Thankfully, it almost all looks better than the first official trailer, which I basically panned.

It’s still a little too obviously computer-generated for my tastes, but still better than the first trailer. Apparently I’m not the only . . . → Read More: Seeing Green… Lanterns]]> How many major “cons” are there in a year (that’s “conference” for the un-geeked)? New footage is spilling out like water from WonderCon, held recently, and Green Lantern is pouring out 4 minutes of mostly new scenes.

Thankfully, it almost all looks better than the first official trailer, which I basically panned.

It’s still a little too obviously computer-generated for my tastes, but still better than the first trailer. Apparently I’m not the only one who didn’t like that trailer. According to statements made at CinemaCon:

…Warner Brothers worldwide marketing president, Sue Kroll is admitting the first trailer may not have been all it could or should have been.

“Part of the reason the response to the first trailer was lukewarm was that the big-scale sequences weren’t ready to show, and we suffered for it. … We can’t afford to do that again,” Kroll said at CinemaCon this week.

Warner Brothers underestimated the amount of time it’d take to complete the elaborate 3-D sequences for the film. Now they’ve got it all sorted and, according to their president of motion pictures, Jeff Robinov, their marketing plan is in place: “We won’t be in this position again.”

This is a good first step. I hope they don’t go too far, though, and show basically the whole movie in previews and clips now.

What do you think? That’s an awful lot of aliens to pull off, and I’m not sure they’re doing it convincingly. I think they just bit off more than they can chew with the scope of this one, visually. It’s still a bit video gamey/cartoony, though. Hopefully I can drop my expectations a bit and enjoy it. It does, as I said, look better than the original trailer.

In the end, though, I think it’s going to come down to the actor, Ryan Reynolds, to pull this movie off. I wish I had more confidence in him. I’m trying to keep an open mind, though. And from a scene or two here it seems possible.

By the way… as lead up to the movie, WB is releasing another animated movie to DVD, following the same pattern as Animatrix and Batman: Gotham Knight – multiple stories each telling part of a larger story. In this case, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights will showcase Nathan Fillion as the voice of Hal Jordan (funny how that worked out). From the press release:

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights weaves six legendary stories of the Green Lantern Corps’ rich mythology around preparations for an attack by an ancient enemy. As the battle approaches, Hal Jordan mentors new recruit Arisia in the history of the Green Lantern Corps, telling tales of Avra (the first Green Lantern) and several of Hal’s comrades – including Abin Sur, Kilowog, Laira and Mogo. In the end, Arisia must rise to the occasion to help Hal, Sinestro and the entire Green Lantern Corps save the universe from the destructive forces of Krona.

Sounds like I’ll enjoy that film. Hopefully the live action film is worth all this effort!

On the upside, you do get to hear my wife talking about this stuff as well, so you got that going for you. Which is nice.

Of course throughout the entire . . . → Read More: Grand opening…]]> … and then nothing but disappointment. That pretty much describes this podcast. Really there is some interesting stuff discussed somewhere in there, but to get to it, you have to listen to me talking. Sorry about that, but it is the way of things.

On the upside, you do get to hear my wife talking about this stuff as well, so you got that going for you. Which is nice.

Of course throughout the entire podcast I never introduce her properly, (and in fact, I don’t even use her name once) so let me get this out of the way: World, say hello to Pam. Pam, this is the world.

So what’s this thing about, you ask? Ah, you didn’t read my earlier post on this did you? Well, perhaps you can be excused for that… it’s been almost a month since I posted it after all. (“Soon” is a relative term, you know.) I got busy, sorry. I also got frustrated, hungry, and tired during that time, but none of that is relevant, really. The point is it took a while to get this up, and if I got your hopes up that there would be any quality involved here, sorry about that.

In fact, when I posted my “Coming Soon” post, a friend of mine wrote back: “And that’s when Caddickisms jumped the shark.” He may be right, but I got back at him. I did it anyway.

