James Cameron's Avatar

Remember when James Cameron was cool? Before he came out with that 3-hour long cheese fest about a boat and a grandma and a hundred year-old pendant? Remember him when he was doing movies with ground breaking special effects that were pushing the envelope of what film could do? Remember when he was creating characters that stuck with you? Like that robot from the future out to kill the mother of the savior of our race? Or that time he made this movie about this band of soldiers stuck on an alien planet with a horde of big toothy motherfuckers looking to eat their brains? Or that time he set one of his stories at the bottom of the ocean and broke open the CGI industry.

You probably don't. You're too young.

Suffice to say, there was a James Cameron before Titanic. Pre "I'm the King of the World!" Cameron. A Cameron who was known for creating entertaining action flicks that didn't stick in your craw and make you want to brain old ladies and push scruffy hero characters overboard into freezing waters. That Cameron knew how to pace a movie so there was never a dull moment. He knew how give audiences a character you could root for. He knew how to give us characters you could despise.

With "James Cameron's Avatar" (this is, I suppose, a way to distinguish it from Avatar: The Last Airbender, which by the way, is something else you should definitely check out), Jimmy is back in top form. Good vs. Evil plot? check. Flawed human characters mucking things up? check. Heroically Heroey Hero man who needs to step up and take the role he was destined for? check. Strong, Female leads that aren't your standard damsel in distress and who kick more ass than any of the men? check. Even his mastery over CGI is back; I bet George Lucas wishes he had half this talent.

Since this review is pretty late, you've probably already heard all about the movie and decided that it's going to rock. I'm going to write it up anyway since I too, have decided that it rocks. This in no way invalidates my earlier position on Plurk that CGI and MTV have ruined Hollywood. That still stands. Michael Bay and McG and the other music video directors turned feature filmmakers who think that pretty girls, big explosions, shiny cars, and big robots are all that people want still suck. These guys don't care about character and plot. That is why stuff like Transformers and Terminator: Salvation leaves you're brain so quickly. It wasn't really engaged in the first place. The triumph of spectacle indeed.

Cameron on the other hand understands that when smart people go see a movie, we want to see people we relate to. We don't really care if the dialogue is cheesy ("I see you" is the new "You complete me") or that the aliens look kinda funny (they're aliens, duh). By the middle of the movie, you've forgotten all that. And that's where Cameron succeeds. By the end of the first reel, you're already involved in Jake Sully's story and you forget the weird cat faces and odd, too crisp movement of the CG characters. After the opening sequence I even forgot the movie was in 3D; I was so immersed in the story that I didn't pay attention to what was live action and what was faked.

Are there problems with the script? Sure there are. There aren't many memorable lines here. No "I see dead people." or "I gave her my heart, and she gave me a pen." or even an "I'll be back." Sure the aforementioned Na'vi greeting is probably being used by every couple out there now, but It's not a "Go ahead. Make my day."
This is a very simple plot. It's the good guys agains the bad, underdog against Simon Bar Sinister. None of those convoluted twists that younger directors feel the need to insert into everything. It's not an art film trying to do something "original" or "edgy". You know what's going to happen 30 minutes into the movie and I ask you, is that such a bad thing?

Humans aren't all that complicated to begin with. We hear the same stories all the time, we all have similar mythologies. Ever wonder why? Because we are cheesy. We like the cheese. Bring it on. Remember True Lies when Arnold went over all jealous over a car salesman? We loved that. What about when we all thought Bud was a goner at the end of Abyss? I got choked up. The switches that drive most of us aren't all that hard to find,and Cameron seems to have a manual. Even Titanic, chick flick that it was, was a whole Universe beyond Twilight. So what about Avatar? Does it break new ground? Probably not. There's nothing we haven't seen before. But in the end, does that matter?

