Good-bye 2015. Hello 2016.

Well, in less than 6 hours, California will cross into 2016.

I'm curious to see what 2016 has in-store. Stability? Instability? Will we get the torrential rains of El Niño that are anticipated? Will that assclown, Trump, be the GOP candidate? Will the fates laugh and let that jackass get elected? Will we wind up in another war? Will we wake up and change things?

Guess we'll find out. Time to figure out what movies I want to end 2015 with then figure out which bottle to tap.

Happy New Year and all that.

Beer-induced musings on 2015

My favored watering-hole closes for the balance of 2015. I've had pints and food there and now face a four-day weekend in which I'll see 2016 come on to the scene. Thanks to 6% beers (plural) I feel the urge to comment on my stream-of-consciousness:

• First of all: it's goddamn cold. Seriously. This is the coldest winter in ages. I wish I'd gotten PG&E to fix my goddamn wall heater.
• A year at a new job. Ups. Downs. Ambiguous territory. Comfort zone achieved (more or less). In that year I've hit a point where I've actually had to mentor some other poor soul. The joy of the tech industry. It's been a bumpy ride. I'm hoping 2016 will be better.
• Star Wars managed to redeem itself under J.J. Abrams. I'm unsure how I feel about that. I still want to kick Abrams in the teeth for "Lost". And I'm perversely pleased that George Lucas is unenthusiastic about The Force Awakens. In fairness to Lucas, the plot is a 21st-century ripoff of A New Hope. He's a bit justified in thinking that the film's popularity is bullshit. Having seen it twice, I'm not convinced Episode VIII can be as good without Harrison Ford to carry it, but it's going to be a damn sight better than the turd-blossoms that were the prequels.
• Guns. Seriously. Gun crimes have just gotten crazier in this country. Since when does the Second Amendment cover military-style weapons? The right to bear arms doesn't mean you're entitled to a weapon that can kill a room full of people in two seconds. This shit is fucked up.
• Cops killing African-Americans. That's been a thing for too long of a time. 2015 saw the topic get much-needed attention but it's truly disgusting to see how many unarmed Americans are shot dead by cops. What. The. Fuck?
• ISIS/ISIL/Whatever-the-fuck-they're-calling-themselves. So we have a new boogeyman out there. In fairness, these dickheads are pretty disgusting as simulacrums of humans go. Still, I'm getting tired of shitbags elsewhere in the world being waved about here as an excuse to justify turning this country into some fascist wet-dream. That shit needs to stop.
• Donald Trump. Okay, on the topic of fascists, what the fuck? Why are there people in the United States who pay any attention to this fucktard? Why do we have so many inbred, mouth-breathing, home-grown fascist shitheads who think his brand of stupid is okay? Why is this asswipe getting airtime? Oh wait. He's rich. Nevermind. Carry on.
• It's a sign that one needs to invest in a proper bookshelf when one has towers of books stacked in front of one's already-full bookshelf. Time for a trip to Target/IKEA/whatever. Sigh.
• I'm still thinking Calicraft Oaktown Brown may be my favorite bottled beer in 2015.
• I'm thinking that High West's "Campfire" blend of rye, bourbon, and scotch is my favorite sipping liquid. I plan to end 2015 with a glass of such, assuming I can refrain from killing the bottle between now and then.
• I'm thinking "14" by Peter Clines will be the book in 2015 that had the biggest impact on me.
• Another year of my gaming group going solid on the new campaign I've shoved down their throats. New group. New dynamics. Lots of weirdness. It's still going strong, though. Well, more-or-less.
• I will be totally jazzed if Bernie Sanders somehow defies the odds and takes the presidency in 2016.
• Did I mention it's cold? Fucking hell. I think my adopted cactus plant froze.

Thoughts on "The Force Awakens"

I can't stop myself. Must speculate ramble incoherently in a drunken way.





Spoilers. Be warned.




















































Still there? Foolish Jedi. The Spoiler Side is stronger.

















Okay, so The Force Awakens takes place a good three decades after the events of Return of the Jedi in which Lando Calrissian, Wedge Antillies (sp?), and a bunch of teddy-bear aliens defeated the Empire with a little help from Han Solo, Leia Organa, and Chewbacca. Oh, and Luke was there, too. He was busy setting out daddy issues or something.

In the aftermath, Han and Leia got busy and, in due course, had a rugrat they named Ben.

Being the son of Leia and grandson of Anakin, little Ben was strong in the Force. When Luke decided to rebuild the Jedi Order (hopefully discarding the lies and garbage Yoda and Obi-Wan taught him), he took Ben into the school to teach him.

Then everything went wrong.

