Felicidades al Niño!!

This blog post will be dedicated to one of our faithful blog readers: El Niño. Mainly to wish him a happy birthday.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our little Kid is growing up! He is very special to us at the Three Caballeros. When first we met this young lad, he was one of the most annoying 14 year olds in existence. Of course, his being with us was odd in itself; who brings a 14-year old to a drinking get-together? Julian! That's who! He brought this little, tubby kid to a friend's house and if memory serves me right, left him there after an hour or so. What were we to do? Why, give him a shot to our beer bong, of course! So we get him to drink from it and then we star giving him shit because he can't finish even a can of beer. Oh, the memories. For a while I thought he was going to cry (from the teasing or the liquor, I don't know which one). Still, he took it like a pro, and despite all our berating, he wouldn't go away.


He began gaining some confidence and he started to grow fond of women (which was a good thing as we were starting to get worried). Yes, he was a growing up. Soon he started to go out on his own, made new friends, broadened his horizons but one thing remained the same: mother fucker was an annoying son of a bitch. To this day, he cannot remain still, he will pester and bother anyone in his way, will run around at a moment's notice and demand attention.
Regardless, he's a true friend and a great guy. Despite him growing up, despite him having graduated, despite him having his own business, despite him being way cooler than me, he will always be El Niño.


Happy Birthday, dude!

Is Avatar the next Star Wars? Comparison between two movies.

The blog got a bit of a boost on W.E.’s anti-Avatar rant and that got me thinking a bit more on Avatar. The whole Avatar phenomenon caught me off-guard in that I wasn’t expecting much of it (the trailers got no reaction out of me, I didn’t perceive much anticipation in my neck of the woods, none of the people I knew were remotely interested in it, not much of a Cameron fan, etc); it’s now made more money than any other movie, is up for several awards (Best Movie?!?!?!?!?), has received rave critical reviews and most people seem to think the world of it. All of these factors have led me to consider the longevity and legacy of this movie. These thoughts, along with my natural tendency towards geekness, led me to the ask: Will Avatar become the next Star Wars?

To start with, I should say that I’m a Star Wars fan. I’m not as into it as I used to be (not a fan of the sequels) but I still enjoy the original trilogy and the mythos that it has created. To make the comparison, I’ll only be taking the first Star Wars movie (A New Hope) and do my best to keep it in the setting of when it was originally released.

The first obvious comparison between these two movies is the success that they both enjoyed. Star Wars made in 1977 270 million dollars domestically (U.S.). This was a huge amount of money in those days. To give it perspective, in ’76 the top earner was Rocky with 56 million and in ’78 Grease took it with 98 million. Not even adding up the tally of 1977’s #2 to #5 do they equal Star Wars. All of these figures come from Box Office Report, btw. So this tells us that it was a huge commercial success, specially given its production cost of 11 million dollars. Info obtained from Box Office Report and Box Office mojo.


In the case of Avatar, it’s been the biggest box office draw in history with a domestic total of $668 million and counting. Where Avatar makes its big money, though is on Foreign markets with a worldwide total of $2.35 billion. Huge amounts of money indeed.

So, they’re both massive economic hits. What else?

Even before their releases, both movies had buzz surrounding them regarding their special effects. I won’t go into anything too deep, as I don’t know much on the topic, I’ll just go by my impressions as a viewer. STAR WARS caused an impression on moviegoers because of the action scenes. To start the movie, we see a chase: a small craft followed by an immense bright, white ship that covers the majority of the screen. This was a powerful visual statement to start a movie.

After that, we are treated to several scenes throughout the movie where innovations are presented; some of them are small: laser beams from blasters, lightsabers. Others were major: synchronization between the use of models and cameras to create the effect of ships moving through space, and oh, what explosions! When the original version is seen today, not much seems to be impressive but that is because SW created much of the language which succeeding movies would use.


In the case of Avatar, two major things grab people’s attention. The motion capture and the 3-D. Regarding the motion capture aspect, it is not only impressive on its own, but the fact that it integrates fairly seamlessly with both backgrounds and other elements (humans, ships, other CGI creatures). Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” was the first time we saw so integrated a performance by a motion capture CGI, it turned a special effect into another actor. In Avatar, we had dozens of characters doing this. Granted, there were some shortcuts to obtaining the effect (the aliens are blue, which is an easier color to manipulate and hide certain defects or errors; the backgrounds and much of the environment is CGI so the integration is easier) but ultimately, the effect is created.

