Red Auerbach Hates Floppers

Red Auerbach is more awesome than I thought. I know he won something like 10,000 NBA championships but what I really admire him for is his love for the game and his hatred for, well, let’s just say that if he was alive, Red and Manu won’t be the best of friends.

Final Crisis #1

So it’s finally here but does it live up to the hype? For the most part, yes. As far as opening issues go, this is as good as it gets.

Let’s get the easy things out of the way first. J.G. Jones’ art is awesome. There’s no other way to describe it. Imagine the 52 covers only every panel is like that. Awesome. Whether it’s a multiversal orrery or some dark street alley Jones’ art shines.

On to the writing. The are only two problems I really have with this issue. First, it’s not very accessible to readers who are not very familiar with the DCU. I mean it’s nothing a little googling cannot fix but for an event trying to get new readers on board that’s not really the way to go. Second, characters seem to have forgotten stuff that happened in Countdown (which may not be that bad. I want to forget Countdown happened too). Everybody saw Orion fight Darkseid and now everybody’s surprised he’s dead?

Otherwise this issue is very well-written, original and compelling, setting up various plots and giving the reader the feeling that something big is about to happen (And if you’ve read most of Morrison’s comics he actually starts slow then bombards you with so much awesome. Seriously, read his JLA run). I also like how Grant Morrison really captures each character’s voice. Here is someone getting angry and somehow before you even proceed to the next panel, you know that it’s Green Arrow.

Speaking of which..

J’onn.

The Minutemen

Here’s a picture of The Minutemen from the Watchmen movie and as always it’s looking good. You can also click it for a bigger version.

Based on Zack Snyder’s attention to detail and respect for the source material alone, we have a potentially special movie here. After all, for a material as complex and richly detailed as Watchmen, half the fun in reading it is catching the symbolism and the little details scattered throughout. I’m still cautiously optimistic but so far I like what I’m seeing.

All that’s missing now is Dr. Manhattan’s picture and the main cast is complete.

Scott Pilgrim is Going to be a Movie

In continuation of the current trend of Hollywood mining comic books for stories, Scott Pilgrim is going to make its way to the big screen. Scott Pilgrim starts like any teenage love story, with Scott falling in love with Ramon Flowers. But to date Ramona he must battle her seven evil ex-boyfriends. So yeah, it’s just like any teenage love story, only with a whole lot more fighting and leveling up.

So I decided to finally get to reading the comic book after I heard of the movie. Needless to say the comic kicked ass. The only think people might complain about is the lack of colors and the childlike drawing but even that worked quite well and it looked like a conscious choice by the creator to utilize the technique and not as a result of lack of talent. It kinda reminds me of Blankets which also lacked colors but made up for it with awesome characterization and emotion. Scott Pilgrim is more over the top though so don’t expect the clean line work and dramatic moments from Blankets. If anything, the line work in Scott Pilgrim is representative of the kind of balls to the wall action you can expect from this comic. There are also lots of tidbits and references which geeks will enjoy.

Also, in a bit of inspired casting Michael Cera will play Scott Pilgrim. Nice.

Michael Cera has proven that he can play awkward in Juno and I have seen him in some over the top moments in Arrested Development so I think he’ll do a good job.

And now for some even better news, Die Hard hottie Mary Elizabeth Winstead is playing Ramona. She even looks a little like the character.

She played quite a rebel in Die Hard but I have my doubts if she can pull off the fighting because all she did in Die Hard is get captured. At least we’re sure that she can play hostage and she’s hot.

Watch out for this movie. If it’s half as good as the comic, it’s going to be awesome.

Coding in PHP Again

After making a conscious effort to learn RoR by using it to do projects for the past year, I find myself using PHP again for another project. It’s like seeing your old crush/girlfriend from high school, and she’s still hot maybe even hotter now, but you just can’t shake the feeling that you have something better now so you catch up, share a few laughs and you look back in the past, but that’s mostly it. It will never be the same again.

It’s not a knock against PHP that I mostly use RoR nowadays. I like the language itself and I still use it for most of the small scripts I make, but the PHP frameworks out there pale in comparison to RoR. So when Cake finally shapes up and starts using objects and stops supporting PHP4, I’m there.

Globalize on Rails

I had to convert some dates to Spanish for a recent project I was doing. Ordinarily, I would track down every piece of date text I have and edit them with their Spanish counterparts. Unfortunately the dates were dynamic and I didn’t really want to do a very big if-else statement. Fortunately globalize was there to save the day. This is really an awesome plugin that I have just started using but it’s really useful. Here’s a great tutorial for the globalize plugin.

You may encounter an error for the error_messages_for helper but don’t panic because here’s the fix for that.

Enjoy.

What a Loser

It really is unclear when Marvel turned Spider-Man from a responsible adult into a loser (oh wait…) but this reaction from Aunt May, after Peter declares that he is moving out, says it all. I know Spidey should be an underdog, but what the hell. Before we know it Spidey is going to go all emo on us like Daredevil.

If the goal of One More Day was to introduce a villain who’s a drug addict and turn Peter Parker into a loser, then congratulations. Mission accomplished.

Watchmen Video Journal #2

Here is the second video journal from Watchmen director Zack Snyder. The level of care and detail the filmmakers are giving this movie is astounding. From the costumes to the setting, it’s like the pages from the comic book are coming to life. Good job by the filmmakers so far.

Also here is some good news from Watchmen’s wikipedia page.

“The Black Freighter”, a comic within the Watchmen comic, was included in the script,[57] but was cut due to budget restrictions, though the scene was written in a manner that it could be reinstated on DVD.[58] Eventually, WB decided to raise the budget and have Snyder shoot it for the DVD release.[59] If it works well enough during the edit, it will be included in the theatrical cut.[9]

Awesome.

Final Crisis Preview

Entertainment Weekly has released the first few pages of Final Crisis #1 and it looks awesome. But really, with Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones on board, was there ever any doubt?

Click here to see the preview.

Avengers Movie Being Assembled by Marvel

Just in case you missed the hints in the Iron Man movie (which is awesome by the way) or you think the Avengers movie everybody is so excited about is mere speculation, you best be ready for more awesomeness because this morning Marvel decided to squash all rumors about possible movies in the future:

Marvel this morning released its First Quarter 2008 numbers this morning, and along with them, news that officially, an Iron Man sequel is slated for 2010 along with Thor, and two “Avenger-themed” movies in summer of 2011: Captain America (May) and The Avengers (July).

It’s amazing how Marvel has all of these movies planned through 2011 culminating in one big Avengers movie. Meanwhile, DC can’t even get a freaking Wonder Woman or Green Lantern movie off the ground. This is so frustrating because DC has some really awesome properties in their hand and they can’t do shit with them. Better shape up DC.