Assassin’s Creed (Yes, the first one. Shut up.)

This is how severe my backlog is. I’m just now playing the first game in this series. I haven’t even picked up the others because I wasn’t sure when I’d get to this.

It took me a little while to get into the groove of the game. Not because I thought it was bad, or I was bored. The game itself is pretty good, and I enjoy it. It came down to mood. I was not in the mood to help people, or do good deeds. What I wanted was to be a complete bastard and rampage through things and kill everything. So I went to Prototype for a while. Then I came back to this game and felt better about not assassinating everybody who pissed me off.

There were a lot of people that pissed me off in this game, too. Every drunk asshole who pushed me for laughs, all the crazy guys, all the begging women. I really would have liked to do away with those. But the game isn’t that sort of game. You want the citizens to like and trust and help you. So you have to be nice to them. And not gut them in the street.

I had a lot of fun getting the achievements and watching the story unfold.

I have one tiny, little, itty bitty gripe though. It’s nothing that would have me up in arms or say that this was a bad game. But it is enough to bother me. Not just while playing, also after I was done with a session, thinking back on it. It bugs me enough that I feel that if I don’t write it down somewhere, I might explode. Mostly because it’s a thing I cannot seem to suspend disbelief on, which I’m generally fairly good at.

The makers of this game want me to believe this motherfucker, this world class assassin, has been trained to use many weapons, he can ride a horse, he can jump across rooftops like they’re nothing, and he can plummet off of the highest goddamned building in the fucking world into a pile of hay and not hurt himself, yet for some reason…

He doesn’t know how to swim?

Bullshit.

Don’t try to tell me that it’s the times he lived in, either. Where there is water, there is swimming, and this guy encounters enough water to have that be a part of his life. The makers of this game want me to believe that in all his training, not once did any of his instructors say “So, Altaïr, now you know how to kill a man in 20 different ways with your bare hands, is there anything else you need to be taught? Like, you know how to swim, right?”

There is no fucking way that anybody is going to let an assassin be taken down by something stupid like drowning. It’s just not viable. A guy is offing the biggest names in that moment of history, yet all anybody has to do to stop him is push him into a lake?

Bullshit.

I know this sounds over the top and oddly adamant, it’s a strange thing to focus on, I know. I just… I can’t. I can’t let it go. A highly trained killer not knowing how to swim is like James Bond not knowing how to bed a woman. It doesn’t fit. It makes no sense. It manages to take me out of the game in these tiny fits of frustrated rage.

That said, it is the only real complaint that I had the whole time I was playing. So that’s not a bad track record.

Doom Plague Movies

I recently got pretty sick. Sick enough that I was incapable of doing anything at all except laying on my couch in complete delirious misery. I wasn’t even able to sleep, it was so bad. This gave me a lot of hours to fill. A lot of hours. Needless to say, perhaps, I cleared out a good number of things from my instant queue, and even hit a few things that were just randomly picked hoping they’d lull me into oblivion.

In total, I hit 20 movies in about 60 hours.

So I thought I’d do a bit of a brief writeup on each, and use a very easy scoring system. + if I liked it, - if I didn’t, \ if I don’t really go either way or maybe go both ways.

Here we go:

-American Loser: I really feel like they used Sean William Scott and Gretchen Mol as magnets for this movie knowing that people would flock to it, and then didn’t bother, you know, writing anything. This was such a boring movie. The idea that a guy is an alcoholic with learning disabilities and is trying to form a relationship with a chick that is just as fucked up as him has potential. It was not met. Or even glanced at.

+Assassination of a High School President: This was a lot better than I expected it to be. There were really interesting layers and the story was pretty intriguing. Bruce Willis’ character was simply amazing, his aversion to gum was well played out (something that I thought was going to be really stupid). It had a kind of noir-ish feel to it, but doesn’t quite dive into the pool. This isn’t a bad thing, even though it sounds like it should be.

+Let Go: Another movie I really thought was going to be blah, but turned out better than hoped. The description that Netflix gives it doesn’t really do it justice, not that I’m surprised by that happening anymore. Everybody they cast did a brilliant job at their parts, though I have to say my favorite was Kevin Hart. I love that guy. I really felt for him through the whole movie. He just kept trying and failing, and it so wasn’t even his fault.

+Safety Not Guaranteed: Granted, this movie has some kind of strange moments in it, and those moments wouldn’t have worked in any other setting, but they did in this one somehow. They only really left one thing untouched that nags at me, and that’s the like “I have only done this once before”. It’s never questioned, never brought up to the guy. Everything else is taken care of. Why not that? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME!? I WAS SICK!

+Heavenly Creatures: I’ve known this story for some time. I have a couple of true crime books that talk about it or give the short version. When I found out that a movie had been made, of course I had to see it. I had never previously encountered the journal entries, and the addition of those just made the whole story more … more. It adds a level that you just don’t get when you’re reading the basic facts.

\The Snowtown Murders: So. So, I really liked the information this movie put forth. The facts of what went on. Depicting all the characters really well. It just wasn’t a very exciting movie. At times it was incredibly graphic (a scene where one brother rapes another goes on a lot longer than you’d think), and there was enough to keep my attention, but I think that I would have much rather read about all of it. As detailed as it was, there were some spots that didn’t really touch on things too deeply, and that was weird. I didn’t hate it, but I won’t watch it again.

