Cowboys vs Aliens

So, this week I finally rented Cowboys vs Aliens from Netflix. I no longer really cared about seeing it at this point and hadn't actually expected it at this point since it had said Long Wait the last I had checked. On the day that I received it, I decided to re-watch the trailer before actually watching the movie. After watching the trailer, my expectations were lowered. So I decided to watch it the next day.

Which is why I'm writing this. I had promised to let a couple of friends know how I liked it since I generally have a higher tolerance for movies than they do. Also they said my explanations of the movies is funny and that people may actually want to read them.

After starting the movie, I had the realization: I don't like westerns. Some people might find that strange since I live in Texas, but it's true. Sure, there's exceptions like Brisco County Jr. and Back To The Future 3 (that counts as a western, right?), but generally I can't stand them. Perhaps it's the horrible accents which don't actually exist in Texas unless you happen to live in a small town or perhaps it's the fact that I just dislike all that stuff. Oh right, tangents, yes there will be tangents. Oh so many tangents...

Back to the movie, the realization that I dislike westerns plus the runtime of the movie made me decide that since I was watching on my computer, I may was well speed it up. So, I started at 1.3x speed. It's a nice viewing choice when you want to shave off 10-15 minutes from a movie which should only have been an hour and a half, but it's not fast enough to distort voices noticeably. Eventually it ended up going as high as 2x and even 3x for awhile. I cared nothing about what any of the people were saying or doing, it was just boring stuff which honestly didn't make the build up of the alien stuff any better. I should have been able to like the stuff, I really like Clancy Brown and Harrison Ford. But no...

Finally I made it to the point where the aliens were. And what did they give us? A mixture of one of the aliens from X-Com mixed with a tick, which means that they'll be called Space Ticks from now on. The alien was kind of silly, but the effects were decent (despite the fact I prefer practical effects over CGI). So more happened and finally the best part of the movie. The female from House partially nude.

Eventually James Bond and crew fought the Space Ticks and it was completely unsatisfying. The fact they were Space Ticks and exploded like ticks wasn't awesome, it just made it extermination.

In the end, there was nothing memorable about this movie. As I said to my friends, this movie should have been Men In Black meets Wild Wild West (complete with Will Smith) or even a movie with a Brisco County Jr. type bounty hunter going after aliens. But no, it was just a boring cowboy movie with Space Ticks at times. I recommend watching 1 hr of Wild Wild West and 30 minutes of Independence Day instead. In fact, I even suggest watching Pluto Nash over this.

Back again

I don't know why, but I seem to have trouble keeping up a blog. But I'm going to try to do it again. I'm going to make no commitments to how often I'll do an entry, except that I plan to do it more than once a year.

This year's Project Puppet Contest will be in a couple of weeks. I've started my puppet and am over halfway finished with it. The theme this year is superheroes/villains. Despite my preference for villains, I'm making a superhero. The reasoning is that I have over 4 gallons of mask latex left and I can make a really cool costume using it. I will post pictures of it after the contest has ended. This will probably include making of pictures too.

This month will also be when I'll finally make things to attempt selling on Etsy. I will try to have information and pictures of these items on here from time to time. The first thing I'm going to make will probably either be a zombie puppet or a werewolf puppet. Anything I make to attempt to sell in the next 6-7 weeks will be Halloween or horror themed in order to take advantage of the holiday.

The Percy Jackson Movie

I completely forgot about watching the trailer for the upcoming Percy Jackson movie about an hour ago.
While the movie looks like it will be good, I couldn't help being distracted by a few things. The female teacher from the start of the book (no, I can't remember her name) is dressed all wrong. She's wearing a librarian/English teacher sweater instead of a leather jacket as the book mentions. While this could be taken as nitpicking, I think the choice of the leather jacket made sense. The jacket was her wings. And then when it showed her changing, it just looked odd. She looked like a cross between the Mothman and a Dementor from Harry Potter.
Then there's Grover. Or I'm assuming it's Grover since he's shown several times and I can't think of any other character he could be. Yeah, he didn't speak in the trailer at all, but there's just something about him that didn't seem right. But hopefully I'll be wrong and he'll actually be really good in the part.

Friday it seems

Yeah, it appears today is Friday. Neutral for more, but some people find comfort in it.

Wednesday I started work on a maquette (even though there's a red underline, I know it's a word) of a creature from a monster manual I have. I'm simply doing it for practice and not to sell. It's actually coming out quite well. It was originally going to be sculpted out of super Sculpey/Sculpey 3 mix, but I found that to be too brittle and heavy for the design. So I'm finishing it with paper mache.

I'm still writing for NaNoWrimo, despite being behind. I have all plans of catching up on Sunday and to even be able to finish next Friday/Saturday morning.

The magazine is still going as planned. Hopefully once there has been an issue made people will be more interested. I need to work on logo designs some more today since I'm not quite happy with any of the ones I have so far.

And finally I received my Advance Reader Copy of R. W. Ridley's Lost Days.

Status of stuff

Well, it's now the 17th and I'm quite behind on writing for NaNoWriMo. If not for the fact I joined the site the 14th or 15th my first year and succeeded, I'd fear I have no hope of finishing. But I have a schedule and plan for how to finish and even finish early.

And the magazine... Well, I worked on some logo ideas for the cover as well as having a few open source programs for making it. Now if only I can get more people involved.

Online Magazine and such

Well, I'm working on doing an online magazine. Wish me luck. Hopefully this one will go better than my last attempt.
And it's day 3 of NaNoWriMo and I'm quite uninspired.

NaNoWriMo

Just thought I'd mention I'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. Last year I didn't really get to do it because I hurt my back. This year I have all plans of finishing.