Penis. No, I mean... wait...

Well, we might as well go ahead and get it all out of our systems. Doctor Manhattan, like most males, has a penis. He rocks out with his cock out. I was afraid that they would wimp out and make him wear clothes through the whole film, but they didn't. Good for them. It was mildly irritating when, during dramatic moments, the chuckleheads sitting in front of us would notice Jon's blue manhood wagging about and burst into Beavis-and-Butthead style "uhuhuhuh" laughter.

Also worrying was the large number of small children in the theatre as we watched this (deservedly) R-rated movie. I'm frequently amazed at how poorly some people parent their children. In a similar vein to the legally brain-dead parents who allow their kids to play games like Grand Theft Auto and then act surprised when they stab their sister over a Nintendo DS (or not), Katie and I actually sat next to a group of four children, aged approximately 6-11 years. One of the kids was sucking his thumb, and another took a fairly expensive nap. Meanwhile, on screen, Nite Owl is putting the blocks to Silk Spectre in the Owlship, Rorshach is planting a meat cleaver into a child-killer's forehead, everybody's saying "fuck" and "shit" like they're contributing to this website, and let's not forget Doc Manhattan's big blue thang. Sigh. And yes, I'm aware that I'm being sort of hypocritical, accusing people of bad parenting when I don't have kids myself, but fuck that. This movie was not appropriate for kids, based solely on the level of violence.

Which leads us neatly into my brief critique of the film. If you plan on seeing it, have never read the comic, and don't want things spoiled, then go watch the movie or read the book and come back afterwards.

I liked it. I can actually make this faster by saying that I liked it all, with the exception of the following elements:
• Malin Åkerman - was apparently cast more for her physical resemblance to Silk Spectre II then for her acting ability; successfully took one of the two most important and deep characters from the comic book and reduced her to two facial expressions; such a shame.
• the violence - I am a big fan of fictional violence in general, but the comic purposefully veered away from excess in favor of a more realistic portrayal; Nite Owl pulled a Jet Li, busting-the-elbow-through-the skin move that made no sense; Silk Spectre stabbed a guy in the throat; the violence was a bit over-glorified, where I think its portrayal as ugly-but-sometimes-necessary would have been more effective.
• the "super" heroes - in the novel, there was Doctor Manhattan, and then there was everyone else; there was exactly one superhero (perhaps two if you count Ozymandias' metahuman reflexes, but that's more of an amazingly-well-trained thing, like Batman), but in the film, the Comedian, Nite Owl, and Silk Spectre all exhibit greater-than-average strength, which I thought was silly and tried to drag the movie into the same genre with Batman and Iron Man, where it does not belong, any more than the comic should be placed on the same shelf with the latest X-Men crossover.
• the ending - I don't think it was bad, it was just different; the replacement of the giant alien squid with Ozymandias' vilification of Doctor Manhattan made sense in that it kept Jon as the lynchpin which the entire story turned on, and that's fine; I just felt that the catastrophe lost a lot of its viscerality, since, in the novel, the alien squid thing dies and kills half of New York, but it doesn't actually destroy anything: there are just piles and piles of twisted human bodies; the movie sanitizes this a bit by having large portions of several cities be vaporized, resulting in a (perhaps satisfyingly?) cleaner rebuilding-New-York shot towards the end that wears its post-September 11th sensibility plain on its sleeve.

All that said, I liked the film, and I will watch it again when it becomes available on DVD. Therefore...

Final score: 10.
(I know that was a lot to read. Sorry; here, have some pictures and videos.)
We had guests. Paul and Stephanie trekked down from Halifax for a week, carting wee little Colin along for the ride. Sadly, Colin is a drunk. Shame. We actually didn't get any photos of the trip, so I'll have to hit up Paul's flickr... stream.. or whatever. It was lovely to have visitors, though, and we can't wait to darken their doorway someday soon.

Speaking of wee little things! Our oven gave out a couple of weeks ago. We told our landlady. Nothing happened for a while. Suddenly, we're told we're getting a new stove! Hooray, right?
Not so much. Now our kitchen looks like it had one of its teeth knocked out. Christ's sake. Ah, well. I hear Inwood's nice...

The internet continues to vomit forth its bounty.

Shopping Cart Hero doesn't do lots, but what it does, it does well. Go down the hill, go up in the air, try not to die.

Don't Shit Your Pants probably doesn't need much explanation. If you've ever played Maniac Mansion, Police Quest, or any of those old Sierra or LucasArts games, then you should be fine.

Someone very clever mocked up an intro for a faux-80s Saturday-morning Watchmen cartoon.

There is a person in the world who performs video game theme songs a cappella and with a ukulele, and this person is, alarmingly, not me.

In more distressing news, sadness suffuses my soul:
Without the Green Lantern Ring, how will I open my beer defend the Earth from aliens? *whinewhine*

We'll have to depend on Kitty, I suppose.

That's all the time I have today, kids! Keep in touch!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Not enough mana!