-Jerk Theory: Fucking suuuuuucked. There was no redeeming moment in this movie at all. Not one. Nothing. The acting was bad, the story was stupid, it was boring, it had obnoxious songs in it. Bad. All bad. No good.

+He Was A Quiet Man: Not really something that I expected to see Christian Slater in. I mean, obviously he is, but the role, the character he plays, isn’t really Slater norm. I think it really shows his diversity as an actor, his amazingness, really. This movie was really touching. There were a lot of unexpected things, too, which I liked. I kind of wonder why I didn’t hear more about this movie, but I kind of don’t. You don’t really know what to expect going in, and there’s no real way to describe it to anybody else that doesn’t make it sound trite or unlike the movie you just watched.

+The Killing Jar: It could be that I just really really love Danny Trejo, Michael Madsen, and Harold Perrineau, but I had a lot of fun with this one. A lot. The plot synopsis makes it sound really boring, but I was not bored for one second.

\Capote: I like things that Capote has written, I just wasn’t really interested in the movie. I can’t exactly say why, either. Maybe just because I was sick and it’s not really a great sick movie? I don’t know. I also didn’t hate it. And Phillip Seymore Hoffman’s portrayal of Capote was glorious. Beautiful. He was stunning in that role. That’s what kept me watching the whole time, honestly.

-HottieBoombaLottie: Just. Shut up. This was a movie I hoped would destroy my brain and let me sleep. Unfortunately, I stayed awake for the whole thing. There were tiny funny moments, and that’s all it’s got going for it. So bad. So very, very bad. I might have actually gotten sicker due to this movie.

+Repeaters: What happens when you Groundhog Day a trio of recovering drug addict kids? Chaos! Wonderful, wonderful chaos. It’s not the most intelligent movie on the planet, and there are some plot holes that never get cleared up (really kind of minor plot, thankfully). Still, it was fun.

\Hick: The actors played their parts well, the concept was interesting, but when it was all said and done, I just wasn’t into the story. It wasn’t bad, it was just blah. Not the best. Also, Netflix should learn how to properly describe things, because this movie is nothing like how it’s written up.

+Nightwatch: There are two movies of this name. One of them is Russian and the other has Ewan McGregor and Josh Brolin. It is very important to make sure that you do not watch one thinking you are watching the other. They are very very different movies with very different plots and you will get VERY confused. That said, this Nightwatch was FANTASTIC. Man, I loved it. I was on the edge of my seat. As much as I could be, since I was laying down curled in a ball. WATCH THIS MOVIE. Goddamn.

\Howl: I am not a fan of the poem, Howl. This movie, however, was pretty well done, and the animation was amazing. Jon Hamm and James Franco nailed their parts. And the story of the trial is pretty interesting, too. They cut out the more boring bits, of course, making it seem less tedious than I’m sure it was. It was entertaining enough to keep a sick girl happy.

-Arthur: I hate Russell Brand. I do. There’s only one thing he’s in that I can think of that I enjoy, and that’s Despicable Me. I’m not sure why they picked him to redo something Dudley Moore did so well, but it was a poor, poor choice. He just didn’t pull it off.

\Project X: I watched this largely because I saw a preview for it with a friend of mine and the dog in the jumping castle was really amusing. I’m ambivalent toward the movie in general, as it had some fun parts, but the concept is not really… anything I’m into. If that many people were anywhere near my house, people would be getting shot. By me.

-Nine Dead: I don’t think I’ve been so disappointed in a movie in a really long time. This one should have been great. Nothing about it was, though. It was flat, it didn’t have suspense, it didn’t have interesting characters, the actors failed at getting anything across (except for the mob guy, he was pretty believable), and I will never – not ever in my life – believe Melissa Joan Hart in a role like that.

+Employee of the Month: This movie really starts out shitty. I gave up on it a couple of times just because the flow was off and the story wasn’t catching me. But I hit a certain point and all of it turned around. From then on, it was good times for everybody. Okay, just for me, since I watched it alone. Blood, laughter, things that were completely unexpected. It’s like the recipe for awesome.

+Killer Elite: Yep. Yes. All the time yes. All the yesses in the whole world. I cannot yes enough. I did go into this thinking that it was all action, which it’s not, but I wasn’t upset at the absence. There were actiony parts that were enough to fill my desires. The rest of it… wow. Wow. And the line “Strawberry or fuck you”? I knew I was in love as soon as it was uttered.

An Open Letter To Netflix

Dearest Netflix,

What the fuck.

No, seriously. What the fuck is going on with you? Why is it that you don’t seem to fucking function anymore? Not even in the “I hate the way you tried to ‘streamline’ your shit” kind of way, either. But in the “I don’t think your employees are actually doing their jobs” kind of way.

I guess it started a while ago, maybe even before you decided to start charging more for shit. Splitting up the DVD and Instant services was just an asshole move. But things were rocky before then, weren’t they?

You started suggesting things that you thought I might like that were NOTHING like the movies and shows I had just watched or were in my history. Okay, I can see that I suppose. Maybe there’s something in this romance movie I might like even though 70% of what I watch is drama or horror, and 20% of it is comedy. Maybe somebody dies, I don’t know.

