JsARCLIGHT

I think it should be noted that most of us who have "custom titles" did not exactly ask for them but rather got them slapped on us for stupid things we said or did in the past. It would be elitism if we chose those titles, this is more along the lines of "kick me" signs on our backs... some of us have come to embrace the kick me sign and others have come to loathe it.

Am I the only one asking "why now?". Garfield hit his peak of popularity in the mid to late '80s. That was back when I remember going into bookstores in the mall and seeing "Garfield 48: His Most Recent Book!" on the shelves of one of those big cardboard standees. That was also back in the day when CBS (or was it NBC?) kept putting up those Garfield animated holiday specials like no tomorrow... Thanksgiving, Christmas, Holloween... Garfield's popularity to me seems to have nose dived after that with the occasional appearance in a TV commercial (ala ALF). Now suddenly he is reborn in crappy CG form in a summer movie? Does this mean ALF the Movie will be close behind?

I don't know much about this movie or it's story but I have a few questions for those who may know already: Is this movie supposed to take place before or after the events in Pitch Black? This new movie has a design style (what with all the highly stylized armor and such) that clashes horribly with the one they established in Pitch Black. PB had this sort of Alien meets Blade Runner sort of "post modern" thing going on. People still used projectile guns, still wore very normal looking clothes and uniforms, still had a very 20th century feel to them. The new movie has this bizzare organic Stargate ultra distopian medival crazy nuts thing going on and I'm not sure why... If you listen closely to the backstory of Riddick in PB he pretty much lets us know he is a hardened criminal who did a lot of very nasty, very illegal things and got thrown in a super high security prison from which he got his eyes and then escaped. He was then promptly captured by the eyeball morphine injecting asswipe rent-a-cop who gets eaten up really good in PB. So I'm taking a huge leap that the new movie has to take place after the first one... but then you have the end of PB when Riddick, the kid and Keith David escape they declare Riddick "dead" on the planet so he can live a supposed newfound life of good. How is it that he continues on his merry way apparently still under the same name? PB made it seem like he was the most wanted man in the galaxy and that the cops would be down on him like ten thousand elephants if he ever popped up alive... or is that supposed to be the premise of the new movie?

Fiancee and I saw it at the noon show today. I liked it and she did too. Might see it again before it leaves the big screen.

Be in the wrong place at the wrong time and say something stupid.

Yet another reason I try to never, ever have a pic of myself online... then again when you look like Kenny G meets Jesus Fabio you can see why I shy away from photo ops. This is the closest you will get to an actual picture of me: ... the sad thing is I look a little too much like that South Park version of me... right down to the suit, bandolier and assault rifle.

Lemmie get in touch with that guy and see if he still has the white one. I'm not sure of condition though, it could be minty mint loose or missing everything with one arm. PM me and I'll see what I can get from him.

If this movie sucks then SW: Birth of the Empire will become SW: The Death of the Franchise. I'll continue to wait until I see the movie to crap all over it like I do to eps 1 and 2... and I love to crap on those movies.

Ahh. This situation reminds me of my high school days in computer class programming in Basic... 10 IF BIGWEST = DYRL GOTO 90 20 IF HG = DYRL GOTO 80 30 IF BIGWEST > HG GOTO 90 40 KAWAMORI > MACEK 50 IF HG > BIGWEST GOTO 80 60 IF DYRL = TOYNAMI GOTO 80 70 IF DYRL = YAMATO GOTO 90 80 RUN ARMAGEDDON KEY GOTO 100 90 RUN VICTORY DANCE GOTO END 100 ALL LIFE ENDS KISS ASS GOODBYE GOTO 110 110 DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER MASS HISTERIA GOTO 120 120 LAUNCH NUCLEAR STOCKPILE GOTO 130 130 PRAY FOR DEATH GOTO END

I guess this puts them one step closer to lasering a giant Nike swoosh into the moon, building a huge floating Taco Bell billboard visible from space or generally raping space in the name of corporate greed like we know they will. At least when space flight was dominated by nations you had honor, nobility and courage. Nasa and the Soviets ignoring the cold war and linking up in orbit... ... now all we have to look forward to is the McDonnaldland space station, the Escallade moon SUV and the Sony Moonman. Bitter? Nooooooooooo.

