Mr. Confrontation's Proclamation

STAR TREK ONLINE! BEAMING ITS WAY INTO HOMES NOW!

2010-02-01T07:51:00.002-05:00

“To Boldly Go” without leaving your basement…

As I write this, the new MMORPG sensation known as Star Trek Online is currently in the last legs of the “head start” for players that have pre-ordered the game. I was originally going to write this as my first post, but felt it best to hold off as I am still learning the ropes as to how to blog. But right now, I cannot hold it in any longer. Star Trek Online is here and it is a really addictive game. I was lucky enough to land the open beta and play this game for just over a week. I really wish I was able to get in earlier because this game was a lot of fun and truly a marvel at what MMORPGs will be like in a few years time. I am played this game a lot. I am still on a messed up sleeping pattern because of this game. So far, nothing I do can make me stay up long enough to get back on a normal habit of sleep. For the past five days, I have been sleeping for only two or three hours at a time every six hours or so. It’s quite strange to be wide awake from 5am up until 11am and then sleep until 6pm and be awake until 3am and then sleep and start the cycle all over again. Normally I would just go out and buy a case of Barqs root beer and that would get me on track, but I have no money so I am stuck with water and the juices I can make with water.

But I digress. Star Trek Online was AWESOME! This game had a lot of features to it that were really superior and will give the pending Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG a run for its money. To begin: your away missions and just as entertaining as your space battle. You get to beam down with an away team where you can not only equip them with unique weapons, armor and devices, but you can develop their skills and have an engineer on the ground with you, a science officer, a tactical officer and a doctor to heal you as he’s firing disrupter bolts at the enemy. Now in a lot of video games there are bad guys and minions that are clearly inferior to you as the player. This is not the case in STO. When you fight Klingons, they are experts in hand to hand combat and they are also very resistant to all types of weapons, so you really have to strategize to be victorious in a battle. The Romulans are conniving and they revive their fallen allies and regenerate their shields just as you can, so you are in a dog fight with them for a long time during your away missions. Gorn are really tough and throw things at you. There are “dogs” in the game that charge and are just plane annoying. You have a variety of weapons you can find and there are also tactics you can employ. You can actually dodge in this game. If a guy fires at you or throws a grenade, you can roll away and be unscathed. It won’t turn or curve and hit you like in other MMORPGs. In addition, if you manage to disable a guy, you get the option on your weapon to fire a critical shot that can vaporize your opponent. How awesome is that?

You have a scanning device that points the way where you’re supposed to go in your missions in case you get lost. You have a map of explored areas and a sensor sweep to see bad guys. There’s a lot of treats to this. You don’t really have to aim your weapons, but you do need to select the right target. The best part is that if you die, your team mates, the NPCs in your party can revive you! It isn’t game over or anything and it’s vice versa.

The character creation of the game was a lot of fun. Not as diverse as I was hoping but still enjoyable. I was able to make some outrageous looking aliens, but if I wanted to play around with a human, that was a bit more difficult. I couldn’t make him look like a really old guy that I wanted. The hair styles were very limited as were the skin tone and the ability to manipulate features like noses, eye brows and jaw lines. If you wanted to make a character look exactly like yourself, it was going to be really difficult; and one of the things they went on advertising was that very same ability! I hope for game launch that option will be available.

The next part, my love of the game: The space battle. If you check out the Star Trek Online website you’ll find the three classes of ships and some of the sub classes that are associated with them. This part made me a little disappointed. I was hoping for a broader spectrum of ships to choose from but it was very small all around. You start with a Miranda Class (the ship we saw in The Wrath Of Khan) and it’s a very diverse ship. You can equip any type of weapon on it and fly around and shoot guys. Next once you get promoted to a lieutenant, you are given the option to fly a cruiser, escort or science vessel. I started with a cruiser as its design was that of the original USS Enterprise from the old movies. That was a lot of fun, but what surprised me was that the Enterprise ship was only given an additional engineering station for “special attacks or abilities”. This made me a little disappointed as with something like a cruiser, I was expecting two engineering stations or at least two lieutenant stations. Luckily I had a large amount of energy credits and I purchased and escort ship which had a set of tactical stations to allow me superior fighting capabilities. I was able to level up rather quickly on the game and become a commander with a second escort ship.

Some of the let downs of the game were that there was very little information regarding weapons, character choices, skill trees, ships and their capabilities, mission locations, map details… the list goes on. It was like looking at a set of blue prints. You see measurements for a few of the walls and things of a building and you have to do the math to figure out the rest of the info; in other words, there was a lot of detective work required for this game during the open beta. I read all of the update notes, but the tutorial was rather weak. It should have had options for it to come up as you gained rank, or a new ship, or a new mission. Throw in an option to turn it off if you want, but it would have been really helpful. The other complaint that I have for this game is that the leveling up process was ridiculously fast for an open beta. Usually it’s accelerated so that you can complete the game once in the first three or so weeks of frequent play. I was only able to play for 9 days and I was more than half way finished everything. I was two ranks away from the end in just 9 days! Most of everyone else that I was playing with had several characters that were all ready Admirals, fully completed and they were playing again for kicks. This really bothered me, because they would either have to slow down the progression rate so much that it would take forever to level up, or, modify it slightly where I would be done with the game in a matter of two months or so. I didn’t like the idea of that. If I’m going to play a game, specifically one where I have to pay every month, I want a lot to do and some strong progression knowing that there is a lot more a head and with STO, I didn’t get those feeling at all. It felt to me that once I became an Admiral with one character I would just be flying from planet to planet, doing random missions etc and traveling in space blowing up Romulans and Klingons. The worst part about this game was that you couldn’t remain a specific rank. If I wanted to stop at Captain and not be promoted, I had no choice in the matter. I was going to be an Admiral and there was nothing I could do about it.

