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If you look closely, you'll notice I'm running a poll on my blog. It appears at the bottom of the lower sidebar on the right hand side of this page. The poll is about your favorite Star Wars universe era. You can find an explanation of these eras here. The poll will run until the end of the month. This is mostly just to test out the poll feature of this site, but I would also appreciate your feedback.
I know I've mentioned it before, but I have to say again how much I like the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars cartoon. It truly revitalizes the Star Wars universe for me. Last weeks episode, "The Downfall of a Droid", is an excellent example of how it does this.
Upbeat techno music is scattered throughout the soundtrack for the episode, giving it a fresh and exciting feel, instead of the dramatic orchestral arrangements of the movies. The battle that Anakin and Ahsoka fight against the IG assassin droids in a narrow ship's hold is both creative and visually dynamic.
Now, don't misunderstand me here. I love the Star Wars movies, especially the original trilogy. However, with all of the expanded universe content that's been produced in the form of books, video games, etc., I feel like Star Wars is getting worn thin. Some EU content manages to capture the charm of the original movies, such as the Thrawn book trilogy. Others try to freshen things up, but in ways that aren't to my taste. The New Jedi Order book series falls into that category. The Clone Wars cartoon, on the other hand, offers a new take on Star Wars without compromising the classic Star Wars style.
You can see 2 minute "dataclip" recaps of all of the cartoon episodes, and full videos of the last couple of episodes at the official website.
Have you seen The Clone Wars cartoon? What do you think of it? How does it compare to the movies and to other EU material?
I've been working some more on reorganizing my room. It's proven to be quite an undertaking, but I'm making definite progress. Yesterday, I pulled out all of my artwork that I've saved over the years, which is a lot, and undertook the task of organizing it. I got some 3 ring binders and sorted my art by genre.
As I did this, it occurred to me that if I ever wanted to share my art with a friend or acquaintance, I don't want them to have to look through a half dozen binders, and hundreds of crappy pictures, just to see a few good ones. The first solution that came to mind was to go through my collection and pick out a few of my better pieces and put them in a separate binder to create a sort of portfolio. Ultimately, though, that would be unsatisfactory. If at some point I get the urge to skim through all of my sci-fi artwork, for example, I'd like to be able to just flip through one binder. If I had some of my sci-fi art in my portfolio binder, though, then I'd have to consult that as well.
Then I thought I could make copies of the pieces I would want to include in a portfolio, that way I could keep the original papers in the appropriate binders. While I'm at it, I might as well do some digital touch ups, and maybe even some digital coloring of my favorite pieces. But Aaron pointed out that people might enjoy seeing the original hand-drawings rather than digitally enhanced versions. That gave me the idea to give each piece in my portfolio 2 pages. 1 page would be the final, digitally enhanced image, and the other page would feature 2 or 3 smaller images of the picture in various stages along with production notes. The final element that made the whole idea come together was when it occured to me that, rather than just putting this all in a binder to share with my friends, I could print it as an art book through Lulu.com, or a similiar print-on-demand service.
What do you think? Would you be interested in seeing a book collecting some of my art with production notes, etc.? Do you have any ideas or suggestions for how I might go about this project?
This post is prompted by a news article I read here. It announced that Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander, two of the original writers and executive producers of Heroes, are no longer working on the show. Apparently they were bumped because the show's ratings are continually dropping off. The article went on to relate the writer's opinion of why the show is failing.
I'm not sure I agree with all of the observations made in the article, but I will say that I have been somewhat dissatisfied with the show since the end of season 1. I'll cut them some slack because season 2 was cut short, and season 3 seems to have some good things going for it. I just thought I would share a few thoughts on what I think Heroes is doing well, and where I think they've made some mistakes.
I think that, for the most part, season 3 is on the right track. Arthur Petrelli makes a compelling new villian, and the whole family in-fighting aspect of the story is interresting. It looks like that will take off even further in next week's episode. I like what they've done with Sylar so far this season. Making Sylar a Petrelli was unexpected, but probably a good move. It makes him a lot more involved in the intricacies of the plot, and they've developed his character in unexpected ways.
The article mentioned above complains about how they've added so many new characters throughout seasons 2 and 3. I don't mind the new characters, but honestly I'd rather see more of the old characters who have sort of dissipeared from the show. I'd like to see more of the Haitian, Micah, and even Molly. What ever happened to Claude Rains?
Another thing that the article complained about was the way the show has moved away from it's "ordinary people with extraordinary abilities" origins, and has become more like the X-Men without leather jumpsuits. I think that's just a natural evolution of the show. As the characters become more accustomed to their powers, they're going to continue to be less and less "normal". I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but it certainly does change the tone of the story.
I think my biggest complaint against Heroes would be the somewhat hit-and-miss writing as of late. It seems that sometimes the writers just simply forget about what's come before. An outstanding example of this is Caitlin. After the plague of season 2 has been adverted, Peter never even attempts to travel to the future to bring her back. Did he really just forget about her that easily? Obviously the writers did. Less obvious examples are future-Peter being killed by a bullet in one episode when he should be invulnerable to that kind of thing, and Sylar missing a very opportune time to use his super-hearing.
I hope the show picks up the slack and continues to run strong for at least a couple more years, but I'm a little uncertain about it right now.
What do you think? How is Heroes doing? What's the good and the bad in your opinion?
Normally I would be making another post about my weekly time log for last week. However, it seems that my activities have pretty much stabilized. Over the last month I've drastically improved my study habits and field service so that theocratic activities are solidly in third place, right under sleep and work, which is right where they need to be. I've adjusted my other activities to accommodate a better spiritual routine, and now I'm just trying to maintain that.
This week I plan to introduce a new activity to my weekly routine. That will be language study. I want to start learning Japanese again. Also, I'll probably be doing more writing now that things are beginning to slow down around here.
Other than that, I don't see my activities changing much, so while I'll still be logging my time, I probably won't be posting updates of those activities on my blog. I might post a summary once a month, like I did here, but not every week.