Every year Syfy airs a new Sharknado, and following shortly after, and getting promoted like crazy durign Sharknado, is some other premiere of a Syfy monster flick. The first year had Ghost Shark, a promising yet middling movie about a shark that dies and comes back as a ghost that can attack anywhere there is water, and I mean anywhere. They literally pad the movie with every form of water you can imagine and someone being attacked by a shark from it. Some of it is so half-assed they don't even give any more context than "somewhere in town, there's water, and the shark killed somebody". Within minutes one guy gets killed while fixing pipes under his sink and a kid gets eaten in his slip and slide and the scenes are not revisited, so basically they died just to prove that the shark could do it. The second year we got Sharktopus vs Pteracuda, the sequel to Sharktopus in which someone combined a shark and an octopus to create an animal with the head of a shark so it can bite people, but just behind the gills it's an octopus so it can climb up on land and grab people to feed itself. the monster was killed in the first one, but it managed to produce offspring which was raised in the second one in an aquarium to be like a trained whale or dolphin. Meanwhile, te world of science fals to learn it's lesson and tries the hybrid game again by adding pteradactyl DNA to a barracuda in an attempt to create a living military weapon, and of course it goes out of control. Decidedly the trained sharktopus is the only thing that can stop the pteracuda. Of course that works out great...NOT! Conan O'Brien gets killed in a thankless cameo that says "sorry we didn't fit you in Sharknado."
This year the double feature was Lavalantula, which they actually started promoting the year before. It starred Steve Guttenberg and most of the cast of Police Academy, which I assume was Syfy's way of saying "See, even we don't take ourselves seriously anymore." Steve Guttenberg plays an action star and is in surprisingly good shape for his age, or he had an awesome body double for his shirtless scenes. The movie opens with him starrign in a movie which turns out to be about giant cockroaches and he storms out saying he doesn't want to do a bug movie, besides he wants to take his son to a baseball game. Within minutes the Santa Monica hills erupt into volcanoes and ginat fire breathing spiders start attacking. Yes, in case you couldn't guess from the title, this is the gst of Lavalantula, fire breathing spiders. Somehow Guttenberg's antics tie in the news with the cty being burned by man-sized arachnids as we see on the news feeds several times throughout the show. His son was bicycling with friends until the spiders bite his prospective girlfriend and they run for their lives. Guttenberg desperately rushes to rescue his family and discovers that the lavalantulas are nesting in underground lava tubes mapped out by a geologist he finds at the La Brea Tar Pit. This was probably the lowest point in the movie as even the scientist admits he doesn't know why he's still there, offering gems like "Like, it's a hive" and "the Mayans called them Lavalantulas"(no they didn't). The high point was Ian Ziering's cameo in which he says "love to help you but I have a shark problem". Meanwhile, the girl who got bitten by a lavalantula turns out to have been infected with eggs and a swarm of baby lavalntulas eat her from the inside, then pour out of her mouth and kill the other friend leaving Guttenberg's son as the last kid standing. Seriously, the plot armor in this movie is amazing as literally everybody else dies around this family and they manage to survive unscathed. The ending involves excessive use of liquid nitrogen to take down the queen lavalantula.
In a world without Sharknado, Lavalantula might have been the king with promises of a sequel, but sadly for this movie, this is a world with not one, but three Sharknados, so Lavalantula doesn't quite make it. But, it's good for a cheap laugh. Maybe, one day, Lavalntual vs Sharknado, but alas, not now.
7th Moon
Friday, July 31, 2015
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!
I...don't...know...what...to...say.
Sharknado 3 was...to say ridiculous is an understatement. What it was...okay, let me start at the beginning.
The movies opens with Finn going to the White House to accept the National Medal of Honor for defeating not one, but two sharknados, and also is inducted as the first member of the Loyal Order of the Golden Chainsaw which comes with an actual functioning golden chainsaw, and you'd better believe that it comes in handy more than once. Of course, in the middle of the ceremony, a sharknado hits Washington, D.C. scooping up sharks from the Potomac River(if you're thinking "The Potomac River is freshwater, there are no sharks in there" you are thinking way too hard and you need to turn your brain down for this one). Sharks proceed to attack everyone in the capitol and Finn fights them off with Presidet Mark Cuban who actually kicks ass pretty hard. The best part is when a secret service agent says "This is the most secure room in the world" then opens it and is immediately attacked by a shark from inside said room. The worst part is that Ann Coulter plays the Vice President and despite how much I was looking forward to her dying a horrible death which she deserves more than anyone who has ever been in Sharknado or ever will be, she manages to survive unharmed.
