The Geeky Guide to Nearly Everything

[TV] Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 2

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:17:17 PST

All good things must come to an end, they say, and this is even more true in the harsh cutthroat environment of network television. The very best shows get to create a legacy than spans several years. Some are able to get past the mythical 100th episode mark. Some are killed before the show even fully gets off the ground. Some never even see the light of air time and remain to be unreleased pilot episodes, lost in the archives of the studios.

So in way, one has to be thankful when a show even manages to decently complete a single season. That's an achievement in itself to make it that far and to be able to get a story really out there. Of course us fans rarely see that at the precise moment when a show's cancellation is announced. We just end up feeling bitter and angry about it and it prevents us from enjoying the run of the show as best as we can.

So let's celebrate the final season of another great show. Yes, it was killed off too soon but then it doesn't mean it didn't have a great exit.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 2 was the final season for this interesting expansion of the Terminator film franchise. However the ratings for the first season were only just enough to keep it alive and thus the second season was certainly in jeopardy. For what it's worth, the writers certainly decided to try and push the envelope and make the most of their second lease on life.

Image via Wikipedia

While the first season was interesting in its own right, it sort of lacked focus and their only enemy was a single terminator who spent most of the season putting himself back together. The second season followed the pattern established in the movies by introducing a more advanced terminator - a "female" T-1001 played by the amazing Shirley Manson who was portraying the role of Catherine Weaver, the head of a high technology company known as ZeiraCorp. She becomes the focus of the show as the adversary of sorts against Sarah and John Connor (played by Lena Headey and Thomas Dekker respectively) along with a reprogrammed terminator Cameron (Summer Glaue) and fellow freedom fighter from the future Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green). Plus there's still the threat of the terminator from the first season whom they've come to know as Cromartie.

The show had a fair number of plot developments that were clearly attempts to make things more interesting. First, Cameron appears to somehow have "feelings" of some sort centered around John despite her being an artificial lifeform, if even that. John also starts changing and becoming more the harder, stronger leader that he needs to become as leader of the future human resistance against Skynet. There were a also a few new characters like another human resistance member sent from the future, Jesse Flores (Stephanie Jacobsen) who is Derek's love interest along with Riley Dawson (Leven Rambin), who in turn becomes John's love interest. And ultimately there's also the developing artificial intelligence who is only come to be known as John Henry.

This season had a lot more focus and direction and less of the seemingly aimless wandering around of the first show. Instead of just running after the faintest echoes of potential Skynet precursors, the group had their own goals and missions all leading towards bringing down Skynet once and for all. And this was no easy task either with two Terminators operating in the city, each with their respective agendas.

What are a small band of humans expected to do in the face of such seemingly overwhelming odds? I mean come on, Catherine Weaver has the resources of an entire company to use to make their lives difficult, not counting the fact that she's composed of liquid metal and is truly a living weapon. The T-1000 line remains to be my favorite of all the terminator models featured in the franchise and certainly some of the deadliest. Here she's not just some mindless killing machine - she's cunning and ruthless and actually has a larger strategy and is not simply using brute force to come after the Connors.

Still, the show had to end and this was certainly a great yet confusing way to end the run of the series. As is typical of such situations, they chose to end things by leaving the door open for future writers in the more chance that someone else will pick up the show in the future. There are always reruns to build up a fan base after all - it's how Star Trek came back from the dead.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 2 gets 4 shape-shifting urinals out of a possible 5.

[Books] Everfree

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:08:00 PST

All good things must come to an end...more or less. In my case, it's coming to the end the books that I have in a particular series or by a particular author. If I'm lucky, the last book will mark a logical conclusion for this segment of the story or at least a good resting point of sorts. You know what I mean right?

Or there are those times you get left hanging and you feel slighted and annoyed that you can't continue on. It's like being a junkie in search of the next fix and finding out that your dealer has skipped town. This is why I try to avoid reading books in a series when I don't have all the books yet.

Well, the operative word here is try.

I'm not sure if this particular books marks an end to a major chapter in the characters' lives, but it was a good enough stopping point, I suppose. However you can never really and this won't be the first time that success has driven additional books to be written even when the original story can be considered "over". Ugh.

Everfree is the third book written by Nick Sagan in his continuing series. The series does not have a collective name just yet - I can't even think of a quick way of summarizing events in a single name. The Posthumans' Saga? The Children of Idlewild? After The Fall of Humanity? Living In The Shadow Of Black Ep? Whatever.

Anyway, back to the story.

So yes, once again we're revisiting the posthumans in their struggle to repopulate the planet. Instead of their original plan of creating children of their own to solely repopulate the species, the survivors of Idlewild decide to revive the many humans who were cryogenically frozen at the height of Black Ep. Naturally, the ones who could actually afford this process were the rich and powerful and this has resulted in an odd community where there are too many cooks and not enough people willing to get their hands dirty.

In response to this, the survivors of the Gedaechtnis project create the Doctrine, which requires those who wish to remain with their society have to contribute to its wellfare equally. Many join in order to avoid the rigors of living in the untamed lands beyond but that doesn't mean everything is fine and dandy. They posthumans know their hold on things is tenuous at best, but still they push on trying to accomplish their mission, whether humanity likes it or not.

The book continues the first-person narrative style that Nick Sagan has maintained in all the other books. Interestingly enough, he sort of combines the styles he employed in the two books prior. The first part of the book is told almost entirely from the perspective of Haloween, our protagonist from the first book. He's now in charge of security for the fledgling community and he does his best to keep the dissents in line.

The second portion of the book reverts to the multi-character style employed in the second title complete with individual symbols to remind the reader of which character is "speaking" at this point.

Comparing the two segments, I have to admit I enjoyed things more when we got around to the second act - the first felt a tad unfocused and was spent constantly reminding us that the former leaders of industry were choking at the bit and eager to throw off the shackles of the enforced socialism of The Doctrine. Plus Halloween just didn't seem as "engaged" as before, or something like that. He just didn't strike me as a daring rebel that he used to be in his youth. Time does that to people I guess, but it doesn't necessarily translate to believable reading.

I did appreciate some of the finer points of the book and how it better answers the "logical" questions the average reader would ask about this world like "What happened to the world leaders?" or "Didn't these guys ever see The Matrix?" or even "How does corporate America try to plan for the Apocalypse?" - weird questions, but the answers do make sense in this book, perhaps in a rather scary way.

Overall, it's a decent enough way to end the series...for now. Sagan has clearly left the seeds for future books laying out there in the open and it's up to the readers to drive support for a sequel. I'm not sure if everyone will have the same issues I had with getting through the first half of the book but overall it just means the story wasn't as tight as it could have been.

Everfree gets 3.5 drug-enchanged chimpanzees out of a possible 5.

[Entertainment] Oscar Winners 2010

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:33:35 PST

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

So the 2010 Oscars are over and here are the winners:

1. Best Picture: The Hurt Locker
2. Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
3. Actor in a Leading Role: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
4. Actress in a Leading Role: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
5. Actor in a Supporting Role: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
6. Actress in a Supporting Role: Mo'Nique, Precious
7. Original Screenplay: The Hurt Locker, Mark Boal
8. Adapted Screenplay: Precious, Geoffrey Fletcher
9. Animated Film: Up
10. Foreign Language Film: The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos, Argentina)
11. Original Score: Michael Giacchino, Up
12. Original Song: "The Weary Kind," Music and Lyrics by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett (Crazy Heart)
13. Art Direction: Avatar
14. Cinematography: Avatar, Mauro Fiore
15. Costume Design: The Young Victoria, Sandy Powell
16. Makeup: Star Trek
17. Film Editing: The Hurt Locker, Bob Murawski and Chris Innis
18. Documentary Feature: The Cove
19. Documentary Short Subject: Music by Prudence
20. Animated Short Film: Logorama
21. Live Action Short Film: The New Tenants
22. Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker
23. Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker
24. Visual Effects: Avatar
25. Governors Award: Lauren Bacall, Roger Corman and Gordon Willis

The big winner, obviously, was The Hurt Locker taking home 6 Oscars out of 9 nominations, I'm just glad that Avatar didn't sweep the awards this year. If it had, well, then my faith in the Academy would definitely be diminished significantly. I mean, like in a really, really bad way.

When I first reviewed The Hurt Locker after its limited release here in Manila, I was pretty impressed with it. I walked away with generally the same feeling I had after watching Crash and The Constant Gardener - it was heavy, powerful and very draining. But really, all were good movies that weren't quite so popular at the box office. If the Oscars were anything like our horrible Metro Manila Film Festival Awards, then it definitely wouldn't have won the way it did.

So yes, I'd like to thank the Academy for not being total idiots.

Plus major cheers for Kathryn Bigelow for becoming the first-ever female director to win at the Oscars. I mean seriously, kudos to you! Your movie was just gripping and intense and as much as I walked away feeling a little worse about the world, it was a good kind of hurt. Or something like that.

I can't really comment on the acting awards since I haven't actually most of those movies save for Inglourious Basterds, so yay for Christoph Waltz! And okay, okay, here's a big cheer for Sandra Bullock for finally breaking out of the romantic comedy rut and managing to accomplish was Julia Roberts managed back in 2001 for Erin Brockovich.