Story is still king, and Cameron knows it. He knows how to frame action and use his CG to support the plot, not set pieces. Like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, he doesn't rely on the CGI to pull the movie out, but rather uses it to enhance scenes, to make us this alien world that is both terrifying and beautiful. If Science Fiction is the literature of wonder, then Cameron must be a fan. Every frame of Pandora ups the wow. It brings me back to the times when I was a kid and wondered if there really were living zepplins floating in the clouds of Jupiter.

I'm sure once I see the film again, I'll find little things wrong with it. Small things that I didn't see before. I'm sure after several viewings I might eventually get bored of it. I fell asleep during my 3rd viewing of Dark Knight. Right now though, I can't wait to see Sully experience Pandora again, running through the bioluminescent jungle, jumping through 1000 year old trees, and flying through floating mountains. I hope his follow up will be just as satisfying.

Now if only someone would make an articulated Powersuit that will hold 6 inch figures...

Dead or Alive Trading Figures

If you've collected 1/18th toys for awhile, they you know what a sausage fest it is. Both Star Wars (which pioneered the scale) and GI Joe are boys lines and the consensus among toy manufacturers is that boys don't want to play with girls. You would have thought 250,000 years of evidence to the contrary would have been enough to convince them otherwise.

Realistically, this may have been true when the lines were conceptualized; back in the days of the USA vs. whatever-bad-guy's-currently-available, boys were concious of not looking like pansies. But today, when more and more kids would rather play video games than role play with action figures, the toy companies need to realize there's been a paradigm shift. More than ever, the collector's market is becoming more prominent.

If you dig deep enough in any collector's closet, you'll find that closely guarded "hot girl collection". Sure if a collector is married or in a long-term relationship, that collection may have fallen victim to some "compromising", but at one point or another, it was there. Us collectors WANT female figures in our lines. We want to see that Baroness standing next to Destro, or Teela next to He-Man. We want our Princess Leia in the Gold Bikini.

Sadly, we don't see this happen a lot. We're lucky if we get 1 female figure in a line. Often times, even if a character is a big figure in the series, she still doesn't make the draft. Look at Scarlett in the Sigma 6 line. Big in the cartoon series but we had to wait through something like 10 waves of repaints and retools before we heard news that she was coming out. We got all excited, and then they cancelled the line.

Say it with me. "Fuck You, Hasbro".

So, back to my point. The 1/18 scale is woefully lacking in the female characters. Which is one of the reasons that I've been looking for this particular set for over 2 years now. I finally found a "pre-owned" one from another collector who was streamlining (Thanks, man!) for p700. One of the figures was slightly damaged, hence the relatively cheap price, but it's nothing a little glue won't fix.

The Dead Or Alive set consists of 6 articulated figures; Kasumi (Blue), Kasumi (White), Ayane (Purple), Ayane (White), Hitomi, and Lei Fang. They're about 4" tall, so they're perfectly in scale with Joes or Star Wars figures. This of course means girl ninjas to kick Snake Eye's butt.

 

 

 

The girls are sculpted in the typical japanalicious way. Colored hair, heart shaped faces, huge eyes, tiny
noses and mouths, big breasts, slim waists, round hips and butts, and long legs. If you've played the video game that these are based on, then you know one of the draws is that these are typical extensions of various male fantasies. They look very pretty and great next to other toys. They've even got transluscent hair so that they photograph better.

One of the big features of the earlier installments of the game was that you could turn the "gainaxing" (look it up) of the female characters on or off, depending on how pervy you were willing to admit you were. I'm a particulary pervy person so I always had it on. This year's Ninja Gaiden went one further and gave us the ability to control the movement using the game pad. How's that for progress?

Articulation is really nice on these, especially considering they are trading figures. You've got movement at the nape of the neck, where the neck meets the chest, the shoulder, an arm swivel, a diagonal swivel for an elbow, a wrist swivel, a slanted swivel waist, V-cut hips, thigh cuts, hinge knees, and rocker ankles. All told, that's 19 points of articulation. The two Ayanes have 22 since they've got 3 more joints for they're huge yellow bows. When you compare that to the 13 or 14 that today's joes have, that's amazing.

