armentage

I just think back to the original Superman movie, or even Batman Begins. In both of these very well-made movies, we get the origin AND a very engaging episode of the hero fighting a villian, because these movies jump through time. Spiderman does a little of this too (A year or so passes between Parker becoming Spiderman and his rivalry with the Goblin really starting up). Fantastic Four took place over a span of 2 weeks? Maybe 3? How much change can a character's life experience if you're only talking such a short part of it? I think the good flicks will always do the right things, and the bad ones will continue to suck. That's just how it is. I don't think fans like us will ever feel saturated, because the good-ness of a story always shines through, where-as special effects get old fast. I'm sure FF would have been an AMAZING movie if it came out 20 years ago (due to its special effects) but by today's standards...

Uhm, it has to do with the fact that 90% of the people are Sci-Fi fans in general, and most of the ones who model have been dying for this kit????

I give it a 4/10. Complete crap as far as a Hero movie goes. Go watch Incredibles again for a better use of your time. They put together a somewhat decent cast of reality-TV stars, and then trapped them all in Reed's lab for 60% of the movie. Everyone laughed when Johnny Storm told a joke, but the rest of the movie was Jennifer Alba pulling the same get-naked trick over and over, and Dr Doom doing senseless, stupid, and not very diabolical things. BTW - it was VERY skimpy on the effects. Mr Fantastic in particular was done REALLY badly. Elastigirl would own his ass for breakfast. Hell, the best part of the movie was the Thing's costume. The rest of the powers & fx were a joke. There was nothing more than you saw in the trailers (about 5 minutes of FX for the whole 2hr movie)

Yah, this flick was FANTASTIC. I am pretty partial to #2 because I love Michel Pfiffier and Danny Devito, but I almost want to say that this was the best movie so far. Christian Bale was utterly perfect as Bruce Wayne. For the first time, I really felt like Bruce was nothing but a scum-bag rich boy when he was "in character" and that his Batman persona was a psychopath. Great fight scenes & effects. Great acting overall, by everyone. Katie Holmes was nothing but eye candy, and she was barely on screen for more than 10 minutes. This film was Bale all the way, with Michael Caine KICKING ASS supporting him as Alfred.

Thought the movie was crap. Started off very strong, but began to tank fairly early. What I hated most was that it was NOTHING more than a simple remake. Same exact story. There were no surprises at all. A few heroic scenes were added for Curise, but the overall plot was exactly what you expect (bacteria kills super-space aliens). HG Wells was a man ahead of his time, and back in 1890 that plot was an amazing concept. Today however, it's ridiculous and stupid. Spending $200 mil to re-tell a dumb story is unforgivable. Even if they had planned on keeping the same ending, they could have at least added more flavor. Seeing everything from Tom's POV got boring very quickly. "Oh I'm powerless, I'm so sad. Oh my kids, I love my kids, please don't kill my kids!" etc etc etc. BLAH. We get a few scenes of army trucks driving by, but that's it. The original movie had much more in the way excitement. This one was big on suspense - "Will the alien see me? Will the 5 monkey aliens notice the pesky humans hiding in the corners?" Was there any intellectual stimulation? NO. Was there anything for Sci-Fi fans to speculate over and analyze to death? NO. I give the movie a 4/10. Well shot, decent acting, but that's not what you make an alien-invasion movie for.

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...1&st=&p=entry AGH! IMAGES ARE GONE!!!!! EDIT: AGH! They're back!

Put me down!

Wow, fantastic F-14! They're both 1/72nd yes?

Dunno bout saying Mac-Plus wasn't deep... the plot was actually pretty touching from an emotional/psychological point of view. Isamu & Myung, both love Guld as a friend, but have to lie to themselves about what really happened so that he can be spared the pain of knowing the terrible thing that he did. It might be a touch melodramatic. However, it's much deeper than "technology is bad because island girls are hot" or "Pop songs turn crazed giant murderers into cool sweet hearted dudes!" It was also FAR more visually pleasing (aside from the mecha scenes). Those scenes up on bird-hill were gorgeously drawn. Hell, all of the alien faurna and plant-life on Eden was gorgeously drawn and conceived. I still listen to the sound-track 10 years later and think that Yoko Kanno is fantastic. Mac+ had a helluva lot of imagine running behind it. It smashes Mac-Zero and Mac-II into dust when it comes to over-all production value.

It's just SO BAD!!!! I am going to have some fun repainting though.... me and my air-brush are dangerous!

Wow, I just watched Yukikaze.. Ugh.... the story was just so horrific... The animation in "Operation 1" was pretty iffy too. The scenes near the end were rendered way better than the first big fighter battles. It's based on a book right? I hope the story just "suffered" in the adaptation. Thought, I must say, I can see what all the hooplah was about - those fighter designs are just gorgeous beyond words! I especially loved The FRX-99, absolutely beautiful! Best fighter design since the YF-19.

Just received a pair of those $10 VF-19 bootlegs... they are utter crap! Not the worst toys EVER, but pretty horrible. They VAGUELY look like the original Bandai's. Same shape, but the details are totally missing. Paint job is very minimal and pretty bad too. They transform, sorta. In Battroid mode, there's no lock to hold the top half of the torso in place, nor the shoulders "forward" so they are perpendicular to the body. In fighter form, there's nothing to really hold the wing assemblies in place. They flop around a bit. The rear vertical stablizers help a little, but not enough. The Red one came completely loose out of the box... screws weren't turned tight enough! 5 minutes with a phillips tightened things up, but over all its still floppier than the blue one. The blue one has the "signature" red-purple shoulders and under-torse of the bootlegs. I can only guess this is because those two pieces are molded are the same color on the model as well, and they wanted to avoid producing that piece twice. I'm seriously tempted to say they aren't worth it even for $10 a pieace (plus $4 x2 shipped, which is what I got them for on Ebay) Going to have to find some kid to give these too... my friend's 6 year old is probably old enough for one!

bah Here I am explaining things for the master! Nothing to see here...

