review

I saw Ghost Town this weekend and was sorry to see how poorly it did in the box office. I enjoyed it more than Righteous Kill, Lake View Terrace, and Burn After Reading (although that was pretty decent), which all beat it. Ricky Gervais is of course funny, but he also shows us he can act (granted, he already did that in the Extras series finale). Anyway, if you like Extras or the British Office, you’ll enjoy this.

Yesterday I braved the crowds and the alarming number of children at the theatre, attending this movie.  Kids at a children’s movie, what a concept.  However, the movie was a real pleasure and definitely worth a viewing.

 More importantly, I found myself in a DLP theatre, by mere circumstance.  Wall-E in DLP is a real pleasure, and not to be missed.  Couple that with a very generous admission price of 5.00 before 6PM and I had an all-around great experience.  The theater is located in La Palma, Orange County.  You can find it by going to the DLP website and searching your local area code.  As always, my only gripe is that the theatre does not list the DLP theatre separately from its print counterparts, so you have to call ahead to find out where you need to be before the 6PM bell tolls.  Try DLP, you’ll like it.

 I also experienced that rarity: a breakdown in the DLP projector halfway through the movie.  However, I can report that unlike the days of old, the system reboot only took a few seconds; no need to bring up the houselights while the white-clad team of   repairmen descended on the clean room housing the projector.   The movie continued and I can report that it’s worth your time.

I’ll let someone else with a good graphics background report on the movie itself.  I am only an awe-struck theatre-goer that appreciates quality work.

This was an eye-opening documentary on steroids. There was a lot of info here, exploring the issue from many angles, and I learned a lot. Documentarian Chris Bell makes it personal with family interviews; both of this brothers are steroid users, which of course is a real shock when they’ve got nicknames like Mad Dog and Smelly. Bell makes it clear he’s been morally opposed to steroids his whole life. I don’t know if his situation injected bias or not, as I don’t know how it was edited or what was left out. In the end, though, I think viewers will be more likely to try steroids than they were before watching this.

This is because the film portrays the short term effects as mostly reversible, provided you’ve got a penis, or aren’t afraid to grow one if you don’t. It can’t list any long term effects because there’s a wholesale ban on steroids, so we will never be able to study them. This leaves the audience with a list of the long term effects such as having your own reality series (Hulk Hogan), becoming a movie star (Sylvester Stallone), or being elected governor (Elliot Spitzer Schwarzenegger). Hmm, I guess it could be use for sports, too.

The only way I can think to combat this is to point out that chicks don’t dig overmuscled meatheads, and steer them towards eating disorders instead. Of course, with cheerleaders literally getting their panties in a bunch over some roided out football player, this could be an uphill battle.

I saw The Visitor over the weekend and can recommend it. It’s a touching story that raises awareness about immigration in this country, which has become quite difficult, even for honest people. I also really dug the drum music in the film. To learn more, watch the trailer or visit the film’s page at the IMDB.

NOTE: You’ll be seeing more of these micro-reviews from me, which I hope add value.

I was not expecting AoC to live up to the hype, but it did.

I was not expecting it to be so gorgeous, and not just because you can see boobies. The youtube clips don’t do this game justice.

I was expecting it to be buggy and to have that “new game” feel, but the content I have seen so far is kicking butt. I have not yet gotten stuck, had a buggy quest, or had the game crash.

I was not expecting AoC to run as smoothly as it did, considering I am playing it on a Mac using Bootcamp, but the only thing limiting it is the steaming load that is Windows XP. I have 8 cores and 16gb of ram running on a 64 bit bus, most of which just sits there unused. I went with a slower processor and dumped the savings into upgrading the machine, but I have never used more than 35% of the CPU. The 8800GT is doing all the work, and all I can say is WOW (no, not WoW, not anything like WoW).

The fighting mechanics are still growing on me. I was one of those rare people that will admit to liking Oblivion, especially compared to the click on target mash buttons lameness that most classes in WoW utilize (sure, in raids they are now forcing you to move around to avoid hot lava, but the only reason this is hard is because many people don’t have the skills to actually watch their cast bar AND the screen). So far I have only played a barbarian, and the casting time for longer combo moves seems a bit off. Many times I think I initiated a combo, but my toon is just standing there getting beat on. Finally, the combo will pop up, and like some tard at the fair playing whack-a-mole, I excitedly mash the buttons in the order shown. Sure, I could have gone with the dance dance revolution comparison, but that would give away my winning idea of using a dance mat for controlling my toon!

Things I am not digging as part of the Early Access include the craptacular server maintenance schedules and lack of voice acting for the quests past the starting area, but maybe those will be fixed with the official launch. Of course, they are european, and expecting even half-assed customer support would be purely naive. Don’t believe me? Go try to find their phone support number…. nope, they don’t have one. Hopefully they can make up for it with adequate online GM support.

Should Blizzard be worried? Yes, they should. Not because everyone will be leaving WoW to play AoC,though some will, just for something new to do. Personally, I am not yet to the point where I am hooked, and I fully expect to go back to WoW some time before the next expansion. AoC may just delay my return for a few months. The real reason Bizzard should be worried though is that a bunch of weird Norwegians showed that WoW did not set the bar too high, and they are no longer the only real option for people wanting to get their MMO on. Two days ago I was still resigned to WoW being the best option for the foreseeable future, but now I can see that providing them competition is not only possible, but likely. This is good for gaming in general, and I look forward to seeing how the competition drives the genre in the future.

In Priceless, Audrey Tatou says that charm is better than looks. “Looks can be resisted, charm cannot.” Priceless has charm in spades.

I’m not one of those guys who throws around terms like “delightful comedy” (unless I’m being ironic). But that just about sums up this film.

In Amelie, Audrey Tatou showed us she can be uniquely cute better than just about anyone. Here, she shows us sexy. She is practically naked the entire film, by way of dresses with sheer and/or very little fabric, and her glorious refusal to wear a bra. Also, she is sometimes just naked. Bravo!

Also, she can act. Not too far into the film I’m thinking, “I really don’t like her character.” I was concerned for the film, because how am I supposed get into a romantic comedy when I don’t know why the guy is pursuing this girl? But it’s not long before she, too, shows us what charm is. Yes, the screenwriters get credit for this, too, but it still requires the right actress to make us change our minds.

Gad Elmaleh is great as Jean, a bartender who falls for Tatou, a girl way above his pay grade. His father was a mime, and you can see him channeling Chaplin in this film. After watching him in this, I’ve moved The Valet to the top of my Netflix queue.

Now, some caveats. This is a French film. I don’t just mean the dialogue is in French¹, I mean the comedy, tone, setting, etc. I’m a big fan of foreign films, especially French; you may not be. At the same time, if you’re expecting Amelie, which is off-the-charts charming and quirky, you’ll be disappointed. But it is quirky, and fun, and… You know. Delightful.

