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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

Sure... and Sony will buy Apple, too.

So the big brouhaha in the animation industry over the last couple of days is the age-old rumor of Disney planning to buy Pixar.   As far as I've been able to tell, all of the articles have been based around one article which originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. What's interesting to me about all of this, is how all of these other "news" services seem to be treating this as fact. The buyout is practically a done-deal by their accounts. Although at the end of most articles, most are
Guest

Guest

2

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 6 - Captain America

A friend of mine got me into a free screening for Captain America the other evening, complete with free popcorn, soda and snacks! Now, despite this, I promise that this will in no way bias my review towards what is obviously the greatest movie in the history of cinema!   Okay, it wasn't that great. But Captain America was still pretty good.   Or rather, that should read "'Captain America: The First Avenger' was still pretty good", because after all, there may be two or three people on p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 5 - Green Lantern

Five down... one to go.   I only had a couple of Green Lantern comics as a kid. I knew he had a power ring that was recharged by sticking it into a lantern, and that he could fly and shoot energy blasts with it... and that was about it. It was only later as I began collecting comics that I peripherally learned more - that he was only one of thousands of Green Lanterns patrolling the galaxy, and that they make giant green things ("constructs") like dinosaurs, fists, and sledgehammers out of the
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 4 - X-Men: First Class

Sheesh... I'm up to part 4 already. I guess I'm committed to this for the long haul, now.   I went and saw X-Men: First Class at a late Friday night showing. Usually, I'll wait a week or so to go see a film to avoid lines or crowds, but well... I was bored. So I decided to go see it.   The first two X-Men films were okay, but I never felt that they got all of the characters quite right. (Anna Paquin?? Gimme a break.) It felt like they took random bits and pieces of characters and stories,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 3 - Thor

Okay, true story - I've actually known two people named Thor.   One of them was a co-worker, and the other a student (who is now a director).   I also knew someone whose last name was Batman. I bet she got teased a lot as a kid. But that's off-topic.   I went to see the movie Thor today, despite being somewhat underwhelmed by the trailers for it, and despite that I've always felt Thor was somewhat of a third-stringer, superhero-wise. But I decided to go see it since I enjoyed watching Iron
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 2 - Iron Man 2

Yeah... so this is about a year late. But I never did see Iron Man 2 in the theater. I just wasn't all that excited by it for some reason, despite really liking the first one.   So I finally rented it this week. I didn't get it from Netflix, or download it from iTunes, or stream it, or get video on demand. I rented an actual, physical Blu-ray disc.   From a store. A small, mom and pop type video store.*   I know... quaint, right?   Well, I couldn't rent it from a Blockbuster, since those
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 1 - Smallville finale

What's up with all the superhero movies this summer? Thor, Green Lantern, X-Men: First Class, Captain America... there's a veritable glut of 'em.   Maybe even... a super glut.   I have yet to decide if I'm going to see any of them or not. Frankly, I've never been a big fan of Thor (although if Walt Simonson were drawing the movie, I'd go see it), the previous X-Men movies have all been pretty wretched, Green Lantern looks kind of stupid (sorry GL fans... but I call 'em as I see 'em), and I h
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

5

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 7 - The Dark Knight

I hated the Tim Burton "Batman" film. Michael Keaton was a chinless, scrawny twerp and Jack Nicholson was a puffy, over-the-hill buffoon. The series actually got worse after that, with each film further devolving into camp versions of the original comic books, making the 60's TV series look like serious drama.   When Batman Begins came out a couple of years ago, it seemed to be a very promising reboot of the franchise. It took things much more seriously, had far better casting and directing, a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

14

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 6 - Wall-E

And the Summer movie-fest rolls on!   So, another research trip to... okay... we skipped work again. But if anything qualifies as research to those who work in an animation program, it's Wall-E.   Prior to the feature, is Pixar's latest short film: Presto. This is a wonderful throwback to the classic animated short films of Warner Brothers and MGM from the 40's and 50's. It's silly, fun animation, for the sake of silly, fun animation. (And you can buy it on iTunes for $1.99 if you want.)  
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 5 - The Incredible Hulk

Okay... so I originally said that I wasn't going to see The Incredible Hulk. But I did anyway. A friend of mine wanted to go, so I figured - "why not?" At the very least, we could make fun of how bad it was afterwards.   However, it wasn't that bad of a film. Actually, it was pretty decent. Nowhere near the level of Iron Man, but probably somewhere between Fantastic Four and X-Men.   Edward Norton made a good Bruce Banner, and most of the rest of the cast was fine, although Liv Tyler spent m
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 4 - Kung Fu Panda

