Socorro, New Mexico. A road created solely for the purpose of funneling you to The WalMart. Saddest thing I think I’ve ever seen.
Dec 23, 2009
Dec 19, 2009
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 13, 2009
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen – Okay, this is a pretty weird movie, but it is Terry GIlliam. I didn’t like Time Bandits, I’ve yet to see Brazil (I guess I did them in the wrong order). I did like this movie. It’s certainly weird, it feels like the whole thing is puppets even though it’s not really. Just the quality of the sets and effects feels like a movie filled with puppets. The story is kind of clever, fantastical and a little all over the place, but I found it entertaining. The characters are completely unlikeable, which is a problem. The servants are either without personality or idiots, the girl is a brat, the antagonists are jerks, and the baron is just an ass. Presumably we’re not supposed to like these people, but it's hard to invest in even the fantastical lives of dipshits. But I did like it. Not love, not even like a lot, but like.
Sukiyaki Western Django – Damn, I thought I was going to love this! It looked like a japanese video game but western. It looked like Final Fantasy 3:10 to Yuma. And for some reason I felt like it was going to be slightly futuristic too, don’t know where I got that, way off. Sadly the movie doesn’t really work out for me. It’s kind of over the top, not kill bill over the top, but certainly heightened reality. Some of it is cool, shooting arrows out of the air and such. Some okay gun fighting. But most of the movie is more of an extended wtf moment. The plot is nigh incomprehensible, the acting is overbearingly japanese. That sounds racist, and it is, but I’m american and I’m not used to actors screaming nonsense at the top of their lungs. And I mean english nonsense, I’m not that racist. I’d almost rather the movie have been in japanese and subtitled, would have made more sense to me. But, not enough sense, through no real fault of it’s own, it’s just not for me. What style there was didn’t make up for the rest of it.
Battle for Haditha – I’m struggling with this movie. I know I didn’t like it, but I’m not sure why. It seems to me it’s either because 1) it’s poorly made; 2) it’s manipulative in an extremely shady way; or 3) I’m uncomfortable with the truths of war. I’m pretty sure it’s 1 or 2, but I can’t totally rule out 3, one doesn’t always know why one feels a certain way, right? I’m pretty sure the movie is poorly made. The acting is kind of awful for most of it, except toward the end one of the kids learns how to act. The tone is aggressive, though you could excuse that given the subject matter. #2 is tough, it’s basically about the real life story a couple years ago where an IED killed a few marines, and their comrades went on a fucking rampage and killed every iraqi they could find nearby. It’s an awful story, seems to shine a pretty horrible light on us and our military. The movie uses that and I can’t decide where it’s going. You don’t feel much empathy for the soldiers, despite the fact that one of their friends is literally blown in half. As such, it feels very negative toward the soldiers and toward the military. Throughout they are portrayed as soulless and uncaring. The part where #3 creeps in – is that true? This is an often enough discussed subject – do you have to become soulless to survive in that kind of environment. Can we wonder why our trained killers sometimes kill? But, at the same time, the movie seems too simple. And anytime a complex issue is portrayed in a very simple way, I decide it’s manipulation with a distinct viewpoint (or if you want to sound more political – a distinct agenda). The iraqi side too is over simplified. There are the bad ones who want to kill everyone, the one who was an iraqi army guy, then got booted, so starts killing americans, then wonders what the point was if it lead to the deaths of more iraqis. It also points out, rightly, that when the soldiers go on their rampage, it does nothing but stoke the people into anti-americanism in general and terrorism in particular. Those are not doubt all true representations of things that happen in parts of life over there. But the way it is given to me, it feels hacked together. Like every perspective was forced in. Like a student film hitting all the bullet points, but having no thread between them, no believable characters to support them. I don’t know, I’m sure I didn’t like it, I’m afraid it’s because I don’t like to think that people can be so disgusting, but I think it’s because the filmmaker was too keen to make me feel disgusted.
Observe and Report – Wow, what a horrible piece of crap! Every bit as bad as Paul Blart, except without the almost innocent charm of being an imbecilic movie. This movie thinks its funny, thinks its a parody, thinks its serious, and most laughably thinks its badass. Anna Farris is pathetic. Seth Rogan is a fucking asshole, and not in a fun way, just an asshole that you hope loses. If he gets shot in the face, I’m kind of okay with that. Stupid movie. Maybe not the worst movie ever, okay definitely not the worst movie. Not even in that category. But massively annoying because it thinks it’s cool and it’s horrible.
Adventureland – Huh, this movie has no right to be as good as it is. Fault the first – it stars the guy they got cuz they couldn’t get michael cera. The second – it also has the twilight chick who, while very cute, will always be the twilight chick. The third – ryan reynolds is the big star! These did not bode well. And in truth it’s really just an indie-feeling summer love movie. But in the end it’s actually good. Not great, didn’t make me cry or change my life. But I’m pretty impressed with its straightfoward honesty. It’s a little cheesy, events are a little too well structured for real life. But I still like it. Can’t really justify why, I just think they did a good job.
