It -should- have been brilliant. Alan Moore at least came up with a good idea there. Unfortunately the comic does very little for me. I must admit I think the guy is THE most overrated writer around as far as comics go. He can come up with good ideas but his writing is, on the whole, pretty bad. There were a couple of good moments in the comic, but not that many. Even fewer in the film.
Good points? Nemo was well done, nice he was kept as a Sikh. The Invisible Man was good (not as good as the book, but well done in terms of effects and a fairly interesting character. Jekyl/Hyde was also well done, both in effects and characterisation, although Hyde went from psycho to hero a little too quickly for my liking.
The bad points? Plenty. The Nautilus's redesign wasn't up to much, and it floating straight into Venice without comment was ridiculous. Tom Sawyer's appearance as a token American was plain embarrassing and such an obvious marketing ploy that it never should have been allowed to happen. (An American film with only British characters? Never happen! Brits can't -be- heroes. An American always has to save the day. Don't they know that?!) Mina was totally over the top, all subtlety of her comic book appearances lost in her obvious vampirism. Dorian Gray's appearance was not only pointless, but badly done - he was obviously a bad man from the very first, and the treatment of him as a complete immortal who was immune to harm just didn't tally. I never understood that to be the way it worked. The painting aged insted of him, yes, but that didn't mean he was immune to harm.
The major problem I had was Sean Connery though, who hijacked the film, drained Quartemain of any interesting quirks that he had in the comic version, presumably insisted that he was the lead character and he should lead the League rather than Mina and turned the whole thing into a mysogonistic pile of goo.
All pretty unsubtle stuff.
Onto comics:
Ultimate Spiderman TPB: Some fun moments and some quirky writing from Brian Bendis - Spiderman's the one comic he does consistantly well. Although why there had to be an X-men crossover is beyond me. It provided some humour but nothing new in terms of character and the 'mutant' villain was just plain irritating.
Agent X was pretty unmemorable. Writing this I can't actually recall any moments that stuck out apart from the photosection at the back with the stuffed Black Swan which was fairly amusing. Deadpool seemed to be playing second fiddle to Agent X here though, and so his return felt pretty unimpressive. They never should have changed Deadpool to Agent X in the first place. The last few issues of Deadpool -were- great, but the introduction of Alex Hayden etc etc was just a step back in my opinion. If I pick up a book supposedly about an established character I don't want to be reading about another. If they'd wanted to create a whole new character thay should have just let Gail Simone do that and be done with it.
Wolverine was a good character issue, but Logan did come across as pretty whiny. (I'm not an animal. I'm not. Sniff.) Get over it already! Kurt's appearance was nice to see, and he was well written, but I wish he'd make his mind up once and for all if he's a bloody priest or not.
Mystique was good - liked the new art style, although I couldn't fathom quite why Raven has turned so good as to start saving humans now. Some pretty funny lines though, and the 'Where's Wally' style spot the Mysti game is always fun. Consistantly readable this.
Venom was another fairly unmemorable comic. as far as I recall nothing much happened this issue, although the appearance of Wolverine at the end suggests good things are to come. Nice new art too.
X51 - read the first comple of issues and it was as poor as I was expecting really. Although the random cruelty to Toad (Blob tossing him at a helicopter etc) made me laugh.
Weapon X was actually quite... and I hate myself for admitting this... but it was actually quite readable. Nothing special and no moments that really stood out. Some poor character writing as hitherto rabid Weapon Xers swapped sides for no particular reason, but it was nice to see Wildside and Reaper with new looks appearing, Cable's Underground wasn't quite as awful as I expected. Agent Jackson is certainly the most interesting character in the book and it's nice to see good things being done with him. Good to -finally- see the Marrow/Sabretooth situation dealt with as the Morlocks finally got revenged and Marrow ended up back on the side of the angels. The twist appearance of Sinister was a good moment, and the latest issue dealing with Sinister's machinations as far back as WWII and his run in with Namor, the Human Torch and Captain America, all produced in atmospheric greys and reds, was actually really nicely done and a little bit of characterisation for a villain who usually screams plot device. On the down side the writing was fairly nondescript, people seemed to swap sides far too regularly without any comeback, the agents seem to be pretty decimated now and the ending where Cable and co's memories were wiped of Neverland was so ridiculously convenient it was painful.