1. Except for “pick-me-up” and “sunny-side up”, which have apparently been assimilated into the French language. [↩]

While Kevin Smith inspired me to pursue filmmaking (albeit lazily and half-heartedly, with slightly less effort than I muster for breathing), I aspire to create movies like Judd Apatow’s. Knocked Up was awesome the whole way through. There are parts where Apatow just machine guns you with jokes, which are hilarious, because he had the balls to make it Rated R. Unsurprisingly, it’s already 163 on the IMDB Top 250. And man, is Katherine Heigl is hot (I call dibs. Sorry.). So if you were thinking of waiting for the DVD, aww, man, so sorry, ’cause you’re totally not doing that. ‘Cause I said so. And you’re welcome.

It is very rare when a movie lives up to the lofty expectations that the trailer has set. The trailer for 300 set my expectations incredibly high, but the film did not disappoint.

Part of me thinks this review is pointless. If you saw the trailer, you want to see it. Heck, I just watched it again and thought, “Wow, this movie looks awesome, I’ve gotta see this!”

But, perhaps a poor critical review is keeping you from watching it. If so, know that the critics are wrong, and the people have spoken. This film is already in the top 200 films of all time on the IMDB. Of the 37,000 voters who’ve rated it, almost 75% gave it a 9 or 10 (actually, close to 60% give it a perfect 10). Also, the only critic who matters is Roger Ebert, and he didn’t review it.

But not only must you see it in the theatre, you must see it in IMAX. I promise you, you will hate yourself if you wait for video. Seriously, I don’t care how good your home theatre is, it can’t do this movie justice. If you wait for DVD, there will be much wailing (from you) and gnashing of teeth (Yes, your teeth. Totally gnashed.).

The film is a visually stunning masterpiece. It begs for IMAX, and IMAX delivers. Make no mistake - this is not a regular movie thrown on an IMAX screen, it is a special print mastered in the IMAX format. We saw it at The Bridge in LA, and except for some seats in the very last row (behind some stupid railing), there didn’t seem to be a bad seat in the house. We even sat towards the back-left, but the screen is so monstrous we seemed to be barely off center.

The fight scenes? Incredible. The sex scenes? Filmed on a cold set, apparently. You might miss that in some small theater, but not with IMAX. See? IMAX is looking out for you.

The sound is also fantastic. A deep bass rumbles as the largest army ever assembled marches on screen. As shields bash skulls. As a god-king whispers. Seriously, the man has no “inside voice”.

The casting was excellent. Gerard Butler was the epitome of the warrior king, and I expect more leading roles from him in the future. I also expect - and this is written without the slightest hint of irony or sarcasm - that you will see a surge in the number of boys named Leonidas. I don’t think think, however, we will be seeing many girls named Gorgo, despite Lena Headey’s portrayal of the beautiful and strong queen. I do think we’ll see a lot more of Kelly Craig (Oracle Girl), assuming Larry Ellison doesn’t run off and marry her. Heck, here’s some more Oracle Girl right now:

Continuing 300’s affect on pop culture, I also predict that MSU will have this film playing on campus, and steal the music and dialogue clips to get their teams pumped, for most of eternity. And just about every new local sports team will want to call themselves the Spartans. And the next NFL expansion team will be the LA Spartans, so we can say LA is home to both the Spartans and the Trojans.

For those who’ve already seen it, I’ve compiled a list of titles for further viewing. I haven’t seen these, but have added them to my Netflix queue. Unfortunately, none of these have Kelly Craig.

• Beowulf & Grendel: Starring Gerard Butler as Beowulf.
• Last Stand of the 300: History Channel special on the subject. Unfortunately, it only had one airing and now they want you to buy the DVD. I’ll wait.
• The 300 Spartans: 1962 film depicting the same battle.
• Imagine Me & You: If you want to see more of Lena Headey, she plays a lesbian temptress in this romantic comedy. So what I’m saying is, you want to see more of Lena Headey.

Several people have praised this movie to me, yet they added the postscript: What is the movie about?? Without giving anything away, let me point you to the Will Durant quote that opens the movie:

“A great Civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

Some movies give it all up in the title; I’m thinking ‘Snakes on a Plane’ and ‘Free Willie’ for starters. You know there are snakes on an aircraft and you know Willie will go free. Oops. I hope I didn’t spoil that classic movie for you by giving you the ending. And yet there was enough doubt about the outcome to engender a “Free Willie 2″ and “Free Willie: the Revenge” : )

So let’s go back to the name of the movie: Apocalypto. This brings up all sorts of end-of-the-world images and references the book of the Apocalypse in the Bible (also known as the Book of Revelations) which recounts all sorts of bloody battles and the final match between Good and Evil in the history of humanity. So you know something cataclysmic will take place, and also that established cultures will meet and clash. That’s all I’m saying before I head into the spoilers that follow……

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For Christmas this year, I treated myself to a longtime object of my technolust: the Sandisk Sansa e280 flash memory MP3 player. Part of the e200 series, the e280 is the 8GB version. I paid $185 at Amazon (no blogger bribes here!). All e200 players have many features to thrash those precious iPod Nanos:

• Plays MP3, WMA, and secure WMA (see below)
• 1.8″ color LCD screen
• Image viewer
• Video player
• Voice recorder
• Data storage
• FM tuner, with record capability
• microSD expansion slot
• User replaceable, rechargeable Lithium Ion battery with 20 hours of play time (average)

That’s what everybody gets. The real kicker is if you have Windows XP [1] and a subscription service like Rhapsody-To-Go, Napster, or Yahoo! Music. This is a Plays For Sure player, so you can take subscription content with you. As long as I am a subscriber, I can transfer any track in my library, even though I didn’t buy it. Since I just got a great deal on Rhapsody-To-Go [2] I expect to subscribe indefinitely. That gives me any of Rhapsody’s 3 million+ tracks anywhere I want. It is the awesome.

That’s quite a feature list, in a very compact package. Here are the highs and lows.

Highs

• Screen is sharp, photos and videos look good.
• Sound quality is quite good, both for WMA (160K) and FM stereo
• Using Rhapsody’s jukebox software, transferring music is quite easy. You either drag and drop files, or synchronize with your Rhapsody Library. If you needed to, you could pick and choose from your Library instead of copying the whole thing. Personally, mine is a giant “best of” collection, so it’s very convenient for me to connect it to my PC have it automatically sync up. Right now I’ve got around 600 tracks that I’ve chosen over the last year, and it takes up about 2.7GB.
• The design is very nice. It’s shiny! And black. It’s not quite as compact or beautiful as the iPod, but… duh. As far as I can tell, Apple has kidnapped the best designers on the planet (minus Agent Hulagun), so nobody else can have such elegant-looking products. It’s the modern day equivalent of Ivan the Terrible poking out the eyes of Postnik Yakovlev after he built St. Basil’s Cathedral.
• New batteries are only $20 from Sandisk, compared to $60 for iPods.

