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The Final Non-Star Wars Week of 2016

Today marks the start of the final non-Star Wars week of 2016. Meaning that next week we finally get the first Star Wars spin-off in the form of Rogue One.

I have my Thursday night tickets booked in the Harkins Ciné1 with the 80′ screen, 105,000 watts Dolby Atmos and the leather recliners:
harkins-leather-seats

I also have tickets booked in the same theater for that Saturday.

For every other day I have the Regal Ultimate ticket, so that first Friday I’ll be using it to see it on a real IMAX screen and then I’ll go to IMAX every Sunday to get those posters.

I’ve said before why I’m looking forward to Rogue One so much, and now there’s only 10 days to go!

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Why I’m Looking Forward to Rogue One More Than The Force Awakens

We’re less than a month away from Rogue One (if you, like most fans, will see it on the 15th), but there are still those people out there complaining about getting a new Star Wars movie this year and just troll the official Star Wars social media accounts with dumb “we want Episode 8” comments.

I’m actually looking forward to Rogue One more than I was The Force Awakens. Not just because I like Gareth Edwards a lot and his Godzilla is one of my favorite movies in the last few years, but because of the story. Growing up with A New Hope, the opening crawl described a Star Wars movie in itself.

“Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.”

We finally get to see that battle and the first Rebellion victory in Rogue One:

rogue-one-korean-trailer

Of course, we then get to see the Rebel spies who use that battle as an opportunity to steal the Death Star plans.

More than any opening crawl in the Original Trilogy, A New Hope’s illustrated a Star Wars movie you’d want to see. That’s probably why it was pitched as a spinoff in the first place. It’s an incredibly cool piece of Star Wars history that we get to see, all based on a couple of sentences George Lucas wrote in the original Star Wars movie nearly forty years ago.

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Doctor Strange is Now My Favorite MCU Movie

I saw Doctor Strange a week before release, in 3D, and I loved it. I reviewed it on Furious Fanboys then, and this weekend I saw it a second time on a 82′ screen in 2D with Dolby Atmos and I liked it even more the second time.

It should definitely be seen in 3D at least once, but the movie works just as well in 3D. Of all the Marvel films, this one gets the core origin and character down better than any of the others. You can bitch all you want about them changing the Ancient One, but that character could be a ground beef patty that gets BBQ’ed and still serve the same purpose in the origin. The gender/race of the Ancient One doesn’t matter as long as they end up dying in the end so Stephen Strange can become the Sorcerer Supreme.

I still had a huge smile on my face watching the movie a second time as they completely got Doctor Strange right in the MCU. There’s still a lot of weirdness that can be explored on a sequel, but this is basically the Batman Begins for Doctor Strange where the sequel could be its Dark Knight. It’s surprising that they were able to get the character so perfect in live action. It’s not a hard concept to do, but if this movie was attempted even a decade ago by someone like Fox they could’ve got it very wrong with an attempt to ground the concept in reality. 2016 seems to be the perfect time for Strange as Marvel was able to establish the magical and cosmic sides of the MCU through Thor and Guardians.

I intend to see Doctor Strange at least a couple more times before it leaves theaters, and if all goes well I’ll do so this coming weekend (probably in 3D again). Doctor Strange has always been one of my favorite Marvel characters, and I am so happy the movie turned out as good as it did. With the amount of money it’s pulling in, we’re going to see him a lot in the MCU. An appearance in Thor: Ragnarok is pretty much guaranteed, then we’ll see him in Infinity War, and then we’ll probably get a Phase 4 sequel. I can’t wait.

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Collector’s Corps, Legion of Collectors, Smuggler’s Bounty, and LootCrate

To be perfectly honest I never really was too interested in those monthly delivery box services like LootCrate, but recently I’ve been looking at the Funko ones. I only have a couple of Pops, mostly because I only want to collect specific characters and not everything, but a bi-monthly box that comes with a Pop and often a T-shirt is pretty tempting to me for $25.

