Update 7/21: Shame on anyone that missed the free viewing of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which ended today. Extra shame on anyone that still has no idea what Dr. Horrible even is. What’s not to love about a fourty-minute web musical starring a low-rent supervillain trying to make it into the Evil League of Evil and win the girl of his dreams whom he sees every weekend at the laundromat (who’s inadvertently swept off her feet by his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer)?

Everyone involved is spectacular, but I was particularly amused to see Nathan Fillion playing the moronic Captain Hammer. I just about died during “Everyone’s A Hero” when he started singing about “bashing in minds.” There are even a couple of twists n the final act that caught me off guard. One isn’t too difficult to guess at, but the other was pretty shocking and very sad.

If you are one of the unfortunate souls that completely missed out on the free viewing you can still pick it up on iTunes. $3.99 for the entire series is a steal, and a soundtrack is supposed to be out soon. Do yourself a favor and buy it.

Virginia

I was lucky enough to spend a week in Virginia with a good friend and had a blast. We spent a lot of time watching movies, but I also got to visit Washington DC for the first time, as well as meet some new people. The flight back was an experience too; flying was fun, but with a two-hour layover in Atlanta meant that I didn’t get home until 5:30am the next day (that’s about twelve hours from taking off in D.C. to arriving home in Michigan). I’d just like to thank everyone in Virginia again–particularly the one that made the trip possible–for an awesome time.

Return to Oz

Liliy finally got me to watch Return to Oz, an awesome movie that’s much better than the original. Unless you completely hate the original film, you should definitely see it.

MO and RPG

Thanks to the freak power outage, I haven’t had time to get to any new Maikeru On themes; I’d hoped to do both a Christmas and 2008 theme, but it looks like they’ll both be late. On the plus side, the MORPG prototype forum is up if anyone is interested in participating. Even if you don’t have anything particular to contribute, you can still join the forum, post in the general section, and test out new features as they are added.

Half-Life

Half-Life has devoured most of my time these past few days. I got The Orange Box for Christmas, and ended up purchasing Half-Life from Steam so I could get the backstory for Half-Life 2. Having finished the original and Portal and started on Half-Life 2, I can safely say that these are some of the greatest games ever. Coolest moment so far: in Half-Life 2, there’s a spot where you have to load bricks onto one end of a see-saw platform to  get the other end up high enough to reach a ledge. It sounds boring, but those kinds of physics are rarely found in a game, and that level of detail and interaction really help to immerse you in the experience.

Dai-Guard and D.Grey-Man

I finally got Dai-Guard (perfect collection) for Christmas. I’m only six episodes in, but it’s definitely one of the better mecha anime I’ve seen. It’s always funny to see a stuffy board of directors argue over forms and funds while their pay-roll pilots launch the mecha with their say. The real genius of Dai-Guard is that it presents a fairly plausible picture of what things would probably be like if an independent corporation had it’s own giant mecha: the thing constantly breaks due to poor construction, and the corporate board sees it as a money pit that should never actually be used.D.Grey-Man is awesome, by the way. It’s the first actual manga I’ve read, but it’s good. And it’s probably going to eat away at my bank account now.

Safari

I’ve been playing with the Firefox 3 beta release for awhile now, and it’s really good. Unfortunately, it’s also not compatible with most of my extensions, and it made me realize that without those, there’s no particular reason for me to use Firefox. I decided to give Apple’s Safari a shot, and I’m extremely pleased so far. It’s really slick, and lightning-fast compared to Firefox. Firefox 3’s address bar autocomplete is still prettier, but Safari has it beat on speed. I might end up sticking with it.

And Finally…

… here’s to a new year; to new beginnings, new places, new opportunities, new experiences, and new people. To overcoming, letting go, and finding happiness. To good times and good friends. Here’s to what will hopefully be an explosively awesome year. Happy new year everyone!

The Fountain is an excellent movie. It’s also very confusing; I was more than a little disappointed with it after seeing it in theaters. After awhile (and a lot of thinking) things started to make a little more sense, though. I just saw it again for the second time last night, and it was a lot better the second time. If you’ve ever seen The Fountain and were more than a little confused and disappointed, consider this: the conquistador from the 16th century is fictional.

Everything from the 16th century is part of Izzy’s manuscript, The Fountain.

Understanding that probably helps a lot. The movie drops a lot of hints throughout, but never really comes out and says it. The previews don’t help much either, as they heavily suggest that the same Hugh Jackman spans all three time periods. I spent most of the movie trying to understand how that worked out the first time I saw it, what with Conquistador-Jackman getting stabbed (and presumably dying) in the first ten-minutes. Once you realize that all of those scenes are from the manuscript, though, things make more sense. Scientist-Jackman—whom we spend most of our time with—is real. Astronaut-Jackman is also real, and the tree he’s taking to Xibalba is his wife (scene parallels help a lot with making this connection).

This isn’t the only interpretation, though. The director, Darren Aronofsky, has purposely left the film vague and refuses to provide a clear-cut answer as to what exactly is going on. Josh Tyler over at CinemaBlend agrees with my theory, and post a collection of other theories not-long after the movie was released last November. Many of them raise some interesting points, but I think the theory Josh and I agree on is the most likely based on what we actually see in the movie.

In the meantime, there’s… not much. Already saw Resident Evil: Apocalypse (great movie, go see it). I suppose there’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but I’m not terribly anxious to run out and see it.

Autumn started yesterday, so get out and enjoy it! Of course, it’s still unreasonably warm for my tastes, but that’ll change soon (Michigan weather being what it is and all). Autumn tends to be my favorite time of year, tying it up with Winter. Spring and Summer are highly overrated. So here’s to leaves changing color, snow, and all the other things that make Autumn and Winter better than the other half of the year!

That’s about it for current events. My father’s birthday was today (which is why it took so long to get things up). Also saw The Bourne Supremacy finally, which was quite good. If you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out.