Lows

• Like just about every other MP3 player I’ve read reviews on, the earbuds kinda suck. Sound quality is decent, they’re just these big round discs that don’t feel like they were designed to go in your ears. They’re too big for your ear canal (I think they’re more bellybutton sized), and I haven’t figure out a way to place them so they don’t feel like they’re about to fall out. I’m looking for a replacement, and have my eye on the Sennheiser PMX60 headphones. I’m pretty sure the larger drivers will drain the batteries faster, but at least they’ll be comfortable without messing up my incredible hair.
• The voice recorder seems to record a high-pitched whine along with your voice. It’s annoying, so don’t expect to make any podcasts from it. And you have to speak into the mic, so I don’t think you can use it to record lectures. Of course, the mic hole is about 2mm in diameter, so it’s a wonder it works at all. At least you can pause and continue the recording.
• When using the thumbwheel, your thumb rests on the left side of the wheel, which is not optimal. You scroll down, you’re turning counterclockwise, and the screen scrolls up. This is really an artifact of using a very compact device, and I don’t see a solution - that’s just where your thumb naturally rests. To make this more ergonomic you’d need to make it bigger, which nobody wants. I’m sure most compact MP3 players have this issue.
• When connecting to my PC for transfer, the Rhapsody software needs to scan the device for tracks. This takes several minutes, and I only have about 600 tracks (”only” meaning it’s only 1/3 full). In “mass storage” mode, you can’t transfer subscription content, only drag and drop files. So it doesn’t scan your tracks when you connect, but when you disconnect it essentially reboots and does this “Refresh Database” thing that also takes a couple minutes. You can’t win.
• The only way to recharge the battery is by hooking the device up to a USB port via the included cable. Not an issue - unless you want to travel with it. Luckily, there are many 3rd party Sansa accessories that solve this, and they’re even blessed by Sandisk. This includes USB charging ports for your car’s cigarette lighter, as well as wall chargers.
• The LCD stays on when the device is connected to a PC. Since you connect to charge the battery, it seems dumb to be draining it by lighting up the screen.
• Photos and videos can’t be placed on the microSD card.

I’m nitpicking a bit with the lows, but I’d rather be thorough in case one of them is a deal-breaker for you. Overall, I think the highs far outweigh them, and I’m quite happy with my purchase!

[1] And presumably Vista, but don’t hold me to that. I think it just needs Windows Media Player 10 or better.

[2] I’m afraid it’s gone now, but during the holidays they offered the to-go service for $8 month. I’d been paying $10/month for the Unlimited service, which doesn’t allow you to transfer to MP3 players, and the upgrade price was $15/month! I created another account, hoping to merge the two, but the best customer support could do was cancel the old one. I downloaded the entire library from my original account and then imported it from the new one, so I was able to save just about everything. After spending a year carefully selecting 600 tracks (out of several thousand), you don’t want to have to find them again!

This movie will most likely become a classic, in the league of 2001:A Space Odyssey. Not as effective as that cinematic milestone, but just as ambitious. It is also just as confusing: this is a good thing. Aronofsky has given us another tour-de-force, just as intense as “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream” but centered around a love story.

I am going to discuss a few obvious religious symbols in the movie, and will leave it at that. You should go see it and decide what it all means to you.

Spoilers follow……….

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I made a wrong left turn on the way to Stranger Than Fiction, and wound up in Let’s Go to Prison (trust me, I wasn’t navigating). You might be tempted to see this because the trailer looked funny, or Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show) directs and acts in it, or Will Arnett (Arrested Development) stars. All are good reasons, but the movie is just nominally funny, and that only in parts. It seriously drags, and by drags, I’m saying don’t even bother with the DVD. Skip it altogether, there are tons of better comedies out there.

In fact, go watch an all-time classic comedy, like Dr. Strangelove. Or The Heartbreak Kid. In the latter, you can see see Charles Grodin act with a brilliant sense of timing and deliver great lines by Neil Simon, and a 22 year old, half-naked Cybill Shepherd looking astonishingly cute. No, seriously, look!

Some writers can claim, with justifiable pride, to have the best reviews, oftentimes before the books even hit your local bookseller. However, since I no longer work for your local bookseller (and even then, I would only have been local if “local” for you meant one of the uglier corners of Union County), and since I no longer have free books thrown at me like Tom Jones gets panties (ie. I pay for this stuff), I may be a bit behind the times. But I digress… Two favorites from recent reading:

Voices of Time: A Life in Stories by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Mark Fried. Metropolitan Books, 2006.

Reading Eduardo Galeano is like the literary equivalent of Pablo Neruda via Wire’s “Pink Flag:” Short, sharp vignettes, each with a lovely economy, abound over many of the Uruguayan author’s best works, from the Memory of Fire trilogy through his 1998 bestseller Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World. There’s a certain anger here, but it’s anger as well-directed as it is deeply felt; and it’s suffused with a warmth for those who’ve gotten the short end of the stick, without stooping to condescension.

But there’s also a certain danger in reviewing Galeano, especially if you enjoy his works. There’s the temptation to just quote your favorite bits, and let them stand in for the whole, sort of like a film trailer. Having said that, I’ll open with one line that could easily stand in for the collection: “Reporters don’t cover dreams.”

It’s true enough of the nightly news, but not of the author’s work; dreams have been Galeano’s beat for years, in tandem with–and sometimes jostling against–the waking world that he chronicles. And for every famous name encountered in the stories, from Caetano Veloso to Diego Maradona or Sebastiao Salgado, it’s the quotidian details of the lives of everyone else–blue algae, ants, pensioners, bartenders, and strangers met along the way–that give the book its real heft.

And whereas the Memory of Fire trilogy encompassed the history of the Americas, Voices in Time starts with the beginnings of life itself, progresses through (but, fittingly, does not end with) death, and takes the scenic route to a number of points in between.

There’s probably much more that could be said about this book, but nothing that would add to the work itself. Suffice to say that the collection is like life itself: sprawling, messy, sometimes sad, often funny, and ultimately, entirely too short.

Pursuit, by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza.

This is the fifth, and perhaps final (but perhaps not), installment of bestselling Brazilian author Garcia-Roza’s Espinosa series. I’ll forego the customary pull-quote hyperbole (”An enchanting, riveting read that will hold you completely in its thrall from start to finish!”) since there’s plenty of that to be found on the dust-jacket.

But don’t begrudge the author his accolades; he’s earned them. At a time when detective fiction/mystery seems to consist of either A: Softcore porn and a handful of dead bodies, or B: recipies for baked goods, a cat, a few chaste kisses, and a handful of dead bodies–and yes, I’m aware that there are exceptions, but please, go to the Mystery section of your local bookstore and see if the selection doesn’t bear me out–this is a rare bird: creative, thoughtful, literary, and sometimes given to flights of fancy.

And that, I suppose, could apply equally to the series’ protagonist, Espinosa. This isn’t a hardboiled detective in the tradtion of Chandler, Cain, or Hammett; he’s something else altogether. Rather than try to do the writer, and his character, justice, I’ll let Espinosa give a thumbnail description of himself:

“I’m not a warrior, I’m a cop; I’m not a hero, I’m a public employee; and I’m no philosopher, despite my name.” If you can picture a less-neurotic Woody Allen channeling Sam Spade, you’d still be out in left field, but at least in the ballpark.

In a recent interview, Garcia-Roza stated that he was through with the Espinosa series–for now–and that a new series, with one of the current series’ characters as its protagonist, would begin to appear soon. My money would be on Welber, the most fully-developed character in the series apart from its protagonist; that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if that–like so much else in this series–is another red herring.

