Penguin

That new Vadar is a little problematic. On some, the two-part helmet won't stay on at all. The "chain" on the cape also has a tendency to be bent up instead of resting on Vadar's chest. I ended up with three of them (2 from a case lot and 1 from the Hoth Assault pack). I used a drop of crazy glue to pin down the chain and glued down the whole helmet on one of them so that I can handle him without his head falling apart.

Don't think it does fit into the story... at least none of the animation. Looks like a custom paint job on the Master Grade unit 2. Looks cool, though.

That reads as quite dismissive of our beloved "Space" channel. At least they haven't stooped to professional wrestling.

I thought "Predators" was a lot of fun too. Amused that they only reference the first film, although I always enjoyed the second. I appreciated attempt to add to the mythology with the second race, and was very glad there wasn't any reference to AvP, 'cause any reference just would've turned out lame.

This is a feature I really love, 'cause I hate those fat ugly launchers. First saw it on the new AT-ST. I only wish they'd provided something similar on the new Millennium Falcon for the top turret. Launching off two of the gun barrels as "missiles" is the only thing that detracts from that for me.

Well, I dunno about "best", but it was the feature that made all my friends say "okay, now that's cool".

If nothing else, you know Minmay would wear cashmere.

Saw this flick on the weekend. I didn't find it aggressively awful, but nothing to recommend it either. Buncha characters with humourless attitudes pretending to be personalities, mediocre action, meh. I liked "A-Team" many times more.

That bit o' news brightened my day!

It's certainly an B- or C-rank character to base a movie on. Long-time DC readers are likely to recognize the character, but no one else. Typical studio approach though. They seem to equate "comic book = hit movie" instead of "good quality + comic people actually read = hit movie". Strikes me as the same thought processes that brought us "Elektra".

Well if ya don't care, then why ask? My brother's a Jonah Hex fan, so I've ended up absorbing more than I wanted to. Jonah Hex is a bounty hunter, whose career starts up just after the civil war. His original comic run was played pretty straight, and he's got a whole back story that isn't too ludicrous. Fairly well-developed personality. After the first run, they jumped the shark and took him into a post-apocalyptic future. After that killed the comic, there were a couple of revivals under the "Vertigo" imprint that added some supernatural, Lovecraft-esque elements with varying success (my brother hated those, for what that's worth). He's got an ongoing series again that returned to the straight western action hero roots. I actually collected a few issues of the new run, and they were pretty good. Not that any of this has anything to do with the movie or is any predictor of quality. What I've read says there's a new origin story, a supernatural aspect thrown in, and the whole steam-punk-ish thing with "old West" technology like the horse mounted gatlings and the crossbow. Frankly, it all looks more than a little silly to me.

Now that's funny. You get to meet all the best people...

... unless Alphonse gets dinged, anyway. Pondo, you gotta explain the Patlabor comment. It's confusing the heck outta us. Weirdly, the first Gundam series I saw was Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, which builds straight off the story of the first series that I'd never seen (just a vague notion that something called "Gundam" existed). Despite that, the basic story doesn't require a whole bunch of Gundam lore just to understand (remnant fleet of defeated army seeks revenge... got it), it's easily digestable (13 episodes), the lead character is neither emo nor adolescent and only occasionally whiny, and it has cool mechanical designs (Kawamori FTW!). It was enough of a springboard to get me to learn more about the backstory, though I've always skipped the first series. The movie trilogy version was enough for me.

At this point I'm worried MW5 has been dragged into production hell, although there's a mathematically non-zero chance they might be waiting to see the response to the free download to gauge public interest in the franchise.

The Brocken wasn't a great release. Lots of problems with parts either so loose they fell off or fit so tightly you couldn't get them off to switch in the armour parts without getting out a screwdriver. Great accessories, but not a well-designed release. Their follow-up with the AVS-98 was much, much better.

I keep liking this more and more. Might be the first VF I actually display predominantly in battroid mode. The only thing that could kill my enthusiasm would be if Yamato releases the sound booster as a web exclusive like Bandai did.

