Month: May 2016

My Mini-review of The Nice Guys (spoiler warning: it’s like a violent GUMSHOE RPG adventure).

I liked it! If I ever ran a campaign about private investigators in a 1970s world without any kind of supernatural or fantastical stuff, this could have been an adventure in it. I mean, good Lord but the body count was impressive, in its way – and nobody said a goram word about it. I could almost hear the dice clatter at key points in the narrative: Yup, you manage to land in the pool. :clatter: The other guy… well, let’s just say he was about six feet off. Yeah, I’m not gonna bother to roll for damage for him.

Again: this is not bad! As a RPG adventure it was a fun one.  I was laughing throughout the film, and in a good way.  The character interactions between the three main PCs – I’m including the teenage daughter in the party there, by the way – were just good from start to finish. I don’t think that they’re going to make a sequel, but it wouldn’t make for a bad limited TV miniseries.

Maybe – MAYBE – JJ Abrams and Justin Lin can get Paramount to back down on Axanar.

Short version? Well, the Star Trek: Axanar fan film folks got hit by a copyright infringement suit by Paramount – and, I will be honest, here: speaking as a backer of the project I wasn’t happy to find out that they didn’t get permission from Paramount first, because you need to get permission for this sort of thing for precisely this reason – and JJ Abrams is now saying that he’s gotten Paramount to maybe back down. Abrams is of course the executive producers, and he’s apparently joined in this with Justin Lin, who directed the latest Star Trek flick (Star Trek: Beyond). If you’re a cynic, you may be of the opinion that Paramount is not so much seeing the light as they are the bottom line. Paramount would rather like Beyond to make lots of money, please.

Still: it would be nice if we can get this Axanar mess resolved. The concept (Garth of Izar and a Klingon-Federation war!) is awesome and we were unlikely to get it otherwise. Plus, it never hurts to remind people that it’s getting easier and easier to make movies.

Via… everybody, really. But I’ll give @emccoy_writer the credit because I saw her Tweet first.

The “Star Trek: Beyond” trailer. Which might draw on Star Trek III, at that.

No Harry Mudd, more’s the pity. But not without interest, I think. Note the possible destruction of the Enterprise, which tracks to the destruction of the Enterprise in Star Trek III.

(mild spoilers below the fold) Continue reading The “Star Trek: Beyond” trailer. Which might draw on Star Trek III, at that.

Gonna go see The Nice Guys today.

I find this remarkable, given that there are no exploding starships or cyber-ninja or giant monsters in it or anything. Still, it looks funny and there’s a heavy Seventies vibe to it; plus, my mother and my sisters have deftly separated me out from my children and told me to go have a nice day off, so who am I to argue? That’s right; I am not to argue at all. I am to go eat the colorful native foodstuffs of my childhood* and go watch a movie while the family goes on with sucking up as much grandson/nephew time as they possibly can. Continue reading Gonna go see The Nice Guys today.