The specific topics in the podcast this time are varied. Here’s a list of the topics we covered, so you can go and do more research on your own:

• Free Room/Garden/etc layout tool
• Free Internet Parental Controls methods
• EO DAS jet fighter defense systems for the F-35
• Star Wars uber-fanboy story
• Doctor Who: everything you need to know in one poster
• George the Evil Black Suit (also known as Venom) forced to do good… for now
• Spider-man’s new costume for movie reboot
• Highlander reboot
• Nathan Fillion will NOT bring back Firefly (but you can send me money anyway)
• We talked about The Cape and The Event, too.
• Bar Karma – community-developed TV
• Tron: Uprising trailer
• Some talk about Stargate: Universe
• Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D gets 2012 release date
• Sixth Sense vs. Unbreakable and random M. Night Shyamalan comments

You may notice that this podcast starts with some music. Anyone who can tell me the television show it originally comes from (i.e., for which it was written) will be entered into a drawing for a prize. You must leave a comment on the blog, and I’ll pick a name at random from all correct entries. The prize will be something completely mundane, but hey… free stuff, right?

[UPDATE: Ack! I just realized I broke my own contest rules by revealing the answer with the first correct guess and not waiting until we could have a drawing! Sorry to all of you who also knew the answer but haven't commented yet.

So to extend the contest a bit I'll ask this question: list at least two shows/films that we discussed in the podcast that are not listed in the bullet list above. Then I'll do a drawing from that list.]

So, with no further delay… check out the podcast!

I’ve got three video clips for you today, and one of them is not fiction. See if you can figure out which one.

Firefly is back!

That’s right, Nathan Fillion has suited up one more time as Mal Reynolds. Unfortunately, it’s only a reference to his Firefly character on his new show, Castle, but it’s pretty cool, with a couple of good lines . . . → Read More: Firefly is back, Singing Batman, and Cyborg Rats]]> Seriously, where else are you going to get a combination like that?

I’ve got three video clips for you today, and one of them is not fiction. See if you can figure out which one.

Firefly is back!

That’s right, Nathan Fillion has suited up one more time as Mal Reynolds. Unfortunately, it’s only a reference to his Firefly character on his new show, Castle, but it’s pretty cool, with a couple of good lines and music cues.

Singing Batman!

Okay, Batman doesn’t sing in this clip, but he does in this musical episode of Batman: The Brave and The Bold. To get a segue from the above clip, though, Nathan Fillion had a role in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog with Neil Patrick Harris. See if you can guess which one of them is singing in this clip.

Yeah, okay, you probably read the opening credits and know it’s NPH singing. Love the always-underappreciated Aquaman and Green Arrow bit. Also very fun to see the music played out on the utility lines. Favorite line: “His utility belt holds everything… can’t get that at the mall!”

Cyborg Rats!

What do you do if you’re a scientist with unfettered access to rats and robots? You build a cyborg, of course!

This is actually pretty cool.

I did some further reading on this, and it turns out that they went through a lot of groups of rats for this. Each group was given a letter designation (A, B, C, etc.). On some of the rats they used a serum to enhance brain activity. This was the enhanced group (as opposed to the “normal” group). It took 28 groups before they got a rat brain that was successful in controlling the robot. However, they never tested the Enhanced group because the successful rat (from the AB-Normal group) saw an active bunson burner and went on a rampage, terrorizing the Enhanced group before escaping. It’s said that he was lured back by the sound of a violin before being put down. The lead scientist, Dr. Franklin Stein, was annoyed but promised to press on with further research.

The new animated Green Lantern movie, First Flight was released last week. Here are the first four minutes of the film…

I’m looking forward to seeing the whole thing.

Not as much as I’m looking forward to the live action movie, though. But my excitement is a little tempered by news of who landed the role of Hal Jordan: . . . → Read More: Green Lantern: First Flight (and other Green Lantern news) – Tuesday TubeWatch]]> (Holy cow, was today Tuesday?! What happened to last week?)

The new animated Green Lantern movie, First Flight was released last week. Here are the first four minutes of the film…

I’m looking forward to seeing the whole thing.

Not as much as I’m looking forward to the live action movie, though. But my excitement is a little tempered by news of who landed the role of Hal Jordan: Ryan Reynolds. I like Ryan Reynolds in some roles. I think he could make a good Flash, for example (and in fact he was slated to play that role previously), but I don’t see him as Jordan. I think I see him as too comedic for the part.

