I don’t usually post comics. But I don’t usually laugh audibly for 5 seconds straight either.
Sep 30, 2011
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 21, 2011
The Notorious IBE
I feel like I see a lot of the pop dance out there (so you think you can dance, ABDC, LXD. I explicitly don’t watch dancing with the stars, which I believe in fact enhances my credentials) So I feel like breaking sometimes gets a little boring, I see the same things over and over. But this is pretty cool. Splits backward somersaults? arm spin doing the splits? Holding yourself up horizontal(ish) with one arm? Jesus.
Sep 9, 2011
Sep 6, 2011
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
The Source Code – So, imagine Run Lola Run and Inception had a baby. Except, contrary to what you would (fairly) assume – the baby doesn’t come out broken. The movie is cool, interesting, and Jake Gyllaplatypus does a really good job, especially in those moments where he’s trying to make sense of his situation. The movie does get kind of philosoraptor on you at the very end, asking you to accept a certain view of the result. It’s just the very end, you can believe it’s all in his head if you like, and I wouldn’t call deciding on that point to be necessary to like the movie, but it is kind of the take home message. Still good though.
Trollhunter – Damn, I had really high hopes for this one. Didn’t really have a good reason for that. Literally all I knew about it was the poster. But there was something powerful and majestic about that poster. I know what it was, it reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus – one of the best games ever and, given its dated graphics, still an astonishing visual. But first, this is a found footage movie. And while I love the style of found footage movies, I hate the pretense, I wish they’d just leave off the bullshit where they act like its real. More than that, though, I think the movie blows its load too early. In 25 minutes we’ve seen a troll, then we see like 5 more until the important one. If those trolls had been unseen, and then our first view was 70 minutes in, that could have been amazing. Maybe not, maybe I’m wrong, maybe that would have been a massively boring 70 minutes. And hell, you see the monsters throughout SotC, and it’s still amazing. On the flip side, the scenery is fantastic. I’ve never seen much about Norway, but wow is it pretty. I guess there’s a whole level of allegory to this movie that I didn’t understand. The trolls being a metaphor for the need for power, and the power lines or oil fields being the price we pay (ruining the environment) - that didn’t strike me much. And I don’t understand what’s supposed to happen at the end at all. Oh well, ultimately not great, I feel like it could have been great.
Mary and Max – Wow, what a good movie. A really really dark movie. It’s claymation, about a socially outcast 8 year old girl in australia who randomly becomes a penpal with a 40 year old asperger’s man in new york. Yes, that is occasionally creepy. The movie does stretch believability a little bit, things work out (or don’t) in convenient ways. But I can’t imagine a better way to tell this story. This movie is simultaneously hilarious and devastating. And I just don’t know how you could pull that off with real actors, or perhaps even with animation. Claymation has this fantastic ability to be serious, surreal, touching, wacky, and painful all in 5 minutes. I have to say, the movie made me cry a little, it was very touching.
Limitless – I had heard this was horrible, it’s not horrible. It’s not good. It’s an ok suspensey actioney movie. Narrators can be annoying, but I kind of like them. I think the big problem is the ending. It just feels a little too wish fulfillment on the part of the writer. Everything just turns up roses. I know most movies end happy. But most movies don’t’ end up SO damn happy. Like the writer just wrote his ultimate fantasy. It’s like writing a story about me getting super powers, just feels a little silly.
The Messenger – This is a pretty heavy movie. Woody from cheers and that guy who played the really creepy bad guy in 3:10 to yuma go around telling families that their loved one died in war. What a shit job. To some extent the movie does exactly what you imagine. It shows you the range of responses from people, from immense sadness to disturbing acceptance to the fury of the gods. And eventually these two men bond over their experiences, shared and missed. In as much as it is expected, it is still powerful. The guy from 3:10 to yuma is an amazing actor and the story of his war is captivating. Woody Harrelson is a bit less convincing, his listening to that story is perhaps the weakest part of the movie. But the rest of his performance is strong. Not a fun movie, but worthwhile if you can deal with being depressed for an evening.
