In the last two days I have done something I haven't done in a good long time: Blind bought movies/tv shows. For a long time I was only buying movies or shows that I had seen before. Sort of building up my collection as it were. But between Thursday and Friday I have bought 4 blu-rays I've never seen before.
First was Paprika
In spite of my nom de web, I'm not a big anime fan anymore. I used to be a huge one back in the 90s, but at some point I feel as though the medium has passed me by. I have neither the money nor the stamina to keep up with all the series that are available now. And, unlike the early days of anime in America, there's no more natural barrier to keeping the crap out. Back then, only the cream rose to the top, because there wasn't as high a demand for "just any anime". Now the market is flooded with everything from disposable Funimation drek to true masterpieces from the likes of Otomo, Miyazaki and Kon.
Satoshi Kon is the incredible director behind one of my favorite anime feature films of all time, Perfect Blue. Paprika is a film about dreams, what they tell us about ourselves and being true to your true self. I highly recommend it to fans of "art films", thought provoking movies, and especially lapsed anime fans like myself.
I also picked up Next Avengers
This is easily my favorite of the five Marvel original animated films thus far. And it's a huge improvement over Doctor Strange (my least favorite so far, but that's a discussion for another time). The premise is a simple one. The Avengers settled down and had children. One day, Ultron (the killer robot) resurfaces and the Avengers must rally to defeat him. Their children are sent to live with former playboy and superhero, Tony Stark, for safe keeping. When their parents all fall in battle, Tony raises the kids to one day take up the mantle of their superhero family.
I think not being tied into any rigidly established continuity allowed the creators to focus less on trying to make things "fit" for older viewers and more on great storytelling. Appropriately, it also is the kid-friendliest of all the films thus far. Great for kids and adults alike.
I also bought Weeds Season 1 and Wanted.
Unfortunately I haven't watched Wanted yet so I can't comment on it yet.
I am, however, more than halfway through the first season of Weeds and will soon be going back for more. It's a great show. Satirical, insightful, and all the time, it is not preachy, or playing too much to my least favorite of genre trappings: "Woe are we! The suburbs are really so devious and horrible to live in!" (I'm looking at you American Beauty and every wanna be that's come around since). Also, it's hard to put any one character in a box. I like that in my fiction, because it's such lazy writing to say "this is the bitchy mom", "this is the loser dad" etc. Life never works out that way, so why should fiction.
Also, is it me, or does the youngest son, Shane, often seem like he's walked into this show from a completely different show of his own? And I don't mean that as a slight against the character, the actor, or this show at all. But when you have a show about a single suburban mom trying to make ends meet by selling weed, and her youngest son (here be some spoilers)
Shoots a mountain lion in the face with a BB gun, and he films a fake terrorist beheading with a neighbor's kid
(here endeth the spoilers)
He just seems a little left of center. But I dig that.
Oh, and Mary Louise Parker?
RIDICULOUSLY hot!
That's all for now. Now to try to get some more Resistance 2 trophies and hopefully get some Rock Band on later.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Yep Still Alive; Part 2
Well yesterday was about comics, so today's blog won't be.
The Warriors:
The Warriors is quite possibly my favorite 70s movie and favorite cult movie (excepting, in both cases, the original Dawn of the Dead). There is just something about urban decay and blight as a visual setting that I just can't help but be attracted too. And The Warriors showcased this in spades. Add to that the over-the-top nature of the gangs and characters and you're guaranteed to appeal to the comic book fan in me. But, as great as the movie is, I'm writing to talk about the game based on it.
Movie licensed video games tend to, putting it lightly, suck massive amounts of ass. Only rarely do we get games that prove the exception to the rule. Fortunately The Warriors is one of them. Right off the bat, the game is able to avoid one of the major traps that most licensed games fall victim to. Most games of this nature fail by trying to stick too closely to the source material. Not realizing that stretching a 2 hour movie into a 8+ hour game is going to just lead to monotony and poor gameplay. The story of the game opens about 3 months prior to the story of the movie. Allowing for a significant amount of gameplay (easily 7+ hours) to play out before you even embark on the movie's storyline.
Bottom line, if you're a fan of old-school brawlers (Streets of Rage, Final Fight, etc) the game is definitely worth playing. And if you, like me, are a fan of the cult classic film, it's worth owning.
Bond. James Bond.
