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Thu 30 Nov 2006 |
If you read TOAWBAH when it was a column, you may remember there were two lines that drew me to collecting: Batman: The Animated Series and, before even that, Playmates Star Trek. I remember exactly how I felt as I drove away from Toys R Us with that first figure, Captain Scott. He was right next to me on the passenger’s seat. I felt like I’d done something bad, but also exciting. Think about it what you will, but it felt like sitting next to a new friend, and a very old one.
It’s pretty amazing what leaves indelible marks on our memory.
Flash forward to today and, though they’re almost all stored away in the closet, my Playmates Star Trek figures remain the most dear to me. There is however ONE thing that’s always bothered me about two of them. One thing that’s kept my Playmates Star Trek Shangri-La from perfection.
But not anymore.
Take a look at this pic…
This is the brave crew of the Starship Enterprise. That, you know. However, I’m guessing only hardcore Playmates Star Trek nerds like me will detect what’s different about the figures in this picture than, say, ones taken straight from the package.
Think you know? I’ll give you a minute.
Really look at the pic.
Go ahead. I can entertain myself elsewhere.
Stare, if you have to.
Give up?
That’s a shame. Kirk never would.
The answer IS…
Scotty isn’t way too short and Chekov isn’t way too tall.
A simple leg switch, more then ten years overdue, has produced a Scotty of perfect height and a Chekov of…much more acceptable height.
Everything old is perfect at last.
And the adventure continues…
-JJJ
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Thu 30 Nov 2006 |
If you read TOAWBAH when it was a column, you may remember there were two lines that drew me to collecting: Batman: The Animated Series and, before even that, Playmates Star Trek. I remember exactly how I felt as I drove away from Toys R Us with that first figure, Captain Scott. He was right next to me on the passenger’s seat. I felt like I’d done something bad, but also exciting. Think about it what you will, but it felt like sitting next to a new friend, and a very old one.
It’s pretty amazing what leaves indelible marks on our memory.
Flash forward to today and, though they’re almost all stored away in the closet, my Playmates Star Trek figures remain the most dear to me. There is however ONE thing that’s always bothered me about two of them. One thing that’s kept my Playmates Star Trek Shangri-La from perfection.
But not anymore.
Take a look at this pic…
This is the brave crew of the Starship Enterprise. That, you know. However, I’m guessing only hardcore Playmates Star Trek nerds like me will detect what’s different about the figures in this picture than, say, ones taken straight from the package.
Think you know? I’ll give you a minute.
Really look at the pic.
Go ahead. I can entertain myself elsewhere.
Stare, if you have to.
Give up?
That’s a shame. Kirk never would.
The answer IS…
Scotty isn’t way too short and Chekov isn’t way too tall.
A simple leg switch, more then ten years overdue, has produced a Scotty of perfect height and a Chekov of…much more acceptable height.
Everything old is perfect at last.
And the adventure continues…
-JJJ
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Sat 25 Nov 2006 |
 Diamond Select Toys has breathed new life into an old love of mine.
Star Trek has been a part of my life since I can remember. My family watched the series on it’s original NBC run when I was a toddler (the original series debuted in 1966…I debuted in 1965). I don’t remember those as much as I recall discovering the show in its orginal syndication run. I was hooked instantly on the adventures of the intrepid Captain James Tiberius Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise. As far as I was concerned it was the best thing on TV besides Speed Racer!
In December of 1979, even though I was sick, my parents allowed me to wait in line outside the Century 22 theater in San Jose, California on the opening day of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It had seemed like forever since being able to watch a new Star Trek tale unfold before me, though it had merely been ten years since the last new episode aired.
It was following the movie that Pocket Books began its series of Star Trek novels. I kept up for awhile, until the sheer volume became overwhelming and impossible to follow.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan arrived a few years later giving a welcome shot of adrenaline to the film franchise, followed by several sequels of varying quality (though on some level I still love them all…even Star Trek V)
 In 1987, beating all the odds, lighting struck twice when Star Trek: The Next Generation hit the air. Who were these new characters and how dare they have a ship named Enterprise? My friends and I were excited but doubtful this new incarnation would be able to hold a candle to the beloved original. But, it wasn’t much longer before the debates began. Who was the better Captain…Kirk or Picard?