Ninja – Yikes. I went in knowing there’d be horrible acting, writing, and general film making. But I did think it would have fun ninja fighting. How the hell do you make 90 minutes of swords and shurikens boring?
Hello Dolly – Yuuuuuuuck. We watched this because the song from Wall-E got stuck in our heads after going to Disneyland and we wondered what it was and we found out it was a musical that we hadn’t seen and it was on netflix, so there you go. But yuck. I’ve always disliked Barbara Streisand, despite realizing that I’ve never seen a movie with her in it, I just don’t like her. But now I have one datum, she is obnoxious in this movie. Granted, her character is obnoxious, maybe that’s not her fault, but yuck. And I know it was made 40 years ago, but it WAS after women got the right to vote, for christ’s sake, songs about finding a woman to do your cleaning are not charming. Oh, and on that note, Mr. Matthau, swinging your arms back and forth like you are marching IS NOT DANCING. This entire movie lacked any real dancing, had boring songs, hell, it kind of ruined the wall-e song a little for me. The problem, of course, is that I love My Fair Lady. And that movie has not only a “men are great” song but also the worst ending to a movie in the history of movies. But it gets a pass. Why doesn’t this? I don’t know, it just sucks. Okay, to be fair, I wrote all that only an hour into the movie. The rest of the movie got slightly better. They had one number with somewhat acceptable choreography. And the title song is somewhat catchy and Louis Armstrong is the awesomest part of the whole thing. But she still sucks, he still sucks, and the point of the story still sucks. So… that’s me being fair?
Buried – This is the one from last year where Ryan Reynolds is buried in a coffin. The whole movie is him talking to people on the phone and generally freaking out. He does a pretty good job, I suppose. I don’t know that it’s the best movie in the world, but it’s an interesting experience. It is essentially a thriller, but in that confined space, kind of neat. On the other hand, though I know I’m being unfair, I just can’t get over the part where he holds his blackberry up to his ear upside down. How do you miss that?
Smokin’ Aces 2 – I assumed this movie would be bad. But then after a bit I thought, hey this might be good. I like ensemble movies, this movie has a cavalcade of killers all going after a target. But it really just never comes together. What action there is seems like blindly swinging at cool instead of pulling it off. And then for some reason it tries to make a plot twist, where no plot twist was required, and it just seemed silly.
Blitz – Look, I’m ok with Jason Statham making shitty movies where he beats the shit out of bad guys in creative ways. Granted, if he makes 3 of those a year, we might get a bit sick of it, but whatever. However, I am NOT ok with Jason Statham making a shitty movie with precisely 2 minutes of action, one in the beginning, and one in the end. And the rest of the movie attempting to… be interesting? a mystery? suspense cop movie? Dumb.
Forks Over Knives – This is a “documentary” promoting a whole foods plant based diet. Now, I’m obviously on board with that message. Granted, I eat a whole lot of processed crap, and I’m not vegan, so I don’t act out the message of the movie. But I certainly agree in principle. Yet still, this movie was pretty horrible. All these documentaries, I swear they aren’t even trying anymore. It is just so transparent when they present facts, or portions of facts, in ways that trick people. I’m not an idiot, filmmakers. You can’t give me data, some of which goes from 1978 to 1999, some of which goes from 1999 to 2006, some of which another time period, and expect me not to get suspicious. You can’t say “a respected researcher” and “a respected journal” and not cite what the fuck you are talking about. This movie introduces every god damn person who would talk positively about their message in the world, yet they can’t name “a respected researcher”? I know nothing about this stuff, and I can poke holes in their arguments. Do they not understand correlation versus causation? You can’t just boil these things down to ONE cause and ONE effect. And if the studies they refer to make any attempt to suss out that connection, they make no attempt to inform us of that fact. They just spout facts and anecdotes and studies as if they are rock solid. It’s just very bothersome, especially given that I nominally agree with the moral.
