Podcast Reaction: Avatar Edition

This week on the podcast, the topic of Avatar came out, and not the one that brought us the Last Airbender.

Wait, why am I doing these again?  I don’t know.  I have enough problems when I’m part of the show.  I can use my desktop for better audio but no video, or my Kindle Fire for video but sometimes spotty audio.  Back to reactions…

Ryan, it seems, was quite enthusiastic to defend James Cameron and the movie Avatar. But really, do we need four sequels to this movie?  Furthermore, how do we measure success for a film like this?

Gabbing Geek Box Office Report: I Get It Now

I’ve been filling in for Watson for a while now on the Box Office Report despite my repeated preference to never do these again.  Seriously, why do we do these at all?

Then, after a long conversation with last week’s distant Watson cousin, I finally figured it all out.

On Vampires

I was reading an interesting article on Collider yesterday on how Twilight killed the vampire movie.  I’ve long since made my personal distaste for that movie franchise be known.  Don’t believe me?  Search this blog for the tag “Twilight Sucks”.  But, it’s not as if I am alone on hatin’ on that pile of garbage.

But has it killed the vampire at the movies?  Well, let’s take a look at vampires for a moment…

Podcast Reaction: The “Is It A Geek?” Edition

This week on the podcast, the Geeks discussed what is and isn’t a geek property.

Now, I don’t want to cast aspersions over other people’s interests and definitions.  I did not think Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl was a geek book.  I wasn’t even convinced the main character was a geek character.  A fan?  Sure.  No question.  A geek?  I didn’t think so.  Why?  I’ll expand on this a bit after the cut.

Gabbing Geek Box Office Report–Get Your Butt Back To Mars

Man, people bought movie tickets over the weekend!  Wow!  Commerce at work!

Gender Swapped Twilight Still Sucks

You know what many successful authors do?  They try to come up with new stories!

Stephanie Meyer apparently thinks that’s for suckers!

Geek Lit: Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl

Jenny picked Rainbow Rowell’s novel Fangirl as the latest Gabbing Geek book club for the podcast.  I finished it up and have a few thoughts.

To begin, this isn’t really a “geek” book.  It’s a coming-of-age novel about a girl that might be a geek.  I don’t really think she is, actually.  For more thoughts, and potential SPOILERS, see after the cut.

Non-Geek TV From The Geek Perspective: True Blood

There’s a lot of TV out there, and some of it looks like it’s for geeks, but no, not really.  Looks can be deceiving.  Just because you have a lot of monsters and things and some kind of mythology involved doesn’t mean it’s actually geek TV.  It might be more just an excuse to show a lot of boobs and butts and romance-y type thing that if it weren’t for the boob and butts, you’d probably be watching Twilight.

Yeah, this week I’m covering True Blood.

ICYMI-And Now…Twilight Bashing

Don’t worry. This article is worth the pain memories of this photo may cause.

I tagged my first two articles with the tag “Twilight sucks”.  It would be irresponsible of me not to explain why.

See, I’m a happily married man.   As a result of this fact, I have seen most of these movies.  I am not sure my wife even really likes these movies.  She proclaimed reading the final book as six months of her life she’s like to get back since the book was so dull it took her that long to get through it.  But I am not my wife.  I have photos of the two of us in the same room to prove it.  So, why do I think Twilight sucks?

Sequels Better Than The Originals

 

Age of Ultron came out last week.  Like many geeks and fans of the Marvel movies, I saw it that weekend.

And, to be completely spoiler free, I was also a little disappointed.  I won’t really go into why here.  The problem for many sequels, and Age of Ultron was no exception, is that its hard to meet expectations.  The Matrix sequels were highly anticipated, and were a major letdown.  Big budget action sequels often do stuff like go back to what came before and seemed to work, and then doing more and more of that.  Meanwhile, the novelty has somewhat worn off.  Take, as an example, the big fight in the middle of Anchorman:  The Legend of Ron Burgundy.  No one really saw it coming, and it was full of amusing cameos from recognizable actors.  Naturally, when the sequel was made (a movie I mostly enjoyed, truth be told), the fight was expanded and made even crazier, as befits a sequel.  Was it better?  Not really.

But every so often, a movie comes out that is a sequel that is just plain better than the original.  It doesn’t happen often, but below the cut are some of my picks for sequels better than the originals.