"Yeti" on Syfy

I watched Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon on Syfy on Friday night. I did a blow-by-blow review on my Facebook profile, but I thought I'd share a copy here, as well. Click through to read it.

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Iron Man Fridge Logic

Didn't we learn in the first movie that Tony Stark's armored suits are powered by the miniature arc reactor that he wears in his chest to power the gizmo that keeps his heart beating? This would include the second suit he built, the Mark II armor, in particular.

So how was James Rhodes able to operate the Mark II suit in Iron Man 2? If Tony wasn't wearing it, it wouldn't have a power supply.

My geek-fu is still strong.

Review: Iron Man 2

I got to see Iron Man 2 over the weekend, and I was quite pleased. They conveniently avoided the "hero has an extra disadvantage" cliche in this one, which is particularly refreshing, since they already used that one in the first installment. I was also pleased to see that the writers appreciated continuity, as a surprise weapon from the first film was reused in this one, albeit with different results. Also, when this movie's new surprise weapon was only used once, there was a good explanation. Clearly the writing staff had enough geeks to dodge many of my usual criticisms. The armored suits even sustain reasonable amounts of battle damage regardless of who wins.

Performance quality didn't drop in this film, either. Robert Downey Jr. continues to play a character who is an ass on many levels, but likeable all the same. The various people around him are still strained by his selfish eccentricity, and their behavior stays believable.

I wasn't thrilled by the choice of villain when I saw previews for IM2. I'm a bit of a comics buff, and I collected pretty heavily for a while. In the comics, Whiplash is at best a second-tier villain, probably just third. Still, they managed to make him into a threat without straining my sensibilities. I don't want to spoil things by saying how his first encounter with Iron Man went, but I wasn't actually displeased.

So this is definitely a "go see". The writers doing Marvel movies these days seem to be on the ball. They haven't really fumbled since Spiderman 3.

Note: There is an easter egg after the credits, but you have to be a Marvel Comics buff to appreciate it.

While the town was flooded...

In case you didn't notice, it rained last weekend in Nashville. It rained a lot. It rained so much that the river crested some sixteen feet above flood stage. I live a bit outside Nashville, and my house fortunately did not flood (and I'm now pretty sure it never will).

There is, however, a low spot in the road to my house. When I got home from the Crown List event (Maximillian won... again) on Sunday, the river was lapping at the edge of the road. Overnight, it overflowed the road to a depth of five feet.

Needless to say, I stayed home Monday. I didn't miss much; the office where I work closed due to threat of the nearby levy failing and all the surrounding roads being flooded. It was still closed today (Wednesday), and I'm not all that sure about tomorrow. At least I was able to work remotely some today.

So, I did get a little bit of cleaning done, and I finally got the opportunity to see Dead Snow. I saw it in Norwegian with English subtitles via Netflix on-demand. That was a fun little zombie movie, although the zombies were a little non-traditional (you could apparently kill them with damage that would kill a living person, which is atypical for zombie flicks). It turned out to be a little unpredictable, which is good. It was also somewhat tongue-in-cheek, which can vary. Campy worked well for Zombieland, while serious worked well for Night of the Living Dead (for which I actually prefer the 1990 remake, but that's as much because of Patricia Tallman as anything). I give it about a three out of four if you have my bizarre taste in movies (I watch Syfy original movies, after all, even if it's mostly to laugh at their badness).

Hopefully the office will be open tomorrow. I'm totally losing track of my days. For a while, I thought today was Sunday.