Oh boy, it's that guy again! Price of toy in 1985..... $40 Price of legally changing name to Optimus Prime...... $200 Price of film to photograph self in front of rig with guns...... $5 Naming your son Rodimus and dooming him to a life of pain..... priceless.

Hey I remember those cyber cop toys... saw a lot of them I think back in Kay Bee Toys in the mid '90s. If I remember right there was a white one two with a huge like cannon/hang glider thing. I know a guy who still has those toys loose... not sure what condition. I could manage to aquire them from him if anyone is interested.

For this I just have a big Huh? Oops, I was operating under bad intelligence... hey it happens to everyone, right? Ssome people told me she was in this movie playing the part of Helen, they even had pre-made jokes like "the face that launched a thousand ships... in the other direction" and the like. I just now discovered they were wrong and it is some Diane Kruger person I've never heard of. Oh well, movie still looks a little too stupid for me. I was put to sleep reading the Iliad in school and the movie looks to be just as boring.

It's a summer movie. Nothing but eye candy, shallow plotline, shootem' up, less thinkin' and more killin' utter crap comes out between late April and Labor Day in the US... followed closely by the "let's sneak in the period piece, slow paced, coma-inducing, better than Nytol Oscar films that no one but the academy and a few arthouse women will go see" period from October to New Years. Plus any movie that will star Paris Hilton IMHO has already comitted a crime against humanity and does not deserve any screen time.

Don't bootlegs come and go in batches? I would suspect the batch they made a year or so back has run out and they are not making more right now... perhaps lack of demand or they are concerned with making some new bootleg at the moment. I highly doubt ADV has anything to do with putting the kibosh on that particular bootleg. It's sad but bootleggers are like drug dealers, you smash one and two more pop up to take their place.

Yes but to rewrite and rescript things changes their true intent on several levels. I'm not the world's biggest anime fan but you can tell that some shows (Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon, etc.) have gone through the ringer and had almost all traces of japan removed and in their place the show gets americanized. Those shows are custom built to do one thing: sell toys. They are not there to entertain or educate... just sell sell sell! Anime is successful in america mainly because it is an alternative to american shows. Anime has a stigma to it, a stereotype if you will. People know anime from other types of shows. Even little kids know it is not american. I can understand the translation and dubbing of a program so people of a different language and culture can watch it but changing the original cultural elements and replacing them with your culture's jokes and elements sometimes ruins the true intent of the show. 90% of anime in america is marketed not on television to a wide audience but on VHS and DVD to a thin ribbon fanbase who are mostly interested in the shows "staying faithful" to the original material. Anime fans do watch mainstream TV but the mainstream TV audience, the people that would need the show knee-capped for them to consume it, tend not to watch anime. It seems to me that the wide majority of anime consumers, the people buying the goods, want unaltered material.

Accents are also all about your own personal ear. Some people are tuned to hear them and others are not. Hence why people with a certain accent cannot "hear their own accent". Unless someone is talking to me directly I tend to not pick up on accents too well, but when they are I can peg a region they come from in seconds. (I think it should also be noted that I drove to Atlanta, parked at the building I had the meeting at, spoke with a bunch of New Yorkers there, went to my hotel where I was greeted by a very friendly native at the counter, went to bed and drove home.)

If you've lived in Chitown for more than a year you can tell what parts of the city people are from just based on their subtle accents... kind of like Europe just sans the whimsy. Most big cities are like that. But in today's modern world were travel and (most of all) nation wide "single accent" television and entertainment prevail many areas are slowly losing their accents. When I was in N'yark (New York) in the '90s for my shipout to Europe you could hear the thick accents everywhere. Last time I was there they seemed to be in lesser number. Same with Atlanta... last time I was in Atlanta on business I only met one man, one single man, who had a drawl. Everyone else spoke propper whitey english like they were on a detergent ad or something.