Year One – Y’know, when we all first saw this trailer, we all said “holy shit that is going to be bad.” Then by the end of the trailer we actually laughed like 4 or 5 times, and we were confused. Clearly this will be bad, but we legitimately laughed! Well, fear not, the movie is bad, and those 4 or 5 laughs were the entirety of the comedy to be found in this comedy. Jack Black is obnoxious, Michael Sera is funny precisely once – that berry picking comment in the trailer. The movie plays like the bible’s greatest hits, the only thing they didn’t have was noah building an ark. It’s all around boring, predictable, and not funny, boo.
Angels vs. Demons – 0 for 2 this weekend! Didn’t expect this one to be any good. I was into Dan Brown briefly several years ago. I liked Da Vinci Code, though I imagine I wouldn’t now. I read two others, but not this one, and they were both fine. Though the NASA related one pissed me off. I guess that’s kind of the trouble with dan brown. Either you don’t know the subject matter he is ripping in to (or “exploring”) and you are learning from it. Except that you know perfectly well he makes half of this shit up, so you don’t know what is true and what is shit. Maybe the Illuminati formed in 234 and then bought a kitten in 455 and then pooped behind the altar at the vatican in 899. Or maybe I just made that shit up, but in dan brown stories, you have no idea. On the other hand, maybe you know about the subject, like Galileo or antimatter, and you are either bored to tears because you already know it, or you know perfectly well that the movie has bullcrap coming out of its movie shaped ears. So… what’s the point? It’s an average thriller, running from point A to point C, solving puzzle B on the way. It’s really no better or worse than national treasure. Except it is made with an extra 150 million dollars and is shinier.
The Taking of Pelham 123 – Huh, I wouldn’t call this movie good, it’s not necessarily 1 out of 3 for the weekend, but it is actually better than I thought. First off, I thought it was more horror. It’s actually kind of terrorism thriller, like Speed or something. John Travolta is kind of convincing, but he says motherfucker far too often, it’s silly. Denzel Washington is pretty decent, he has a pretty straightforward job, but it’s good. What else? I can’t really remember even though it was less than 24 hours ago. The beginning, the actual heist (if that’s what you can call taking over a subway) was more exciting, the rest was average. The ending was mind boggling. It pretty much completely undermines Travolta’s character that he’s such a genius and then such a dumbass. Really? That was the plan? Just… run that way? Oookay… maybe think that one through next time. Maybe think the movie through while you are at it.
Blazing Saddles – So I’m pretty sure I saw this many years ago, but I didn’t really remember it, so we gave it a shot. I’m pretty surprised at how not good it is. The core of the movie is great. The whole concept of a black sheriff and a racist town is really smart. And most scenes with Bart are good to excellent. But pretty much everything else in the movie is horrendous. It’s either cheesy physical comedy, stupid sight gags or corny character jokes. I think you just had to watch it in 1974 (and remember it) to like it. I think spaceballs is fantastic, most of its corny jokes are hilarious. But this just seemed stupid and pointless. Had to have been there I guess.
Spies Like Us – 80s movie I had never seen. It’s pretty fun. Not a whole lot going on there, feels pretty 80s with some of the humor. But I enjoyed it. Can’t think of a whole lot to say about it. Oh! It does have the “doctor doctor doctor doctor” thing! I never knew! Everyone knows that, and everyone gets that when they become a doctor. But I didn’t actually know what it was from. I didn’t actually know it was from anything. So that was cool. Besides that? Random movie, kinda fun, nothing big.
Raging Bull – Um… okay. This is a big famous movie I never saw, Rober De Niro is a famous boxer from real life (I guess famous, I don’t know him, but that isn’t saying much). I don’t really get why it’s so good. deniro and joe pesci defintely do good jobs, they are very convincing and they aren’t at all bad. But the movie itself? It’s nicely done, it’s in black and white which is pretty pretentious. But his life is just so boring. He beats the shit out of people to make money, he gets mad a lot, he beats the shit out of the people he loves, he gets sad, repeat. He’s just a big fuckhead who can’t control his fists. I didn’t see a lot of dimensions to him. The very end of the movie is fairly powerful. His scene in jail is very good, especially given that he’s in shadow. The stuff after that is kind of good too. But for the most part I just don’t think he had that interesting of a life. I guess it’s supposed to be more of a character study. In retrospect, it seems kind of like The Wrestler for 30 years ago. But the wrestler was amazing, and this was just kind of boring. Sorry :/
War Inc. – This is a pretty weird movie. It’s essentially a farce, sort of a near future, almost hyper real, parody of the world. Focusing on the power of corporations (kind of going with the shadowrun model where they are the global power instead of countries) and throwing in a lot of “wakawaka-istan” countries that the countries and america by extension are attacking and occupying. John Cusack is a hired killer, he goes on a mission and hijinks ensue. It’s not really particularly good. It’s not so over the top that it’s a comedy, but it’s ridiculous enough that it’s certainly not a dramatic narrative, even though they try to make one out of the relationships. It’s not really one of anything, or good at any of those things. It reminds me of Idiocracy in that it’s this ridiculous near future stupid world. But it’s not funny, and I don’t really give a crap about john cusack and some stupid pop singer. So I’m not left with a lot. Also, Joan Cusack is the most annoying fucking actor in the world, I need someone to punch her in her screaming face.