The Wizard – Um, yikes. That’s not really what I thought it was going to be. I had never seen it, I knew it was video games, but I didn’t realize it was a 90 minute ad for nintendo. Not a particularly good ad, of course, it was made in the 80s. I’m sure if I had seen it as a 10 year old, and it was my introduction to super mario bros 3, this movie would just have an unassailable place in my heart. But, I didn’t, it wasn’t, and it doesn’t.
Skyline – Movie about alien invasion. Better than it deserves to be, but not necessarily good. Some decent special effects, obviously limited scale, but that doesn’t bother me. Some pretty horrendous acting and writing, but an okay story. Again, not good, but not as bad as you’d think.
Centurion – Oh Netflix Instant, is there anything I won’t watch on you? Granted, we’re all slowly turning on netflix, so maybe I won’t be saying that in 6 months, but that’s not really what I’m supposed to be typing. This movie was fine, romans run around, chopping up dudes, mostly run around and get chopped up themselves. Not very good, but okay background movie.
Marimba Zelda Cover
I know it’s just another Zelda cover. But 1) you could cover zelda on a kazuu and I’d probably listen, and 2) it’s actually really good.
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 23, 2011
Aug 20, 2011
Apologies to Chris Brown
I don’t know who this Andrew Levy guy is – but he is, without question, the best thing to ever happen on fox news.
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Okay, I’m way behind again, let’s power through:
Sucker Punch – This movie is ultimately a failure, but I see what he was going for. It’s basically about some girls in an asylum who escape into a fantasy land that some how impacts their attempt to escape the asylum. As such, the movie comes into 2 distinct sections. The fantasy sections are essentially the baddest ass video game cut scenes you’ve ever damn seen. It is so much exactly what you would make if you made your ideal cut scenes, it’s almost insulting. I mean, they cover steam punk, they cover WW II, they cover dragons, they cover orcs, knights, robots, samurai, guns, planes, swords, fucking everything. It’s borderline manipulative to cram basically every single nerd trope (sans ninjas and pirates) into a single hour and a half. But, like it or not, it’s pretty awesomely filmed (slash digitally generated) action. The other half of the movie is very uncomfortable. I don’t feel that Zach Snyder has the cred to pull off a movie about abused women. Especially when their empowerment comes from wearing as little as humanly possibly whilst beating the shit out of undead soldiers. It just comes off bad. Besides the fact that the asylum world is kind of boring and nonsensical. There is a moderate twist at the end that doesn’t land very heavily, and the moral is… ambiguous. On the flip side, I was busy trying to buy a god damn touchpad for $100 (WHICH DISAPPEARED FROM MY CART HALFWAY THROUGH CHECKOUT!), so I accidentally let the movie start again. And the opening slow-motion-to-music scene that originally felt in media res and fell kind of flat, was actually very effective. I have a worry that the movie needs a second watching that I’ll never give it. But I’m probably wrong.
Red – What the hell? Why was this so good? This was supposed to be bad! Like, really bad. But it was actually really good. Like, 4 stars on netflix good. It’s not a super original story, an old retired killer has to strap his gun back on and do a job or save his own life or whatever. But the movie is aware of that, kind of has fun with it, has this wacky team of retired spies that’s just silly enough to take the edge off of the potential “same old”ness, but not so silly that it becomes pointless. Really, honestly, shocked at how much I liked this.
The American – zzzzz. Huh? What? Oh, I’m sorry. I was just watching the american, and I fell asleep. CUZ IT’S BORING. I’m sure this movie thinks it is the slow burn of spy movies that builds and builds to awesomeness. But it’s not. It’s 1/4 of a spy movie spread over 2 hours with nothing to fill the gaps except george clooney staring intently at a girl, a guy, or into the distance. Which is sad, because I used to be able to say I’ve never disliked a clooney movie. But this one sucked.
Cop Out – Well, funnier than I thought it would be. I hate tracy morgan. And yes I hated him before the gay kid “contraversy”, he’s not funny, he just acts crazy, and people THINK that means funny, but it actually is just stupid. Anyway, the movie is better than you would think. Not really that good or anything, but not so bad.