So I’ve been debating between the Star Wars, DC, and Marvel Funko boxes. I love all three, but I think I’ve settled on the Marvel one over the Star Wars one. Firstly, the October box was Doctor Strange. My favorite Marvel character. I missed the deadline to get in on that one, but I luckily found someone selling an unopened one in my shirt size on eBay so I should have it soon. And next month’s box is X-Men. That is enough for me to pull the trigger on the Marvel box over Star Wars.

I’ve read X-Men since the Claremont days, and it’s still the one Marvel line I try to follow even when I’m not reading it every month. So with the December box being X-Men, I’m probably going to start up a subscription due to that.

I’m not a huge fan of unboxing videos, especially when they’re stupid and open a figure that’s already in a clear case, but I may start filming the unboxing of these Marvel Funko boxes as I get them.

On the subject of those boxes, the new Marvel Gear and Goods box from LootCrate is very tempting. It’s $40, but the first one includes a bathrobe made to look like Doctor Strange’s cape. That right there is enough for me to get it. I’m still debating on that one and I have until Tuesday to decide.

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PlayStation VR & PlayStation 4 Pro

I know I said I wouldn’t be buying any VR headsets this year, but I did break down and get a PlayStation VR launch bundle. I wrote a review of it for Furious Fanboys and even a few days after having it I still like it. But the resolution the VR games run in is such a big issue I will be getting a PlayStation 4 Pro on release day.

It’s kind of funny how the same people who praised the PS4’s 1080p output are screaming at how amazing PlayStation VR is when the games look like they’re almost running at Vita resolution. When you have a some PSVR games running on your system, take off the headset and you’ll see your UI at a very small resolution on the screen. The system simply can’t push out VR at resolutions even close to what the Rift and Vive can do and running non-VR games in “cinema mode” makes them look like PS3 games thanks to the limited resolution of the headset itself (Blu-Rays in cinema mode look like 720p instead of 1080p).

But for the game resolution, hopefully the PlayStation Pro will help. It won’t be pushing anything to 4K, but I’m hoping for PS4 Pro patches for things like Driveclub (which is a big downgrade from the non-VR game), Valkyrie, and maybe Riggs. Rez looks as good as the game has ever looked, and stuff on PSVR Worlds seem to be OK. It feels like some of the “full” games could benefit a bit from a resolution and framerate boost on the Pro. Driveclub is running at 30fps, which is why some people feel sick while playing it. Even if they kept the same graphic quality and boosted its framerate on the Pro that could fix some of the problems.

The processor box only supporting HDMI 1.4 and thus no HDR passthrough is a huge thorn in PSVR’s side. I really, really, hope Sony revises the box and either offers some kind of upgrade or exchange for PS4 Pro owners as unhooking that thing and swapping the HDMI cables whenever you want to play something in HDR on the TV is going to become annoying fast.

In other PlayStation news, I’m really close to grabbing tickets to the PlayStation Experience in Anaheim this December. Still on the fence, but if I do I may just go for one day out of the two.

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The Grand Tour Trailer

Amazon has released the first real trailer for The Grand Tour featuring footage they’ve already done for the show. Aside from the two quick shots inside the tent, it doesn’t look like any of the California stuff is included so we’ll still have to wait until November 18th to see that stuff.

And I can’t say for 100% certainty that the tent shots are California, but they look like it. Apparently at the time of the CA filming they had only done one other audience shoot in South Africa (it sounds like the third after CA is in the UK possibly). The shot of the trio entering the tent looks like it could be California as in the background it looks like there’s some stuff being deconstructed that was used in the filming the day before.

I can’t wait for this to start. The road trips were the best thing about the old show and this entire show is that. The celebrity guests were normally just fluff interviews and I’d usually skip their dumb lap. So to have an entire show of them just doing dumb stuff in cars is something I’m really looking forward to.

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Update on the Continuing ‘Bring Back Legends’ Harassment

Just a quick update on bit of harassment from someone claiming to be part of the Bring Back Legends group.

