Robyn Paterson's Blog, page 31

X-Men: Days of Future Past (spoiler-lite)

I just saw X-men: Days of Future Past, and I have to say it’s probably the best X-men film by a large margin. It’s not a superhero film, and deviates wildly from the original comic storyline, but I’d argue those are it’s strengths, not its weaknesses.

Overall, it’s a character-driven science fiction film that involves superpowers, as opposed to a superpowered science fiction film. The powers serve the story and provide nice visuals, but everything important comes from the very human character...

Hammering Home the Horror

I’ve always had a fondness for oldschool horror, especially the Hammer Horror films from England of the 60′s and 70′s. They used to show them on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid, and I found them annoying because they were displacing my favorite movies involving giant monsters. However, as I’ve grown up, I’ve also grown to appreciate the contributions Hammer made to horror and film in general. If for no other reason than bringing Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee into the popular culture!...

Google’s Great New Tool for Finding Royalty Free Images for Blogs and Covers

Google has recently added an amazing new tool for bloggers to its image search function. You can now search for images that you can use on your blog or whatever based on the license the image is released under. Using this, you can easily find blog-safe images you can use for different topics and not have to worry about the copyright police hunting you down and hauling you out of your house in the middle of the night. (Always a plus!)

Here’s how you do it:

Go to Google Advanced Image Search and...

Write…or DIE!

I briefly mentioned it last week in my post on Prepping Your Novel, but I thought I should give the free based-based software Write or Die a little more attention.

Originally developed for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to help people with reaching their daily word counts, Write or Die 2 is basically a carrot/stick motivator for writers. You set your goals into it, and then if you stop writing for a period of time it will give you negative stimulus like horrible music and images of s...

Urban Exploring in Taiwan- The Renoir Resort Club

Taiwan seems to be a real hotbed of abandoned places. I think it’s because they had a huge financial boom at one time, so people went crazy building thing, and then later just abandoned them when they didn’t work out. I love reading about these reports, so I’ll share what I come across from time to time.

Renoir resort club 雷諾瓦俱樂部 is a surprising find inGuanziling 關子嶺, the most famous and well-developed hot springs town inTainan 台南. I went to stay there one night in the spring of 2014 to have a...

Today I learned the writer for the new Godzilla movie was also the writer for The Expendables and DOOM.

Now the movie’s lack of human characters makes a whole lot more sense.

They must have given him the job because he had experience with lumbering dinosaurs!

Rob

Epic Rap Battles- Superman vs. Goku

Samurai vs. Shadow

Wow. Now that is some seriously amazing choreography!

Daikaiju Sushi

As many may know, I’m a huge Giant Monster fan, and today I discovered that one of my favorite blogs, Giant Monsters Attack!, has been reborn on Tumblr as Daikaiju Sushi after being dormant for a while. Check it out for all sorts of new and fun giant monster goodness!

Godzilla 2014

My first Godzilla movie was Godzilla vs. Megalon. I was seven, and caught it while turning the dial one way on the 13” TV we had. There, on that small screen, was the biggest, coolest monster that I’d ever seen, and even seeing him in those modest circumstances didn’t blunt the power of the King of the Monsters.

I was in love.

And it would be a lifelong love affair, one that would see me glued to the TV every Saturday afternoon when Superhost or Channel 43’s Weekend Movie would run one of a doz...