Fast and Furious – Um, so, all the people from the old movies get together, drive cars fast, shoot guns (maybe? I can’t remember?). It’s cool stuff, I guess, but who cares? No one.
Death Race 2 – Less driving, lots more violence. A twist (?) to make this prequel connected to the last movie that doesn’t make sense. Kind of fun mindless violence, that’s all.
Jonah Hex – Also better than I thought it would be, I had heard such bad things. It’s not all that exciting, megan fox can be eliminated from the world and that would be good. Josh Brolin does an ok job I guess? I don’t know, I watched it 2 months ago, I really don’t remember.
Night at the Museum 2 – I think this was kind of fun. Kind of like the first one, maybe a little less interesting because the idea wasn’t novel and they had to up the “action” to make the sequel bigger. So kind of lamer in that respect. Amy Adams’ Amelia Earhardt was more annoying than she was inspiring as a strong woman. But still, kind of fun.
The Wolfman – This is the longest back in the list of things I forgot to write about. I’m pretty sure I thought it was horrible. I did bother to give it 2 stars, so I guess it’s not like, C-movie trash, but it’s still pretty bad. Boring for non-action, action isn’t interesting, story isn’t interesting, just not very good.
Aug 11, 2011
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Xmen First Class – Well, that was entirely adequate. Not bad, not at all. Good, I guess you’d say. But no more than that. The casting was good all around. The girl who played Mystique was too young (making it super creepy at one point) and January Jones is too weird looking to be hot enough to be the white queen. But she did the uppity thing well. Kevin Bacon is probably the best (though I seem to remember shaw being much burlier), though everyone, including me, is kind of in love with michael fassbender lately. The plot was fine. Ridiculously rushed. I guess it’s cool to put it against a big historical event. But that historical event happened kind of quickly. Which means the standard training montage that typically happens way too quickly happened WAAAAY too quickly. The action is pretty good, pretty brief though. I did have a problem with the setting. Except for one shagadelic song and some silly outfits, it didn’t feel very 60s to me. It could have been any time period, it really didn’t matter. I don’t know, the movie is good. I think maybe we aren’t surprised by good comic movies anymore. I imagine the first Xmen blew me away because I didn’t think they could do it. Now I know they can, so you have to try harder to make it really good. Still worth seeing though.
The Social Network – Well I finally see this freaking movie. I have such a problem with it because there’s so much of it that’s not true. I don’t really know the details, but I know there’s plenty of artistic license, and that makes it hard to watch a based-on-a-true-story movie. It’s a well done movie, the dialogue is very aaron sorkin. Honestly I’m a little sick of that style these days. I think maybe it’s been done too much, or it just is too far from how people really talk. I’ve seen mark zuckerberg talk, he doesn’t talk like that. No one talks like that. Unless you have half an hour to prepare for each sentence to make the utmost efficient use of every syllable, you don’t talk like that. But whatever, it’s entertaining. So I still have this problem that it’s not real. Either the point of the movie is to be entertaining, in which case don’t base it on reality. Or it’s to tell the story, in which case, tell the right story. Kind of annoying that now i have this poisoned version of something that actually happened. But it is a good movie, well made, well acted, all that.
Mao’s Last Dancer – Pretty cool movie about a dancer in the 80s who comes over from China to study, and then causes a minor event when he doesn’t want to return. He’s a ballet dancer, I guess pretty famous at the time, not that I know ballet dancers. The dancing in the movie, though slightly more sparse than I’d like, was very nice. It’s edited and such to make it look better, I’m sure, but he the actor is a beautiful dancer. The movie is interesting, well done, and has pretty dancing, pretty much all you could ask from it.
The Green Hornet – Umm… okay I guess. Not bad, kind of amusing. Nothing special. The Kato fighting is pretty cool I guess. The story is predictable. Seth Rogan is likable enough as the green hornet. Feels a little low budget, like maybe it’s an HBO movie or something. But it’s not bad, just kind of fine.