Well, The Next Generation was followed by Deep Space Nine (which I enjoyed quite a bit, especially in its later seasons), then Voyage and Enterprise (both of which I never warmed up to). Through all the television series, movies, novels, comic books, video games and action figures at some point it just became too much. My love for the house that Rodenberry built began to wane.
My dislike of Voyage and Enterprise were the final nails in the coffin. I didn’t watch either series much past the second seasons and my interests moved on to other things.
Art Asylum picked up the Star Trek license after Playmates Toys finally let it drop and produced some nice stuff, but by that point the public interest in the franchise had also waned and they struggled in the marketplace.
Then Diamond Select Toys came to the rescue. DST teamed up with Art Asylum and planned to carry on producing Star Trek action figures.
I found my interest piqued.
 Then DST announced their Star Trek: The Next Generation line and that was it. I was hooked again. I’m focusing on the seventh season core crew members and not really worrying about variants. But, dang, I love these figures. They’re solid, well done figures with very good likenesses. My only complaint about the line (thus far) is that I’d really love to see more aliens, especially Classic and Next Gen Romulans. Maybe someday.
The Trek market is still pretty weak…but it’s showing signs of life. 2006 is the 40th anniversary of the original series and nostalgia can be a powerful force. But even with the sluggish market Diamond is committed to their Trek products.
So, I’ve been reading Constellations, the 40th Anniversary short story collection recently published by Pocket Books, watching some of the re-mastered original series episodes that are currently being syndicated and even picked up the Star Trek Manga collection from Tokyo Pop.
I’m a Trekkie again (lets face it, I’m not obsessed enough to go with the "Trekker" moniker!) and loving every second of it, and I owe it all to Diamond Select Toys. So, my thanks to the crew over at DST. Keep those figures coming. I’m clearing more space on my shelves!
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Wed 22 Nov 2006 |
To all our Friends and Family here at AFI and beyond, have a Happy Thanksgiving!! Make sure you eat way too much, take a huge nap, watch the Broncos beat the Chiefs Thurs night and then get up at 3 AM to battle all the humanity on Black Friday!
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Wed 15 Nov 2006 |
I’m sure we’ve all gotten the odd sidelong glance from parents or employees while trolling the pegs for the latest treasure, but here’s something I hadn’t encountered until yesterday.
I’m in the Wal-Mart figure aisle, flipping through the DC Superheroes. Behind me, a guy is trying to align a large, unwieldy box under the price scanner. His girlfriend/wife/what-have-you is lending ineffectual support.
I’m about to move on to the Ben 10 pegs when I hear a somewhat insistent, "Excuse me, you work here?" Fairly certain I was the only other person in the aisle, I turn around and, sure enough, Unwieldy Box Guy is looking right at me.
"You work here?"
I look down at my jeans, banded collar shirt, and military style jacket, then at him. "No."
"Yeah, you work here." He shifted the box. "You know you’re a security guard. You’re not here cleaning up the toys…you’re watching me and shit!"
"Yeah, ok." I continued on to Ben 10. Unwieldy Box Guy and his woman found help elsewhere.
Now, I’ve dropped 30 pounds in the last seven months and added some muscle mass, but that’s the first time I’ve ever been called out as security.
What’s the societal comment? You decide.
-JJJ
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Wed 15 Nov 2006 |
I’m sure we’ve all gotten the odd sidelong glance from parents or employees while trolling the pegs for the latest treasure, but here’s something I hadn’t encountered until yesterday.
I’m in the Wal-Mart figure aisle, flipping through the DC Superheroes. Behind me, a guy is trying to align a large, unwieldy box under the price scanner. His girlfriend/wife/what-have-you is lending ineffectual support.
