I fiddled around with one of the Avatar video games. It was a nice little RPG. Not especially hard, but nice little story. Cool animations.

The game was nothing great, but it reminded what a great little universe the Avatar people created. Everything fits. Everything seems natural and coherent.

Most fantasy worlds struggle with that. Once you let in magic things can get arbitrary super quick. But Avatar is a nice little contained universe where the pieces seem to go together.

Supposedly this is Jay Leno's last year. But I hope he sticks around and moves to another network. He's way, way better than Letterman. I liked Letterman when I was a kid, but now he seem just mean, old, and cranky. I find his show kind of depressing.

The first terminator movie is pretty relentless. There's some humor in the beginning. But then it becomes just one intensifying chase movie. In T2 they added a lot more humor.

The Terminator TV show is more like T1 -- all relentless and serious and humor-free.

The serious approach can work in a 90 minute movie with a big cathartic payoff at the end. It doesn't work well for a tv series, though. 20+ hrs a season of constant serious, oh-no, the world is gonna end, moroseness. It just gets tiring for the audience. It wears on you.

Which is why Term: Sarah Connor needs to add some humor, romance, winking action -- something -- to lighten up the show. At least have one character who's enjoying themselves in some small way.

Right now all the actors look like they've been tranquilized.

The Terminator TV show is decent, but ... depressing. Everybody on the show is morose and pensive all the time. They really need to add some more humor or fun action to the show. And I don't think they can afford much action. I think it's a decent concept. And I know they are trying to be artsy/angsty. It's just a kind of depressing show to watch. Maybe if they made John Connor be a little bit of a feisty, I'm invincible, teenager. That way he could enjoy having a super robot bodyguard and all the cool adventures they have. Instead he's like a shell-shocked war veteran. He constantly looks traumatized.

The real problem with 24 is that each season they run out of steam. It usually starts out promising, but then, 8-10 episodes in, they start kind of bumbling around. It's usually after the payoff on the first big threat. It's also probably about how far ahead the writers had scripted. At that point the writers are just making things up as they go along. Sometimes it's clear they wrote themselves into a corner. Then some whole plot thread or character gets abandoned. 24 usually comes together again for the last few episodes. But the middle 10 are too often a rambling, incoherent mess.

I see a new season of 24 is on its way. I really liked the first two seasons. After that ... it was ok. Many times 24 got way, way too politically correct. Seems every TV show and movie is filled with eastern European terrorists, evil Texas oil tycoons. Sadly, I'm pretty sure this season of 24 will the most PC yet.

Speaking of anime, Japanese culture in general is somewhat fascinating. As an American, Japanese culture seems the most foreign of any rich country, the most different from American culture, and therefore interesting.

I'm not a huge anime fan, but I've seen some of the classics. Kinda delving in a bit more. I especially like the near future scifi ones. I'm not big into the giant mecha type animes, but I do like Ghost in the Shell type cyberpunk style animes.

I never really liked first person shootes. Very claustrophobia inducing, not to mention headache inducing. It's a huge part of the industry, though, and drives a lot of the cutting edge graphics tech. I'm always curious to see what the new shooters look like. But not enough to actually play them for any length of time.

Watching the new Star Wars: Clone Wars got me thinking. When, if ever, will CGI be used for a more serious TV show? Right now CG animation is mainly used for family-friendly movies and kids TV. Obviously we have the Pixar and Shrek hits. But childrens TV is increasingly populated with CG. Jimmy Neutron, The Backyardigans, Winnie the Pooh, Dragon Tales, Sid the Science Kid, etc. Clone Wars is an attempt to move into more adult scifi action adventure. The series still has a lot of, fairly juvenile, humor. Probably won't happen until more realistic humans can be simulated, but already CG shows can feature much bigger action sequences than a live action show. I can easily imagine how a Stargate or Star Trek type series could have much more impressive battles and scifi set-pieces in a CG world. It'll probably happen about 10 years after the first movie with believable humans. Beowulf was close, but the people still didn't feel alive.