My Geek Life

We took a break this weekend to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Overall, it’s a light fluff piece with a few decent performances wrapped up in a mediocre story with some moments that will bug comic book geeks and purists like myself.

Hugh Jackman at least showed up to work on this film, although he brings a bit of an odd leading-man quality to Wolverine. Sabertooth and Gambit were also handled well, but beyond that ... well, there are lot of pretty explosions and action scenes.

Overall, the key seems to be keeping your expectations fairly low. Fortunately, after X-Men 3, they couldn’t have been much lower, so I found the film modestly entertaining. The eye-candy of Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, and Taylor Kitsch (as Gambit) didn’t hurt, either.

I have higher hopes for Star Trek this week. We’ll see if that turns out to be a mistake or not.

Saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull tonight. (Fear not, no spoilers in this post for those who may not have seen it yet.) A perfectly satisfactory Indy film, with lots of fond homage (and the occasional fromage) for the franchise. Worth seeing, and certainly inspirational fodder for my ongoing Thrilling Tales of the Midnight Society game.

Saw it tonight. It was... okay. Visually stunning architecture and design (thanks CGI!) but a bit thin on the story side. There’s a lot of “introduce new characters and have them tell you stuff” although it was nice to have a young female protagonist who’s smart, clever, and doing the rescuing rather than looking for rescue at every turn. It also seemed to end a bit abruptly. A decent film, but no Lord of the Rings (or even Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) by any means. If you like to see nice CGI on the big screen, then it’s worth a look, otherwise you can easily wait for the DVD.

It was cute — clever CGI-candy. I was never a big fan of the original cartoons (or toys) but even I gotta say, having the original voice actor for Optimus Prime totally made it for me. Plus I got to watch Christopher turn all Transformers-geek, which is über-cute. All-in-all, a fun evening’s entertainment.

Saw the Nicolas Cage remake of The Wicker Man last night with friends. The target audience is clearly folks who liked the original (starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee), but wished it had been set in America, and terrible. I can report success on both fronts.

The James Bond of my childhood was the campy Roger Moore Bond of films like Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me (the first Bond film I saw). Later, I became a fan of Connery's Bond (and George Lazenby's), suffered through Timothy Dalton's, and for the most part enjoyed Pierce Brosnan in the role. Daniel Craig's hiring as the new 007 was controversial (largely due to his hair color, it seems, which didn't bother me at all) but I've got to say, having just seen him in Casino Royale, Craig gets it, and how.

This was a good Bond movie. The gadgetry is at a bare minimum (ironically much of it is also entirely real — Connery's Bond only wished he had a cell and a laptop at his disposal). Craig's Bond is dry and witty without self-conscious jokes and, while handsome, he's not as pretty as past Bonds, putting him more in line with Flemming's stories. Dame Judi Dench does another lovely turn as M, with a bigger part (yay!) but not so big as to detract from the main story. I won't spoil the story except to say that I thought at one point, "Wow, character development in a Bond film: what will they think of next?"