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Is Oz Great and Powerful?

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Oz: The Great and Powerful is the prequel to The Wizard Oz, and is directed by Sam Raimi.  It never lives up to the original film, but he still made a pretty decent movie, and if you have seen Raimi’s earlier work then you might notice that this seems a lot like Army of Darkness for kids.

Army of Darkness features a jerk that comes from the future and he saves a kingdom with his knowledge of basic science. Oz: The Great and Powerful features a conman/magician, Oz (James Franco), that goes over the rainbow in a balloon and saves a kingdom with his knowledge of science and theatricality.  He even has some scenes at the end of the film to confirm that he knows they similar too, but unlike his previous movie, Oz learns his lessons and becomes a better man.

You can tell Raimi is having fun with the visuals in this movie.  Since it is a fantasy land he goes over the top with color and the detail, and it looks fantastic.  He also gets to use his horror chops because the flying baboons are quit scary, and he has a few startling scares too.  He also peppers things from the original Oz all over the place so you know it is the same land.

The actors, especially the witches, Mila Kunis (Theodora), Rachel Wiesz (Evanora), and Michelle Williams (Glinda), do a great job, and they are really the stars of this movie, but if you are not a fan of James Franco, then this movie will not change your mind because he is pretty much James Franco.  Oz’s computer animated compatriots, played by Joey King (China Girl) and Zach Braff (Flying Monkey), do a great job of playing the characters sweet and keeping Oz on the straight and narrow.

Raimi did what he could to make a worthy prequel to the classic film, but he falls a little short.  It is still an entertaining film, and since he kept it PG, you can take your whole family, which is a rarity these days.  It does make me want to watch Army of Darkness again though.

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Second Run in Shadowrun!

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The boys and I got together for another shot at the Table Top RPG Shadowrun.  The good news is that we are getting better at it; the bad news is there is still a lot to learn.  As we play we are still digging through the rule books quit a bit, but I think we are finally getting the hang of things.  As the GM (Game Master) it is my job to know the rules backward and forward but I seem to lack the ability to keep everything straight.

Shadowrun has so many ways to solve issues due to the verity of skills the players can have, half of the GMs job is just to roll with the punches, and work with the ideas that your players are throwing at you, and not punishing them for their creativity.  Thankfully Daniel, Andy, and Shawn always kept me on my toes and are forgiving of my errors.

I do want to give a shoot out to the store DriveThruPRG.  They have some great tools and campaigns that make running any table top game, let alone Shadowrun, much easier.  I got my campaign On the Run there and it really helped having pre-made NPCs (non player characters) and bad guys ready to go.

If you have never played a table top RPG you should give it a shot.  They are a lot of fun, and it is a great way to hang out with your friends, provided they have an active imagination.

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Is the Shadow of Freedom worth reading?

Shadow of Freedom

Shardow of Freedom is book written by David Webber, and is the fourteenth of series (or third or twentieth depending on how you look at it), so if you haven’t read the previous thirteen there probably isn’t a lot of this review you will understand.  The only reason I am writing this review is to vent on the internet.

This book was originally part of A Rising Thunder, but because of length they made it its own book, and because of that I was hoping it would make a good second half to A Rising Thunder.  It does not. It turns out is more like the third Saganami Island book about Admiral Michelle Henke and the Talbott Cluster. It does have a better ending then A Rising Thunder, but that is not difficult.

This book commits the same sins as a lot of the more resent Honorverse books in that it introduces a lot more new characters that you don’t care about, and most of the action takes place around a conference table then in giant space battles, and I am a big fan of giant space battles, less so conference tables.  The bad guys in this book are also uninteresting, they are either evil and dumb,  The Solarian League, or evil and twirling their mustaches in the background, The Mesan Alignment.  Plus the Solarians are so out classed as far as tech and firepower goes, that the strategy is how to win with killing the least amount of bad guys, so The Star Empire of Maticore isn’t even threatened in this book, so there is nothing to get worried about except that maybe the Mesan’s will do something, they don’t, but I assume they have a great maniacal laugh.