For these reasons, I personally can not be a participant in this game. I am so grateful I got a chance to play it for free with an Open beta and not get disappointed and go even more broke than I am now by investing in this game and discovering all of these faults. I would have been more upset than I am now if that ended up happening.

I really like Cryptic. I enjoyed City of Heroes for nearly two years and feel I got my money out of it. Star Trek Online is a big work in progress. I hope that in a few years time they make a sequel. Here are some suggestions for if they decide to go there:

1. When the player starts, they should be a cadet, not an Ensign. They should go through the Academy. A detailed and fun tutorial where they get to experience bits of every part of the game.

2. Assignment: When you graduate from the Academy you are assigned to a random ship. The captain is an NPC. You are at a particular station. You can be an engineer, science officer, tactical, or helm. So if you’re the helmsmen you can pilot the ship. The NPC give you orders to fly here or their in battle or navigate to missions and you do that (which is basically what you did in STO except you were an “acting captain”) and then you go on away missions.

3. You can not choose the name of your ship. You just can’t. There should be a limited number of ships in Star Fleet and in the game. The best way to achieve a solid MMO experience would be that if on your ship you are with other players that fill other positions on the ship. You can make teams so you can play with your friends or do it at random so you can play with others. If you’re not online an NPC takes your place or another player can come in on a duty roster. If you have multiple characters on different ships you can switch out for station duty and or wander the ship and skill up in a holodeck or something. Make lots of options to make it more like an actual Star Trek world than a fancy flaccid on you have now.

4. Promotions: When you get promoted you should have assignment options in addition to improving you skill tree. Say you get promoted and another star ship offers you a position on their ship. Say it’s not a science vessel that you’re currently on, but instead and escort or a cruiser. You can then switch over to that ship and work in more dangerous missions, maybe even skill up your tactical skills faster.

5. There should be a lot of skills. Keep the whole officer designation but really allow for lots of skills to keep the game interesting. Learn new flight patterns or scanning abilities, or quick fixes in engineering or healing powers if you’re a doctor. Treat specific diseases or learn a skill that works with mini-game puzzles like curing new viruses etc. Really explore the possibility of making your officer a unique and adventurous individual.

6. Becoming a captain! This should be a really difficult process, but not unobtainable. When you become a captain you should be able to advertise for positions on your ship. There you can pick your friends again or pick strangers whom have the best skills for your crew and your missions. In addition, again you don’t get to select the name of your ship, but you do get to select the class. Say you want a Galaxy Class. Well you get a Galaxy Class with a serial number and a specific name. The ship could be brand new or handed down from an NPC or player that chose to be promoted to Admiral. Once you become a captain then you get discretionary missions of either exploration or diplomatic or tactical. Now you have a bridge crew where you go on big missions through out the game and really work together. You can sub out certain positions making you take over the pilots seat and have a computer player do tactical if you don’t or a player isn’t online to do it. Or you can set up a chain of command orders line for all of your characters to follow and watch the show as you plan your next set of moves; just like a real captain!

I would fin all of those things really a lot of fun. It would also give more incentive with away missions as you can be a bit more on your own and really diversify the game. That’s what I would like to see in the next Star Trek Online game. I hope one day someone from Cryptic reads this or maybe you all as fans of STO read this and pass it along to Cryptic. I think they would have one hell of an adventure programming this next generation in MMORPG and I think it’d be amazing to play as well.

Dollhouse has departed!

2010-01-31T06:34:00.001-05:00

About Fuckin’ time!

This past Friday Fox aired the series finally of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and I was thrilled! For those of you that followed the show, I give you a one word comment: “HA!” You Whedon loyalists have wasted at least 25 hours of your lives involving yourself in this empty trite known as Dollhouse, and I couldn’t be happier. Over the past ten years, the one thing I have hated more than anything are those Joss Whedon loyalist fans. People who have no grasp on reality, or for that matter, an average education who think Joss Whedon is the greatest writer to grace Film, Television and the Internet.

Allow me to elaborate why you are all wrong, and how, although Mr. Whedon is a decent writer, he is by no means the greatest. The first piece of evidence I have to submit is that Joss Whedon has had three cancelled shows. That’s right, three. Granted, it is impressive that he was able to sell those same three shows to begin production, but the difference between a decent writer and a great writer, is that great writers can keep their shows on the air and the networks happy. Whedon has failed to do this with every show, except Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. But don’t think for a second that Buffy was safe from cancellation. After the mid season hiatus; taken out of respect for those lost during the horrible Columbine Shooting, Buffy ratings were dropping steadily. Once Buffy herself left high school and entered college, the whole series began to fall apart. What were they going to do next? The whole writing team of Buffy clearly did not have any ideas and it showed in the boring sub-plots of the whole army sub-division experimenting on demons and, the biggest jump the shark type gimmick: the invention of Dawn! This series should have ended with the high school graduation. That last line that Seth Green said about surviving high school was a great analogy for the show and the viewers watching it. That alone was a great ending, but they couldn’t stop there. They had to keep going, and going, and going. They had to bring in the three geek squad with the gay sounded and acting geek, the freaky midget, and the pre-cursor to Ted Mosby robot inventor. It then “evolved” Willow turning gay, then into a witch, and Giles as well getting magical powers, Spike becoming a love interest, all the potential slayers being “unlocked” and the introduction of an unstoppable reverend played by the kick ass Nathan Fillion.

What really made the show eve more ridiculous is the fact that they adopted (and I’m using that word politely) the whole Jedi Order and used it to pertain to all of the Slayers in the world. You also know what really made the show suck in those final years? All of the sudden, everyone and their grandmother are personal friends or enemies of demons. It makes the whole first four years of the show pointless for Buffy to have kept the secret of the Slayer when there was no divide between the demon world and the human world after all.
Then we have “Angel”. The show started off horribly. Angel wasn’t even really doing anything. It was like watching The Hulk without Lou Forrigno and it featured Cordelia, who I never found attractive and her playboy spread from what I told is as revolting as her ten foot wide mouth. That show wanders aimlessly for the first few seasons until they jump to Angel having a son, pretty much a male Slayer, then he is put in charge of a law firm and then that story runs dry to its eventual end.