Maybe not 100% spoiler free like agent Bladerunner’s post, but I did the best I could. If you REALLY want to play it safe, just skip my inane babbling, like most rational folks do anyways.

It is to Bond what Batman Begins was to that pointless crapfest series of movies. Both movies dealt with the beginnings of their characters, not worrying so much about continuity with what had been done before/after them. This works for me. The latest set of Star Wars movies are a good example of why you don’t want to try to stick within the framework you already set up too much. Yeah, prequels are hard, but this one got it right in many ways. Is it a must see in the theater, I don’t know? If you have a nice home system you won’t loose too much, so if your schedule is full there may be other movies out this season that I would put before this, but definitely catch it on Netflix, as it really was quite enjoyable.

Problem is, I can’t exactly figure out what to say about it that is good. I have a few complaints I can start with, but I will try to come back to what is good. First, there seemed to be 4 different directors and writers, or maybe they broke up the movie between different production groups for style reasons, I am not sure Interesting, but I don’t know if it really works. The continuity between the different parts was just not there for me, and I didn’t feel like it was my fault because I am not sophisticated, but rather, I felt like someone was trying to demonstrate skills that they clearly had, but maybe they should have saved for another film. Maybe some of you smarter folks will appreciate that aspect of it more than I did.

Second, as many of you already know, for me casting is one of the most critical parts of movie making. In my opinion, this casting was brilliant…. mostly. Daniel Craig was amazing. He was nothing like any of the previous bonds, and that is fine by me. I enjoyed many of those films, but they really were becoming caricatures of themselves. The one liners and catch phrases were becoming more of what defined the movies than the story and action. This one dropped all of that (including sadly, some of my favorite stuff, but discussing that may be a spoiler to some of you purists, so I will talk about that at a later date). The few one liners where delivered with a completely different style and approach, that they actually worked. The bad guys were SOOOOO bad and the rest were all great, perfectly cast for their roles, with a few that really stole the show for a few minutes (Jeffrey Wright and the guy that played the banker both stood out to me). Judi Dench as M was superb. If she gets any better I might start developing a thing for much older women, which is good, because I seem to be aging myself for some reason. Which leads me to the leading woman, my biggest complaint. Ok, in a bond movie there are usually a few women, and there are here as well, don’t worry, but the main chick just didn’t do it for me. She was hot, sure, and seemed to be quite a talented actress, but I didn’t buy her in her role, and I didn’t feel any chemistry between her and Bond, though that may have been on purpose for story reasons that I am not smart enough to follow. Maybe she nailed her part, but if so, maybe that part needed a bit more refinement, but then again, they don’t let me make many big budget movies, so I may be missing something here.

So, what did I like about it? Well, it was just a great film. Despite its incongruous nature to us lowbrow types, it was enjoyable as hell to watch, even if you have to check your ticket to make sure you are in the correct theater. The intro was the best ever for a bond flick, in its own way. With a single exception (in my opinion) the casting was superb. The parts I missed about the old ones, I got over, and the new parts that would not have worked at all in the old Bond movies where a nice change of perspective to the series. I am truly looking forward to the next one. I wouldn’t suggest it for kids (nothing there for them) and I wouldn’t suggest it to my Dad, who is a big bond fan, but for the rest of you I would give it some witty affirmation of a positive nature.

This was a story that had to be told. I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but it’s about that famous photograph of the soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima, its impact on the war, and the men behind it. It goes back and forth between their time overseas (much of it in combat) and their time in the states after the photo. There is an upcoming companion piece called Letters from Iwo Jima, which tells the Japanese side of the story. This explains why they are largely faceless (and voiceless) in this film.

I’ve heard comparisons to Saving Private Ryan, but I had a very different emotional responses to those movies. After Saving Private Ryan, I walked around shell shocked, for two days, thinking about how we should avoid war at all costs. And while the combat sequences in Flags were violent, they didn’t bother me nearly as much. Instead of walking out numb and fearful, I felt shame for the way my country treated (used, discarded) those men. I also felt a newfound respect and appreciation for the soldiers fighting for us today.

When the credits came up, I witnessed something in the audience I’d never seen before. People had started to leave, some almost at the the exits, when photos were displayed along with the credits. They were vintage photos from the war, including some photos of the men portrayed in the film. Everyone stopped and watched the photos. Not one person left before the credits finished. It was a nice communal moment.

If you like this film (and I’m sure you will, it’s a great film), I can recommend two others. The first is Tora! Tora! Tora!, a classic movie about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It shows both the American and Japanese points of view, shot with separate American and Japanese casts and crews. It’s well edited to preserve the timeline, for which it received an Oscar nomination (as well as for sound and f/x). The other is The Best Years of Our Lives, a 1946 film about 3 men who return from the war. It does a remarkable job of illustrating the differences between your rank in the Army during wartime, and your rank in society when you return. This just swept at the Oscars, taking home seven, including Best Picture (which it also won at the Golden Globes and BAFTA).

Yes, it’s high time to discuss that most-kept of secrets. There’s more in Casablanca that meets the eye. This is another chapter in the series of “It’s Obvious…” film articles that started with the following entries:

Episode 1. It’s Obvious, Narnia

Episode 2. It’s Obvious, 2001

In this entry, I will discuss the high possibility that the main character in that most respected of film classics, Casablanca, was quite gay. Yes you heard it right. The character played by that most admired of macho actors, Humphrey Bogart, was as gay as Hollywood could dare to write in the high-suspicion environment of post-World-War-II America. I personally am just “shocked, shocked” that this revelation was not caught, expounded, denounced or cherished in such outre documentaries like “Out of the Closet Hollywood.” Oh well, perhaps they can add a small segment to the DVD release and credit me, bladerunner at CrackTeam.org, for this insight.

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Imagine Marc Bolan backed by Black Sabbath while Ozzy was on a bender, and you’ve got a pretty clear idea of Wolfmother. Aussie Ozborne, if you will. If you’ve got a healthy taste for classic rock, by which I mean the hard stuff, you’ll find their self titled album pretty fanstastic.

I’m ever impressed by bands these days who really capture a particular sound from years past. Interpol, She Wants Revenge - those aren’t bands that are influenced by the Manchester music scene of the 80’s - they’re the real thing. Wolfmother does the same thing for 70’s rock. I seriously doubt there’s a modern instrument among them.

And cover art by Frank Frazetta for cryin’ out loud!

Some people think embracing an era that strongly is lame and unorginal. I’m of the opinion that it’s actually way harder to pull off than anyone gives them credit for. Also, it sounds awesome. Also, my opinions count more than other people’s. Sorry, that’s just a fact.

You’ve probably heard Woman by now, and maybe Dimension if you watched Dane Cook’s Tourgasm. Here are some other tracks I thought were particularly good:

White Unicorn: Just the title is evocative of the 70’s fantasy literature and art embraced by bands like Rush (did you know they had a song called The Necromancer? And another about trees fighting each other?) and Led Zeplin (who weren’t afraid to sing about Middle Earth).

Mind’s Eye: little slower, but with a rockin’ chorus. Keyboards remind me of The Who.

Love Train: Little funk, little Latin vibe thrown in.

