Bits & Bobs - 8th Edition

Bits & Bobs collects some of the cool things around the interwebs that I think are noteworthy and worth your time but don't necessarily fill up a full blog post or news item. On with the show...

THERE HAS BEEN AN AWAKENING, AND YOU PROBABLY FELT IT...

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Unless you've been off the grid since Thanksgiving, you probably have already seen and know that a teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released on Black Friday. The new sequel film takes place thirty years after the events of Return of the Jedi and features all-new characters and some familiar faces including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. The teaser trailer clocks in at a mere 88 seconds but is the first official glimpse of the newcomers John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Issac and is intended as something of an amuse-bouche before bigger trailers are released presumably next spring. Of course, fanboys are nitpicking over tiny details including a brand new lightsaber seen sported by what many assume is the new villain of the film but how can you not like everything you see in this trailer? A panicked hero in Stormtooper armor on the run, a tough female jumping onto a souped-up speeder and racing to (or away from) danger, X-Wings, the Millennium Falcon... I mean, c'mon. If you haven't seen it, check it out here in glorious high definition courtesy of StarWars.com.

HER NAME IS AGENT

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is about to head off into its mid-season hiatus with a blow-out Winter Finale on December 9th, but the good news is that in between episodes Agent Carter is going to help you pass the time starting with a two-hour film airing on ABC January 6, 2015. The latest TV spots and promos really make the film look true to the first Captain America: The First Avenger film (and in-turn, gets me stoked for the show because it also feels a lot like The Rocketeer). The seven episodes will presumably air weekly leading up to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s return later in 2015, and knowing how everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is connected, will most likely have ramifications for all of the Marvel shows and films to come.

Bits & Bobs - 5th Edition

Bits & Bobs collects some of the cool things around the interwebs that I think are noteworthy and worth your time but don't necessarily fill up a full blog post or news item. On with the show...

BACK TO THE PILOT TRAINING GROUND

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Quick, get in close enough to take a picture of it for the recon mission -- without crashing into it. It's like landing a plane on the aircraft carrier in the NES Top Gun.

Remember the countless hours spent in a DOS environment trying to get X-Wing up and running on your Dad's work PC? I do, I must have spent hours upon hours trying to get all seven of those discs to install only to find that the sound card he had wasn't compatible and I'd have to play without sound. Regardless, so many days and nights were spent behind the controls of an X-Wing fighter in LucasArts' X-Wing simulator. Later on, they released a CD-ROM version for the Mac that I ate up with a spoon, but unfortunately it hasn't worked on any of my computers (along with the fantastic Rebel Assault games) for years. Enter GOG.com who swiped up the rights to X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and The Secret of Monkey Island and are offering them through their DRM-free download service. Good news right? Bad news is that it's Windows only for X-Wing and TIE Fighter for the time being. Check it out here!

GET READY FOR PHASE THREE FEATURING...

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Unless you somehow completely managed to avoid the internet all day yesterday (or any of your friends that are vaguely enthusiasts of popular culture), you probably already know that Marvel held a big Apple-like event at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, CA yesterday to announce their movie plans through the year 2019. The biggest surprises of the announcement were the revelations that a Captain Marvel film (based on the most recent and awesome Carol Danvers version of the character) is on the way, and also that the next Avengers film will be a big two-parter revolving around Thanos and his killer hand modeling. And the whole thing is going to kick off with a new Cap movie loosely inspired by the Civil War event. So who wants to update that intense info-graphic of the tentpole movie slate for the next ten years?

TERMINATOR: PARENTHOOD

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This week's Entertainment Weekly has a cover story on the upcoming Terminator reboot/reimagining, Terminator: Genisys (which I still can't spell the subtitle of correctly without looking up). In it, they reveal how this new film fits into the continuity and how a new incarnation of Sarah Connor has been raised by... a Cyberdyne model 101? According to the article: "Sarah Connor isn’t the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton’s steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991’s T2. Rather, the mother of humanity’s messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion." Interesting. Apparently it has James Cameron's seal of approval, but we'll see how it all shakes out next July.