But following “Angel” there was hope, with a well pitched and interesting new show that had nothing to do with vampires: Firefly!

What a great concept: Cowboys in space; renegade jack of all trades men/women looking for work, trying to survive in a galaxy of constant danger. Too bad they didn’t have a direction for the show to go in. My favourite episode too this day, and one I watch on occasion is “Out of Gas”. This show had great characters and was the first time we saw some experimentation with Joss Whedon dialogue. All though it was not as risky as I would like it, we finally had characters that didn’t sound like the same person talking to themselves with other people in the room; a prelude to my second point of why Joss Whedon is not the greatest writer. This was a show with a lot of potential, but if there’s one thing Joss Whedon and crew have to do, is draw out their ideas and milk them as long as they can before people catch on that they only have a concept and not a story. Problem is, they did that twice all ready with Buff and Angel so Fox and friends caught on quicker and pulled the plug. I can’t blame the lack of Firefly’s success solely on Whedon. Had Fox Network aired the shows in the order for which they were intended, less confusion would have entered the minds of new audiences, so this one is the fault of two parties. However, Fox accepted their mistake and gave Whedon the chance to save the series by helping him make a feature film to bump the story to a better starting point and launch the second chapter of the series. They gave Whedon just over $39 million and if the movie made its money back plus a profit, Firefly would return to air waves and conclude in a few years.

Serenity which came out in September of 2005, was Whedon’s first unaltered movie that he has made and the first he directed. The original 1992 Buffy was re-written under the supervision of the films director (Fran Rubel Kuzui) and it made a lot of money for its budget and became a cult classic off the bat. Firefly hit theatres and did well its opening week, but failed to meet the standards Fox had generously laid out. It fell short of its budget by around $200,000 and that was the end.

It would be another 4 years until Whedon would grace us with a new show, but what the fuck? Dollhouse? 4 years and the best you can come up with is Dollhouse? On top of that, you have to cast the ugly slayer as the lead, too? You do realize that Eliza Dushku didn’t even look cute as a 14 year-old in True Lies and just got worse as puberty rounded out. On top of that you again, don’t have a follow through story! Just a concept and a bunch of shitty gimmicks, plus, and I can’t stress this enough, all of your characters talk exactly the same! They have the exact same word choice! Their grammar is identical; they have no individual verbal character to compliment their actions. We’re back to a high school level of writing, and you’re “The Legendary Joss Whedon?” Bullshit!

I stumbled upon this show within its first month on the air and knew instantly that this show would be cancelled. I knew it would get 13 episodes aired for sure, as that is the standard for any show introduced and because it was Joss Whedon and his fans are retarded nut jobs, it would get a gracious second set of 13 episodes or so to see if the show could develop to be, a serious money making series. Way to fail to deliver again, Joss! Not only could you not save your show, but frickin’ Smallville on the CW beat you in the ratings every week! That shows been on for 9 years, they’ve got crazy ridiculous stories that are so expositional and far fetched, and you, YOU Joss Whedon can’t beat them? You were number 5 in the ratings for your SERIES FINALLY! It’s really sad to think that Smallville, who just had a filler episode, kicked a Joss Whedon’s series finally episodes ass. You know what’s the funniest part about this latest development? If and when Smallville ever does end, its season finally will have more viewers and be higher on the ratings than Dollhouse ever will, and that show only sucks slightly less than Dollhouse!

Joss, for the love of your reputation, your real one, not the one your fans hold on to like their dreams of re-living high school, but for your real reputation and continuing career as a writer, go to a fuckin’ learning annex and take some classes on story development, arch plots, dialogue and history! You have proven that you can come up with some fairly interesting ideas, but your last three attempts have been empty shells. A good writer never stops trying to learn to be better, but you just keep making the same mistakes. I want you to prove me wrong by doing something awesome and truly successful, not just by your fans, but by people who have never heard of you. Do something that will make Fox (if you decide to stick with them) kick themselves in the ass for canceling your previous shows and make them tremble at the idea of loosing your next project. Come on, Joss. I’ve got a lot of free time and I want to see what you’ve got!

I’m Sad! I’m Sad! I’m Sad out the IPad!

2010-01-30T06:55:00.003-05:00

The future of technology is in a single touch… yeah, and it’ll be the end of us!

Wow, who would have thought that in a world of economic difficulty, Apple would spend a shit load of money on the IPad? Let’s not seriously answer that. The IPad or what I think we should call it, Tony Robbins’s Ipod Touch. Because that’s all this new device is. The 21st century of technology opened up with the return of Apple computers to the public market and they have done an amazing job, not only with quality products, but also with their advertising. They have really made additions to the internet and computers aboard. But now with this IPad, they’re just wasting time, money and resources. Why are they bothering with this? Touch screens are good for small things, or for straight up monitors. We as a society can’t be walking around with large touch screen panels. Especially since, regardless of how durable they can be, they are eventually going to take damage and be replaced. Ever drop your Ipod, or Iphone and the screen breaks? Now imagine that on something 14 inches or larger! That’s going to be one hell of a mess and you’ll probably cut yourself taking it to get replaced. So not only are you out the $1000 that this thing will cost (that’s after the contract and other trinkets), but you’ll be out and additional 12 cents for bandages on your hands and fingers. That’s just a kick in the balls when you’ve all ready fallen down.

I suppose I’d be less upset by this new Ipad if 1: It was more than just an extremely large Ipod touch and 2: If it didn’t rip off the PADDs from Star Trek: The Next Generation. That’s really what this is. It is a Star Trek PADD. A device used to hold files and read reports. Yeah it can brows some internet content, but it can’t co-operate with Flash and a lot of sites have other software on it that any other computer device can read, but not the IPad.

