I Saw Some Movies

THE RAID 2 - It's rare that a film can be released, let alone a sequel, that outdoes Quentin Tarantino at his own game. The Raid 2 not only outdoes its own 1st installment, it seamlessly blends what was so amazing about the first film with a sprawling story and an additional hour that the first film didn't have while losing absolutely none of the originality and vision that director Gareth Evans brings to his work. The aforementioned QT always brings story, humor and style to his displays of outrageous and extremely violent fight & shootout choreography in a way that has scores of directors, from green film students to seasoned vets, lining up to make an homage to him in the way that his films are homages to the masters of the past. Depending on who you talk to or how deep of a Google hole you go down, it seems as if The Raid, merely a couple years old, has already inspired a handful of copycats, from the gleefully bloody Dredd to the Paul Walker/RZA/Luc Besson film Brick Mansions this month. The conceit itself comes from just about every video game ever made, a one-man-army ascending from level to level, dispatching henchmen until the final battle with the big boss. Evans, this time around, kept in all the jaw-dropping hand-to-hand (or in some cases bat-to-skull or hammer-to-spine) combat scenes but added almost an hour and incorporated the entirety of the Jakarta criminal underworld for Rama, the hero of the first film, to infiltrate and dismantle from the inside. We also get a whole handful of nameless assassins (Hammer Girl, her brother Baseball Bat Man, an assassin known simply as The Assassin, among others) and mob bosses to color the landscape and add B and C plots. Evans has very clearly become a master at his craft in a very short amount of time and after this installment, he should have the ability to write his own ticket from here on out.Baseball Bat Man (who in one scene, calls his shot, a-la Babe Ruth, before drilling a baseball into the temple of a man 100 feet away) and even more-so Hammer Girl will surely become iconic in the way that Hit-Girl and Go-Go Yubari did after their respective characters hit the big screen. I can't recommend The Raid 2 enough and I don't know if there will be a third installment but if there is, Evans's groupies, me and QT, I'm sure, among them, will be there opening day.

THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR: SATAN CAME TO EDEN - The Galapagos Affair is an interesting true crime/nature documentary about early settlers to the small island Floreana, among the Galapagos Islands, and the strange occurrences that happened between 1929 and 1934. Friedrich Ritter, a physician hoping to flee civilization and any of his duties as a doctor, brought his mistress from Berlin, Dore Strauch, to Floreana in hopes of becoming a modern-day Adam & Eve and living off the land to create an isolated paradise for themselves. After word got out about the mad doctor and his wife, the so-called modern-day Adam & Eve, another German couple, Heinz and Margaret Wittmer, arrived on Floreana, much to the dismay of Strauch & Ritter. Margaret Wittmer was pregnant and hoped to have Ritter help deliver her baby on the island and live out some kind of Swiss Family Robinson scenario. The already tense & odd scenario was made even stranger when the self-proclaimed Baroness Von Wagner (pictured) arrives on the island and claimes it and everything on it for herself. She had two husbands in tow whom she used as enforcers to take over the lives of the two couples on the island as well as the residents of the neighboring islands as well as visitors. She had hopes of building a tourist resort on the island and at one point, had the crew of a visiting scientific expedition make a movie based on her life, shot there on the island. What follows is a strange and tense struggle between the doctor who wishes to be left alone, the couple who wants to raise a family there and the power hungry woman with delusions of grandeur that ends in murder and affected the residents of the Galapagos to this day. The film is just as much the story of the people as it is a documentary showcasing the beautiful vistas and the endemic flora & fauna of the famous islands. The film also features a voice-over cast, including Cate Blanchett, Josh Radnor and Diane Kruger, as the voices of the principal figures through their letters and journal entries detailing their time on the islands.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER - It could still just be the residual effect of having just seen it, but I feel comfortable saying that this is my favorite of the Marvel movies, dating back to Iron Man. The Winter Soldier sets itself apart by giving itself the distinction of being an old-school style spy film that happens to be set inside a big budget superhero film. Captain America is the willing but reluctant weapon the USA and S.H.I.E.L.D. uses against all manner of threats but now, when he starts to question what his and his agency's role is in the world, things start to go south. As a fugitive, Steve Rogers struggles to trust anyone in his life and when he learns more about his life pre-thaw and finds out that his former best friend has been turned into a super-soldier by Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s enemy, he sets out to foil their plot. That's all well and great, pretty basic boilerplate stuff, but what makes this film so watchable is the chemistry between Evans and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff who flirt by trying to find Steve a date with a number of women in the S.H.I.E.L.D. office. Romanoff, like Rogers, struggles to come to grips with the fact that perhaps she is just a cog in the machine and that she is just being played by whoever is in power at any given moment. The poster above helps evoke the feeling of one of those '70's spy films that Robert Redford might have starred in that the directors were going for (I think). This film seems more grounded than some of the other Marvel projects, the action sequences and shootouts & car chases seem like something out of any old action movie, not the endlessly greenscreened CGI heavy films of recent years, including, of course, all the Marvel movies. The final battle is similar to some of The Winter Soldier's predecessors, which was slightly disappointing, but what's great about all these Marvel films is that each one is a set-up for the next and the next Cap movie and the next Avengers movie should be pretty great. This film gave non comic readers like myself a lot of history on the character and the agency as well as a lot of little easter eggs teasing future Marvel projects and other nerdy aspects for eagle-eyed viewers to relish in. In addition, Marvel's foray into the world of television, ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., has seen its world directly affected by the events of The Winter Soldier, which is pretty interesting. The world-building that Marvel is doing is pretty spectacular, at least for someone like me who knows nothing of the decades of history in the comics.