I’m about to move on to the Ben 10 pegs when I hear a somewhat insistent, "Excuse me, you work here?" Fairly certain I was the only other person in the aisle, I turn around and, sure enough, Unwieldy Box Guy is looking right at me.
"You work here?"
I look down at my jeans, banded collar shirt, and military style jacket, then at him. "No."
"Yeah, you work here." He shifted the box. "You know you’re a security guard. You’re not here cleaning up the toys…you’re watching me and shit!"
"Yeah, ok." I continued on to Ben 10. Unwieldy Box Guy and his woman found help elsewhere.
Now, I’ve dropped 30 pounds in the last seven months and added some muscle mass, but that’s the first time I’ve ever been called out as security.
What’s the societal comment? You decide.
-JJJ
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Wed 8 Nov 2006 |
As some of you know, I am a certified James Robinson Starman nutjob. Loved the character of Jack Knight, loved the series and Tony Harris’ artwork and loved pretty much anything else associated with the property. Still do. I re-read all the trades on a fairly continual basis – just great, great stuff. So with apologies to Robinson and Jack’s shop, I’m borrowing the “Times Past’ phrase to share some stories from my own crazy collecting experiences. This particular Times Past tale is about a topic we all know and love – The Super Powers Collection.
1984. Masters of the Universe, G.I.Joe and Transformers was what my world revolved around. Playing with toys and watching those wonderful 30-minute animated commercials pretty much consumed my life, with a little school and eating on the side. I had a definite interest in super heroes from the beginning (I dressed as Wonder Woman at age 5, horrible story for another day) and I every once in a while would be allowed to buy comic books at the Circle K or the old bookstore that kept back issues in a big bin. That is where I discovered my first issue of the original Justice League of America comic books,number 119 with the helpless injured JLA on the cover watching earth being destroyed from space. I bought that and was hooked. The Green Lantern was my standout favorite character, along with Green Arrow, Black Canary and Red Tornado, but I loved them all. The idea of all these heroes in one story was a 9-yr-old’s idea of perfection. Many hours were spent drawing Green Lantern and his adventures, cutting them out and playing with them since there were no figures made at the time. And then I saw the commercials.
I don’t remember the specifics of the commercial for the The Super Powers Collection of action figures, but my focus was only on one thing – the Green Lantern!! I had to have it. But we couldn’t find them. We had no Toys R Us, Lionel Playworld didn’t have it and neither did the local mall shop, Toys By Roy. And as kids do, I kinda forgot about it. So one day, I’m running errands with my Dad and we make one of the usual toy runs I’ve yet again talked him into. We stopped at Smitty’s, a local grocer now long-gone from Arizona, and I proceeded to the toy aisle to peruse the latest figures – and there it was. An entire endcap of Super Powers figures! Superman, Batman, Flash, Aquaman – and Green Lantern. Somehow I convinced my Dad to purchase it, and man that was it. The coolest action figure ever. EVER! The sculpt, the pose, the little lantern, the action feature! Even today, with all the advances in technology and sculpting, this figure still remains arguably the best version of Hal Jordan in plastic. I took that thing everywhere, outside, to school, errands with my Dad, everywhere. I didn’t even need any other figures to play with, G.L. was the coolest! Of course, Superman followed soon after, and then Batman and Joker and Hawkman and the others. My folks ended up buying me the entire first series that summer, except for Wonder Woman, Brainiac and Penguin which could not be found anywhere.