New X-men was... actually, it was one of Grant Morrison's weaker issues I think. Not so much what happened, more what didn't happen. The art was nice again, but the art led this issue. All in all there was probably about enough plot to fill half an issue at best, probably a third. the rest of the issue was taken up with double page spread, extreme close ups etc with a single speech bubble in each. Ended up lookig more like a pin up book than a comic book.
What little plot there was was a mix of good and bad. The relationship development between Logan and Jean as they plunged towards the sun was extremely good, and the shock ending was... well... shocking. That's what dominated the issue for me. On the down side, Magneto's character was poorly written this issue. He seems to have turned into a moron with even Toad being more astute than he was as he suggests he gives the crowds what they want instead of all the Shakespeare crap. And the idea of putting Beak in charge of a cull of humans when he -so- obviously will never go through with it is just painful.
Basilisk continues to entertain though.
Funnily enough the thing that irritated me most was the big splash picture of Beast on the cover. "At last!" I thought. "An issue with Beast playing a decent role. He hasn't been in it for -months-." But no, he wasn't even in the frickin' issue at all let alone with a decent role.
Marvel's covers piss me off sometimes. :P
Dog's looking a bit more spritely again this morning. Slept in my room again and actually managed to go through to about 6.30 before waking me up. Previous night I was up about 3 times with her. Over the past few weeks we've been up an average of 5 or 6 between us.
She's still not eating though, although she's drinking milk and water now. Vets today hopefully. She's looking a bit more like she'll survive another night at least.
Pretty upset about it as you can imagine. We've had her... not sure if it's 11 or 12 years now. Never fun to lose a pet and even worse to see her in distress. But this morning she was up to her usual tricks. Legs stiff from sleeping all night and not working this morning, so she staggered around my room like a drunk, crashing into things. The fact some mornings she can hardly walk, she's been having fits, and she's stopped eating, none of it very positive.
Anyway...
Was fairly busy over the weekend, even despite the dog nursing. Saturday and Sunday both I had to work on this poster I designed for the local amateur theatre company which they wanted majorly altering. I didn't mind that, but it did take a while to do. Fiddly.
Aside from that, Saturday afternoon I spent helping my sister and her new boyfriend move a couple of couches into her new(ish) apartment. The 2 seater we got up the stairs without -too- many problems, though it was heavy as all buggery, but the 3 seater was the problem. Old apartments, stairs go up in 3 levels. First attempt we got the couch jammed half way up the stairs. tried again and jammed it trying to turn it on the stairs. We figured we needed to do some minor demolition and disemble a couple of shelves that were blocking our way in the lobby. That helped and we got the couch up to the second landing without any problems. Then got well and truly jammed trying to get it around the corner. Were there for a little while easing it bit by bit before we finally managed the last part. My arm's completely buggered though now.
After that, decided since I was over this way I might as well go grab a meal and a movie at the local mall/out-of-town development type place. Good meal, then went and saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Would have prefered Underworld but it had stopped showing apparently. Comments on the film below.
Today's my dad's birthday, so yesterday we went out for a meal in the evening. Lovely meal, good company. Enjoyed it a lot, nice to get a bit of family time. Bang goes the diet, but tough, if I don't put anything on this week I'll be content and if I do, oh well.
Caught up a bit on comics. I'll cut my comments to avoid spoilers, so be warned.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was entertaining enough, but nothing special. Much like the comic, the film was one of those ideas that's great, but isn't that entertaining as a film or book. It -should- have been brilliant. Alan Moore at least came up with a good idea there. Unfortunately the comic does very little for me. I must admit I think the guy is THE most overrated writer around as far as comics go. He can come up with good ideas but his writing is, on the whole, pretty bad. There were a couple of good moments in the comic, but not that many. Even fewer in the film.
Good points? Nemo was well done, nice he was kept as a Sikh. The Invisible Man was good (not as good as the book, but well done in terms of effects and a fairly interesting character. Jekyl/Hyde was also well done, both in effects and characterisation, although Hyde went from psycho to hero a little too quickly for my liking.
The bad points? Plenty. The Nautilus's redesign wasn't up to much, and it floating straight into Venice without comment was ridiculous. Tom Sawyer's appearance as a token American was plain embarrassing and such an obvious marketing ploy that it never should have been allowed to happen. (An American film with only British characters? Never happen! Brits can't -be- heroes. An American always has to save the day. Don't they know that?!) Mina was totally over the top, all subtlety of her comic book appearances lost in her obvious vampirism. Dorian Gray's appearance was not only pointless, but badly done - he was obviously a bad man from the very first, and the treatment of him as a complete immortal who was immune to harm just didn't tally. I never understood that to be the way it worked. The painting aged insted of him, yes, but that didn't mean he was immune to harm.