 

 

Note that I said most of them are swivels, including their elbows. That's because these toys are so tiny and
delicate, that adding hinges wouldn't be advisable.Though angled swivels don't work so well in bigger scales, here they do their job nicely. paired with the various other swivels allows one to have the flexibility needed here. They are actually a very nice balance between sculpt and joint work, though the plastic they are made of can become brittle.

That really becomes a problem when you try and switch out the hands with the other sets, which each figure comes with. They are all a very tight fit and don't come out very easily. You need to pull very hard to get them out and the post that connects them can snap just like that. This is a problem since you can not easily glue
it back. The parts are too tiny, with too small a surface area to have any kind of strength once broken.

Other than the extra hands, each also comes with a few other things. Kasumi has her short sword, Ayane her bow. Hitomi also has this circular impact effect thing that is supposed to go around her foot I guess. Lei Fang gets nada. They all do come with a plain, rectangular black stand. Unfortunately, it only fits them. It comes with a post and a twist tie that act as away you can display them kicking in the air. Low-tech, but effective.

You'd be lucky to find these figures out there at the local specialty shops. Even if you did, they're trading figures, so they come in a blind box. This means that the box is identical for all figures and there is no
indication of what's inside. This is a stupid way of doing things, especially since Japanese companies who do this usually pack in crappy figures with the good ones. Thankfully, there isn't a bad one in the bunch here.

Though I do favor Hitomi and Lei-Fang for their regular civilian clothes, each of th figures looks great.
At less than p1000 for the set, this was a great bargain. Current prices on sites like www.toywiz.com are about $30 USD, not including shipping or the insane customs fees we have here in the Philippines. I imagine it's
even more on eBay if you're lucky enough to find a set.

 

 

Snake Eyes & Storm Shadow

Originally posted at slangards.multiply.com on Nov 7, '09

There are a few toy lines that have become media franchises. G.I. Joe which has been around since the early 1960's is one. They started as military figures, Barbies for boys, with the familiar green fatigues of real american troops and relatively realistic gear.  In the 1980's they shrunk to 3.75" to cash in on the success of the Star Wars line that shared that scale. That's when it really took off, becoming one of the merchandising cash cows for toy maker Hasbro.

The line died down in the mid 1990's. With odder product lines in weird neon colors, outlandish weapons, and vehicles that looked more and more ridiculous, the series just lost a lot of it's original fan base. But in 2003 and 2004, Hasbro released Spy Troops and Valor vs. Venom, cartoon series that brought back the original military feel and lead to my favorite line of G.I. Joes, the 8" Sigma6 line.

Epic Mickey is Coming!

Originally posted at slangards.multiply.com on Nov 7, 2009

Of all the sub-cultures that exist for geeks and nerds in the world, gaming is one that I never really got into. It's the result of many factors. First off, I suck at them. I was well into my 20's before I finished Super Mario Bros. The original Nintendo version. 8-bit. Recognize. I didn't get better with age. The only way I can make it through games is if I print out a cheat sheet or walkthrough to refer to when I get stuck, which is about 80% of the time.

Secondly, I believe that the pervasiveness of video games is slowly dropping the collective IQ of the species. No one cares if a game has an internal logic to it. As long as you've got a good physics system to mimic the movement of the female mammary gland, most fan boys will not care if your protagonist is a virtual cardboard cutout. This may seem like a harsh assessment, but you see the evidence in the quality of tangential media like comics and movies everyday. Stories are getting less and less cohesive. Characterization has given way to empty gags and one liners. It's all about the visual bling now, man. Story isn't king any longer. The King is dead.