Naturally, Avatar got the mandatory nods on the technical side save for those for sound - if you're one of the few who managed to watch The Hurt Locker, you'll know why it won all the sound awards. However the big win that I don't get for Avatar was why they won Best Cinematography given majority of the movie was, well, animated. I don't think they did motion capture for trees and the like and so the most stunning visuals weren't even real. If this was the case, then any CGI-rendered background in any movie can be win for Cinematography in the future.

My partner and I agree that the cinematography is way different from visual effects. There's no question that Avatar had some amazing visuals and thus the visual effects award, but things should have ended there. Creating the environments in post-production is not the same as scouting out locations to shoot, planning out the shots and executing them in natural lighting conditions. If you do it in post, then it's visual effects.

If it's because it was a live-action movie, then does that mean that the likes of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within could have won? What if Mary Poppins had visuals as stunning as Avatar in terms of the carousel scene - would that make it worthy of the Oscar for cinematography? Think about it, it sort of doesn't make sense.

Overall, I was happy with this year's Oscar winners. There were even the nice little nods to Lost's Michael Giacchino for his score work in Up and Best Make-Up for Star Trek - officially the first-ever Academy Award for any Star Trek franchise film.

Let's hope that next year's offerings are even better given how this year's awards turned out. Remember that movie makers - the Academy rewards quality and not box office results!

[Movies] Aliens (1986)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:59:45 PST

In recent times, sequels tend to be almost synonymous with failures. We know that Hollywood forces franchises to continue in order to rake in more revenue with minimal creative energy expenditure, even when it no longer makes sense to the plot. And thus we now greet sequels with a certain degree of skepticism and doubt - and you can't blame people for reacting that way.

But it wasn't always like that. And yes, I also acknowledge that there are still some pretty wicked sequels out there.

The best most people expect from a sequel is that it'll be as good as the first movie and that's about it. It's very rare that movies consistently reach that level of potential, what more getting all the way to being truly successful - I mean better than the original movie.

For me, this will always be one of those movies that helped define that kind of a sequel for me.

Aliens is the 1986 sequel to the original science fiction / suspense movie - Alien. Just adding that little "S" instead of a number "2" or "II" was enough to define this movie as the next step in this stellar franchise.

In the movie, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only survivor of the Nostromo in the first movie, is finally awoken from hypersleep after her vessel is found. It's been 57 years since the events of the first movie and yet her original company still exists and they refuse to believe her story about the lethal xenomorph. Thus she is stripped of her license and pretty much ridiculed by her former employees.

Image via Wikipedia

In time she is approached by Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) from her company Weyland-Yutani and Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) of the Colonial Marines. The planet where her crew had picked up the alien lifeform was now home to a terraforming colony - a colony that was no longer reporting in. Given Ripley's account, they feared the worst and were now sending in a strike team to establish what had happened. They wanted Ripley to sign on as a consultant despite her trauma over the original incident and eventually she agreed, if only to face the monster that was fated to terrorize her dreams for the rest of her life.

And thus the story of this movie becomes a lot more than what was originally presented in the first movie. Instead of a group of poorly armed, untrained space truckers fighting one of these aliens, you get the best that humanity has to offer in the form of the Colonial Marines against a greater quantity of these alien killing machines. So yeah, it feels like it was blatantly designed to draw in fan viewers.

But the movie was also graced with a pretty good plot - an actual meaty story that you can really sink your teeth into. The movie does a lot in terms of providing you with more information about the society at large that is now learning of the Xenomorphs. You get to learn more about the aliens as a species as well and how they behave in their native groups - and in very large numbers. This was really a movie that took the franchise to a completely different level and helped trigger its translation into books, video games, toys and a whole lot more just based on this one movie.

And the cast was pretty stellar as well and even if they seemed very caricature in dialog or behavior, it all came together and simply worked for this movie's concept. You have your typical tomboy tough chick Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) or salty drill sergeant Apone (Al Matthews). You have the spunky female pilot Ferro (Colette Hiller) and the cool-headed Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn). Oh, and don't forget the creepy cybernetic man Bishop (Lance Henriksen) and miraculous child survivor Newt (Carrie Henn). The cast was campy and silly but totally great together and the chemistry just worked.

Aliens remains to be one of my favorite science fiction thrillers of all time. Sure, there's a lot of action and at times it drags a bit but the overall experience was just amazing. It deserves a full 5 power loaders out of a possible 5.

[TV] Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 1

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:49:48 PST

A lot of science fiction movies end up becoming franchises given how well they do at the box office. The simple Hollywood logic of deciding whether or not to create a sequel is simple enough since all you need to do is repeat a lot of the key elements from the first movie, mix in new actors and a different plot and you're all set. At least that's how the theory goes and yet the results are horribly diverse and fans like us end up loving the continuation of the franchise or we hate it and totally let the movie bomb at the box office.

Then there's the riskier jump, which is for a majorly successful movie to try and make the jump to the small screen to become a TV series. The reverse of this equation tends to occur a lot more frequently and with greater success than the former, and yet studios tend to take the gamble here and there and sometimes it pays off.

It's just not that simple to adapt a movie realm into that of a sustained TV series. The action gets drawn out. The plot lines need to get more complicated. The host of characters becomes larger as well. There are many factors that make TV different from the movies, and the translations aren't always quite as what the producers expect.

Image via Wikipedia

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was the Fox adaptation of the popular movie franchise. Set sometime after the events of the second Terminator movie, it focuses on the life of Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and her son John Connor (Thomas Drekker), who is believed to be fated to become the future leader of the human resistance against the machines. He and his mother have been moving all over the country while constantly evading cybernetic assassins sent from the future by Skynet. During one such lull period when he and his mother try to live some semblance of a normal life, he encounters Cameron (Summer Glau), who turns out to be a reprogrammed terminator sent to the past by his future self to protect him. Together, the three continue the fight against Skynet and try to do their best to prevent that dark future from ever happening.

While on the run from another terminator who has taken on the persona of Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt), the three find themselves relying on Cameron alone to save their lives. Her solution is a bold one - to jump forward in time about 8 years into the future to the year 2007 to evade the terminator completely. With this setting, the stage is set for the series and a rather interesting ride.

First, the casting for this show was pretty awesome, even though it took a bit of time for all the actors to really grow into their roles. Lena Headey was pretty great as the strong-willed Sarah Connor, which she also portrayed as being occasionally weak and vulnerable. This made perfect sense since it's not like she was a trained killer all her life. Once upon a time she was just a waitress who eventually got caught up in all this and eventually became the mother of the potential savior of mankind. Thomas Drekker certainly tried to recapture the whiney John Connor we all saw in Terminator 2 (as performed by Edward Furlong), which made him a lot more annoying than he should have been. Still, it's impressive to consider that the writers gave themselves a significant challenge in writing John that way since now they had to find a way for him to become the John Connor that would one day lead mankind's armies against the machines.

Summer Glau is something else and she's creepy when she's in her full terminator mode. She really does come off as a machine walking amongst us and I was totally cool with this idea apart from the fact that she was able to act completely human back in the first episode, and yet this behavior was never seen again.

What made this show a bit hard to enjoy was the slower plot and the lack of an overall villain. The trio find themselves chasing after whispers and echoes of things that may become the man-killing thinking computer, Skynet. Thus they end up running after chess-playing computers and possible shipments of metals that could possibly used one day to create other terminators. While their reasons are sound and all this is perfectly possible, it still doesn't leave the viewer with a sense of satisfaction. Sure, Skynet lurks beyond the horizon of the coming Judgment Day in the future, but this doesn't translate into a traditional villain that people can latch onto.

On the whole, I really liked the show's premise and wanted to see where the writers originally wanted to take this series were it not for the darned 2007 Writers' Strike. Still, the show did its fair share in contributing to science fiction culture while also showing that it's possible to write yourself into almost any franchise for as long as you have the power of time travel.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 1 gets 3.5 time-travelling naked terminators out of 5.

[TV] The Virtual Revolution on the BBC

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:15:15 PST

Image via Wikipedia

Instead of a product review or a gadget discussion, this week's Wired Wednesday will actually talk about...a TV show. Yeah, I know, this sort of overlaps with my TV Thursdays, but then seriously, are you going to complain? At least this still fits the theme of the day and I'm kind of struggling to figure out something to write about while leaving me time to actually get some sleep before work later tonight.

Ah yes, the curse of the call center lifestyle.

The BBC has finally gotten around to releasing their really interesting 4-part documentary about the internet called The Virtual Revolution. The series doesn't just talk about the barebones history of the internet, but it takes a deeper look at its full impact on the human race as a whole, whether in terms of politics, youth culture, big business, freedom of expression and a whole lot more.

The documentary is hosted by Dr Aleks Krotoski, a broadcaster and journalist who has been studying and writing about the internet, technology and interactivity. She has a PhD in Social Psychology and thus she talks about the internet in such terms, charting the classical patterns of revolution and counterrevolution while also getting to get the opinions of many of the big names of the wired world ranging from Tim Berners-Lee who helped create the World Wide Web to Bill Gates, Steven Wozniak and other leaders of the tech industry.

All four parts have already aired so you should be able to get a copy by now. If you want to get more of taste of what this series is about, check out the introduction below:

The Virtual Revolution Intro (BBC)

[Books] Edenborn

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:27:36 PST

It's not very often that I venture into a new book series without having read more about it beforehand or received extensive feedback on the series from fellow geeks. And yet every now and then there are those books that just strike you as worth the gamble and so we just go for it. Sometimes we end up regretting such rash purchasing decisions. Other times we're definitely rewarded.

