Scott Pilgrim Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

As enjoyable as the Scott Pilgrim comics are, I gotta thank the writers of the film adaptation for cutting a lot of stuff out and making it more dramatic, particularly during the fight with Lucas Lee. The pacing of the comics is surprisingly all over the place in this book, going from intense fighting with Lucas to sitting down and having a drink with him, to challenging him to the disappointingly anticlimactic skateboard rail thing.

Anyway, this is still pretty cool. Also, I like the pretty colours.

Also also, I think my body looks strange here.

From outline to pilot

Got the go-ahead to proceed from beat sheet outline of my original TV pilot to draft.

I am excited.  Finally.

The scary thing is that now I actually believe my show could be on the air somewhere, sometime.  It’s a weird feeling.  I think I should get used to it because, quite frankly, my show is pretty awesome.

“I really care about you… and I don’t want to anymore.”

Possibly my favourite and the best scene in the TV show Girls, thus far.  Two of my favourite quotes:

“I don’t even want a boyfriend.  I just want someone who wants to hang out all the time, and thinks I’m the best person in the world and wants to have sex with only me.”

“You might not know this, but you are very, very charming.  And I really care about you… and I don’t want to anymore because it feels too shitty from it.”

 

Saturday Morning Documenty: BBC Natural World: Panda Makers

Okay, so Panda Makers doesn’t sound as cool as Monkey-Eating Eagle but at least it lives up to its name.  And if you like pandas, there’s plenty of OMG-I’m-dying-from-cuteness! in this episode of Natural World.

Because of the endagerment of giant pandas, folks in a city in China started a breeding program consisting of raising 300 pandas in captivity and then releasing them into the wild in the hopes of increasing the population.  This, of course, is controversial because, as David Attenborough (YES!!!!) explains, many captivity breeding programs around the world have failed and some people are arguing that all the money and time being spent on the pandas could be used to protect or save a different species.  However, consider the alternative: doing nothing and letting the panda population slowly become overwhelmed by humans.  It’s worth a try, right?

The footage, as usual, is fantastic.  We get right up close to lots of pandas in the captivity as well as some in the wild.  There’s a tense scene with a female in a cage who is ready to mate but she, along with the male she is set up with, don’t seem to be able to get the hang of it and start to get frustrated, leading to some aggression.  At one point, there’s also footage of a live panda birth, which frankly surprised me as the baby panda suddenly popped out, slippery and squealing.  I didn’t know baby pandas slipped out so easily like that!

What I like best about this episode is, like Planet Earth, there is a gentle nudge of conservation and environmentalism — much more prevalent for obvious reasons in this episode.  Coupled with cute images of panda cubs, it’s impossible not to feel for the furry little creatures (and if you don’t, then hooray, you’ve successfully become an android!).

And last but not least, watching this reminded me of one of my sister’s cats named Panda, named so because of the two black circles around her eyes.  Panda panda!!!!  I miss that cat.

Panda cubs with workers at the centre

Saturday Morning Documentary: Wonders of the Solar System

Everyone knows the solar system and the planets; we’ve all learned it in primary school.  But this BBC series, narrated and hosted by professor Brian Cox, takes us on a voyage to the little known wonders of space.  It’s not a general look at the planets, but more of the road less taken, the cool attractions in a city one doesn’t get to see.  Again, it’s been a while since I saw the series so I’m not super familiar with everything, but there are 5 episodes total, all an hour long.

With Cox’s mellow narration and his simple constructed diagrams like bottles of condiments at a diner which make it easy for stupid people to understand (a good thing, btw), the series examines things from the beginnings of life on Earth in episode two, “Order Out of Chaos”, to volcanic activity on Saturn’s moons in the “Dead or Alive” episode.  This is a fascinating, interesting, high-definition look at the rarely talked-about things in our solar system that is sure to make you wonder how complex, bizarre, and cool the world is beyond our planet.

The only thing that bugged me about everything was Cox’s pronounciation when it came to words that end in a “g”.  It’s part of his accent, I’m sure, but for whatever reason, it kinda annoyed me whenever he would say words like, “thing-guh” or “thinking-guh”, always saying the “g”.  Anyway, that’s just me and North American-ness.

Wonders of the Solar System

Saturday Morning Documentary: BBC Life

Swordfish and a shoal of fish

Following in the tradition of fantastic fascinating documentary series produced by the BBC is Life. After the worldwide acclaim for Planet Earth, Life stepped in after for those who want a high-definition look at our world.  The series, ten episodes in total, covers various species and, well, life forms around our planet–from the first episode, Challenges of Life, to whales in Mammals, to even unique vegetation in Plants, this series is arguably on par with, if not better, than Planet Earth.  The original British series is hosted once again by David Attenborough, while the US version is narrated by Oprah; I’ve read many comments about how bad Oprah is as a narrator so I’d stick with Attenborough’s narration instead.

There really isn’t much I can say about this series except that the images and cinematography are phenomenal and captivating.  My favourite episode is probably Mammals (ep. 3) or Fish (ep. 4); there’s a sequence where the crew is filming flying fish and it looks like nothing I’ve seen before.

Though the episodes are an hour in length, the last 15 minutes are a unique behind-the-scenes/making-of documentary within a documentary, giving viewers a glimpse of the challenges of filming, the different and exotic locations they traveled to, and their interaction with the animals.  In the second episode, Reptiles and Amphibians, the crew must get extremely close to Komodo dragons in order to film them, putting their lives at risk amongst the unpredictable animals.  And in the Insects episode, the crew struggles to get their camera high enough in the trees with limited daylight to film monarch butterflies in South America (or was it Mexico?).

All in all, Life is definitely worth checking out especially if you enjoyed Planet Earth.  I’ll admit that the first episode left me a little disappointed but the following episodes featured some pretty amazing, cool, and of course, bizarre things on Earth.

BBC Life