Toy Review: Super Robot Transformable Tomas

09/23/09

Super Robot Transformable Tomas (knockoff)

I’ve been wanting to pick this up for ages now, but Divisoria is just so far out of my way that I’ve been putting it off. Thankfully, there’s a store in a local mall that frequents that area, bringing goodies like this to all us good little boys and girls in the Ortigas area. Sure there’s a premium I’ve got to pay for the convenience of not having to deal with the 2 hour trip, the sweaty little firetrap corridors of 168 or Divimall, and the insane grid lock traffic of the ride back, but I think it’s a fair deal, don’t you?

You might have a little trouble spotting this gem since it’s packaged as 3 seperate train toys, a red, a blue, and a green one. Now, since I am not a 5 year old, I have limited knowledge of the “Thomas the Tank Engine” series created by Rev. W.V Awdry. According to a quick net search, he is a “fictional anthropomorphic steam locomotive”.

Thank god for wikipedia.

Further study reveals that the red engine is named James, the green is called Henry, and the blue one is either Thomas himself, or someone named Edward. It’s all very weird and a little like some kind of drug-addled nightmare. I mean they’re trains… with faces. It’s like something out of Dr. Who.

The 3 locomotives break apart, each re-forming into either the torso, or two limbs. “Form feet and legs!” It’s not a very involved transformation, but I’m sure kids will love it. There are instructions on the back of the card, but you don’t really need it to figure this all out. It’s basically just pull apart, fold out, and put back together, making Trainbot a partsformer in the truest sense.

All together, Trainbot is about as tall as the old Hasbro combiners back in the 80’s, or about as big as a Leader Class figure in today’s vernacular. That makes him a pretty good deal for what I paid for him (p250.00), but keep in mind that he is a knockoff. I don’t know who originally manufactured this toy, but the ones you’ll find here are definitely a sub-standard copies. Not only are there no decals or paint applications, the plastic is of the worse kind, brittle and prone to bending.

Mine’s head is also tooled improperly. Once it’s popped out, your stuck. The part won’t go back down into the body of the train again. I don’t know if it’s the same with all of them, but I would be surprised.

You’ll also want to watch out when you attach his “jetpack”. It’s attached to his back via a small post on the pack, but the hole on his back isn’t drilled or formed on a solid part. It’s simply a thin tab of plastic with a hole that tends to bend when you try to push this into it. If you’re not careful, you’ll be looking for another set and making this one into “Battle Damaged Super Robot Transformable Tomas”.

Overall, I wouldn’t really know who to recommend this to. If I had a kid young enough to be a fan of Thomas the Train, I’d be hesitant to give this to him. Pieces tend to break off (a few of his wheels broke off yesterday, and there’s that tab I mentioned) and with all the news about lead in toys from China, it’s an iffy proposition. Anyone old enough to play with it probably wouldn’t enjoy a Thomas the Train toy. I guess it’s just the oddball in me that likes it, and what Leader Class figure can you get for p250?

Blog Post: I hate James Oliver Rigney, Jr.

09/19/09

I hate James Oliver Rigney, Jr.

I really, really hate him. It wasn’t always like this. Back in 1990, when I was in junior high in Guam, I fell in love with the guy. That’s right. L-O-V-E, love. I was a nerd who spent a lot of time exchanging crappy old 50’s pulp paperbacks I picked up at yard sales for like 5 cents for nice shiny new fantasy novels in the local library’s trade-in section. You young ‘uns don’t know how much eBay went and fucked things up for you.

Anyway, I was there in the library and I come across this huge (I could barely wrap my pudgy twinkie coated hands around the thing) novel with that unforgettable cover art by Darrell K. Sweet. It wrapped around the whole book, some 670 pages, and when you opened it up, there was another unbelievable painting. It was beautiful. Now I know what they say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, but I’m not kidding, as soon as I saw this I was hooked. I immediately pulled “The Eye of the World” from the shelf and placed some silly Choose Your Own Adventure novelette in its place.