When it came to this series of books, I ended up waiting to complete the initial trilogy before even trying to get started on reading the first book. I just wanted to make sure that I'd be ready to dive into the whole experience in case it proved interesting. Had it not, then I would have wasted my money on a few more books, which ultimately isn't a bad thing. There is no such thing as too many books, hehe.

Well, this book was definitely worth the purchase. Absolutely.

Edenborn is Nick Sagan's sequel to the post-apocalyptic novel Idlewild. It has been approximately 18 years since the events of the first book and the posthuman survivors are trying to take up the mission they were created for many years ago. In Egypt, Isaac has raised a group of normal humans that he keeps alive through extensive medication, arguing that natural humans are needed to repopulate the world. In Germany. Vashti and Champagne are raising a group of bioengineered girls as representatives of their philosophy to improve the human race in order to survive in the post Black Ep world. The two camps regular send their respective children to live with the other group as part of a cultural exchange program of sorts, and this is where the story really lies.

We are drawn to two children as sort of main characters. On the one hand we have Isaacs devoted son Haji, who is a devout Sufi Muslim. On the other we have Penny, one of Vashti's creations who is selfish hungry for attention and power. Beyond them is the only other participating posthuman from the original group, Pandora, who oversees the IVR which Vashti and her children continue to use. No word has been heard from the only other surviving siblings Haloween and Fantasia.

All these elements come together to form a very interesting story told from multiple points of view and yet always as a first-person narrative. I've never been a big fan of first-person narratives since it's a very difficult storytelling format to maintain and more often than not writers tend to fumble with it. And yet Nick Sagan has slipped into the mode very comfortably as if it was the only way to tell stories at all.

Once again the book seems to be very simplistic, especially since a lot of the story is told through the eyes of Haji and Penny. However it's certainly not a young adult novel given the dark themes presented in this tale and the concepts are certainly the kind that make you think a bit more. After all, how would you handle the Herculean task of trying to recreate all of human society? Would you try to make things exactly the same as they used to be? Would you try to make things somehow better? What exactly is "better" given that most of your life was spent in a virtual reality environment? Such are the questions that the book forces you to ponder.

Despite my tendency to predict the end of such stories. I have to admit this book still caught me by surprise with its final twist. Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention to the right clues or something but I still feel the book was well-written enough to be able to genuinely surprise its readers with how the story is going to unfold and resolve itself. That's a rare gift among writers, one that definitely needs to be nourished and supported.

Edenborn is an excellent follow-up to Idlewild and it certainly deserves 4 IVR reconstructed personalities out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Up In The Air (2010)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:08:00 PST

In these modern times rich with blogs, spoiler sites and other sources of online information, it's really hard to be able to watch a movie without hearing anything about it beforehand. As much as most people generally don't like reading spoilers about the movie, so many more people seem to invest so much time in saturating the internet with them in order to "spread the word" or whatever reason they have for posting this kind of stuff.

Personally, I hate reading spoilers and I do everything that I can to avoid them like the plague. I like researching about movies in order to know what they're about to who's starring in it but beyond that I try to keep myself generally ignorant. Even just limiting myself to that can lead to unintentional spoilers included in commonplace advanced peeks or synopses of the movie or movies in question may still involve learning something very unique or spoilery. Don't you hate it when that happens?

So it's nice to occasionally enter a theater with absolutely no idea of what the movie is about - you get to be genuinely surprised by the entire experience, just as you should be.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Up In The Air is interesting comedy / drama directed by Jason Reitman of Juno fame. The movie involves the life of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who works for a company that handles larger layoffs and downsizing efforts when the company is unable (or unwilling) to handle this difficult process themselves. With the current economic situation, business is very good and Ryan spends most of the year travelling by plane, thus helping him attain his other goal in life - to attain 1 million frequent flier miles with American Airlines.

His self-proclaimed perfect life starts to become threatened when a young coworker Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) makes a radical proposal to switch over to an online telecommuting model for terminating people that would eliminate the need for anyone to travel. This comes just as Ryan starts a casual relationship with fellow traveler Alex (Vera Farmiga) who appears to share Ryan's love for travel and the associated acclaim. Now Ryan is charged with showing Natalie more of how the business works so she can fine-tune her proposal.

Given I entered the cinema with absolutely no idea of what the movie was about. Thanks to a free ticket to the premiere from the folks at New Worlds, my partner and I took a gamble on the movie and certainly weren't disappointed. This was especially true given I'm no fan of the likes of George Clooney at all. Really, there's just something about him that rubs me the wrong way when I see him on screen.

Clooner really did work in the role of Ryan, perhaps because he kept thing low key and didn't make it all too over the top like he normally does. He had the right amount of charm and and for lack of a better term - assholishness to really make his character work. After all, here was a very jaded person who had steeled himself to handle terminations day in and day out while largely ignoring and neglecting his family for most of his time.

Kendrick was also rather good in her role - a know-it-all in her own way and quite impressive given her age. She really carried herself well and her character was definitely one a lot of us could relate to given her challenge of balancing the demands on a career on a younger person. Her performance was interestingly contrasted against the colder, collected portrayal of Alex by Vera Farmiga, who made for a very alternative kind of romantic interest.

While music did not play a role as large as it did in Juno, it still accented the entire movie nicely and made for some interesting moments. I really enjoyed how the whole thing was put together and it certainly made things a lot more enjoyable to see. It wasn't an outright comedy or anything like that given the dramatic spin to things but the music certainly helped keeps things a bit lighter and thus giving the movie a nicely quirky feel.

Quite frankly, I found myself laughing out loud like mad during this movie and it's nice to find a nice, intelligent movie like this to enjoy whole-heartedly and without shame. Plus it was nice that the audience that we watched the movie with also enjoyed it and were laughing at all the right bits. This is definitely a movie that I'd recommend to anyone with an appreciation for smarter comedies.

Up In The Air deserves a full 5 empty backpacks out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Alien (1979)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:08:00 PST

I'm a huge science fiction fan, as if all of you geeky readers didn't already know that. At the same time, I'm not very good with horror movies since I scare easily and I'm all nervous and tense as it is.

Of course there's a large subset of science fiction movies that have horror / suspense elements, so that's sort of bad news for me. The geek in me will want to go see the movie for the science fiction side of things but at the same time the scaredy cat in me doesn't look forward to getting surprised and scared out of my mind.

And yet the geek in me always wins out and I do end up watching whatever scary movie is out there. I do my best to overcome my fear in order to fulfill my geeky needs. This is one of the greatest science fiction movies out there, in my opinion, and yet also one of the freakiest.

Alien was a science fiction movie that totally changed the game when it came to our concept of such movies. Instead of the campy, high adventure feel of most other science fiction pieces, this was dark, serious and ultimately scary in how it presented this glimpse of the future.

Image via Wikipedia

The movie follows the crew of the commercial vessel known as the Nostromo on its way back to Earth. I always think of them as sort of space truckers on this long distance flight hauling ore and other raw materials for resource needs. They receive orders to investigate a transmission they receive from a nearby planet and there they find an alien spacecraft. One of the crew encounters a strange alien creature that attaches itself to his face and doesn't let go. The thing becomes more popularly known as a facehugger a its sole purpose is to implant an alien egg in the host and use the body as an incubation unit.

And this is where the real story begins. The crew now find themselves in a battle to survive against the alien creature that turns out to be highly aggressive, has acid for blood and moves lightning fast. Given they're not very well-armed it's not an easy feat to accomplish.

The movie's central claim to fame, in my opinion, was introducing the world to Warrant Officer Ripley as immortalized by Sigourney Weaver. She was a very different kind of leading lady since she was tough, aggressive, strong, independent and yet still feminine when she needed to be. She wasn't too much of a tomboy character but she was definitely a breath of fresh hair compared to all the stereotype female roles in Hollywood in the years before.

Then there's the alien itself, which was also a very striking and surprising image. It wasn't your typical bug-eyed monster but it was scary in a completely different way. It's what many people think to be the perfect killing-machine and as illogical as some of its biological innovations are, we can't argue the fact that it was amazingly well-designed for killing things and pretty much scary the living daylights out of folks.

Thus the movie also has all the elements of a great psychological horror piece. You don't see the alien until more than halfway through the movie and a lot of the movie is long, drawn-out moments of silence that do amazingly well to build up tension and of course suspense. I hate scary movies and this one really freaked me out more than once during the film. And yet I loved every moment of it, for sure.

This is a science fiction movie that everyone needs to watch. All similar movies in recent years owe a lot to this first one and you'll come to respect what they managed to achieve despite the technological limitations of the time. And it's a totally amazing movie all the same, one that will surely stand the tests of time.

Alien gets 5 out of 5 dead crew members.

[TV] Tin Man (2007)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:16:29 PST

The realm of children's fairy tales are an amazingly rich source for works of high fantasy, horror and even science fiction. Think about it - we're taken to so many amazingly surreal worlds in such stories and it's a small wonder that we don't come out somehow damaged given the kind of books we read while we're young. Even "nonsense" books like Dr. Seuss certainly push the mind into new directions where we're made to accept fantastical creatures and strange animals and locations.

Thus it's no surprise when modern day writers and movie makers decide to explore such timeless tales in order to see how they can use the existing material to present new and exciting stories of a different variety. Some of these ventures have been quite interesting and refreshing while others have been total snorefests that make us curse Hollywood for trying to destroy our happy memories of childhood.

