Found this photo I took back when Super 8 was in theaters. It’s funny how, when you get used to emoticons, they just kind of insist on being read.

This one’s right up there with Windows XP.

Still, I’m most impressed that the movies finished, and didn’t stop partway through the series with dwindling budgets and audience interest. His Dark Materials couldn’t get past the first film, and based on the box office, it’s pretty clear that the current Narnia films aren’t going to continue beyond Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Eight movies over a decade, adapting a complete series, and going out with a bang? That’s an impressive feat right there!

Every new relationship comes with baggage. In this case, the baggage happens to be Ramona Flowers’ seven evil exes, who all want to fight Scott Pilgrim if he’s going to date her. Fights are staged like video games, with “X vs Y” captions, physics-defying moves and special powers, and defeated opponents transforming into coins. Caption boxes provide extra information. Flashbacks are illustrated in comic-strip form.

Its biggest flaw, IMO, is that it tries so hard to fit all the battles into one movie that it forgets to slow down and show us that Scott and Ramona actually like each other (most of the time). There’s no real sense of time, and it feels like the whole thing could happen in a week. So when the supporting cast starts asking Scott whether being with Ramona is really worth all the effort, it’s a good question, one that makes the ultimate ending a bit less satisfying than the one in the original graphic novels.

The original comics tell the story over six volumes, which take place over roughly a year. Obviously side characters are developed a lot more. More importantly for the lead story, Ramona is developed a lot more, and you get to see the two of them dealing with an actual relationship, rather than simply “You’re hot, wanna go out?” “Oh, okay.” You get much more of a sense that the fights mean something. The later volumes also focus heavily on people growing up and growing apart, something which there really isn’t time for in the movie.

The movie is great fun. If you liked it, I absolutely recommend picking up the graphic novels. If you liked the idea, but not the execution, or if you can’t stand Michael Cera (I know that’s a consideration for some people, and I had my doubts when I heard that he’d been cast in the role), I recommend picking up the first volume or two to give it a try.

Quick, someone call the ASPCA!

In a case of life imitating art, the National Park Service is currently battling Transformers 3 — a movie about robots from space — over just what they can and can’t do with a national monument!

Okay, you can’t blow up a national monument, but…

Bill Line, Park Service spokesman, said the producers “have asked to do some things that simply are not done on the National Mall,” among them staging a “car race” along the Mall’s gravel paths and flooding it with artificial light in order to shoot at night.

Apparently it’s not unique to Transformers 3, but a fairly frequent battle between the park service and film producers, which means Sprint’s video isn’t just a funny story, but a bit of an in-joke to those familiar with the industry.

Hmm, any chance the new movie will have a chorus singing “Robots from space!” in the background?

This could actually make an interesting movie. Okay, it would be about as long as Bambi Meets Godzilla, but still…

• “Damn it, dear, I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer!”
• “Damn the torpedoes, dear. Full speed ahead!”
• “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes, dears.”
• “Hello, dear. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
• “I aim to misbehave, dear.”
• “I came, I saw, I conquered, dear.”
• “Kneel before Zod, dear.”
• “Madness? This is Sparta, dear!” ← (this one’s my favorite)
• “More weight, dear.”
• “Something wicked this way comes, dear.”
• “The same thing we do every night, dear: Try to take over the world!”
• “Why so serious, dear?”
• “Yippee-ki-yay, dear.”
• “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, dear?”

The title of that first novel was originally going to be Another Fine Mess, from the Laurel and Hardy catch-phrase, but someone misheard it and Robert Asprin decided he liked that version better. It turns out that “Another fine mess” is actually a misquote itself, according to this the New York Times article on why we misquote movies (via @johannadc). It was originally “Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”