And that was just the intro to the movie.
After the opening credits we cut to April in Orlando at Universal Studios. She is now pregnant with her third child by Finn, but more importantly, she has a prosthetic hand that she wears a black glove over so that mostly nobody has to worry about her having lost it in the second movie, but it is definitely artificial because it also conceals a mini-chainsaw. Let me repeat that because it bears repeating and is actually very relevant, Tara Reid's April Wexler Sheppard has a miniature chainsaw hidden inside her prosthetic left arm, just in case a sharknado hits, she wants to be prepared to fight. A shark falls from the sky and lands in the pool at the hotel, warning April of what is to come. Daughter Claudia is at Universal Studios, whose best known attraction is Jaws(totally not a coincidence) and in the least believable part of the entire movie, the teenage girl accidentally leaves behind her phone. Really? I can take sharks in tornadoes, but a teenage girl forgetting her phone? Yeah right.
Meanwhile, Finn starts driving south from D.C. to Orlando and is waylaid in South Carolina by yet another sharknado, saved by...Nova! Yes, the hot sexy bikini babe from the original, M.I.A. in the second, has now become a storm chaser, specifically chasing sharknadoes with the help of Frankie Muniz. Together they have been studying sharks from the sharknadoes and determined that they aren't just being sucked up into the sky by the storm, they're actually thriving in the clouds eating birds and ice crystals. The road has been destroyed and they have to make a detour to a military base where they plan to take a fighter plane to Orlando. Another sharknado hits the base and Muniz sacrifices himself to save everyone by hitting his trailer's self-destruct button. Wait, let me set up the drama, as he reaches his trailer, a flying shark bite off one leg, and he hops into the trailer, a second flying shark bites off his left arm as he enters the door, he climbs up to the roof, because of course the button is on top of the damn thing where he has another chance to be bitten by sharks, loses his other leg dragging himself across the roof with one hand like Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, then just as he is about to press the button, his right arm, his last remaining limb, is bitten off by yet another shark and he worms his way up to the button and presses it with his chin.
Meanwhile, Finn and Nova fly south and crash land in a lagoon. By the miracle of Syfy plot convenience, it happens to be in Universal Studios and Finn promptly begins searching for his family following a tracking app to the roller coaster where his daughter left her phone. Of course she's not there, but April is, having also tracked her phone so they are reunited. Unfortunately, there is a shark on the roller coaster which rolls up not once, not twice, but three times before it finally eats Chris Jericho and causes the cart to start rolling down the track with Finn stuck on it. Why they use those three rolls to get into the worst possible positions instead of getting down from the roller coaster, I don't know. Anyway, Finn is flung into another attraction where he kills a shark in front of an impressed audience and then is finally reunited with his family who have managed to gather coincidentally right outside this particular attraction.
But wait, there's more, it's not over yet. The sharknado is becoming a sharkicane(a really, really big sharknado) and the only way to stop it is to form a towering inferno, which they believe they can accomplish with help from Finn's astronaut father Gil. Yes, Finn and Gil. And he's played by David Hasselhoff. I probably could hae just said David Hasselhoff is in this and that would have been enough. They are going to use the last space shuttle at Cape Canaveral to unleash a blast from the rockets to diffuse the sharkicane. When that fails, Gil has to go out and manually operate a secret war satellite to blast the sharkicane with a laser. Oh, but there is still more. The resulting explosion launches sharks into space where they attack the shuttle, and Finn fights them off with a laser chainsaw(yes, you read that right) and one eats April whole. Finn jumps into a shark's mouth, presumably the same shark, but really not, and they fall through the atmosphere, protected from the heat by the shark's burning bodies and land back on Earth safely only a few feet apart from each other.
