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.

Wall-E (game)

It makes me really sad to say that this game is complete crap. Absolute shit.

While it is fun to speed around pretending to be a cute little boxy robot, or fly at breakneck speeds as a sleek and powerful one, that’s about where the enjoyment ends. You can make them say things and stuff with the directional pad, but it doesn’t always work. If you let them sit on screen untouched for a little bit, they’ll do cute stuff, but it gets repetitive after a bit and uninteresting.

As much as I love this movie, I was really excited to get this game and play it. I even have Wall-E and Eve robots sitting on my shelf. They interact with one another. I can turn them on and just listen to them say stuff to one another and get a good deal more enjoyment out of my time than I had playing a game that revolves around them.

This is not the first kids game that I have played that has been completely horrible, either. Which makes me wonder if maybe kids are attracted to adult games because the people who make adult games know that we’re discerning gamers and we’ll bitch if something is broken. It’s like the makers of these childrens’ games don’t give a shit. They’re just trying to get a product out there that will be bought, and what happens after that is meaningless to them.

So the problems this game has? Let me list them for you.

– Graphics: For the most part, the graphics are pretty okay. Not the most high tech out there, but you certainly get the feeling that you’re Wall-E. The cut scene graphics are actually worse than the in-game graphics, though. And there are parts of the game where you can tell that the people working on it just sort of gave up.

– Levels: A few of the levels are frustratingly complex. Not in a way that encourages the player to keep trying. But in a way that makes me wonder if any child has ever even finished this game. They aren’t intuitive. They aren’t easy. You have to have one or the other. If you’re going to have a stupidly hard level, it has to be something that can be figured out. The end must be something clearly visible. Or you can do it the other way. You can have no guide at all, no path set, and have the level be the easiest thing on the planet. But you cannot make a level nigh impossible and not have some kind of hint that points the player in the right direction.

And there is no tutorial. No level to level guide that makes it clear what the hell you’re supposed to be doing. It’s all trial and error. Not once was I told that Eve couldn’t ever touch any object. Know how I found out? Dying.

The levels have these arbitrary end points. There’s no warning. You don’t get a chance to say “oh, I’m not quite done exploring yet, so I’ll just not go over there”. There’s nothing that tells you the end is near. You might just accidentally roll toward something that looks like a collectable, and then you’re done. You’re on to the next thing.

– Mechanics: The in game mechanics are just a huge bucket of failure. Something that shouldn’t work at all does, the things that you’re told should work don’t. Why throw three garbage blocks to get to your next point when two will open the gate just fine? Doesn’t matter that there are three lights on the giant metal bucket thing. That gate will open anyway.

There were also several occasions when the mechanics just stopped working entirely. Things that I needed to progress to the next part. I actually had to turn the game off and reload in order to get things functioning again so I could progress. More than once. If this had been an adult game, there would be outrage far and wide all over the internet. You know what I found? I found user ratings at 6.0 across the board, which makes me think that somebody isn’t being very honest.

– Buttons: This goes in with the no tutorial, sort of. You’re sort of told sometimes what buttons will do, but you’re never told at any time that these buttons might change. When they pair you up with Eve, instead of adding a button for the things that you guys can do together, or for Eve’s abilities, they just change the general button configuration. There’s no warning for this. It’s another one of those things that you figure out by dying. What should make Wall-E do things makes Eve do things and vice versa.

You’ll just be rolling along thinking, I’ll just jump over that red spot on the floo….or shoot things with Eve accidentally and die.

-Other: Checkpoints are a joke. Where there should be progress checkpoints after a particularly grueling puzzle, there isn’t one. So if you get past something you feel proud of finally figuring out after being frustrated for a half an hour, and then die, you get to do that again! Fun! Then! if you’ve done nothing complicated at all, you’ll roll right past a checkpoint! Awesome!

Mini-games required: Usually mini-games are things that you can choose to do or not do, as time or want dictates. In this game, however, there are levels you cannot pass until you finish the mini-games. Finish, and pass, I might add. And no, they aren’t easy.

There was one, in the first section where you play as Eve, where you had to hit these acceleration points, they would speed you on to the next one, and you had to get all of them within a very short amount of time. Something that was challenging and interesting. The first five times I tried to beat it. You see, at one point in the map, the barrier that forces (forces, you don’t just stop and can’t go further, the game flips Eve around in a grand show, and you can’t stop the movement) you back is right over the line of natural movement for this challenge. It’s at the second to last acceleration point. Eventually, I figured out that if I took a completely awkward route, I could bypass this enough to get through the game.