Maybe I’m just still stuck on the idea of Nathan Fillion as Hal. I hope Reynolds pulls it off.

First of all, this . . . → Read More: Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern? – Tuesday TubeWatch]]> I’ve posted before about the Green Lantern movie(s) in the works. No cast has been announced, no real information has come to my attention at all about the live action movie, other than it’s still on the books. However, some fan put together a pretty good trailer for what he’d like to see, using Nathan Fillion as the lead character, Hal Jordan. And you know what… it looks pretty good:

First of all, this took a lot of work to put together, so kudos to the guy that created it. I’m not usually a fan of fan-made trailers for movies, but this one is pretty nice.

Obviously it’s really a collection of clips from various sources, including movies (Superman Returns, the Matrix trilogy, Serenity, Star Trek, etc), TV shows (most notably, Justice League), and video games. But most have been modified with new graphics and lighting effects that fit the Green Lantern look, and it really looks good (usually). You have to forgive the differences in look between the video game clips and the others, but it comes off surprisingly well integrated, in my opinion.

The other thing this trailer does for me is begin to allay my fears that the effects in the actual upcoming movie might look stupid. That still could happen, obviously, but if somebody could make the effects in this trailer themselves, even building on others’ work, the professionals getting paid to put something top-notch out should be able to blow us away.

Another surprise in this for me is that I think Nathan Fillion could actually take the role of Hal Jordan and do it justice. He didn’t occur to me as a possible actor for this role, but in thinking about it, I kind of hope he gets it.

All: COMMENTARY COMMENTARY FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS – IT’S A COMMENTARY

EVERYONE LOVES THESE “MAKING-OF”S THE STORY BEHIND THE SCENES THE WAY THAT WE GOT THAT ONE COOL SHOT AND WHAT IT ALL MEANS WE’LL TALK ABOUT THE WRITING WE’LL PROBABLY SAY “IT’S GREAT!” AND THE ACTING — SO EXCITING EXCEPT FOR NATE

Nathan: I phoned it in

All: COMMENTARY COMMENTARY SET COURSE FOR . . . → Read More: Dr. Horrible: Commentary! The Musical]]> Once again, I just have to say this is a genius idea.

All:
COMMENTARY
COMMENTARY
FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS – IT’S A COMMENTARY

EVERYONE LOVES THESE “MAKING-OF”S
THE STORY BEHIND THE SCENES
THE WAY THAT WE GOT THAT ONE COOL SHOT
AND WHAT IT ALL MEANS
WE’LL TALK ABOUT THE WRITING
WE’LL PROBABLY SAY “IT’S GREAT!”
AND THE ACTING — SO EXCITING
EXCEPT FOR NATE

Nathan:
I phoned it in

All:
COMMENTARY
COMMENTARY
SET COURSE FOR WONDER – IT’S A COMMENTARY

Sadly, I haven’t heard it yet. But I just looked through the lyrics. Funny stuff. I need to buy this DVD.

These two songs, the finale of act 1 and the start of act 2, are easily my favorites (though I love . . . → Read More: Horrible music is really pretty good]]> One of the things that surprised me most about Dr. Horrible was the quality of the music. I knew Joss Whedon had written a musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that got great fan reaction, but I’ve never seen it, so I didn’t know how good he and his brother were with music.

These two songs, the finale of act 1 and the start of act 2, are easily my favorites (though I love the first song of act 1 quite a bit as well).

I really think musically, “On the Rise” is probably the best song in the video. The interplay of the characters’ voices and lyrics is fantastic, plus it rapidly sets the tone for act two, which shows exactly what the song says – Dr. Horrible’s evil on the rise. This single video almost makes me believe a musical TV show could succeed (but then I remember “Cop Rock” – and I wonder if the general TV audience would be any more receptive now than in 1990).

Combine that quality music with the humor, and the quality story, and you have an explanation for the attention this internet-only little project has garnered (okay, it doesn’t hurt that Nathan Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris, and Joss Whedon all have rabid fan-bases).

The thing that might get me to actually buy the DVD when this comes out? Supposedly the commentary is going to be done purely in song. That is just too original of a concept to miss.