I'll always feel that it takes a lot of guts to try and reimagine such classic stories and it's a small wonder that any movies of this nature still manage to survive underneath our collective scrutiny. But well all know it's going to keep happening and we geeks are still going to give them a shot.

Tin Man is a 6-hour 2007 TV mini-series that was co-produced by RHI Entertainment and the then Sci Fi (now SyFy) Channel. It's partly a reimagining of and a sequel to the classic story The Wizard of Oz and does a nice job of taking elements of the original story and combining it with modern fantasy and science fiction elements to come up with a pretty intense story.

Image via Wikipedia

The story is centered around DG (Zooey Deschanel), a small-town waitress and part-time student from Kansas who never quite fits in with the others. She is plagued by these visions of a woman calling out to her and warning of a coming storm. These dream become reality when soldiers from the land of the O.Z. (or the Outer Zone) invade their farm via tornado in an effort to take her back with them. She narrowly escapes them but is forced into the vortex by her parents in order to send her to the O.Z. to fulfill her destiny. Along the way she meets a diverse crew of individuals who have all lost something because of the evil reign of the wicked witch Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson). They consist of a man who has lost half of his brain named Glitch (Alan Cumming), a former law enforcer who had been imprisoned in an iron suit for many years as a prison named Wyatt Cain (Neal McDonough) and a lion-like Viewer named Raw (Raoul Trujillo). Together they travel across the O.Z. in search of the secrets of DG's past and in order to escape the relentless pursuit of the witch queen Azkadellia.

What I first loved about this mini-series was the effort put into making subtle references to the original Oz tale without requiring the characters themselves to embrace such a paradigm. Thus you end up with some pretty enjoyable small touches and quaint moments like when you see DG in her waitress outfit that looks a lot like the original dress of Dorothy in the original movie or all the banter about Wyatt being without a heart and Glitch being without a brain just like the Tin Man and the Scarecrow in the original tale.

Most of the acting was solid and Zoe really worked out as a great actress to play the lead role given her ability to remain largely innocent while asking rather difficult or awkward questions when under fire. Alan Cumming came off a bit too much like Michael Jackson, but that still worked for his concept and Neal McDonough was surprisingly good as the "Tin Man" despite his often strange roles in the past. Plus the young actresses Rachel Pattee and Alexia Fast were really amazing as the young DG and Azkadelia respectively - great performances at such young ages.

I wasn't all that impressed with Kathleen Robertson though - he performance as the main villain was a tad inconsistent, and I mean that in a bad way despite her character. Or maybe it was just her gold costume that was really distracting me - I started to appreciate her more in the last two parts when she started wearing better-looking and yet still menacing outfits.

Of course the real meat here is the story and I did like their vision of the world of the O.Z. Sure, there were parts that dragged a bit or weren't too clear how they fit in the rest of the story, but overall I really enjoyed the plot and found the story quite compelling. Plus its very rich musical scoring really helped drive the mood for the series and kind of made me wish that they had expanded this into a full TV series and not just a limited one. There's so much of their version of the OZ universe that warrants further exploration in a future creative effort.

I think what also worked for the show is how they chose not to have the characters being self-aware that they were in the story of OZ. The more recent SyFy mini-series, Alice, tried to use this knowledge to a limited degree but eventually had the characters remain completely ignorant of the story. Here they were always ignorant and yet their progression did hint at echoes of the original, which totally worked for me.

The whole thing was trying to build up to a rather epic climax, and it attempted this rather well although in the end it did suffer from some Act 3 issues. All the same, it was still a rather great story and one that I enjoyed as far as reimagination movies go.

Tin Man gets 4 subtle OZ references out of a possible 5.

[Gadgets] Printer Options

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:08:00 PST

In recent months, I've been making a few significant gadget purchases here and there and have been documenting such plans here on the Geeky Guide. Things started with my plans of getting a netbook as opposed another desktop or a full laptop. After much deliberation, I ended up getting an Asus EEE 1005HA, which I'm pretty happy with.

Then I started considering what new mobile phone to buy and after much deliberation, I ended up with my first smart phone: a Nokia E63. My transition to a smart phone and a QWERTY keypad has been pretty decent as well and once again I'm happy with my purchase. The only other gadget consideration I had in mind was trying to figure out what digital camera I wanted and for now I sort of settled on keeping a look out for a Panasonic Lumix ZS3, although this is the only purchase that I have yet to fulfill.

And now I'm considering what printer to get, so once again I'm going to document my considerations.

Image via Wikipedia

This all started when my partner indicated that he wanted to get a flatbed scanner for his comic book pages and perhaps a photo printer for those pages that he edits on the computer. In the interests of our budget and space constraints, an all-in-on (AIO) printer-scanner seemed like the best option. So in the interests of getting him a nice gift, I've started researching on what would be the best possible unit to purchase.

We're not going to do a lot of printing, mind you, and my partner is sure to utilize the scanning function more. Thus the priority of features is (1) a good flatbed scanner, (2) overall affordability / price, (3) good photo quality printing, (4) affordable ink system and (5) decent printing speeds. Things like wireless networking are bonus perks, but certainly not primary requirements.

The first printer that caught my attention given its prevalence amongst the computer stores was the Canon Pixma MP198. It certainly seems like a promising unit given (1) its initial unit price is around PHP 3,000, (2) it's both a printer and a scanner and (3) it has borderless printing, which is something that my partner is interested in for his comic art. It seems to be practically everywhere these days and so it's definitely an easy option to explore.

However when I started looking up the reviews for the MP198 online, the results were less than favorable and many complain about the slow printing speed and the inconsistent photo quality.

Another option I have looking at the Brother line of printers which seem pretty affordable with many of them already offering wireless networking options. However there are complaints for a few of the models about their compatibility with Windows 7 so I may have to wait for a latter version that ensures the appropriate OS patches.

Then there's the Epson Stylus TX400 which got rave reviews in this PC World India article ranking different budget all-in-one printers. It got high marks for print quality with it's black ink only option and overall print speed. I'm not sure how reliable the scanning side of it is - most reviews tend to ignore discussing the scanning for some reason.

Of course there's also HP to consider with all-in-one printers like the HP Photosmart Plus B209. It's more expensive than the Epson but also comes with wireless networking and of course it's an HP unit, which is know for pretty decent quality. If might be a wee bit beyond my price range but then the wireless networking might be a major bonus given our wireless setup here at home. Of course HP is notorious for very expensive ink and I doubt that's going to change anytime soon.

So at the moment, the rankings have the Epson coming out first, the HP unit second, a miscellaneous Brother unit at third and the initial Canon printer now trailing behind. If have experience using these printers or have your own recommendations, then I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to leave a comment with your feedback or of course you can get in touch with me more directly (if you know how).

Hurry! I want to get this gift for my partner already! Hahaha!

[Movies] Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:46:05 PST

As much as there are many comic book storylines that I love enough to want to see as movie or animated feature, I also acknowledge that translations across the media formats don't always go well. I'm not trying to sound all Alan Moore here, mind you, but he does have a point despite all the eccentricity. Comic books are a special medium in themselves and it's not always automatic that what works on paper will work on the silver (or small) screen.

Then of course you have the meddling of Hollywood to contend with given they always try to "improve" upon the original story in order to give it a wider appeal or to ensure it's success, as measured in dollars spent on the feature and not so much based on the fan reactions. This has resulted in both good and bad movies, animated TV shows and live action specials. Okay, so maybe more bad ones than good ones, but we comic book geeks still give them a shot and try to watch them.

As much as I like the comic book that this movie was partly based on, the end result wasn't quite something I'd go out of my way to see again.

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is the latest direct-to-video release from DC Universe Original Animated Movies. A lot of the write-ups about the movie highlight the fact that this was originally meant to bridge the old Justice League cartoon with its later update, Justice League Unlimited, however the project never got off the ground. It looks like DC finally decided to revisit the darned thing but making sure it no longer depended on the long-standing Justice League cartoons.

The story involves a Lex Luthor from a parallel universe who seeks out the help of the Justice League to stop the Crime Syndicate, a mirror universe version of the League with similar superhumans who are dedicated to evil instead of good. After much debate, many members of the Justice League eventually agree to travel across the dimensions in order to do what they can to save the parallel Earth and restore peace. Of course coming head-to-head with their parallel selves in an interesting match-up in itself and it'll take more that brute force to resolve things on the other side of the dimensional veil.

The animated movie draws heavily upon Grant Morrison's one-shot entitled JLA: Earth. The main plot elements of the good Luthor from an alternate universe and an evil League called the Crime Syndicate are clearly present in the movie, but beyond that the influence begins to ebb and clearly Hollywood input started to come into play. As someone who read the original comic book, I have to admit I felt pretty bad about that given the fact that it was already a good story on its own and I see no reason why it needed modification.

Even if I were to judge the movie upon its merits apart from the comic book, I'd still end up feeling things could have been a lot better. Much of the motivations of the heroes and villains wasn't throughly explained and thus came out somewhat flat and rather shallow. In other times, I felt characterization was outright inconsistent and strange.

I wasn't very big on the voice talents tapped for this movie either. There was something odd to James Woods as Owlman not that William Baldwin's version of Batman was any better. Why did they feel Kevin Conroy was not longer a good choice for the role? And don't get me started on both Vanessa Marshall and Gina Torres as Wonder Woman and Superwoman respectively - their performances were equally hammy and somehow out of place.

