Review: Boba Fett Blox!

Some of my favourite items in my Star Wars collection are the oddities - the twisted, bizarre, bootleg, or super-deformed versions of our favourite characters from a galaxy far away. And why not shake it up a little bit? Visual artists frequently create their own stylised interpretations of  Luke, Han, Chewie and the gang, so why not carry that aesthetic across to toys? We've already had decades of screen accurate characters, so I welcome any product that tries something different.

We've already taken a look at Funko's Pop Vinyl bobblehead figures but they also have released a range of larger, wafer-thin, stylised vinyl figures called Blox. Thanks to our very own Jacinta, I now own Boba Fett. Check him out...

This may almost be a case of what-you-see-is-what-you-get but join me after the jump and we'll break him out and show a few more images...

Happy Birthday! Fruitless Pursuits Turns One Today!

Just a quick post to recognise that Fruitless Pursuits celebrates its first birthday today!

One year ago a group of us on a creative forum decided to combine our powers and launch a site together where we were able to talk about all the nerdy stuff we were into it, and also share our own projects. Since then we've had a lot of contributor changes and focus changes, our share of quiet times and busy times, but we've endured longer than I think any of us probably thought we would, and I think we're starting to find our voice. In fact it's hard to believe it's only been a year!

A big thanks to all our contributors, past, present and future, to the wonderful people who sponsor us, and an especially big thanks to you for reading and supporting us! Happy birthday.

El Professore Movie: Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation

Not Quite Hollywood

2008
Director: Mark Hartley
* * * *

Ozploitation; a term I was regretfully unfamiliar with just a few years ago. Then this amazing, confounding, eye opening documentary was unleashed upon unsuspecting cinephiles and now despite still not having seen the majority of the films listed, it is a term that I spout as if I had heard it all my life.

Click through the jump for the full review.

Pre-Order Hot Toys 1/4 Scale Dark Knight! Arkham City Catwoman! And 3A Halo!

Ruthlessly determined to bankrupt us, our pals at Sideshow have updated with a handful of extremely appealing pre-orders to tempt your whimpering credit card out of hiding. How can I not share these with you!

Each time the genius artisans at Hot Toys release a figure I'm inclined to insist that it's the definitive version of that character. I certainly felt that way after seeing their recent Dark Knight Rises 1/6th scale Batman, but no - they prove me wrong by now offering up this 1/4 scale version! What does that mean? That this guy is even bigger, now standing about 18 inches high! Check this out...

I have so many more images, and all the pre-order info of this bounty... after the jump!

Delayed Forbidden Era Contest Winner!

My apologies for the delay, but we have a winner for our Forbidden Era book contest.

Our winner is CBarton!

CBarton, email me at your earliest convenience (jeff.raymond@gmail.com) and I'll get you hooked in. Thanks again for Amanda Mondoux for the contest!

Review: Dark Knight Rises "Gotham City Battle" Action Figure Five-Pack!

Now here’s a toy oddity I found hard to resist! Mattel has released this very reasonably priced five-pack of 3 3/4 action figures based on Sir Christopher Nolan’s bombastic, clunky, terrifyingly bleak, almost-Batmanless epic The Dark Knight Rises...

And, furthermore, this set is clearly aimed at children. “Hi, my son is turning five on Saturday and I’m looking for a small action figure of a fetish mask wearing, neck-breaking terrorist but I don’t want to spend a lot of money. Can you help me? Oh, and if you can throw in a crazy, crippled rasping billionaire and a double-crossing thief in a sexy bondage outfit then that would be good too.” Sir.. have we ever got you covered...

This unlikely set fascinates me because the quality wildly ranges from dollar store bootleg to a couple of surprisingly decent figures (at least sculpt-wise). I’m kind of amused that it exists at all.

I’ll show you a whole lot more... after the jump!

Book Review: The Shadow of the Wind

Last month, a much awaited book came out in the United States, The Prisoner of Heaven. In anticipation, I read the first book as part of the series, The Shadow of the Wind. It's sometimes difficult to find a truly unique book when you read 200+ books a year and feel as if you've seen it all. The Shadow of the Wind is not only a super-unique book, but it's a book that does a lot of things at the same time, and all of them extremely well.

