Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Episode 26 and 27

I'm back and still kicking. I expect that I'll be writing more in the coming weeks as my wife gets back to work and I get fewer hours at work. Boo-urns. Anyway, two episodes!

First and foremost: Come on. Really? Setuna recruits Lockon's brother, the brother looks very similar to Lockon, and then he also takes the codename of Lockon? That's just...lazy? It's something, anyway.

After New Lockon is recruited Setsuna spins my Miss Sumeragi's place, outs her to her friend as, basically, the entire reason that Celestial Being was as effective as it was four years ago, and takes her, more or less against her will, back to space where the others are waiting. Getting the band back together can be hard.

Anyway, When Setsuna gets there there's already a battle being waged at the mothership. Tieria's doing his best, but he's barely able to keep them at bay, let alone win. Setsuna bails out of the transport while it's still in space, and right into the cockpit of a new prototype gundam with two engines in it that they've been unable to get working. But Setsuna shouts at it and bangs on the coontrols enough to get it up and going, and he wins handily.

End episode. Next one. We're rescueing...Allelujah? I guess that looks right. Anyway, Allelujah has been held in a detention centre for the last four years and for whatever reason the information gets leaked to Celestial Being. Everyone gets all upity, and a rescue mission is launched. New Lockon is included even though he's never been in a mobile suit before. And he does well. Go figure.

What I want to know is: why did they even build a replacement gundam for Dynamis if they knew Lockon was dead? Wouldn't it be easier to build the sort of Gundam that the new pilot would be most efficient with than trying to force the replacement to be as good a sniper as Lockon was before he lost his eye?

I guess not. Anywho, plan succeeds, giant robot fights, things explode, Allelujah is rescued, and they have enough time to get the princess that Setsuna has a weird love-threaten dynamic with. Saji begins to understand that just because the Gundams did bring fighting to his doorstep and made him suffer, it doesn't mean that there wasn't fighting before they showed up. End of episode.

I'm Dave, and this has been your Virtual Reality Check.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Episode 26

I'm back, folks! First chance I've had in a little while to really watch anything worth writing about. First episode of the new season. This episode felt a little weird. Maybe it's because the last few episodes of this have been so packed with crazy. Hard to say. Anyway, it's four years after the massacre of the Celestial Being operational crew. Saji, who has had everyone he cares about taken away from him because the Gundams existed, but befriended Setsuna as his idendity as the pilot of Exia was kept secret. Anyway, Saji has fulfilled his dream of going into space. He's a glorified forklift operator, from the looks of it. Anyway, his supervisor is arrested for being a rebel against the government. Saji is taken too. Guilty by association.

Setsuna breaks into the work camp that Saji is being held at (by accident. Setsuna didn't know he was there. He was there to give the government a bloody nose), and saves him from being the victim of a military weapons test. They escape the facility on Exia (who clearly hasn't been repaired at all in the last four years. Still missing an arm and half its face), they get into trouble as Exia is outdated tech, and an old comrade of Setsuna's whose name slips my mind comes to the rescue in a brand new model of Gundam. Once everyone is safe Saji flips out. The episode closes with one of the government's mobile suit's pilots revealing herself to be Louise, Saji's paramour. :O

It definitely feels different from the first half of the series, but I'm hoping things will get back into the swing of things shortly.

I'm Dave, and this has been your virtual reality check.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Episode 25

Well, we've hit the end of season one. They've killed more than half the cast, destroyed all the Gundams, and healed the pilot with the fractured personality. If he's still alive. Really, the safety of the Gundam pilots are all a big question mark. Right at the end of the show Oh. Andre the Mobile Armour was disabled my Setsuna. Then, surprise, there's a mobile suit inside. It's dispatched. But the man preseived to be the main antagonist was just a pawn all along! It was a guy named, and I'm not making this up, Ribbons. Yes. A name that shall be feared through the ages. In spite of the silly names, I am quite looking forward to season two.

As a side note, please feel free to respond to any on my posts should you feel like further discussion is warranted. I'll take part.

I'm Dave and this has been your virtual reality check.

Baby Mama

Yes! Another movie! This one is also about babies! Tina Faye, Steve Martin, and a bunch of other people I kinda recognize, but don't know. Tina Faye can't get pregnant because she has a "T"-shaped uterus. Anyway, Tina Faye pays Sigourney Weaver $100,000 (American, presumably) to hire a surrogate. White Trash shows up, screws everything up with her common-law husband and moves in. Hilarity ensues. Pretty standard comedy. It's not as clever as 30 Rock, though Tina Faye does play a pretty similar character. The surrogate is an exageration of the stereotypical lower-class, high school dropout. It's well acted.

