Terminator Salvation

SORT-OF WARNING: may contain minor spoilers

I don't know what critics and other Terminator fans were expecting from this movie. Noah and I watched it last night, and we both enjoyed it. It's not the best of the franchise by any means, but it's a good action movie. It was exactly what I expected it to be. Yes, there were some continuity issues, but the core premise of the Terminator franchise has been "Hey, let's mess with continuity!" The first three movies were about using time travel to change the past and using the knowledge of the future to change that future. Terminator Salvation is the result of effing with the timeline. It's a different future than the one Kyle Reese told Sarah Connor about back in 1984. John Connor says as much. A lot of fans seem dissappointed that this movie didn't look exactly like the flash forwards to the post apocolyptic year of 2029. For one thing, the movie was set in 2018, so things are going to look different than in 2029. For another thing, with all of the robots and soldiers jumping around through time messing things up, the future is going to be different. Heck, Judgement Day was pushed back six years, so Skynet will have to play catch-up as it is.

Things that I liked:

1) The scar that John Connor had in the two visions of the future you see in T2 and T3 is explained.

2) Kyle Reese is played by the guy who played Checkov in the new Star Trek movie, and he actually kind of looks like a teenaged Michael Biehn.

3) The T-800 looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1984.

4) Sam Worthington's character was interesting.

5) No time travel.

Little things that I didn't like:

1) No Derek Reese (Kyle's brother in The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Would it have been so hard to replace the adorable little mute girl with Derek?

2) No terminators with rubber skin (mentioned by Kyle in the original movie)

3) The human prisoners didn't have barcode tattoos.

4) Molten steel, which destroyed the terminators in T2, didn't destroy the T-800.

Again With the Star Trek

Warning: More spoilers.

So I've reviewed the movie and given my thoughts on the changes. This post will be devoted to some of my favourite moments from the movie.

1) Captain Pike: the movie prominently featured Captain Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Enterprise. Fans remember him from the original pilot of the original series before Gene Rodenberry made the second pilot that introduced Star Trek as we know it. Pike wasn't terribly different than Kirk, but I've always held a special place for him in my heart. It was good to see him in a movie, albeit played by a different actor. In the movie, he's an important factor leading to Kirk becoming captain of the Enterprise.

2) The red ensign: a long-standing joke about Star Trek is the unfortunate "red ensign". Whenever an away team beamed down, it consisted of people such as Captain Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy, and an unknown character of low rank wearing a red shirt. More often than not, this character died violently. The writers of the movie purposefully and humorously provided a blatant "red ensign" moment. Captain Pike orders a space drop (sky diving from orbit). Reporting in drop suits are Kirt, Sulu, and some guy dressed in red that has made no previous appearance in the movie. His name was Ensign Olsen, or something like that. He was amusingly gung-ho about kicking Romulun ass, and the movie makers introduced his character in a way that you just absolutely know that he'll be dead in a few minutes. And what do you know: he pulls his chute too late, breaks his leg when he lands, falls over the edge of the drill, and gets sucked into jet of flame underneath the platform. I've never laughed so hard at such a horrible death.

3) Scotty's question about the future: Kirk and Spock Prime arrive at the lonely Federation outpost on the ice planet that Spock abandoned Kirk on. They find Scotty, and in the course of their discussion, it is mentioned that Spock Prime is from the future. "You're from the future?" Scotty enthusiastically asks. Spock Prime answers in the affirmative, to which Scotty, who clearly doesn't believe Spock Prime, asks, "Do they still have sandwiches there?"

4) Spock loses it: I mentioned this part in my review, so I won't go into detail. Kirk needs to take command over the Enterprise from Spock, using a regulation stating that someone who is strongly emotionally affected by the situation should be removed by command. Kirk antagonizes Spock, accusing him of not loving his recently-deceased mother, and Spock goes absolutely ape-shit, beats the tar out of Kirk, and only stops choking him when reprimanded by Sarek.

5) Ringtone: Near the beginning of the movie, when a young Jim Kirk steals his step-father's antique Corvette, his step-father calls Jim on the car's phone. The ringtone is the same annoying ringtone has been used on cellphones for years now. "Do-do-do-dooo! Do-do-do-dooo! Do-do-do-doo-doooooooo!" And the phone is a Nokia. Nice to see that Nokia will survive World War III.

6) Breaking the tension: After the beat-down Spock inflicted on Kirk in point number 4, the bridge crew stands around in an awkward silence. Scotty looks around with a wide-eyed expression, and then says, "I like this ship! It's very exciting."

7) Spock/Uhura romance: There's an episode of the original series where everyone is hanging out in the mess hall. Uhura starts singing a song, making it up on the spot, about the Enterprise and it's crew, and there's a verse about Spock that she sings directly to him. That's the most intimate moment between the two of them I can think of. The writers of the movie seemed to take that small, brief spark and run with it. I was surprised at first, and didn't really know what to think, but I eventually decided that I like it. I especially liked the look Kirk gave them when he realized that the two of them were a couple.