What's Out? 1st of August 2012

Welcome to What's Out? The FINAL What's Out?
This started as a way to provide a service and make some jokes at the same time. It's a year later and I have seen terrible things, tried to understand kids these days and made fun of everything I don't understand.
So one last time, here is what's out at comic shops today:

Stryder's Favourite Comics - 7/25/2012

Last comics of July this week!  However, once again, Internet connectivity issues have destroyed my ability to post this article when I normally would.  According to the cable company, they have top men working on it now.  Who?  TOP MEN.

On that note...

Green Lantern #11 - A whole new story arc begins this month in Green Lantern!  William " The Black" Hand killed himself last issue to escape from under the influence of the Indigo Tribe.  Of course, being this ultimate bad ass Black Ranger guy he rose from the dead, free from their powers!  Now he's returned to Earth where he creepily got Chinese food and resurrected  his very dead family to invite them to dinner.  His plan?  To kill as many people as possible on Earth, raise them as zombies and give them the ability to do the same, until everyone on the planet is one big happy undead family.  Delightful...couldn't he just watch "The Walking Dead" like the rest of us??

Meanwhile, Hal Jordan has gotten the Indigo Tribe to release Sinestro to his custody, having them recharge and reprogram both his and Sinestro's rings in the process.  You may remember Hal's ring was enslaved to Sinestro's when this series began.  Now it's fully independent and able to effect Sinestro just as it would anyone.  Hooray!  After this it's off to Sinestro's home planet to pick up "The Book of Black" and figure out what to do about both Black Hand and the imminent, prophesied betrayal of the Green Lantern Corps by the Guardians.

So yeah, there's a lot going on!  I'm STILL wondering what happened to Star Sapphire....hopefully with this return to Earth she'll come into play.

Superman, Batman, The Comedian and more after the JUMP!!

The Book Was Better Podcast Episode 23: Richie Rich!

It's time for another Book Was Better Podcast where your hosts Jessica and Luke discuss, debate and mock the tie-in novels of your "favourite" films. As always, Jess says it best:

"Occupy Mount Richmore! Let a couple of working-class slobs guide you through the confusing politics of Richie Rich, another novelization from our sworn enemy old friend Todd Strasser. If you hate fat people and love McDonald's, this is the one for you!"

You can download it from the official site or subscribe to us on iTunes! And here's a picture of ruthless rich prick Richie to get you in the money-swimming mood!

Nerd History: The Bloop!

Once upon a time, there was a sound. The sound was picked up by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, sometime in 1997. The NOAA was tracking oceanic sounds and picked up on this one specific sound. You can hear it above.

What's strange about this sound, however, is that scientists feel confident that it's from an animal. The problem is that the sound came from roughly 5000 kilometers away, meaning that the animal in question, theoretically, would have had to have been larger than a blue whale.

What the bloop is, we don't know. I'm betting on Cthuhlu.

10 Ways Peter Jackson Could Stretch Out The Hobbit Into Even More Movies!

So hirsute director Peter Jackson officially confirmed rumours today that wafer-thin children’s book The Hobbit will be expanded upon even further to become three movies instead of two. There’s a growing trend of splitting up single books into multiple movies, so I say to Mr. Jackson, why stop at three? Why not twelve? Or fifteen? Or Twenty-Three? The whole world has gone Hobbit crazy with anticipation - everyone is eating ‘taters, not wearing shoes, and even the most elegant ladies are proudly growing out the hair on their feet, so why not capitalise on this as much as you can? I would buy a hobbit right now if I could. THREE IS NOT ENOUGH. I vote to stretch out our Hobbit out for at least the rest of the decade.

Now, I realise that stretching things further will take a bit of work, so I’m offering the following ten suggestions/solutions free-of-charge. That’s how keen I am to make this thirty-five movie opus happen!