Things I Want To Ask My Dog Who Just Got Neutered

Hey man, I'm sorry they did this to you. I blame Bob Barker, but you know it is supposed to be for your own good. Well, more like for the good of the puppies you no longer are able to have. If I had my way I'd let you sow those wild oats, but we can't risk you impregnating a stranger's dog when we take you for walks. Remind me to start taking you on walks. Anyways I was hoping you could answer some questions for me with the fresh stitches and all.

1. Does it hurt when you pee?
2. Hell, does it hurt when you walk?
3. How are you coping existentially with the fact that you can no longer have progeny?
4. Did you have plans for starting a family?
5. If you answered yes to number 4, how did you plan on supporting this family?
6. Okay I'm not saying there isn't a puppy night school, but what type of classes would they even offer?
7. If you answered no to number 4, what happened in your life that makes you feel that not having kids is the way to go?
8. How big of an influence was your abandonment in my neighbor's backyard where I found you on this decision?
9. Does it hurt when you scratch?
10. Do you feel, as they claim, that you are less aggressive now?
11. What impact do you think this surgery will have on your lizard/snail hunting skills?
12. Does this mean Boo Boo wears the metaphorical puppy pants in your relationship?
13. Will you be able to bark in a higher octave?
14. First the groomers butchered your beautiful fur coat and now this, will you ever trust Mom again?
15. What is your take on the Israel-Palestine situation? You strike me as a two state solution kind of dude.
16. Why do you bark so much at people moving their trash cans around?
17. Where do you think we go when we die?
18. How'd you like your experience with anaesthesia? That time is completely lost man, you'll never know what happened! I bet you've figured some of it out by now.
19. Why didn't they send you home in a cone? Television has made me believe this is a necessary accoutrement for freshly surgered dogs.
20. We're still cool though right?

Some of those got a little off topic, but I believe they're pertinent to the over-arching context of our relationship.

On The Conclusion Of Things

After 17 days, we finally learned what the fate of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was. That the plane crashed and all 239 people on board perished in the Indian Ocean somewhere is what most (rational) people suspected, however, it didn't stop us from speculating about all manner of conspiracy theories, from hijacking and pilot suicide to black holes and the possibility of the very real MH370 being doomed to the same fate as the fictional Oceanic Flight 815. The idea that the passengers and crew of the Malaysian Airlines flight had landed on a mysterious island just like Jack Shepard, Kate Austen and James Ford had was a preposterous idea, but it didn't stop the internet from speculating if it had happened. I have a few theories as to why we do this:

-Our desire for instant gratification; everyone has iPhones in their pocket which have the entirety of the internet and all it's accumulated information available at the touch of a button. Since we can look up anything and everything in 10 seconds, we start to get restless when we don't know the answers to mysteries like this.

-Social media gives crazy people a place to voice their theories where other potentially crazy people might see them and believe them even more; since it's so quick and easy to post a theory or make a meme on Twitter comparing this plane crash to the one on Lost, people start to come up with other comparisons, make a GIF or a meme, throw it up on Facebook, and a bunch of idiots start talking conspiracy theories and making jokes.

