Top of Cool

Define Irony

Situational Irony occurs when one event is expected but another oppositional event occurs.

Like when Serenity is rated 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, but grosses fewer ticket sales than Flightplan, which is rated at 37%.

Then again… Brothers Grimm is rated 38% by critics on Rotten Tomatoes, so maybe I shouldn’t judge Flightplan until I’ve seen it, but COME ON! Better than Serenity? I doubt it.

…

Okay, Okay… I’m a browncoat. So what? I can still be objective. Somehow.

My turn for what?

In my humble opinion, the title of Serenity is effective, not in its foil to the action of the film, but in how the movie does in fact have profound moments of serenity, and had these brief moments of peace not been there, the film surely would’ve failed and been another sci-fi action blockbuster that went bust.

Not to mention that Serenity takes its name from the tough little spaceship that the main characters inhabit, which in turn takes its name from the Battle of Serenity Valley. A battle where the good guys lost. Badly. When I say lost here, I mean totally completely and irrevocably decimated, and whether it is acknowledged or not, it is the most important part of the film. The Battle of Serenity Valley is what shaped and formed Captain Malcolm Reynolds, and is the keystone upon which his entire character (and indirectly his crew) is laid against.

Unless you had seen the series, however, you Top Of Cool readers (all 2 of you) might not know that.

Can someone enjoy Serenity without seeing Joss Whedon’s series, Firefly? Absolutely. In fact, those that have seen the movie will be delighted to go back and watch the series and get a little bit of history regarding their favorite characters from the movie.

Serenity, as a film, is probably perfect. Well, as perfect as any movie can be, I suppose. It’s strength lies primarily in the writing. Joss Whedon has written a story that anyone can relate with. Freedom, love, adventure, fear. I would be a fool not to mention the screenplay. The dialog has always been one of the best parts of the Firefly series, and this is also true of Serenity.

If anyone out there has been hearing about this whole Firefly thing, and hasn’t seen any episodes yet. Go watch the movie. Now. Then, go watch the episodes on the Sci-Fi channel, or rent the DVD’s at Blockbuster or something. You will thank me.

And I don’t know who these yayhoos are that you saw it with, Solyd, but if they’re complaining about this movie because it didn’t answer enough questions, THEY ARE STUPID! I will refute them utterly by using one word: REAVERS. What more do you want? For crying out loud, we have to have something left to do in the next two movies, after all.

But yeah, Serenity is the best movie ever made ever.

If I had to lay out my absolute favorite films of all freaking time, here is my current list, which has been known to change from time to time based on mood, temperature, and how much Pocky I’ve eaten.

1. Serenity
2. The Brothers Grimm
3. Star Wars: Episode III
4. Star Wars: Episode V
5. Time Bandits
6. The rest of the Star Wars movies in no particular order
7. The Lord of the Rings films in no particular order
8. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
9. Aliens

Yeah… I’m a nerd. SO?

Serene is not what I’d call it

Were I a screaming fanboy, I would be without words about this movie. I’m a fanboy of fewer words, so, naturally, I have a few to say.

The movie is *wonderful*. The silent title has to be one of the most effective titles I’ve seen yet. I was similarly moved by Hitchhiker’s because of the theme, these titles have entirely different merits. Serenity’s title is a wonderful offset for the action previous to the title (this is if I’m remembering in the correct order…). It left an impact like a well placed dramatic effect ‘effect’. As was the series, the movie is jam packed with classic quotables. “Oh God, Oh God, we’re all going to die” is only the beginning, I’m ashamed of forgetting it already, but Captain Mal has a wonderful line just following that one. All of our favorite character interplays are there.

As a side note, Simon, who had his cool moments in the series, becomes fully fledged ‘awesome’ for actions taken. Wash is still my favorite.

Joss Whedon said that series are questions, and movies are answers. In this movie we find answers to questions some of us weren’t asking, the group I went with was in great dismay about the questions not answered, and the questions *raised* by this movie, but it still answers questions. These answers were thought provoking and well presented.

I’m very sure I’m going to have more to say about this movie on subsequent viewings.

Rating: Top of Cool

Tag, your turn Finster.

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos aka More RTS Awesomeness

Oh wow… this looks beautiful.

I love Dawn of War and will be getting the Dawn of War expansions pretty soon, and if the game is as fun as these screenshots look, then this will be a GREAT game. However, we know how the screenshot thing goes, and the only problem here is that Relic is not developing this one.

Honestly though, I think RTS games are at a point now that everyone is pretty much tired of them, but with stuff like Dawn of War and Rome: Total War, the RTS is still much more than just a niche genre.

Notice of generic introduction

Greetings all.
But that would be much more formal than I normally am. Hi, solyd here, with the advent of the new MoveableType version, I’m able to join the fray here freely. So, first, a few words about myself:

I am a freelance Japanese translator. I have done some manga as part of this, it’s out there, and if you’re especially clever, you’ll find out what I’ve done. I follow anime and manga in a casual fashion, expect to see the majority of my posts on such, though I dabble in near all subjects.

The end of the Egg

Old news I know, but Super Egg Machine performed their last concert together in April. I’d suspected their breakup some time ago, but it’s still sad. Well, time to go find all the albums.

-solyd

I upgraded and all I got was this stupid weblog

I upgraded my backend to the new MovableType 3.2. It’s pretty slick, I must say. They’ve integrated some of the more popular plugins, and everything seems to be a bit more user-friendly. If you’re used to MT3 then things will look pretty familiar with this version, and there are quite a few new features. I’m still thinking about moving to WordPress, however. We’ll see how this goes.

The upgrade process itself was completely painless. Of course, this was only because my backup policy is set somewhere between paranoid and practical. That way, when I stupidly delete a config file, I don’t have to completely start from scratch.

At least I have chicken…

AFK Gamer had a link to The Leeroy Jenkins Soundboard.

And in case you have not been introduced to the World of Warcraft hilarity that is: The Leeroy Jenkins video.

Leeroy Jenkins is the funniest thing on the internet since the Star Wars Kid.

WoW Suffers from The Plague

No… newbies can sometimes be annoying, but they are not the plague that I speak of.

Apparently, WoW suffered from a virtual communicable desease, beginning with players infected by Hakkar the Soulflayer.

When infected adventurers returned to town at the end of their quest, they inadvertently passed along the Corrupted Blood infection to those nearby. In short order, the plague ravaged the population. Soon entire cities fell victim to the artificial disease. And while 280 damage points may be easy for a level-58 Night Elf warrior to contend with, it’s enough to kill a lower-level player in seconds.

Nasty, but ultimately very cool. This was an inadvertant bug, but Blizzard may have serendipitously discovered a very cool MMORPG feature. In fact, this is the kind of thing that I have craved from an MMORPG. A seemingly simple act, such as getting cursed by a dungeon boss, and having it cause some sort of lasting effect on the rest of the game world.

Now, granted, 280 points of damage to a poor level 5 hunter is a little extreme. But there’s no reason Blizzard couldn’t level limit these kinds of things. Maybe you get infected, and it requires people to gather some rare plant extract from the far reaches. Entire sub-economies based on the availability of medicines would crop up. If someone got infected, their entire guild may become infected and caught up in some kind of sidequest. I don’t know, this kind of gameplay would be really fun for me, kind of like the plague in Morrowind. I’m sure others would be really frustrated by this kind of thing, but if there were some kind of reward, like having better stats after being cured or something.

I don’t know.

Okay okay okay…

If this were real, it would make me want to buy a Revolution right away.