"Watchmen" review

I'll spare everyone the cultural history of Alan Moore's critically-acclaimed graphic novel, “Watchmen”; odds are that you've already (a) read the book yourself, (b) heard about it on one of our myriad “entertainment news” tv shows or (c) done your own research. All you need to know is that the complex literary work has, until now, been deemed “unfilmable” and scribe Alan Moore has vowed to disassociate himself from any attempt at bringing the text to the silver screen.



There are two fiercely loyal camps of fans when it comes to comic book-to-movie translations: the purists and those who embrace change. Zack Snyder's “Watchmen” tries to please both groups simultaneously and, in my opinion, achieves mixed results. Compared to a film like 2000's “X-Men,” which relaunched the spandex-wearing comic franchise into a modern “this is what it'd be like in real-life” romp, “Watchmen” takes few chances. Besides the reworked (and arguably better) ending, Snyder's film makes no qualms about accurately recreating panel-perfect comic book frames on the big screen. As a fan, this is a nice gesture. But from a newcomer's perspective, I can see how this can be disconcerting. Certain scenes meant to invoke a “that's familiar” feeling in the minds of old fans tend to linger beyond the “that's neat” moment. The dialogue lifted straight off of the book's panels often sounds forced. Perhaps the actors were directed to spit their lines out as if their words were, indeed, floating above their heads in round, white balloons.



This tilted dialogue does little to enhance the relationships between the main characters. I didn't feel any comradery between Nite Owl II and Rorschach, former crime-fighting duo; nor did I particularly care for the needlessly-long sex scene, but hey, Malin Akerman is ridiculously good-looking and boobs sell tickets. Right?

Another gripe before I get to the good stuff: the overblown musical interludes seemed uninspired and did a good job of pulling me out of the action. Yes, yes, I realize that the original text used quotes from songs that defined the times, but I don't need to hear the whole thing just because you bought the rights to it. Exception: the introduction into the parallel 1985 universe cut together to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin' " was exceptional. I did not, however, need to hear Jimi Hendrix to remind me that America was a wacky place during Vietnam, with or without superheroes busting heads all over town.



So, complaints aside, let's move on to the things that I did enjoy about “Watchmen.” First and foremost, Rorschach was spot-on. Jackie Earle Haley does a great job of growling through the iconic vigilante's nebulous “face” and keeps fear alive on the streets. Snyder's choice to cast relative unknowns in his main roles helps ease a newcomer into this universe without having to picture somebody like Nicholas Cage killing a man with a bucket of hot fry grease. With that being said, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Comedian looks way too much like Robert Downey Jr. I can easily see Joe Q. Public failing to make the distinction. The aforementioned Malin Akerman is one sexy Silk Spectre and Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan drew a round of giggles whenever his digital blue-bits were front and center.



Violence is integral to the story and Snyder's indulgent, red light-green light action sequences work just as well here as they did in his previous film, the testosterone-oozing “300”. Some of the ultraviolence seemed a little hokey (the prison dismemberment definitely would have played better just off-screen, as we looked at a blood-spattered Rorschach) but touches like that tend to draw in the “Dude, you've gotta go see this crazy thing!” crowd that the studio is counting on. When Rorschach exclaimed that all of the prisoners were locked in with him, rather than vice-versa, a large Mexican fellow down the aisle from me pointed at the screen and shouted, “THAT DUDE CRAZY!” Well played, Snyder. Well played.

The film's ending is radically different from the text's, and for good reason. No spoilers, but just know it's been considered a pleasant surprise by original fans and less-confusing to “Watchmen” newbies, which is a good thing. All in all, I was satisfied when I left the theater and would recommend the flick to anybody with the slightest bit of interest in taking a trip into Bizzaro 1985. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Dogs in my way get outta my way...

^Hotel Del Coronado^

So there I was, in the middle of a 4-mile run around Coronado Island, basking in the sunshine of another lovely San Diego day. I'd made my way from the Hotel Del Coronado down to the turnaround at the end of the beach and begun the return trip up through the dog beach, where pet owners are allowed to unleash their hounds and let them frolic in the surf. I was listening to music and admiring cute girls and dogs and enjoying the trip in general when, all of a sudden, I heard a loud WOOF ahead of me.