The other aspect is 3-D. It’s been promoted very heavily how this is the first movie that is actually filmed in 3-D, that special cameras were created via a partnership with Sony. How is all this used? It’s not only used for the typical 3D effect where something comes up to the viewer’s face, but is mostly used to create the illusions of space and depth. Some of these are pretty subtle and enhance the sensation of a real environment.

Both of these movies are technological milestones. They have created new technology to make the universes they present a more real and palpable experience for the viewers.

Another similarity between these two movies is the sense of deeper storylines and mythology. Both movies do a good job giving the spectators the idea that there is much more that is not shown in the movie, that there is more history to be explored. The potential for a grand back-story and mythology are in place. I’ll give the edge to Star Wars, for two reasons:
a) SW deals with a whole galaxy, compared to the one planet Avatar is set in.
b) A New Hope starts in the middle of a story. There isn’t a beginning that we are presented to. The Rebellion has already started, there have been wars, allegiances have been established, etc.

Sure, we can be curious and wonder about the alien’s past history and the initial contact between the humans and the Na’vi, but there is no comparison in the richness in story and characters between these two movies.

So far we’ve seen how these movies are similar in ways that would give them long-term visibility and fan following. What follows is how they differ.

While both movies did a good job at obtaining a wide spectrum of audience, Star Wars promoted itself more heavily to children and younger audiences. Avatar, as the PG-13 rating reflects, went to a more mature audience. This is further demonstrated by the romance angle and the stronger fight scenes and deaths.

The advantage or hooking an audience while young is pretty obvious: you make an impression on them while being kids, you feed this with toys, magazines, clothing, trading cards, etc., and that will get them ready for the sequel and whatever more Star Wars material that comes out. As time goes by, these kids grow older and they turn into adults having been a raging fan for over 30 years. This is the key to the SW phenomenon: people who were hooked on a product from an early age and grew up without losing the interest in the property. And of course, these people have children of their own themselves and introduce their passion to the next generation.

Something that is needed for audiences to latch on to a property is characters: interesting character with interesting personalities and interaction between them. SW has many advantages over Avatar on this area. To begin with, very few characters from that movie died. Except for Obi-Wan, all characters that are given significant screen time survived and were able to go into whatever material would go next. In Avatar’s case, about half the cast is gone by the end of the movie.

Next thing, the characters in Star Wars are actually interesting. Their personality is more developed, they all have their story, they interact in a natural or interesting manner with the rest of the cast and the writing gives the audience a chance to actually like them. In Avatar’s case, most of the cast seems to be present to fill a role in the movie instead of being an actual character. This is added to the fact the dialogue is wooden, boring and flat. There isn’t really a desire in the part of the audience to know more about any of the given cast.

The lack of depth in characterization ties into the survival rate of the cast. In SW we had interesting characters that people would want to see more. In Avatar, once the character’s role is accomplished, they are no longer necessary; either that or they are more important dead than alive, the typical case of a death to simulate pathos in a movie.

The last point of difference I’ll add is the overall quality of the movies. Granted, Avatar is by far the most polished of the movies, but that’s the only advantage I can give it. Star Wars has a better story, better pacing, better characters and offers a better movie experience. Avatar is beautiful to look at, but doesn’t work well as a movie. If Avatar had been released in the summer, along with that year’s blockbusters, it’s a safe bet it wouldn’t have made as much money or it wouldn’t have gotten as much attention. Here are the movies Avatar competed against on its first 5 weeks (movies that premiered): “Did you Hear about the Morgans?” “Sherlock Holmes” “Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel”, “It’s Complicated”, “Daybreakers” and “Book of Eli”. There’s only one movie in the bunch that could be considered an actual competition to this type of movie.

As it stands today, I don’t see the possibility of Avatar growing into as huge a fan phenomenon as Star Wars. Of course, there are plans for sequels; with a strong direction towards good stories and characters and an expanding universe, who knows? It might prove to be one of those rare times where the sequels are better than the original.

Superbowl XLIV

Superbowl! And what a game it was! This was probably the best game (taking excitement and quality of play) I saw this entire season. Actually, I have a couple of thoughts of the season in general, but that’ll wait for next blog post. For now, this is all about the game last Saturday.

By far the highlight was the Porter interception of Manning’s pass. As that happened, I was hooting and hollering, clapping and jumping! Not only was I rooting for New Orleans, I have this very powerful dislike towards Peyton Manning. To see the Superbowl decided on an interception returned for a touchdown by him was heavenly.