I dunno..... The blond Pilot girl and her co-horts were UBER CUTE! Ishtar's rather beautiful as well... I always felt that MacII had great char designs. Speaking of Mr Mikimoto, has he done anything recently? Aside from Macross, Orguss, and that comic he did in NewType... I can't think of any of his other works!

I remember it was a really early "non-mainstream" dub. Back in 1992 or something? The voice actors were pretty bad. Not absolutely horrible but not good either. But the timing.... ugh, the timing. They tried so hard to keep lip-sync that the whole thing was unwatchable. I'd like to see a Sub if one was available...

Heh I used to LOVE these toys when I was a kid in the 80s. They were pure crap, but the pictures on the box were SO EXCITING. When Robotech finally came out in the US, these toys could be found way in the back of the Toys'R'Us racks, in horrible condition. Torn boxes, dusty, NO LOVE. I swear, they were the worst transforming toys ever.

Be...cause The... Du..b Ta....lks like... this To make...the....lips... sync And... the story is.... very.... dumb But .... I think.... that the art.... is very beautiful and the.... mecha designs.... fantastic ... ... the character... designs... If they are Mikimoto... I... think they are.... his best.

I've pretty much decided that any Japanese Cinema imported the US is going to be utter garbage. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of old Samurai Flicks (Mr Kurosawa is #1!), but the modern horror flicks are just SO BAD.

Wait a second... where are the pictures??!

tabajito = "small work" pelicula = "movie" jeje = "hehe" as in the laugh so... Hello, I am of Argentina and I made this trabajito in Photoshop 7. The idea was to make an advert poster for a "possible" Macross movie hehe. He conception of what a Macross Movie would look like... This is one is another illustration that I'd like to share with you all That's the 2nd sentence.

Space opera, without a doubt. Edit: this doesn't mean that I think space opera isn't SF. It's just a kind of SF (adventure stories as opposed to science heavy hard SF or New Wave SF), and I, myself, don't use it as a derogatory term, nor do any others I know of anymore. EDIT - I forgot about Gunbuster! Aim for the Top chronicled war at the speed of light, against enemies too far away to reach without suffering the effects of relativity. We also get to explore the crazy idea of "what if the universe is actually some sort of organism to which we are some kind of invading bacteria". Sure it cuties in bikini pants and ridiculous characters that made no sense - but there was some making-you-think going on there too. Sorry Jeinlein, but I'm having trouble seeing your point. What qualifies as hard SF? Stories devoid of plot, character development, or excitement? By that defination, only the shortest stories would qualify - the stories you find in "Years Best SF" or 1950s SF stories by the old masters. Hard boiled SF? Would Altered Carbon make it? The oldest SF was always about how advances in science & technology would change society, but I don't that rules out having a plot & good writing, or at least some sort of filler-material to make it more than just day-dreaming about the future.

Sorry, I was thinking of the paperback edition. In the US, each book was cut in half and released as two seperate paperbacks.

While on the topic... Does Aim for the Top (Gunbuster) count as SF (as opposed to Space Opera?)

Why do you disagree that Reality Disfunction does not quality as hard SF?? It has plenty of technology thats far beyond our abilities, explored at some depth, as well as the impact of said technology on society. It has entirely new forms of society and personal interaction that revolve around these new technologies. From Websters: science fiction n. A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background. A story in which half of humanity lives in telepathically linked within and to a bio-engineered sentient space-station orbitting and sustaining themselves on space-stations seems to fit that defintion to a T. When said story also has HUNDREDS of pages devoted to how these uber humans live, die, interact with each other and their bio-engineered enviroments, I consider that hard SF. "Chewie, lock in the hyperspace coordinates and punch it!" is definately not hard.

Nope. Space opera is merely an adventure story with science fiction trappings. The term was coined as a play on "saddle opera" (saddle operas were western adventure stories that were published in pulps and were often very formulaic in nature) and was originally a derogatory term used by "real" science fiction magazines like Astounding and Galaxy. It's since lost most of its negative connotations, especially since probably 99% of all media SF is space opera. Not neccessarily false... Lately, the term "space opera" has been co-opted to cover both ideas. I see this in Sci-Fi novels. Long series, like Peter F Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction are considered Space Opera by many editors. It's a series of 6 HARD sci-fi novels with plenty of advanced technology and biology, plenty of talk of how the new technology has affected society, etc. However, there is PLENTY of adventure, hundreds of characters and setting, and many completely disconnected plot threads that just barely weave together at the end of the story. I think you could say that, historically, "Space Opera" was good story-telling with a wobbly high-tech setting, while "Sci Fi" was mediocre story-telling with detailed, realistic, and well thought technology and its impact on society. Thing is, there are more people writing Sci-Fi now a days. More REAL writers, who also happen to have a thing for technology and What-If settings. You have a plethora of Asimov's out there, who have well developed writing skills and can skim the Internet and TV to learn about amazing new scientific advances and theories, and then using Asimov, Clark, and the greats as a template, weave them into interesting stories. So is the term really derogatory? I'm almost tempted to say that now a days being "merely" Sci-Fi could be more derogatory. Or maybe it just means "short story". Or maybe "Space Opera" means "A long Sci-Fi story" Sci-Fi is fast becoming a real, legit form of literature. There's enough people out there writing and enough style and substance that it's almost unfair to try to group things together as "Crap" or "Not-Crap". I don't think I've made a good solid point here, but I'm at work and don't really have time to think this all out clearly!