Now here's the big finale:
April uses her cyberhand chainsaw to cut through the shark, then hands out her baby that she gave birth to on the way down from space inside the shark out through this hole she just cut giving her newborn son to Finn through the shark's body, then emerges herself, still unharmed! Don't clap yet though, the big twist is that Finn notices that he has lost the wing pin his father gave him to give to their son and April notices it and walks over to pick it up and a piece of the shuttle falls from the sky hurtling towards her and...her fate will be revealed in Sharknado 4! #AprilLives
Sharknado 3 was...to say ridiculous is an understatement. What it was...okay, let me start at the beginning.
The movies opens with Finn going to the White House to accept the National Medal of Honor for defeating not one, but two sharknados, and also is inducted as the first member of the Loyal Order of the Golden Chainsaw which comes with an actual functioning golden chainsaw, and you'd better believe that it comes in handy more than once. Of course, in the middle of the ceremony, a sharknado hits Washington, D.C. scooping up sharks from the Potomac River(if you're thinking "The Potomac River is freshwater, there are no sharks in there" you are thinking way too hard and you need to turn your brain down for this one). Sharks proceed to attack everyone in the capitol and Finn fights them off with Presidet Mark Cuban who actually kicks ass pretty hard. The best part is when a secret service agent says "This is the most secure room in the world" then opens it and is immediately attacked by a shark from inside said room. The worst part is that Ann Coulter plays the Vice President and despite how much I was looking forward to her dying a horrible death which she deserves more than anyone who has ever been in Sharknado or ever will be, she manages to survive unharmed.
And that was just the intro to the movie.
After the opening credits we cut to April in Orlando at Universal Studios. She is now pregnant with her third child by Finn, but more importantly, she has a prosthetic hand that she wears a black glove over so that mostly nobody has to worry about her having lost it in the second movie, but it is definitely artificial because it also conceals a mini-chainsaw. Let me repeat that because it bears repeating and is actually very relevant, Tara Reid's April Wexler Sheppard has a miniature chainsaw hidden inside her prosthetic left arm, just in case a sharknado hits, she wants to be prepared to fight. A shark falls from the sky and lands in the pool at the hotel, warning April of what is to come. Daughter Claudia is at Universal Studios, whose best known attraction is Jaws(totally not a coincidence) and in the least believable part of the entire movie, the teenage girl accidentally leaves behind her phone. Really? I can take sharks in tornadoes, but a teenage girl forgetting her phone? Yeah right.
Meanwhile, Finn starts driving south from D.C. to Orlando and is waylaid in South Carolina by yet another sharknado, saved by...Nova! Yes, the hot sexy bikini babe from the original, M.I.A. in the second, has now become a storm chaser, specifically chasing sharknadoes with the help of Frankie Muniz. Together they have been studying sharks from the sharknadoes and determined that they aren't just being sucked up into the sky by the storm, they're actually thriving in the clouds eating birds and ice crystals. The road has been destroyed and they have to make a detour to a military base where they plan to take a fighter plane to Orlando. Another sharknado hits the base and Muniz sacrifices himself to save everyone by hitting his trailer's self-destruct button. Wait, let me set up the drama, as he reaches his trailer, a flying shark bite off one leg, and he hops into the trailer, a second flying shark bites off his left arm as he enters the door, he climbs up to the roof, because of course the button is on top of the damn thing where he has another chance to be bitten by sharks, loses his other leg dragging himself across the roof with one hand like Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, then just as he is about to press the button, his right arm, his last remaining limb, is bitten off by yet another shark and he worms his way up to the button and presses it with his chin.
Meanwhile, Finn and Nova fly south and crash land in a lagoon. By the miracle of Syfy plot convenience, it happens to be in Universal Studios and Finn promptly begins searching for his family following a tracking app to the roller coaster where his daughter left her phone. Of course she's not there, but April is, having also tracked her phone so they are reunited. Unfortunately, there is a shark on the roller coaster which rolls up not once, not twice, but three times before it finally eats Chris Jericho and causes the cart to start rolling down the track with Finn stuck on it. Why they use those three rolls to get into the worst possible positions instead of getting down from the roller coaster, I don't know. Anyway, Finn is flung into another attraction where he kills a shark in front of an impressed audience and then is finally reunited with his family who have managed to gather coincidentally right outside this particular attraction.