Technology of the future is supposed to be getting small and more portable as we go, but for some reason Apple has decided to go the opposite direction with the one technology that they have been marketing for years as easy and portable. Will this kill the competition of any type of digital book reading device on the market? Oh yeah. People are stupid and most of them are blind Apple loyalists: like iJustine. She wouldn’t have a career if it weren’t for AT&T and the Iphone. So naturally every time a new Apple product is announced, she’ll throw out her harsh complaints for itty bitty ones and then go against better judgment and buy the damn thing anyway. Only to find out later that it’s the most expensive paper weight for digital paper on the market.

Some of you may be fans of hers, and some of you might not be. But if any of you claim that she’s just a blond being blond, I should point out that she is not a natural blond and that your initial comment is hair-ist.

I think Apple should trash this IPad as soon as they can. It’s an affectation of technology, not very functional. You know what’s more superior than an IPad? Any book ever published. It has an unlimited battery life, so your power bill doesn’t sky rocket when you charge it, and it’s lighter and cheaper to replace! It also lasts longer and you can sell it used for roughly what you bought it for!

What Apple really should do is incorporate the IPad into the monitor for the IMac. When I do film editing, it would be greatly convenient if on Final Cut, instead of fumbling with the mouse to make my video display bigger, I could just stretch it with my two fingers in a more precise way, or does the double tap zoom. Our technology can’t and shouldn’t go to a full touch screen mode. We need some type of physicality to our technology more for easier and cheaper repair than anything else. Could you imagine if you could only start your car with a touch screen, but for some odd reason it is broken and won’t let you turn on your car? Then you find out that there’s nothing wrong with the screen but the software for the ignition? So instead of taking it to a mechanic you have to take it to a computer store and they have to do a diagnostic and then beta test and then verify and god knows what else to make sure that the problem doesn’t happen again. Then when they finally do fix it, they give you a boot flash drive incase the problem happens again, but after a few months, when it does happen you either loose the flash drive or you find out that there’s another new problem where the whole ignition system will have to be replaced! All the while you’re telling your family about your troubles, you’re old man, or mom, tells you how much easier it was back in the old days when the worst problem they had with the ignition is when the engine flooded or the key broke off.

I am officially against the Ipad! You know what I want? I want Apple to make a set of head phones, not those crappy ear buds, but actual head phones with an Ipod built into the ear piece. You know how convenient that would be? Instead of taking off your ear buds (which are really bad for your ears, physically damaging and also damaging your hearing), binding up the wire, turning off your Ipod and putting it away, you’ve got an easy portable device with no wires! Make it collapsible, have it in various colours. It’d be easier to run with or go to the gym with as you won’t have to strap it to your arm and worry about getting wires caught on the free weights or some jerk sticking their arm out as you jog by, causing your head to snap back and trip into the post box, bruising parts of your genitals you didn’t think could get bruised unless there was a lack of sex involved. I would have called them the IPhones but people are stupid and would get confused, so another name will have to be determined.

Comment with suggestions and I’ll write up a better business proposal to Apple and if I like your name suggestion you’ll get partial credit and compensation if the thing sells. Don’t think I’ll be able to do it? Oh, yee of little faith. I have a lot of free time!

Long live Leno!

2010-01-29T03:33:00.001-05:00

I’m not a huge Jay Leno fan. In fact, out of all of the hosts of the Tonight Show since 1954, Jay Leno is by far the worst stand-up comic to have gotten the honour to be host. I just don’t find him all that funny. Is he a nice guy? Apparently so, but so are a lot of stand-up comics, and many of them are more deserving of the Tonight Show than Leno. I remember back in 1992, I was a young kid. I mean young, and when I heard that Johnny Carson was retiring from the Tonight Show, I was sad. But when I heard that Jay Leno was going to be his replacement I had to ask, “Who the hell is Jay Leno?”

Did you know? Did you really? I didn’t know and I knew of comedians like Bill Hicks, Jerry Seinfeld and Norm MacDonald! Carson didn’t even like Leno and thought that Letterman would be taking over his show. But because Letterman’s style of comedy offended the new higher-ups at NBC and Leno was a push over who loved to schmoose and be your friend, NBC figured they could get Leno to do the show how they want and at a lot less of a price than what they are currently paying Letterman. With the help of Jay’s former conniving manager, Leno landed The Tonight Show, he held the number one spot and the rest is history.

Well, there is one small bit of information that a lot of people won’t admit to. Leno’s first few years hosting The Tonight Show were a disaster!

So on May 25, 1992, when Lay Leno took over as the host, it ceased to be The Tonight Show fans had come to love. It was very different in style and content to what Carson did prior. For starters, Jay Leno does not do sketch comedy. A big part of The Tonight Show since its beginnings was sketch comedy, featuring the host and occasionally the guests. What Jay ended up doing was more stand-up bits, and casual, cheap and lazy bits with audiences, people outside the studio and the guests.

Jay has gone on record that while he’s hosted The Tonight Show he was always number one. This is a big ass lie. During the first several months with Leno as host, The Tonight Show ratings dropped over 50% and David Letterman had been signed and started hosting his show The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. With Letterman’s popularity and ratings going up and Leno’s going down, NBC realized that they made a really big mistake. They immediately called Letterman and offered him The Tonight Show after Leno’s 3 year contract was up. Letterman was then really caught in a bind: Should he go back to NBC that fucked him over and caused a divide between one of his closest friends or should he stay with CBS that will let him do whatever he wants especially since he’s on the home stretch to beat The Tonight Show in the ratings. Letterman called up Carson and asked what he should do. Carson’s reply was to stay with CBS and forget about NBC and The Tonight Show. Carson basically told Letterman that NBC can’t be trusted by him anymore and that as far as he [Carson]’s concerned, The Tonight Show ended when he left and Letterman was given the boot.

As we all know, Letterman remained on CBS, Leno as The Tonight Show host and eventually, by the end of Leno’s second year, he was getting the ratings back up to NBC standards.

