All posts tagged Rant

Zombieland (2009)

By | 20 October 2009 | Movies, Rant | 1 Comment

Earlier this week I went to the local theater and saw Zombieland. The film had been getting good reviews, and the few people I knew that saw it seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. So, I figured I would go check it out. Unfortunately the film ultimately disappointed.

The trailers I saw of the film made it look like it was going to be a comedy with zombies in. Kind of like how Resident Evil is an action movie with zombies in it. This was not the case. The movie opened with a strong horror element, as it was plagued with cheap shock scenes. This set a bad tone for the film, as the shock scenes never came back, but the threat was there.

There were comedy elements throughout the film, but they didn’t feel right for the setting. And, quite frankly, most of the jokes really weren’t very funny. I cannot remember laughing once throughout the entire film. Part of the problem was that that film took itself too seriously, inconsistently.

Mixed into the horror/comedy was coming of age drama. At the end they tried to force a lame moral to the story: “if you don’t spend time with people, you might as well be a zombie” or something like that. I guess it had something to do with the main character, and the world coming to an end to finally force him “out of his shell.” It was like they were trying to make the film something more, but it didn’t really work.

Much ado was made of the cameo in the film. I had my fingers crossed for Bruce Campbell, but that was too much to ask. The cameo was actually just Bill Murry. Granted, I like Bill, and I guess that is a big deal for a random zombie movie, but it didn’t really do it for me. Like pretty much everything else in the filme, it just didn’t feel right.

As you may have guested, my biggest problem with the film was the identify crisis. Is it a horror movie? Not really. Is it a comedy? Sort of. Is it a drama? I guess. It is good? Not really.

So, while there were interesting points in the movie, it was mostly disappointing, and run of the mill. I will give the film a 0 on my Undecim scoring system.

Tales of Ice and Fire

By | 19 October 2009 | Rant | 3 Comments

Last weekend I finally able to finish A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in the, A Song of Ice and Fire series. This series is one of my favorite.

Many fantasy series are what might be considered “high magic,” which basically means that every fiber of the universe is dripping with magic, and magic is integral to the function of the story. For example, any D&D novel is like this, as is the dreadful Harry Potter series. Luckily, SoIF is not.

A Song of Ice and Fire might best be described as something akin to historical fiction with light touches of mysticism that add flare to both the story, and setting. I particularly like the fact that most things that appear to be magic can be explained away as “smoke and mirrors.” But, this is contrasted with other “true” mystical elements.

One of my favorite aspect of the writing style is the gritty realism throughout. It makes you feel the grime on your skin, and smell the fresh blood in the air. It is coarse, harsh, and captures the essence of the period beautifully.

Another excellent aspect of the series is the intricacies of the plot. The books are LONG, and have several point of view characters. All of these characters demonstrate all the complexities of a living world. When you’re reading you not only have to remember about the point of view character, but you also have to remember where they are, who they’re with, and what information is available to them. Since the realm is fairly large, and they only have conventional methods for conveying information, it is always interesting to see who has what information, and to see how that information has been corrupted over time. It is also interesting to see how the plots of characters play out over time. These books play no favorites.

You never know what is going to happen in the books. It goes well beyond the classical good triumphs over evil. In fact, up to this point, good is pretty much getting its ass kicked by evil. Perhaps the most solid pillar of virtue, Ed Stark, was brutally executed for essentially no reason towards the end of the first book. I am still stunned by it when I think about it. However, to a certain extent there is a level of karma in the series as well, since things always seem to come back on people.

Granted, this is all just an insubstantial rant, and not really a review (I always get crap for posting spoilers on my site). But, I hope that I have conveyed the essence of the series, and inspire someone to pick up the first book.

On my Undecim rating scale, I whole heartedly give the series a five, and encourage everyone to pick it up.

SGU Continues to Disappoint

By | 11 October 2009 | General, Rant, Television | 9 Comments

Last Friday was the final part of the SGU premiere, Air. And, sadly the show continues to disappoint. This is all a matter of perspective, of course. There are several things that have taken the show in a new direction different from previous Stargate series.

The tone is much darker, and the character dynamic is much more like a soap opera than a group of professionals working together. Seriously, if you were selecting an elite group of people to work together on a world in the far reaches of the galaxy wouldn’t you pick some people that wouldn’t be at each others throats constantly?

The presentation is also quite different. The sets are much darker, and worn looking. Apparently the SGU people are stuck on what is possibly the most advanced piece of technology to ever be on the show, and it looks to be the least advanced. Sadly, it looks like something straight out of Battlestar Galactica.

Camera work is just dreadful. One of the things I have always liked about Stargate is the wide open camera shots. I always felt like I knew where everyone was, and what was going on. Sadly, so far in SGU they have opted for very tight shots. This only adds to the soap opera feel of the show, and makes me feel like I am missing out what is going on off camera.