From there it went to what you were comparing with what. In your “More Like ___” sections, I started to find more and more things that were NOT alike at all. Not in any way. That got paired up with the fact that you started grouping things wrong. Care Bears in science fiction? That’s not how that works.

Then it was like a trainwreck happening, one that’s still happening. One that I just don’t even try to understand anymore.

– You say there are new episodes in a series when there aren’t any.

– You list things on the New Releases tab when they’ve been out for four or five years. If you just got it, and are just now able to let us see it on Instant, it should go under Just Added.

– There is no longer any way to search by actor if you’re not online doing it. It just tells you that shit doesn’t even exist. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure that Marilyn Monroe did a couple of movies and that you’ve got them all stashed somewhere. The fact that I have to search each one by title instead of being able to bring them up by her name? What the hell?

– Your copy is wrong. More often than I would like, I find myself watching something because of the description I read. And hating it. Or, on the flip side, not watching it because it sounds like something I would loathe, and then finding out later that I would have loved it.

– Your employees aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing. Did you know that for a really long time after you added Life to Instant that you had Charlie Crews’ name completely wrong? Hm? You did. Shouldn’t have happened.

– Episodes for shows are actually skipped over during regular play. When I watched Supernatural, it skipped over half of a season when I was hitting “play next episode”. When I watched Ugly Betty, the first few episodes of the first season had the wrong information tied to them, and weren’t in order. A couple might have even been missing, but since I don’t know the series, I couldn’t say. But it was all very confusing.

– Recently Watched randomly just doesn’t show up at all. Doesn’t seem to be any reason for it. I’ll just turn on my 360, fire up Netflix, wait to see my Recently Watched so I can easily pick up where I left off, and … it’s not there. The whole goddamned field is just gone.

Now let’s add into the things I’ve spoken of before, shall we? I’ll just copy and paste it to make things easier for both of us.

“To make it worse, Netflix also changed their dashboard to coincide with the Xbox change. And the Netflix dashboard is so goddamned useless sometimes that I want to throw things. They show you movies you might like to see during the last bits of movie you’re watching (some movies have stuff going on during or after the credits, so I’m not particularly happy that they reduce the screen) but they don’t give you a description of the movie, you have to seek it out after to see what it’s about. There’s no way to rate a movie without playing it. There’s no longer any way to mark that you’re not even interested in the movie anymore, so stuff you really don’t want to keep seeing pop up will, unless you go to the site. For tv shows, you can’t go in and pick an episode unless, again, you start playing the series. So if you haven’t watched in a while and want to see if the “new episodes” they’ve added are really and truly new, you have to start playing, then go to the episodes list. This is completely stupid.”

That’s just something I tacked onto a rant about the 360 dashboard. I think it’s good here, too. Since it’s about you. And the things you’re slacking on. Or forgetting. Or just don’t care about anymore.

The money I shell out to you for this service might not mean much to you. But it means a lot to me. I’m on a really strict budget. Netflix is one of the things that is completely unnecessary to life that I allow myself. A fun little thing that I enjoy having quite a bit.

It might not matter to you that all this shit is broken, but it matters to me, because of this money I hand to you every month. I know it matters to other people as well. Maybe they don’t use Instant as much as I do. Maybe that 10 bucks isn’t a really big deal to them. But it still matters. You know why?

BECAUSE WE PAY YOU FOR THIS SERVICE.

It’s not something that you give us for free. It’s not an add on to DVDs like it used to be. It’s a stand alone service that shouldn’t be as fucked up as it is. It should work. It should be functional. It should be valid. It should be fun, and not frustrating.

I’m not going to threaten to not use your service, because that’s unrealistic at this point. But I am going to ask you to fix your shit, because I’m tired of it, and there’s a good number of people I know who are also tired of it. It should be seen as a courtesy to us, your paying customers.

To sum up?
Get your shit together, Netflix.

-Mila.

Fable: The Journey

The thought of this game coming out actually saddens me. It actually makes me feel upset.

Since the Fable series began, I have bought and loved every single game. I have purchased every tiny bit of downloadable content, including Pub Games and now Fable Heroes. I have had no complaints for any of them. I’ve played all of them many, many times through.

And now?

Now Lionhead has decided to make a Kinect only game. Fable: The Journey requires it to play at all. I do not have a Kinect. I likely won’t ever have a Kinect. I hate it. I hate that it’s such a piece of shit and yet Xbox refuses to improve it or throw it away. They just leave it as it is, and keep trying to push it on us.

Because of this, I will not be buying Fable: The Journey.

For the first time in the long run of the Fable franchise, I have absolutely no desire to own one of their products. I’m not quite sure what to do with myself, here. I want Lionhead to continue to make Fable games, but not if this is what they’re going to do. It’s a big risk making it Kinect required. I know a good deal of people who feel the way I do about the device. I know others who are curious about it but can’t afford it, and likely won’t be able to for a long time. So what’s this going to do for Lionhead? What purpose?