True enough, the movie had some good action sequences and it was generally fun to watch the heroes try to square off against villains with generally the same powers and abilities as they did. I just wish that they had found a way to keep things a lot more consistent in order to keep the story flowing a lot better. At many points, I actually found myself getting bored with the story and losing interest in their caricature-style antics.

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths really felt like a direct-to-video release in the negative sense and only gets 2 abused plotlines out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:08:00 PST

The post Harry Potter media world continues to do its best to find the next great book series that will cross generations in terms of appeal just like what J.K. Rowling achieved with her landmark book franchise. While there have been some notable successes, nothing ha been quite as big as the big HP series.

It's funny how some books seem like total Harry Potter clones and yet because of the change of setting or circumstances, a little tweak here or there, you end up with a book that is independent enough to stand on its own and survive on its own merits. If you manage to get that far, well, then you know that Hollywood is going to be knocking on your door pretty soon.

I hate it when a book feels like it was written for its Hollywood movie potential. I pay good money to read books, not screenplays in beta testing! And so we get this movie, of which I never read the original book so this is strictly an opinion based on what appeared on the screen. Oh well.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (also known as Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief), is potentially the first movie in a new film franchise based on the series of young adult fantasy books written by Rick Riordan. It's all about the life of one Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), who one day discovers that he's actually the son of Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and has been accused on stealing the Lightning Bolt of Zeus (Sean Bean). Given this charge, pretty much all those mythical creatures of Greek lore are now out to get him in order to bring him to justice or at least acquire the lightning bolt for themselves.

In order to protect him and give him the right training for his legacy, Percy is brought by his mother and his best friend Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), who turns to be a satyr charged to be his protector, to a secret training camp for demigods like himself. There is trained by one of his teachers from the real world Mr. Brunner (Pierce Brosnan), who turns out to be the centaur Chiron. He also gets to meet Luke Castellan (Jake Abel), a son of Hermes and Annabeth Chase (Alexandra Daddario), daughter of Athena. From there you know the story is going to eventually involve trying to regain the lightning bolt involving this main characters and thus the normal progression of such stories continues.

The comparisons between this story and that of Harry Potter are hard to ignore. You have the reluctant lead who discovers this whole other side to his heritage that had been kept secret from him in order to keep him safe, you have the comedic best friend supporting character who can get more annoying than entertaining and you have the smart, boyish female friend on the side. It's not a perfect translation, but the design of the template involved in this story is clearly there - well that and the classic archetype of the Hero's Journey of course.

The characterization and ultimately the acting in the movie was a bit wanting in many ways. Lerman is clearly being groomed as a possible Zac Efron type of young male lead character while Daddario did her best to be a lot more manly than Hermione Granger ever was. However in her effort to become a stronger character physically, she ended up ignoring the whole "I'm descended from the goddess of wisdom and battle tactics side". Grover was just plain annoying for me and for a young man in high school, he certainly had some pretty strong inappropriate leanings in terms of the intensity of his feelings towards the opposite sex. His humor did not fit his portrayal well and ended up making him feel like a parody of Phil from the Disney Hercules cartoon.

Chris Columbus could have done a lot better in terms of how he set the direction and tone for this movie, I think. A lot of times the characters seemed uncomfortable with what they were doing or just generally seemed ill-suited for their roles since they didn't know what to do. The individual battle sequences were fun and all but the whole story just didn't flow right and was battling between being something set in more classical period settings (like the camp and Olympus itself) and being an updated version of the myths more suited to modern audiences (such as Uma Thurman's Medusa or the Lotus Eaters' Casino). This inconsistency of tone and focus just totally made things weird and awkward here and there.

Special effects were nicely seamless for the most part, I have to admit. Medusa was wonderful in her modern leather outfit and the hydra was rather impressive once things all came together. Even the minotaur was pretty awesome - the strength of the special effects team was clearly within the realms of ground-base action.

Overall, it was a decent movie and not quite as bad as some of the other Harry Potter wannabes out there. I'm fairly certainly it'll survive for at least another movie and the film does make me want to read the books if only to see what the differences between the two are.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief gets 3 pairs of flying sneakers out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Across the Universe (2007)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:13:15 PST

Some movies seem a lot better when you see them featured in awards shows. Maybe it's just a matter of personal taste or something, but I feel that way about certain movies. As much as I respect the award-giving bodies out there, sometimes the results just totally don't make sense to me. Then again, I'm no member of the Academy or something.

Then again, that is the purpose of such awarding ceremonies - to highlight the best and brightest moments of the nominated films to get people curious enough to go out and see them or catch them on home video if they're no longer in cinemas. I've managed to see a number of good movies for precisely this reason and others still that were decent yet things that I just didn't get.

Perhaps my opinion of this movie was even more impacted by my expectations for it. Can you blame me?

Image via Wikipedia

Across the Universe was designed to be an interesting modern day musical featuring the songs of The Beatles set during the years of the Vietnam War in the 19060's. The tale is centered around Jude (Jim Sturgess), a young shipyard worker in Liverpool who decides to venture across the ocean to the United States in search of his American G.I. father whom he has never met nor does this man realize he has a son. In his adventures in the US he becomes friends with Maxwell (Joe Anderson), a student at Princeton and eventually grows infatuated with his sister, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). As their lives remain interconnected but not quite together, we're also brought along in a retelling of the stories of the period including the draft, protest actions and working as an illegal immigrant.

The whole movie is told in two ways - straight narrative moments where scenes from their lives are depicted and in fantastical flights of fancy set to the music of The Beatles. As much as I enjoyed many of the musical sequences that felt very surreal, they didn't quite mesh well with the narrative portions of the movie thus given it a somewhat schizophrenic feel in a not so good way. We've seen modern musicals use more popular songs and weave them effectively into the narrative, but I felt this movie felt short in this department.

The actors were decent but nothing spectacular. I felt at times some performances were a tad flat and it made it harder to connect with their characters. Add in the somewhat haphazard pacing of the story and you get yourself a movie with no clear direction and a plot that is not strong enough to pull the diverse elements together. I didn't even feel that strongly for Jude and Lucy - it just didn't click for me for some reason.

Don't get me wrong here - I do enjoy the music of The Beatles and I did like the performances as I mentioned before. It just felt like many disparate music videos that attempted to tell a story, like what Mamma Mia! accomplished with the music of ABBA. It just didn't mesh as well as I hoped.

I think I'm beginning to get repetitive. Sorry - it became a bit of a struggle to get past the last two-thirds of the film once my attention had fully wandered away past the opening act.

Across the Universe is a movie that had a LOT of potential but fell rather short of delivery. It gets 2.5 nailed-on strawberries out of 5.

[TV] Lost: Season 5

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:22:02 PST

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for time travel and parallel worlds in terms of science fiction stories. I can't quite put my finger on it - it's probably something that started when I first read William F. Wu's series, Isaac Asimov's Robots in Time. It was a nice combination of what remains my one of my favorite concepts, robots, merged with time travel.

Time travel is never easy and there seems to be thousands of interpretations and speculations of how time travel might work and the potential implications of such ventures into our past or our future. Some same time is fluid and easy to shift into new directions while others still postulate that time is constant and no matter what you change in the past, the universe does what it can to restore a sense of "order" by making sure key events persist and still occur. Regardless of whatever school of time travel theory you subscribe to, you have to admit that it's always a fascinating subject.

It isn't often that time travel is presented in interesting and new ways, most especially on network television.

The fifth season of Lost has the castaways and other residents of the island in for a pretty wild ride. On the one hand, a select few now known around the world as the Oceanic Six have escaped the island and are now trying to figure out how to live normal lives. At the same time, all those left behind on the island have started to experience flashes that send them back and forth in time but always remaining on the mysterious island. As the flashes continue, so does the increased strain on their bodies. It is eventually revealed that the only way that the flashes will stop is for the Oceanic Six to return to the island. Otherwise, all those who were left behind are doomed to die.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This season is a tad harder to follow than the others given the inconsistent time jumps that replace the familiar flashbacks of old. You never really know where the castaways are going to end up next. However this back and forth storytelling does end up revealing a lot more about one of the lingering mysteries of the show - the Dharma Initiative and more details related to their struggle against the Hostiles, who are the residents of the island that viewers know better as the Others.

Despite being separated from his allies on the island, Ben (Michael Emerson) really did shine in this season and thus it totally makes sense why he won the Emmy for his performance. Emerson's intensity and command of a scene is something else and he's certainly a very difficult act ton follow in case anyone ever ventures to try and duplicate what he did for the show.

There's all the usual development of the individual characters on their respective plot paths however at the same time bringing them into interesting new directions. We all get to see the shift in Jack (Matthew Fox) from being the logical leader to this apathetic follower. We get to see Sun (Yunjin Kim) become a much stronger character and worthy of the legacy of her father. Oh, and Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) fall in love with Sawyer (Josh Holloway). Yeah, she gets all the guys.

As difficult as this season was to understand at some points, it's certainly a great one and definitely a clear sign of the escalating drama leading up to the show's final season.

Lost Season 5 deserves 4 Dharma Initiative initiation videos out of 5.

[Books] Chapterhouse: Dune

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:43:37 PST

All good things must come to an end and this always rings most true to me whenever a great author passes. For years they invest so much of their time into creating the most amazing stories, books that bring us to the farthest reaches of the imagination. It hurts even more when the author is the type who writes novels in trilogies or expanded series. Even if they claim their stories are over, their deaths always make it seem like the story has now been cut short and there's no further opportunity to return to those worlds. Sometimes other authors try to revisit these worlds and reinterpret the old stories but the results are never quite as good as the original.