Scratch – Wow, I guess I really don’t care about turntablists. This is a 90 min documentary of the history of those guys who make the wikky wikky sounds. Seems like it should be interesting, that’s why I rented it, but I was completely bored. I just sort of happened, people came and went, introduced new styles or whatever. Super duper boring.
Dec 7, 2009
Dec 5, 2009
Dec 2, 2009
Gay Marriage Speech
Don’t really post speeches from the halls of government often, but this is a pretty damn good one.
Dec 1, 2009
Iconic Reshoots
Empire magazine did a super cool photo shoot with actors recreating their famous characters. Some of them are really awesome. I don’t really buy recreating hot fuzz, or harry potter, it was like… a day and a half ago. The effective ones are very out of context or it’s been so long the actor is much older. Braveheart, Seven, and Silence of the Lambs are my favorite.
Nov 29, 2009
Nov 25, 2009
4-handed Guitar
When they started just playing on different strings, I thought, aw cute. When they went half and half (one strumming the other’s strings and vica versa), my mind was blown.
Nov 23, 2009
You should totally go see Twilight!
Because I need a list of people who can’t vote next time around.
Also: this. They are almost so moronic that you feel bad that you are making fun of someone with a legitimate mental disability. Almost.
Nov 21, 2009
Video Game Reviews @ The Temple
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – Awesome!! This game was so damn much fun! I remember the demo and being kind of unimpressed, it seemed shallow. That’s true, and it isn’t. The much self-lauded physics engines are okay, they are cool, certainly if you are going to be force’ing things around, they ought to move interestingly, but it’s not like it changed my life. The combat is deeper than I thought, there’s enough saber combos and combinations of force powers that actually give you a wide variety of things to do. Any significant enemy or boss ends with a quicktime event, which are pretty awesome. QTEs are always a pain cuz you are focusing on your stupid buttons instead of the cool action, but it’s still pretty damn cool. The graphics all around are pretty great. It helps that it’s a fundamentally cgi almost cartoony world, but it all looks really good. The character models are also great, though the facial animations leave something to be desired. Especially on the monkey main character, the girlfriend with enough plastic surgery to look like that cat lady, and the mutated clone of jimmy smitz. Eyes tend to have a glassy clearly separate look to them as well. But besides that the game looks great. The environments are beautiful star wars imaginings. Everything looks good and right. The game is kind of buggy, mostly forgivable (in that we somehow accept a buggy game these days). Just dumb things like stuck on invisible walls, stupid save policy, and one hilarious moment where I pushed a boss through the ground to her death (I got the points). But each boss ends with a QTE, not death, so the game was stuck and I had to reload. Kind of annoying, but honestly only a handful of annoyances in a great game is okay. The highlight might be the story. It fills in a gap between the 3rd and 4th movies better than the 3rd movie filled in the gap between the 2nd and 4th! The corruption and redemption of a character is more believable here than in any of the 3 prequels. It was really enjoyable from top to bottom, the progression of powers is good, the fights are generally challenging but not frustrating. There was one fight where you had to fight like 4 of these ironman dudes that are really meant to be fought 1 on 1, but that was the only one I had to retry 80 times to win. I’d almost consider playing this game again on a harder difficulty or to collect more stuff, as I don’t have any other PS3 games to play. But then I realize I have 3 or 4 unplayed PC games sitting here. Plus replaying for collectables or achievements is freakin’ boring. Maybe if i was 14, not now. Anyway, off track! The point is, great game. Just the gameplay isn’t a new era of gaming, but it’s very fun. Add in the very good story, and you have a winner. Had much more fun than in 75% of MGS4! There is DLC, and believe it or not I considered it. But $10 bucks for a single effing chapter is pretty much the dumbest thing I ever heard. The game is going for $30 at retail now, why the hell would you charge another $20 in missions and $15 in character packs? Idiots. But let’s pretend I never logged onto PSN, and say great game.