These changes, among other less obvious ones are why people are beginning to polarize around the show. Right now, people seem to be falling into three camps: hate it, love it, don’t know what to make of it.

The people who have been following the show for years, and loved it the way it was are leaning towards the hate it camp. Too many things have changed in such a way that the show does not even feel like Stargate. It is something else that has elements from Stargate in it.

The love it crowd seem to be the people that were BSG fans. I loath that wretched re-imagining, so it is fairly obvious why my opinion would clash with theirs. I also think some of these people are those that came onto the show towards its end, and didn’t really care for it. Most of the changes have made it filmed in a more contemporary way at the show’s detriment.

A vast majority of the people are still in the don’t know what to make of it group. I think these are people that have been watching the show for a while, but are only casual fans. They recognize that there are differences in the new show, but they are waiting to see how it all settles together before they make a decision on it.

I intend to keep waiting the show, and will watch the whole first season to see if it improves. Hopefully I will warm up to it, because there are not a lot of options for science fiction right now.

ODST: Epic Fail

By | 9 October 2009 | General, Rant, Video Games | 4 Comments

epic-firefight-sized

This is a word of caution to all you Halo faithful. Make sure that you let your games upload to bungie after you finish, otherwise your stats might as well never have happened.

For some reason, My brothers, vanlandw, and I partook in a seven hour round of firefight, and scored well over 2,000,000 points. The stats from that game alone would have been epic on my service record. Unfortunately, I jumped the gun and turned off the Xbox too soon, since I went to bed right after the game. However, that seven hours translated into 66mb of game play. And, that would have taken a while to upload.

Luckily, vanlandw saved the video of the match, so there is at least some evidence that the match occurred. Although, at 66mb it’s too be to share on the base file sharing package.

Lesson: long play time -> long time in lobby to upload game to bungie.

P.S. vanlandw, when you read this, take a screen cap from the game so I can post it, thanks.

Halo 3: ODST

By | 7 October 2009 | General, Rant, Video Games | 8 Comments

Let me begin this by stating, this game has an awful title. The original working title “Recon” was considerably better. Just throwing together a bunch of random letters is not particularly helpful. I can understand if they did not want it to be confused with Halo Reach, which is supposed to come out some time next year. However, they could have just as easily gone with something simple, like “Shock” or “Trooper,” but whatever I guess.

Last week I managed to procure this game. Sadly, I had to put it on a credit card since I am too broke at the moment to be able to pay for it in cash. Hurray for interest. Sadly, since my purchase was delayed, I missed a marathon session with vanberge, and vanlandw (who wussed out and played on Heroic). Luckily, vanlandw was up for a second play through so I was able to obliterate the campaign on legendary with him and my brother, Jason. Good times.

The game itself is basically halo 3, but a little suckier. There is HUD system that obscures a lot of screen, and sucks on split screen. Additionally, they decided to put health back in to the game. So, it effectively works a lot like the original halo, where you have a “shield” and health. I have to say that the past two games have made me a bit soft, because it sucks to have to find health packs again. There are a few quirks in the system as well, for example, if you pick up a turret it makes you run faster, whoops.

When we started there were some serious lag issues. For the first couple of levels the game was lagging so much it was barely playable. However, during this time vanlandw was experiencing smooth game play, so I assume my degraded performance was due to caching data to the hard drive or something. Anyhow, after a few levels everything started working smoothly.

The campaign was pretty fun, not as good as Halo 3, but better than Halo 2. I hate the flashback aspect of it it though. And, the story is not particularly interesting, especially if you listen to the audio clips. The whole “save the girl” storyline…give me a break. The campaign was effectively short though, as the three of us were able to beat it on legendary in under five hours. And, there are not really any tough choke points like there are in Halo 3.

Firefight kind of sucks. It is not fun to solo, period. And, while you can play with friends, there is no matchmaking so if none of your friends on online you’re by yourself. Also, the skull handling is pretty annoying. I would really like to have more control over it. I tend to prefer things that are set so you know specifically what is required of you. This constantly changing the terms of battle only deters from the experience. Even if all they had was a way to “buy” disabling of a skull with points kind of like you do in Cal of Duty: World at War in Zombie mode.

Most of the achievements in the game are pretty easy to get, in fact you get about half of them just by playing through the campaign. However, there are some tough ones, particularly the vidmaster challenges. I am not sure about the fightfight achievements. I haven’t been able to get four people together to play it, and so far the best I’ve done with a group is 120,000, and that took quite a while to get.

I am not exactly sure why, but I think the game designers took a page out of the Gears of War book with the way things are setup. The level designs are much more muted than what I’m used to in Halo. And the “visor mode” just washes things out worse.

Basically, I’d say the game was fun, but not great. I would recommend it to every Halo fan. However, I think that most casual gamers would not get a lot of enjoyment out of it. I’m giving the game a 3 on my undecim rating system.

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