Did I mention that Eve can’t touch anything at all? Or she gets hurt? Nothing. Can’t touch the ground, the buildings, the random level items. The edges of things. All of it hurts her.

Did I mention that there are hidden collectables that require the movement of some in-level items by using Eve’s body?

Puzzle on that.

Further Xbox Broken Info

I realize that my last post about my xbox was highly vague and didn’t lend any knowledge as to what the problem was, but I was sad and angry and I didn’t feel like writing it out.

A week before that post, my Xbox had started to do this thing where it would begin a cycle of turning itself off and then back on again. It would do this for about five minutes and then quit, leaving me with the ability to play games or do whatever else I wanted to do for an infinite amount of time.

When I looked it up online, most of what I found said that in cases of anything overheating, the box would show red lights and shut itself off. The other thing I found was that it might be power supply failure, which mine displayed no evidence of. Despite the fact that these were not my symptoms, I attempted to apply them to what I was dealing with. Nothing made any difference. Nothing was showing that any part of my console was being defective.

I let it go a couple more days, and the cycling continued to increase. I finally contacted Microsoft support and spoke through chat with somebody who informed me I should clear the cache. I did this and it did nothing. Of course, at this point the chat disconnected and I was too frustrated to try anything else.

I didn’t play for a couple of days, didn’t use it for anything, to see if it just needed to sit. I even turned it on it’s head so it was sitting vertical just to see if that would make any sort of difference. When I turned the Xbox back on and discovered that none of these things mattered and the cycling was still worse, I contacted Microsoft again.

To be told that they’ve never encountered this issue and that my options were expensive repair or replacing the console entirely, neither of which I have the cash for. I was also informed by the tech I spoke to that he would continue to check into the problem and then contact me within 48 hours either way. Which never happened.

The next time I turned my Xbox on, it only stayed normal for five minutes before beginning this cycle again. That was the day I made that post which so succinctly summed up my current feelings.

I’m not sure how I’m going to replace this, only that I need to, because I’m already suffering from not having access to gaming. I’m twitchy. I’m frustrated. Gaming is a really excellent way for me to get out aggression and escape the world, to pretend to be somebody/thing I am not. There aren’t really any other entertainment mediums that have that ability. I miss it. So much.

Achievements for playing online in single player games

I game solo. I do this because most of the people that one finds online aren’t the sort of people I want to talk to. I also don’t really like playing games with other people for the most part, because they tend to ruin my fun. Even friends do this. I stopped playing the Lego games with people that I knew because while I was trying to do something, people would run off and I’d end up falling off of cliffs. That’s not fun to me. I like to explore, I like to see what’s there. Sometimes I like to just run around on my horse and kill animals for the whole time I’m playing, it’s pretty rare that anybody I know is willing to do whatever I want whenever I want to do it, so I play alone.

There are a few exceptions to that rule, of course. I got Monday Night Combat to play with a couple of friends (which I haven’t done since probably the first month I had it), I bought Viva Pinata: Party Animals with the intention of playing with others while inebriated. And I have a friend who I play the Fable games with. Other than that, however, my games are bought for me to play, and to play alone.

The newest trend of single player games such as Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Red Dead Redemption and others having a co-op doesn’t bother me. I’m not stupid. I know that other people in the world enjoy having a friend along for certain things. I’m not saying that they can’t make it, or have it, or use it. I don’t understand it, I won’t ever be in that number, but I can ignore it for the most part.

What I can’t ignore is single player games that have achievements attached to them for playing online and/or in co-op. I have games that I will never be able to get all the achievements for because I won’t ever play them with others. These don’t encourage me to do so, either. They just irritate me. Those nagging little empty slots holding achievements that I won’t ever get.

I’m unsure why I should shoulder this punishment because I don’t want to deal with other people. That’s what it feels like, to me. A punishment. It’s like the game industry is saying “Hey, since you’re a loner loser with no friends and antisocial to boot, you don’t get to have as much fun”. (I’m not really a loser with no friends, but I am antisocial and a loner.)

