Last Thursday I made the probably unwise decision to see the live-action interpretation of Ghost In the Shell starring Scarlet Johannson at the local movie theater.  The terrible weather in the Bay Area aside (continual rain, Washington DC-like cold, gusts of wind up to 50 miles per hour), it's just not a good movie.  I was expecting a half-assed retelling of the original movie's story with additional Hollywood elements, and I wasn't disappointed in that respect.

tl;dr - Don't bother.  ScarJo's new movie is a bad cosplay that'll leave you feeling like you just took some pills a random person …

I've had some ideas kicking around in the back of my head for a while, in particular after finally watching the other two Star Wars prequels (I saw the first and it put me off from watching the other two for many years - ye gods...) and this article in the Huffington Post about where the next movie might be headed. I'll not cover that territory because there really isn't any reason to, but there are a few things that I've been ruminating on for a while.

First, let me state a couple of things up front: I'm not a raving …

Last night, after some juggling of schedules, Lyssa, Laurelindel, and I went to see Prometheus, the long-awaited prequel to the Alien movies which feature the designs of (and inspired by) the artist H.R. Giger. I have to admit, we had some trepidation going in because the Alien movies are some of our favorites (and there were only three, we maintain) and unless it was done right the prequel was destined to suck.

Well....

Prometheus is a deeply flawed movie. The writing is good in some parts, okay in others, but it has a few scenes that should have been …

A couple of nights ago I went to see Tron: Legacy again with Jason, and we spent much of the evening afterward discussing it, as we are wont to do. I haven't been keeping up with reviews of it, to be honest, I just know what a couple of people said about it. Largely, their opinions were that the movie was visually stunning (it was), the effects were top notch (they were), but the plot was somewhat lacking and relied a little bit too much on references to the original movie. If nothing else, the soundtrack is awesome and I …

About two Fridays ago, Lyssa and I hopped the Metro to go toward downtown DC to a little indie movie theatre on E Street, the one theatre in the area that is showing the movie Daywatch (or Дневно́й дозо́р, if you speak Russian). The movie picks up some time after the events of Nightwatch - Anton is training Svetlana, the woman at the end of the first movie as a member of the Night Watch, when all hell breaks loose (as one would expect of such a movie).

Under this cut, here there be spoilers... if you haven't seen …