That fall my family took a road trip to California. These trips meant business meetings and sales calls for my folks, but for me it meant only one thing – the legendary visits to Toys R Us! *cue music* Nothing back then or even now compares to that feeling of walking down the ginourmous aisles of the original setup of Toys R Us and seeing what seemed like every single toy in existence. Those of you who remember that know what I am talking about. It seemed like a mile long, simply amazing. We headed down to the area that contained a 10″ x 10″ spread of Super Powers figures, and looked through all of them, row after row, but could not find the three I was missing. Dejected, disappointed, we turned to leave but on the way out my Dad spotted an employee. They chatted for a minute and then the employee disappeared for a while. He was actually checking in the back, it really happened back then! The employee returned with a big smile and presented me with the elusive Wonder Woman, Brainiac and Penguin figures, all right out of the case. It was a moment of sheer joy! I can’t even imagine that happening now, things have changed so much. And it’s funny that something so simple would stick with me all this time. The employee also brought out the Hall of Justice playset, and my parents bought it all! What a horrible spoiled child I was. I had the Hall set up in the back of the infamous Country Squire the entire 8 hour ride back to AZ, and I still have all those figures today. Hard to believe it’s been over 20 years.
So, I pretty much have my parents to blame for this whole collecting thing.
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Wed 8 Nov 2006 |
*Almost.
In our first visit of the blog era, I listed ten things I believe you can do to escape or avoid toy addiction. Subsequently, I thought of an eleventh item for that list, but there’s a problem.
The eleventh thing you can do to beat toy addiction would have been…
There are two kinds of toys; the ones you open when you get home and the ones you shouldn’t buy.
…and I think it’s a solid general rule that I try to follow.
But what if you just don’t have the room for the things to love most.
 This is Superposeable Strider (with, I believe Helm’s Deep Aragorn’s head) from Toy Biz’s Lord of the Rings line, the second greatest movie action figure line of all time, in my opinion.
 This is Gothmog, a character I love, and an absolutely outstanding figure from the ToyBiz Lord of the Rings line. He’s one of my favorite figures ever.
This is Strider fighting Gothmog. I’ve opened about a dozen other figures in the line.
Now check this out…
This, along with my wife’s yoga ball, is the near closetful of ToyBiz Lord of the Rings figures I have MOC in storage. Note the giant Toy R Us bag to the left of the main one, and the box behind the main bag to the upper right. That’s actually a stack of two boxes. All of it is MOC ToyBiz Lord of the Rings.
I have limited display space in this one bedroom apatment, and we’re looking to move, but one day, and it’s getting to be soon, there will be a massive opening party.
Life’s too precious, and can end too quickly, to always collect by the rules.
-JJJ
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Wed 1 Nov 2006 |
We’re going to try something different here at the mighty TOAWBAH. We’ll see how you like it.
If there is one enthusiasm I have more passion for than action figures, it is film. Before I was a Would’ve-Been Action Hero, I was a Would’ve-Been Screenwriter. I wrote a short film back in 1995 or so that won some awards from a film school I didn’t even attend. That’s about as far as my screenwriting career got, although I did visit the United States Coast Guard Academy and tour the USCGC Gallatin, a 378-foot High Endurance Cutter, as research for a screenplay that never got past page 15.
It would have been better than The Guardian though, I can tell you that.
I’m intruducing two new features to the blog, they will turn up whenever it suits me. One will be Jason Reviews a Movie, of which this is the premiere. The other will be Jason Recommends a Movie, wherein I will suggest and describe a movie I think deserves a wider audience.
The reviews will go as follows. First, I’ll describe the plot and review the film free of SPOILERS. That will conclude with a star rating, from * to ****. Then I’ll give you ample SPOILER SPACE and get into the hows and whys of my opinion, so if you want to get more in depth, you can.
Sound good? It does to me.
For my first review, I will tackle the current, reigning, and defending box office champion of the United States…
I am not at all a fan of modern horror movies, but the Saw films are a guility pleasure of mine. There has been little released after Universal’s Monster heyday that I can say I like. I know current entries like Wolf Creek and the ghastly House of 1,000 Corpses have their fans, but their appeal is completely lost on me. The Saw franchise is different, largely because the scripts actually try to tell a story.
Or at least play a good trick.