Of course, that's a generalization. Generalizations are ba-a-a-a-a-d (at least according to the anti-harassment training videos I watch all the time). There are quite a few titles that really distinguish themselves in the gaming arena, it's just that they are buried in the legions of crap product out there. It's a lot like Hollywood, only with socially inept people rather than the photogenic don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful crowd.

During my college days, I was really into Soul Reaver, a series about a vampire apocalypse with a time travelling twist. The story of Kain and Raziel was something else and read like a high fantasy novel. The graphics were top of the line back in the day, with some inventive environments and excellent animation, and the gameplay was very involved, including shifting from the ethereal plane to the material one. Everything FELT thought out and logical, and things were intuitive. I got the same thing from the Thief series, a steampunk fantasy adventure with religious overtones. Again great story, great graphics, excellent gameplay with a variety of things to do.

I like to keep an eye on the gamesphere to see what is coming to find out if anything will really push me enough to buy into another console system. That 8-bit Nintendo really burned be when I bought it right on the cusp of the 16-bit revolution. So far, the only thing to wow me is the God of War series for the Playstation. But today, I found something that might actually swing me back towards Nintendo: Epic Mickey.

When I read about this new game, it totally blew me away. According to advance reports, it centers around forgotten Disney characters, ones from before the days of Steamboat Willie, deciding to take their revenge on the Mouse House's colorful stable of personalities. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (Wikipedia him) unleashes Phantom Blot (again, Wiki is your friend) on toon town and all the happy little animals get a nice black coat of black ink. Anyone else remember the Exxon Valdez? No? God I'm old.

So the original Moustketeer is the only one to stop old Oswald, and to do it he gets a load of brushes, pens, paints, and erasers to re-color his world. But until he succeeds, gamers are going to be treated to a darker, more sinister cartoon world than you've ever seen in the Disney films. It's a steampunk's wet dream, at least if these concept paintings of a brokendown Magic Kingdom by artist Fred Gambino are any indication it is:

 

 

In addition, Fred shows us what the familiar cast of characters will look like in Oswald's little personal Dystopia through some nasty character sketches:

 

After seeing these beautiful images, I seriously can't wait to see if this title will be launched on any other platform aside from the Nintendo Wii. While I appreciate that the unique (at least for now) controls of the Wii lend a certain charm to the gamer's proposed interaction with the game character, the Wii's selection of titles leaves something to be desired.

Let's hope Disney's next theatrical release ties into this little idea somehow. I'd hate to think that crap like "The Princess and the Frog" is what we're gonna be seeing from them from now on.

       

Alter Yoko Littner: Bounty Hunter Version

If you've been following the reviews on the site, then you know I've got a mad crush on Yoko Littner. It's almost as bad as the one I had on Cheetara of the Thundercats (oh, Cheetara...). I've already got two figures based on the character: Fraulein Revoltech Yoko (TV Version) and the Fraulein Revoltech Yoko (Movie Version) . The one we're reviewing today will be my third and I'm seriously thinking of getting a few more. The red hair, the fantastic curves, the hot pants, the bikini, the huge gun...

Excuse me a moment.
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Ok, I'm back. but yeah, Yoko Littner. As I said in the previous reviews, I've got no clue as to what the anime was about. I've been meaning to watch the thing, but like art films, I seem to have lost the patience for long-winded Japanese animation. If it's not an hour long OAV full of gag boobs, gainaxing, giant mecha and/or mixed martial arts mayhem, I'd rather be watching Star Trek for the 23rd time.

When I first saw Alter’s 1/8th scale Yoko Littner ‘Bounty Hunter Ver.’ PVC statue on WasabiToys.com I just couldn't resist pre-ordering one for myself. The product shots of this figure were amazing, plain and simple. You can't not look at it. I clicked on "Add to Cart" button almost without thinking.