My feelings exactly. Though I don't like it, I can understand selling an entire product (like a weathered version or the Regult) as a web exclusive to save costs on distribution or whatever on a low-volume item, but holding back accessories instead of packaging them with the toy like Bandai did with the Fire Valkyrie just bugs me.

I love working those classic kits. They can be a pain in the ass, but I have a lot of fun whipping them into shape. I would buy them all. Bring 'em on, Bandai!

Normally I don't prime, but due to the darker grey plastic I did a coat of white primer for my fan racer. Helps the orange/red stand out without having to layer it on too thick. I recommend Tamiya's paints too. My little fan racer is all Tamiya except for a little fine marker work on the panel lines and Hikaru... flat white primer, gloss white, medium grey, orange, flat black, and flat aluminum for the plane, then orange, yellow, flesh, semi-gloss black, and sky blue for Hikaru.

I agree with pretty much everything in that article. I'm getting aggressively disinterested in 3-D movies, to the point where I won't go to see it if it's only in 3-D.

Kinda, with regards to the ending, but in a roundabout way. The original French novel "La Planete des Singes" has the hero character find a completely different planet with apes as the dominant life forms, at a 20th century technology level. Evidence arises to show that the planet was once ruled by humans who had used apes for manual labour, later to be overthrown by the apes as the humans became lazy and degenerate. The original movie series is closer to the novel in this regard. At the end of the novel, the hero goes back to Earth, a round trip of 700 years thanks to time dilation, and finds the same thing has happened to the Earth. This is where Burton's film seems closer, but only there. Burton's notion was that rather than time dilation it was the "storm" that was throwing people around in time, since the later you go through the storm, the further back in time you come out... not that it makes a lot of sense (monkey, Wahlberg, station come out in reverse order that they went in, so if Ape-roth goes through after Wahlberg, using leftover pod from station, he arrives in Earth's distant past and conquers the Earth, thus causing massive time paradox preventing human station from being created in the first place?). I saw the remade "A Nightmare on Elm Street" this weekend. Haley is actually pretty sinister, although I thought they overdid the burn makeup. It's very realistic, but they used a lot of that stretched, smooth effect and it removes some of his ability to emote through the makeup. Englund's Freddy could really sneer... Haley's Freddy has almost no nose. The rest of the dead teenagers, however, are cardboard cutouts. Suffers from the same problem I had with the new "Clash of the Titans"... everyone is just dour and morose and angst-y, as if that's a replacement for having a personality. Craven at least let the audience have some time with the kids in a normal setting, blue skies and a few laughs, before the dying starts.

See, I was having a good day, and then you brought up that Cat's Eye mission, and now I'm having all these awful flashbacks... (twitch, twitch) That mission actually killed the game for me. I got so fed up, I stopped playing and never bothered to finish it. I only drag it out for player vs. player (turn off all the targeting, enable fog, and hunt each other sniper style... it's stupidly fun).

There are 3 softcover volumes that are great companions to the series and movie. The first two each cover half of the series, and the third covers the movie. Check out the links below. All three provide a wealth of detail on the characters, stories, productions, props, set design, chinese translations... you name it. All three contain some subtle insights on Joss' long-term intentions, here and there. The movie companion talks a bit more about how it was essentially a condensed version of what season 2 of the series would have revealed. If you're a fan like me, I definitely recommend them. Firefly Companion, volume 1 Firefly Companion, volume 2 Serenity Companion

Me, too... especially anything with ground battles (I think I'm just in "Mechwarrior" withdrawal ). I remember my brother, listening to me curse out "Gundam: Crossfire" and its crappy response while in the middle of a battle (bloody Xamel ), asking "If it sucks so much, why keep playing it?". And yet, I just couldn't stop... If we'd gotten "Mobile Suit Gundam Battlefield Record U.C. 0081" in North America, I'd probably own it too.