The 6 books that make up the Dune Chronicles are pretty much the most important books in my life. A lot of my beliefs and principles were shaped while reading these books. This is the last Dune book that Frank Herbert ever wrote and it ends on an odd note. While it's still an ending that is relatively decent, but at the same time you can definitely feel the chasm that stands between you as a reader and the rest of the Dune tale that Herbert intended to write about had he lived longer.

While it's not necessarily the greatest book in the series, it's definitely one of the more shocking and startling.

Chapterhouse: Dune is the sixth and last Dune Chronicle written by Frank Herbert. It continues the story started in Heretics of Dune with the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood hiding on their home planet known only as Chapterhouse while the Honored Matres rage across the Known Universe, destroying everything in their path. The other Bene Gesserit worlds have fallen to their forces and now the Sisterhood can't even venture out to help their isolated sisters. All that protects them is a massive fleet of no-ships masking Chapterhouse from prying eyes and prescient vision - all this just a gamble on a wild plan by Darwi Odrade who is now Mother Superior.

Image via Wikipedia

They hold prisoner Scytale, one of the Tleilaxu Masters. The Sisters hope to obtain from him the secrets of the Tleilaxu axlotl tanks and with it the ability to create artificial spice and gholas. Together with the Master in the grounded no-ship is the ghola of Duncan Idaho and his wife, the now-bonded Honored Matre Murbella. They all hold the secrets to the Sisterhood's future as long as Odrade finds a way to get the valuable information that she needs.

The tone of Chapterhouse is a dark one where the one mighty Bene Gesserit are now prisoners of their own planet. The Honored Matres are savage and seemingly unstoppable and even the Bene Tleilaxu have been driven from their worlds. The great Houses are no more and everything that used to be stable and reliable in the previous books have been thrown out the window. Heck, even Dune is no more, destroyed at the end of Heretics. Given this kind of a universe, I can understand why a lot of fans had a really hard time accepting this aspect of the Dune Universe and the story it had to tell.

Still, I liked Heretics and I certainly appreciated this continuation of that particular story. Sure, it's a bit difficult to accept the Bene Gesserit as the new Atreides however you have to admit that they've always been one of the more interesting factions in the Dune Universe. One can't ignore the fact that they were instrumental in pretty much creating Paul and being the origin of his training as well. At the end of the day, Paul Muab'Dib was in fact the fulfillment of the Bene Gesserit genetic plan, their Kwisatz Haderach.

At times, the story does get a tad preachy (although not as preachy as God Emperor of Dune was) but the trials that the Sisterhood face along with the rest of the Known Universe are valuable ones indeed. The mystery of the plans and designs of the Honored Matres are slowly revealed as Odrade and her allies try to put the pieces together like some elaborate mystery or puzzle. It's a story that certainly keeps one guessing and in time much will be uncovered.

But not everything. And that's the sad aspect of things as punctuated by the death of Frank Herbert.

As the last true Dune book, Chapterhouse: Dune gets 4 Face Dancers out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Valentine's Day (2010)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:49:32 PST

When reviewing movies, I always feel that it's important that you try to evaluate it based on its peers and not the entire body of work that is the history of films for the past 50 or so years. Comedies should be compared to comedies. Dramas must be judged as dramas and not action films. It seems very common sense, but it's a tad harder than that when you get down to it.

Garry Marshall is known for a particular genre of of feel good movies and romantic comedies. They're not necessarily award-winning movie concepts but they're the kind of movies that we all go to see when we want to have a good laugh, when we want to be reminded about the virtues of love or we just want to have a good time with friends or a loved one.

And this movie seemed tailor-fitted for this kind of thing, especially tying into the holiday the movie was named for.

Valentine's Day is a multi-plot romantic comedy directed by Garry Marshall of Pretty Woman fame. The movie follows the many misadventures of love and romance experience by a variety of people in Los Angeles on one particular Valentine's Day. There are far too many plot points to capture in a single synopsis, but allow me to try a few of them.

Image via Wikipedia

One of the big ones is about the current owner of Sierra Bouquets, Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) who decides to propose to his girlfriend (Jessica Alba) on Valentine's Day. His best friend, Julia (Jennifer Garner) is currently in love with one Dr. Harrison Copeland (Patrick Dempsey), who has secrets of his own to consider. Then there are other side stories of interest like the budding relationship of mailroom clerk Jason (Topher Grace) and receptionist Liz (Anne Hathaway), who moonlights as a phone sex operator. Then there's Holden (Bradley Cooper) who finds himself next to Captain Kate Hazeltine (Julia Roberts) of the US Army on her way home for a one-day leave. The two bond on the plane fairly well while trying to figure out things about the other given the long flight.

There are many more stories and even more celebrities involved in the movie that it just gets rather dizzying to try and figure things out all at once. And yet the story isn't quite that complicated per se - it's just that there's a lot going on even if each story is fairly simple on its own.

The interconnected stories are both the best and worst part of this movie. The many plot threads and storylines do make things interesting and keep the story very dynamic and quick-witted. Thus it has resulted in many celebrity cameos and interesting side stories. At the same time however, the sheer number of plot threads doesn't result in a story that is very solidly tired together and it can feel like the many disparate plots don't all fit right. Plus there are some stories that just don't contribute much to the movie apart from perhaps the vision of the writer to somehow showcase every single possible kind of love celebrated or experienced in the world.

The acting was pretty decent but nothing exceptional as well - then again I may be judging things too soon. Given the limited screen time of each actor from within their respective plot threads and thus not everyone gets enough time in front of the camera for us as viewers to really evaluate their performances well enough.

It's definitely a simpler movie and one that generally makes you feel good about love given that one story or another is bound to be something you can associate with. It does seem to try to accomplish many different things all at once but of course it doesn't really drive anything in particular. It feels like many different stories that could have been full-blown movies on their owns but just merged all together into this hodge-podge story.

Don't expect this movie to change your life or totally blow you away - that's not its purpose. It's just a simple, fun, enjoyable movie full of eye candy and quirky moments.

Valentine's Day gets 4 crazy Anne Hathaway impersonations out of 5.

[TV] Lost: Season 4

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:08:13 PST

So with some degree of irony, it appears that I've become a "Lostie" - a fan of the show Lost. For most of you casual readers of the Geeky Guide, I suppose you might think that such a "revelation" isn't much of a surprise. After all, Lost is a rather geeky show. I am a geek. Therefore, I must like Lost. However for the past few years I allowed myself to be horribly scarred by the first half of the second season of Lost, hence the reason I never returned to the show. Ironically enough, I was initially a self-professed Heroes fan until things really started to go downhill in its own second season.

So in the past few weeks I've been devoting a lot of my idle time to trying to catch up with four season's worth of Lost in order to be able to watch the final season of the show that started airing this month. Believe it or not, I managed to accomplish this feat despite how busy my work life has been and now I stand ready to join my partner in closing out the show.

As we wait for the new episodes to come out, feel free to enjoy my weekly reviews of each season as I had perceived things.

Lost: Season 4 continues the wriggly, twisty story of the castaways as things escalate with the revelation that the freighter just offshore from the island has nothing to do with Penny, the long lost love of Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick). This splinters the survivors into two camps - one led by Jack (Matthew Fox) who believes the freighter will help them finally leave the island. The other led by John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), who believes that none of them are meant to leave the island and that all this is wrong. The remaining surivors find themselves torn between the two groups and some major characters actually do switch allegiances between camps throughout the season as they all try to figure out what to do.

Image via Wikipedia

Thus we now get to meet the mixed crew of the freighter - the seemingly absent-minded physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies), anthropologist Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader), spiritualist and medium Miles Straume (Ken Leung) and quirky yet skilled pilot Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey). The exact mission of this team is yet another mystery added into the mix of the show since it's immediately obvious that rescuing the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 is hardly their priority.

The season reveals a lot more about the diverse interconnections between the lives of the survivors and other major players on the island. On top of the usual back and fourth between flashbacks in order to drive character development, the show really goes heavy science fiction this time around by introducing elements about time travel as centered around the new abilities
Desmond started to demonstrate at the tail end of the previous season. Their interpretation of time travel is a decent one and not one of those other kind of concepts presented in Hollydood that dumb things down to the level of children's absurdity. This kept the concept rather realistic enough, at least within the context of science fiction fan.

And yet even more questions are left unanswered and I can see this season still making some longer term fans upset given the long drown out reveals while others still will find things entertaining, gripping and pleasantly surprising.

This season continued to drive my appreciation and respect for Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), and to some extent my fear of Ben (Michael Emerson) and precisely what he's capable of in the name of "keeping the island safe". The constant juxtapositions we encounter whether in the form of contrasting Jack and John over and over again as representatives of reason and faith / belief and so on. They do make for interesting plot points, although over time they do get a tad frustrating and somewhat redundant.

Lost: Season 4 is still a key piece of the overall puzzle and helped push the series to become a true science fiction tale. It gets 4 time flashes out of a possible 5.

[Gadgets] My Final Choice: The Nokia E63

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:56:49 PST

Last week, I posted my considerations for getting a new mobile phone. I had listed the qualities I desired in aforementioned phone and then I started gathering suggestions and ideas, researching options and visiting mobile phone shops.

