Dakota Graves

I spent this weekend at home with my family and my lovely girlfriend Caitlen. We celebrated her birthday and our anniversary. It was a grand old time. I love every minute I get to spend with that girl. I’ve known (and been with) lots of girls but none of them are like her. Ha, I’m not one for the mushy stuff (at least not on here) so I’ll get right to the point. This weekend I went and saw Coraline and finally got around to reading FABLES: Volume 11: War and Pieces. 

What can I say about Coraline other than its one of the best animated films I’ve seen in a long time. It deffinitely holds its own as one of the best stop-motion animation films of the last few years. Its easily as good as The Nightmare Before Christmas (In some ways even better) and deffinitely better than The Corpse Bride. 

Coraline is the film adaptation of Coraline, the horror novella by the amazing (comic book writer) Neil Gaiman (Coraline wasn’t originally a comic book however). It has been adapted by Henry Selick, the original director of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and is the first film by Laika animation studio. 

Henry Selick was the director of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Tim Burton produced, co-wrote, and came up with the original ideas for the project while Henry Selick, who (would go on to make a career out of directing stop-motion films) directed it and in my opinion did all the real work. I might as well get it out of the way and say that I am not very fond of Tim Burton. While he did do one of my favorite films, “Big Fish” and that most ofhis films are pretty good, I feel like Mr. Burton’a portfolio is very narrow. His movies are all very similar and he never explores anything new or reinvents his style. He’s found what he works and hes not going to change it apparently. Not what I would be doing if I was in his position. Then again he is the big time Hollywood director, but I digress. I think Henry Selick did much better without Tim Burton than Tim Burton did without Henry Selick. Coraline is just as good is not better than The Nightmare Before Christmas, while The Corpse Bride felt like a desperate attempt for Tim Burton to cash in on his The Nightmare Before Christmas namesake.

Fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas (cough* scene kids cough*) should love this movie. Its much better written, and perfectly balanced between adult and family themes. The animation is beautiful, especially where the CGI and stop-motion meet. There are some camera angles that i was very surprised to se in a stop-motion movie, very impressive. The voice acting is phenomenal, and you can tell the dialogue was very thoughtfully written. All and all this is an amazing animated movie. 

FABLES. I absolutely love Fables. This is one of the best comic books of all time. Simply amazing. Seriously, if you  like comics or even great stroies in general you need to be reading FABLES. This book is astounding.

This weekend I finally got around to reading FABLES: Volume 11: War and Pieces. Does not dissappoint. Continuing the amazing ongoing storyline of FABLETOWN v.s. The Adversary, the war to take back the homelands finally starts in this volume and it is badass. I was dissappointed by the Bigby v.s. The Emperor fight round 1. I would really like to have seen Bigby just kick the Emperor’s ass straight forward with his magic powers and the fight could have been a little longer. It was one of those “Oh shit!” moments, “Bigby is going to throw down with The Emperor!” This was followed immediately by Bigby getting his ass handed to him, a major let down. Though the whole outsmarting thing in round 2 was cool, but the “Great Wolf” should have kicked some wooden ass. I love that he is this magical force of nature to be reckoned with, he helps sell the series.  The dialogue between the enemy troops referring to Bigby as a “Wonder Wolf” made my nerd sense happy. I was also very pleased with Boy Blue’s narration . Another character who just sells the series. 

Seriously, if you haven’t read Fables, GO READ IT.

I made it home early tonight thanks to the exceptional driving of my room mate Adam’s mother. My wonderful girlffriend was here to meet me and we had a wonderful night laying around the house together.

The other thing that made my night wonderful tonight was that I finally got to watch Heroes: Fugitives: Chapter One. Yes, this is the first episode in Volume Four: Fugitives, which is the last twelve episodes of season 3. Let me just say this, I have watched every episode of Heroes from the very beginning. I’ve taken the good and the bad and watched it all. I have been a devoted fan of the show, but my faith has been waning.  This episode was awesome. It looks and feels like an episode from the first season. What Heroes should be. The only scenes in the episode that were bad were the ones that were in some way connected to Volumes Two or Three. The awkwardness of the character in the scene trying to deal with the crazy dispostion they have been left in.

My three main complaints:

1) Noah Bennet (Horn Rimmed Glasses) was completely out of character. The writers need to come up with some sort of bible for this character and stick with it. He hates people with powers, he loves people with powers, hes a good guy, hes a bad guy, who knows! The first seasonwho he was and his actions were mysterious, but eventually understandable and witin reason. Season Two, the writing was bad, but I guess his actions could have been justified. Season 3, his character was much closer to where it needed to be. Not perfect, but closer. I love this character. He has an incredible amount of potential. He could be one of the shows leading characters besides Claire, Hiro and Peter. Instead he is reduced to a second rate way of carrying out plot lines.  

2) Claire is annoying as fuck. All she does is bitch about everything, misunderstands the situation, then runs away from it, and finally change her mind again. She is an infinitely shallow character and is annoying as hell. Please, please , please fix her. 

3) Nathan  is another character who has been all over map. Seems like the writers can’t decide if they want him to be the ultimate bad guy or the ultimate good guy. 

That is 99% of my problems with Heroes. Character inconsistency. 

The best parts of this episode?: 

1) Mohinder and Peter’s taxi ride. Pure season one brilliant nostalgia. Made me Nerd-smile all over the place.

2) Sylar kicking the asses of the special-ops team sent to take him down. Perfect Sylar moment.

3) The entire last 10 minutes. That plane sequence is amazing. The whole thing. Peter kicking ass. Mohinder pulling the recue. Even the meaningless death of one of the prisoners as he flew out the hole in the plane’s hull. Awesome.

Finally, the three things I’m looking forward to the most this season:

1) More Michael Dorn (WORF!!!) as the President, like we saw at the end of the Volume Three.

2) I love seeing all the characters in one place together. Let the ass kicking in the following episodes commence.

3) Hiro getting his space/time powers back. Non-powered, non-cool. 

Thats my rant about Heroes! In other news, I’m still sick! Tomm night Caitlen and I are going to see Coraline with our good friends Ally and Cory. Stay tuned for that rant later.