15 Foot Shark Washes Up On Long Island

CNN Video Link

For reference, this thing is 10 feet shy (60% of) the "Bruce" shark in Jaws, though it's not a dangerous species like the Great White.


I'm wondering if the dude setting up the tripod in that footage was just setting up a pic of himself a leg propped up in triumph, to be captioned "Oh, you collect seashells when you go to the shore? How quaint."

(photo & further details via ABC News)

Natalie Portman cast as Jane Foster in Thor

Natalie Portman will be playing Jane Foster in the upcoming Thor movie. Jane was a nurse who was an early love interest for Thor in the comics, but who will be updated in some manner for the film adaptation.

Marvel's press release describes the film's plot:
Marvel Studios expands its film universe with a new type of superhero: THOR. This epic adventure spans the Marvel Universe; from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard. At the center of the story is The Mighty Thor, a powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, the film (due out May 20, 2011) will feature Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Tom Hiddleston as Loki, and will be part of the ongoing Marvel film universe alongside Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Captain America s they build towards an Avengers film.

It'll be interesting to see how she plays into things, since word has it they're seemingly taking the Ultimate Thor approach of not using Dr. Donald Blake as an alter-ego for Thor- at least not until towards the end of the movie, as a means to connect it to the Avengers movie.

It's an interesting choice. Portman can certainly act, but she tends to do better in more grounded or deeply dramatic material that she, presumably, can better relate to (Garden State or V For Vendetta, for example), while her track record with more fantastical material has been a little spotty (the Star Wars prequels, though granted she had to deal with some horrific dialogue there). Kenneth should be a good directing match for her, though, so i think she'll do a good job.

Star Trek Episode Review- TOS 101: The Man Trap

101- The Man Trap:
-Premise: The Enterprise drops off medical supplies to a planet, where McCoy encounters another doctor he formerly had romantic involvement with. However, it turns out it is really a shape-shifting salt vampire.

-Quest Comments: Honestly, I couldn't finish this one, it's just awful. This is the only episode in the franchise I had to just turn off. Definitely not a good introductory episode, and, thankfully, not related to any other episodes, so we'll let this one be the first clunker in the waste basket. "Trash". Avoid it.

On the plus side, a salt vampire is still more of a vampire than anything in "Twilight" ;)

(image via Memory Alpha: The Star Trek Wiki)

Meet the Filmmakers of "500 Days of Summer" @ Apple Store Soho

As my wanderings continued (I skipped using the subway and just walked for the rest of the day- had to work off that burger!), I swung over to the Apple Store in Soho (which is only a couple blocks down Prince St from the NYFA campus I attended) with no particular goals in mind beyond enjoying the atmosphere of a major Apple Store.

Turns out they had a small "Meet the Filmmaker" event going on within 20 minutes of my arival there, this one with the writers and director of the film "500 Days of Summer", which hits theaters this weekend.

Rom-Coms aren't usually my thing, but the few TV spots and talk show clips I had seen had nabbed some of my interest- and it's Sundance awards at least indicated it wasn't going to be your typical Rom-Com formula. And Zooey Deschanel is hard to resist in any role. So I decided to stick around and check it out.

All three guys were pretty funny (though I was suprised at how young the writers seemingly were) and were pretty forward about wanting to avoid the worn-down formula of Rom-Coms (a genre the writers apparently do like) as well as unrealistic set pieces ("Nobody gets bitten by a dolphin in our movie.").

The subsequent Q&A included some interesting tidbits, including how the color scheme of the film was designed to highlight Zooey's presence in her scenes.

They showed a couple clips from the movie, including what looks to be a clever sequence using side-by-side split screen showing the same party, contrasting what the (apparently at-times-unreliable) narrator's expectations were with the reality of the situation.

It looks like this one will be worth checking out- amusingly enough, they pointed out that while testing the movie, men liked the movie more than women but, due to the genre, were also the least likely to recommend it.

Apple should have a video podcast of the event available shortly. You can search for Meet the Filmmaker on the iTunes Store and subscribe to it there.

We Must Stop Carl From Mating

So, was that two dogs with 3 legs or one with 2 extra?