It's no The Hangover or Bridesmaids, but it's a pretty good way to kill some time if you're in the mood for a comedy that is more suitable for younger viewers than the above mentioned.

Best quote "OH GOD! IT FEELS LIKE I'M SHITTING A KNIFE!"

I'm Dave and this is your virtual reality check.

The Business of Being Born

This is a documentary about midwifery. I know what you're thinking. It's a real word. I promise. Anyway, there are some statistics presented here that are pretty shocking provided that they're true. The history of obstetrics (I'll correct the spelling of that in post-production) is pretty horrifying. Twilight Sleep in particular. They also show a woman giving a water birth, at home, with a midwife, and there was a bunch of grunting, but no screams or drugs involved. She just pooped that baby out in no time. It was pretty amazing.


It was largely a piece about how hospitals make birthing way harder than it needs to be and so on and so forth. Ironically the director's own baby was breach and had to be taken to the hospital to have a c-section as a result. Her doctor was actually very cool with her wanting a home birth though, and was there when she needed him, so everything ended well.

If you're pregnant or trying to become pregnany I would suggest that you give it a watch. It's less than an hour and a half. You can do it!

I'm Dave and this has been your virtual reality check.

Underworld

So I got home from work today and the wife queues up Underworld on Netflix right after she tells me to look for the Love, Actually DVD, so I know know if this is better or worse for you. But let's get on with it.

I first saw this movie years ago. It does not get better with age. I mean, sure. The vampires want to maintain racial purity. I get that motivation. The "lycans", and they are fooling no one. They are werewolves. Anyway...the leader of the werewolves wants to...make a...mixed race...guy. I guess. And he died with a smile on his lips when it was done. Very weird. And vampires are all coniving, lying, kinslaying bad guys. If you have the option of killing your daughter or killing the husband that you super don't like, who do you choose? Why let them get married in the first place? Bah.

Also, if the vampires are so allegedly superior than humans then why is it that over the course of this movie:

a) a subway train snuck up on the protagonist.
b) werewolf stabbed a giant sword through the hood of the car twice before actually hitting the vampire and having said vampire actually react to any threats from the roof of the car.
c) every time an armed vampire is confronted with a werewolf going through the "change of life" they wait for the wolf to finish before opening up on him.
d) whips? Really? You deserve to have your head eatten.
e) and this point is for both sides, if no one can survive the bite from both a vampire and a werewolf then why the hell are they messing around with neck snapping and swords not just biting each other? Tranq guns filled with their own saliva?

If you just shut the hell up and watch it then it's an OK movie, I guess. But for anyone who doesn't just turn off during a movie there are better movies. Watch Ginger Snaps if you're looking for werewolves. Watch Blackula if you're looking for a vampire movie. Watch Supernatural if you're looking for both because that show is bitching.

This is Dave and this is your virtual reality check.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: American Remix

So I just got back from seeing new version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie. I saw the first one when it came out in the original...Swedish? Is that a language? Anyway, the first movie (you can tell that I strive for only the pinicle of journalistic integrity for my readership). I haven't read the book and have no interest in the book at all as it's not my kind of leisure reading. Nor is this sort of thing normally my typical movie fare, but in both cases I was impressed. It is a good solid story. Regardless of whether you've seen the original version of this film, I suggest that you go see this movie if you feel that you can spend two and a half hours of your time on a well crafted, if brutal at times, whodunnit.

Spoiler time. Avert your tender, virgin eyes.

Do not take your children to see this movie. If you've read the book you know why. The female protagonist in this film gets brutally raped her state-appointed care-giver (there's really nothing close to it in North American culture as far as I can tell. Maybe parole officer), but then gets revenge on him by sodomizing him and then tattooing "I am a rapist pig" accross his chest. Granted, I've seen these two movies years apart. The only glaring difference that I noticed in the Hollywood version to the original is that at the end, when the bad guy gets into a car accident. In the Swedish version she intentionally and with great malice did cause the car to explode. In the Hollywood version the car exploded on its own. Perhaps that speaks more to the engineering of American cars over European ones. Who am I to say. Anyway, as long as you can stomach the brutal scenes, and don't feel too uncomfortable watching some (consensual) soft-core porn with a theatre full of strangers, then I would say that this movie is something that everyone should see in at least one of its forms.

My name is Dave, and this has been your virtual reality check.