Now we jump to 2003 and a remarkable thing is happening: Conan O’Brien is getting amazing ratings after The Tonight Show, his writing staff is winning awards and has been getting nominated every year since 1996 and other networks are propositioning him to compete with Leno at 11:35. Well Conan’s contract is coming up for renewal and NBC doesn’t know what they can do to keep him and at this point, Conan doesn’t know what they can do to keep him either. So NBC comes up with the idea of giving Conan The Tonight Show in 2009. This of course shocks and thrills Conan and he accepts. Jay Leno finds out about this deal in 2004 moments before the contracts are drawn up and is of course hurt and confused. According to Leno, the host of The Tonight Show steps down when the ratings go down. But that wasn’t the case with Johnny Carson and the shows ratings dropped huge when Leno took over, so what the hell is he talking about? By his own logic, he should have left 15 years ago.

We all know Leno reluctantly accepted to step down and “retire” and people were getting really excited about Conan taking over The Tonight Show. In fact, the last 5 years of Late Night with Conan O’Brien were the highest rated in the shows history. But as the world came closer to Conan’s move to The Tonight Show, NBC announces a curve ball. Jay Leno is getting a 10:00 show. Why? What the hell is the point of this? To this day neither Jay Leno nor anyone at NBC can explain why they chose to do this. What made this action even funnier is that it cost a lot of people in the business jobs as they weren’t able to work on any of the new pitched shows for NBC because Leno’s new show would be on 5 nights a week. They called it a lead in to The Tonight Show, but a lead in has never been required for The Tonight Show because for 60 years, The Tonight Show was the thing to watch on weekdays. On top of that, it wasn’t even truly a lead in. Leno’s show ended at 11:00 and was followed by the local news! If anything Leno’s show was a giant “Fuck You!” to anyone watching NBC because after the 9:00 time slot was done, there was nothing on for 95 minutes! But luckily, it was announced that Leno’s show wouldn’t start until September, so that gave Conan three months to transition his audience to the new time slot.

Conan got off to a good start, his ratings weren’t what they were during his Late Night show, and a lot of Leno loyalists did refuse to watch Conan, but something happened to The Tonight Show that hadn’t been seen in nearly 17 years. It was really really funny! It was back to the traditional style of the franchise. Conan brought in sketches, celebrity guests to do bits; he incorporated lots of gags and got really creative! The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien was an actual Tonight Show! This was an amazing occurrence! I am yelling as I type this! What was even more remarkable is that Conan’s ratings drop was incredibly small compared to Leno’s first few months. True Conan was struggling with Letterman, and it was a really hard fight. After all, a majority of people I know and their friends said that when they would watch late night TV they’d start with Letterman and change over to Conan. Now that they were up against each other, it was tricky for them to figure out what to do.

Things were looking good for Conan, but they weren’t great. He made jokes about the ratings struggle and in addition it helped slightly in the ratings. He started fake feuds, got a concussion and really went all out with some of the guests and gags. He did the show justice and people were still getting adjusted to it.

But the big fly in the soup was The Jay Leno Show. Here we have a “lead in” broken up with 30 minutes of local news that is Jay doing what Jay does. Reading the newspaper to his audience, driving a car, and talking to whoever wants a few grand to come on his show. We were literally getting a watered down version of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno before the actual Tonight Show. It was redundant programming and it ended up killing both shows.

Now I find it difficult to believe that Jay Leno had an active part in re-claiming The Tonight Show. They guy has no back bone. NBC told him he’s going back and Jay like the loveable puppy he is, licked NBC’s face and humped its leg saying “okay, okay, okay!” But Conan’s not like that and NBC new was well aware of this. In a series of calculated tactics, NBC said they were moving The Tonight Show back 30 minutes to have a stronger lead in for Conan to boost the ratings. This was of course bullshit. This clearly was a tactic to get Conan to quit by choice instead of them having to pay out the contract for him and his crew. But our lovely Coco wasn’t going to bite and after days of debate, NBC bought Conan out and booted him out.

This was the biggest example of irresponsible management a network could do. The worst part about it is that they couldn’t even give Conan the chance to finish his first year. The odds of the shows success was in his favour! Conan was getting his feet wet, the show founds its format and things were getting better and better. Everyone, including myself hoped that this controversy was a stunt to boost ratings and I along with so many others joined in petitions to keep Conan on the air, but the deal was done before any of our cries could affect the outcome. What is even more disgusting by this deal is that Conan wasn’t even given the opportunity to finish up to the start of the Olympics coverage. NBC was so upset and eager to get him out that they would rather air re-runs of his show than let him continue to do new ones until the break!
Know this: The Late Night controversy is not over. When Leno returns there is still going to be a lot of talk about what’s going on and I truly believe that the ratings won’t be as great as they were last year for him. I can only hope that a series of celebrities boycott Leno’s show because of NBC’s actions and lack of respect, but that really won’t be the case.

The truth of the matter will be this. Conan still has respect for a lot of people at NBC. Not necessarily the people that wanted him out, but NBC is really big and he’s got more friends there than enemies. I am eager to see what Conan will end up doing next, and if luck is in his favour, he could very well return to The Tonight Show when Leno really retires. Remember, nothing is absolute. NBC will get new owners. Conan will find another show or go back to writing. Conan got to do the job that he always wanted and he will be remembered as the man that brought back Late Night. Jay Leno will be known as the guy who returned to Late Night. The only thing that would really piss me off would be that if Leno does actually retire that Jimmy Fallon gets the show. I haven’t warmed up to him yet, and I really disliked him on SNL laughing in all of those sketches. It’s bad enough most of those jerk offs just read cue card and don’t try to memorize their lines, but that rant is for another blog.

Going where no blog has gone before… well not really.

2010-01-28T03:02:00.002-05:00

"A good plot is a series of inevitable events."