But wait, there's more, it's not over yet. The sharknado is becoming a sharkicane(a really, really big sharknado) and the only way to stop it is to form a towering inferno, which they believe they can accomplish with help from Finn's astronaut father Gil. Yes, Finn and Gil. And he's played by David Hasselhoff. I probably could hae just said David Hasselhoff is in this and that would have been enough. They are going to use the last space shuttle at Cape Canaveral to unleash a blast from the rockets to diffuse the sharkicane. When that fails, Gil has to go out and manually operate a secret war satellite to blast the sharkicane with a laser. Oh, but there is still more. The resulting explosion launches sharks into space where they attack the shuttle, and Finn fights them off with a laser chainsaw(yes, you read that right) and one eats April whole. Finn jumps into a shark's mouth, presumably the same shark, but really not, and they fall through the atmosphere, protected from the heat by the shark's burning bodies and land back on Earth safely only a few feet apart from each other.
Now here's the big finale:
April uses her cyberhand chainsaw to cut through the shark, then hands out her baby that she gave birth to on the way down from space inside the shark out through this hole she just cut giving her newborn son to Finn through the shark's body, then emerges herself, still unharmed! Don't clap yet though, the big twist is that Finn notices that he has lost the wing pin his father gave him to give to their son and April notices it and walks over to pick it up and a piece of the shuttle falls from the sky hurtling towards her and...her fate will be revealed in Sharknado 4! #AprilLives
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Sharknado
It's a tornado made of sharks! That's really all you need to know about the most awesomely bad movie franchise ever that will air it's third installment this Wednesday on Syfy. Really, it's that simple, if you can get that, you just shut your brain off for the best mindless entertainment available on basic cable. But if you must know more, here are the synopses for the first two movies, as if you actually need to know what's going on. Before I get started on individual synopses, let's start with what they have in common. Both movies involve a sharknado, presumably the scariest thing a Syfy producer could imagine in which a hurricane scoops a bunch of sharks into the air, then comes inland where the tornado continues to cause destruction while dropping sharks onto the fleeing people where in the last throes of life the sharks eat people, and occasionally fall in water where they actively hunt people. Our hero is Finn Sheppard, played b Ian Ziering, a former marine who desperately tries to save his family by gathering them and taking them further inland where he basically takes down the last of the sharks with a chainsaw. Yup that's about it.
Okay, for specifics to each movie, the first Sharknado has Finn running a bar on the beach in California with a bikini waitress named Nova with a distinct scar on her leg. After surfing one morning, they get to work in the bar and the Sharknado hits, destroying the bar. Finn gets away in his truck along with Nova, his best friend, and one of the bar's regulars. The customer dies valiantly trying to protect Finn and Nova and the two make it into the hills where Finn's ex-wife April, played by Tara Reid, lives with their kids and her new boyfriend. Finn tried to convince them they should leave, but the sharknado catches up and a shark swims into their living room, eats the new boyfriend, and everybody else manages to escape and head further inland looking for Finn's son who is at a military flight camp. More random destruction ensues from wind torn refuse and sharks, the guy who does the voice of Choji on Naruto plays a bus driver who gets taken out with a fragment of the Hollywood sign while Finn saves all the children on the bus. The Sheppard clan manages to find Finn's son where they finally come up with a plan to stop the tornadoes by blowing them up from the inside. Please do not try to figure out how the physics of this plan actually works, it is not worth the aneurysm that you will suffer. Finn's friend dies, but the really awesome finale that must be seen to be believed is when Nova is eaten whole by a shark, then Finn jumps chainsaw first into a shark and cuts his way out and coincidentally, it happens to be the same shark Nova was eaten by and they both emerge safely and unharmed, though covered in shark blood.