Call of Juarez – Whooopsie! When I bought this for $2 on gogamer I thought it was the new one. Turns out there was an old CoJ from a couple years ago. Oh well, play it anyway. It’s an okay game. It brings some somewhat interesting (I guess) game play mechanics in, though they aren’t really that interesting, but at least they were trying. There’s some slow motion bow&arrow and gun aiming. There’s a quick draw high noon sort of mechanic that isn’t that much fun. It’s neat how the story alternates between characters, especially since they are at odds with each other to begin with. The story itself is fine, not bad. The voice acting is surprisingly decent for what is otherwise kind of a low production values game. I think maybe that’s why I feel meh about it, it just doesn’t feel that exciting. Everything is done fine, but not great. And since the gameplay is interesting in theory but not necessarily all that fun, you have to have more in the production department to keep me going. It’s a relatively short game, so I did push all the way through. But if it was twice as long I wouldn’t have made it, I imagine.
Prince of Persia – The newest of the PoP revival, though still a couple years old. But hey, I’m always behind the times on games. Playing this one on PC (another cheapo gogamer purchase). Sadly, that fact presented many of the issues. The first was controls. Playing this on keyboard and mouse is an absolute nightmare. There are four basic attacks (kind of like the four face buttons on a controller?), plus a block and movement. Trying to map all four attacks and a block to my mouse, though it does have the requisite number of buttons, is horribly janky. On top of that, my mouse only registered 1/5 of the “forward/back page” button clicks, making the “press the button repeatedly” moments literally impossible. Fortunately, the day was saved when I borrowed a 360 controller from JIHoR and that worked wonderfully. The game is quite fun to play with a reasonable control scheme. As the PoP games are known for, the fluidity of the motions is pretty good. Jumping from this to that and flipping and sliding works pretty well. Next comes the other big PC fault – my computer wasn’t totally up to task. In any sufficiently complicated scene or battle, the framerate slowed down pretty pathetically. This is presumably not a problem on a console and would have made the game more fun. It’s frustrating to lose because the game didn’t keep up with your button presses, or even worse, you get used to pressing multiple times so that it does, but then it registers multiple presses and you jump into oblivion for no good god damn reason. But getting past that, the game is pretty fun. It is not nearly Sands of Time. SoT was revolutionary, the entire time mechanic was so mind blowing, and so much more fun to use and to save yourself with. This game doesn’t have that, all it has is a chick who follows you and helps you jump around. And if you fall, slip, get stabbed, or swallow a grenade, she casts a spell and you’re back, presto. That is fine, certainly makes getting through the game a lot easier, but it’s not anything like the fun of playing with time. The platforming is still fun, though, the best part of the game. The fight mechanic isn’t great. There’s combos that are kind of neat, blocking that’s a little finicky, and most annoyingly there are repeated quick time events. Not really fancy QTEs, just things that you have to press the button fast to dodge or counter an attack. Trouble is it’s a big pain in the ass, especially with a bad framerate fucking up your response time. So the combat kind of sucks, but it’s tolerable. The art style is basically cell shaded, with a little more style. I don’t really like cell shaded most of the time. I guess it kind of works here in a storybook tale sort of way. But hey, if it was real graphics, my computer would have slipped a disk, so i should be happy I guess. The story is very simple for the most part, the voice acting is good. The script is mostly good, some of the humor is forced and falls flat, but the prince is mostly charming. The ending is pretty fantastic, as far as I’m concerned, with only a slight negativity due to natural expectation of a gamer these days that you can always choose between good and evil. But there’s no choice here, and the end is very effective. Over all, good game.
Vakyria Chronicles – Pretty great game! I played the demo forever ago, but not during a time I had gamefly, so I never got the real thing. Luckily JIHoR had it in, so I borrowed it! It’s a turned based, RPGish war game, set in sort of a fake WW II time. It’s pretty japanesey in visual style, but in an odd mix with european influence. The gameplay is the star of the show. It’s not really like anything else I can think of. It’s kind of a first person RPG combined with final fantasy tactics or something. You have different units (although I think there should have been more) with different specialties. You run around, shoot bad guys, save the world, etc. It sounds simple, and it kind of is. There’s not so much strategy to it. Mostly you sneak up behind with these guys, run at them with these guys, and in general: just use the tank. The story is…. kind of crappy. There are some sweet spots, a clumsy discussion of race, and an awkward importance placed on community over technological superiority, which is very japanesey too, and kind of silly. It’s funny, we had this discussion – why does the VC mindless babble seem more tolerable than the MGS4 babble? The conclusion was that in an action game you expect action and badassery. And in a jrpg you expect miles of text. Well, that’s what you get, but it doesn’t really make sense to me, babble is babble, and if I have to “sit through it” instead of enjoy it, you made a game with a shitty plot. But I’m being overly harsh, it’s not intolerable, and you can of course skip it if you don’t have my disease. And certainly in this case the gameplay is original and fun enough to justify it (where as MGS4 was pretty derivative of itself). So, really good game, not underrated, but underplayed.