I’m okay with titles having Kinect whatnot built into them, it means I can still play with a regular controller. I’m okay with arcade games being Kinect only. It kind of sucks that I won’t get to play something like Gunstringer, cause it looks cute, but it’s not a game from a company that I have invested a lot of time and love into.

But this?

Phone – The Saga part two

A little while ago I posted about my phone and how much I didn’t want to let it go. Despite it’s many issues, I was finding workarounds so that I could keep it and live happily.

Well, the new Twitter client that I found won’t let me look at conversations, won’t let me click on links, and takes an exceedingly long time to get anything done. I tried for a while to just use the service web-based, but that was even more cumbersome. I thought I had found a miracle when I discovered the client I’m using now. It’s really actually cut down on my Twitter use because of it’s many problems.

New issues have arisen as well. I’m not getting all the texts that people say they’re sending. And I’m also apparently not sending out all the texts that I type up, either. It says I do. But then people feel hurt because I drop the conversation (or don’t answer them at all).

It’s use as an actual phone has been cut down as well. It’s dropping calls, it’s not getting full signal – even in my house, where I have an AirWave. What’s an AirWave? It’s a thing that makes it so that you essentially have a cell tower inside of your home. Yet, somehow, there are times when I have NO BARS. How is this possible? Fucked if I know.

And now Snaptu, who I thought was just dropping the Twitter client part of their service, has just shut down completely. This was the only way that I had of checking weather, or reading news, or doing a good number of things that I did. I don’t know if they realize it, but by shutting themselves down, they’ve cut off big things for a lot of users. Fine, they want to just focus on Facebook, I guess Facebook is giving them enough money to do this. Does that mean it’s not the biggest dick move they could have pulled? No. In fact, I don’t know if they realize just how fucked up it was to do this. It was bad enough that I couldn’t get to Twitter anymore, but to take away everything else I used? Why? They claim they want to make Facebook accessible to all phones, but what about the rest of it? My phone really cannot even open most news sites. It certainly can’t do anything web-based easily.

Anyway. Because of all these things, plus the fact that the new battery didn’t help very much, I’ve bent and gotten a new phone. It should be here any time. Wait wait wait.

I’m anxious, but in an excited kind of way. I’m looking forward to playing with the new phone and getting to know it. But I’m also sad that I have to retire the one I’ve got. The time has come, though, and even I cannot ignore it anymore.

Never again.

It feels like forever since I’ve sat down to write anything about games. Which, honestly, it has been. I am, admittedly, addicted to my Xbox. I have named her, I speak to her, I long for her when we’re parted. So to be away from her for this long has been a terrific ordeal.

Yes, overly dramatic, yes, they’re only games, she’s only a gaming system. Whatever.

By the time I got my living room set up, my television plugged in, my machines hooked up to it, it had been 68 days since I had played anything, or even seen my 360 in any manner than tucked away securely in a box awaiting my attention.

68 days.

I can honestly say that I have not gone that long without using my Xbox since I got it. Probably since I got my original Xbox, actually. Which I still have, by the way. And I do still love him, too.

It might have been one thing if my hiatus was voluntary, but it was not. It was forced. The sheer mess of things, the current status of certain rooms being that of a storage unit with no end in sight, my absurd notion of working from the back of the house forward (don’t know, don’t ask, can’t tell you) all impeded my … well, my whole life, to tell the honest truth. My gaming systems were not the only things tampered with. My ability to spend any significant time online, my books, my writing materials, all hidden under piles of other shit, thus making my life one of the circles of Dante’s Hell, I’m not sure which. All of them, maybe, at various stages. Yes, I know I’m using that entirely wrong, the example, but as stated above – overly dramatic.

About the only entertainment I have experienced that is of my norm is my movie watching. I have seen a good fair number of those. Not all of which I have written about, but could soon be on the way.

Anyway. All of this was just to say that everything is back to how it should be.

My Phone

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a new phone the last few weeks. My current device has mounting issues, much like a ball of snow rolling down a semi-steep hill at a good clip. The most annoying of which, and the newest problem, being the slow but sure final death of my battery.

I got the phone that I have now because of the way it looks. I can admit that. I didn’t look into the features, I didn’t care what it could do. I saw a square phone and fell in love. Plus, it carried the name of “Lotus”, really, how could I go wrong?

Lucky for me, my choice wasn’t a bad one. I’ve had really good luck with it and until the last six months or so, have had no issues with it. Sure, I yell at the GPS as it’s trying to tell me where I need to be going, but I don’t think that’s something that I can lay upon the phone’s proverbial shoulders. I think that’s whoever made the goddamned GPS having a sick sense of humor. Sometimes I wonder if when I turn the GPS on, there’s a two way connection happening, and there are people on the other end of it listening to me call my GPS a bitch and a whore and telling her that I can’t turn there or I’ll drive off a bridge/into a wall/down a one way street. I talk back to my GPS as if it’s a real person. A real person who pisses me the fuck off.

Anyway.

The problems started with the keyboard, really. If I’m not careful, it likes to add extra letters in, so I end up with “helloooooooo” instead of “hello”. Something that isn’t so bad unless I’m not paying attention, or on Ambien (just… don’t ask). Then other letters started sticking and not coming up at all when I typed. When I turn the sound down it doesn’t go down for texts, the same if I turn it on to vibrate only; texts still come through with loud and occasionally startling noise. The blinking light that comes on when the battery is too low now doesn’t turn back off when it’s getting recharged like it used to, I have to restart the phone for that.