8) Kobaichi Maru: I have no clue if I spelled that correctly. It's the test in Star Fleet academy that was designed to be a no-win situation to see how cadets would react to it. It turns up in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn when Savik takes--and unavoidably fails--the test at the beginning of the film. As the movie goes on, it is said that Captain Kirk is the only who ever passed the test. Kirk finally explains to his son, David, that he reprogrammed the computer to change the variables of the test. In other words, he cheated. It was nice to actually be able to see that moment, especially when it is revealed that this is how Kirk first meets Spock, who is the designer of the test.

Star Trek

I'm a Trekkie. Not the loser kind of Trekkie who goes to Star Trek conventions wearing rubber Spock ears or a banana clip painted gold over my eyes. Heck, the only time I've ever been to the Vulcan, Alberta Trek Centre (which is about an hour away from where I've lived for most of the last seven years) was to ask directions to a funeral. I could beat up most other Trekkies, and I'm not a fighter. But I am a Trekkie nonetheless. I watched reruns of the original series when I was a kid, and I loved the movies. I was a faithful and devoted fan of The Next Generation, which is my favourite of the five TV series. I had a passing interest in Deep Space Nine. I watched Voyager faithfully even though it paled in comparison to the original series and TNG. And I thought Enterprise was one of the most under-rated TV series of this decade. I own Star Trek I through X, most of them the two-disc collectors editions, and I have numerous DVD fan collections.

This past Saturday, Avril and I went to watch the latest Star Trek movie, the reboot done by J.J. Abrams. The original characters played by a new cast. This movie very easily could have sucked. Thankfully, it didn't.

WARNING: the remainder of this post contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you may want to stop reading here and come back after you've seen the movie. Unless you hate Star Trek and don't care if I ruin the movie for you.

Let me make this perfectly clear right from the start: I love this new Star Trek movie. Chris Pine was a good Kirk (nobody can be Shatner without coming off as silly, and Pine wisely didn't try a Shatner impression. He managed to get the feel of Kirk without aping Shatner. In fact, the more I think about it, the more impressive that seems.) Zachary Quinto did an excellent job portraying Spock. Karl Urban was an amazing Dr. McCoy. Simon Pegg's portrayal of Scotty was one of the highlights of the movie, and I'm sad that he didn't play a larger role. Eric Bana as the bad guy, Nero, did an excellent job. Winona Ryder was an...interesting choice to play Spock's mother. I'm glad I didn't realize it was her until the end credits were rolling.

The writing was top-notch. They captured the essensce of the characters without falling into the rut that has been trapping Trek writers since the mid-'90s. This was the most refreshing Star Trek, on film or on TV, that I've seen in a long time. The direction was also refreshing and excellent. The special effects were great, and even the look of sets were great. The shuttle crafts taking the recruits for training looked well-used and real, something that Star Trek has never really done, and the engineering section of the Enterprise looked like it was the actual functioning engine room of a ship.

The story was engaging and emotionally gripping. The opening scene in which George Kirk sacrifices his life to allow the escape pods to get away while his wife is giving birth to James Kirk caused more than a just a few moist eyes. Leonard Nimoy's cameo as Spock Prime was nice to see, and it played a more important role to the plot than I was expecting. The destruction of Vulcan was a powerful moment, especially for Trekkies. Destroying Vulcan is almost as drastic as destroying Earth to us. Another powerful moment was when Kirk antagonized Spock into losing control of his emotions, which lead to Spock beating the crap out of Kirk.

An awesome movie. I loved it. Loved it!

But there is a small part of me that can't stop thinking about the drastic changes this movie has made to the Star Trek universe. Destroying Vulcan in the prequel to everything else that has happened over the last 40+ years that Star Trek has been around is huge. The planet Vulcan is gone. Only about 10,000 Vulcans out of 6 billion survived. Tuvok, from Voyager, most likely will never be born. The Federation will be fundamentally changed. I actually woke up around 3:00 Sunday morning wandering how the galaxy will be different by the time TNG roles around. The Star Trek universe is changed. My Star Trek universe!

But, like I said, that's just a small part of me. I'm interested and eager to see what the future holds for the Star Trek franchise.

We didn't start the flame war

Watch We Didnt Start the Flame War on CollegeHumor

This video tickled me. College Humor has some funny stuff. You should check it out. Just a warning though: there is some bad language and this video in particular shows a picture of two girls making out.