Decided to take a day to just relax and hang around the city, so I headed over to Washington Square to sit around and read a book, enjoy the weather and outdoors, etc. Chatted with a JC'er who was in the area as well.

Lots of performance artists in the park today- in particular one band over by the Garibaldi statue (who didn't sound too shabby) and a guy playing drums (albeit plstic drums/cans) who was closer to where I was sitting. That dude had to have been playing for like 3 or 4 hours straight at least.

Couldn't make out the exact situation- whether someone was trying to get a picture or something, but the drum guy kept saying "Five doallrs. Five dollars. Five dollars," So, from that point on, there really was no alternative to calling him anything but "Five Dollars".

The book I was reading was Stephen Colbert's "I Am America (and so can you)". Been meaning to read it for awhile- picked it up when it first came out but haven't had the right occasion to start it. I haven't finished it yet, but the first third so far is quite funny and very in-line with Colbert's character on The Colbert Report, with margin comments that echo the style of The Word segment on the show. If you're a fan, it's definitely worth checking out.


After reading for a few hours, I grabbed a bite at Cozy's Soup 'n Burger, which serves some awesome diner grub and some epic burgers. I'm sure most city goers know about it already, but for those of you who haven't been to it, it's located on Broadway between 8th & Waverly, pretty much just where Astor Place comes to a T with Broadway.

Transformers Quote of the Week 7/13/09

Ultra Magnus: "I've never seen anything this beautiful in the entire galaxy. Alright, give me the bomb."

Star Trek Episode Review- TOS 100: The Cage

(Before we get started, I'll note that for this leg of the project, I used the episode order listed on tv.com, thus episode numbers are labeled and ordered accordingly. I don't know if it's the most accurate one or not, but it's the one I used. Additionally, as we encounter them, I keep a running tab on time travel and alternate universe events, because I'm just a sucker for those kind of stories)

100: The Cage
-Premise: Pilot episode focusing on the previous captain of the Enterprise, Christopher Pike, as they investigate a distress signal which lures Pike and his ship to Talos IV, where a race with powerful mental abilities use their powers of illusion to trap Pike in a zoo-like facility.

-Quest Comments: Despite being a pilot, this one is actually pretty decent and has a slightly more serious/mature feel to it (though the big brained aliens are still silly, and it's hard not to crack up at Spock's exclaimation of "The women!!")

The Number One character played Mrs Roddenberry actually improves the general dynamics of the crew arrangement and, in retrospect, is sorely missing from the actual series and actually makes a whole lot of sense; thankfully the position would be resurrected later on with Riker in TNG. The Cage is more of a show that was not to be, replaced with what we know now, though I can't help but think it might have been a better show.

Lacking any solid transition from Pike to Kirk, I wouldn't reccomend this be viewed as an introduction to the series itself, and so it kind of remains a standalone oddity of interest. So, with that in mind, and given aspects of The Menagerie two-parter, I'd put this one down as an "Ok, But Not Necessarily Essential" episode.

As an aside, the "Remastered" version of The Menagerie does a great job of making the introductory "zoom into the bridge" camera motion from this episode into one continuous shot from exterior to interior.

(image via Memory Alpha: The Star Trek Wiki)

SGU Teaser #3: Survive

The third teaser, "Survive", for the forthcoming Stargate Universe series is online now, for those who don't want to endure the newly rebranded Syphillis Chan...er..SyFy Channel's programming (at least there's still Eureka and Ghost Hunters during the summer, stupid channel branding or not).

It looks like the entire gate spins here, not just the inner track, which is kind of a cool visual, IMO.

The series still has a serious "we've merged Battlestar Galactica with Voyager" resemblance it's going to have to work to overcome, as well as the rumored "Atlantis was cancelled to make room for SGU" situation.

Still, it's Stargate, so it should still be fun (and, let's face it, Voyager's concept has nowhere to go but up).

The previous two teasers can be found here:
#1: Frantic
#2: Philosophical

The official Stargate site has also been relaunched for SGU as well.

Star Trek: An Episode Review Journey- Introduction

Back in 2004, after absorbing so much of the great series Babylon 5, I started to become curious about watching it's once-competitor, Deep Space Nine (of which numerous similarities and accusations of copying between the two shows were observed over the years) and I really wanted to see how they compared. Especially since what little I did see of DS9 back in the day when it first aired was apparently just before it started to get good and it's major war plotline began.

