Rick's World

Today I'm going to do something different. I'm going to review a movie trailer for the new Spiderman 3 movie. Why? Because, as I mentioned in my previous blog, there is a lot in this short 2 minute trailer. It actually provides a lot of information as to what is going to be in this movie, if you know what to look for. Since I've been reading Spiderman comics for over 20 years, I was able to notice a lot in this trailer that other might have missed. So, I thought I would explain (and show!) what I saw...

The Black Costume Here we see a shot of Spidey wearing a black costume, rather than the usual red and blue costume. At first you may think this is simply a shot taken at night. It's clearly not. The entire costume is black. This costume is shown throughout the entire trailer, in both night and day shots. This costume can only indicate one thing - Venom! Who is Venom? He is essentially an 'evil' Spiderman. The whole story of Venom is that Spiderman aquires a new, black costume that has the ability to change it's appearance to literally anything. This costume is also alive. It is a living creature that flows around like a sort of oil slick. At one point, in the trailer, you have a shot of the black costume flowing onto the old red costume. This clearly indicates that the costume is alive. Later in the comics, when Spiderman discovers that not only is the costume alive, that it's been controlling his mind, he decides to get rid of it. The problem is the costume doesn't want to leave! So he ends up fighting it. He discovers that the costume's only weakness is extremely loud sounds. So he ends up going to a church and standing right next to the church tower bells as they chime. This loud noise drives off the costume, seemingly killing it. In reality, the costume simply escapes until it finds a reporter named Eddie Brock, who also happened to be in the church. This reporter is angry at Spiderman for proving one of his stories to be false. When the costume joins Brock, he goes insane and becomes Venom. Note that there don't appear to be any shots of Venom in this trailer. I suspect that either the appearance of Venom is top secret and they don't want to reveal it, or he simply requires so much CGI that they haven't finished the effects enough to show it in the trailer yet.

Attempting to kill the costume Here we see Spiderman, standing in the bell tower of a church. Notice the bell to his right. He is covering his ears and no doubt screaming in pain as the sound waves emmenating from the bell deafen him and kill the costume.

Eddie Brock / Venom Here we see a shot of Topher Grace as Eddie Brock. In this scene he is looking up and saying "Parker". He's also sporting a serious zit on his upper lip too! Some makeup artist fell asleep at the wheel there! How do I know this is Eddie Brock? Topher Grace is another actor who was long known to be in the movie, but his role was also unknown. Since we already know that Thomas Hayden Church is playing the Sandman, and we've got some strong hints that Venom is in this movie (the black costume), that's the only person he could be. Also notice how he is looking up. I suspect that this picture is taken directly from the scene in the church after Spiderman gets rid of the black costume. This is probably just before the black costume joins with Brock and becomes Venom.

Marrying Man Here we see a shot of Peter falling and seeming to lose grasp of what looks suspiciously like an engagement ring. Apparently he's planning on proposing to Mary Jane in the movie. This is consistent with the comic book, where he ended up marrying Mary Jane some years ago. The appearance of Sandman, the new Green Goblin and (maybe) Venom, no doubt gets in the way.

Gwen Stacy Here we see a shot of Peter and Gwen Stacy dancing. Gwen Stacy is a very well known character in Spiderman history. In the comic books, she was his first love. Unfortunately she was killed by the Green Goblin. Her death has haunted him ever since. In the comic book she was killed when she was tossed from the top of a bridge. In the first Spiderman movie, they duplicated this scene, only with Mary Jane, instead of Gwen, and Mary Jane survived. I wonder if in this movie the new Green Goblin will end up killing her? Now, if Peter is supposedly in love with Mary Jane and thinking about proposing to her, what's he doing dancing with another woman? My best guess is that the black costume influences his mind and causes him to cheat on Mary Jane and have a romance with Gwen. How do I know this is Gwen Stacy? Easy. Notice the blond hair and the black strap in her hair? That is exactly how she always looks in the comic book.

