Yeah, it’s not much, but here’s a bit of filler to tide you over until the next update: A Crayon Haiku #62 and A Crayon Haiku #63. The first of these is a reference to “Desertion of the Dinobots” from season 2 of the original Transformers cartoon, but the picture itself was taken while Grimlock was drying after I applied some clear nail polish to his hip joints. Good stuff.
As for the second, I’ll doubtless have a Hot Flash (or whatever I decide to call the comics following #100; do feel free to weigh in on that) or two about the new TMNT movie, but — for the moment — suffice it to say that I was kind of disappointed with it. I mean, I wasn’t expecting Welles’ The Trial, but given all of the OMGZ BEST TURTLES MOVIE EVER type fan reviews, I was expecting it to at least live up to that descriptor. It totally doesn’t. It comes nowhere near the level of the first movie. For all of its preachiness about family and brotherly love, it fails to actually illustrate these concepts in a manner even remotely on par with the many great moments of the first film. (For a look at some of those moments, see our 2004 Father’s Day tribute to Splinter.) And while after seeing the movie I’d determined that it was at least better than TMNT II, my re-watching of those earlier flicks yesterday has forced me to recant that statement.
Yes, this new movie looked better and had a slightly more serious tone than the early films, but those films are easily superior in terms of plot, direction, and characterization — particularly where the villains are concerned. TMNT II is definitely inferior to the first movie, but it still introduced Tokka and Rahzar and Super Shredder (who’s really just Shredder mutated, but still) and gave them enough characterization for them to be memorable characters. By comparison, Karai and the stone generals in the new film were barely even mentioned by name, such that if I didn’t already know who they were I’d be reduced to calling them “that Foot chick” and “those rock dudes”. And whereas the first two films had decent enough (if simple) storylines and direction that, at the very least, wasn’t distracting, TMNT 2007 felt rushed and made little sense at times. (Why the heck did Leo have such a problem with the Nightwatcher, seeing as how he was pretty much doing the same thing they did when they battled the Foot and defeated the Shredder? How did these giant monsters show up in NYC without anyone noticing? Since when was April a badass ninja skilled enough to go toe to toe with freaking Karai? Would a mask-wearing mutant turtle really criticize his brother for “dressing up like it’s Halloween?” I could go on.) I don’t think it was a terrible movie, and TMNT fans will want to check it out for the fantastic battle between Leo and Raph, but I found the flick on the whole to be highly unsatisfying. Animation aside, it was only slightly better than one of the ho-hum filler episodes from the 2K3 cartoon series. 🙁
And finally, regarding the site’s ongoing redesign, here’s a question concerning the search: how do you feel about the highlighted words? Like, if you enter a search query, the page outputs with your terms highlighted (I liked purple, though it’s possible for me to change the color). Search terms are also highlighted for visitors coming in from engines like Google and Yahoo. Admittedly, I’m not sure how I feel about it — on the one hand, it could be helpful to people, but on the other hand (at least in my case), I find highlighted words to be kind of annoying when I visit a page, since I’d typically just use the “Find” dialogue to locate them myself. And seeing as how readers would still have to do this if the search brought them to an article (because those lie outside of the WordPress database and therefore outside the scope of the Search Hilite plugin), the highlighting wouldn’t necessarily be all that helpful anyway.
Speaking of searches, I’m planning to add a search box to the category content pages as well. Owing to the point above, it wouldn’t let you search the fulltext of articles, but you would be able to search the blurbs. However, this could be even more useful for locating relevant articles. For example, if you search for “Donatello”, you won’t get all of the pieces in which I simply mention his name, but you’ll get the ones in which he features prominently enough to warrant a mention in the blurb. So yeah, that’s on the horizon too.
And eventually there will be new articles!
First of all, I want to apologize for my eralier comments. You stroke a never with the last post, and I’m very sensitive about the subject in question.
Still, I apologize and I extend my friendship.
As for the new TMNT movie, the director (I can’t remember jis name right now) stated, in MANY interviews and comic book conventions, that this movie was made towards fans of the original Eastman-Laird comic book and his goal was to be as true to those comic books as possible.
The reason why he didn’t introduce Karai or the Rock Soldiers is because the fans of the comic books (ie. the movie’s intended audience) already knew who they were so there wasn’t a point in an indtroduction.
April was far tougher in the comic books that she ever was in the movies or any of the cartoons.
In the comic books, giant monsters would attack New York at all times without anyone noticing.
And the Turtles in the comic books always kept an air of seriousness and badassness, thus the comment about the Halloween costume.
So,in short: you have to view this movie as a continuation of the comic books, NOT the movies or the cartoons.
I like the new design. I specially like that Mike Bison Lego figurine you have in the contents page.
And one last note: my comments about Lindsay Lohan being a goth stemmed from the Robert Altman movie “A Praire Home Companion”, where Lohan clearly played a goth.