So after a week's worth of careful study and contemplation, I've narrowed down my list to pretty much two mobile phones with one edging out over the other. Here are the phones that I'm considering, in case you geeks are interested - the options may surprise you.

The first phone that I started to consider based on the suggestions of many friends was the Samsung Jet (S8000). It's a pretty little thing that boasts of a pretty impressive touch screen display that can manage over 16 million colors and it has the WiFi capability that I've been looking for. It's just within my budget range (although near what I'm comfortable spending for) and it looks pretty as heck. It is, after all, part of Samsung's "Stylish" line of phones and so that last bit sort of makes sense.

Despite the prettiness and the impressive AMOLED display, the phone does make me pause to some extent. I'm a heavy text message kind of person and I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with a touch screen interface. QWERTY option or not, it's still a resistive touch screen and thus I'll definitely need to look at the screen to make sure I'm typing my messages correctly. Most reviews indicate that they didn't encounter any major problem with the responsiveness of the virtual keypad, but many have complained about how easily the screen gets smudged with fingerprints.

I almost bought myself a Jet last Saturday but when I finally decided on getting one, the store that I had initially canvassed had coincidentally sold off its last unit to the woman standing right beside me at the counter. It was a bit of a jarring experience given that it takes a while for a geek like me to warm up to an actual purchasing decision only to find out the item in question was out of stock at the last minute.

So I did a reality check and considered not getting a phone as pretty as that one and focused more on my original requirements. I reminded myself that I didn't really need a pretty phone - I just needed a practical one that gave me mobile browsing capabilities, especially via WiFi. With that in mind, I found myself looking at a brand I had long abandoned years ago - Nokia.

CNET Asia ranked the Nokia E72 as the best phone based on Singaporean subscriber numbers. While the E72 is within a similar price range as the Samsung Jet, I know that I don't necessarily need a phone with those features, especially given the wide range of phones in the same family with highly similar features.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

So I turned to the Nokia E63 instead, the somewhat cuter and scaled down version of the E71 and the E72. It features a plastic housing which may seem cornier-looking but perhaps more practical from a grip perspective with the same WiFi capabilities and an actual QWERTY keypad. The screen is decently-sized for my needs and looking at the unit, it seems to fit my palm decently well without becoming too bulky or anything like that.

It's practically half the cost of the Samsung Jet with just enough of the features that I need. It's a really good bargain considering the price tag and the affordability makes my risk factor seem a lot less. If it doesn't work out for me and this phone, I can always consider getting a new phone a year or two down the line. I know that sounds a tad frivolous, but frankly it's more practical than you may realize.

I canvassed for the phone last Monday and was unable to secure one just yet. The store that had the best deal didn't have the phone in stock but assured me that they'd have new inventory either today or by Friday. I'll wait for Friday to make the trek to get one - wish me luck!

[Books] Idlewild

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:59:23 PST

It's very hard for me to get into a new book series on my own. I don't quite understand why this is the case, but it just is. I think the only time that I've found a completely new series of books to get into was when I picked up Peter J. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction and found myself enjoying the whole series. Books like are pretty rare.

I tend to rely on the opinions and recommendations of friends for the most part. I guess it helps me minimize risk in terms of exploring a new series of books given these recommendations come from people that I trust. More or less.

Then there are those books that aren't truly recommendations but are just books that a friend picks out since they seem to fit your tastes. This was one of those books and I was certainly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Idlewild is the first of a trilogy of science fiction books written by Nick Sagan, the son of THE Carl Sagan. This is definitely one of those cases when I'm glad the son took up the craft of his father, unlike other sons of famous writers like Brian Herbert.

Damn you Brian Herbert. Anyway.

Idlewild, Michigan is home to a school unlike any other - that where the better off can send their children to a completely different kind of private school. Here the teens are immersed in an artificial reality known as the IVR where they are taught their lessons in a virtual school where they can not only gain access to the best teachers ever programmed but they can re-live the greatest moments in history. Imagine learning about evolution alongside Charles Darwin or discussing the Theory of General Relativity with Albert Einstein. Such are the possibilities of a virtual school.

Our protagonist wakes up unable to move within this virtual world and also without his memory. He quickly realizes that someone tried to kill him and he may have killed someone himself as well. Thus a complex mystery begins to unfold as he tries to regain his memory without revealing to his peers what has happened to him. Solving the mystery of the attack on him is just the beginning for Idlewild holds even deeper secrets than meets the eye.

I certainly appreciated the tone of the book as based on the perspective of its protagonist, Halloween. He's your more or less typical brooding teenager whose intellectual realizations and internal commentary smacks of the likes of Holden Caufield, which I rather enjoyed. Plus he wasn't just trying to sound smart - this character does happen to be highly intelligent and some of the meanderings of his mind probably become rather difficult for your average, non-science fiction reader to keep up with at times.

The book presents the reader with some very interesting concepts about human evolution, surviving future challenges and perhaps even the question of humanity itself. Despite the brainier parts of the book, it's a fairly simple read and I can imagine this being more targeted towards a younger audience. This is not to say that the older set can't enjoy the books - I'm just saying it has a rather hit, vibrant tone that's pretty fun.

Plus I like how the reveals were handled all throughout the book. Just when you think you have things figured out, Sagan goes on to jerk you around in a completely different direction. Plus nothing and no one is overly sacred - anyone is a liability that can be killed. No one is quite who they seem to be. In a world where people can escape into the IVR, what is truly real any more?

I know, the questions reek of The Matrix, but it's not quite the same. I'd like to think of it as a nice update to the cyberpunk genre in a manner that is refreshing and can survive into the new future. It's not a game-changing book or anythging like that, but it's still a great read and more than worth picking up. I already have the other two books in the trilogy and I can hardly wait to get to the next title.

Oh wait - I already started on it yesteday, haha.

Idlewild gets 4 IVR domains out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:29:03 PST

When movie studios first announce that they're turning a children's book into a feature-length movie, my initial reaction is a raised eyebrow and a lot of skepticism. Most children's books really don't translate into movies well given the source material is so limited versus how much content is needed to pull off a full movie.

We've seen some pretty scary translations over the years such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat and a few others that managed decently enough such as, um, the Harry Potter movies? Okay, I need a more specific example that fits the analogy - give me a moment.

Oh wait I got it - think of most of the Roald Dahl movies. There's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach to name a few of the better ones. They still weren't ideal, but it still managed to capture the original sense of the books they were based on well enough.

Image via Wikipedia

Where the Wild Things Are was based on the children's book of the same name written back in 1963 by Maurice Sendak. The book won the Caldecott Medal for its distinct art style and has been one of the better loved children's books over the years. It really wasn't much of a story originally and it seems the screenwriters managed to expand on the material a LOT in order to come up with enough plot for a full movie.

In the movie, Max (Max Records) is a rather solitary 9 year old boy living with his busy working mother Connie (Katherine Keener) and his teenage sister Claire (Pepita Emmerichs). He often escapes into the world of his imagination to help the days go by until one night he gets into a bit of an argument with his mother, bites her and then eventually runs away. He eventually find a boat that takes him to the island where the Wild Things live and manages to live amongst them and become their king. There he discovers all the trials and tribulations of the Wild Things which somehow echo his own problems at home.

Given the original book did win an award for its art, it was great that the movie really captured the original look of the horrific Wild Things. But beyond just recreating them visually, the decision to have much of the movie carried by performers in costumes as opposed to pure CGI gave the monsters a nice feeling of weight in their actions that made things even more real. The use of CGI helped tweak their facial expressions and their more fantastic leaps and feats of strength, but otherwise they were pretty much the same as if they had jumped out of the book into the real world.

Beyond the visual appeal, the story had a very deep and meaningful plot - one that'll probably breeze over the heads of the kids in the audience but is sure to strike a real chord with the older folks watching the movie. In the same way that the children's book carrier multiple levels of meaning given its Freudian portrayal of anger, the writers behind the movie decided to take things to a different level in how the characters were written and they different roles each one took on.

You had Carol (James Gandolfini) who has some sort of a past with K.W. (Lauren Ambrose). There's the couple Ira (Forest Whitaker) and Judith (Catherine O'Hara) who are polar opposites in terms of their personalities. There's the often ignored Alexander (Paul Dano) and the friend-to-all Douglas (Chris Cooper). And there's the enigmatic Bernard (Michale Berry, Jr.) rounding up the Wild Thing crew.

The is pretty heavy to truly understand at first, especially when you give the movie a lot of significant thought. The concepts, themes and allegories presented are just...a LOT, it's hard to discuss in one quick paragraph or whatever. This makes the movie highly impressive and yet at the same time rather intense and a lot of bear.

Where the Wild Things Are is a great adaptation of the original book that does well in its effort to expand the story into something much more. It gets 4 magical fortresses out of a possible 5.

[TV] Lost: Season 3

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:08:00 PST

It's not very often that a show keeps me guessing for long these days. I'm not trying to brag or anything - you have to admit that it's not very often that TV shows are written well enough to give viewers like myself a good run in terms of plot twists and story complexity.

The way that I was raised in terms of watching TV shows and movies was to constantly stay on the alert and try to predict the next step in the plot - or even the ultimate end of the episode or movie. It's something that my mom really was keen on and given the number of cop shows and mystery stories we watched together, I'd like to think that I got pretty good at it. I mean seriously, I'm pretty spot on when I really put my mind towards speculating my way to the end of a House episode.