There they were - a pack of 5 big dogs...three mutts and a couple of Black Labs. They barreled heedlessly toward me, barking and nipping at one another, blissfully unaware that they were in my path. Before I had time to react they were on me. Two cut to the side. Two others I managed to dodge. But ol' Black Lab bringing up the rear, he never saw me coming. He tucked his head and yelped as he crashed into my legs, sending me sprawling forward into the sand and him into a roll behind me. I managed to toss my left arm out in front of me to avoid a total catastrophe, but my elbow took a twist and I'm afraid I'll be feeling the effects of that in the morning.

I got to my feet and my first instinct was to make sure the dog was okay. He was sitting in the sand looking as stunned as I was. He came over and licked my hand and I patted his head. Then I noticed the owners, a group of about 10 people, laughing from their spot on the sand. I gave them a sarcastic thumbs-up and a "What the fuck?!" shrug while I rubbed my twisted elbow and decided that getting back to my business would be better than any sort of altercation.

I'm not at all against the idea of a place where dogs can run free without leashes, but it just seems like a bad idea to let a group of LARGE dogs run in a pack completely unattended. They could've trampled a little kid or something! In any event, the rest of the run went without a hitch and the weather is perfect again. Thanks, San Diego!

Rough day!

So it's 10:15 a.m. and I'm already on my second extended break of the day at Helicopter School. Good thing I only live a couple of blocks from the Base...this is awesome! I feel cooler than a bulldog ridin' a skateboard!

Good day, Mr. Pilkington!

Day 2 of this helicopter school was done by 0930. I'm really enjoying this. Tomorrow will be a "late" day, since we have building cleanup, but I'll be home by 3:30, so I can't really complain about that, either. It truly is a waste of government time and resources, but I'm not gonna butt heads. I deserve a two month vacation as much as anybody else does! I spent my free time today out at Mission Valley and picked up some cheap curtains, a new pair of jeans, a Ghostbusters t-shirt and a stylin' track jacket. It makes me look like I'm from the future! I think so, anyway.

Here's a question: You know how you always see old people wearing headphones out in public? What the heck are they listening to? I suppose the quickest way to solve this mystery would be to stop and ask them, but if an old man told me he was listening to Nickleback while he was mall-walking I'd probably throw up on the ground right there. Today I was eating lunch in a Chinese fast food place and an old guy was reading a paper and listening to a set of big old-time headphones. Was he listening to classic rock? Paul Harvey? Smooth jazz? I want to know! Can anybody give me any insight into this octogenarian fad? I'd totally appreciate it.

Like a Cowboy Boot

Little Big Problems

If you know me very well at all, you know I'm a video game nut. I enjoy turning people on to new games or recommending titles that might otherwise be overlooked. I also enjoy dropping critical information on bad games to help people make smarter purchases; why, just the other day I helped a total stranger decide against buying the new SOCOM game for PS3, informing him that it was pretty poorly-reviewed BUT, if he was intent on trying it, to at least download it on the Playstation Network and save $20. That's me - friend of the little man.

So, with that being said, I'd like to take a few moments to wax about my newest digital obsession - a little, big game called Little Big Planet. Maybe you've heard of it? It's a Playstation3 exclusive created by a tiny software house called Media Molecule. Every report about the company mentions that their development office is on the second floor above a toilet store, so I guess that's somethin'. Sony has been spending loads of money to promote the game and it's been critically hailed as one of the best titles of the year. Unfortunately, the game isn't selling as well as it should - numbers are low, but those who have adopted this gem have taken to it like a new best friend - myself included. Let me tell you all about it and how it's taking over my life.



These are your characters in Little Big Planet. Sackboys and Sackgirls, customizable to the Nth degree with all sorts of costumes and stickers and decorations for their tiny sack bodies. Note that you're not locked into the brown sack material, either - there are a multitude of body types, from leather to green felt to burlap to who knows what. The control scheme isn't mind-boggling - you can run, you can jump and you can grab onto appropriate surfaces (i.e. sponge, carpet, styrofoam) to swing and leap and get yourself in and out of all sorts of shenanigans. It's basically just a good-looking, good-playing side-scrolling platform-jumping game with a great sense of humor, amazing production values and a quality of replayability that will keep you hunting for that one last item well past your regularly-scheduled bedtime. The normal portion of the game is relatively short, albeit fun, but the really interesting things happen after you finish the story and unleash the hounds of your own creativity unto the world - I'm talkin' about about custom level creations on an unprecedented scale.