1. All walking scenes will now happen in real time.
2. Bilbo will develop a wicked stutter. At points in the story it will get so bad that he will have to play charades to get his point across to the dwarves.
3. Gandalf becomes is now incredibly forgetful and indecisive. An hour in they have to double back to fetch his pipe when he realises that he left it back in Bilbo’s hole. This happens three times.
4. All songs immediately demand an encore.
5. Smaug painstakingly catalogues every single item in his treasure hoard. Does a double-check.
6. Extended scenes of Boromir. As a baby.
7. Gollum has narcolepsy. The other characters patiently wait as they are too polite to wake him.
8. All footnotes and appendices will be read aloud in their entirety. By an Ent.
9. Two additional films will be comprised solely of endings.
10. The films will now be shot at 12 frames per second.

I’ve already started queuing for Hobbit Eighteen in 2020!

Pre-Order Hot Toys Iron Man Mark VII!

It's been a long time coming, but the Hot Toys Iron Man Mark VII from The Avengers is finally up for pre-order at Sideshow! If you're still to get your wisecracking, hard-drinking, deadpan billionaire industrialist fix, then this is the one to grab...

More images of Tony after the jump, or you can do what I just did and reserve yours straight away here: Hot Toys Movie Masterpiece Series Iron Man Mark VII Sixth Scale Figure EXCLUSIVE - The Avengers

Review: Magic Mike

Dear friends, while I'd like to stay in your good regard by claiming that I saw this movie for science, or that I was taking one for the team, if I did I would be thoroughly lying. I put on my Woo Girl hat for the night (not an ACTUAL hat, just for the record. Though if it was an actual hat there'd be sparkles I'm sure) and headed on down to the cinema to be assaulted by the abdominals of several extremely attractive men for an hour and a half.

Fellas, you might want to skip this one, but ladies would do well to follow me below the cut for the low-down on Magic Mike and his band of merry men.

Review: The Amazing Spider-Man Minimates!

I stumbled across these yesterday and thought they would be a good follow up to my earlier Avengers minimate review. The Amazing Spider-Man, with its single costumed hero, certainly doesn’t have anywhere near the impact of The Avengers line which had a bounty of great characters to choose from, but I do like the new Spider-Man re-design, complete with gold eyes and sneakers, and figured that at least the titular character is worth a closer look.

I picked up the Spider-Man/Peter Parker two-pack of minimates which I believe is the only way to get Spidey in his regular costume. To find out what I thought of these blocky, mini arachnid buggers... join me after the jump!

Tabletop: Episodes 8 and 9 - Fiasco with Bonnie Burton, Alison Haislip and John Rogers

Tabletop took a big twist in Episode 8, introducing the first role playing game to the series, and then twisted things a little more by making it a two-part episode. The group, consisting of Bonnie Burton (author, crafter, geek grrl), Alison Haislip (actress - G4, Battleground), and John Rogers (screenwriter - Leverage, Jackie Chan Adventures) and host Wil Wheaton, played the hell out of the game Fiasco.

FIASCO is an award-winning, GM-less game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation. During a game you will engineer and play out stupid, disastrous situations, usually at the intersection of greed, fear, and lust. It’s like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it’d take to watch one.

Watching a group play a role playing game sounds a little odd, but this is a very creative group. Most of them are writers and actors, which helps on all levels.. and Fiasco is a little different than your average game. Many things go wrong, and many others go terribly wrong. It's like watching a train wreck that you've invested a few hours into the setup.

So while the first part, Episode 8, drags on a little.. part two is amazing. Bonnie and John are wonderful storytellers, and Alison's character is dead on (especially her "dead eyes"). In the second episode, the game starts to take it's shape and follow in the footsteps of all of the previous Tabletop games by forcing me to immediately go right out and buy the game. And if you are interested, the scenario that the group played (Saturday Night ’78) is available for PDF download at: http://bit.ly/OGeFqX

Click through the jump for both full episodes and a look at the next game for episode 10.

Batman vs Bane

I quite liked Dark Knight Rises not really up there with Dark Knight but it finished Nolan's Batman trilogy pretty well. Although if I had to pick the definitive Batman I'd have to go with the Animated Batman. See their version of Batman fighting Bane

Every time I go back and watch this series (and the straight to video movies) especially the first few seasons it always shocks me with how good it was.

I've got a few other clips after the jump