This evening, after having a pretty good day, I decided to eschew my normal routine of watching and coding along with some Unity tutorials and instead popped in disc 1 of season 4 of the Walking Dead, freshly delivered to my stoop yesterday. At the end of the first episode I was completely lost.

The gang is back at the prison. There's a whole gaggle of people milling about and I don't understand who they are or why they got there.

Somehow I've skewed story lines between the comic and the tv show. I knew it would happen. I remember it happening a little when I was watching a couple of episodes from season 3. But I've got some Walking Dead Dementia/Alzheimer's going on now.

Is would make the most sense to either re-watch the last episode or two from season 3, or more easily go online and look at season summaries. But this is an opportunity for me to start over and re-discover the episodes. I like Walking Dead as it captures what I like about the zombie genre - you're not going to win, just see how long you can survive. I think I remember most of what happens in the first season, but I'm going to start over with episode 1 anyway.

I watch movies multiple times and enjoy them. I've watched the entire run of Friends and Frasier multiple times. Why should I feel so bad doing the same for Walking Dead?

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Star Trek Enterprise Part Deux

03.29.2014

While hip deep in actual work for the past month+, I've been re-watching Start Trek Enterprise in my down time. With 43 minute episodes that I've seen before, there's less chance of accidentally getting sucked into a watching marathon.

I watched parts of the first season when it first aired in 2001. Once the series was released on DVD in 2005 I finally watched the whole series. Since then, I don't think I've watched a complete episode. It was with a little trepidation that I started over with episode 1 as I didn't have the fondest memories of the series. Much to my surprise, I've been enjoying this 10 year old sci-fi series a lot more than I think I did in 2005.

Firstly, outside of the pilot episode it seems I don't remember any of the episodes. While this may mean the specific plot points were forgettable, it also means for the past month it's felt like I've seen all new episodes. Next, I don't remember as many CGI special effects in the show. Or space battles. Pew pew pew!

Yesterday I finished up season 3, which (as I remember) wrapped up the big story arc of the show even though the season finale ended on a cliffhanger. We'll season what happens over season 4 as I have free time this coming week.

Once I finish Enterprise (for the second time, ever) I've got my normal backlog of DVDs that have been released over the past month. There's also a couple of TV shows in that mix for me:

• Game of Thrones, Season 3 - This is one I've been looking forward to and know it will lead to a weekend marathon where I watch the whole season. This batch of shows is the reason I started watching Enterprise again, as I knew I didn't have a weekend I could waste in front of the TV.
• Arrow, Season 1 - I got this on sale for $15 at Target. I'm led to believe this is the Green Arrow version of Smallville. I liked Smallville. I had planned on waiting until Arrow had produced more seasons before trying it out (nothing worse than getting enthralled in a show and then having it suddenly cancelled/unavailable), but for $15....
• Boardwalk Empire (Seasons 1-3) - Another sale pickup that I've just been delaying getting into.

I've got plenty to do in my free time. I just need the free time again.

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Movie Watchin

02.12.2014

Over the past week I've been re-watching some older movies thanks in part to working more from home thanks to warnings of Snowpocalypse 2014 along with actually staying home for fear of getting caught out in Snowpocalypse 2014. That's ok, I like being at home. I've got food, I've got power, I've got the internet, and I've got more ways to entertain myself than I can keep up with. It hit me some time last week that most of my friends have hobbies that get them out of the house. Most of them are married, and most of those have kids, so they're looking for excuses to get out of the house. All of my hobbies keep me in the house because I have no one to escape from. Plus, I'm a home-body.

I was digging through the movie collection and pulled out a couple of old ones to watch again. The first one was the 2012 remake of Total Recall. I remember being less than impressed the first time I watched it. A year or so has passed, and this time I didn't have as high an expectation of the movie due in part to forgetting most of what this version was about since the last time I had seen it. In addition, I didn't compare it to the Schwartzenegger original. Thanks to this attitude I found the 2012 remake quite enjoyable, much more so than the first time I watched it.

The 2nd movie I re-watched was last year's World War Z, which had nothing to do with the book by the same name. I enjoyed the book - it's one of the few zombie books I've read. I knew going into the movie that it would have nothing in common with the book as it was pretty much advertised as such. Even then, while watching the movie I couldn't stop myself from thinking how the book was better. Watching the movie this time, I looked at it as just another zombie movie. It was much more enjoyable that way.

All of this brings me to a new DVD release for this week - Ender's Game. This movie is based on a book published in 1985 that is a sci-fi classic. Quite a good sci-fi classic, and one of the few books that my slow reading speed has pored through more than once. Once again, I tried to watch a movie,one where I pretty much knew what was going to happen before everything started, with an open mind. It was a pretty movie, but I had problems.

I'm not sure if I was trying to pay too much attention, but it seemed they were leaving out plot points, or at least some explanations of how and why certain things were happening. I know the story as presented by the book so I always knew what was going on, but I was questioning how the movie was explaining the events as they happened.

The beginning of the movie felt rushed, maybe because they shoved the first ¼ of the book into the first 15 minutes. A lot of the "why" of some of the events seemed to be skipped, and one part that I thought was important was a made up sci-fi word said during a training sequence that's said again at the end of climatic action sequence. If you know what the made up sci-fi word is supposed to be, the next 5 minutes after the climatic action sequence make a lot more sense. The script finally tells you what happens after those 5 minutes, so maybe building up tension was the point?

Now I'll wait a year and think about watching Ender's Game again. My expectations will be lowered. Maybe I won't compare it to the book. I have hope - my favorite sci-fi book is Starship Troopers and I never had any problem with any of the movies. Or TV show. Or video game. Oh, and the board games. Wait, what was I complaining about?

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