And lo and behold, right on the other side of the shelf was “The Great Hunt”. I brought the books home and started reading. What a world this guy had created, full of all the same things we had (economics, politics, differing social mores), but with all sorts of other stuff too (magic, monsters, adventure). It was populated by all sorts of people with all sorts of languages and customs. The characters felt more like people than the ones in Tolkien’s works, which had always felt to me like reading homework. These I couldn’t put it down.

I found “The Dragon Reborn” about a month later thinking it would be the last book, considering that the whole thing was about “The Dragon” being reborn. I was so excited to see how it would end. No such luck. After the third book came another. And another. One trilogy became two. Then three. Finally, 11 books and 18 years later, Wheel of Time fans still don’t know what happened at the end of the Third Age.

It got to the point where I was writing my own fan fiction on a role play site just to get by. Sadly, I must admit that my stories are no where near as engrossing as Jordan’s, and appreciation of them were limited to members of the old Wheel of Time Roleplay site. It was a poor substitute for the real thing. So we waited and waited and waited.

Then, on September 16, 2007, at the age of 58, James Oliver Rigney, Jr., better known to his fans as Robert Jordan, author of The Wheel of Time, died from cardiac amyloidosis.

I was devastated. I had waited for this man to finish a story I had loved for more than half my life and he up and croaked. I had feared this would happen since the rumors first started about his poor health. The time between chapters was getting longer and longer, and as each book came to an end, I kept thinking, “We’re not even at the Last Battle yet! How on Earth is he going to wrap this up in time?” Then, instead of finishing work on the last chapter, it was announced that he’d be working on 2 prequels to the series. I was incensed. I know this is callous beyond belief, but I wanted my ending. I wanted to see what Mr. Jordan intended for these characters when he started 2 decades ago.

Thankfully, Mr. Jordan didn’t leave without thinking of his fans. He had prepared enough notes for someone to take over. In 2008, the new author was Brian Sanderson. If you’ll go to his website at www.brandonsanderson.com, you’ll find his readthroughs of the entire series as prep to his work on the final book. It looked like he was set to do a great job continuing Mr. Jordan’s vision.

Having just read his first chapter on www.tor.com I’m skeptical that his prose will have the same impact as the first books. From what they’ve given us, his sentence structure is much more flowery than Jordan’s. I remember that Jordan’s was much more simple and easier to read. It really throws me off. I’m reserving judgment until the first part of A Memory of Light, The Gathering Storm hits shelves on November 3rd 2009.

Here’s hoping the 20 year lead up is worth it. We’ve got 3 more years of wait ahead.

Movie Review: Outlander

09/18/09

Outlander

As genre crossovers go, the Science Fiction/Viking mash-up is probably one of the rarest among the contenders. Even Science Fiction/Western sub-genre has more members in it’s little gang; Joss Whedon’s Firefly being the latest. But aliens and Norsemen? Nope, I can count the number of times I’ve seen that with my pinkie finger. That lends 2008’s Outlander a certain notoriety that no other film can really claim. Sure I love Viking movies like Prince Valiant, the 13th Warrior, and Beowulf, but none of those have spaceships and maurading aliens.

Long story short (the movie is just shy of 2 hours), spaceman Kainan is part of a failed attempt to terraform a planet by genocide. Naturally the dominant lifeforms, called Moorwen, were pissed that Kainan’s people were raining fire on them, chasing them into pits, and generally giving them a hard time. One of the aliens escapes the bombings, kills the first settlers on the planet and hitches a ride on the survivors’ ship, which subsequently crashes into Earth. Kainan, the lone survivor, must join with some rather unhygenic fellows to hunt down the last of the Moorwen and save the hot girl (Sophia Myles from Underworld).

It’s all pretty simple really.

Despite the long running time, the movie works. Mostly, it’s due to the fact that it’s not trying to be anything but what the audience expects it to be; an action movie. It also doesn’t try to offer complicated plot twists to spice things up with surprise developments or character turns. It is what it is and what it is is a rather ludicrous concept executed rather well, one that is predictable, but genuinely satisfying.

Naturally, there are a few issues I’ve got with this movie. One is the odd 2nd act, where James Caviezel starts bonding with the rest of the Vikings. There’s a good 20 minute section where they are playing a game called “Shields”. The set piece really breaks up the momentum of the film, especially coming after the great beginning.