Some preliminaries. Going into the game, I was very much pro-Saints. Since Drew Brees went to that team and a huge effort was made to make the Saints a powerful, dynamic offense, I’ve had a soft spot for them. I liked watching them play and sort of rooted for them. If you add in, the whole Katrina mess, and how that team has meant so much for the city and its people, I was very much in favor of them winning on Sunday.

I can’t say that it was all the Saints though. Being honest, aside from the Vikings, I would’ve rooted for any team that would’ve made it from the NFC. I don’t like the Colts and I specially don’t like Payton Manning. Why? I’m not completely sure. I’ll be the first to admit that my dislike of him is irrational. He’s not only an amazing player, but he seems to be a nice guy, he’s not showy, he’s responsible and not a grandstander; these are all reasons why I should like him, but I don’t. Regardless, I don’t want this to turn into a ‘down with Manning’ rant.

I was very nervous as the game started. The Colts were clearly the dominant team in the first quarter; hell, the first half belonged to the Colts. Down 10 to 0, things didn’t look good for the Saints. Later on the Saints added 3 points, but turned the ball over on downs failing to get a in the end zone. At that point, me and the people I was watching it with: Jon and Dani (sorry Fercho, sleeping in front of the TV doesn’t count as watching it) were screaming at the TV and calling for the heads of everybody on the Saints sideline. Fortunately for them, the defense held and they were able to get another 3 points.

Looking back, that decision to go for it on 4th down was probably the reason why they kicked the on-side kick to begin the second half, so I guess that it wasn’t so bad after all.

And what a huge momentum turner that was. It caught the Colts off-guard and further increased the time Peyton went without touching the ball.


The Saints made some very good adjustments and kept the game very close. The game wouldn’t be either a blow-out or an offensive shoot-out as every sports commentator said it would; just like the Patriots didn’t blow-out the Giants and just like the Cardinals weren’t destroyed by the Steelers. Curiously enough, I haven’t heard a single radio guy (radio being the medium that I am exposed to the most) comment on how wrong they were on their projections.



Near the end of the game, with the Saints up 7 points, you’d think that I would feel a good about how things were going, but with 4 minutes left, that lead felt like a deficit. With Manning at the helm (he lead the Colts to victory 7 times while losing in the 4th quarter during the season), you knew that a victory was far from a done deal. That’s why the interception was unbelievable. This was my wet dream realizing itself in front of my eyes. On the biggest stage, with the biggest prize up for grabs, Manning throws a pick. It was near orgasmic. When my Packers beat the Colts last season, was the closest I had felt to that feeling.




Still, it wasn’t over. There were 3 minutes left on the clock. Knowing Manning and the Colts offense, a 14 point deficit, with that much time, they weren’t mentally defeated. I told Jon how incredible it was that I was feeling so nervous about the outcome of the game despite the point differential and how little time was left. Only the Colts could do that.

You know how the rest of the game went. Less than a minute left, Colts in the red zone, 4th and goal and nothing. Incomplete pass and the Saints have the ball. Game over. Let the celebration for New Orleans commence!


It really is a good story, and regardless of who anyone was rooting for, you have to realize that few cities deserve a win like N.O. A lot of people can say that this is just sports, that it’s all meaningless and has no practical importance. In a way they’d be right. But the morale of a whole city can be tied into a sports team, and the Saints really do represent the city. After Katrina, the city was a huge, huge mess. The Saints, a football team, became a rallying force for a whole community. And this didn’t only relate to morale, the Saints have brought in so much national attention, has kept the city relevant and very importantly, has contributed to the city’s economy. Good for them.

Anyways, what else is there to mention? The half-time show of course!

How was that? It sucked!! It was bad, really, really bad. I have heard that there was a good amount of people who were so disgusted with the spectacle that they either changed the channel or went off somewhere and they actually missed the on-side kick as a result! Fortunately for us, we had Jon’s laptop and were looking up stupid stuff and not paying attention to the TV other than to comment on how old and sad they looked.


I was left wondering something. What is worse? Having a boring, old, IRRELEVANT, act for a show, or having a stupid, inane, and bad act? Would I have preferred watching The Who or Lady Gaga? How about next year? Little Richard or Beyonce? Before the whole Janet Jackson fiasco, we were treated with the pop performers of the moment. They were usually bad, but at least there was a connection with some part of the audience; there wasn’t a disconnection that there now is.