Like most from my generation, I grew up on the Bond movies of Dalton and Brosnan. And, as a kid, I was never a huge fan of the Bond films. I mostly watched them because I thought it was what guys were "supposed to" do. I never really got into the Bond films until I saw Casino Royale (which I initially hated, but have come to love). After that I bought one of the James Bond Ultimate Collections to try and give the Bond series a shot as an adult.
The collection I bought had a nice sampling of Bonds. Connery (From Russia With Love), Lazenby (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), Moore (Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only), and Brosnan (GoldenEye). Only Dalton was missing, but I'd already seen both of his Bond exploits as a kid, so it was no big loss.
The Collection was a revelation. I had always been under the impression that the earlier Bonds were exercises in extravagance and way too overblown to be believable. But of all the movies in the collection, only For Your Eyes Only failed to hold my attention. And even that wasn't because the movie was too over the top. It just didn't pop for me. Granted I still haven't seen some of the more hated entries (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, Tomorrow Never Dies, etc.), but I have to say that I'm looking forward to pouring over the remaining Bond movies.
And for the record, my list of favorite Bonds is as follows:
The Warriors:
The Warriors is quite possibly my favorite 70s movie and favorite cult movie (excepting, in both cases, the original Dawn of the Dead). There is just something about urban decay and blight as a visual setting that I just can't help but be attracted too. And The Warriors showcased this in spades. Add to that the over-the-top nature of the gangs and characters and you're guaranteed to appeal to the comic book fan in me. But, as great as the movie is, I'm writing to talk about the game based on it.
Movie licensed video games tend to, putting it lightly, suck massive amounts of ass. Only rarely do we get games that prove the exception to the rule. Fortunately The Warriors is one of them. Right off the bat, the game is able to avoid one of the major traps that most licensed games fall victim to. Most games of this nature fail by trying to stick too closely to the source material. Not realizing that stretching a 2 hour movie into a 8+ hour game is going to just lead to monotony and poor gameplay. The story of the game opens about 3 months prior to the story of the movie. Allowing for a significant amount of gameplay (easily 7+ hours) to play out before you even embark on the movie's storyline.
Bottom line, if you're a fan of old-school brawlers (Streets of Rage, Final Fight, etc) the game is definitely worth playing. And if you, like me, are a fan of the cult classic film, it's worth owning.
Bond. James Bond.
Like most from my generation, I grew up on the Bond movies of Dalton and Brosnan. And, as a kid, I was never a huge fan of the Bond films. I mostly watched them because I thought it was what guys were "supposed to" do. I never really got into the Bond films until I saw Casino Royale (which I initially hated, but have come to love). After that I bought one of the James Bond Ultimate Collections to try and give the Bond series a shot as an adult.
The collection I bought had a nice sampling of Bonds. Connery (From Russia With Love), Lazenby (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), Moore (Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only), and Brosnan (GoldenEye). Only Dalton was missing, but I'd already seen both of his Bond exploits as a kid, so it was no big loss.
The Collection was a revelation. I had always been under the impression that the earlier Bonds were exercises in extravagance and way too overblown to be believable. But of all the movies in the collection, only For Your Eyes Only failed to hold my attention. And even that wasn't because the movie was too over the top. It just didn't pop for me. Granted I still haven't seen some of the more hated entries (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, Tomorrow Never Dies, etc.), but I have to say that I'm looking forward to pouring over the remaining Bond movies.
And for the record, my list of favorite Bonds is as follows:
- Craig
- Lazenby
- Connery
- Brosnan
- Moore
- Dalton
Monday, December 29, 2008
Yep Still Alive; Part 1
Wow, been a while hasn't it? Well between by several aborted attempts to create an entry entitled "In Defense Of Buffy Season 4" (which I will eventually finish and post one day) and being out of town for Christmas week with my girlfriend's family (and not internet, save for on my phone), updates got to be pretty slim pickins for a while. But now I'm back and ready to spill my thoughts about several geek topics onto the page. Ready to go?
Final Crisis (here there be spoilers)
Yikes, what a mess.
Ok. I'll admit that before this year, I was never a huge DC fan. I was and always will be a Marvel guy. It's just the way I was raised. My dad was a big Marvel guy, my uncles were Marvel guys, so it all just stuck. However, 2008 saw me making serious inroads at rectifying this.