Few could imagine that there is any way to top this, but they tried and in my opinion, succeeded. I admit it should not have happened but it did, so let's just accept this and move on with the sheer absurd insanity that is Sharknado 2: the Second One. Yes folks, that is the name they settled on; they had a contest with several awesome names including my personal favorite Sharknado 2: the Sharkening, a nod to Highlander 2: the Quickening arguably the worst sequel before the Sharknado series, but Syfy went minimalist. This sequel picks up with Finn and April going to New York City to promote their book, "The Sharknado Survival Guide" which is an actual book you can get and I have a copy. On their flight in, another Sharknado hits their plane in midair and April tries to shoot at the flying sharks which bites off her left hand which is not only holding the gun but also wearing her engagement ring that she never quite got around to removing after her divorce. Yes, this is some ridiculous shit and you know damn well that shark and the hand are coming back later in the movie, but that is much later, so let's just take our time with the amazing, totally unbelievable bullshit that happens in between. First April is taken to a hospital where she's treated for her shark bite/amputation. April pulls through and she's fine other than losing her hand. Meanwhile, she and Finn know the drill and prepare to protect everyone form the sharknado. For a film with a thin plot, it gets padded with cameos and random shark attacks, which are actually quite entertaining to the target audience, because let's face it, if you tuned in, this is what you wanted to see. The film truly surpasses it's predecessor for three specific reasons. #1. Vivica A. Fox fights sharks with a sword. I don't really know why it happened, Finn suggested collecting weapons and Vivica finds a sword in one shop then proceeds to slash at flying sharks with it to defend Finn while he prepares his tornado stopping bomb. I am a sucker for swords so I don't really care if it was the dumbest part of the movie, it was also the most awesome scene ever. #2. Finn jumps into the sharknado with a chainsaw and takes on multiple sharks while flying through the storm. I wasn't sure that they could top the iconic scene from the first movie, but they found a way by just making more of everything, more sharks, more tornado, more chainsaw, more Finn. This was an insane scene but bravo to Syfy for having the balls to do it. #3. the resolution to April's lost hand becomes the ultimate unlikely show of deus ex machine ever: April attaches a small buzz saw to her stump and uses the makeshift prosthetic hand to protect Finn from a flying shark while Finn prepares his last stand, then another shark flies at them while they are on top of the Empire State building, the last shark after the sharknado has been stopped by Finn's explosives, and Finn looks down to see that the shark April took down with her buzz saw is the one that bit her hand off and the hand is still in the shark's mouth with the ring and gun, Finn picks up the hand, uses the gun to shoot down the last shark and then reproposes to April with the ring while discarding her severed hand! You can not make that shit up!
I am not sure exactly what this next one has in store, but I know this, they will be in Washington D.C. the sharks will be attacking politicians, PLAYED BY ACTUAL POLITICIANS, and David Hasselhoff is in it. Bring. It. On.
Okay, for specifics to each movie, the first Sharknado has Finn running a bar on the beach in California with a bikini waitress named Nova with a distinct scar on her leg. After surfing one morning, they get to work in the bar and the Sharknado hits, destroying the bar. Finn gets away in his truck along with Nova, his best friend, and one of the bar's regulars. The customer dies valiantly trying to protect Finn and Nova and the two make it into the hills where Finn's ex-wife April, played by Tara Reid, lives with their kids and her new boyfriend. Finn tried to convince them they should leave, but the sharknado catches up and a shark swims into their living room, eats the new boyfriend, and everybody else manages to escape and head further inland looking for Finn's son who is at a military flight camp. More random destruction ensues from wind torn refuse and sharks, the guy who does the voice of Choji on Naruto plays a bus driver who gets taken out with a fragment of the Hollywood sign while Finn saves all the children on the bus. The Sheppard clan manages to find Finn's son where they finally come up with a plan to stop the tornadoes by blowing them up from the inside. Please do not try to figure out how the physics of this plan actually works, it is not worth the aneurysm that you will suffer. Finn's friend dies, but the really awesome finale that must be seen to be believed is when Nova is eaten whole by a shark, then Finn jumps chainsaw first into a shark and cuts his way out and coincidentally, it happens to be the same shark Nova was eaten by and they both emerge safely and unharmed, though covered in shark blood.