The third installment in the franchise finds the game-playing, morality-judging, cancer-ridden Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, never over the top) confined to a hideaway hospital bed with his victim-turned-apprentice Amanda (Shawnee Smith) dutifully by his side. The end is nigh for Jigsaw, however, and so Amanda kidnaps him a doctor (Bahar Soomekh) to delay the inevitable until one last game can play out. That game involves Jeff (Angus MacFadyen, looking here like a cross between Russell Crowe after thirty odd pint of ale and Peter Lorre shortly before he died), who must navigate a series of Jigsaw’s challenges in a quest to confront the man who killed his young son in a drunk driving accident.
Will Dr. Lynn keep Jigsaw, and herself, alive long enough to see Jeff through to the endgame? That’s why you buys your tickets, kids.
That’s also the problem.
Like the first sequel, Saw III is two movies running concurrently. Unlike Saw II, the stories here are sharply partitioned and one of them, Jeff’s anguished trip down the Black Linoleum Road, is a tedious, uninteresting trek filled with unremitting, brutal gore. One of the things I like most about the first Saw was, although gory, horrible things happen, much of it takes place off-screen or is suggested with quick shots and cuts. The first sequel added to the gore factor, as all horror sequels do, but this new one splatters the previous two under the table inside of the first 20 minutes. If I cared at all about Jeff or MacFadyden’s puffy, sleepy performance, I might have stomached the bloody, bony mayhem better. But I didn’t, so I didn’t.
The Jigsaw/Lynn/Amanda storyline (love triangle?) is more compelling, and less gory, but it isn’t up to even the confrontation between Jigsaw and Donnie Wahlberg’s corrupt police detective in Saw II.
Where Saw III excels, surprisingly, is in flashbacks that fill in the timeframe before and after the events of the first Saw. You don’t know the whole story surrounding that bathroom, folks. This movie makes the first one a better, tighter film. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered that in a film franchise.
This is purported to be the last Saw film, and I think that’s a good thing. The franchise, like so many others, has played to diminishing returns. The scripts and casting have declined with each film, though Bell and Smith have done yeoman’s work in all three. I’d hate to see what started as a clever, well-made, pulpy thriller degrade any further into the realm of Roth-inspired torture and gore for the sake of tittering excess.
Jigsaw is a poor man’s Hannibal Lecter. Let’s let him go before he becomes a clever man’s Jason Vorhees.
Rating: **
and, for reference…
Saw: ***
Saw II: **1/2
And there you have it. Thanks for joining me for the inaugural edition of Jason Reviews a Movie. Let me know what you think and I’ll see you next time.
-JJJ
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One of the things that bothered me most, and really set the tone for how I’d feel about the whole film, was the unceremonious, savage dispatching of series veteren Dina Meyer’s Kerry in the first ten minutes of the movie. It felt very much like the writers capriciously closing a plothole they didn’t want to address, namely the complete non-involvement of the police in the story.
Plus, Dina Meyer’s hot. She, and Kerry, deserved much better.
Two other series alumni appear in Saw III, one from the first movie and one from the second. That’s all I’ll say.
One of the questions posed throughout the story is whether or not Amanda is as fit an apprentice to Jigsaw as either of them would like. Specifically, is she the right person to carry on Jigsaw’s work after he dies? The answer to this question is fairly obvious from the start, especially to those paying attention to the first two murders. However, The Big Reveal acts as though the answer is a surprise.
Speaking of The Big Reveal, there certainly is one, as has been tradition in the series. This one is actually a rapid series of little Big Reveals, the biggest of which ties the two storylines together, but none of them add up to much.
The story and character motivations in general get increasingly murky as the movie sprints to the finish. By the end, it’s just words and violence flying around. The Jeff storyline, in particular, gets more uninvolving and foolish (and gory) as it goes.
I went in hoping to be told what in Jigsaw’s background enabled him to create all the traps and devices used on his victims. Sadly, all we get is him painting the puppet.
We do, however, get a small glimpse into the life Jigsaw may have had before even his cancer, but it’s not enough to provide any real insight into the character.
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