The New Green Goblin Here we see a shot of the new Green Goblin. Sorry for the rather blurry shot, but this was the best picture I was able to capture from the trailer. This entire scene was maybe 1-2 seconds in the trailer. This new Green Goblin is very likely Harry Osbourne. As you'll recall, at the end of Spiderman 2, not only did Harry discover that Peter Parker is Spiderman, but he also found his father's stash of Green Goblin weaponry. This is consistent with the comic book where Harry Osbourne also becomes the Green Goblin after his father's death. He falsely blames Spiderman for his father's death, so he sets out to kill Spiderman in revenge. You'll notice how this Green Goblin is quite different from the first Green Goblin. His mask only appears to cover part of his face. His hair is visible above the mask. His hairstyle appears identical to Harry Osbourne's hairstyle as it's shown in another scene in the trailer. I have to say that I like the look of this Green Goblin a lot more than the original Green Goblin in the first Spiderman movie. I never really liked his look in that movie. This Goblin has a much simpler look.

The Sandman Here we see a shot of an angry Thomas Hayden Church. Notice the green striped shirt he is wearing? This is the exact shirt that the Sandman always wears in the comic book. This means that Church is obviously playing Sandman. It's been known for a long time that Church was playing a character in the movie, but it was never revealed what character he was going to play. This seems to answer that question.

The Plot

Based upon the scenes in this movie, here is my best guess as to the plot of the movie.

Peter and Mary Jane have been dating for a while. Peter decides to ask her to marry him. He goes out and buys an engagement ring. Right as he is about to ask her to marry him, he somehow encounters the black costume. The costume flows over his red and blue costume, replacing it with the black costume we see in the trailer. He goes about being Spiderman in this new black costume, thinking nothing is different. It turns out that the costume is affecting his mind. This leads him to stray from Mary Jane. He meets Gwen Stacy and has a romance with her. Mary Jane finds out and they have a big argument/breakup. Somewhere along the way the new Green Goblin and the Sandman make appearances. No doubt there will be a few scenes of the black costume Spiderman fighting them. Later, he discovers that the costume is controlling him and discovers that sound waves can kill it. He heads to the church bell tower and stands there while the bells go off. The costume supposedly dies. He leaves. Eddie Brock, who was also in the church, below the bell tower, finds the injured costume. They join together and become Venom. This leads to a climactic battle between Spiderman, back in the red and blue costume, versus Venom (and maybe Green Goblin and Sandman too). He fights and wins. He returns to Mary Jane and explains everything. They make up and he proposes to her. The movie ends with the two of them getting married.

How's that for a complete analysis of a 2 minute trailer? It should be interesting to see how close I was to the truth when this movie comes out a year from now.

Update: You can find my other Spiderman 3 entries here and here...

Update 2: I've seen the movie! You can read my followup on this article and see how well I did on my predictions. You can also read my full (long!) movie review.

Last night, I went and saw Superman Returns at the 10pm showing. I was kind of expecting a midnight showing. This is the first time I've seen a 10pm 'midnight showing'. 10pm on a Tuesday night is an odd time to start showing a movie.

I got to the theater, bought my ticket and went in. The theater, as I expected was packed. Nearly every seat was taken. One of the previews shown before the movie was the new preview for the Spiderman 3 movie coming out next year. This preview got huge chears from the audience. It sounds like the audience clearly understood what was hinted at in the preview. But that's a subject for another blog...

The movie started. It opened with a nice CGI sequence if flying through space. Then the classic theme music from the previous Superman movies starts up. It was a really cool feeling to hear this music on the new movie. Brandon Roush, who plays Superman in this movie, looks and sounds a lot like Christopher Reeve in this movie. It's kinda freaky to see. It's almost like seeing another Christopher Reeve movie. Yes, he looks different in the costume, but as Clark Kent, he looks and sounds nearly identical. The special effects are also fantastic. Much better than any previous Superman movie. Also, this movie has much less 'cheese' than the previous Superman movies. It is a very serious movie. Lex Luther is downright evil in this movie. In the previous Superman movies, he was kind of a 'cornball' bad guy. Not here. He is serious and downright mean throughout the movie.

I won't spoil the movie by giving away much of the plot. Sufice it to say, it is an entertaining movie and for the most part, the story makes sense.

All in all, I would have to say this is one of the best comic book movies I've ever seen. It's better than all the X-Men movies. It's better than the Spiderman movies. It's much better than the Fantastic Four movie. This was the first comic book movie I've seen in a long time that didn't seem to have that 'cheese' factor in it. It was the most serious comic book movie I've ever seen.

Go see this movie. You won't be dissapointed.

This really sucks.

For the last two days, I've been heading by the gym after work in order to get a workout in. Both days, the entire parking lot has been full beyond capacity. There was literally not one stinkin' parking place anywhere. In fact, they were so low on parking spaces there were at least a dozen cars or so that made their own parking spaces by parking on the grass, etc.