Sometimes I get really frustrated with games that are single player because I look at the list of achievements and see that so many of them are for co-op. How is that possible? Why should that be? In fighting games, in racing games, that makes sense to me. Those are games that you imagine playing with other people. But in no way does it make sense to me to be running around in Mass Effect with a partner of any kind to be getting any sort of achievement. It’s a single player game. While I know that there are games out there used for co-op purposes that have single player stories attached to them, like the Halo series, I can’t think of very many people that I know that go for those games FOR the single player story. They might do it, because it unlocks more things for their co-op, but it’s not why they got it.

Now, let me say here, I’m not opposed to the achievements being there, but can’t there be some kind of option? Some kind of add-on that people who want to play online and in co-op can get? A dollar or two shelled out so they can have these achievements and my slots can be filled with things that I can do alone? The game companies are free to have their cake and eat it too, but there has to be some other way. We unlock many things with DLC, more stories, more missions, more characters, clothes, weapons, random objects, so why can’t co-op be another one of them?

Games are allowed to have a certain amount of achievements attached to them. They have to add up to 2000 points total, it doesn’t matter how they’re distributed. DLC can add more when you buy them. So it makes sense to me to have co-op something that you unlock, something that ADDS those achievements to the game at the end of things. That’s fair to me. A lot of people don’t buy DLC because they’re not interested, so they don’t get those points. I wouldn’t get the points for the co-op DLC because I’m not intersted. It shouldn’t be shoved down my throat that I don’t play games with others when I look at achievement lists and see that there’s a huge chunk of them devoted to something I’m not even interested in.

There are 9 achievements in the main pool of Red Dead Revolver that I’ll never get. On the flip side of that, there’s an entire DLC story that seems to be strictly Co-op (I did buy this, but it was on accident, because I got the special sale that gave you all the RDR DLC for a low price), which is exactly what I’m talking about here. It highlights my idea perfectly. I’m sure lots of people bought this DLC (on purpose), so why couldn’t all of those RDR achievements be in that DLC? Or more than one?

Leave the single player people with the ability to get all the achievements in their game if they can, if they’re interested. Give the co-op people what they want, but keep it something separate. Really easy, in my mind. Really easy.

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?

The Hunger Games (Book and movie)

I have a feeling I might not be sitting in the Popular Opinion Cool Kids Section after this one. Oh well.

The Hunger Games in general didn’t catch my attention like it did the rest of the world. I didn’t clamor to get the books, and I wasn’t rabid at the idea of a movie. There are several reasons for this. I don’t actively seek out YA books, though I know they can be well written and interesting. I have a lot of other books sitting on a table and waiting to be read, competing with the reorganization and fixing of my house, so I’m not actively seeking out any books that come in a series. Those books waiting to be read are also things that I’ve been looking forward to reading, and I want to get to them. I haven’t been reading like I normally do, and the thought of adding more books to that pile at the moment is a little daunting.

However.

My mother picked up the first book in the series and read it really quickly. She told me that she really enjoyed it. Since it’s a YA and I know that she’s not trying to trick me into reading smut, I decided to give it a chance. I thought it might be nice to have a quick, fun read.

Turns out, I did enjoy reading it. The story is deep, the characters are well thought out and I was interested in knowing more about them. And I read it in under 10 hours total.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to fashion a Katniss Everdeen costume and write fanfic now. I’ve written fanfic exactly twice in my life. Once was an Anita Blake fic, I decided that with how absurd the story was getting and how badly the writing was becoming, a werecow fit right into it all. The other was a Superman/Lex Luthor fic for a friend that complained there was nothing good out there to satisfy her wants. There’s one brewing in my head that has to do with Darth Vader, but we’ll forget I even bought that up.

But I did decide that I wanted to see the movie, and so did my mom. I have heard nothing but rave reviews for it, along with statements that it was perfectly made and they left nothing out.

This is where I’m going to get hit with the shit stick, I think.

This movie has had issues and controversy surrounding it because of morons with low to nonexistent reading comprehension outing themselves as racists. I’m not going to get into this. Personally, I think the casting was pretty well done. My issue is not casting.

It’s the entirety of the movie.

My mother and I left the movie feeling… unsure. But as we talked about it, we realized… it’s not good. We were really unhappy. And I was really confused. How could everybody say that this movie was perfectly made? That it was exactly what the book was, and they couldn’t have asked for anything more? How were legions of people delighted by what they had seen? I felt hugely, hugely, let down.

I’m going to spell out why. But I’m going to mention here that I’m not going to hold back on what I say, so there’s bound to be spoilers. I don’t really know more than one or two people that haven’t somehow become absorbed into this, so I’m not really worried. Since I don’t want to get yelled at for it, however, and don’t want spoiler issues to overshadow the rest of what I’m saying, here it is:

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.