-Our desire to be a part of something monumental in our generation, for better or worse; I think we like wondering if events like this will turn out to be something where we'll remember where we were when it happened. My father remembers exactly where he was when he heard about the assassination of JFK. I remember the exact circumstances of where I was when I heard about the events of 9/11 but I suppose now whenever something like this happens, we'll just read a tweet about it on our phone.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to current events, of course, it happens all the time with television shows, which is ruining people's expectations of television shows. A show like True Detective comes along and becomes a monumental success and the source of thousands of water cooler and Twitter conversations every week. True Detective is a good show, but it's not a game-changer, as far as television dramas go. It's a great show in terms of the way television shows are made and will perhaps influence the way they're made in the future, ie. limited series runs, a single writer/director team, A-list stars, but this is perhaps a subject for another blog post on another day. But because Matthew McConaughey is in the middle of the McConnaisance and we all love Woody Harrelson as much as we all like having a marquee show to talk about, True Detective became a cultural touchstone...for a few weeks until everyone was disappointed at how it ended. Everyone was expecting something epic from it; the theories ran the gamut from some kind of supernatural H.P Lovecraft inspired climax to Rust Cohle being some kind of criminally insane genius. Every Sunday night, the internet became a sounding board for talking about what just happened and speculating about what would happen next week. We do the same thing with Mad Men and we did it with Breaking Bad and we'll all decide some other show in a couple months is worthy of the conversation and we'll do it with that one too. When Breaking Bad was coming to a close, we were pretty much going crazy trying to figure out how Walt would go out and as it turned out...he went out in pretty much the most logical way. All the theories amounted to nothing the second the episode ended and we moved on. True Detective, like Breaking Bad, is about criminals and like all shows about criminals, the bad guy dies or gets caught in the end. True Detective was a pretty conventional show that looked exceptionally good. At it's core, it was a murder mystery and since we knew it was going to end after 8 episodes, it was a pretty good bet the cops (the good guys) were going to capture the killer (the bad guy). That's the formula and that's how TV shows get made, for better or worse. I'm not a big fan of shows that go for shock value over plot, but shows that routinely have that soap opera-ish, What The Fuck! moment are the ones people keep coming back to and they bring that expectation to shows like True Detective that were never going to have that. But maybe I'm just boring and I like things that are conventional, as long as they're made well.

If an airplane doesn't make it's scheduled landing, the most obvious explanation is that it probably crashed and since the earth is mostly ocean, it probably crashed in the ocean. It didn't secretly land on an island, it didn't follow a different plane so closely that the two aircraft would look like only one on a radar screen, it wasn't a conspiracy on the part of the pilots to crash the plane, nobody stole the airplane. Maybe when someone eventually finds the (red cylindrical) black boxes, we'll find out what caused this tragedy and maybe it will be something odd and extraordinary, but it will probably just be chalked up to something as routine and common as mechanical failure. I don't suppose the families are interested in conspiracy theories, they just want the facts right now, they want someone to explain exactly how this happened and why their loved ones are dead. Speculating that the plane flew into a black hole doesn't help anyone. I guess we get bored and want to believe something extraordinary is happening when in reality, it's the most plausible & realistic explanation that usually ends up being the truth, even if the conspiracy theories are more sexy or fun or interesting to talk about. Us realists don't usually get upset when something extraordinary doesn't happen because we usually knew we were right all along.

Three Movies In Three Days

NYMPHOMANIAC - The third in Lars Von Trier's "Depression Trilogy" is decent, if you know what you're getting into. Antichrist was an exercise is grief management that ended up with images of genital mutilation and talking foxes but was ultimately weird and interesting enough to be somewhat enjoyable. Melancholia was the more humorous of the two, which is strange considering it was about the end of everything on earth. But something about Kirsten Dunst moping around naked in the forest in the face of such certain tragedy makes you keep watching even though you know the ending. Nymphomaniac, the four hour opus, split into two parts released separately, is the most watchable. The sex is graphic, awkward, and abundant, the penis's (penii?) are ever-present and show up in every size, color and shape including Shia LaBeouf's, if you're into that. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Von Trier's go-to-gal for this type of thing, is great, as always, as Joe, who is found beaten in an alley and recounts her life story to the man who finds her and lets her recover in his flat. As a self-professed nymphomaniac, what Joe knows is sex and she details the major events of her life surrounding her many conquests. At one point, as a teenager, Joe and her best friend compete to see who can fuck the most amount of men on a train. Her friend is in double digits while Joe merely has had 6 men, although she wins the contest by giving fellatio to a married man in first class who paid for their tickets when they were being harassed by a ticket agent. Her prize is a bag of chocolate sweets. The film is ambitious but it's hard to get past the shock value of it all and try to get behind Joe (no pun intended) as a protagonist. I suppose it's a satire of how we view sex today, showing how soulless and empty and ugly it is, even though it's an act so coveted and desired by almost everyone. If the exploration of sex broken down in a clinical, mathematical way by a weirdo art-house director is your thing, than Nymphomaniac is the film for you.