LGAA Notes

So I spent three days in Red Deer last week at the Local Government Administrators Association annual convention. When the first guest speaker started speaking, all of my fellow interns grabbed a pen and paper and started taking notes. "Pssshhh!" I said. "Notes! This isn't school." So I picked up my own pen and paper and took smart-ass notes. Some of the notes pertained to what the speaker said, and some were just random thoughts. I've provided parenthetical explanations where I deemed it appropriate. Either way, here they are. Enjoy:

-I am taking notes.
-Not to take away from her point, but I have never liked the letter E.
-The more she says "I Generation," the more I want to listen to my iPod.
-"I'll burn the building down." (This is an Office Space quote. The speaker was talking about a person who was upset that someone took her stapler."
-www.mikemackenzie.com
-"Join the I Generation" sounds like a Pepsi slogan.
-It should be FIPP, not FOIP. (This is referring to Alberta's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which is commonly abbreviated as FOIP, much to my chagrin.)
-Rod is such an A-hole.
-Uh-oh! Not the C-word!
-Mmm! Gum!
-Hey, that rhymes!
-Tee-hee-hee! She said panties!
-I lay on my back and put both legs in at the same time.
-Suck it, Lizzy! (Lizzy being Queen Elizabeth II)
-Nobody likes a smart-ass, Mik. (My name tag at the convention read "Mik MacKenzie," which amused me to no end.)
-Just like in Smallville.
-I'm a loner. A rebel.
-"But I still love technology/Always and forever."
-"How can anyone not like you?"
-Why are toothless children cute, but toothless adults are ugly?
-Real notes?
-Yeah, I can do that. (This has nothing to do with the "real notes" comment.)
1. Yes
2. Yeah
3. This does not apply
-170,000
-My doodling is usually words. I word doodle.
-Ha-ha-ha! "My beans!"
-Smartiac Attacks!
-I bet no one else in the room doodled Cthulu burning down the hotel. (The speaker had earlier encouraged us to doodle, and then at this point said that he bets that six or seven people in the room doodled the same thing. I'm pretty sure I was an exception, because I had doodled Cthulu stand above a burning picture of Red Deer's Capri Centre and saying, "Blargh! My arms are too short!")
-Hooray for ABBA!
-I think Kurtis was abducted by aliens. Or maybe eaten by Cthulu.
-Slums of Jakarta would make a pretty good band name.
-My name is not Mik. It's not Erik, either.
-She looks like an older version of Maria Keen. (Maria was a friend of mine in my single days.)
-This is the most boring birthday ever. I better win the laptop. (I didn't.) It's not the worst birthday ever, though.
-Except for Highway 21, of course.
-I should grow my hair long enough to stick a pen in it. Or maybe my beard.
-31 years old, and I have a zit on my nose.
-2+2 does not equal 6, stupid.
-time for the birthday dance! (Then I drew I stick figure dancing.)
-Who's talking?
-I hate it when people say "were" instead of "we're".
-"The near term"; I like that.

I had four more pages of quality notes from Thursday, but the cleaning staff threw them away when I wasn't looking.

Fear From Fiction

I was raised on R-rated horror movies. I've been watching them for as long as I can remember. Alien, Aliens, Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining. I could go on. What do those movies I just listed have in common? I saw them all before I was 10 years old. As a result, I'm very desensitized to horror, both in film and books. I enjoy horror, yes, but it doesn't really scare me. There are only two movies I can think of that can scare me: The Shining (specifically, the naked dead woman that Jack Nicholson made out with) and Signs. The Shining still scares me because I always revert back to the quivering 7-year-old boy lying on the family room floor in the basement of my house in Cole Harbour. Signs scares me because it's a masterfully made suspense movie that touches on fears that resonate just right with me.

Some video games can scare me, but that's because they're interactive and pull me in more than any book or movie can.

So here I am, going through life watching horror movies and reading dozens of Stephen King books, not even flinching at the horrors inside. Then, last week, I bought a book: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: the Best of H.P. Lovecraft. Stephen King recommends him. Lovecraft is basically the father of modern horror. Since I'm an aspiring author who sometimes dabbles in writing horror, I figured I'd read some of his work. As a general rule, I hate early 20th century fiction, and when I started reading the first story ("The Rats in the Wall"), I figured that this was going to be no exception. However, once I got into the meat of the story, I realized that H.P. Lovecraft is seriously effed up. I loved the story. It disturbed me in a delightful way. I read a couple of other stories, but then decided to skip ahead to read "The Call of Cthulhu", one of his most famous stories. I finished reading it last night. I put it down, intending to go to bed, but there was just one problem: the thought of going to bed, alone (Avril and the boys are out of town), in my dark bedroom terrified me. I couldn't get the image of Cthulhu out of my head. Here's a picture of him:

Note the tiny man falling from his claws, and the dead guys on the rock in the foreground. I was sure that I would be haunted by the giant, octopus-headed ancient alien in my sleep. So I stayed up for another hour or two distracting myself with the Mo-Board. When I finally went to sleep, instead of Cthulhu, I dreamt about Star Wars.