The Media Molecule team has seen fit to provide all of the creation tools you could ever need to build insanely detailed objects, levels and fully-scripted narratives on your own little Moon in the Little Big Planet solar system. Everything operates in a fully-realized physics environment, so you'll have to keep your fantastic creations within the confines of Earth's gravity - unless you can build the simple machines to help you realize your goals. Which leads us to my Little Big Problem...

I am completely and utterly addicted to playing around with this game. My waking time is spent trying to figure out how to make gears work properly, how to string up a series of lights that activate when you open a door, what sort of creatures I could build to attack unsuspecting Sackboys and Girls. A game hasn't hooked me like this in years, and it's pretty refreshing. I just have to remind myself how to balance my time and keep the bills paid. It's not like I have a dynamite social life to begin with.

I guess the whole point of this post is to gush about how great Little Big Planet is and to encourage anyone with a Playstation 3 to go pick it up. Take my advice, won't you? It's totally worth it!

Oh, I forgot to mention that it's for 4-players, online and off, and is great for the whole family. Check it out!

2009 - Year of the Ox

Ranked as the second zodiac, the ox has a large volume. In life, people often used the ox to indicate something big or large in number. The ox is sedulous, simple, honest, and straightforward. Fractious people are said to have an 'oxen temper'.


Well, here we are in 2009, the Year of the Ox. I spent my New Year's Eve 2008 sitting here in my tiny studio apartment, alone, watching Nick at Nite and playing games on my Playstation 3. I drank Dr. Pepper rather than beer and tuned in to see a stroke-addled Dick Clark count down my time-shifted Times Square ball drop. He's terrifying, really - just give up the ship, Dick, you had a good run. As for today, it'll be a quiet one here at the house watching the Twilight Zone marathon on SciFi and cooking up a pot of black-eyed peas for dinner. I'm off work until Monday, at which point I'll be going to a Navy school for 2 months (vacation!), so I'm living free and easy for a little while, which feels awfully nice.



New Year's Resolutions? I've got a few. Most important to me right now is getting my finances under control. Yes, I've come to the boring point of being a grown-up where I want to know what I'm spending my money on. Don't get me wrong, I don't intend on cutting out my frivolous purchases, video game necessities and trendy snack foods - I just want to be more organized about it.

I'd like to find a place to learn and practice Tai Chi in San Diego. I took a few lessons back in the day in Tallahassee with my pals and found it to be pretty enjoyable. I never took it very seriously, as college pursuits were always distracting me, but I think I could get a lot of good out of a structured program of practice and meditation now that I've got some time on my hands. The trick is to find a place in San Diego that fits my work schedule, feels comfortable and won't charge me a grip of money for what amounts to the practice of moving slow and breathing deep.

I also need to start working up some projects to make me more attractive for Officer Candidate School next year. I wasn't picked up this cycle, so all I can do is beef up my stats and resubmit come October. Which seems like forever from here. The Naval Public Affairs Office is a small community so it's gonna take some pushing to get my foot in the door, but as long as I'm under the employ of Uncle Sam that's where I'm trying to get to. If I don't make it before 2012 I'll be back to the civilian world, fighting for unemployment like all great Americans should!


So, going back to my favorite New Year's Day pastime, let's talk about The Twilight Zone for a minute. Many Americans watch football...I watch The Twilight Zone. I've seen them all over and over again, yet they never get old. That's a great quality that these 30-minute journeys from the terrifying 1960's bring with them - in spite of the dated visuals and occasionally spotty acting, the stories themselves do such a great job of invoking emotion - humor or sadness or suspense or straight-up fear - that they really are timeless. Whether you're being stalked by a hitchhiker in the dead of night or just scared to death of a ringing phone, the Twilight Zone is never a pleasant place to be.

My very favorite episode never seems to get any airtime during the New Year's marathon. I'm told that it snuck into a 4th of July marathon this year, but I was out at sea during that and wouldn't know. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story written by Ambrose Bierce. Some French dudes made it into a short film back in the day and, recognizing it's awesomeness, Rod Serling snatched it up and aired it here in the States as an episode of The Twilight Zone. If you're unfamiliar with it, saying much more would only spoil it. So, as a New Year's gift to you, submitted for your approval, step into the scary door and watch! Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated.

Part I:


Part II:


Part III: