Archive for August 19th, 2008
iPod batteries overheating in Japan. Meanwhile, Jobs says he’ll fix crashing iPhone. More on the bigfoot scam. Google Android phone is real. Yahoo opening up Buzz to the public. Sounds like Digg to me. Researchers say Vista gets dumped from 1/3 of enterprise PC’s. Microsoft dropping fees left and right. They also like tailored search now. IDF in play in San Francisco. MSNBC behind the times. 29-percent Internet users buy from spam solicitations.
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I would venture to say you have been living in a cave if you haven’t heard that they want to do a live action version of the 80’s cartoon Voltron. I have been a bit apprehensive about this since Voltron never had the same following that The Transformers had, so I am afraid it just won’t get the same big budget treatment.
So the question becomes, will Hollywood once again fist-jab my childhood and continue to take the bright spots of my young life and tie me to a chair to execute them before my eyes? Or will this movie achieve the level of goodness that was The Transformers?
Voltron, more then maybe any other cartoon, was one of my favorites. I had all the original Die-Cast lions and they formed up into the giant defender of the universe, with a huge plastic plasma sword. The NNCC (the people who ruined all our toys by making them “safe”) would shudder to see it. I liked Voltron because it didn’t have a complicated back story like Transformers, or the X-Men and I could just sit back and enjoy the stories each week. Don’t get me wrong, I love the comic book arcs that surrounded X-Men and being able to learn about all the individual transformers was great, especially when I would sit around with my friends and have intense arguments about whether StarScream really wanted to destroy MegaTron, or if they were just putting on a show to keep the other decepticons in line.
Anyway, I digress, Voltron was just good fun without too much thinking involved, and sometimes that is nice. I am afraid, though, that when pitched to the big screen people, it will run the coat tails of The Transformers, and that success will be used as a reason why Voltron will succeed. However, coat tails mean that Voltron will likely get a cheaper, “let’s try and see” type of budget and the story line may or may not be true to the original feel of the story. I have heard bits and pieces of the movie storyline and already I can see that they are deviating from the original. Instead of defending the Galactic Alliance, Voltron will apparently be an “Earth” defender who will be protecting earth from invaders. Hopefully the Alliance will be given play in the movie and they will go that direction. I would hate to see a “Transformers” type of story line that takes place in our reality and has a typical military feel too it. I would love it if they went on a world building exercise with the movie and created the alliance and put it in a completely different reality, then what we see today.
i09.com is reporting that they are planning on giving it a Frank Miller type of movie feel using the same B-tech CGI that made 300 look completely awesome, so that makes me a little more excited about it. However, the success of this movie will not rest solely on the graphics and effects. It will demand a good, true to the original storyline that will engage the audience and hopefully create a new generation of Voltron fans.
Oh and Hollywood, one more thing, updating these stories doesn’t mean that they have to be more graphic and more violent. They were fine the way they were.
So, what say you? Are you excited, or even interested in a Voltron remake? Let me know in the comments, and in the meantime, I leave you with the OG intro for Voltron.
The Olympics aren’t geeky, but …this is just so full of win that I couldn’t help share it.
World Record card stacker [ Bryan Berg ] has recreated the Beijing Olympic Village using 140,000 playing cards.
Thanks to [ Diagonal View ] for posting this originally
Bryan originally made the Guiness Book of World Records by building the World’s Tallest House of Cards in 1992 at the age of seventeen, with a tower fourteen feet, six inches tall. His latest record-holding structure in the category is over twenty-five feet tall. In 2004, Guinness created a new record category for the World’s Largest House of Cards to recognize a project Berg built for Walt Disney World–a replica of Cinderella’s Castle. He continues to hold both records.
Bryan, you get to sit at the Desk of Awesome today.