Just because I like movies, and also I want to try and build a following before I get into all the grit I have in the back of my mind, I figured I would jump in and do a movie critique. This is just the first, but I assure you won’t be the last on the things I have in store for the blog.

I have decided to address the latest Star Trek film by J.J. Abrams. He’s a TV director. Is he a film director? He’s made movies. Are they action packed and thrilling? Yes. Do they feel like movies? Kind of. There are things he does that work better on TV than on film. The first Abrams film I saw was Mission Impossible III. I vividly recall walking out of the theatre with a painful headache and it had nothing to do with the grasping of the story. I got the story, quite easily.

After a short while of thought and discussion with my friends, some film grads, others just your average movie go-er, I realized that my negative reaction to the film was due to the style in which it was shot, it’s cinematography and story logic. For a film, being shown on a large screen, to me it just didn’t seem to work. There were an excessive amount of close ups, camera shakes and it had a pace to the film that was moving faster than the story. I also found that the format was very TV like. It opened up with a scene that took place in the middle of the movie which ended up being a single story beat before the final climax and end. So for the first 3/4s of the movie we’re waiting to see this intense scene. This is a style used in TV because you want to prevent your viewer from changing the channel. But when you’re in a theatre, that option is not available. In fact the only option to you in a theatre besides staying is to get up and leave, and that only happens is you’re watching RV or Wild Hogs.

As a film grad, when I watch a movie my mind splits in two. One part is usually enjoying the film while the other part is taking notes as to what is being done and how it's being done. After all, as a writer of films, I should find the things in movies that get them made and work towards that in my own projects. So, I’m watching MI: III and its decent, so much better than MI:II. Make more sense than Mission: Impossible. That dialogue between Voit and Cruise at the Airport, what the hell is that all about? There’s something missing there. Anyway, a few months later MI:III hits DVD on a Monday, instead of the typical Tuesday release, and I watch it with some friends and it was an enjoyable experience. And then it hits me again, that this movie looks and feels so much better on a small screen (TV) than what I remember in the movie theatre.

Much of Abrams career is heavy with TV. So he uses all of those TV styles in his movie making. Some are good, and others should stay in TV. For starts, extreme close ups should stay in TV. A movie screen is really big, if we see a medium shot, that’s still pretty detailed. But in TV you need the close ups because your average TV owner doesn’t own a 600 inch TV screen, so you go closer to get that intensity in the eyes, or show tension between two characters. So after watching MI:III again, and enjoying it that time around, I came to the conclusion that MI:III is a made for TV movie with a kick ass budget. It fits so well for the small screen, and when it’s aired on TV the film fits the commercial breaks quite impressively.

So when I heard that J.J. Abrams was making a Star Trek “reboot” two things went through my head. The first was a groan of “Oh no…” and the second was anger and jealously as I was preemptively struck out of a script I had started working on a few months earlier. That’s right, in my last semester in college I was working on a pilot for a new Star Trek series that focused on the original Enterprise crew. It took place at a time before Kirk became Captain, where the crew of the Enterprise would be serving on other ships. It was planned to be a five year series ending with Kirk getting the Enterprise and selecting his bridge crew. I would have pitched it as a “Heroes” narrative on Star Trek, but “Heroes” didn’t come out until July of 2006 and I had started talking about my Star Trek back in Feb of 2006. So my pitch had a bit more words to it, but I got a lot of people interested and willing and ready to help me pitch it to Paramount/CBS after I had the summer to finish the first thirteen episodes. I was doing the final touch ups of episode 9 when my Writing for Business Professor pulled me out of a class to tell me that Abrams has announced he’s doing a Star Trek film reboot. “Son of a bitch!” were the first words out of my mouth. I was incredibly jealous that Abrams had the opportunity to do this. If he didn’t have family in the entertainment industry growing up, he’d still be working on directing small TV projects instead of going through the fast track like he ended up doing.

Needless to say I stopped writing my series. I still jotted down ideas and notes incase the project didn’t get green lit, but that ended up happening mere weeks after the official announcement. So fast forward three years later to May 2009. Me and my friends jump into the theatre and watch. And it was better than MI: III but had some stupid TV attribute to it that really bothered me and a lot of the audience I was with. Most notably the lens flares, but my god the close ups. They were just too close. There was also a scene where they decided to show the Enterprise upside down, but as a close up so a lot of people didn’t know what to make of it. Was the ship upside down? Or was the bridge upside down and underneath. The shot was so close it was tricky to tell. Some would argue that it’s the cinematography’s responsibility and/or the CGI effects crew. Well, it is and it isn’t. The director contributes to how the shot should look, the cinematographer contributes his/her experience to achieving that look or a suggesting a more effective one, a decision is made and then actioned. The GCI effects crew pretty much follows the same directions, but like a lot of crew, they do get opportunities to be really creative depending on the people in charge. Abrams made those choices and stuck by them and there were crewmembers questioning if those are the best ideas. They were right to question, and Abrams was still wet behind the ears to think it would be best. Granted the film didn’t do horribly but the fewer complaints you have from your audience the better. And the lens flares are one that really easy to avoid, as it doesn’t happen normally on a set. In fact, they had to spend additional money to achieve those. If I were a producer on that film, I would have hit some body for wasting money on a stupid affectation.

Now, I’m not saying that Abrams is horrible (he did learn something from MI:III as Star Trek didn't have that strong of a TV feel to it) and the fact that he is still new to big budget movie making is good, because he did come up with some ideas in production that were really clever and effective. The camera rumbling: Abrams rapidly hitting the film stock while shooting, a little ridiculous but effective visually in the final product. Also, having the actors stand on a mirror instead of hanging them upside down in a sky diving shot is really clever. It’s cheap and doesn’t harm the actor. You can get more takes with less rest in between shots. He has some fresh ideas for making movies and I look forward to seeing what other new things he brings. But his narrative needs to grow up from TV and into Features. Part of this has to do with also selecting better writers.

