Freyburg

Over the years, I’ve noticed I’ve gone from an arrogant, cranky young dinkfaced geek to a crochety, slighty more wise, cranky old geek. This essay in the Guardian about the “WTF” moment an older geek has when confronted with MySpace sums up the aging process and being overtaken, and in a sense, betrayed by (your freind, mother, secret lover) the Internet quite well. 🙂

ful disclosure: the better half is a Myspace goddess, and I have my own (barely checked) page here.

The movie I’ve been eagerly anticipating for more than a year has finally arrived. Was it worth the hype? Mostly yes.

There’s no way Superman Returns can top the 1978 masterpiece, and even if it could, I’m not seven years old anymore, and this film won’t affect me in the same way. And it didn’t…though i really liked the film, it’s in no way a replacement for the original, and that’s fine.

But what Superman Returns does do quite well is expand upon and show respect for the original film, whether its including quotes from Marlon Brando, sneaking in little references, or using the old-school swooshing opening credits. It gets all those little touches just right, and you can see that Superman: The Movie was as important to director Bryan Singer as it is to the thirty-something nerds in the audience.

So what about the new stuff? Well, everyone in the cast has big shoes to fill, and they all do so admirably. Brandon Routh does a great job as the new Man of Steel, sometimes doing a dead-on impression of Christopher Reeve and sometimes taking the role in new directions. Kevin Spacey does good work as Lex Luthor, which he plays with more vanity and menace and less humour than Gene Hackman. If there’s a weak link, it’s Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane; she’s pretty generic Hollywood fodder, and seems a little out of place.

Some geeks have referred to Superman Returns as the Lord of the Rings of superhero movies…it’s good, but it ain’t that good. In fact, I’d say the two Spiderman movies are slightly better, though they don’t have the legacy to carry around that this film does. So if I had to give this movie a rating, I’d say it’s a B+…maybe even an A-. I’d like to see it again without hype and without childhood baggage to skew my opinion.

And speaking of the Spiderman films, a sweet trailer for Spiderman 3 ran right before the main event. Check it out.

There’s a new trailer for Superman Returns on Quicktime.com, hyping me further still for a return to the glory days of 1978. Which I’ll be doing this Wednesday, as myself and the girlfriend take in a bit of Donner-inspired, Singer-executed brilliance on opening day.

Paul Sherman, a movie critic, has been busted for selling the screeners of Hollywood films he’s received over the years to pirates and warez groups. Not much to say here, except for “be more careful next time, buddy, or I’ll be forced to pay for my movies.” 🙂

Slate has an interesting piece about how while the newspaper has been declining since the advent of radio, the appetite for news (in any media people can find) is more insatiable than ever.

Sorry for the lack of posts for the past couple of days; I was on vacation in Penticton and nowhere near an Internet connection. Hang on, Azeroth, I’m coming! 🙂

Forbes details how hip clothing outlet (apparently, I ain’t cool with what the kids dig) American Apparel has opened a clothing store in Second Life, the massive online 3D community. It isn’t a store for buying their real world clothes through the game; it’s a store for buying your avatar clothes to wear IN the game. Other events are wandering into Second Life as well, such as Fox broadcasting the premiere of X-Men 3.

I gave Second Life a miss, myself…i spent about five minutes inside the game world wandering around, and got bored pretty quickly with the crappy graphics and lack of any definable goals. World of Warcraft is a far better experience, in my opinion, though are a ton of people in Second Life that probably disagree with me on that point.

Joi Ito’s site, always a good place to check out the latest net.happenings, has a post about dot.sub, a collaborative site where you upload your video and then let the denizens of the internet subtitle it for you. Neat.

And here’s an interview with Joi, done by one of his friends as a video podcast. Also neat.

…is a sentence I didn’t expect to type anytime soon. The Gray Lady goes in-depth with the creative nerds who, deprived of any new shows from Paramount, are taking matters into their own hands. Extra props for the emphasis on classic drunken womanizing computer smashing mini-skirt Trek, and not the later incarnations.

At least the future of Broadband, if Business 2.0 is to be believed. South Koreans are some of the most avid gamers on the planet, and apparently their most popular sites are a bizarre combination of Second Life, Myspace, and a blog. O’Reilly Radar has a reaction piece. All I know is that when I applied for an english editing job at Incheon International Airport a couple of years ago, it took them so long to go through the process of hiring me that I eventually said “screw it” and decided to stay in Canada instead. So I was denied cyberdelic nirvana..but I’m not too miffed about it. 🙂

The Guardian (of all places) has an interesting article about griefers, people who go into online worlds and lie, cheat and steal their way to a higher level character. As someone who just succumbed to the dark addictive pleasure that is World of Warcraft, I can say that I’m not a fan of this kind of virtual shenaniganery.

There’s also an article at 1Up.com about machinima artists (people who make films using a game engine and the characters within it) looking at the feasibility of making their films full-time. While I can see quitting your day job to blog and living off Adsense revenue (and instant noodles), I think it’ll be a while before machinima can pay the bills.