You realize later this whole scene is forshadowing a trap they lay for the Moorwen. This brilliant plan fails, which isn’t unexpected, but the way the shoddy camera work and editing is. Movements aren’t always clear and sometimes you don’t know what is happening. Wulfric (Jack Huston), is running from the monster and then all of a sudden he’s swimming in the oil. There are a lot of fight scenes with this same kind of thing, where it seems as if movements don’t follow through cuts. It’s all very aggravating.

Another thing is the way they used Ron Perlman who plays Gunnar, a rival King. I’ve been a fan of Perlman’s since his old Beauty and the Beast days and felt his character deserved more than what he got here. For one, he looked great as a barbarian, with fur, and scars, and two stone hammers smashing skulls. The fight between him and John Hurt (who should not be taking hammer blows at his age) was great, but so so short.

But really, the final grade for the film depends on how satisfying it was at the end, and I’ve got to say, I was very satisfied. It’s got a great blend of things going for it - a strong cast, decent effects, rich production design, and a unique if somewhat preposterous premise. I would have definitely paid money to watch it in the theater.

Toy Review: Dawn

09/17/09

Dawn from McFarlane Toys

I’ve never been a big fan of McFarlane toys. Their product is often touted as “action” figures but they’ve always been far from it. Many can’t even boast of the simple 5 point joint system your old school He-Man figures used to have, and the joints they do have are often swivels that add nothing to a figures poseablility. They are essentially made to be displayed in one pose and one pose only.

That being said, this figure, based on Joseph Michael Linsner’s Dawn character has been on my want list since I first saw it on a 2008 filmschoolrejects.com list of the 10 Hottest Female Action Figures. Even if the figure was released back in 1999, the sculpt is still one of the best that any company has ever produced in this scale.

Like a lot of the figures in my collection, I don’t know a hell of a lot about the character Dawn. According to Wikipedia (how the hell did we do research before Wikipedia?), she is a comic character who first appeared in 1989 and is supposed to be a representation of the goddess of rebirth. There’s a whole lot of malarkey that follows about how Dawn is every woman and every woman is beautifyl, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. I skipped over it and decided there was a better way to find out about her. According to a Google Image Search (how on earth did we find pictures without the Google Image Search?), she’s a buxom lingerie model who likes swords.

The McFarlane statuette naturally leans toward to latter description. She is dressed in a green backless body suit, with gloves, boots and a skirt. It’s a pretty great look and there are excellent details to her costume and armor. I really love the vac-metalized belt she’s wearing, even if the process is notorious for chipping over time. It simply looks great.

Paint on the one I found was perfect as far as I could see. This may not be the case for all examples since I bought mine from a McFarlane collector at the recent Metro Comic Con. He most likely bought the best figure he could find. I hear very little about quality control issues about McFarlane so I imagine that there aren’t many problems on this toy’s production run.

As mentioned, articulation is crap. She’s got a ball jointed (if I’m not mistaken) neck that is useless because of her hair, shoulder swivels, elbow swivels, wrist swivels, angled thigh swivels, and one more set of swivels at the top of her boots. None of these are particularly useful except for perhaps the arm articulation which allows for her to gesture or hold the included sword in a couple of ladylike poses (I mean that “couple”; there are two poses only).

The accessories are minimal and are all really part of the base she comes with. There is a sword, a demon skull, a rose and vine, a pair of Greek theater masks, a weird tree trunk/stump thing with wings, and the asphalt base. I’m sure these items all have something to do with the story, but as I haven’t read the book, I couldn’t tell you their significance. They all look great though.

So there’s the good and the bad… and then there’s the pervy. The whole front of her costume is translucent. That’s right. It’s see-through. The sculpt underneath is even anatomically correct. Bewbs.

If you’ve been collecting action figures for any amount of time, you know that the female toys are always the ones that look the weirdest, which is why if you want a nice one, you need to shell out for statuettes like this one. No she doens’t have a hell of a lot of articulation, but the beautiful sculpt, the great looking accessories, and the fact that it’s an obscure character that doesn’t get a lot of attention (and hence doens’t warrant insane eBay prices) make this figure a good buy. I got mine at P900.00 loose which is less than a new figure from NECA, so if you can find one around that price I’d suggest picking it up.