First off: how the hell did Luke screw that up? How did Supreme Leader Snape (Snorkel, Snoop-Dog... I can never remember his name) weasel his way into Luke's Jedi school and lure impressionable young Ben over to the Dark Side? And what the hell are the "Knights of Ren"?

io9 has a bunch of articles discussing backstory on all this. I'm disinclined to pay too much attention to backstory not actually covered in the movie.

My reasons are simple: if you need backstory from other media to understand what's going on in a movie, that's lazy storytelling.

So anyway, we find out that Ben Solo is now going by the inexplicable name of Kylo Ren (following in the Supreme Leader's footsteps of having an unimpressive-sounding villain name). He's got a mask to hide his coiffed hair and the anger-control issues of a demented fifteen-year-old boy.

Supreme Leader Snark's First Order (nice name) builds yet another Death Star (because the first two were obvious successes), only this one is built out of a planet and eats suns to blow up planets on the other end of the galaxy using hand-wavy Star Wars science.

All said, not a terrible plan.

Supreme Leader Sniffles and Kylo Ren are also looking for Luke who has gone into hiding after his school got wiped out.

My bad. Clearly, Luke learned his lessons from Yoda on how to be a whiny quitter instead of rolling with the punches and actually fighting the bad guys.

Apparently "Jedi" is a Galactic term for "weak-ass whiny punk".

For some reason, Supreme Leader Snotty is actually afraid of Luke and wants to find him. And there's a map.

Okay, wait. Why is there a map? And in a society with faster-than-light travel, why does that map have multiple points on it? Wouldn't it be better simply to have destination coordinates? As I understand it, hyperdrive can take you from where you are to virtually anywhere, given arbitrary fuel factors and what not.

*Shakes head*

Nevermind.

Meanwhile, Finn (aka "FN-blah-blah-blah") showing actual guts, quits his job as a janitor stormtrooper (seriously, they have the black guy working in sanitation in the First Order? WTF?). He busts out a rebel resistance pilot and they steal a TIE and the fun begins.

The pilot, Poe, winds up giving Finn his name and they bond in what would make an awesome buddy movie.

Seriously, I'd watch the Adventures of Finn and Poe as they steal First Order spaceships and fuck up the bad guys. I think that would be tight.

Stuff goes on. Finn and Poe are separated. Then Finn meets Rey.

Okay, so Rey is becoming a lightning rod out there. There's accusations that she's a "Mary Sue". I don't buy it. Let's discount for a moment any ancestry issues we're working out with her. She was abandoned on a shithole planet and raised having to fend for herself. It's made her a tough fighter and given her a broad skill set. Add to that the fact that she's clearly strong in the Force without her brain being polluted by Jedi bullshit dogma.

So far she's the biggest badass in the show aside from Finn, who may or may not have access to the Force in any significant way.

They meet, bond, and steal the Millennium Falcon (what a coincidence!) then wind up embroiled in the crazy.

Rey's sharp but seems to think the family who abandoned her to slowly starve to death on a crappy junkyard planet will come back.

Issues.

She's got a weird connection to Luke's lightsaber (somehow recovered from Bespin... also a weird coincidence). She's sufficiently badass that she is able to rescue herself from a cell using a Jedi mind-trick (without the hand wave). She can stop Kylo Ren's mind-probe powers. And she can pick up lightsaber skills pretty quick.

Okay, that sounds like an argument in-favor of the Mary Sue claim (despite the fact that "Mary Sue" can't possibly apply here, but I digress).

I think Rey's prowess isn't unreasonable. Luke had weird visions under weirder circumstances as did Anakin before him. Rey and Finn's ability to fight Kylo Ren (a trained Force user) on Starkiller Base seems ridiculous until you remember Kylo Ren had a hole in him from Chewbacca's bowcaster. And he was an emo, whiny punk.

Finn, a trained soldier, handled himself fine until Kylo remembered he has Force powers.

When Rey steps in, she's reasonably-fresh and has strong Force powers.

And then there's the parentage argument.

So it's implied (vaguely) that Rey may be Luke's daughter. Whether or not Luke adopted the whole "Jedi don't marry" thing, he still could have shacked up with someone and had a kid. As a child, Rey could have witnessed Daddy Luke lightsaber fighting and remembered some of that subconsciously.

Okay, that's a stretch, but we're talking about superpowered warrior monks. It's no weirder than the rest of the premises of the film.

So is Rey Luke's daughter? I honestly don't know. I know Abrams likes to tease and taunt with mysteries. I know Star Wars is supposed to be following the Skywalker family. Seems logical Rey is Luke's kid. A lot of that really depends on who her mother is.

Rey was abandoned on Jakku, a desert shithole junkyard where she lived a pretty terrible life.

If Luke is her father, seems he's going to be on the hook for neglect charges and therapy bills.

But Luke may not have known Rey was on Jakku. It's possible Rey's mysterious mom dropped her on Jakku, possibly being pursued. She may have intended to come back and met an untimely end.