My Bookmarks

Here is a list and descriptions of the websites that I visit on a daily basis:

Cracked.com "America's Only Humor & Video Site, Since 1958"

For years, Cracked magazine was the most successful Mad magazine clone on the market. Cracked magazine is no longer in print, and really, is Mad really going to be that far behind? Are there still people out there who find the Mad-style of humor funny? No, I didn't think so. Cracked decided to focus all of its efforts into its website, which is a million times more funny than the magazine ever was. Part of the reason that I like it might be because the writers are predominantly men who are close to my age and have similar interests that I do. Nerdish interests. They specialize in list-based articles (they also specialize in dick jokes). For example:

8 Customers Everyone Hates
7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey
7 Classic Disney Movies That Taught Us Terrible Lessons
The 20 Most Ridiculous Batman Comics Ever Released
The 7 Dumbest Things Ever Done by Airport Security

There are also six full-time bloggers on staff. My favourite two of these bloggers are Daniel O'Brien and Michael Swaim. Michael Swaim is also the host of Cracked TV, an online series of short videos which is really just more list-based humor.


The Mo-Board "A place for Mo-Mos, Non-Mos, Ex-Mos, and even Anti-Mos to make friends and chat."

While the Mo-Board isn't the birth of hyperferrianism (that would be bolt.com), it is his current place of residence. One of the many, many message boards on bolt.com was the Mormonism/LDS board. As time went on, and bolt rapidly became a place that was unbearable to be (I'm not just being an ass; the place no longer exists), one regular frequenter of the Mormonism/LDS board saw fit to venture over to Proboards and create The Mormon Board, which eventually became the Mo-Board. There was a mass exodus of the regulars of bolt's Mormonism/LDS board to Andrew's new Mo-Board, a place free of the many, many, many ills of bolt.com. We're a very tight-knit group, and I consider most of them real friends, not the lesser breed of online acquaintances. Several of the members of the board have met in real life. Personally, the only two members of the board that I've met are the two that I knew in real life before the Mo-Board existed, but I plan to change that someday.

Facebook

You all know how I feel about Facebook.

Mary's Attempt at a Blog

This is my younger sister's blog. She blogs and posts pictures of herself and her family.

The Emily Needs to Take More Pictures Blog

This is my youngest sister's blog, which she doesn't update nearly often enough.

Pat's Photo A Day "A scrapbooking grandmother's pictorial journey through life, one day at a time."

This is my mother's blog. She uses it to post pictures and talk about grandmotherly things. It is also the source of most of the family news that comes my way.

Mommy Moments "Tales of 3 great kids and their snap-happy Mom"

This is the blog of one of my older sisters. Like Mary, she uses it to blog and post pictures of herself and her family. She's also a professional photographer, so they're really nice pictures.

Edmonton Oilers - The Official Web Site

My favourite hockey team's official web site. It is a source of great joy, anger, and frustration. It's also a great resource for when I miss hockey games due to travel, Tree House, or Rock Band.

hyperblogianism "Jokes, social commentary, and other miscellaneous thoughts of my online persona, hyperferrianism"

I don't think a description for this one is necessary.

MiKenzie, Inc. "Established 1978. Mike MacKenzie, President; Avril MacKenzie, CEO; Kenneth MacKenzie, Jr. Vice President; Alexander MacKenzie, Not An Explorer"

My first blog. This is where I keep people updated on my family. MiKenzie, Inc. was coined by my former roommate, Zac Erickson, and is an amalgamation of "Mike" and "MacKenzie".

Jandrew Edits "a collection of humorously edited footage"

I was introduced to Jandrew Edits by cracked.com, which will often post links to sites that they enjoy. This guy takes existing footage (mostly from Star Trek: The Next Generation and, more recently, Back to the Future) and cleverly edits them for short, funny clips. My favourite one is called "Bridge Buffoonery"

Memories of the '90s "I'm either one of the youngest Gen X-ers or one of the oldest Gen Y-ers, depending on which text book you look in. I turned 12 in March of 1990, and these are my memories of being a teenager in the last decade of the 20th Century."

My third blog.

Avrilcakes

This is my wife's substitute for a blog. It's her Shutterfly page, where she posts pictures of her family life. It also has a journal feature, which she uses as a blog.

amywoolf

The blog of another one of my older sisters. Like Mary and Sara, she uses it to blog and post pictures of herself and her family.

White Ninja Comics

Another site that Cracked.com introduced me to. It's a comic strip that updates three times a week chronicling the adventures of White Ninja, a man with an unclear history whose age changes from strip to strip. Sometimes he has a wife and kids. Sometimes his kids are teenagers, and sometimes they're little. Sometimes he's a child. He's even a baby in one strip. It's hard to put a finger on why it's such a funny comic strip, but I absolutely love it. I'll post some of my favourite strips here.