This film is an exhausting exercise in style over substance. It has an 80’s undercurrent via music and 8-bit video games, but for no reason I could determine. As it opened, I thought that I might not be in the right theatre, but the title credit (done in super low-res graphics) confirmed it. When I walked out, I thought the writer/director came from video games. Turns out I’m not far off the mark. There are two of them, and both did visual f/x for Biker Boyz. This helps explain the shitty writing. So, ok, I laughed a few times. A few action sequences were decent. But I certainly don’t think that made it worth seeing. Ok, yes, Amy Smart looks amazing, and that’d be enough for some, but she also plays a very annoying character. You’d think that with a hitman for boyfriend, she’d be dead already (then again, she is really hot here).

Meanwhile, I still haven’t seen Little Miss Sunshine, The Illusionist, Hollywoodland, or heck, even Beerfest. Talk about salt in the wounds…

This is one of the most beautiful films I have seen in years. The cinematography of the settings, costumes, and of course, actresses, is simply stunning. I regret not having seen this on the big screen.

Even though this is a long film at 2:25, I felt the pacing was good and it never felt slow. Part of that may have been the cinematography; even if it lingered some some still shots, I would not have complained.

Now, Ebert didn’t review it all that highly. He claims it wasn’t for sociological reasons, but his review certainly sounds that way. Geishas were artists, yes, but they were also paid for their company. They were often sold into that lifestyle, and had no free will. Yes, that is obviously an objectable practice. He also called it melodramatic, which I guess it might be. Certainly when compared to many Japanese films, like Ozu’s Tokyo Story, which Ebert adores¹. But Memoirs is a film written, directed, and produced by Americans. In a way, it is a very American view of that period and lifestyle. To be fair, I could probably substitute “American” with “foreign” (Gaijin?) - the Geisha have been romanticized by many, even Gilbert and Sullivan (see Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy). Is it fair to romanticize the selling of young girls into a life of prostitution, absent of free will? Certainly not to the Geishas. But for the typical movie audience, it makes for a much more enjoyable experience.

1. It was also a past Classic Movie Night selection, and was quite good, if a little, um, “subtle”. [↩]

After watching X-Men: The Last Stand, I decided I wanted to catch up on changes to the comic book universe. I’ve been out of comics since the mid-nineties, when I graduated from college and moved out to SoCal. So I’ve missed almost a decade’s worth of stories. Gotta be something big that went down between then and now, right? The major stories should be nicely packaged in graphic novel format by now.

So I go down to my local comic book store to see what I could find. What I found, sitting behind the counter, was a guy who looked and dressed exactly like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. I shit you not: brown hair in a pony tail, goatee, overweight, wearing a t-shirt tucked into sweatshorts pulled up to his bellybutton. Surreal. I figured this would be the guy to talk to. I give him a rundown of the situation, figuring he won’t even know where to start. Actually, I was pretty sure he would know where to start. But he doesn’t. He tells me nothing really stands out when you look at the last ten years. Things are pretty much the same as I left them. I think, maybe it’s like when you talk to someone you haven’t heard from in a while, and nothing really stands out: same job, same house, same life - nope, nothing new to report. Oh, but it has been hot out, recently… Anyway, he points out a book that’s gotten good reviews, written by Joss Whedon of Firefly/Serenity fame. I pay the man and take it home.

About two pages into it I’m thinking, who’s the blonde bimbo sleeping with Scott Summers? Flipflip. She’s in charge of the school? Where’s Professor X? Flipflip. Flipflipflip. Where’s the hell is Professor X?

Those were exactly the kinds of changes I wanted to read about. So I jump into the Batmobile and make a bee line back to the store. “What’s the deal?” I ask Comic Book Guy. “You said nothing changed. Trust me, things have changed!” He sticks to his guns for few seconds before he breaks down and admits that running a comic book store doesn’t actually leave him time to read comics. He hadn’t read comics since Magneto was on trial for, I don’t know, being Jewish or something. It was before I got into comics, so he was useless to me.

Well, I was on my own, so I turned to the most reliable source of wisdom I knew of: Amazon reader reviews. I really want to support my local comic book store, but if they can’t give me the advice I need, then I don’t mind saving over 30% at Amazon. I mean, that comes to about $5 a book. Combined with my Amazon Prime trial, I get everything cheap, tax free, and delivered within 3 days. And so far, I haven’t been disappointed. Sure, you can’t flip through them, but I’m after the major stories everyone knows about and has enjoyed. Previewing usually has little effect on my purchase decision unless the art is truly sub par.

So I plowed ahead and bought some highly rated stuff, and over time I’ll be chiming in on them with short reviews, starting with these. I’m still not caught up with the stories, but I’m definitely impressed with the state of the art (litterally). The artists are fully utilizing digital ink and paint systems, to the point where they’re adding things like motion blur and depth of field. Yes, depth of field! In a comic book! Like I’ve said before, we’re living in the future.

The only complaint I have is the book bindings. No, they’re not falling apart, they’re actually bound too tightly. This is fine until you come across two-page spreads showing epic battles (House of M is full of these), and you can’t clearly or fully see the part where the pages meet. They need to use the lay-flat binding that O’Reilly uses for their computer books. That would work perfectly.

Gifted / Dangerous
These two books collect Astonishing X-Men 1-12. They’re written by Joss Whedon, so there’s a lot more humor than usual. One issue I had with Gifted is that X-Men: The Last Stand borrowed heavily from it, so there are many plot parallels (figures, the first book I buy has a storyline I’m already familar with). As soon as it’s released, I plan on picking up Torn, which collects issues 13-18.

House of M
This is HUGE, meaning world altering. Meaning it alters the current, mainstream Marvel universe instead of creating yet another alternate. It involves the X-men, Avengers (new, old, I really don’t know since I never read that series), Spiderman, and others. Also features Scarlett Witch, Magneto, and Quicksilver (at least they were baddies in the 90’s; nothing’s clear anymore). The art is pretty fantastic, IMHO. Without giving anything away, it’s a good place to start to see the state of the universe after certain super-powers have their way with it.

On the way:

• Decimation: X-Men - The Day After: follow-up to House of M
• X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga: Ok, this took place before I started reading comics, but is supposedly an all-time great and I’ve never read it.

If anyone has any suggestions, preferably in the mainstream Marvel or DC universes (I’ll get to non-superhero stuff later), I’d appreciate them!

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It’s one of those where you’re sitting through most of it with a goofy grin on your face. It’s a feelgood movie, but you already knew that just from the trailer.

I have a soft spot for films set in the seventies, and this film does a great job evoking that era. It starts off painted in autumnal hues, set to Jim Croce’s I Got A Name. [1] We see working class South Philly of 1976, which probably hasn’t changed much in 30 years. Maybe it’s the whole city of brotherly love thing, but South Philly just seems a lot less scary than other working class neighborhoods. Perhaps Agents Mystery and Hulagun, former Philadelphia residents, will want to chime in.

I also have to say that I’ve warmed up to Marky Mark. He started out great as Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, but repeated that over-the-top, nice guy character ad nauseum. As Agent Assassin pointed out, now he’s not so over-the-top. It’s a big help. I also found myself thinking, “Wow, he’s buff here,” completely forgetting about the much buffer Funky Bunch-era Marky Mark. [2] It will come full circle when he plays a character that has audiences thinking, “Wow, who knew Mark Wahlberg could rap?”