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL - A new Wes Anderson film is always cause for celebration and his newest didn't disappoint. Grand Budapest Hotel seems the most caricature-ish, the most constructed of the Wes Anderson films. The film, like the hotel itself, takes after the sweet confections made by a girl with a birthmark of Mexico on her cheek; layers upon layers of sweet, colorful substance, constructed with care and meant to be consumed similarly. It seemed to me to be the most cynical of Anderson's films lately, although I'm sure if I thought about it, there could be similar instances found in the others. In GBH, relationships don't last, beauty fades, death comes easily and often, and there is actually pure evil lurking around the corner. M. Gustave, played with the perfect amount of upper class grace and self-loathing by Ralph Fiennes, enlists the help of his lobby boy, named Zero, in clearing his name after the death of a woman who enjoyed Gustave's company and whose family blames him for her death. Anderson's films always seem to be the perfect antidote to the melodrama that always exists on movie screens. GBH in particular feels like the dessert to the heavy main course that was the 4 month Oscar season. What I always loved about Anderson was his attention to detail in creating these worlds on screen for us to escape into. It's not tacky, it's not twee, it's simply original and awe-inspiring and I can't wait to see this again and whatever world Anderson takes us into next.

NON-STOP - This is, admittedly, a weird time to be watching a feature film about a potential airline disaster, with the mystery of the missing MH370 flight still on everybody's minds the last couple weeks. Non-Stop doesn't really evoke any direct correlation between that potential tragedy and the one unfolding on screen, but it would be impossible to avoid thinking about it. Non-Stop more evokes 9-11, as if another 9-11 type event were happening in the age of social media, smart phones and instant news. Liam Neeson plays a troubled air marshal who begins receiving cryptic messages warning him that unless he complies with certain demands, someone onboard will die every 20 minutes. From there, the film turns into a whodunit where a whole host of characters, including Julianne Moore and Scoot McNairy, all look like viable suspects at certain points. I even briefly considered the 8 year old girl flying alone to London could be in on it. As with most big budget, mainstream films like this, if you wanted to take time to sit down and poke holes in the plot and the sequence of events, you probably could, but what fun would that be? Neeson is a law enforcement officer in the vein of Martin Riggs and John McClain, the shoot first, ask questions and get reprimanded for it later types. As social commentary, it's somewhat relevant and the conclusion and reasoning for the attack comes about kind of suddenly but it fits nicely with how these kind of movies usually treat their baddies. I have really been enjoying Neeson's late career resurgence as a complete badass action hero and Non-Stop fits into that category, again, if you're into that sort of thing. A fitting end to a few days at the movies.

What I'm Enjoying Right Now

BROAD CITY - I came late to the party on Broad City but I ended up watching all the episodes so far in one day. People have described it as Workaholics but with girls but I like to think of it more as what Girls would be like if the characters actually liked each other and weren't so miserable all the time. Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson created and star as Abbi & Ilana, two twenty-somethings navigating life in New York City and having all kinds of wacky adventures. It's absolutely hilarious, the two of them are one of the best comedic teams on tv. In the first episode, they try to scrape together some money to see a pop-up Lil Wayne show by stealing & selling office supplies, bucket drumming in the park, and cleaning a baby's apartment in their underwear. The "baby" is Fred Armisen and it's one of the funniest sequences I've ever seen, he brings creepin' to a new level. Props to him. When he doesn't pay since he's a baby and he doesn't have any money, they steal his furs and liquor and go home. Hannibal Buress plays Ilana's sometimes boyfriend/sometimes fuck buddy to great acclaim. Ilana is a manic, klepto horndog who harbors a more than obvious crush on Abbi, who is stuck working as a janitor at a gym who constantly has to clean up "pube situations" in the bathroom and has to deal with the nightmare boyfriend of an absent roommate. Hannah Horvath should run into these girls in the city and drop her terrible circle of friends. She might actually start enjoying life for once.

