Monthly Archives: March 2009

Movies

FWWM on Blu-Ray

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A deleted scene from FWWM
Dugpa.com has some news about the possible release of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on Blu-Ray. The short version: it’s not “in the cards at the moment” but there is a good chance it will at some point.

As Dugpa notes, this is basically our last chance to fight for the infamous deleted scenes for a long time. This has been a movement I’ve been involved with since DVDs first arrived on the scene. There are all sorts of complications around ownership and getting the scenes to DVD-quality would require some restoration efforts and involvement from Lynch himself. We almost got the scenes on a French special edition of FWWM but it didn’t quite happen.

Seriously: I very much want to see these scenes. I urge you to send feedback to Warner Brothers. For reference, here is what I told them:

i believe that you now own the rights to twin peaks: fire walk with me. this is one of my favorite movies (one of lynch’s best, in fact) and i’d love to see it on blu-ray… and i’d love even more to see the infamous “deleted scenes” that we’ve been fighting for (around the world) for years now.

i’m a huge fan of the work you did on the matrix collection (i had it on dvd and now have it on blu-ray). and i’m VERY eagerly awaiting your box set for the 1990s batman films. and of course i have batman begins and the dark knight. and once you release the alien quadrilogy on blu-ray, you know i’m replacing the dvd set i currently have 🙂

so i’d love to see your commitment to putting out great discs for the sci-fi/fan community and think fire walk with me would be a great addition to your already awesome catalog.

thx

I thought it’d help to show I support Warner Brothers releases and am already looking forward to stuff they have coming up. I also wanted to stress the fact that they already have made concessions to the “fan communities.”

So yah, please join me in trying to get this awesome film on Blu-Ray with the elusive deleted scenes!

Television

Finale Thoughts

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After last night’s disappointing (to me, at least [but I don’t have any overly insightful thoughts on it so I won’t really elaborate — I just thought it was too normal/straightforward/not-twisty-enough]) Battlestar Galactica series finale, I started doing some thinking on the nature of series finales (I seem to be watching a few this season: Boston Legal, The L Word, and now Battlestar Galactica (but unfortunately not Smallville which seems to keep going and going and going…).

Overall, I’ve been watching so much television lately that I feel like I’m starting to uncover some of the basic formulas and tropes used so much in television: there is often a single home/gathering place that everyone hangs out at… and, well, that’s the only one I can think of now — but I know I had more at one time.

Anyway, in my “analysis” of series finales, I’ve noticed that they tend to fall into three main categories. I purposely didn’t elaborate on my reasoning behind the shows so as not to spoil them. I think it’s safe to continue reading even if you haven’t seen some of the finales for some of the shows, yet.

Also: there is a bonus “type” of finale: The Flashback. But in my “studies” this seems to overlap with the three other categories, so I’ll note the episodes that use flashbacks with a *.

Total War: Especially in sci-fi shows with a “big bad” or overarching enemy, the series finale will involve confronting this big thing in a huge all-out war. It’s almost certain that some of our favorite characters will die in the process and in the end good will win. In non-sci-fi shows, this could also be considered the Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again ending: something huge happens that affects the lives of everyone on the show (someone gets married, the office where people work closes, etc.) and the show has to end because, like total war, the premise of the series would be so different if it kept going.

  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Buffy
  • Angel
  • Boston Legal
  • Star Trek: Voyager (my favorite ending to a sci-fi show so far, by the way)
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  • Sex and the City
  • X-Files *
  • The L Word *

Just Another Day: As opposed to Total War/Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again, the Just Another Day ending tries to show that while this may be the final episode of the series, the lives of the characters we’ve come to love will keep going on just like normal. That’s not to say there won’t be any big events or resolutions to long plot lines, but for the most part Things Stay The Same or don’t change too much. The show could conceivably keep going after the final episode.

  • Six Feet Under
  • Roswell
  • Roseanne
  • Veronica Mars (this one sort of doesn’t count since the show was canceled…)
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation *
  • Arrested Development
  • Knots Landing
  • The West Wing
  • The Sopranos (depending on what happens…)

The final type of series finale is by far the worst (depending on the circumstances): The Unresolved. Sometimes this happens when a show is unexpectedly canceled and the creators cannot create a proper ending. Or sometimes it happens when a show is unexpectedly canceled and the creators don’t want to do a proper ending. While I am usually a fan of twists and strange endings in a show, these endings are mostly “I wish it wouldn’t have ended so soon”-type of endings.