Few could imagine that there is any way to top this, but they tried and in my opinion, succeeded. I admit it should not have happened but it did, so let's just accept this and move on with the sheer absurd insanity that is Sharknado 2: the Second One. Yes folks, that is the name they settled on; they had a contest with several awesome names including my personal favorite Sharknado 2: the Sharkening, a nod to Highlander 2: the Quickening arguably the worst sequel before the Sharknado series, but Syfy went minimalist. This sequel picks up with Finn and April going to New York City to promote their book, "The Sharknado Survival Guide" which is an actual book you can get and I have a copy. On their flight in, another Sharknado hits their plane in midair and April tries to shoot at the flying sharks which bites off her left hand which is not only holding the gun but also wearing her engagement ring that she never quite got around to removing after her divorce. Yes, this is some ridiculous shit and you know damn well that shark and the hand are coming back later in the movie, but that is much later, so let's just take our time with the amazing, totally unbelievable bullshit that happens in between. First April is taken to a hospital where she's treated for her shark bite/amputation. April pulls through and she's fine other than losing her hand. Meanwhile, she and Finn know the drill and prepare to protect everyone form the sharknado. For a film with a thin plot, it gets padded with cameos and random shark attacks, which are actually quite entertaining to the target audience, because let's face it, if you tuned in, this is what you wanted to see. The film truly surpasses it's predecessor for three specific reasons. #1. Vivica A. Fox fights sharks with a sword. I don't really know why it happened, Finn suggested collecting weapons and Vivica finds a sword in one shop then proceeds to slash at flying sharks with it to defend Finn while he prepares his tornado stopping bomb. I am a sucker for swords so I don't really care if it was the dumbest part of the movie, it was also the most awesome scene ever. #2. Finn jumps into the sharknado with a chainsaw and takes on multiple sharks while flying through the storm. I wasn't sure that they could top the iconic scene from the first movie, but they found a way by just making more of everything, more sharks, more tornado, more chainsaw, more Finn. This was an insane scene but bravo to Syfy for having the balls to do it. #3. the resolution to April's lost hand becomes the ultimate unlikely show of deus ex machine ever: April attaches a small buzz saw to her stump and uses the makeshift prosthetic hand to protect Finn from a flying shark while Finn prepares his last stand, then another shark flies at them while they are on top of the Empire State building, the last shark after the sharknado has been stopped by Finn's explosives, and Finn looks down to see that the shark April took down with her buzz saw is the one that bit her hand off and the hand is still in the shark's mouth with the ring and gun, Finn picks up the hand, uses the gun to shoot down the last shark and then reproposes to April with the ring while discarding her severed hand! You can not make that shit up!
I am not sure exactly what this next one has in store, but I know this, they will be in Washington D.C. the sharks will be attacking politicians, PLAYED BY ACTUAL POLITICIANS, and David Hasselhoff is in it. Bring. It. On.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Mongoliad Book 2
As if the first book hadn't introduced enough, this book chooses to make it even more complicated by introducing a plot regarding the election of the Pope, which actually was a rather notorious event that happened to coincide with the Mongol Invasion. In this book it is only tangentially related by two survivors of the Battle of Mohi, the base event setting the entire story in motion, ending up in Rome and one being Father Rodrigo, a priest with connections to the OMVI or Shield Brethren managing to get into the papal conclave and give us semi-relevant eyes into the whole situation. Meanwhile, the other survivor is Ferenc a Magyar hunter who only knows his unique regional dialect and is entirely unable to communicate with anyone else in Rome, except a young Binder named Ocyroe who can communicate using Rankos Kalba, a form of sign language as fictional as the Binders themselves. We still aren't given much information on these Binders, they are an all female order of messengers with a secret language, but beyond that we know nothing. A large portion of the book is dedicated to these events, but nothing is said of what this has to do with anything else beyond a shared starting point and time.
Meanwhile, in Poland, the story of the circus of swords is elaborated upon following Andreas and Rutger against the Knights of Livonia and Ongwe Khan and their alliance with Kim Alcheon and Zugokaitso no Yama. Farther East, the main heroes get very little coverage as they follow the Silk Road to Mongolia in an attempt to assassinate Ogedei Khan, a plot prolonged primarily by simply being ignored for most of the book. The most consistent story is that of Gansukh and Lian who travel beyond the walls of Karakorum to the borderlands of China.
The story, or rather stories are rather good, but the pace at which the authors switch between them can be annoying, you get started enjoying one story and it switches to something else. In my attempt to write a fanfiction for Kindle Worlds I was very interested in following the story of Hakkon, but after a chapter or two he is mostly forgotten- not dead though, the last mention is that Ongwe Khan delivered him to his father and he is now on the road with the Khagan and Gansukh and Lian, but with the focus in that area shifted off of him, he becomes invisible background. I started reading this thinking I was going to mainly get a story of the fighting Shield Brethren, but this ended up being more about the political intrigue in the Vatican and the romance of Gansukh and Lian and woefully little was said about the people I wanted to read about. Also, the back cover blurb once again has a false sell, suggesting more of a connection between the people in Rome and the travelers on the Silk Road than is actually demonstrated. I can only hope the third installment brings everything together better than this book did.