After I had submitted the order and that initial infatuation with the figure had died, I was worried that I'd be disappointed. I'd seen some statues that looked great in the trade announcements and then turned out to be nightmares on the shelf. Plus this was a statue. This wasn't really a toy in the strictest sense. You could not play with it. There were no joints and no accessories. You couldn't do anything with it except sit it on your desk and stare at it. It was crazy expensive (near p5000.00 at the pre-order price), and damn fragile to boot. Previous PVC figures I bought had tended to lean after time and they were a bitch to stand after that happened. These were the cons.

The pros? It's pretty. Damned pretty.

Naturally, the pros won out or I wouldn't be here writing this. Last week, after about 6 months of waiting, I stopped by WasabiToys in Blue Lane of the Shoppesville Arcade in Greenhills to pick up my prize.

At first glance I was pretty disappointed. I'm not used to these kinds of figures, so I was thinking they'd have put more effort into the packaging. It's pretty bad. Just a few product shots and a lot of Japanese script I couldn't read, very plainly laid out. The cardboard itself is surprisingly thin for something this expensive. My Polno Dianno figure had a nice sturdy box surrounding it. Since this figure has such a fragile looking coat and hair, I'd figure they'd have given it a bit more protection. Mine was pretty badly dented in shipping apparently.

  

When I finally got it out of the box, my perception of it changed completely. Even if the box was unattractive as hell, all that missing effort went right into the figure. It was exactly as it was pictured in the product shots, which is to say, absolutely pristine. Every line and curve is there. It's one solid piece of PVC goodness, no assembly required. Well, except for placing her on the little stand, but come on.

There isn't a misplaced paint application on this sucker, from her sniper rifle, right down to her boots, every color is crisp and sharp. You'll notice it first off on her bikini. Honestly, the bikini is hard not to notice. You'll see her little red flames are perfectly drawn in against the white with no bleed whatsoever. The color of the plastic is perfect skin tone, making for a very translucent quality to the entire figure.

 

The sculpt itself is great. Designed by Ikuma Kuramoto who I'm told has done many other Fate/Stay Night statues, the figure is in a pretty bold pose. Her Rifle is slung up on her shoulders and her hair and jacket are swept back in the mountain air. You'd think that sculpting a character like this wouldn't be so hard considering the lack of detail necessary, but the extra things give her a lot of depth. The jacket is unbelievably nice. With holes and ragged edges. The buckles and belts are whipping in the air, too. She's go her distinctive chopstick hairpins in, and the red hair looks natural the way it flies out behind her.

  

The thing that really impressed me was the pistol by her side. The holster has some great detailing on it. Even the stitches on the leather are visible! There's some wash to the brown to give it some weathering which is very effective. It's "tied" to her thigh with a thing strand of leather which I could have sworn was removable. It's not, just a sculpted piece, nicely painted. However, the pistol itself IS removable. If you have any 1/8th scale figures in need of weapon to borrow (GI joe Sigma 6 figures come to mind), here you go. I kinda wish I could also pull off the sniper rifle and give it to Long Range as well.

  

Yoko's face is great, too. It's less cartoony than the Fraulein Revoltech versions, but then you'll have to remember that this is anime, so the requisite big eyes are still there. The register lines thought are sharper than anything you'll see in the mass market toys in Toy Kingdom. The hair falls nicely in front of her eyes, but doesn't cover her face. There's a tiny smug smirk on her lips.

 

About the only thing I didn't like is her lack of a butt. She is devoid of back. booty-less. It's a small thing considering you'd likely display her facing out to show off that amazing front, but is sad that she's so unbalanced. I don't know why the sculptor didn't give her some meat back there. It's barely visible since you need to do some serious upskirting to notice it, so it's kewl.

 

All in all, I feel she's a great value for p5000.00, especially finding out that she's currently selling for p7000.00 at other shops in Greenhills now. I was hoping she was going to be about 12" high to pair with a Marvel Icon or two (I mixed up 1/8th scale with 1/6th so for the longest time I thought this was the case), but she goes great with my small collection of anime statues. If I can find a few more that are this high quality, I might consider getting a few more PVCs.