GRANTLAND - Grantland is my go-to source for sports, tv, and movie discussion. Bill Simmons created Grantland for the purpose of providing a place for smart pop culture aficionados and smart sports fans to get in-depth full length articles about topics ranging from Andy Greenwald's take on what is going on on True Detective to Bill Barnwell's analysis of NFL Free Agency to Chuck Klosterman's obit of Lou Reed. Simmons oversees the Grantland empire in addition to his podcast, The B.S. Report through ESPN and his work as an NBA analyst for ESPN and his 30-for-30 films. Grantland expanded quickly into a multi-headed podcast network as well, with Grantland Sports and Grantland Pop Culture divisions. Weekly shows include a pro wrestling podcast, a reality tv roundup podcast, an NFL podcast, a movie/tv podcast called Do You Like Prince Movies?, and a whole host of others. So much of sports and pop culture is just getting quick headlines or snippets or tweets but Grantland still puts out full length, in-depth pieces that are well researched, thought out and footnoted. I don't always agree with everything their contributors put out, there's a little bit of snarky, hipster, coast bias sometimes but the majority of their work is spot-on. I like having a one-stop blog for all the stuff I love.

@MIDNIGHT - @Midnight is an idea that is fine for a night in the back of Meltdown Comics that could very easily have become a quickly cancelled show but, luckily, quite the opposite happened. It's a consistently funny, smart, ridiculous game show that never reaches hokey, corny levels that any other show could very easily get to. Everyone's favorite comedian/game show host Chris Hardwick is in his element as host of a show where three comedians make fun of pop culture and the internet and each other. It's already hit it's stride and has so far gotten some quality guests, not just the same LA comedians that are on each others podcasts and shows. Will Ferrel showed up last week as Chad Softwick, host of the @midnight spin-off show on the OWN network, @midday. There was a State reunion episode that managed to get all 11 (?) members in on the game as well as a panel with the Broad City girls and Hannibal Buress and an episode with the founding male members of UCB. There are a lot of theme/reunion shows like that in addition to panels with just three really funny people. Regulars include Doug Benson, Natasha Leggero, Kyle Kinane and Tom Lennon as well as some new favorites of mine like Grace Helbig. Outside of the comedy world, the likes of Neko Case, WWE's Chris Jericho and Dominic Monaghan have all shown up. If you can get past Chris Hardwick saying "Points!" a hundred times a night, you'll enjoy this show.

What I'm Enjoying Right Now (Cool Crime Edition)

FATALE - The continuously brilliant, enthralling and gorgeous series Fatale is coming to an end soon. Issue twenty was released this week and the run will finish with issue twenty four where Josephine's tale will come to a close. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips just signed a nearly unprecedented five year, produce-any-fucking-thing-they-want-to deal with Image and will be focusing on some new things. Fatale is so great because it brings together two of underground literature's most interesting and underutilized genres, H.P. Lovecraft-style horror fiction and crime noir. Josephine is a cursed woman with unknowable forces chasing her through time and across the country. Simply put, she's a woman men will kill for. They literally can't help themselves around her. The femme fatale character archetype can be troublesome if not fully fleshed out but when she's written with such depth and care, you can't help but keep turning the page to see what happens. Even as just a 2D character on the page, she still seems to have some kind of a pull on me, which means kudos are in order for Brubaker and Phillips. Jo will be missed but we'll have those two around for a long time to keep making quality stuff.

HARD CASE CRIME - Charles Ardai was sitting at a bar in New York one day and over drinks, he got to talking with a friend and fellow writer Max Phillips about how they loved the old violent, sexy pulp crime novels of yore and how nobody publishes those anymore. What could have easily been a drunken late night idea forgotten by morning, it turned into Hard Case Crime, the finest purveyor of the sort of hard boiled detective, noir, crime and horror novels that nobody else puts out anymore, at least the way HCC does it. HCC puts out reprints of classic, lost and/or out of print novels from some of the titans of the genre (Mickey Spillane, Donald E. Westlake, Michael Crichton, Cornell Woolrich) in addition to new stuff from a stable of writers keeping the tradition alive (Max Allan Collins, Ken Bruen, Allan Guthrie, Stephen King) complete with hand painted on canvas art and log lines like FOR WHAT SHE WENT THROUGH, SOMEONE HAD TO PAY and DID HE WANT HER ENOUGH TO KILL FOR HER? It's the kind of stuff that if done badly can end up corny but it's all done out of pure love and a nod to what a select few of us love about the good 'ol days of crime fiction (even if we weren't around for it all in the first place). Hard Case briefly fell prey to the same bug that had decimated the publishing industry but they came back from the grave recently and expanded their output to include trade size and even full size hardcovers, a long way from the pocket paperbacks they put out for years. One of HCC's biggest fans is Stephen King who has created two original novels for Hard Case, The Colorado Kid which is the basis for the Syfy Channel show Haven and the more recent Joyland which brought Hard Case Crime and it's signature hand drawn logo to shelves of supermarkets and big box stores around the country. Juxtapoz just did a great piece in their November 2013 issue complete with an interview with Ardai and a selection of art from the series. I have about half of the entire HCC catalog which boasts almost 100 titles by now and they look mighty fine on my shelf.