Or it's a plot hole that will never be filled. Whatever.

Rey, when hearing Luke's name, seems to think he's a legend. She could have been faking, but if she's Luke's daughter, why react at all? Why just not shrug off the name. Seemed weird. It's possible Rey is Luke's kid but she was separated from him before she ever learned he had a name beyond "Daddy".

Seems like she was pretty young. I'm just sayin'.

If Rey is indeed offspring of Luke, it seems like old Ben Solo/Kylo Ren didn't inherit any ability to sense his cousins in the Force pool of powers. Leia may have. She and Rey hug when they first meet, which is weird. But that could also just be bad writing.

I'm nitpicking on these points because they bug me, of course. I still enjoyed the film immensely, but I really hope the writers have satisfactory answers to questions instead of Abrams' usual hand-wavy bullshit.

Review: "The Husbands of River Song" (Latest Doctor Who Xmas special)

So... yeah. The latest Doctor Who Xmas special aired.

Spoilers.


















































Still there? You were warned.


















I'm really tired of this tradition. I'm prefacing my review with that. I'm really tired of Xmas stories in Doctor who.

So this is kind of stand-up comedy instead of a proper Doctor Who episode.

The Doctor is hanging out on some planet in the 51st century (which looks remarkably un-advanced, but let's move on). A weird bald guy recruits the Doctor thinking he's a surgeon. The bald guy is working for River Song, who does not recognize the Doctor. She needs a surgeon to remove a diamond from the brain of her husband, Hydroflax, the cyborg king of some empire. She wants to kill the king to steal back the diamond to sell it off.

There's some craziness and the Doctor and River make off with Hydroflax's head.

Turns out Hydroflax's body is a killer robot that takes the heads of others in its pursuit of River and the Doctor.

There's some shenanigans. River steals the TARDIS with the Doctor in it. They pop over to a spaceship where River plans to sell the diamond and... much craziness happens. The whole time, the Doctor and River are mixing while she has no idea that he's the Doctor.

They're cornered and then the Doctor tips off River and there's much um... yeah. Stuff.

Then... the conclusion. Overall pros:

• The Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston dynamic.
• Some funny bits.
• The sonic screwdriver.
• A somewhat satisfying conclusion to the River Song story.

Overall cons:

• The Sonic Sunglasses again????
• Sonic Trowell?
• The utterly nonsensical plot.

Review: "Nie Yin Yiang" ("The Assassin")

As I apparently have not had enough of movies this weekend, I watched Nie Yin Yiang (The Assassin). As a fan of wuxia and martial arts films, I figured this would be a slam-dunk couple of hours of fun.

Frankly, I was bored to tears watching this film. I never did figure out what was going on or who meant who to what or why. A lot of the cinematography had far-off shots or scenes as viewed through gauzy silk, as though the audience were voyeurs in the shadows (presumably to mirror the view of the titular assassin herself).

Frankly, it didn't work for me at all.

A shame, really. I'd heard a lot of hype over how gorgeous and original this film was. There were some pretty scenes, but frankly the entire thing felt choppy and amateurish. I don't understand the love.

Oh well. I can still bask in the glow of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I saw it in 3-D IMAX last night.

Sweet Jedi goodness that film was awesome!

Oh, I could nitpick on a few things (I can always nitpick on things) but that film was head-and-shoulders better than it had a right to be. I'd rate it up there with Episode IV ("A New Hope") and Episode V ("The Empire Strikes Back"). In terms of dialog, acting, direction, and awesomeness of heroes, it blows Episode VI ("The Return of the Jedi") out of the water. Obviously the prequels are left far, far behind in the dust.

I'm going to show uncharacteristic restraint and not make any kind of specific review. I don't want to spoil anything.

My faith in "Star Wars" is renewed. My faith in J.J. Abrams is renewed. I'm going to go find my lightsaber and break some lamps in my apartment now.

Don't quite get it

So apparently there's a remake of Ghostbusters in the making. It's a gender-switch, so it's got an all-female cast of Ghostbusters with a male admin of some sort.

Cute gimmick, I guess.

Back in July, io9 insisted on no longer referring to it as "All female Ghostbusters". To wit, I have to ask: why?

This is an obvious remake of an existing, successful film. There was an obvious move to replace the four male protagonists with four female protagonists (even down to the one token member of African ethnicity). Why not call it what it is?

It's a remake of Ghostbusters and it's got a female cast. This is what it is. It's not an original thing. It's a remake of an existing, successful film using a gimmick of swapping out the male cast with female cast. Sure, they may rock the roles and make this awesome, or even better than the original, but it's still a remake with very specific, conscious casting choices. Why pretend otherwise?

Sometimes io9 makes no sense to me.