A few years back, while I was reading Eifelheim, I read up on the Black Death. There was a theory floating around at the time that, based on symptoms and virulence, the black death might have been caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever like Marburg, not by the bubonic plague that’s still endemic in some parts of the world. Since then, researchers have managed to extract bacterial DNA from the bones of Londoners who died when the plague reached the city in 1348, confirming that they were infected with a relative of the modern plague…and have reconstructed its genome. Wow. (via Slashdot)
Emergency Preparedness: Cell & Home Phone Guidelines. In particular: wireless home phones require power. Keep one landline phone with a cord on hand. And for non-emergency communications (“I’m OK, hope everyone else is”), stick to texting, email, or social networks so that emergency workers and people in immediate danger (“Help, I’m trapped under a fallen wall”) can use the voice channels.
Whenever I hear someone complain about “hipsters,” I always think of this comic.
Spotted this at the grocery store on the clearance table:
It’s not quite as good a title as Transmorphers, but seriously: look at that logo! It’s a dead ringer for Transformers: Armada, down to the extra capital letter…though in this case the placement makes absolutely no sense!
I’m still trying to figure out what to make of the slogan, “Super Transform Ultimate End General Mobilization.”
If you went out to the movies in the US during 2009, there’s a good chance you saw this turn-off-your-phone PSA in which a movie about “robots from space” tries to negotiate blowing up Mount Rushmore.
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?
I finally saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen today.
In some ways it wasn’t as awful as I’d heard, and in some ways it was worse. On the plus side, it had giant robots blowing stuff up, and they put more thought into the story than I expected them to. And there were certainly good moments spread throughout the film. On the minus side, the visuals were so complex that they were hard to follow. That’s a problem I had with the Transformers’ designs in the first film, too — they look insanely cool in still shots, but start them moving and you end up with two clouds of shrapnel fighting each other. Plus Michael Bay has a very different sense of humor than I do, which didn’t help. And amazingly enough, the movie was tedious. I don’t know how you can possibly take a movie about giant robots and explosions and make it dull enough that I checked my watch at least five times during the film.
In summary, I’m glad I waited for the second-run showing and only spent $1.75.
Found this fun short movie: Mac vs. PC. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. It’s been done a million times. But how many times have the Mac and PC been Transformers? There’s a strong element of Terminator in there, as well.
Several months ago I was browsing the local Blockbuster video store for a movie to rent, and I stumbled across one that made me laugh out loud. It’s the title on the right, and you’ll see why if you compare it to the rather more well-known title on the left.
I mean, seriously, look how carefully they tried to match the source material.
The logo design, with the TLA (three-letter acronym) in large type and the full title in small type below it.
The layout on the packaging, with close-ups of the two creature’s heads, one on each side.
The monochrome design, using green instead of blue.
The creature designs, one with an elongated head and nasty-looking teeth, the other wearing a mask.
Even the font on the full title is similar.
I have to admit I haven’t watched either of them, so I have no idea whether this attention to detail pervades the actual movie. But I can seriously imagine someone not paying close attention picking up the wrong movie by mistake.
On the same trip, I found another video called Transmorphers — by the same production company, it turns out (big surprise) — but they didn’t try nearly as hard to match the packaging to anything Transformers-related. Still, for a good laugh, look through the titles of movies by The Asylum — I think Snakes on a Train may actually trump both titles.
I finally got out to see Transformers today. Yes, I grew up with the cartoons, the toys and the comics. Yes, I even collected every comic book from the original Marvel series through the Generation 2 series (including the prologue in G.I. Joe) through the first round from DreamWave. But somewhere along the line I just lost interest, and ultimately sold off my entire collection. (On eBay, actually.)
But still, there’s some sort of primal thrill—at least for anyone who grew up as a boy in 1980s America—in seeing giant robots fighting each other. So I finally decided to catch it while it was still in theaters.
It was better constructed than I expected. They had a plausible reason for the Autobots and Decepticons to be on Earth, and they were very good about following up on exposition. Every gun that appeared on the wall was eventually fired, down to Sam’s eBay auctions, with one exception: I really expected them to blow up Hoover Dam.
Which brings me to the biggest gap in logic. SPOILERS follow, for anyone who, like me, has been living in a cave. Continue reading →