On the Shoulders of Giants – What a cool movie! It’s a documentary about the beginnings of black people playing basketball professionally in america. Unsurprisingly, it used to be segregated. Surprisingly it wasn’t really integrated until the 50s. In the 20s and 30s there was a team called the Rens from Harlem. They were really sort of the heroes of that culture. A respected team that, though not allowed to compete with white guys formally, were every bit as good and better in exhibitions. They differed from the other famous team, the Harlem Globetrotters (who, amazingly, were from Chicago, and did not travel the globe) in that the globetrotters were more toward entertainment than straight up athletes. The movie follows their progression, eventually being able to play and win a championship against a white team (a win that went unmentioned by the white press of the time!). So the story is super interesting to begin with, and then there’s a very charming art style on top of it. Throughout the movie are drawings/paintings/something by this artist with an extremely cool style. Not quite caricature, kind of hyper realistic, kind of cartoony, but absolutely beautiful. There’s also this weird jib-jab thing I don’t like where they put still photos of these old players’ heads on still photos of their bodies and move them separately. Presumably because they don’t really have much video of them. It’s silly, though, I don’t like it. But the rest is so cool to look at. It’s got interviews with quite a few notable black people, some athletes, some not. And at 75 minutes long, it’s just a great way to spend some time on netflix instant.
The People I’ve Slept With – Oh the movies I’ll watch when I need something to be playing while I do other things! This is super amateur, about some girl who sleeps around, gets pregnant, has to find the dad, has a bunch of drama. Has a gay best friend who is also trying to “reform” his life. I don’t know how you can tell that it’s an amateur movie, but you can. The acting, mostly, the editing too, maybe the filming, not sure. Not very good. Not offensive, just not very good.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – Pppppppppt. This movie is just like the first one, except even more pointless. There’s a story, but at least the first one KIND of had an arc. At least a tiny arc at the end. This guy is just an asshole like the first, and that’s it. Nicolas Cage is awful. I’m not sure if he thinks he’s doing a southern accent? Or a asshole accent? Tough guy? Something? Whatever it is, it blows. Everything in the movie sucks. The only good thing about this movie is it makes me look back on the original slightly more favorably.
Creep – Okay, so the girl from run lola run gets trapped in a subway at night, some crazy thing tries to kill her and a few other people. It’s kind of bloody, but not that much. They move past the unseen monster thing in about 10 minutes, so it doesn’t have any suspense to it. The characters don’t have much personality, so we don’t care about them. Look, I know it’s a crap horror movie that isn’t really worth many sentences. I’m just saying, it’s not very good.
The Hole – Hm, is this great, or horrible? 4 teenagers go down into an old abandoned bunker for a party, get stuck, bad things happen. The great part of the movie is its playing with flawed narrator. One version of the story it tells us isn’t the whole story, or even the right story. So we are set up to think things are happening one way. Then we start seeing hints that it’s another way. I thought that would be used more, like they would have us wondering what is true. They don’t really do that, sadly, once it switches, it stays switched. But they do continue to reveal things that we didn’t necessarily know at the start, so that’s cool. I’m not a fan of the super cold calculating effective young person, tends to feel too perfectly set up. But that’s a relatively small part of the movie, and the rest is really quite good. I’m not saying I loved it, but it’s cool.
Capitalism: A Love Story – Finally saw the latest michael moore movie. God damn is everyone as sick of his patronizing high and mighty bullshit tone yet? For fuck sake, I am very glad he tells me most of the things he tells me, but can someone else tell them to me? I can’t stand his obnoxious pretentious asshole voice anymore. Even when I AGREE with him it feels like he’s talking down to me. But if you can ignore that, and I’ll grant you that’s a big if, the movie is good. I don’t know why people get away with what they get away with. I feel like life has reached a level of abstraction that bad people may always get away with their shit. As long as banks can do the horrendous shit they do, and then Obama can get blamed for the state of the economy, how will the people who do bad ever suffer for it? Very frustrating.
Astro Boy – Nothing much to say, just an animated movie. Kind of meh animation, but it’s not bad. Average story, kind of funny. That’s about it.