Meanwhile, in Poland, the story of the circus of swords is elaborated upon following Andreas and Rutger against the Knights of Livonia and Ongwe Khan and their alliance with Kim Alcheon and Zugokaitso no Yama. Farther East, the main heroes get very little coverage as they follow the Silk Road to Mongolia in an attempt to assassinate Ogedei Khan, a plot prolonged primarily by simply being ignored for most of the book. The most consistent story is that of Gansukh and Lian who travel beyond the walls of Karakorum to the borderlands of China.
The story, or rather stories are rather good, but the pace at which the authors switch between them can be annoying, you get started enjoying one story and it switches to something else. In my attempt to write a fanfiction for Kindle Worlds I was very interested in following the story of Hakkon, but after a chapter or two he is mostly forgotten- not dead though, the last mention is that Ongwe Khan delivered him to his father and he is now on the road with the Khagan and Gansukh and Lian, but with the focus in that area shifted off of him, he becomes invisible background. I started reading this thinking I was going to mainly get a story of the fighting Shield Brethren, but this ended up being more about the political intrigue in the Vatican and the romance of Gansukh and Lian and woefully little was said about the people I wanted to read about. Also, the back cover blurb once again has a false sell, suggesting more of a connection between the people in Rome and the travelers on the Silk Road than is actually demonstrated. I can only hope the third installment brings everything together better than this book did.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Jurassic World
I saw Jurassic World and it was awesome. It was exactly what a Jurassic Park movie should be, almost what I wanted the first one to be. I would like to think Michael Crichton would be proud of what was done with this film. It did rehash some old tropes, but it did them so badass that even when you can tell what's going to happen, you still think "Wow, that was cool...do it again!"
So in case you somehow missed what the whole deal is, scientists figured out how to recreate dinosaurs and decided to make a zoo/theme park where people can check out the dinosaurs. In the original movie they attempted to create the park and invited a few experts to see what it was like and coincidentally at the same time a tech decided to steal some of the dino embryos for a competitor and while overriding the security system leaves everyone vulnerable to predatory dinosaurs and also revealed that their attempt to control dinosaur breeding had failed and they were now independent, and oh yeah velociraptors can open doors so there's nowhere to hide.
In this movie, they try the theme park again and this time everything works fine and they hired a guy from the Navy (Owen played by Chris Pratt) to train the velociraptors. Okay, the whole velociraptor trainer thing is a bit contrived to make a hero character, but seriously, he is the most perfectly badass hero this franchise could have. He trains raptors, his most badass moment is when he introduces the raptors to the kids and they ask "Who's the Alpha?" and he replies "You're looking at him." Sorry Sam Neil and Jeff Goldblum, even Sam L. Jackson, nothing you do will make you as cool as a guy who rides a motorcycle and leads a pack of raptors. The only way to make this cooler was if the raptors had some parrot DNA and could speak(not that strange in context, but I'll get to that) and/or Owen was somehow part dinosaur, but that may be in the sequel, so let's not give up hope yet. Seriously though, based on the Jurassic Park franchise thus far, Owen is the guy that would result from winning a fan poll of who you want to see next; a minority of critics may not like Owen, but the other 99% of people who actually watch this film will love him.
Of course, with the velociraptors under control we need a new badass dinosaur, enter the Indominus Rex, a T-Rex that has been boosted with the DNA of multiple creatures to make it bigger and scarier, and well, somethign that should not be. Now, I was a bit skeptical at first, this is supposed to eb a dinosaur movie and creating a brand new dinosaur species is kind of saying nature failed to impress us. But they actually address this in the movie, with an explanation that in our world of advancing technology and wanting to see the next big thing, only little kids with an innocent sense of wonder are still impressed and usually only for one visit, they need something more so they have to breed something new. Then we are reminded of the underlying message of scientific ethics behind this whole concept, should humans be playing god with genetics and creating species that went extinct? As a scientist I can say, no, this should never happen, because the reality is if dinosaurs had never gone extinct humans never would have existed, we evolved from mammals that thrived only because of the Ice Age that killed the dinosaurs, and if we brought them back to our world of global warming, they would most likely hunt humans to extinction, though we may be able to thrive in the arctic, but unless everyone wants to move to Antarctica and farm penguins, no we do not want dinosaurs back in our current ecosystem. Of course corporations don't think that far ahead and proceed with Indominus and it turns out to be the most badass monster ever. I thought of SyFy channel's monster movies, and I want those people to watch Jurassic World so they know what to do, because this is what they try to do but fail. I don't want to give away too many spoilers but there is a scene where a velciraptor and a T-Rex double team the Indominus...there is simply no description I can give that does this scene justice, but it is the scene that is worth the price of admission, you MUST see it. Afterward the T-Rex and the raptor(Blue) look at each other and you can tell the T-Rex is all like, "I'd high five you but...you know...T-Rex arms." and Blue is just like "I got you bro."