District 9

09/3/09

District 9

Science Fiction isn’t a genre that has much of a following in the Philippines. My theory is that because of the lack of focus on science in schools, and the growing introversion of society, Pinoys grew up without the sense of wonder that American kids of the 70’s and 80’s grew up with. We lived in an age when Space Shuttle lauches were watched with a quiet awe and where we lived things like Star Trek and Transformers in our heads and wondered what it would be to race among the stars. Remember when every kid you knew wanted to be an astronaut? I do.

Nowadays, I can see why that awe has left us. Reality has set in. We’re no where near where the SciFi greats said we’d be. Where are the robots? The space ships and teleportation pads? We haven’t even reached Mars yet, let alone Proxima Centauri. I don’t remember the last time I saw a scientific breakthrough make it to the news. If it’s not sensationalist coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, then it’s news of impending doom, or the reality of today’s economy sinking in. No one has time to wonder anymore.

And that’s exactly where Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 comes in.

This isn’t the science fiction of Roddenberry’s day; bright utopian futures where no one worries about money and the goal of the human race is the betterment of all the species of the Federation. Nope, Blomkamp’s vision is of a world that wouldn’t be out of place in today’s news headlines. It’s set in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 90’s, when apartheid was still in effect. If you don’t know what apartheid is, shame on you. The slums of the city are a perfect backdrop to the story’s themes of prejudice and intolerance.

The plot goes like this: Ginormous alien spaceship drops out of the sky and parks itself right outside the city. The government eventually decides to break in and finds a million alien beings, starving in the hold. Government says “Hey, let’s build these guys a slum and take run experiments on them and take any technology we can find”. Naturally, aliens aren’t to happy about it. Local crime lords begin taking advantage of them, tensions rise between alien and human population. Violent, graphic family fun ensues.

It’s sort of a cross between Alien Nation, Blair Witch Project and Independence Day.

The hero of our story is Wikus van de Merwe, an office worker of MNU, a multi-national company that handles military contacts. They are the ones who are handling the security for District 9, the alien slum. When the disturbances between “prawns” (derogatory term for the aliens) and humans increase, and the human population demands their removal, the MNU are tasked to serve the prawns eviction notices. Wikus is promoted to the project manager. Naturally, the eviction and re-location doesn’t go as planned and Wikus finds himself teaming up with a sympathetic alien character, “Christopher” in an attempt to free his people.

While I love documentaries (I’m a PBS - Public Broadcasting Service - fan from way back), I’m not a fan of the “mock documentary” school of filmmaking. I hated Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield did little to redeem the genre for me. I’m of the opinion that there is a reason that hand held camera is reserved for scenes where you want to create tension. However, great storytelling can do wonders. Look at Battlestar Galactica. District 9 actually succeeds in it’s use of handheld because it takes the idea to another level. The whole movie is like a documentary complete with interviews from subject matter experts, candid shots, and the lame, sappy money shots, close ups that are meant to tug at your heartstrings. Of course, there are moments when you’ll be called upon to suspend your disbelief. How can the camera be following Wikus and Christopher into a SECRET underground lab? I don’t know, and I hardly care. The movie is good enough that I barely registered that until the moment was gone.

The effects aren’t the most spectacular. They’re meant to serve the story and the film. Since the film is meant to be a fake documentary, much of it is grainy and from odd agles. Word of advice, don’t eat a lot before sitting down to watch. It can make you queasy. Thankfully, SM cinema has cut out much of the gore that might have tickled my gag reflex. Oh, you’ll see a few dismemberments, and an exploding body or two, but their cut short. Those think they censored a lot of essential stuff can rest easy. The story is intact.

Sadly, I don’t think this kind of movie has much of a chance here in the Philippines. When it came out, it was in what is equivalent to limited release. Not all theaters were screening it, and those that did only had it on 1 screen. Even Megamall. Megamall had Transformers on 6 or 7 screens opening day. It’s really a sad day on Earth when a movie like Transformers is getting more attention than a movie like District 9. If you want to see it in theaters, as it was meant to be seen, go now. Don’t wait. I doubt it’ll last beyond a week and a half.