I keep reading these books hoping they will get back to what made them great in the first eight books.  With exciting action and Machiavellian strategy, but instead they have taken a turn for more characters and more conference tables then I can count.  I would like to say this is the last Honor Harrington book that I am going to read, but they used to be so good that I know I will keep reading and hoping for their return to glory.

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Top 10 Movies for 2013

pacific-rim-backgroundAs we move towards movie season 2013, I thought it might be fun to list my top 10 movies that I want to see this year.  Here they are in descending order.

10: World War Z

A movie about a war with Zombies? Count me in, though it has fallen down my list due to a number of script rewrites and people saying that they completely changed the story from the book, but it is still a movie about a war with the undead so it sneaks in at number 10.

9: Ender’s Game

Orson Scott Card’s book finally makes it to the big screen.  If falls to number 9 since I think this is a hard book to convert to a movie with all the internal monolog of Ender, plus they need to find a ton of good child actors.

8: R.I.P.D.

This is a movie about the Rest In Peace Department, a group of dead cops that move people and monsters to the other side.  I am hoping that Jeff Bridges can make Ryan Reynolds tolerable.

7: Thor: The Dark Worlds

A sequel to Thor with the Dark Elves? Yes Please, and Disney/Marvel hasn’t let us down so far.

6: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

I loved the books and was caught off guard when the first movie was as good as it was.  I won’t be again, and I hope they keep the quality up.

5: Man of Steel

Zack Snyder (Watchmen and The 300) and Christopher Nolan (Latest Batman Trilogy) reboot Superman.  Warner Bros has a lot ridding on this, and the buzz has been very good.

 4: Iron Man 3

Marvel/Disney continues to make movies I want to watch, and adding Sir Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin sounds amazing.

3: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Here is hoping we get to see Smaug in this movie!  The Hobbit Trilogy rolls on.

2: Star Trek Into Darkness

The first J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie was better then anyone expected, and now the hype is out of control for this second one. Please, Please be good, and oh yeah it has Benedict cumberbatch in it!

1: Pacific Rim

Guillermo Del Toro, Giant Monsters vs. Giant Robots, and Idris Elba!  Plus they beat the crap out of San Francisco.  I can’t wait,  I really need to build that time machine.  I ordered all the parts I just have put it together yet.

So that is my list tell me what you think or even add your own!

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Where is Batman?

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My last rant about the future of DC mostly turned in to a rant about the future of the Justice League, so I decided to turn my sights to the Dark Knight himself.  DC has several options available to them as where to take the Batman series and I am going to explore a few of them.

The first option and probably the worst option is the reboot the franchise.  I think everyone knows how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, and I don’t think many people want to see that again, so whatever they do they should keep Batman’s past in the past, mostly anyway.

The option they seem to be trying now, if the rumors are accurate, is pay Christopher Nolan a ton of money and hope he brings Christian Bale with him.  This would make a lot of movie fans happy, and I am sure they would make a lot of cash, but we have kind of done their Batman, and it is all mopey and sad, very good, but I am not sure how much more realistic bleakness we can all handle.  They should pay Nolan a lot of money stay around Warner Bros though.  It would be a good investment.

The next option is to make a movie with Morgan Freeman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and make almost a Batman Incorporated movie with Lucius Fox sort of running Batman franchises to try and keep crime at bay throughout America.  It would be fun and they already have the pieces in place to make it happen.

The last major option that I am going to put forward is to do a Batman Beyond movie with an aging Bruce Wayne handing over the reigns to a young protégé, and guiding him every step of the way.  This lets Warner have a new Batman, but without the need for a reboot plus you can incorporate all sorts of fun Sci-Fi elements because it would be the near future.

Of the options that I put forward I like the last two the most.  They both take the Bat in new directions and allow the studio to show us something exciting, and since I like Sci-Fi a Batman Beyond movie sounds amazing, but I am pretty sure they will try their hardest just to give Nolan tons of money, which will be good, but just not super original, but we will see, and this post is on the internet, so maybe I will change some minds (it won’t).