You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

Saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes today, which was way more awesome than I expected it to be. One thing I didn't like was how quickly the program director or whatever changed his mind about James Franco's research. Like, one second he is totally against it, it's never going to happen, and suddenly he's not only okay with it but he suddenly becomes the Greedy Corporate Guy who pushes the research ahead, without regard for potential disaster. But everything else was great. Andy Serkis is really what makes it fly, and he gives another stunning motion-capture performance as Caesar. I've heard talk about an Oscar nomination, and while that is absolutely not going to happen in a competitive acting category (Academy is still under the impression that VFX people can alter the performance, making it not truly the actor's work), I'd LOVE to see them dust off the Special Achievement Oscar for Serkis's work on this, Kong, and LOTR.

Oh, and yes, Tom Felton is in it, too. He's typecast as the bully, which is to be expected, but he's in a major motion picture that has nothing to do with wizards and that's an achievement by itself. It could be worse - look at "sweep the leg" guy. His conflict with the apes is like Buckbeak all over again, LOL, but he does get to say the CLASSIC Charlton Heston line ("Get you stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!") which is AWESOME. I was so excited I Tweeted him about it. :P

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So now the Pottermore early entry challenges are at an end. Is it just me or did the questions (and the quill tasks) get a lot easier as the week went on? Hardest questions were the first three and probably the hardest quill task was on Day 3. I suppose so many people were freaking out that the people designing the challenges decided to take it down a notch. :P

It amused me to see people wondering if they were just letting "everyone" in, because of how easy it's been here towards the end, but I think the audience for this site (and the books in general, as well as the films) is bigger than we're really aware of in our little fandom cocoon. It's certainly far, far bigger than just the people who obsess about HP on the internet. All the helps and alerts are not things that probably most of the fans even knew about, so we had a big leg up there. The last two challenges still maxed out in a couple of hours (first day was an hour and a half), so it was still plenty competitive. I'd say probably everyone who is an obsessive fan, who still checks the fansites and really wanted early entry got in, and I think that's kind of cool.

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I'm finally joining the Battlestar Galactica party. I tried around Christmastime to start with the original series from 1978, but I couldn't stick with it. It was just too cheesy (and I LIKE cheesy). But the new series is wonderful so far - I'm not terribly far into it yet; just the miniseries and the first few episodes. I'd also love to get caught up with Doctor Who before the new episodes start, but that's ... probably not going to happen. Though I'd love to try. I do have the First Series and about 1/4 of the Second watched already, and the seasons are short so ... maybe?

In other fannish news, I'm also reading A Game of Thrones. I wasn't really sold in the first 100 pages, mostly because OMG how HORRIBLE it would be to be a woman in that universe (and yes, I saw Jason Momoa's asshat comment from SDCC)! But Arya's utter PWNage of that little snotrag Joffrey won me over, at least for now. I do like the narrative structure, with the different POVs, though I like some POVs better than others. Eddard, Arya, Bran, Tyrion = awesomesauce; Jon, Sansa = not so much. Again, all impressions are from the first couple hundred pages (or first quarter) of the book, so I may feel differently later.