Robocop

I'm embarrassed to say that like many nerds, I automatically jump to worst-case-scenario when it comes to news about adaptations to licences that I loved as a kid, and Robocop was one of them. When I heard that Hollywood was doing another movie about the murdered Detroit cop brought back to life by cybernetics to fight crime, my reaction was a less than stellar example of open-mindedness.

In fact, there may have been a generous measure of angry screaming, and some rather vigorous head-desking involved.

Justice League: War

Justice League: War is the cartoon equivalent of a Michael Bay movie: lots of action, explosions and silly women. If that's what you're looking for in a comic book feature, then this DVD from the guys over at Warner Bros. Animation is just the thing.

However, if you're like me and was a fan of the DC Animated Universe and its unparalleled success at creating a hugely entertaining inter-connected continuity with superior screenwriting and world building, then you'll be disappointed.

M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender

Let me admit that I was a huge fan of M. Night Shyamalan. 'The Sixth Sense'? Wow. That movie was awesome, and still holds a lot of it's appeal after you already know the big ending. I also liked two of his follow up hits, 'Unbreakable' and 'The Village'. However, aside from those, he's put out turkey after turkey. There was the odd 'Signs' in which Mel Gibson faces off against aliens dumb enough to attack a planet whose surface is covered in about 70% water, a substance that is lethal to them. Then there was that awful 'The Happening' where Mark Wahlberg realizes that the plant population has banded together to get rid of human beings by forcing them to commit suicide (it's as dumb as it sounds). Don't even get me started with 'Lady in the Water.'

But by far, Mr. Shyamalan's biggest sin, the one movie that I now associate with his name and the cause for innumerable Internet rants, was 'The Last Airbender'.

Helix

I only got wind of SyFy's new show, ‘Helix,’ a few days before its premiere on the cable network on January 10, 2014. So far, I've seen three episodes and I’m hooked, eager to see what’s next.

The show is produced by Ronald D. Moore, the guy behind the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ reboot, and a mess of other creative guys from shows like ‘Alphas’ and ‘The X-Files,’ and movies like ‘Contact.’ The new show is the brainchild of Cameron Porsandeh, a writer who is new to me, but is who is now definitely on my radar. He brought it to Sony Pictures and they were able to pull in all this fantastic talent to flesh it out and connect ideas to make it cohesive, according to interviews.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Re-Watch

As Michael Bay's new 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' movie is due out later this year, I thought I'd take some time and re-watch the 1990 live action adaptation. That way, it's fresh in my mind when I end up hating the new version. I'll need the geek ammunition for my inevitable rant.

I'm glad to say that the film still holds up, even after a decade and a half.

Attack on Titan

I've become convinced that the reason that the humans of 'Attack the Titan' (or Shingeki no Kyojin) keep losing is because they just won't shut up. Whenever there's a crisis, members of the Survey Corp. will invariably spend 20 minutes discussing how they feel about the situation, often with shiny quivering anime eyes, before taking any action. For some reason, the slack-faced Titans will patiently wait for said soldiers to finish their histrionic discussions and then promptly proceed to defeat the resulting plan and eat them.

This procedure usually takes up to several episodes. In fact, you could cut the series 25 episode run (so far?) down to maybe 8 or 9 and still end up with the same plot, just minus the sections where the characters are over-emoting.

47 Ronin

So last weekend the Metro Manila Film Festival finally ended and Philippine cinemas were finally free to replace the local garbage habitually exhibited during the holidays with garbage from foreign countries. This time we had a choice between two Hollywood films that have gotten abysmal reviews from critics and movie goers alike. As of this writing, The Legend of Hercules has a 4% score on rottentomatoes.com so that was out. I like a few of Renny Harlin's movies (Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea were both awesome, folks), but he's had so many misses since the 90's that I felt that this one didn't warrant the p220 ticket.

At an aggregate score of 11%, 47 Ronin isn't that much better, but it's got samurai in it. I'm pretty sure that it was Sun Tzu who said, "everything is better with samurai, dude". And besides, every now and then, I enjoy watching a 'bad' movie. At worst, I can write about it from experience, and at best, the reviews desensitize me so well that I end up enjoy it sans any expectations.

I'm glad to say that 47 Ronin was in that latter category.

Gamma Fist Hulk

I'd seen this figure on various online review sites, but when the Avengers Assemble toy lines hit local shelves, Gamma Fist Hulk was not among the toys. Though other figures in the line, like Black Widow, a few times, I never chanced upon Hulk, Hawkeye, or The Leader in the wild. I suppose that the figure was short packed (it is huge after all) and I have been missing the local distributions lately, so it likely sold out as soon as the boxes were unloaded.

But after Christmas, some of the toy stores must have gotten a few more boxes in. I found a single Hulk figure in Toys 'R' Us Galleria. After some flip-flopping over the new Marvel 4" figure price tag (p700), I picked it up.

Thoughts on Sherlock - 'The Empty Hearse'

Two years since Sherlock jumped to his death at the end of Sherlock, series 2, we finally get to hear how it really happened. I tried to figure out a way to review this without spoiling anything for late viewers, but there really isn't anyway to do that, so I'm going to preface this entry with a short summary.

'The Empty Hearse' is a fun, if somewhat mediocre, episode of the Sherlock series. There's a lot of exposition that is thrown at you, very little actual plot or development, and if you haven't followed the series, then you are NOT going to understand what is going on. The actual mystery in this one takes a back seat to humor in this love letter to Sherlock fans.

Now that that's out of the way:

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Time of the Doctor

In the 2007 short Time Crash, the Tenth Doctor met with the Fifth Doctor through some wibbily-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. In the episode, after a beat near the end when Ten (played by David Tennant) has acted starstruck and gushed effusively about meeting his predecessor (Peter Davison), he said to Five, "You were my Doctor."

I understood that the line referred both to the fact that Ten had enjoyed being Five, "...dashing about and playing cricket" (Davison was less stodgy and authoritative than his precursors), as well as the fact that the Fifth Doctor was the one on the air when Tennant was a boy. He would have been about 9 or 10 years old at the time Davison began his run. What I didn't comprehend at the time was the emotion that Tennant displayed when he said that line. However when I watched Matt Smith say farewell as number Eleven in The Time of the Doctor earlier, something dawned on me.

Eleven just isn't my Doctor.