There. You were warned.

Now on to my issues.

1. Where the pin came from. I felt like this was a big deal because that pin came from somebody unexpected. It came from somebody that Katniss didn’t think gave two thoughts about her. It was a showing that she was supported in her future venture, not just for taking her sister’s place and being brave about it in the face of impending shit. Taking this moment away from the story… I just can’t fathom how they thought that it would be okay.

2. Haymitch and his drinking. They played this down. I’m unsure of why. Because kids would be seeing it? Didn’t kids read it? I also felt like him falling off the stage was something of small import. It meant that the whole of the country was watching District 12 already, but making fun of them. Taking this out means that they’re not turning the country’s view of their district around in any way. They don’t start out the underdog.

3. Peeta’s father was removed as well. We know in the book that his mother is a tyrant. This is generally ignored, but I think because I had just read the book and it was fresh in my mind that I translated it onto the screen. Removing his father was harshly evident. There was no balance. Taking out the moment that his father visits Katniss and gifts her with treats removes her decision that she can’t accept kindness from anyone, because of what she has to do. It removes the passionate moment where she throws out the bag, lessening the turmoil of her later decision to team up with Peeta and what it really means.

4. All the personal relationships were really underdeveloped. I felt no connection between Katniss and anybody else. Not her mother, not her sister, not Gale. I didn’t feel for her in the moment that she stepped up to take her sister’s place, because by that time, I really felt like she was an expendable character. Nobody seemed to really give a shit about her, so neither did I. This was in stark contrast to the book, where I could almost feel my own heart breaking as her sister’s name is called. As Gale has to come up and physically remove the sister from the scene because of all the emotion. While this happens in the movie as well, it’s not even a fraction as dramatic as it should have been. It was kind of like a walk in the park.

5. The pressure of the Games is removed. Not one part of it feels harrowing or dangerous. It feels like paintball with friends on a nice Saturday afternoon in comparison to how the book describes it. This can be backed up by the fact that there have been a great number of people in the real world wishing that they could be a part of the Hunger Games. WHY WOULD ANYBODY WANT THAT?

6. It is very evident in the book how different life is in the Capitol, spoken of many times in detail. The weird hair, the outrageous plastic surgery. This being replaced with outlandish makeup and wigs tears apart everything that was trying to be illustrated. Anybody can put on a wig and makeup. These people made alterations to their very structures because they didn’t really have anything better to do with their lives. They dyed their goddamned skin different colors. These are instruments to show the absolute decadence of the Capitol. The lavish lives that they lead. The painful blandness of their lives that drives them to staunch their boredom in un-thought-of ways.

7. Rue. Oh my god, Rue. She wasn’t there for long, but she was a huge impact on Katniss and the general point of the story. But in the movie she’s mainly left out. We don’t see her helping Katniss. We don’t see the exchange of knowledge between them, or that Katniss takes care of this little girl. We don’t get their connection at all. For christ’s sake, she doesn’t even chew the leaves, just pastes them over Katniss’ burns whole. There’s nothing there to make us feel anything for her, or for Katniss when she dies. It’s just an empty, decorated platter. Something pretty to look at, with no substance.

Even the fact that Katniss leaves the spear in Rue so that nobody else will be able to have it is lost.

8. Small, but integral, I think, is the crown. One of the simplest things that happened in the whole story, yet they managed to neglect it entirely. Instead of one crown for one person, the crown splits into two, a part for Katness, a part for Peeta, to show that they share the win. Yet in the movie? One. One for Katniss. While she is the narrator of our tale, she is NOT the only hero. In fact, she’s not really much of a hero in the standard sense at all. She is selfish. Peeta is the hero. This is evident even in the book. So where is Peeta’s crown?

9. Why did they lessen Katniss’ wounds? How did that make anything better? To keep the actress pretty? She went through hell in the book, yet she comes out of the Games looking pretty clean and plump. As if the entire thing happened over a matter of hours instead of days. By the way she looks, she doesn’t need any of the help she gets from others. The teaming up with Rue is diminished here as well.

10. We miss out entirely on her reaction to Peeta’s declaration of love. They don’t have her sitting in the audience to hear it along with the rest of the world. We see her anger. And even that isn’t fully realized. She breaks his hands in the book. Breaks his HANDS.