He’s joined by the crazy hot Elizabeth Banks. You’ll remember her as Beth, the hot and crazy girl from The 40 Year Old Virgin, and Lindsay, the hot and crazy theatre director in Wet Hot American Summer. [3] She also plays the hot new doctor on Scrubs. I’d like to see a lot more of her, but Invincible is only rated PG. I’d cast her in one of my films, but unfortunately she’s married, which renders her inelligible.

Anyway, it’s a fun flick, and you can even bring the kids if you can’t find a sitter. They might not understand it, but at least they won’t be robbed of their innocence. Just leave that to Pop Warner.

[1] That song is also feature in soundtrack to the The Ice Storm, one of my all time favorite films.

[2] He needed to be huge back then to destroy hotel rooms and beat up gay people.

[3] Which is hilarious, just ask Hulagun.

Recently, my addiction to golf has been getting worse. I now play during the week twice in addition to going to the range several times to practice. Since I am not able to get out to the course until after I put in a 10 hour day at work, it starts to get dark by the time we get to the end of a round. Even though one of the courses I play at is lighted, the amount of illumination between the tee and the green leaves quite a bit to be desired. The greens are generally well lit, so if you hit the green every time you will have no problem finding your ball. However, if I was capable of hitting the green every time, my co-workers would have single word names like �Tiger� and �Vijay�. A few weeks ago I was playing with a random golfer who had a ball that would start blinking when you hit it. This was the product I was looking for! It�s just too bad I didn�t ask him what the name of it was or where he got it.

The next day I ran out to the local Golfsmith and the salesman at the counter, after laughing at me, explained that he had never heard of it. He also commented that he didn�t think the balls would spin very well. Not wanting to sound like a total noob I just smiled and said, �yeah, you�re probably right�. I more or less understood what he meant but I am certainly not a good enough golfer to care how much a ball spins or even to know what to do with said spin. Besides, when you can�t see more than 10 feet in front of you without a flashlight, does it really matter how much your golf ball spins? I think not. Since I pay for the holes whether I play them or not and generally don�t even bother keeping score, the whole point here is to try to get those last few holes in rather than simply going home. I then took my search to where I should have gone in the 1^st place� the internet.

Enter the Twilight Tracer (www.twilighttracer.com). This ball is designed to start flashing a very bright red once you hit it so you can find your ball in the dark. It is an 80 compression ball with a multilayer surlyn cover and is the same weight and size as a regulation ball. I ended up with the 3 pack which goes for about $28 depending on where you find it (I was only able to find it online). It is a touch on the pricey side for me but in the grand scheme of things in the golf world probably not that expensive. The balls last for about 40 hours so, since they blink for roughly 5 minutes at a time, that means you can hit it about 480 times. I was worried that a decent amount of the lifespan of the ball would be lost to getting knocked around during shipping but when I got the balls home and tested one, merely dropping it did not set it off. In fact, it took a moderate amount of force to actually get it blinking, though nothing compared to the force generated during a full golf swing. I feel confident I will get my money�s worth out of each ball.

On the golf course, the 1^st one I pulled out of the box to hit made a nice �thwack� sound as it hit a tree off to the right side of the fairway but, unfortunately, there was no blinking involved before it hit the tree. It was a defective ball and amazingly wasn�t one of the two that I had tested at home. I sent a quick email over the weekend to the company that makes them and they got back to me 1^st thing Monday morning asking me for my address so they can ship me a replacement ball, no questions asked. They will have my business in the future just for that. On the next hole I tried a different ball (after throwing it into the ground first to make sure it worked) and this time I hit a nice shot right down the middle of the fairway and onto the edge of the green. I could see the ball in the air the whole time (which is VERY cool!) and could easily see it sitting on the green from about 175 yards away. In fact, on a later hole I hit the ball about 225 yards and to the right of the fairway into some 1� thick rough and could still see it from the tee box. While I have no real way of comparing the spin rates of this ball to a regular ball, it did seem to bite into the green fairly well and it left a pretty good ball mark, although, the greens were very soft and starting to get soggy from dew so maybe it had nothing to do with the spin.

The two differences between the tracers and a regular ball that stood out the most was the lack of distance and the very different feel off the club face. Using a metal wood with a graphite shaft I couldn�t really feel a difference but you could hear a much different sound with the tracers than with a regular ball. With an iron and a steel shaft you can feel the difference in your hands in addition to the different sound. The ball �feels� much harder than the balls I typically use (Nike Precision Power Distance � Super Soft) but that could be just due to the fact that the Nike�s only have a 60 compression core and a soft cover. There was also a definite lack of distance with the tracers over my regular ball using everything from my driver to my 60� wedge. What it boiled down to is that I had to take one club more than I normally would (or a harder swing on a short pitch) in order to get the distance I needed. I have only played one type of ball in my short career so I am not sure if the difference I see is simply due to the balls I use or due to the characteristics of the tracers. The difference was enough that on my shorter approach shots I switched to a regular ball since my aim on such shots is pretty good. I did not try to putt with these balls but my guess is that I would not like it. I saw that the company is coming out with a ball specifically for putting but they don�t have much information on it other than the fact that it comes in different colors.

All in all, I consider this to be a great product at a reasonable price and have already recommended it to several of the people I golf with. I am sure that as I play on the course in the evenings I will start to get more and more people asking me why my balls are blinking.

Now, if only something could help me find my balls in the daytime��.

Snakes on a Plane (SOAP) is a bad movie. You might have known that beforehand. But there is a chance you might have thought it was a thriller worthy of Samuel L. Jackson. Or perhaps even smart satire or a parody of B-movies. It is none of those things.

Instead, it is an updated version of an 80’s made-for-cable B-movie horror/thriller. Think along the lines of Andy Sidaris movies, but with less sex and more Samuel L. Jackson. You might not know the name Andy Sidaris, but if you ever surfed for boobies and ’splosions on late-night premium cable during the 80’s, you’re familiar with his body of work. They included such gems as Malibu Express, Savage Beach, Picasso Trigger, and Guns. You probably get the picture just from the titles. If not, consider this: most of his actresses were Playboy Playmates.

So that’s what you should expect when you walk in to see SOAP. That’s not to say that SOAP isn’t entertaining - it is, if you’re prepared to laugh at it instead of with it. Not surprisingly, I found the opening-night crowd very into it, cheering in all the right places, which helped a lot. If you can find a good theatre or a bunch of guys who enjoy B-movie schlock, consider it time well spent. I still remember when Masterchief and I saw Species 2, laughing the entire time at how ridiculous it was. In my mind, that’s money better spent than on a comedy that doesn’t make you laugh, or an action flick that’s bad but not funny.