Well, I hadn't originally planned to go see Kung Fu Panda, because most Dreamworks animated films are dreck. Seems to me they even have a few films named Dreck or Wreck or Shlock or some such thing. Whatever.   But when positive reviews started showing up on Cartoon Brew, I thought I'd go see it anyway. The readers on Cartoon Brew tend to be pretty merciless when reviewing animated films that don't live up to their (generally over-inflated but often accurate) standards.   So, as part of work
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 3 - Indiana Jones

Some of us skipped out of work today... I mean... took an extended lunch... to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.   For an opening day, the theater was surprisingly not-that-full. Of course, being in the middle of a Thursday afternoon probably had something to do with it (also, they were showing it on three screens at the same time). And even though large opening-day crowds can be fun, it was still nice not to have to get to the theater two hours early and wait in long li
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 2 - Iron Man

On with the next movie - Iron Man.   I think about half the reason I enjoyed Speed Racer, was because visually it was so interesting.   With Iron Man though - it was just a good, fun movie.   Robert Downey Jr. made a perfect Tony Stark. Even though I don't remember a lot of the comic book personality (I haven't read Iron Man in nearly 20 years), he made a great character out of him. He was both a self-centered jerk, and yet completely likable. He had a self-effacing manner about him, and a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 1 - Speed Racer

It's Summertime! And for the first time in years, there are a good number of movies I'm planning to go see this Summer. Usually I may see only one, perhaps two movies a year.   So, let's run 'em down, shall we?   Iron Man - Review coming soon... I haven't seen this one yet. Speed Racer - Review coming real soon... the rest of this entry, in fact. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Rumor has it Sean Connery will make a cameo as Harrison Ford's son. King Fu Panda - Ick. N
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8
Comic Strips

Stripping

I was digging through some old files on my computer, and ran across a few comic strips I did while participating in Pitfall Harry's Contest of Doom. This was in May, 2003, about six months after I signed on at AtariAge.   These were done as parodies of Pitfall Harry's strip Crane's World. I named mine Carl Wonders, since it's an anagram of Crane's World, and the contest (a series of puzzles) included anagrams in it (among other things - it was a very tough contest).   Anyway,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum in Comic Strips

6

Stripped

Finally! Someone found a way to make Garfield funny...   Garfield minus Garfield           The kicker to this, is that not only did Jim Davis not sue, but he liked the idea so much, he had them published in a book.   (And yes, for those observant blog readers, originally this entry's title referenced Jay Leno, since his humor is just as stale and repetitive as Garfield's. But I thought people might get confused since the entry doesn't have anything to do with the current late-n
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2

Streaking!

Well, since I've had a number of people* tell me that they really liked my 15th entry in the Lead contest, I thought I'd post a blog entry about it.   *That number would be "three".   This was by far the easier of the two illustrations. No 3D here. Just drawing. As always, it started out with some rough sketches. The idea I wanted to convey was a sense of speed, as the player's ship hurtled past the energy walls, and fired away at oncoming ships. So I wanted lots of streaks and blurring to g
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4

Straight Outta Newhall

So, I've been waiting for this CD for awhile...     Was it worth the wait?   Well - yes! Although I have to admit I was more than a little worried about it, since Weird Al's last album - Poodle Hat - was, I thought, his weakest effort to date. Maybe that's because the album before that - Running With Scissors - was (and still is) his best.   But this is a return to good form for Weird Al, and both his parodies and originals are excellent. I don't really keep up on current music anymore,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6

Still not completely fixed, apparently

Previously, I mentioned at the very end of this post: That's not the only problem anymore. You see, I've been testing the Trak-Ball™ hacks on it. Why have I been testing them? Well I wouldn't have wanted to go to the trouble of designing labels for hacks that didn't work now, would I? The problem is... some of them just won't work on my six-switch 2600. What's weird is - some of them do work. On my four-switch, all of the hacks work fine. Both of my CX-22 Trak-Balls™ work with all h
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

30

Stella at 20, at 20

Okay... that's a bit of a cheat. Technically, it should be Stella at 20, at 19. But that just doesn't sound as cool. Bet you never thought you'd see another post about this project... did ya'? Well, at a certain point, neither did I. Eleven years ago, almost to the week, I received the original camera tapes for the two-volume documentary Stella at 20 from Glenn Saunders, with the intent of re-editing it into an expanded version of the documentary. The goal was to put it out on DVD, since it
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9
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