It started at Wizard World Philly where I finally got to meet Ethan Van Sciver (DC exclusive artist extraordinaire) after spending years chatting with him on message boards. Amazing artist and awesome guy, I don't care what anyone says. I wanted him to sign something for me, and I picked up Green Lantern Rebirth and Sinistro Corps War vol 1. He did a cool Sinestro sketch in one of the books and got me really excited to read them.
In a span of just a few months, my Green Lantern Library jumped from two trades to six, and Hal Jordan is one of my favorite superheroes. Over the summer I also picked up both collections of Justice League Unlimited on dvd. I highly recommend it for anyone even tangentially entertained by comics and superheroes, it's great stuff. I even picked up the Identity Crisis and Green Arrow: Quiver trades. So, as you can see, I was slowly starting to get into the DCU.
Then I started reading Final Crisis.
The biggest problem with Final Crisis is the writer. I know Grant Morrison has ardent defenders all over the world. And I'm not trying to say that the man is untalented. In fact it's almost the opposite. His ideas are so big, and so unwieldy many times, he cannot convert his mental vision into a cohesive story that can be widely enjoyed. It also doesn't help that this huge event for the DCU is a love letter to Jack "King" Kirby and some of his lesser known work.
To put this in terms Marvel fans would understand; imagine if Secret Invasion focused, not on the shape shifting alien race of Skrulls (who show-up all over the place in the Marvel U) but instead on the Eternals, Deviants, and Celestials. The Deviants decided to take over the world and only the Eternals could stop them. Cap, Iron Man, Spidey, Wolverine, Luke Cage, etc are all either M.I.A., killed or, captured for 5/7th of the story. But instead it focused on Kirby's lesser known characters and treated them as though they were Cap, Iron Man, etc. and assumed that everyone knew the characters. It would be kinda weird, no?
Well that's essentially what's happening in Final Crisis. The Evil Gods of Apokalips and the New Gods of the 4th world had a battle and the Evil Gods defeated the New Gods. The Evil Gods come to Earth (inhabiting the bodies of established, but minor DCU characters) and bring with them the Anti-Life Equation. They set it loose over the globe and turn Earth into New Apokalips. Some are immune, but most turn into willing slaves of Darkseid (reincarnated in the body of 60 year-old cop Danny Turpin).
Sounds pretty cool so far right?
Until you realize that Superman is M.I.A., Martian Manhunter is killed in issue #1, Batman is captured (don't even get me started on what this means for Batman R.I.P.) and Wonder Woman is converted into a Darkseid slave and you hardly see her. 4 of the most recognizable of their superheroes are relegated to the sidelines while we spend most of our time with The Tatooed Man, Danny Turpin, A Monitor who's forgotten his true role, and the suddenly resurrected Wally West *EDIT* It's actually Barry Allen who has been brought back to life.
The whole thing is Motherboxes, "Kirby Dots" around dialog balloons and characters, the 4th World, and the Bleed. It's all over my head, and not made any easier to understand by Morrison's standard scene jumping with a lack of dialogue or captions explaining where we are and what we're seeing.
Final Crisis (here there be spoilers)
Yikes, what a mess.
Ok. I'll admit that before this year, I was never a huge DC fan. I was and always will be a Marvel guy. It's just the way I was raised. My dad was a big Marvel guy, my uncles were Marvel guys, so it all just stuck. However, 2008 saw me making serious inroads at rectifying this.
It started at Wizard World Philly where I finally got to meet Ethan Van Sciver (DC exclusive artist extraordinaire) after spending years chatting with him on message boards. Amazing artist and awesome guy, I don't care what anyone says. I wanted him to sign something for me, and I picked up Green Lantern Rebirth and Sinistro Corps War vol 1. He did a cool Sinestro sketch in one of the books and got me really excited to read them.
In a span of just a few months, my Green Lantern Library jumped from two trades to six, and Hal Jordan is one of my favorite superheroes. Over the summer I also picked up both collections of Justice League Unlimited on dvd. I highly recommend it for anyone even tangentially entertained by comics and superheroes, it's great stuff. I even picked up the Identity Crisis and Green Arrow: Quiver trades. So, as you can see, I was slowly starting to get into the DCU.
Then I started reading Final Crisis.