A couple of weeks ago I received another harassing email, this time in my old aol.com email address. That’s not really an email I use for much, but the only person who actually had that email and used it to troll me was none-other than the person who goes by the name “Adam Heatherly” online.

heatherly-harassment-email

And today he again used the contact form of this website to send this:
heatherly-harassment

Thankfully I got his IP address from this last contact form and just finished contacting his ISP. As it was a Verizon Business address they may address it quickly.

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The Grand Tour!

I posted the other week that I may have won the ticket lottery for The Grand Tour, and I did. We’re supposed to keep the details on what’s happened secret, so I won’t be posting anything specific about what was filmed here or on social media.

But I will say the CA filming took place in a remote location out in the desert. It sounds like they were filming out there for multiple days, with some car stuff done on Friday and then stuff with an audience on Saturday and Sunday. The “studio” recording in the tent sounds like it was done on Sunday. I was there for the Saturday filming.

It was described as one of the most complicated days of filming the Top Gear guys ever attempted, and I can see why. With 2000 people out there, they had to know what they were doing. It was unforgettable to see that show put together live, as living in the US it wouldn’t have been possible when it was being made in the UK.

Top Gear UK was easily one of my favorite shows and I’m really looking forward to the new Amazon series. The first episode airs on November 18th on Amazon Prime Video and I may be visible in parts of the crowd. I’ll be sure to post pics if I am.

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When Star Wars Fans Want to Be ‘Cool’ But Attack Other Fans

Yesterday I was being mentioned in tweets by people who don’t follow me mocking some things that went on earlier in the day. Digging the thread I saw them mocking a real passionate Star Wars fan (via screenshots of his tweets) who follows me because he Tweeted someone famous. They were being jerks to this Star Wars fan, and acting like snobs. Basically saying (ironically) that they wish they were brave enough to ask a big director a question the way this fan did. I blocked all of them in that discussion because they were trying to act tolerant and inclusive, while attacking someone who is a real big Star Wars fan. But he wasn’t “cool” in their book.

This reminds me of what happened with Fan Force about fifteen years ago in San Francisco.

Fan Force is a group of Star Wars fan groups loosely organized under TheForce.Net and the Jedi Council forums. They have rules groups have to adhere to. The groups have to be completely family friendly and their meetings and gatherings have to adhere to that rule. Around the time Attack of the Clones came out there was a thing with the San Francisco Fan Force where the person running it wanted to be a “cool” group, and shunned the rules.

They’d disrupt movie screenings by yelling “we’re cool Star Wars fans, we get laid”, scream profanity at kids, and stuff like that to fight back against Fan Force. So Fan Force kicked the leader of this group out and said she couldn’t run the official Star Wars group in San Francisco. She then tried luring fans to her gatherings by pretending to be the “official” Fan Force group, when in reality they were banned in their attempt to be “cool” Star Wars fans that alienated the family-friendly audience that Fan Force required.

So when I saw some “cool” Star Wars fans mocking another fan for the way he enjoys he saga, it was a flashback to what happened in Fan Force in San Francisco more than a decade ago.

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Yay for Bring Back Legends Harassment!

I wrote about this on Furious Fanboys today to create a record of what’s happening, but today someone went to the Contact form above and sent me three harassing emails about the Star Wars “Bring Back Legends” thing.

The first one was titled “Take down your articles on SW “BBL”, you are wrong!” and he spoofed James Floyd’s email address so it would look like it came from Jawa James:
bring-back-legends-harassment-1

The second was titled “You are a worthless Douchebag!” and used Eric Geller’s email:
bring-back-legends-harassment-3

Finally the third was made to look like it came from Mike at eleven-thirtyeight.com:
bring-back-legends-harassment-2

He obviously used the Contact form and fake emails because he knows that it’s easy to get email headers from an actual email to determine who sent it. But since this I’ve modified the Contact form so whatever gets submitted through it also gets a database entry, which will also give the IP address of whoever used the form. So if I get more harassment from this Bring Back Legends guy (who apparently has been harassing Jawa James and the Tosche Station people this week) it’ll be easy to find out his ISP and contact them about the abuse.