Mostly all things that cause minor annoyance.

Then the service that I was using for Twitter and Facebook, Snaptu, got bought by Facebook and stopped supporting it’s Twitter client (I think this is a poor and asshole-ish decision on the part of Facebook, not Snaptu), and getting to Twitter became a little tedious.

On top of it, the battery began it’s slow crawl to Electronics Heaven.

All added together, I began to consider getting a new phone. It seemed like it might be the right time for it. Especially given that today is Black Friday, and there are deals everywhere. I have spent an unknown number of hours going over my choices, and trying to find something that fits what I really want. Extra time spent last night into early this morning, because I had so much more to look at.

There are some really interesting and neat looking phones out there. A lot of them right now are free, as well. Which is good for my pocket book. Actually, to be honest, I wouldn’t even consider getting a new phone without it being free. I just can’t afford it. Those bastards are expensive. Although, I think I could spare the one cent that Amazon is charging for some of their choices.

After that long while, I thought I had come to a good choice. So then I began to think about how I really felt about this. Past the giddiness of having something shiny and new to play with, beyond the joy of abandoning the problems of my current phone. Right to the heart of things.

Truth be told, and this is not a very geeky thing to say, I’m just not ready for a new phone yet. I’m comfortable with the one that I have. I love my phone still. I don’t want to lose the familiarity that I have with it. Nor am I ready to abandon some of the texts I have saved (shut up). I know the problems of this phone inside and out. I know how it works, I know it’s temperament. And despite what’s wrong with it, there’s a lot more that’s right.

For now, I think, I’m just going to purchase a new battery (five bucks!) and call it good. I’m going to forgo the New Toy High for a little longer. Cling to what I know. Not out of fear, mind. Out of love. Always out of love.

The Walking Dead – A little more

I’m starting to wonder if this show is not so much stealing ideas from other zombie movies as it is giving homage to them by including scenarios and scenes in what they’re doing.

Very noticeably, I’ve seen stuff from Shuan of the Dead (when they try to blend with the undead, only in The Walking Dead it was much gorier.). Now, it’s possible that I’m just too into zombie movies and I’m just noticing similarities, but I just can’t escape the feeling of copycat with that first episode. It was entirely too similar for me to let it go. The Shaun of the Dead thing might just be me picking up on things and blending them with that feeling I got from episode one.

I am starting to get into the show now. I’m interested in the characters and what happens to them, as well as where the story is going. However, now that I’m into it, I have realized that there’s only one season available, and it’s only a few episodes long.

Which brings me to a bit of a rant. STOP MAKING SEASONS SO SHORT, YOU BASTARDS. Okay, I’m done.

Silent Hill: Homecoming (Frustrations)

I cannot even tell you right now how long ago I got this game. I borrowed it first from a friend, then decided that I liked it too much to not own it, and that it was going to take me a fairly long time to play through it, so holding onto his copy wasn’t really nice.

I have this frequent problem. Or I did. I am trying to correct it. It’s a bad habit, and it’s how I ended up with a giant fucking stack of games that were only somewhat played through. I would be in the middle of a game and something would come out that I was more interested in. Now, instead of buying said game and waiting until I finished what I was working on, I would play the new game, leaving the other sad and alone. Crying. On my shelf.

While I did this with Silent Hill: Homecoming, I did manage to pick it up again fairly quickly after I finished whatever wondrous thing had floated my way. I was playing along quite happily, too. Enjoying myself. Yelling at the television when things wouldn’t die. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have a potty mouth. It’s not just when I write.

Then the most horrible of horribles happened. The one thing that every gamer dreads and curses the sky for.

I got stuck.

I did it to myself. I can wholly admit that. It was all entirely my doing. No question. I went into an area with maybe two bullets, a quarter of my health, a crowbar, an axe, and a flashlight. No medical kits. No health drinks. Just wandered on in, didn’t even think about it. Didn’t consider that I’d just found something pretty significant and maybe, just motherfucking maybe, I should take a moment to gather myself so that I wouldn’t be walking into the massive clusterfuck of assrape that I did. No. Not me. I’ll just go right down this pretty creepy ladder here, and… oh. What’s that? Boss you say? Can’t go back, you say? Fucked myself, did I?

I did.

I literally spent weeks trying to find a way to defeat Scarlett with what I had on me. I can admit that I didn’t even come close. Not even mildly. It’s actually pretty laughable how not close I came to killing her and proceeding with the rest of the game. I would laugh, except it’s my problem. Laughing at yourself often gets you a white padded room and a special jacket. Or maybe that’s just how hard I would be laughing, and with the release of emotion might come some added screaming and…

Let’s move on, shall we?

I have previously talked about my quest to wrap up the above noted games, bringing my backlog into some realm of sanity. Coupled with the vow that once I have picked up a game, I will complete it before starting another. (This vow is hard to keep. Obviously I was not made for vows. Or with much willpower when it comes to video games.) The time for Silent Hill: Homecoming did roll around, and lo, I picked it up and with heavy heart did erase my previous game, thus confirming the restart that was fated to occur.