The major problem I had was Sean Connery though, who hijacked the film, drained Quartemain of any interesting quirks that he had in the comic version, presumably insisted that he was the lead character and he should lead the League rather than Mina and turned the whole thing into a mysogonistic pile of goo.
All pretty unsubtle stuff.
Onto comics:
Ultimate Spiderman TPB: Some fun moments and some quirky writing from Brian Bendis - Spiderman's the one comic he does consistantly well. Although why there had to be an X-men crossover is beyond me. It provided some humour but nothing new in terms of character and the 'mutant' villain was just plain irritating.
Agent X was pretty unmemorable. Writing this I can't actually recall any moments that stuck out apart from the photosection at the back with the stuffed Black Swan which was fairly amusing. Deadpool seemed to be playing second fiddle to Agent X here though, and so his return felt pretty unimpressive. They never should have changed Deadpool to Agent X in the first place. The last few issues of Deadpool -were- great, but the introduction of Alex Hayden etc etc was just a step back in my opinion. If I pick up a book supposedly about an established character I don't want to be reading about another. If they'd wanted to create a whole new character thay should have just let Gail Simone do that and be done with it.
Wolverine was a good character issue, but Logan did come across as pretty whiny. (I'm not an animal. I'm not. Sniff.) Get over it already! Kurt's appearance was nice to see, and he was well written, but I wish he'd make his mind up once and for all if he's a bloody priest or not.
Mystique was good - liked the new art style, although I couldn't fathom quite why Raven has turned so good as to start saving humans now. Some pretty funny lines though, and the 'Where's Wally' style spot the Mysti game is always fun. Consistantly readable this.
Venom was another fairly unmemorable comic. as far as I recall nothing much happened this issue, although the appearance of Wolverine at the end suggests good things are to come. Nice new art too.
X51 - read the first comple of issues and it was as poor as I was expecting really. Although the random cruelty to Toad (Blob tossing him at a helicopter etc) made me laugh.
Weapon X was actually quite... and I hate myself for admitting this... but it was actually quite readable. Nothing special and no moments that really stood out. Some poor character writing as hitherto rabid Weapon Xers swapped sides for no particular reason, but it was nice to see Wildside and Reaper with new looks appearing, Cable's Underground wasn't quite as awful as I expected. Agent Jackson is certainly the most interesting character in the book and it's nice to see good things being done with him. Good to -finally- see the Marrow/Sabretooth situation dealt with as the Morlocks finally got revenged and Marrow ended up back on the side of the angels. The twist appearance of Sinister was a good moment, and the latest issue dealing with Sinister's machinations as far back as WWII and his run in with Namor, the Human Torch and Captain America, all produced in atmospheric greys and reds, was actually really nicely done and a little bit of characterisation for a villain who usually screams plot device. On the down side the writing was fairly nondescript, people seemed to swap sides far too regularly without any comeback, the agents seem to be pretty decimated now and the ending where Cable and co's memories were wiped of Neverland was so ridiculously convenient it was painful.
New X-men was... actually, it was one of Grant Morrison's weaker issues I think. Not so much what happened, more what didn't happen. The art was nice again, but the art led this issue. All in all there was probably about enough plot to fill half an issue at best, probably a third. the rest of the issue was taken up with double page spread, extreme close ups etc with a single speech bubble in each. Ended up lookig more like a pin up book than a comic book.
What little plot there was was a mix of good and bad. The relationship development between Logan and Jean as they plunged towards the sun was extremely good, and the shock ending was... well... shocking. That's what dominated the issue for me. On the down side, Magneto's character was poorly written this issue. He seems to have turned into a moron with even Toad being more astute than he was as he suggests he gives the crowds what they want instead of all the Shakespeare crap. And the idea of putting Beak in charge of a cull of humans when he -so- obviously will never go through with it is just painful.
Basilisk continues to entertain though.
Funnily enough the thing that irritated me most was the big splash picture of Beast on the cover. "At last!" I thought. "An issue with Beast playing a decent role. He hasn't been in it for -months-." But no, he wasn't even in the frickin' issue at all let alone with a decent role.
Marvel's covers piss me off sometimes. :P