So my review is five stars out of five, if you are the kind of person that liked Jurassic Park and want to see more of that, than this is the movie for you. And if you're not, I highly doubt you read this far anyway.
So in case you somehow missed what the whole deal is, scientists figured out how to recreate dinosaurs and decided to make a zoo/theme park where people can check out the dinosaurs. In the original movie they attempted to create the park and invited a few experts to see what it was like and coincidentally at the same time a tech decided to steal some of the dino embryos for a competitor and while overriding the security system leaves everyone vulnerable to predatory dinosaurs and also revealed that their attempt to control dinosaur breeding had failed and they were now independent, and oh yeah velociraptors can open doors so there's nowhere to hide.
In this movie, they try the theme park again and this time everything works fine and they hired a guy from the Navy (Owen played by Chris Pratt) to train the velociraptors. Okay, the whole velociraptor trainer thing is a bit contrived to make a hero character, but seriously, he is the most perfectly badass hero this franchise could have. He trains raptors, his most badass moment is when he introduces the raptors to the kids and they ask "Who's the Alpha?" and he replies "You're looking at him." Sorry Sam Neil and Jeff Goldblum, even Sam L. Jackson, nothing you do will make you as cool as a guy who rides a motorcycle and leads a pack of raptors. The only way to make this cooler was if the raptors had some parrot DNA and could speak(not that strange in context, but I'll get to that) and/or Owen was somehow part dinosaur, but that may be in the sequel, so let's not give up hope yet. Seriously though, based on the Jurassic Park franchise thus far, Owen is the guy that would result from winning a fan poll of who you want to see next; a minority of critics may not like Owen, but the other 99% of people who actually watch this film will love him.
Of course, with the velociraptors under control we need a new badass dinosaur, enter the Indominus Rex, a T-Rex that has been boosted with the DNA of multiple creatures to make it bigger and scarier, and well, somethign that should not be. Now, I was a bit skeptical at first, this is supposed to eb a dinosaur movie and creating a brand new dinosaur species is kind of saying nature failed to impress us. But they actually address this in the movie, with an explanation that in our world of advancing technology and wanting to see the next big thing, only little kids with an innocent sense of wonder are still impressed and usually only for one visit, they need something more so they have to breed something new. Then we are reminded of the underlying message of scientific ethics behind this whole concept, should humans be playing god with genetics and creating species that went extinct? As a scientist I can say, no, this should never happen, because the reality is if dinosaurs had never gone extinct humans never would have existed, we evolved from mammals that thrived only because of the Ice Age that killed the dinosaurs, and if we brought them back to our world of global warming, they would most likely hunt humans to extinction, though we may be able to thrive in the arctic, but unless everyone wants to move to Antarctica and farm penguins, no we do not want dinosaurs back in our current ecosystem. Of course corporations don't think that far ahead and proceed with Indominus and it turns out to be the most badass monster ever. I thought of SyFy channel's monster movies, and I want those people to watch Jurassic World so they know what to do, because this is what they try to do but fail. I don't want to give away too many spoilers but there is a scene where a velciraptor and a T-Rex double team the Indominus...there is simply no description I can give that does this scene justice, but it is the scene that is worth the price of admission, you MUST see it. Afterward the T-Rex and the raptor(Blue) look at each other and you can tell the T-Rex is all like, "I'd high five you but...you know...T-Rex arms." and Blue is just like "I got you bro."
So my review is five stars out of five, if you are the kind of person that liked Jurassic Park and want to see more of that, than this is the movie for you. And if you're not, I highly doubt you read this far anyway.
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