I’ve been enjoying it… I suppose I should say that I had been, had being a very key word here… I had been enjoying it during the replay. There had been enough time and enough other games in that time that I didn’t remember the story perfectly, I didn’t automatically know how to solve the puzzles. It was a little new despite how far I’d gotten. It was okay. It really was.

Until I started thinking about getting to that boss level with the goddamned giant fucking puppet of massive sphincter bleeding. Then I started to get upset. Not with the game, though, with myself. I kept thinking of all the things I could have done differently to prevent this replay from happening. Replaying because you want to is one thing. Doing it because you’ve shoved your own head up your ass is entirely different. It’s just aggravating.

I had to stop playing again. Now it and GTA 4 are the ones staring at me from my shelves, asking me why they aren’t yet finished. SH:H pleading with puppy dog eyes and little whimpering noises. “Just finish me, I’m a good game, I’ll show ya, you enjoyed me before, just pick me up, we’ll have a good time together, promise”. Bastard.

I’m just so annoyed with myself over things that I’m taking it out on the game. I have to get over it, that’s what it comes down to. I have to, and I will. Somehow. Because I cannot just let it linger. It will drive me crazy (obviously we’re significantly down that street, aren’t we?).

There will be another update on this when I finish the damn game.

S, Darko

This movie is just as bad as I thought it was going to be when I first found out about it.

At least I got to watch Ed Westwick prance around dressed as a greaser. Sadly, this is the only redeeming part.

To clear up misunderstandings I had previously: Frank is not the same Frank. Yet for some reason, the image of Donnie’s Frank in his Halloween costume, the freaky rabbit, is Sam’s “Dream face”. This brings me right back to the idea that Frank was Donnie’s catalyst and shouldn’t make an appearance in this film at all. I still stand by that.

The guy actually named Frank in this movie is a mechanic and has nothing to do with anything.

Not that any part of this movie made any actual sense. It sort of felt like the writer and/or director of S. Darko didn’t actually understand Donnie Darko, and just took imagery that seemed cool and shoved it into this movie. The entire concept is off.

I hated it. I hated it the whole time. Don’t watch this movie. Run from it. Run screaming. If somebody says you should watch it, punch them in the face and then run. Or set their copy on fire. Either one is fine with me.

It – Movie VS Book

Alright. So when I finally read It, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I thought that I would immediately pick up the movie and sit down and have a watch, but that didn’t happen until today. As I have previously written, I have never seen It the movie. I don’t know how. I went all these years and never even thought to pick it up on the cheap. Netflix finally sent it to me, and I finally sat down and had my viewing experience.

First things first: There wasn’t enough blood.
It is a very very bloody book. A kid gets his arm fucking ripped off. A little girl is absolutely mutilated. At one point Bev’s bathroom sink explodes with so much gore that it’s supposed to look like a murder scene.

I know it’s a made for TV thing, and they couldn’t include all the really gory stuff, but they certainly could have made things more to the actual story in that area.

Secondly: There were a lot of things I felt were pretty integral to the book that were completely missing from the movie. Like Mike’s story of seeing It for the first time. Where the fuck was that? What about the explanation of how they all got out of the sewers the first time around? HOW ABOUT the fact that the promise they made was a promise made in blood? That’s kind of important.

A lot of other things too. I mean, I know you’ve got a certain amount of time you can have for things like this, but if you’re going to make something three hours long, why cut so much out? Go for that fourth hour and get all the really important stuff in there.

Third and last: The ending was crap. Not the part of what It is, because that’s the same in the book. There’s a lot more involved there, and I think they should have put it in, but whatever. What I’m upset about is the fact that Derry didn’t sink into the ground. Um. Hi. The entire underground is falling apart, how is the city staying up?

All in all, I did enjoy it. I certainly enjoyed Tim Curry in it. He’s so freaking wonderful. I could watch it again, and I would probably get it on DVD, honestly. But that doesn’t mean I’m not sorely disappointed in how things went.

I propose that this is remade. We bring back Tim Curry as Pennywise and we do everything right. I’m sure that we can make that spider thing look a lot more realistic and terrifying. Just imagine what the screen artists of today could pull off if given the reins.

Heavy Metal

Sometimes you can’t go back, and sometimes, even if you can, you shouldn’t. You should just hold in your memory the way things were way back when. There should be no attempt to reclaim youth, or fond memories.

Becomes sometimes those memories fall short.

If I ever needed a clear example of that, I could find it easily in Heavy Metal. Some things can stand the test of time, others make you wonder what the hell you were thinking. Heavy Metal kind of makes me sad to have watched it again. When I was younger, I remember I thought this was one of the best things I’d ever seen. I even remember the magazine of the same name.

I have to believe, now that I’m significantly older than the last time I saw this, that the entire purpose to the movie – and magazine – was the boobs. Perhaps the violence, too. Back then, this must have been one of the goriest things ever. Outside of those two things? I suppose the art is okay, despite some of the characters being ridiculously misproportioned. Funny enough, it’s not just the women. At the start there’s this guy running around with a torso twice as big as the rest of his body.