Now Orci and Kurtzman are okay. They’re not great or good, they’re not mediocre, but they’re just okay. This criticism has more to do with their story telling over their dialogue. I find their dialogue pretty good. The Transformers movie was tolerable because of the banter between Kevin Dunn and Shia LaBeouf. So with dialogue, they’re pretty good and in Star Trek, the dialogue was pretty impressive. But the story telling method they used bugged the crap out of me. If there is one thing I hate in a movie its excessive time jumps and title cards that say “5 years later” or something like that. Why does that part of the story have to happen so many years before the main part? Why can it not happen in the same week or month? You don’t need a title card if you’re jumping a month a head, dialogue accomplishes that and these two writers are good at dialogue! So when I came out of Star Trek, I was really annoyed with the start of the film, having it begin with Kirks birth, jumping 10 years, then jumping 12 years, then jumping 3 years, what the hell? On top of that, the birth of Kirk is out of cannon with Star Trek and needlessly so, and truly history only really starts to change when Eric Banna attacks Vulcan! So why the hell do we have to start the story 25 years earlier? Well guess what, you don’t! These guys love Star Trek. They love it a lot and they know a lot about it. But they chose to incorporate a story device more dramatic than the actual need of the story. I’ll give an example of how they should have done the beginning and how much better it is, and keep know that I came up with this intro less than 10 minutes after the movie ended, so if I were in the same room as these guys while they were writing the script, I could have told them to re-write the intro.

Let’s open up in a similar style with the USS Kelvin recording an anomaly in space. We will also have George Kirk a captain of that ship. To make it a bit more Star Trek-ie in the old style, George Kirk is diverting from his original course to investigate the new anomaly. His original course is to escort Admiral Robau to a star base that is on the Klingon Neutral Zone border. The Kelvin meets the Narada and gets into a fire fight and in such cases the Admiral as senior officer takes command and is requested aboard the Narada. He gets killed, Kirk gets his wife off the ship and saves his crew at his own life, cut to Star Trek title card and we jump to the USS Farragut traveling through space rescuing the shuttles/survivors of the USS Kelvin. Kirk at this point in his career is a Lieutenant aboard the ship and to make it interesting, lets put him in a red shirt and make him a security/tactical officer. He hears from his mother aboard one of the rescued shuttles that his father was killed by Nero and Kirk is grief stricken. The Farragut returns the Kelvin survivors to Earth and Kirk, older brother George Jr. (Jim calls him Sam) and mother attend an honorary memorial for George Kirk. Jim is in a state of grief, overly emotional and unable to focus on his duties. As a result he quits star fleet and copes with his grief with booze. Take a scene to establish Bones as a family friend, maybe make him on the medical staff of the Kelvin who survived showing a link of trust between him and Kirk. We then jump into a bar where we meet Uhura, we’ll make her a Lieutenant junior grade who is a TA at the academy, joining a bunch of students and recruits at bar that Kirk just so happens to be at. The scene plays out as it did in the movie with him getting his butt kicked and Pike stopping fight. We have a heart to heart between Pike and Kirk, with a little alteration. Mention how Kirk showed promise as an officer in line for command but changed to tactical for some reason. Here we reveal that he took his failures of the Kobayashi Maru hard and changed lines of career. Pike mentions how his father didn’t believe in “no win scenarios” and that he shouldn’t either and encourages him to reconsider leaving Star Fleet. Kirk decides to go back and take the Test one more time, reprogramming it, winning, getting in trouble for it, oh no Vulcan is under attack, with the help of Bones who has been re-assigned to the Enterprise he helps Kirk sneak aboard and story plays out as it did.

With this new intro, the story now has a really effective motivation for Kirk, seeking revenge for his father’s death but also growing into the Captains chair and a more believable pace and making a more accurate isolation of the changed cannon to allow for a new universe of films. But I bet some of you are going to say, “Well, Kirk growing up without a father is pretty tough, he could still seek revenge for that.” No denying that growing up without a father is bad. But for me, having lost my father recently and for no reason is more of a drive than growing up without having one. It is more dramatically effective when something is stolen than not having something you never experienced. Kirks father was taken from him, but Kirk himself never met his father and is greatly disassociated from him. But if Kirk was inspired by his father, grew up with him present and then has him taken away suddenly, that drives greater emotions. “You took something of mine that I had!” over “You took something of mine I never experienced!” You care more for the former.

Then there is the other question, “What about Spock? He had some important story beats at the beginning, you just skipped over those.” I have two words for you: Flash back. Those points are not essential to the plot, but good for the character. There is a scene where Spock is in the transporter room dwelling, there’s you flashback to him as a kid fighting for his mothers honour against those oddly enough emotionally abusive Vulcan children. Spock’s father can come in and tell him the advice he told him as a child but it would be heard for the first time by the audience. You could even throw in Spock’s science council interview in there and cut back to him walking to the bridge ready to take action by helping Kirk. The beat works at that point and you have a stronger revelation and fresher understanding for Spock.

Now that’s just the one big thing I would change about Star Trek. The next thing I would do is add some drama to Nero. He was a very one dimensional villain. “Oh no, my home planets destroyed, I’ve been thrown back in time, instead of taking care of the star that destroyed my home world, I’ll just go and destroy the Federation!” That’s really weak and didn’t work for me. Especially when Nero has that speech how he didn’t want to be a warrior of the Romulan Empire but an honest worker. By that thought process, when he realized that he was in the past, we should have seen him petition the Romulan Empire to help him destroy the star before it destroys his home world (remember, Spock Prime hasn’t arrived in the past yet, so research into Red Matter would need to be developed and Romulus has the most at steak. Dramatic.) Have Romulus refuse and try to capture Nero and reverse engineer his ship. Nero obviously escapes and discovers that Spock Prime will enter this time line in a matter of days. He captures Spock and decides to take care of the star on his own. In addition, now that he has this great power, he decides to take revenge on Vulcan for not helping back in his own time, followed by conquering the Federation and with it taking over the Romulan Empire. Now we have something a lot bigger and dangerous. Nero set on a goal of heroism, followed by revenge driven by a lust for absolute power. It’s got more fuel to it than the whole, “forget about saving Romulus lets just destroy the Federation” appearance that the movie had.