It's kind of hard to get a workout in if you can't even park your car! Sheesh.

I've been wearing Oakley sunglasses for the last few years. They are great sunglasses. They fit my face perfectly, then block out the UV and all in all, I've had no complaints. Right now, my main pair of glasses is a pair of Oakley X Metal XX Sunglasses.

A couple of weeks ago, I lost one of the rubber nose pieces for the glasses. I spent the last couple of weeks going to every Oakley store I could find trying to buy a replacement set of them. I figured it couldn't be that expensive - maybe $5-10. I was never able to find any to match my glasses. The salesman recommended that I contact Oakley's customer service department to get a replacement. Finally, today I did call them. I was all ready to whip out the credit card and spend $10 bucks or so on a set, but they told me they would send me a new set for free! I guess since I've only had this pair less than a year, they consider it a warranty repair. I was really suprised and pleased by this. Since I lost the piece I really didn't think it would qualify as a warranty repair. It was my fault that the piece got lost, after all, not theirs.

Thank you Oakley for having some good customer support!

Well how about that? Several months ago, I downloaded the Open Source package Wget. This software package is used to recursively download all the web pages of a site to your computer, so you can view the site offline. I had downloaded the software because I was trying to understand how to do Base64 encoding and decoding. In the process of studying their source code, I came across a buffer overflow bug in their code. I wrote them an email explaining the bug and providing a fix for it. This was months ago. I never heard back from them until a couple days ago. They accepted my patch and added it to the program! I am now officially an open source developer!

I don't see a new version of the package available for download yet though. I guess maybe they haven't released the version with my fix in it. I'll have to keep an eye on it and watch for it's release. I hope they didn't put my change in just some other software package and ignore this one...

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"
- Linus' Law

Ok, the spammers finally pissed me off enough to go and do it. I finally went and disabled trackbacks for all blogs on my site. In the last 3 days I've gotten over 200 trackback spams, and those things are a pain to get rid of. Thankfully, my blog software is open source and I have full access to the database, so I was able to find the table containing all the trackback spam I received. I went in this table and extracted a complete list of the IP addresses that sent all these trackback spams. I then added these IPs to my site's .htaccess file. This means those spammers are now permanently banned from my site. Once I did this, I was able to go in and in one fell swoop delete all the trackback spam!

You gotta love open source!

Yesterday, I bought a new Nintendo DS Lite, on the day it was released, here in the U.S. I gotta say, this is one really fun toy!

I fully expected to have to spend all afternoon driving all over town trying to find one. I figured that since yesterday was the release date, that everyone would be trying to get one. I expected lines, and stores sold out everywhere. To my surprise, I found one at the first place I stopped - Best Buy. I walked in and found 3 other guys who were also there to buy one. The salesman went back and got 4 of them for us. One of the other guys who was there mentioned that there was a coupon online for Best Buy that if you buy the DS, they give you a copy of Brain Age for free! Unfortunately, I didn't know about this so I didn't have the coupon. He had a couple of extra coupons so he gave me one and I was able to walk out with a free game! That was really nice of the guy. I also bought a copy of Super Mario Brothers and a case / charger pack for the thing.

I brought it home, opened it up and put in Brain Age, to try it out. That game is strangely addicting. Brain Age is an educational game designed to give you various thinking exercises to test your 'Brain Age'. The more exercises you do, the younger your brain age becomes. My brain age started at 58... I have a long way to go! :) It has various games like drilling you on simple math problems, Sudoku and a few other things. Sudoku is an interesting game. It's a number game where you've got a 3x3 grid of 9 boxes. Each group of 9 boxes has numbers in it. You have to find the right combination of numbers for each box in the 3x3 grid of boxes to solve the puzzle. It's a great game. The game is also interesting in that it has an animated head of the designer of the game who talks to you throughout the game. At one point, I was playing it late last night and the talking head reminded me not to stay up late and get some sleep! The game also makes a pleasant 'writing sound' whenever you write on the tablet. It kind of reminds me of the sound of someone writing on a chalkboard. It seems like a very appropriate sound for the situation and seems to fit just right.

I also played some Super Mario Brothers. A neat game and a lot of fun, but I really stink at those kinda games! I have to play that one some more when I go on my trip next week.