What else? The commercials! Most of them sucked. Doritos saved a lot of money in getting other people to do their commercials for them, but what they got was stupid, groan-inducing ads. I’m sick and tired of the Go Daddy crap. While I was glad to see the Clydesdale, that commercial wasn’t good at all. That one commercial that ripped off The Hangover was insulting and I thought was the worst. Coca Cola’s were pretty bleh too. There were two commercials I did like. One was the Dove commercial for skin care products for men. It had a great setup and was pretty entertaining; was surprised when they showed what they were promoting. My favorite was one I didn’t see from the beginning but having seen it again, thought it was really smart and simple: the Google search bar one. It didn’t have to do much, not that many bells and whistles, not much flash, just simple, concise and smart.



Well, that’s it for Superbowl 44. I’m done.

Gabo's 2009 Comic Book Picks Pt. 2

And this is the conclusion to the '09 review. Again, I have to note this is a response to something brought up by the excellent Alternate Reality podcast.

Best Writer: Tough one. I think I’ll go with Warren Ellis. He’s been one of the most prolific writers this year, coming out with books from multiple publishers and everything I’ve read of him, has been enjoyable. From Avatar, we have Gravel (one of my favorite series of the year, though the publishing was a bit erratic and took away points from the best series category), Anna Mercury, No Hero, Doctor Sleepless, Ignition City, Supergod, Frankenstein’s Womb. From Marvel, we have Astonishing X-Men, Ultimate Armor Wars. From Radical, Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead (well, he did work on it). He had a great year.
A runner-up would be Fred van Lente for Incredible Herc and Amazing Spiderman, mostly.
Oh, and Joe Kelly is also a great writer!


Worst Writer: Jeph Loeb!

Best Artist: JH Williams III blows my mind not only with his drawings, but also with his composition and the way he treats the page. Amazing! Greg Rucka's doing some good work over at Detective Comics but the book is MADE by the art.

Worst Artist: I’m leaning towards Ed Benes, but Greg Land is up there with me. I’m not much of a fan of the cheesecake in some books. It’s plain hard to take seriously a story or a book that has all of the girls doing ass shots towards the reader. For sexy women done 'right', I'll take Amanda Conner.

Best Hero: Lots of people up for this. Hercules is definitely in consideration. He is fun, a bit goofy without being idiotic, has personality and charm. Thor also had a very strong year dealing everything Loki sent his way. Vril Dox has been great over at R.E.B.EL.S. Starlord and Nova have been showing definite improvements in their leadership abilities over at Marvel Cosmic. Ultimately, I give it to Gravel as the tough military-magician who has to take on a ton of twisted and demented magicians. It’ll be interesting to see how he deals with power and see whether or not he is also corrupted as his rivals have been.

Worst Hero: Damian-Robin. I’ve hated him from the beginning. He’s done nothing to make me change my mind. It doesn't help that his personality seems to change depending who is writing him. Could it be that he is only in need of a proper handling and direction? Nah! Fuck him.


Best Villain: Hera, over at Incredible Hercules. Her master plan is taking shape and it’s been a while in the making. The idea of a Greek goddess being the CEO of a major multinational company and using those earthly resources, as well as all the mythological-magical ones, is fun and clever. It borders on being silly (specially seeing it out of the context of the book) but it's pulled off well by Van Lente.


Worst Villain: toss up between Rulk and Superboy Prime. They’re both so annoying and irritating.

Best movie: I’m torn between District 9 and Zombieland. I enjoyed both films immensely though for different reasons. I loved the documentary feel of D9 but was a bit disappointed when it shifted into an all-out sci-fi action flick (good as it was). Zombieland on the other hand was FUN. Great cast, great humor. So Zombieland it is!

Worst movie: Avatar.
I should say that this wasn’t a bad movie per-
se, just that I was under whelmed. I didn’t know what to expect going into it, and the special effects were very good, but to me, SFX do not a good movie make. It was long, a bit boring, story wasn’t that new or interesting, characters were lame. Definitely overrated.


So that's it. Those are my picks for best/worst in the year that was. Hopefully I'll be back posting more stuff soon.

Gabo's 2009 Comic Book Picks Pt. 1

Hello, my name is Gabo and I’m a geek. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but it’s something that needs to be said as what will follow deals with one of my passions: comic books. I’m really into them (some would say disturbingly so).
I won’t go into my comic book background because I doubt anybody would be interested, so I’ll go into the meat of this post.
Basically, I originally wrote this as a response to an episode of a comic book podcast that I like: Alternate Reality. They did an episode where they discussed the year 2009 in comics; they had several categories and they each had their ‘Best’ and ‘Worst’ selection. What follows are my picks for said categories. If you’re not into comics or are not familiar with them, then this won’t be of much interest. Still, I figured I might as well post it up here as it’s been forever since I (or any of the other caballeros) have written anything for the blog.
Here we go:

Best Series: I’ve always thought that Thor when handled right, was the best Marvel character, and under J.Michael Straczynksi, he was handled right. What I didn’t like about the title though was that it wasn’t always on time and that’s frustrating for a monthly. I also thought of books like Guardians of the Galaxy and R.E.B.E.L.S., but ultimately went with the book that gave me the most enjoyment and left me feeling completely satisfied after reading it: INCREDIBLE HULK! I was surprised with this book because I thought it was a just a marketing ploy as it first came out, but was very much surprised at how they handled Hercules and Cho’s characters and their relationship. The book shows Herc at his best, it’s filled with clever, smart ideas, cool guest appearances, great art and it’s plain FUN without being dumb.

Worst series: There were a couple of contenders for this category. A bunch of stinkers. First off I considered the whole Superman line, specifically Superman and Action Comics. This is mostly from the fact that they bored me to tears; that’s their biggest problem. Justice League was also bad, both story and art. The book had little to no direction, no reason to be read.
I have to go with Hulk as my worst series, though. Loeb is killing me. One could argue that the book is pretty to look at, but that art style doesn’t really do much for me and what is drawn just hurts me. Horrible book.


Best Event: This is a tough category. I didn’t think this year produced that many good events. I’d have to go with Marvel cosmic’s War of Kings. I enjoyed the characters in it and the story overall was pretty good, plus the reintegration of Darkhawk into continuity is great. The problem I had with this was the pacing; it seemed too rushed and didn’t give enough time to go into the repercussions of the events taking place. In fact, I wish this event had taken place a year or two in the future, to give time for other titles to tell their stories (Nova, Guardians basically) before jumping into another status quo. Also, the fact that this leads directly into another ‘event’ doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve loved everything Marvel cosmic, but I wish they would give it time to develop and tell stories without feeling the creators feeling the need to shake things up every other month.

Worst Event: Another category with a lot of possibilities. I’m not sure if Dark Reign is an event; it feels much more like an overall storyline or something like that. It’s being marketed as an event though, so that’s what I don’t like about it, it feels to scattered and imprecise to be a single story.
Flash Rebirth hasn’t been good. First of all, I’m against the idea of bringing back Barry. I’m a Wally guy, I hate to see him diminished in his role as Flash, specially being replaced by a boring old dude. Also, the idea of Zoom doing every nasty little thing in Barry’s life? Absurd!
Somebody mentioned Ultimatum and that was very bad (LOEB!!!).
Captain America: Reborn was also a disappointment ; so Steve wasn’t dead at all and is now coming back but is doing some time travel in his mind before. Whatever.
To me, the worst event though is Blackest Night. I know EVERYBODY loves this, but I’m so sick and tired of it. I was excited at the idea of a war of light with all of the different colored corps, but the build-up to it was so long and over-extended that by the time it started, my excitement had diminished. To top it off, it turned out to be DC Zombies! Overall, the series has been a disappointing and is uninteresting.

Best Single Issue: Easiest category to pick: INCREDIBLE HERCULES # 136. Hands down, the best issue I read last year. This was the culmination of a storyline that had Hercules impersonate Thor after being tricked by the dark elf Malekith. In this particular issue Hercules (impersonated by the real Thor) challenges Thor-Herc to a fight in order to prevent the bad guy’s plan coming to fruition. This issue has it all: good art, great storytelling, fabulous and witty dialogue and even character development, where the essence and greatness of Hercules is defined by both Thor and the Warrior’s Three. Big fights! Big villains! Raunchiness! And best of all, it’s all a LOT of FUN.

Worst Single Issue: I could go with any of the Blackest Night issues, but that’s a bit of cop-out. Instead I’ll go with Flash Rebirth # 5, where we see why Zoom is the pettiest and most ridiculous of all villains (pushed Barry down the stairs when he was a kid? Jeez!).


Best Moment: The fight between “Thor” and “Hercules” in Incredible Hercules #136. I hadn’t enjoyed a book this much in ages.
A runner up was the ending of Boom’s “The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh” # 1. It’s a shocker if you read the previous Unknown mini.
Also enjoyed the reveal in Avatar’s “No Hero”:*the main character turns out to be a “bad” guy and is in league with the people killing off all of the “heroes”* Twisted, freaky and gory!

Worst Moment: Probably the entirety of Blackest Night # 1. At least the point where I realized that all the lead up to this pile of crap was Zombies. Ugh.

There's more, but I'll cut it off for now. Stay tuned for the conclusion of the post!