11. Another diminished aspect that I felt was hugely important? The gifts. The sponsors as a whole, really. Everything that they were doing, from their costumes to how they were acting was to get sponsors, to get gifts, so that they could survive. Without this, what point is the beautiful flaming set of creations by Cinna? Without this, why should she bother even putting on an act with Peeta? We see very little of these gifts, or their meaning. Ripping away beautiful writing and some pretty good moments that could have been captured.

12. Muttations. Hi. This could have been awesome. But it was … sad. Pathetically thought out in the movie, or not thought out, as the case may be. There’s a point when they’re surrounded by these dogs, ravenous and angry, out for blood dog-human creations. Katniss sees in these creatures the features of her fellow tributes, showing just how disgusting these games really are. It doesn’t matter if they’re truly made with the bodies of the fallen, the point is that the creators of this “game” will stoop to any level. They’re using the deceased as game pieces after they’ve already been destroyed in horrible ways. Their death is no peace to them. They are made to terrify and confuse the living. Sure, they’re still plenty discouraging when they appear, but not nearly as moving.

To top it off, we don’t really get to see what the Capitol has done in the past to win against the rebels. The things that they created to best their enemies.

13. The Avox. The whole story of the redheaded girl and how Katniss knew her. The fact that their tongues are removed and they’re made to serve others. Where was it? Why do they keep insisting on refusing to make the Capitol as evil as they are?

14. They missed a huge story point in removing Katniss’ personal issues about Peeta and Gale. What she has to do VS what she wants, and what she’s not sure she wants VS what she might actually be feeling. Worrying about what Gale will think when she does what she has to do to survive.

15. Why remove her entire ordeal with trying to find water? Because they left out everything else that has to with the gifts? Water is important, yet they neglected to make me feel like she’d spent any time without it.

16. I really missed Katniss’ stylists. They are vapid, they are flighty, but they are also interesting. They show the stark contrast between Katniss’ world and the world of the Capitol, and yet they still obviously begin to care about her. We get to see them grow from people who only care about themselves into individuals who are rather like dotty aunts.

17. Cinna. So much more should have been explored with Cinna. His brief moments on screen didn’t even begin to touch the deep connection that he has with her. We don’t know why, in the books, Cinna doesn’t exactly subscribe to the things that the people around him do, but we can see that he doesn’t. He is subdued. He knows what needs to be done, but he isn’t a follower. He helps Katniss in more ways than just her clothing. But we miss it. All of it.

18. Her father? We learn the bare essentials of Katniss and her father, their relationship, what he did for her, what he meant to her, how he left their lives, the impact on her mother. Sure, we see some of this in really brief flashes. But we don’t really get to know it. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t be who she became. Yet it doesn’t seem to be important at all in the movie.

19. The pin. Again. We see it. We know that she takes it into the Games. We don’t know that she’s not really supposed to. We don’t get to see the impact of it anywhere. It’s just a pin. A pin given to her by the wrong person for the wrong reasons.

There are probably more reasons that I’m not coming up with right at this moment, but I think the gist of how I feel has come across in these points. All 19 of them.

Having read the second book now, all of these points are just further cemented for me. I read things that bring these points back into life, into the story. They aren’t things that are just in the first book. They grow and become other things. The changes made in the movie in some cases, completely erases some relationships and moments that happen in the second book. It strips them out entirely. There are some spots, from movie to second book, where I can see the bridges over the gaps they made, using logic, but it doesn’t mean that it will be good or satisfactory if another movie is made. (If. I say if, like it’s not going to happen)

I wish now that I hadn’t even gone to see the movie. It’s tainted my experience. It ripped me out of the moment. I did still enjoy the second book, and I’m looking forward to reading the third and finding out what happens. But the entire time I was reading the second, I was finding flaws in the movie and having to stop to think about everything they took away from us with their omissions and changes. This is not what reading should be. This is not what a movie experience should be.

I’m disappointed. And confused. How is this movie so well liked?

Change is good. But sometimes change is not good.

This is where I rant about the new Xbox 360 dashboard. If you don’t want to hear it, then you don’t have to read it. But it needs to come out of my head, so I’m going to write it.

When the switch came, I hadn’t been on my Xbox in literally months because it’d been packed away and my living room wasn’t set up. So after I gleefully got everything set up, and the Xbox told me there was an update, I updated. I didn’t even take a moment to think about it, I just did it. I knew there was a dashboard update coming, but I didn’t even think about that. I just wanted to play a game.