  • Millennium (I think the show should have ended with the Total War ending that season 2 had)
  • Twin Peaks

So what do you think about my categorization? Am I off the mark on some? (I’m sure I am!) Looking to the future, which finales am I most looking forward to based on the shows I watch now? Lost, Weeds (this show goes in all sorts of crazy directions!), Desperate Housewives (so long as it’s not an overly-sentimental flashback-based one), and Damages.

Video Games

The Guild

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Vork, Zaboo, Codex, Clara, Bladezz
I found this show while looking at the top downloaded videos on Xbox Live. I remember sort of hearing about The Guild a year ago and about how it was an online-only television show that was getting a big following and how it was going to be the future of media, etc. etc. For whatever reason, though, I never sought it out to watch.

But then last week I did and after the first episode I was hooked. And you too can get hooked — if you have an Xbox it’s on Xbox Live (seasons 1 and 2), otherwise you can find the first season and most of season two (Microsoft/Xbox made a deal with the creators to exclusively have season 2 a few episodes ahead of wide release) on The Guild’s web site or YouTube or wherever.

Basically, The Guild is about a group of online gamers who are in an online guild together but up until the first episode hadn’t met each other in person. Then Zaboo, the warlock of the group, decides that he should romantically pursue Codex, the healer/priestess, in real life. Online he thought she was always flirting with him because she somehow never seemed to hit the shift key when making eyes for smileys and everything turned out to be 😉 instead of 🙂

So after Zaboo crashes at Codex’s place she calls a meeting in real life and after years (?) of playing online and talking into microphones at each other, they finally meet face-to-face. Hilarity ensues.

The show focuses exclusively on the real-life aspects of the characters’ lives. There aren’t any in-game shots and even events in the game don’t have too huge of an impact (though one season two storyline does involve some scandal around a treasure the guild finds).

As I mentioned in my 25 Things post, a long time ago I used to play these things called MUDs. They were an early version of online games but without graphics back when having a 14.4k modem was a big deal.

The first MUD I played was called Dark Saga (which was an LPMud using the TMI-2 Mudlib). I was in seventh grade or so at the time and I remember when I had the first opportunity to meet one of the “Gods” of the MUD in real life (he was a college student where I went to computer camp). I totally balked on the opportunity and didn’t. When you have online relationships like that it can be very weird to meet in person. And back in those days, there weren’t enough people online for people to form “local guilds” with people in the same geographical area, but I can imagine that if we were ever able to meet in person, it would’ve been something similar to The Guild (though maybe not as funny).

So despite the fact that I don’t really consider myself a gamer (or, maybe, a gamer-in-the-making) and I haven’t ever played World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, I could still relate to the experience and the people and the gaming aspect and found it highly entertaining. And the amount of story they manage to fit in to five-or-so-minute episodes is amazing — you really get to meet the characters. Fun times!

Cooking

Pineapple-Cashew-Quiona Stir-Fry

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Pineapple-Cashew-Quinoa Stir-Fry
I first had quinoa (seriously if you don’t know much about quinoa checkout the Wiki article — the background info on it is very interesting) a couple years ago when my friend Justin (who has, unfortunately, since developed an allergy to it and cannot eat it anymore!!) introduced it back when we used to cook dinner then watch Desperate Housewives every Sunday. Since then, I haven’t been able to find it at QFC and every time I go to Whole Foods I forget to pick some up.

Then last week while looking for nutritional yeast (which I couldn’t find, unfortunately) I stumbled across Bob’s Red Mill quinoa. Despite costing $11, I picked up the bag and haven’t regretted it since.

Tonight I tried the Pineapple-Cashew-Quinoa Stir-Fry recipe from the Veganomicon.

The recipe is fairly simple — like any stir-fry, it just takes a while to prepare all of the ingredients. Under the ill-advisement of the cookbook, I didn’t prepare the quinoa a day early nor did I use fresh pineapple. Also, I opted for Thai basil and didn’t include mint leaves. In the end, this is basically a sweet-and-sour dish. And I’m not a huge fan of sweet-and-sour, but this was yummy enough. Next time I’m itching to use quinoa, however, I’ll probably do something else.

One thing I wanted to call-out for people who might have Veganomicon and want to make this: In the instructions, it starts off telling how to cook the cashews, but then it doesn’t tell you when to add them back. I totally forgot about them until the last six minutes or so of cooking, so that was unfortunate.

We had the dish with some store-bought pot-stickers.

So overall, if you are in the mood for quinoa and in the mood for stir-fry and in the mood for sweet-and-sour, this would be a great dish. Or, if you haven’t ever had quinoa and really like sweet-and-sour, this would be a great introduction.