So I could think of all sorts of fruity wordplay for this review, but the movie doesn’t mess around so neither will I. It just kicks ass. Now it does take some time to set up relationships between Crocket and Tubbs and their lady friends. Michael Mann doesn’t rush through that part, but he makes up for it with boobies, and more importantly later on, guns capable of removing limbs. The action scenes flat out rock; you do not want to wait for the DVD. See it somewhere with a great sound system and hear those .50s really sing. Ok, not so much sing as thunder - it pretty much sounded like lightning came down in the next seat over. [1]

It’s much more gritty and realistic than other action movies we’ve had lately (e.g., Mission: Impossible, which I also liked). It’s at the top, but not over the top. Yeah, it still has hot cars and boats and houses, but the series taught us 20 years ago that you need that crap to convince successful scumbags you’re just like them.

Just a reminder that Michael Mann directed Heat [2]. If you haven’t seen that lately, I can pretty much guarantee you it’s much better than you remember. It probably ranks up there as one of the most underrated action/cop/thrillers ever made. Miami Vice has the same intensity, although in different ways. Less touchy feely, more shooty stabby.

[1] And yet the burn mark was on my seat. Strange.
[2] And exec produced the Miami Vice television series.

If you’re in a hurry just go down to the link and watch this amazing video to a song by a group called Muse.

But if you’ve got a moment… well,

Something weird is going on.

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I think average opinion on this was, “Eh, it was ok.” That about sums it up. It is also one of the most anticipated films of the year, and it is selling out like crazy everywhere. I got there 45 minutes early and the line was already insane. I imagine some were there a couple hours early or more. Anyway, I thought the effects were good, especially on the sea men, but the story never really got you that involved. Some action scenes felt a bit repetitive and long, too. Of course, Keira Knightly was beautiful, but that’s gonna be the same in any movie she’s in. What I’m most curious about is the second week box office drop, and how it will fair against Superman in the long run. Normally I’d think this would go away quickly, but since everyone knows a third film is on the way, they’ll probably see it anyway.

Edit: Pirates OBLITERATED box office numbers, smashing records left and right. It’s the new #1 weekend, passing Spiderman by over $17M. This must have also beaten Aquaman by a wide margin, so Vinnie Chase has gotta be bummed.

30 years after his introduction, Marvel has finally released an official backstory for Wolverine. It was released in a miniseries (available in TPB) called Origin. The art is quite good, as you’d expect of a work of such importance. Without giving spoilers, it covers his parentage, upbringing, awakening, and passage into adulthood. Some details are given through innuendo, but it’s certainly clear enough for any adult reader with decent comprehension. A few plot points are a bit contrived; the character is fairly complex, and they tried to give an origin/cause for all major character traits and interests. Considering the age of the character (detailed in the book, finally), you’d figure some interests were developed later in life. Still, a must read for any fan, and who isn’t?

I just saw this SciFi classic last night, as part of a double feature with The Day the Earth Stood Still. Experts were on hand to provide more information (including, unfortunately, spoilers). I had never seen it before, but now agree it definitely deserves it’s status as classic SciFi. It was a big budget film back in ‘56 ($1.2M), so the sets look great, esp. on that Technicolor film.

Even better looking is Altaira, played by Anne Francis . The 50’s were a great time for objectifying women, and Anne Francis was definitely worth the effort. She runs around the entire movie in ultra-flimsy micro-miniskirts and bare feet, pretty much just like the photo (although her hair is much blonder int the film). In fact, according to Wikipedia, she helped launch the miniskirt craze. It’s no stretch that Commander Adams (Leslie Nielsen) and his crew (all male, average age 24.6) are comically falling for Anne’s naive character. Nielsen, who’s almost unrecognizable to someone who knows him from his Naked Gun films created 30+ years later, does a good job, although we heard he wanted to play it cooler but the producers were against it.

And, of course, there’s the iconic Robby the Robot. Robby was built for Forbidden Planet, but has made many appearances in film, TV, and commercials since then. He also has the best line in the film, delivered when Altaira complains he took too long to arrive when she called him:

Sorry miss, I was giving myself an oil job.

This is beyond any doubt, the greatest movie ever made. If we pitiful hominids are to leave something of value behind us to demonstrate our collective genius (after the Solar System explodes), a copy of this movie would qualify. It was made in 1968 and has not aged a day. You could view it today and its vision of Mankind’s future in space and beyond would stand up to scrutiny.

The spoilers will follow; if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and watch the DVD until you can get to the Cinerama Dome for a big-screen showing (they have them every other year). And don’t forget to sit in the very front row, center seat at the theatre; you’ll be immersed in a psychedelic journey beyond your wildest CGI-addled dreams.

PS. When I talk about the Monolith I am referring to that big, black, rectangular piece of ebony artwork that makes an appearance throughout the film. And yes, I’ve seen the Monolith written with a capital “M” for reasons that will appear in the review that follows.l
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Catchy tune, great video, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are showing their long term relevance like few bands seem to be able to do these days . I enjoyed this song so much when I first heard it that I went to iTunes to purchase a copy, but sadly, my account info was garbled from a recent hard drive crash, so I didn’t buy it. I am oddly glad of this though, as it seems that this great song is destined to be overplayed on EVERY station I listen to, to the point where I will likely hate it before the full album is released May 9th. Hopefully the rest of the double album will live up to this single, yet somehow not get turned into jingles and get the Phil Collins era radio saturation that can ruin even the best album.

I love a good gyro, and I love Arby’s fast food, but damn, their new gyro is just not good. I am sure that there were some skinny people in California that used words like fabulous or delightful to describe it in taste testing, but they were wrong. It is none of these. Now, the cheese filled potato things with bacon chunks were GREAT, but I would probably enjoy cheese filled cat turds with that much bacon mixed in. Can’t understand how a place that gets so much on there menu so right could drop the ball on a gyro!

Living in a world that constantly occupies and stimulates our minds
with color, sound, action, motion, etc. it occurs to me that many of
the truly obvious things in life are not being captured, stored in
our organic, transitory brains (What *does* happen after the brain
decomposes?? Where do the stored memories and abilities go?? I’ll
address that in a future thread). There are so many obvious truths that
have been learned, discovered, realized by CT members that is seems a
shame to let them go to waste into the thoughtless void of oblivion.

Which is why I am starting this series of ‘obvious’ articles. Given
my preferences, I’ll start with obvious movie facts. Mind you, these
are not opinions; these are facts which have been backed by the combined
might of the human mind and endeavour. If you haven’t heard of them yet,
then you are the perfect subject for the ‘…for Dummies’ series.

Since these articles may be full of spoilers, I will give fair warning of the
spoilers to come. Let’s start with the very popular “Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” If you have not seen it yet, it is now
available on DVD. Purchase the 2-disc set and avoid the movie-only set. You
will be very pleased.

[spoilers follow]
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The marketing people at Gamefly probably are trying to figure out how to send me a check for that one, but anonymity is far too important for an ass like me to give up contact info on a public forum. Instead, I would ask that they donate the money to a young aspiring nurse, cuz the world needs more nurses. I suggest going to a local strip club, cuz I met a bunch of ladies there who were going to college to be nurses, naughty, sparkly nurses.