But then I got to thinking, well, I know DS9 was birthed out of The Next Generation, but I don't remember too much about TNG, other than a few choice episodes (The Best of Both Worlds, etc), and had never seen much of the (lesser quality) early seasons even back when I was watching it.

And then I got to thinking, well, I've never really ever watched a whole episode of The Original Series, either (mostly due to styles and tropes of the era that made me inclined to turn it off), let alone the whole series (though I had thoroughly viewed most of the TOS films). There were bound to be some episodes of interest (the origin of KHAAAAN, for example) that could be seen as "essential" if one wanted to get the important broad strokes of the franchise. So, why not start at the beginning and just hit the whole franchise in order (release order that is)?

Well, that's what I did. As of this posting I'm still watching TNG Season 6 & DS9 Season 1, but I figured I could archive here the comments I've jotted down on each episode during the course of this project, starting with TOS.

With this project, I basically set out to determine what episodes would be considered "Definitely Essential" (introduced important recurring events/characters/etc, or is just so damn good that it shouldn't be missed), what episodes were "Potentially Essential, But Not Necessarily Good" (episodes featuring lesser events/etc that recur down the road, and/or are possibly of lesser/questionable quality), "Good Episode, But Not Necessarily Essential" (most likely worth seeing, even if it doesn't contain "essential" or recurring elements), "Average" (take it or leave it), "Ok Episode, But Not Necessarily Essential" (possibly tolerable, but not a good example of the series-likely has some awful moments of some kind), "Forgettable" (bad episodes, really no reason to watch them other than for completeness sake) & "Trash" (avoid them like the monkeyfighting plague).

In a way, it is a rating scale. If you ignore the "Definitely" and "Potentially" Essential categories as must-sees anyways, that leaves 5 categories. In other words, a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best:

5: Good Episodes
4: Average Episodes
3: Ok Episodes
2: Forgettable Episodes
1: Trash

One thing I'll be very forthright about: I'm a very harsh critic when it comes to period production styles that do not hold up to the test of time. I call it "60's Syndrome". The acting styles, though not used by all actors, prevalent at the time (I hesitate to call them cartoony, but they' lack the realism of modern techniques), ridiculously cheesy lighting and camera choices (how a well lit room in a wide shot suddenly become dark and shadowy in close-ups of male characters, except for a band of light across their eyes, or, for the ladies, going into sudden soft focus), etc. However, I do not hold the F/X at fault. That limitation was not their fault. The others they chose.

So, in short, I seek out the episodes that could be viewed today and still be considered watchable or good, without any sense of nostalgia to excuse the aforementioned weaker elements (in other words, no "Well, remember, at the time, it was good." excuses). Good today is good today, no excuses.

I'll post an entry for each episode, with a premise description, followed by my comments. Initially they'll usually be relatively brief, but over time, the comments evolve into almost a flow of consciousness reaction to the episode as I watch it.

(Inspirational Posters via EchoSphere)
(Other images via Memory-Alpha: The Star Trek Wiki)

Ryan Reynolds is also the Green Lantern?

Ryan Reynolds is Hal Jordan, The Green Lantern.

Well, that's something no one saw coming.

So, not only will Ryan be playing the Marvel character he was destined to play (see him in the otherwise-awful Blade Trinity for proof), Deadpool (which he originated, albeit in a massively bastardized form, in this summer's X-Men Origins: Wolverine), he'll also be playing the DC's Green Lantern (easily the most accessible character outside of Batman in the DC universe) in the upcoming film adaptation.

Advanced word on the script has been very positive, and Ryan's been one of those actors on the verge of breaking out for years- he's just needed the right vehicle (and, to quote "Soontir-Fel" (addressing the world in general), " Not only is he Hal Jordan, he also has abs you could cut diamonds on, and has sex with Scarlett Johansson! He is pretty much better than you in every way!")

So, as long as this doesn't interfere with him playing Deadpool in the Deadpool movie (which is only just announced in development, so with GL commencing filming within the next 6 months, it shouldn't), this bodes well. But he's gotta play the 'pool!