The last chick in the whole story, the so-called badass? She seems to be less of a badass and more of the “ideal woman”. She’s strong. She’s got HUGE breasts. Long flowing hair. She got make-up tips from The Misfits (oh, not the real life band, the all girl band from Jem). She’s dangerous. Also? She never says a single word! That’s right boys, everything you’ve ever wanted in a girl. Can kick your ass, but can’t tell anybody about it. For some unknown reason.

Really, should have left this one in the past. Where it belongs. So destroyed what was once a nice childhood memory. Take my advice, and leave it the hell alone.

Also – extra slow motion in cartoons is ridiculous. It just leaves things feeling sluggish.

The Haunting Of Molly Hartley

While I don’t feel as if I wasted precious minutes of my life by watching this movie, it certainly isn’t one that has made any huge impact in my life. Seeing it, not seeing it, doesn’t really matter. It made absolutely no mark on my being.

Complaint One: You can’t be baptized by some random girl from school. I think that’s common enough knowledge, even for people that weren’t involved in religion in any way. So why the hell would anyone wander into an empty church and follow said random girl into a baptismal? Cause she’s obviously going to try and drown your ass.

Complaint Two: The girl, Molly, is entirely too skittish. Yes, being stabbed by your mother with a pair of scissors is a traumatic event, but jumping five feet in the air when a dog barks at you from the other side of a secure fence and shitting yourself when the mail drops on the floor in your house? A little too much. I get that they want her to be Average Girl, but come on. Molly’s terrified by her own hair.

The ending of this movie is complete crap, by the way. It feels as if they left it open intentionally for a sequel. Which makes it feel like they should have just made it into a television show. That way they could just flounce on with their story as long as they wanted.

Not a whole lot is explained about things either. If you’re into this genre of movie normally, you can kind of piece things together, but you have to be really knowledgeable. Certain characters are just abandoned after a time, too. They have these fairly big roles or big scenes and then… you just don’t see them anymore. There’s an added issue with keeping people’s personalities straight. One girl in particular flip flops in her personality so much that she may well have begun her fictional life as two different characters, then they couldn’t cast the other, and smooshed the two together.

Don’t even bother with this movie. I guess it’s kind of like a reworked Omen or maybe Rosemary’s Baby. And they didn’t do it right. Not even close. At least in those you got to see the creepy shit that went on with the kid. They kind of just implied it there toward the end in a super vague way. In real life, what she achieved at school could easily be done with studying and focus, nobody needs the devil to do well in school. Especially when they were a 4.0 in their previous school. Crap. All of it. Crap.

Not entirely sure why it was listed as horror. They didn’t even explore the premise enough for it to qualify.

Large print

Before I say anything else, I’m going to say that I know what the purpose of large print is. I know it’s for people who have sight problems, and I know that it’s good for that. This isn’t against large print in general.

Saying that, I went a while ago with a friend to Half Price Books, and we hit up the clearance shelves. What that means is books for a dollar. With the amount that I read, books for a dollar is a really good price for me. I managed to find a few that I’d been wanting to read but didn’t really want to spend a great amount on because I didn’t know if they’d be good.

One was Dean Koontz’s Your Heart Belongs To Me. There was a time in my life when everything I read from Koontz I loved. I don’t know if it’s just me that’s changed, or if he’s been overworked, but some of his more recent books have been really disappointing. This one had a concept that I thought was interesting, but it came out kind of quick on the heels of another book, so I couldn’t be sure about it.

It has sat in my stack of To Read books since I brought it home, and last night I finished the one I was reading about serial killers and decided to pick up the Koontz next. Upon opening it I discovered that it’s large print.

There’s something about large print that makes me feel like I’m in kindergarten. I have such trouble reading it. I feel like I’m absolutely slogging through the chapters, like I’m not able to read anything quickly. It’s really frustrating to get to page 50 and turn the page to discover that I’m only at chapter three.

Usually I’m really careful about checking my used books. I guess this is what I get for just picking up the book and running away with it.

One day I may be purposefully looking for large print books, and then I’ll be grateful that they exist. But right now I’m really frustrated.

Just a note on the book itself: so far it’s really wordy. Stephen King wordy. Which is fine for King, but is a little awkward coming from Koontz.

The Dharma of Star Wars

This seemed like a really good idea at the time, and maybe it still is and I’m just taking it too seriously. Or maybe I’m just offended that the author attempted to fit Buddhism incorrectly (in my opinion) into the Jedi path. It could possibly also be that every time I read “Dark Side VS GOOD Side” I felt a little bit of that good ol’ Sith resentment rise in me.

I was ultimately bothered by the fact that despite everything we know about the Jedi, and the Jedi code, this guy still insisted that Jedi are more Buddhist than Sith. We know that the Jedi aren’t allowed to have relationships, and they’re not supposed even become attached to people. Attachment is a Buddhist ideal of suffering, but not in the way that he’s trying to say here. He’s implying in this book that as a Jedi you’re allowed to care for people in extremes, just as long as you’re not attached to them.

Let me remind you of the Jedi Code:

There is no emotion; there is peace.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
There is no chaos; there is harmony.
There is no death; there is the Force.