My favourite part about these new ideas is that a great story point comes from it: The humans’ discovery that Romulans and Vulcans are physically alike. The movie can play on the crews mistrust of Spock and of all Vulcans until their planet is destroyed and the bigotry is replaced with remorse and a better understanding of Vulcans and themselves.

But alas, these are just hopefuls. I wish I had Red Matter to go back in time and find my way to Oric, Kurtzman and Abrams and tell them, “Hey! I’ve got some great notes for your script that’ll make the awesome movie so much better!”

I write this not only for me to get out this idea, but to also use as a point of education for any writers and/or would be writers out there reading this. When developing a script, frequently ask questions regarding story points and character actions. Make sure you can answer all the questions and that the script can answer them as well. If you can ask a question but not find an answer, then you’ll have to re-work the subject of the question. I will talk more about this in another review that I might do right after this one, or later in my blogging. I haven’t decided yet. But a good movie should have no questions about the story, but rather, questions about what will happen next? If you find yourself asking questions like: “Why did that have to happen?” or “Why did that character have to be the one to do that?” and can’t find an answer, then you know what to work on. On top of that you as a writer get the opportunity to come up with creative ways to answer those questions in your story that might really hook your audience into getting more involved, and hopefully wanting to watch it again and again.

So that was my take on Star Trek. Overall I really enjoyed the movie. I did buy the two disc set. I thought a lot of the acting was great, and the dialogue was great as well. I look forward to a sequel and hopefully it won’t involve Khan.

If you guys have a particular movie you’d like me to take a look at and talk about, post a comment and I’ll give it a shot.

I have a lot of free time.

Mr. Confrontation Graces The Internet

2010-01-27T19:11:00.000-05:00

“Here I am! I’m the master of master of your destiny!” – Queen (The band, not the actual Queen; but what’s her deal anyways?)

Are you reading? Yes? No? Maybe? Well you’ve made it this far so you might as well read to the end. Currently I am unemployed. In fact, I have been unemployed for a while… Longer than I wish and because of the current job market being in the crapper, I have resolved to try and make some money blogging. That’s right, I am going to become a blogger. Blogging may seem like an old thing to many of you internet users, but on my current word processor that I write this on, blogging and the word blog itself is not recognized in its dictionary. The library presents me with alternatives such as: log, flog, and bog. That’s right, bog is a word. Specifically a noun sometimes a verb, which means “wet, spongy ground with soil composed mainly of decayed vegetable matter” or “an area or stretch of such ground” or “to sink in or as if in a bog”. Bog also reminds me of the word Bout. That means a contest or trial of strength, or a period or session.

All right, enough of this English lesson and back to my reason for coming to the world of blogging. So, I was bogged down in poverty in a bout of unemployment, looking for work and normally this wouldn’t be a difficult process. But there are a lot of assholes in management positions. They got there by being assholes. The only comfort I have is that they will all eventually be fired for being assholes, only to be replaced by younger assholes that will still turn me away because I’m a dick. These management assholes are all ready getting fucked over by the dick(s) upstairs; they don’t want their underlings to be fucking them over too, pretty much putting them in a finger-cuffed position (that’s how I became unemployed!). That’s why they hire pussys. They just do the assholes shit and don’t cause problems about how badly the shits getting done. As a result, I am still unemployed.

I have an awesome resume, with a great record of holding down a job and excluding my latest line of work, left on the best of terms. In addition I’m also fairly young and a two time college graduate of the literary arts. In other words I’m a writer. I have been trained to understand the concepts and structures of story telling in literature and media. I doubt I will be incorporating much of those skills in my format of blogging. My favourite thing to write are scripts; either short films, features, sketches or bits. I love movies, writing in them, acting in them, editing them, and watching them. It’s a fun job, especially when you get paid for it.

For the past 4 years and some months I worked in retail paying for school and dealing with some of the most interesting and stupidest people I have ever had the honour of meeting. I intend the aforementioned sentence to regard three categories of people: Interesting, Stupid and Interestingly Stupid or is it Stupidly Interesting? There will be stories of those experiences posted in the future, some from my experience, and others from my friends who worked with me.

I have looked for jobs. More so regarding what I went to school for, over the basic retail sector. I have contemplated a few options. I considered writing a book, writing copy for entertainment businesses, writing ads, and even writing adult entertainment. But oddly enough, no one was really hiring and the ones that are hiring are so far away, I would loose money on the commute and they don’t yet work over the internet. So, since I didn’t want to commute, and no one is really hiring, I have opted to try and get some of that internet money to pay my bills; specifically the one that gives me access to the internet.

I have decided to not make this blog specific to any one particular subject. I will tackle everything I can and want to. That includes movies, drugs, politics, the space program, foreign relations, religion etc. I will address them as respectfully as possible. I may not like them, but I have no intentions to violating any laws or terms of policy that will prevent me from making any money off of this; because this is going to be killing two birds with one stone: Exercising my opinions and getting some cash for doing it.

I have chosen the alias of Mr. Confrontation because like everything, there are a lot of things I don’t like and I have reasonable standards that countless people don’t even meet and I’m going to write about it! I will try to limit my cursing but I strongly advise parents to teach their kids about swearing: why we do it, and when it’s appropriate, instead of “not to do it” and as a result telling them not to read my blog.

Visit frequently to see what I’ll be going on about next. Please leave comments and ask questions. If there is something you’d like me to address, feel free to ask about it and I will take a look at the subject. Like I mentioned earlier, I am unemployed. I have a lot of free time.