There goes another weekend

Quite a lot to report.

For starters, my replacement Masterpiece Megatron arrived last week and, two days later, I plucked up the courage to attempt to transform it. It worked. No bits fell off, nothing broke... The right shoulder is a little weak, and cannot support the fusion cannon... but then, that damned thing feels heavier than the robot, so that's no surprise. Perhaps with the electronics removed, it would be a more reasonable weight.

Megatron is reasonably poseable, even managing to sorta pull off a pose from TransFormers: The Movie, where he holds Hot Rod as a shield while shooting Optimus Prime. I really need to sort out some kind of light tent, and then think through some poses to try out for all the Masterpiece models.

It's vaguely interesting to note that I've bought three of the five Masterpieces - all the odd numbers - and it seems very likely that I'll skip on number six (Skywarp). One wonders what they think they're going to do by way of repainting Megatron. Perhaps the black version with the brown grip with blue, as opposed to red, as its secondary colour? Part of me hopes they stop this annoying trend toward reusing Masterpiece molds, as the second one invariably devalues the first.

Some might argue that the reverse is true for MP-03 Starscream and MP-06 Skywarp, since the latter is in 'show accurate colours' and the former is not, while others might argue that MP-04 is better than MP-01/02 because having a trailer, however basic, 'completes' Optimus Prime/Convoy. I'm tempted to agree about that, but MP-o1 hardly suffers from being without.

Went to see Spidey 3 last weekend, and completely forgot to write about it. I can see why it's been criticised. Frankly, the franchise started going the way of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumaker Batman movies with number 2... The third tries to cram far too much into one movie, and so the storytelling suffers by necessity. They could quite easily have turned it into a two-part movie (like The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3), with a compelling cliff-hanger ending to one, and a stronger conclusion to the other. As it was, the story came pretty much full circle, and ended on much the same note as the first. It had more than its fair share of flaws but, frankly, the jazz club dance scene was worth the price of admission on its own. Tobey Maguire did a very good job of portraying Peter Parker's descent into being a bit of a prick, even going as far as to adopt the old Star Trek trick of wearing eyeliner to emphasise his turn to the dark side.

Since I went to see it uptown, I naturally popped in on Forbidden Planet, ostensibly to see if they had any Chevalier D'Eon in stock. They did, but I didn't stop there. I also snagged the first of two DVD boxed sets of Cowboy Bebop, and a large book/box relating to (Ghost in the Shell 2) Innocence. I had no idea what it was, but I knew I needed it. As it turned out, it was a book containing the complete storyboards and script, and possibly interviews (all in Japanese, so it's impossible to tell) and a large box containing a small PVC model based loosely around two different scenes from the film. Very cute, but perhaps a bit too collector-y even for me. If I'd known exactly what was in it (or, more accurately, if I'd know the movie was not included), I probably wouldn't have shelled out for it.

I very pointedly did not visit Orbital Manga, because they have plenty I'd like to buy, and I just don't have the spare cash right now.

This last weekend, I went uptown again, to visit the Star Wars exhibition at London's County Hall. Much bigger and more impressive than the similar exhibition at the Barbican some years ago (around the time of Episode 1, I'd imagine), it was nevertheless a rather dry experience, and somehow lacking in everything. The blurb for the exhibition made it sound much better than it actually was, and I have to say that the building occasionally overshadowed the items on display. The large, circular room containing the full-size Naboo Starfighter was far more stunning than any of its contents.

The Jedi Training School was, perhaps, a little underdeveloped. Put on for the kids, it featured a couple of Jedi who, on the run from the Empire, have popped in on Earth for recruitment purposes. While his Padawan spouted dire prophesies about the Sith, the master sought out the six kids in whom the Force was strongest, taught them a single manoeuvre ("Strike left, strike right, duck, strike left") before proceedings were interrupted by Darth Sidious (aka The Emperor) and his pupil, a certain Darth Vader. Each of the six pint-sized Padawans went up against the Dark Lord of the Sith, and the last had to banish Vader using the Force Push. After Vader's less than confident entrance (well, his field of vision wouldn't be up to much in that helmet, and he had to walk down stairs to get to the kids), I kept hoping that one of the Padawans would ignore their training and swipe wildly at their enemy's knees. No such luck. There were laughs to be had, though, when the Force Push weakened his resolve, and he seemed to walk off in a huff.

With Vader gone, everyone in the room had to tell Sidious to 'talk to the hand' (OK, we all did a Force Push) and, with I final threat of "I'll get you next time!" he was gone.

...But he'd have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for them meddling kids.

The exhibition also had a green screen room, which probably accounted for much of the £16 price tag on the tickets, but the queue was unfeasibly long, so I gave that a miss. The so-called merchandise area consisted of a mobile shop (think burger van, but with t-shirts, lanyards and little bendy rubber figures instead of unhealthy foodstuffs) outside the building.

It was decent... and just about worth the money... but I couldn't help but be disappointed with it. Considering how much space they had available, they didn't really make adequate use of it. Many rooms were very sparse, or had the most random collections of incongruous props you could possibly imagine.

That said, I couldn't help but smile when little kiddies burst out crying as Darth Vader proceeded from his dressing room to the chambers in which the Jedi Training School was held. Aw, bless.