The Jedi are supposed to attempt to be beyond all emotion. They’re supposed to exist only in the Living Force. That means – right now. Right now, right here. Whatever happens, happens for a reason. You’re also supposed to be completely free of all negative emotion.

That’s all well, fine and good, but humans are not robots. Even Artoo is more human than he’s supposed to be, and it’s commented on several times through the series.

The true meaning of being a Sith is to accept that you have these emotions, to not let them overpower you and rule your life. To master them, understand them. To have passion and let it flow through you. To understand that, yeah- okay. So maybe I hate that guy, and that’s okay. But I can’t let it consume me entirely.

Doesn’t that seem more Buddhist? Doesn’t that seem more like what the Buddha was trying to teach? To take the middle path? To not deny yourself things, but to not indulge either?

Maybe I’m just biased here, what with being all Dark Lord of the Sith and whatever, but I think that whole Jedi denial of the self does a lot more damage than it does good.

Zack and Miri Make A Porno

Okay, first things first.

I really didn’t know what to expect coming into this movie.

Let me cut in here. I already feel like everything I’ve typed has dirty connotations. I have a feeling that this is going to continue throughout this entire piece. There is nothing I can say that won’t sound dirty somehow. There’s no way to put things that can’t be twisted around and made perverted by somebody. Double entendres and outright dirty things are going to seem to spring from my fingers. Hell, I might even make a Freudian slip here or there. NOT INTENTIONAL. I promise you that I am going into this movie review with a clean mind. CLEAN. You don’t believe me. I know you don’t.

Sigh.

Alright. So this movie. Didn’t know what to expect. Figured it would be awkward. Uncomfortable. It wasn’t. In some ways it was, but not in the way that I felt awkward watching it. I would watch this movie with my mother, and she would laugh. I know this because she laughed riotously during Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle, and I thought I was going to die at certain parts, but I didn’t, and thanks to that I now know my mother harbors within her some of the sick humor I’ve got. I really think she’d like this one.

Seth Rogen is quickly climbing to the top of my favorite actors list. There are a couple that he won’t ever surpass, but I do think he’s gotten through the number 10 slot at the very least. He’s proven himself to be brilliant in anything he sets his mind to.

So I liked this film.

Now let me rant a little, will you?

This movie is rated R. Rightly so, in my opinion. It definitely worked for that R rating. But you see, I read that the American movie theater association, or whatever the fuck it is that decides on movie posters and their content, didn’t like the idea of having actual pictures of any of the actors. Since the title had Porno in it. They kept it to stick figures, because apparently, you can’t pretend that stick figures are doing anything dirty. (Let me direct you now to this link. NOT SAFE FOR WORK! Unless you work in a porn shop. What are you doing reading my writing at work, anyway?)

There are several reasons I find this ridiculous. Least of all the above link. Having an actual photo of Seth Rogen on the poster could not harm a disabled fuzzy bunny. Having Seth’s photo on the poster next to the word porn isn’t going to harm anybody. The kids who know what the word means are going to giggle. I can guarantee that they’ve seen worse at school because their perverted little friends have found their daddy’s stash. The kids who don’t know what it means aren’t going to give the poster a second look.

The chances of anybody very young even knowing who Seth Rogen is is very minimal. The last thing he was in that should really be seen by anybody under the age of 15 is Freaks and Geeks, and I’m pretty fucking sure that’s obscure enough that the vast majority of them have no idea what you’re talking about when you say anything about it. He’s been in plenty of comedies, yes. But not really the sort that you want to be taking small children to. Of course, if you’re going to let your five year old sit through Pineapple Express, then you’re probably the sort of parent who keeps them out until midnight so you can go see Hostel with a smaller crowd. Kid in tow. That was a pretty obvious part of the statement, wasn’t it? Want me to make it clearer? You’re fucking retarded.

Your small children aren’t really going to know his face. The movies that Seth Rogen has done that ARE actually appropriate for small kids to be seeing, he has only been a voice in. And if this isn’t your issue? If you’re one of the people who think seeing flesh and blood faces next to the word porno is the problem here, then I don’t even know what to say to you. I don’t. I wish I did, and I wish that it was something clever. Smart. Biting. I wish it would make you blush to yourself and reconsider your point of view because somebody has finally said words to you that make sense deep in your heart of hearts, and you have seen the error of your ways. But I have no such words. So it’s not going to happen. Instead, I just get to rant at you, and you will wave your finger at me invisibly from the other end of the interwebs and shame me for liking filth like this. I am not shamed. Penis.

Not to mention the fact that you should be teaching your children that not every movie that guy who did the voice of Mantis is going to be okay for them to see. I knew that when I was little. Why? Because my mother taught me things.

I find it really incredible that this is what people are worried about. The word Porno in a movie title. When in reality, the word “fuck” is bandied about so often that I lost count within the first twenty minutes of the film. Then you have the fact that people are simulating sex. Oh, and did I mention that I now know what Jason Mewes penis looks like? I do. Because they show it.

There is absolutely no reason for children to be seeing this movie. If they are, then somebody needs to call Child Protective Services. Because there is a lot more going on with those families than just inappropriate movie viewing.

Now that I’ve said that, should you be of correct age, see this movie. I did firmly enjoy it.

And how many sexual references did you find? Pervert.