I think the dubbers are just doing what normal TV people do: oversimplifying the show for americans so slower witted people can grasp it. Typical TV logic: the character is "southern" japanese so ergo they must be like southern americans so we must give them a southern accent so american viewers will identify with the difference between southern and northern. Pure Genius. I'm always amazed at how much anime dubbers always try to "americanize" the subject matter they are translating believing that somehow a super mainstream American Idol watching hayseed is going to be viewing it and have such a hard time understanding the subtleties of japanese culture. They still miss the point that most of the people watching anime still to this day know it's anime, know it's from japan, know it's translated and know that massive changes are being made. Anyway on the accent thing when I went to college in Chicago I had a southwestern accent and people thought I was from california. I was not there long enough to pick up the Chi-caa-go accent but when I was in Europe they had me pegged for what I was: American. When I got back and lived in Texas for a while they called me a Yankee because I had no drawl. Now that I'm in Missourah were everyone drives an Arnge Fard Tarus on Highway Farty Far in their Sharts I'm still out of place.

Oh for the love of... Everyone loses something computer related every once in a while, they are computers. They crash. You lose things. Much like other people I came into this thread expecting to console a fellow member over the death of a parent, loved one, child or the loss of a home or other major piece of real world something. Dust your frickin' self off and get over it. My business' entire system went off into the black void during our office move, that caused my company thousands of dollars of revenue loss to our bottom line, we lost months of very, very important project work and I had to pay out of my own pocket to rebuild most of it before our darn business insurance kicked in. THAT is a serious catastrophe. Not meaning to harsh on you (well... yes I am) but you lost a bunch of crap. Whining on this scale over a hard drive full of rips, boots, DL'ed free stuff and pictures is a little melodramatic, don't you think? Call me when something serious happens like someone dies, you lose your job or your house burns down.

I bet you could adapt the kit to a real life M1A1 but it would be very very bad for two reasons: real live M1A1s only come in two flavors, SMG Class III weapon and 16" barrelled semi-auto weapon. The classic SMGs are uber rare and go for super duper high price tags ($10,000+), not to mention the form 4 transfers and legal items aside... while the new 16" post-ban carbine versions are common they have a lot of mechnical differences between them and their SMG cousins like the action, barrel and mag port. Lastly a real live M1A1 heats up like a stove when being fired. Unless those conversion kits can take the heat you might end up melting most of the parts or shaking them loose. I'd think those kits are for the purpose they were intended: wall hanger applications.

Sweet Gorilla of Manilla a freaking GRAND for that... that... toy?!? I expect it to make me coffee for that much... or at least chamber real 10mm ammo. You could buy three electric airsofts or a nice real rifle for that price tag, damn.

Hey does anyone remember the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons toys or the original Lord of the Rings / Hobbit action figures? Those were pretty cool. I remember one time I saw the Ringwraith figure with steed in a Woolworths and thought it was kickass. I don't see those around much anymore.

I was like 14 or 15 at the time (does that still count) but I would go to K Mart and buy an armful of GI Joe 3 3/4" figures... then trade one of them to a guy I knew at school who had these small really tough rubber bands (I think he used them for model airplanes, the remote control kind that is) and I would then proceed to pull the joes in half and cut their center rubber bands. I would then take my dad's small metal snips and cut a link in the torso loop so I could thread on a new rubber band. Then I would play "musical pants" with them until I got combinations I liked. Then all I had to do was reassemble them and set them up. I had Duke with blue jeans, snake eyes with camo pants, the bazooka guy with the beard had duke's pants and so on and so forth. It was pretty cool for about ten minutes.

Shogun Warriors... or more precisely "Shogun Warrior Jumbo Machineders!" OK, so in today's day and age everyone remembers the giant japanese robots like Mazinga and the king of all lizzards featured in this toy line... but who here honestly remembers or owned their now mythic american release counterparts? I had the huge downs-syndromed Godzilla. He was the shiznit. Shogun Warrior Jumbo Machineders