The biggest problem with Final Crisis is the writer. I know Grant Morrison has ardent defenders all over the world. And I'm not trying to say that the man is untalented. In fact it's almost the opposite. His ideas are so big, and so unwieldy many times, he cannot convert his mental vision into a cohesive story that can be widely enjoyed. It also doesn't help that this huge event for the DCU is a love letter to Jack "King" Kirby and some of his lesser known work.
To put this in terms Marvel fans would understand; imagine if Secret Invasion focused, not on the shape shifting alien race of Skrulls (who show-up all over the place in the Marvel U) but instead on the Eternals, Deviants, and Celestials. The Deviants decided to take over the world and only the Eternals could stop them. Cap, Iron Man, Spidey, Wolverine, Luke Cage, etc are all either M.I.A., killed or, captured for 5/7th of the story. But instead it focused on Kirby's lesser known characters and treated them as though they were Cap, Iron Man, etc. and assumed that everyone knew the characters. It would be kinda weird, no?
Well that's essentially what's happening in Final Crisis. The Evil Gods of Apokalips and the New Gods of the 4th world had a battle and the Evil Gods defeated the New Gods. The Evil Gods come to Earth (inhabiting the bodies of established, but minor DCU characters) and bring with them the Anti-Life Equation. They set it loose over the globe and turn Earth into New Apokalips. Some are immune, but most turn into willing slaves of Darkseid (reincarnated in the body of 60 year-old cop Danny Turpin).
Sounds pretty cool so far right?
Until you realize that Superman is M.I.A., Martian Manhunter is killed in issue #1, Batman is captured (don't even get me started on what this means for Batman R.I.P.) and Wonder Woman is converted into a Darkseid slave and you hardly see her. 4 of the most recognizable of their superheroes are relegated to the sidelines while we spend most of our time with The Tatooed Man, Danny Turpin, A Monitor who's forgotten his true role, and the suddenly resurrected Wally West *EDIT* It's actually Barry Allen who has been brought back to life.
The whole thing is Motherboxes, "Kirby Dots" around dialog balloons and characters, the 4th World, and the Bleed. It's all over my head, and not made any easier to understand by Morrison's standard scene jumping with a lack of dialogue or captions explaining where we are and what we're seeing.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Bettie and Acme
Like many, I was upset upon hearing the terrible news of Bettie Page's death. However, I was even more upset to find out that many of my peers at work had no idea who she was, nor did they seem to care. Maybe I'm spoiled by spending so much time with a relatively small circle of like-minded friends and acquaintances. Maybe I'm too old-fashioned in my interests, my pursuits, my tastes, etc. Or maybe the world at large is just too busy idolizing the current icons that stand on the shoulders of the giants of days past to notice what the clay feet of their heroes are resting upon.
OK, that sounded a little bitter...
On a brighter note I highly suggest the biopic The Notorious Bettie Page for your weekend viewing.
It is a wonderful film from director Mary Harron, best known for American Psycho. And while it, like most biopics, is far from all-encompassing, it does give a sense of the atmosphere of sexual repression and hypocrisy that gripped the United States in the 1940s and 50s.
For your viewing pleasure, I present a trailer for the movie:
As well as a rare 1997 interview with Bettie herself:
As promised here's my feelings on ordering groceries online: not too shabby. The actual ordering process was pretty painless. After I ordered my groceries (with an active running tally running alongside letting me keep track of how much I was spending), I requested a delivery time for the next day. I requested a window between 6:30-8:00pm and at 6:30 on the dot, the Acme truck was waiting outside. It was all pretty painless overall. My only issue was that because I didn't reserve a time before I started shopping, some of the items I requested were unavailable, but they made me aware of that before I checked out and now I know for next time. I also ended up spending about $30 less that I usually do at the store because I was able to stay focused on what I needed instead of just grabbing stuff that I saw and thought I wanted. I'll definitely do it again.
OK, that sounded a little bitter...
On a brighter note I highly suggest the biopic The Notorious Bettie Page for your weekend viewing.
It is a wonderful film from director Mary Harron, best known for American Psycho. And while it, like most biopics, is far from all-encompassing, it does give a sense of the atmosphere of sexual repression and hypocrisy that gripped the United States in the 1940s and 50s.