Book of Eli – This movie’s pretty good. Everyone loves a post-apocalypse, after all. Denzel Washington does a remarkably contained job. I mean, his thing these days, what he gets credit for, is the staccato loud dramatic acting. Here he’s soft spoken, efficient in his use of action and voice, it’s good to see. The world looks reasonably convincing. And it has its own hook, it’s not JUST another guy wandering a scorched world fighting the bad guys who try to control the pieces. It’s got a purpose, and a nice little ending to go with that purpose. I could do without mila kunis trying to look like a badass, but besides that, I’d actually say it was a good movie!
Video Game Reviews @ The Temple
God of War 3 – So… that was as expected. It was fun, sure. Blood and guts is fun. Mashing buttons and ripping things apart is fun. QTEs are fun. But you could apply that exact same description to the last two games. I’m not really sure what the point of this one was. Oh yeah, it’s pretty. Well, GW2 was like 20 years ago. In my mind, it looks exactly like this one, so the graphics don’t really do much for me. So, same game, different textures. Nothing new. Fun, but old. Good distraction, fine way to unwind after months of being unable to play a video game, yep. But not really that special objectively.
Prototype / Infamous – So I played both of these games near each other, I might as well compare them directly, since I’ll be doing it indirectly in separate posts anyway. They are both super-hero type games, you have powers, you run around a city doing fighting stuff and climbing buildings. Infamous has a morality structure, prototype does not. As always the good/evil choices are pretty easy. There’s no gray or anything, but it’s kind of neat either being a famous hero or a hated villain as you walk around and see posters and people’s reactions. Overall the story of Infamous is probably better. Not that it’s amazing, but it seems like they put more effort in to it, and the end is pretty cool. Prototype is a hell of a lot more fun, though, I gotta say. To some extent, that is a result of Infamous’ choices, not its failures. That is, Infamous decides that you can only glide, and that to climb a building you have to hop from window to window, like Assassin’s Creed. Prototype says fuck that, you can literally run up the side of a building, leap off, fly for 3 city blocks, do a little air jump, fly some more, do ANOTHER air jump, fly some more, and then finally glide down. I can cross half the city in a single bound in the time the Infamous guy is still jumping past the 8th window. It’s not necessarily bad of Infamous to choose to make you slightly less powerful. But leaping around like a bad ass is much more good than climbing your 90th fire escape. Fighting is similarly streamlined and fun. In infamous hand to hand is pretty useless, mostly due to your limited range and limited ability to close range, and relative fragility to getting pounded by other guys’ guns while you fight one hand to hand. Prototype meanwhile is just chaos leaping from guy to go smashing them, pulling them in half, picking them up and destroying all their friends with their body. Plus driving tanks and helicopters is NEVER a bad thing. Again, it’s not like Infamous tried to do that and failed, they tried to do something different. But if I had 5 minutes to smash around a city, I’d definitely spend those 5 minutes in Prototype.
Aug 8, 2011
Aug 5, 2011
Aug 3, 2011
iLuminate
Not a whole lot of dancing, but extremely cool visuals from this group on america’s got talent.
Jul 27, 2011
Spirit Rover Tribute
6 years on Mars. Jesus, my phone can’t last a year without becoming a god damn paperweight. ON EARTH.
Jul 26, 2011
State Farm Parody
HA! Reminds me of old D&D-table jokes about where the food in the “create food” spell comes from – the conclusion was usually poor people.
Jul 19, 2011
Raise Your Glass – Cosplay Version
I’m not super into cosplay, I’ve certainly never done it myself. And I kind of figure I wouldn’t want to spend too much time with those that get really in to it. But anyone who is outside of the norm, who is maybe laughed at for what makes them happy, deserves the chance to celebrate it, so this is kind of awesome.
Jul 18, 2011
Star Wars A Capella Re-Dub
I didn’t post the Matrix one from a couple weeks ago, but I can’t resist this Star Wars one. Awesome! I love Matt Mulholland.