Later that afternoon, I bought a copy of Tetris DS. Now this was a cool experience. Tetris DS is a WiFi enabled game. That means you can play it wirelessly over the Internet with other people all over the world! What's great about this is that this feature is completely free with no registration or anything! You just run the game, say connect and off you go! I was playing Tetris last night with other people all over the world. It's a truly amazing experience to be sitting on my bed, nowhere near my PC and playing on just the DS against someone across the world. I think at one point I was playing someone in Japan (based on the characters in his name). The only problem with this system is that there is no way to chat with other person. It would be truly cool if you could chat, either by voice or text with people all over the world. I can see that feature being truly addicting. You just play the game and that's it. I used to think that I was good at Tetris until I played these people! They soundly kicked my butt in every game! I'll have to practice that game! :)

As for the design of the DS Lite itself, it is quite nice. It resembles a small, white laptop. It is a very clean design that closes easily and looks great. It looks much better than the clumsy look of the old Nintendo DS. I had read an article last week that said that Nintendo seems to have a case of 'Apple Envy', in that they tend to follow Apple's designs in their own products. This certainly seems to be true from the look of the DS Lite! It looks very similar to the iPod. It has that same, shiny, slightly off-white look of the iPod. It seems to be made of the exact same material. The two screens are also very bright and easy to read.

All in all, I think Nintendo has a potential winner here.

Wow!

It's not often I see a movie that just completely blows me away! The Incredibles did this, Princess Mononoke did this, Spirited Away did this, and this movie - Howl's Moving Castle did it. This is one of the most incredible movies I've ever seen.

This movie is an example of Japanese Anime. Anime is a truly unique form of animation. It makes most American animation look downright tame and dull in comparison. Now Anime takes some getting used to. It is very different from American animation... It tends to be really weird stuff. The characters are very odd looking. Some have big heads, some are little. They are all weird dimensions. But all this weirdness also tends to make the movie very interesting.

With the exception of "The Incredibles", all the movies I mentioned are directed by a Japanese director named Hayao Miyazaki. I first discovered his movies with Princess Mononoke years ago, and ever since I've been very interested in his other movies. They never dissapoint.

Sorry if I'm being vague as to what happens in the movies, but they are kind of hard to explain. All I can say is that they are incredible movies and well worth the effort to see.

I intend to buy this on DVD as soon as I can...

A few weeks back, I bought myself a new acoustic/electric guitar. Why did I buy another expensive guitar, when I already have a nice electric guitar that I can't even play? Well, I bought it because I wanted something 'easier' to learn on. It turns out that 'easy' is a matter of opinion.

The acoustic is easier from a setup point of view. I love how you can just pick it up, and start playing. You don't have to worry about connecting cables, plugging in the amp, adjusting the settings on the amp for the sound you want, etc. You just grab it and go. While it is easier to setup, it's not necessarily easier to play. The body of the acoustic is much thicker than an electric, which means you have to struggle with reaching around that big thing in order to play. It involves having to find an entirely different position to play in, where you can comfortably play without that fat body getting in the way. Also, the action (the height of the strings) is higher. This means you have to push farther down to properly fret the strings.

The electric, while being much more involved on setup is much easier to play, especially on my PRS. The action is much lower and the guitar is much thinner. A lower action means its easier to play, and a thinner body means that it doesn't get in the way like the acoustic's body does.

The odd thing that I am discovering is that at least right now, I'm enjoying the acoustic more than the electric! I never expected this. I've always loved the electric guitar (and I still do) and found acoutic guitar kinda boring when I listen to it. Now I find that the sound from that acoustic is much cleaner and downright beautiful compared to the sound from the electric and the amp. I'm beginning to wonder if the sound coming from the amp sounds so bad because I'm trying to play a high quality guitar through a cheapo amp...

Maybe I'm developing a case of GAS (Gear Aquisition Syndrome) again. That Fender G-DEC is looking more and more appealing...

In two days I start my second 'semester' of my beginner/intermediate guitar class. At the start of this class, the teacher is going to essentially give me my final exam from last semester again. If I pass this 'makeup test', then I get to go to the advanced class.

I am not ready.

I freely admit I haven't been practicing as much as I should. I think I'm taking this class as much to force me to keep practicing as to try to learn how to play the guitar. The fact that I know I'm going to be going to class and I am expected to get better at this stuff is forcing me to continue to practice and try to focus on getting all this stuff straight. The article linked to by this blog shows a good technique for practicing clean chord changes (which I call 'chord transitions'). I'm goint to try this technique tonight and see how it goes...