For your viewing pleasure, I present a trailer for the movie:
As well as a rare 1997 interview with Bettie herself:
As promised here's my feelings on ordering groceries online: not too shabby. The actual ordering process was pretty painless. After I ordered my groceries (with an active running tally running alongside letting me keep track of how much I was spending), I requested a delivery time for the next day. I requested a window between 6:30-8:00pm and at 6:30 on the dot, the Acme truck was waiting outside. It was all pretty painless overall. My only issue was that because I didn't reserve a time before I started shopping, some of the items I requested were unavailable, but they made me aware of that before I checked out and now I know for next time. I also ended up spending about $30 less that I usually do at the store because I was able to stay focused on what I needed instead of just grabbing stuff that I saw and thought I wanted. I'll definitely do it again.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Welcome HOME
So much for updating yesterday huh? Long story short, my day kinda went downhill after making that blog update. My afternoon at work became a torrential downpour of phone calls. Each trying my patience more than the last. And my trip home was tinged by minor chaos.
Suffice it to say, there was no spicy pasta for me last night.
All that out of the way, on to the fun stuff; PlayStation Home.
It's been almost 2 years since then president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, first announced Home at the Game Developers Conference. Since then, Phil has gone on to Atari, and his pet project, Home, has gone forward without him.
The long and the short of Home is that is is a virtual world existing on the PlayStation network, where PS3 owners can chat, play and interact with each other in a shared space. Sounds great in theory. But in theory, communism works...
Unfortunately, Home is kinda sterile and barren right now; and has lots of unfulfilled potential. Right now there doesn't seem to be much noticeable community management outside of Sony organizing "dance parties" in Central Square (the main gathering spot in Home).
For example, one of Sony's biggest and best games this generation is Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and there is a space dedicated to it in Home. The description of the area states that there are hidden areas to find in the Uncharted game space, but there are no instructions as to how to find them. And the location (based on the design of an early 20th century waterfront bar) is too small and cramped to accommodate more than, say, 20 people at a time. Unfortunately, in my brief time inside, there were easily 5 times that many. The virtual claustrophobia made it just plain annoying to stay too long.
That's not to say that Home is a total clusterfuck. Far from it. I always loved rearranging furniture in The Sims and Home offers a similar mechanic. And Sony has promised to integrate more features into Home in the future. And while they may be s l o w in updating their systems and network, they do get it done. So I'm hopeful that eventually, Home will be the user friendly hot spot that Sony has been touting it as. But I'm not holding my breath.
Christ, I'm tired tonight. That's all for now. Earlier tonight I place my first order for home delivery of groceries, so I'll comment on how that went tomorrow.
Suffice it to say, there was no spicy pasta for me last night.
All that out of the way, on to the fun stuff; PlayStation Home.
It's been almost 2 years since then president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, first announced Home at the Game Developers Conference. Since then, Phil has gone on to Atari, and his pet project, Home, has gone forward without him.
The long and the short of Home is that is is a virtual world existing on the PlayStation network, where PS3 owners can chat, play and interact with each other in a shared space. Sounds great in theory. But in theory, communism works...
Unfortunately, Home is kinda sterile and barren right now; and has lots of unfulfilled potential. Right now there doesn't seem to be much noticeable community management outside of Sony organizing "dance parties" in Central Square (the main gathering spot in Home).
For example, one of Sony's biggest and best games this generation is Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and there is a space dedicated to it in Home. The description of the area states that there are hidden areas to find in the Uncharted game space, but there are no instructions as to how to find them. And the location (based on the design of an early 20th century waterfront bar) is too small and cramped to accommodate more than, say, 20 people at a time. Unfortunately, in my brief time inside, there were easily 5 times that many. The virtual claustrophobia made it just plain annoying to stay too long.
That's not to say that Home is a total clusterfuck. Far from it. I always loved rearranging furniture in The Sims and Home offers a similar mechanic. And Sony has promised to integrate more features into Home in the future. And while they may be s l o w in updating their systems and network, they do get it done. So I'm hopeful that eventually, Home will be the user friendly hot spot that Sony has been touting it as. But I'm not holding my breath.
Christ, I'm tired tonight. That's all for now. Earlier tonight I place my first order for home delivery of groceries, so I'll comment on how that went tomorrow.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Long Time, No Update
I went from three updates in one day to none for two days. You can tell I'm back at work. I'll set aside some time tonight to give a proper update. Probably while I'm cooking dinner. Mmm, spicy pasta...
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