It's not perfect mind you but it does happen more often than not. However there are those shows that do genuinely surprise me from time to time, and that deserves some degree of commendation.

Lost: Season 3 was an interesting turning point in the story. With the mixed bag that was the second season well in the past, the castaways now find themselves face-to-face with the once-mysterious "Others" - but they're not quite the brutal savages that everyone thought they were in the beginning. This season naturally focuses on these longtime residents of the island, thus providing new insights into what everyone had been considering as the villains for the past two season. Of course, things aren't quite black and white in any world, what more the world of Lost.

Image via Wikipedia

Chief characters of interest are Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), pretty much leader of the Others and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), one of his trusted fellows amongst the Others who has an agenda of her own. There's the return of former hatch resident Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), now enhanced with some form of clairvoyance or prescience. Plus there were all the usual juxtaposing of characters such as the contrasts between Jack (Matthew Fox) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn) as leadership figures in the group, the silent rivalry between Jack and Sawyer (James Holloway) for the affections of Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and all the little stories that each member of this large ensemble cast carry with them.

The season introduced even more mysteries than ever despite the slight sense of resolution attained in the second season when it came to many details about the Dharma Initiative. This season revealed even more about them but created new questions and revealed just convoluted Ben's lies truly were. And at the heart of everything is an even greater mystery - the true leader of the Others, a secretive figure known only as Jacob.

I have to admit that I enjoyed this season a lot more than the two seasons prior. The plot twists were fresh and inventive and I did in fact find myself uncertain of what was going to happen here and there despite my mind racing a mile a minute to figure things out before the reveals.

Plus the character development was just awesome in this season and it really brought to life many of the figures that seemed to be just useless cannon fodder in previous season. I'm totally in love with Ben and Juliet as the skilled manipulators and leaders of the show in more ways than one and I have to admit that I've become pretty much committed to seeing this through to the end because of them.

The third season of Lost was a great new adventure to take and one that deserves 4 resurrected one-eyed Russians out of 5.

[Gadgets] The Geek Needs A New Phone

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:00:38 PST

Image by kalleboo via Flickr

Recently, my trusty old Sony Ericsson W660i has been acting weird on me. Sure, the problems with its proprietary plug for headphones was annoying enough given it no longer stays in place, now I seem to be unable to consistently send out text messages (SMS) via Globe. While I know that Globe Telecom has been experiencing major network issues ever since Typhoon Ondoy and probably ever since more and more people have picked up iPhones, I've noticed that I seem to be having more trouble than most.

So this geek is finally considering getting a new mobile phone after almost three years of working his Sony Ericsson to the bone. I've never been one to really push mobile phone limits in terms of my acquisitions in favor of something sturdy, reliable and efficient and so I rarely change my phone unless it's absolutely necessary.

I mean come on, I was perfectly happy with my Nokia 5110 for most of my college days. As much as I'm a major geek, I've never really been one to be picky about my phone.

The first impulse of my friends is to joke about why I don't own an Android phone just yet given my eternal devotion to Google as a brand. The thought did occur to me, but I'm not all that sure if I want to get into the smart phone market. I do want to have mobile browsing options so that may be worth considering.

Okay - this is going nowhere. Allow me to rank my mobile phone needs in order, with 1 being the most important:

1. Sturdy
2. Battery life
3. Comfortable (easy?) SMS interface
4. WiFi connectivity
5. Effective mobile browsing capability

And at my partner's suggestion, here's 5 things that are not so important to me:
1. Touch Screen
2. Dual SIM capability
3. High Megapixel camera
4. Expandable memory
5. Downloadable apps

So given this list of wants and items of little interest. I fell in love with the Sony Ericsson concept however the whole proprietary plugs and memory gets really old really fast. I may consider a Samsung phone since they look interesting or even an HTC phone if it doesn't get too costly.

I really don't feel comfortable returning to Nokia, unless you guys have some amazing reviews and experiences to share about your Nokia phone.

Leave your ideas in the comments and we'll discuss your suggestions next week!

[Books] Heretics of Dune

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:35:08 PST

It's ironic when longtime readers of a particular series of books start to get bored when things are repetitive and thus they demand that the author change things and bring the series into a new direction. The irony lies in when the series does finally take that fateful twist, those same fans end up complaining that too much has changed and the series is no longer quite what it used to be.

For many Dune fans, the shift in the on-going Dune Chronicles that Frank Herbert brought about in this fifth book of the series was very hard to stomach. It was the kind of change that you either loved or hated and not much else in-between. Personally, I really liked where the story went in the next two books especially when it came down to the characters introduced here.

Yeah, Frank Herbert was always amazingly good with creating very strong and inspiring characters.

Image via Wikipedia

Heretics of Dune is the fifth book of Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles and it takes place more than 1,500 years after the events of God Emperor of Dune. The God Emperor Leto II is long dead and humankind has spread beyond the Known Universe in a massive wave of expansion known as The Scattering. The old Imperium is no longer the absolute power of the universe and remains corrupted by its own priesthood. The Noble Houses remain, but not quite as powerful as they used to be.

And now mysterious forces have begun to invade the Known Universe from the dark reaches of The Scattering. At the forefront are a group of feral warrior women known as the Honored Matres who conquer with massive armies, mutant slaves and sexual prowess. The only force that can now truly oppose them are the stewards of the Atreides genetic legacy - the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. The similarities between the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserit are too obvious to ignore but that just leaves far too many questions more to be answered. Thus the stage is set for a new final act in the Dune legacy.

With a major shift in dramatic focus, Heretics of Dune brought the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood to the forefront with them as the protagonists of sorts in this story. For far too long Herbert had conditioned us readers to distrust the "witches" given their skilled manipulation of political and religious forces plus their full mastery of nerves and bodies making them some of the most formidable fighters in the Known Universe. And naturally having them as the "heroes" of this tale required an equally devious foe, one they found in the form of the Honored Matres.

This book also continued the strange mystery of the seemingly never-ending Duncan Idaho Gholas, brought to light more of the strange practices of the Bene Tleilax and introduced new heroic characters like the aging military genius Miles Teg or the wild sandworm rider Sheeana. There's just so much to explore and enjoy in this one book that sometimes I just can't understand why more people didn't enjoy it as much as I did.

Admittedly, it's a lot of changes to accept in a short span of time and I can understand why not everyone took well to the story right off the bat. This is not to say it's not a good book and I'd always encourage more Dune fans out there to give this book a fair chance. For non-Dune readers, you definitely don't want to start your Dune adventure here - go back to Start for the best experience. Herbert relies a lot on knowledge of the chronological history of the series to enjoy the latter books and this is truly felt in these last two parts of the series.

Heretics of Dune gets 4 invisible no-ships out of 5.

[Movies] Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

rgsunico@gmail.com (rOckY) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:27:57 PST

Children's books will always have a very high potential for getting turned into animated feature films since (1) book sales will help determine existing interest in the story, (2) family-friendly content means more potential viewers and (3) it saves you a lot of time and effort in terms of writing the actual story.

Such movies tend to be rather hit or miss really, but at the very least they tend to sell well with the kiddies. The greater challenge is to present the movie in such a way that even the parents watching with their kids have something to enjoy. We've seen some movies succeed in this kind of cross-generation targeting such as with the Shrek franchise, but beyond that the results are a bit too unpredictable for movie studios to clearly gamble on.

So I'm glad when some really entertaining animated movies come along, even without them coming from the ever-popular Pixar or something like that.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is a 3D animated movie based on a children's book of the same name. The story follows the life of amateur inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) of the small island town of Swallow Falls. Here everyone is forced to eat nothing but sardines after the local Baby Brent Sardines factory closed down due to everyone realizing sardines are gross. Flint decides to try and invent a machine that turns water into food in order to break the eating ennui and this leads to most unusual results - food falling from the sky as a weather phenomenon. All this is tracked and reported by weather intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) whom Flint finds oddly attractive.

This is definitely one of those cases when deviating from the original story really benefited the end result - this being the movie. The whole scientist angle was never part of the original story - that was just about an island that had food for weather three times a day. The introduction of Flint Lockwood and his entire story was a great medium for trying the story together and it certainly made for a very entertaining film.

It really helped that the writing was pretty awesome and the movie was definitely funny all throughout. Given that I am a bit of a geek (hehe) and perhaps the reason I was laughing the whole time was more because of the geekiness of the humor and not just the movie being plain funny could be a factor, I still think a lot of people will enjoy it. There's a lot of repeated gags that work on many levels and I can imagine kids enjoying all the sequence of repetition while older folks will have to at least chuckle a bit every time Steve goes into his inventing mode complete with self-narration of his actions.

The fact that movie was also made available in 3D didn't really strike me. I mean sure, there were a lot of entertaining 3D bits in the movie but I felt they underutilized the technology. Heck, the trailers for the new Toy Story were a lot more impressive in a 3D sense compared to the entire movie.

The film has some GREAT voice talents other than the names I already highlighted. You could definitely detect the rich comedic talent they had gathered with voice talents like Neil Patrick Harris, Bruce Campbell, Andy Samberg, Will Forte and none other than Mr. T himself! Plus there were other interesting casting choices like James Caan and Benjamin Bratt in other key roles.

Overall, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is a pretty funny film in a rather geeky way although you may not necessarily have to dole out the extra cash to see it in 3D. It gets 4 sentient pizza slices out of a possible 5.