If you own an XBOX 360, with the exception of Call of Duty 2 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I haven’t found a single other came that required more than a few days of my time to be finished with them. In the 3 weeks I had Oblivion with Gamefly I saved an assload of cash (though I am sure I will buy a used copy some day to play it again). For all the other games I got on Gamefly, there was not a single one that had any replay value in my opinion. Most of them I would have actually been quite mad about if I had purchased them at full price. Before Gamefly I researched purchases quite a bit, and was much more cautious with the games I tried, so on the plus side I guess, I tried some games that I would not have considered otherwise, and, of course, they sucked.

This is leads me to what really what makes Gamefly rock. See, most reviewers are soulless whores of the gaming industry. Then only decent reviews I have read in quite a while were at Penny-Arcade, while reading their comics. Seriously, their comics are one of the only sources of decent game reviews I have found, which is kind of like watching the daily show for news. For some reason, the idiots at all the major game sites figure you won?t remember the steaming pile of crap that they gave an 8.5 out of 10 to when you are reading their next ?review?.

The bottom line with Gamefly is that it saves a ton of cash. For $15 a month, I avoid buying $60 games. Simple math is that in 4 months I have spent what it would have cost for a single game, but I played 10 of them, which would have put me back $600. I would have played fewer games if some of them had been a bit better, but that hardly makes the service less compelling. The only ?downside? of Gamefly is that it is a bit slower than NetFlix, but then I live like 40 miles from a regional NetFlix center, so I usually have single day shipment from them (yes, I send a movie on Monday, it gets to them Tuesday, and I get my next one on Wednesday, which is pretty cool).

In the extended entry (if it works) are some mini-reviews from some of the games I played from Gamefly (not all were for the 360, but I need to fill in between their release schedule):
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Finally picked this up, and am just getting the hang of it. For a more detailed review by far better gamers than I (Masterchief and Zbalance) read these comments. Haven’t had much time to play, but was disappointed with the lack of online help and the pamphlet of a manual. Yes, I’m one of those geeks who reads the manual before he does something.

Coming from WOW, I’m used to automated updates and tons of UI mods. Oblivion has many content mods built with their construction set, but very few UI mods. No nifty Lua scripting engine to make UI tweaks easy. Another interesting file type available, surprising because it’s been forever since I’ve played “adventure games”, are saved games! One useful one puts you right after the tutorial (with all possible loot) and right before you choose your final stats. I’m also used to many dedicated strategy sites, including a few professional ones. There are far fewer for Oblivion, and IGN has decided to charge a subscription for their guide. Booooo! Anyway, I found some useful links that I thought I’d post. If you have more, please let everyone know by commenting. Thanks!

Oblivion Character Creation Tips
Lockpicking Made Easy!
The Alchemy FAQ

I could really use a guide on magic. And a game that didn’t hang when you switched to window-mode.

Edit: The game now crashes my system, apparently due to some video driver or performance issue (and I have a decent card: Radeon X800 Pro). I recommend others hold off until a general bugfix patch is released.

Yep, I liked it, allot. I liked just about everything about it. Casting, cinematography, choreography, costumes, the way they were able to put together intelligent and interesting dialogue that had every letter starting with the same letter (they used V, not C like I was doing until I ran out of words). The dialogue was so good I was convinced that Kevin Smith must have been involved with the screenplay until I saw the credits. I think the reason I enjoyed V for Vendetta the most was because it didn’t feel like the regular Hollywood script written by a committee of idiots, steered by marketing monkeys and studio nitwits. Usually, in the process of dumbing down a script to feed it to the target audience, they ensure that there is a clear and simple message, yet in this case it wasn’t that way at all. Is the terrorist a good guy? See it and think about all his actions for a full day before you answer. It wasn’t complex or deep so much as fully developed in ways that are refreshing in modern cinema. Furthermore, the main ?non-spoiler? plot theme was that an oppressive government with religious overtones is bad (aka the big bad republicans if it had been written in Hollywood), yet I recognized a few quotes made by the good guy from NRA speeches and propaganda!

Of course, I LOVED Natalie, and not just in a venereal way (adj relating to sex acts or sexual desire). She rocked in at least 7 different ways that I counted. She should be in every movie that deserves her, which sadly is not that many. When she did that thing to that guy, damn, it was like, wow! (You try to write a review without spoilers.) Now, I know there will be some who will disagree with me here, but I actually loved her English accent, and I had watched Pride and Prejudice the night before (for her sexalicious clone, Kierra, who also was amazing, of course).

The actor playing the lead was also astounding. He was able to put more feeling and emotion in scenes while covered from head to toe in his costume, including the mask and hat, than most Hollywood ?actors? would be able to express if they were set on fire naked! Truly an amazing performance. Same with the lead antagonist. His speeches were scary good. I hope he never moves to Germany and runs for political office. Overall, I can’t think of the any of the main cast that wasn’t great. Bravo all around. I recommend the movie with all the credibility as a movie aficionado that I deserve.

I’m typically not a hater, because there’s so much good stuff out there; I’d rather spend my time praising things I love. Also, film is subjective, and I don’t want to stop you from seeing something you might like. I am making an exception because a) Ebert didn’t review it (they probably didn’t let him screen it), and b) I am very confident you won’t like this film.
     Yes, I do see a lot of art, classic, and independent films, so you might discount my opinion based on that alone. But I have also seen both Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Ok, I didn’t really like those, either, but both are much better films than this. I’ll break it down for you, as spoiler free as possible. Again, when I say something is bad, I mean bad compared to Resident Evil, not Citizen Cane. Heck, not even The Fifth Element.

+ The plot is, “Milla mows down soldiers effortlessly.” That’s pretty much it. Ever play an arcade game with a cheat code that gives you infinite ammo, energy, and lives? It’s kinda like that, only instead of infinite lives, you only get one. So it makes you invincible! This is an action movie with no real conflict. Very shortly into the film, you realize Milla is never in any danger, ever, because she’s just that good. There are other plot points, but they are confusing and poorly explained.
+ The effects are mediocre, except the last sequence, which is really bad. This is probably because they spent all this money on some stupid blur effect on everyone’s face to make them look digitally airbrushed, all the time. I’m sorry, but have you seen Milla Jovovich? Because she’s really hot! She does not need any airbrushing!
+ It appears that camerawork and editing are used to hide lousy fight choreography. However, the movie is only PG-13, so that also may have contributed to the lousy fight choreography.
+ Action heroes spend so much time kicking ass, they don’t have much time to talk. Therefore, it’s crucial that their lines are clever and memorable. Milla gets lines that painfully state the obvious. It would have been better if most of her lines were dropped.
+ If you’re not turned off by now, the only thing that will possibly stop you from seeing this is a reminder that it’s PG-13. That’s right, when she “gets naked”, they make sure you can’t see a darn thing. It’s only there to frustrate you.

So what can you watch instead? Well it turns out the writer/director is not an idiot. He did another action movie set in a future dystopia called Equilibrium. It stars Christian Bale (with a good supporting cast) and it’s actually quite good! It’d probably make a good double feature with Batman Begins. If you were really after Milla, rent The Fifth Element. Yeah, it can be cheesy and over the top (it’s a Luc Besson film, what do you expect?), and Chris Tucker is pretty annoying in it. But it’s also pretty entertaining, and you get a gorgeous 22 year old Milla wearing nothing but a few strips of gauze expertly designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. I give it 3 thumbs up.