BOSCH - In their attempt to jump into competition with Netflix, Amazon started making their own original shows and posted all the pilots for viewers to watch and rate. The second wave of pilots, released this month, included the potentially great Bosch, starring Titus Welliver (The Town, Gone Baby Gone, Sons Of Anarchy, Lost), an east coast guy so good in Ben Affleck's Boston crime films, stepping into the shoes of Michael Connelly's iconic Los Angeles detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, an empathic detective who stalks the streets of LA avenging those who are unable to do it themselves. Bosch is a firm member of the old school, perpetually hounded by Internal Affairs and both respected and loathed by his fellow officers. Welliver's Bosch is noticeably different from the Bosch of Connelly's 16+ novels featuring the character but with Connelly in from the start as creator of the show, he becomes something new and fresh while keeping with everything that makes him such an iconic character. In the pilot, Bosch is simultaneously on trial for the murder of a serial killer and investigating the murder of a small boy who was mercilessly abused and whose bones were found in the hills of Griffith Park. Working the Homicide table isn't just a job for Bosch, it's a calling. Seeing Harry Bosch looking out over Dodger Stadium at night or having a drink at Musso & Frank or investigating a suicide with the Hollywood sign on the hill in the background is something to behold after just reading it on the page for so long. The supporting cast is nothing short of amazing and more than a dozen familiar faces popped up in the hour long pilot. The show so far is only available as a free stream on Amazon and will eventually (hopefully) be picked up for a full season and be available to stream through Amazon Prime.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
TRUE DETECTIVE - That shit is getting crazy.
JUSTIFIED - The penultimate season is in full swing and is as good as ever.

On the (Not Quite) Evil Empire

Final Fantasy X is getting a remastered HD release due out in North America in March, and as exciting as this is I can't help but wish this was of Final Fantasy XII instead. X's story is great, and probably the most concise of the entire series (excepting any of the XIII series which I skipped because it felt more movie than game), but XII really had it all for me. Though now replaying XII I've found the lack of character mechanical difference a shortcoming.

Gameplay being changed by using different characters adds attachment to these characters because they're the best in the group at what they do. The ability to LP grind your way to super-powered sameness in FF12 is at once a draw and a downside. This is probably because I've grown attached to the LotFP way of specializing roles so that the party NEEDS a character of a specific class if they want to get far at all with anything. Now if only my all-fighters all the time players could figure that out we'd be doing great. 

Now to the real reason I've gathered you here: the Empire. In our campaign world I set up an Empire that I was trying to model on the Warhammer40k Empire of Man, but things didn't turn out that way. Partly because this tactic required knowledge of a universe that I only have a cursory knowledge of through video games and old splat books as I could find. And partly because through gameplay the players in the Empire are chaotic evil rascals that making the Imperials "Xeno" hating conquerors didn't seem quite as fun as making THEM the good guys. Well, "good" guys. What Imperialist regime is truly Good?

Anyway despite all of my intentions the descriptions of the Empire became modeled on those of the Archadian Empire from FF12. So here's an image dump courtesy of Google to help your imagination.

Airships of the Dragonmarked Houses

Personal Airship

Personal Airship

Justicars

Imperial Engineers

Imperial Mages

Imperial Grunts

Imperial Priests

The Emperor's Flagship

Imperial Battleship

Imperial Patrolcraft

Imperial Supply Ship

Anything that is ring based is a bound elemental whose power is keeping the ship afloat, so notice the larger craft have a TON of those. Except I can't really see any on the Emperor's flagship, I guess they're there. If not it must be his Holiness' Divine Will.