I hated it so completely and so instantly that I found myself looking around online for a way to reverse it. Of course, there is no such way. Not unless I wanted to potentially ruin my box and possibly not be able to use it to get to XBL.

I then thought that I should give it a while, and maybe I would hate it less. But you know what? I have not hated it less. I still hate it as much as I did when I first saw it. Maybe I hate it even more, now that I’ve had time with it. I have had time to discover that it had less functionality than it did before.

They killed the way that my background works. They killed the ease that I used to have looking at my friends who are online. They made it harder to find certain things that have to do with the way the Xbox itself works. They made it more difficult to get to the games that I have stored there. They even took away the option to hide some of this shit. And oh, did they add a whole bunch of crap that I would very much like to hide. There is really no part of this new dashboard that I enjoy.

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.

I really wish that companies would stop trying to fix things that aren’t broken in the first place. And I wish that they would stop trying to cater to a crowd that isn’t their main staple. I know a lot of this was done with the Kinect in mind, but when the Kinect isn’t really selling well and the gamers that spend the most time and money on their Xbox aren’t even interested in it, the Kinect should not be the focus. In honesty, the way that the dashboard looks and functions makes me want the Kinect less than I did before. I obviously don’t know if this is true for others, but it has angered me to the point that I don’t even want to give the Kinect a try now. If this is how bad stuff works for the Kinect, I really don’t think I would enjoy myself at all.

I also really wish that there was a way to go back to the old dashboard. While I didn’t like it very much at first, at least I eventually got used to it. It’s been months now and I still don’t feel comfortable with the way the dashboard works. The lack of functionality just jars me out of the moment.

Alright. I’m done bitching now.

Two Worlds – Request

Fuck you.

No. Seriously. Fuck you.

I played this game long before I ever started writing this here compendium of geekery. I will not play it again just because somebody out there has some sick sense of humor, or even if they’re genuinely curious about what’s going on.

Never before in my life have I so completely, categorically, loathed a game. Never before had I ever known that anything could make me hate everything so entirely. This game made me want to break innocent objects that were only guilty of being within arm’s reach.

I went into it thinking that I would like it, too. There’s a lot of things this game has going for it that I’m a fan of. But the end result of it all is that I would like to find ever copy of this game that’s floating around and set them all on fire. I know it would create a giant, pulsing hole in the earth’s atmosphere, and I can’t really bring myself to give a fuck. I would do permanent damage to the polar ice caps to gleefully enact my revenge upon this game.

It really blew me away when I realized that this game had a “special edition” for which people would actually pay significantly more money. Really? And who thought that was a good plan? Who bought it should really be the question here.

And how many motherfuckers actually bought and kept this travesty, thus encouraging them to make a Two Worlds II??? Hm? I would like to know. I saw that laying upon the shelf at my local game-centric store and it was a lucky thing that I didn’t have a firearm, because I would have shot myself in the face due to the resulting plummet of my faith in the general populace. Seriously. Things like this should not be encouraged. They should be shunned. Why was there no shunning? Why was a second one made? These are questions important to the survival of the planet.

You, who requested I write about this game, all this ire is your fault. You are to blame for unleashing my thus far pent up rage about this particular subject matter. You? You should feel ashamed for dredging up the pain.

Gnomeo And Juliet

I am crazy in love with Romeo and Juliet. The first time I read it, I was in fourth grade, and it started me on a path to Shakespeare and I never looked back. Okay, I’ve looked back a few times, if you mean it in the sense that I’ve reread everything he’s written about a half a million times.

The idea of making a version of the story for kids, involving garden gnomes, seemed pretty fun to me. I thought it was a cute idea, and that I would really enjoy watching.

Now that I’ve seen it? I don’t think there should be a children’s version of Romeo and Juliet. I also don’t think it should be done with garden gnomes. And I’m pretty fucking pissed off that Mercutio was completely missing from the entire thing. How do you fucking leave out Mercutio? He’s such a pivotal character to the entire story that dropping him hurts everything. Everything.

I’m not happy with the way Tybalt was portrayed, either. I know, I know. For kids. Garden gnomes. I get it. But he comes off as a brute and a bully, with none of the slyness or wit or intelligence that he actually has. Tybalt and Mercutio are two of my very favorite characters in this piece, and I am very irritated at the absence of one and abuse of the other.

Really, so many characters (and important scenes) were missing from this movie that I almost couldn’t sit through it. Luckily for this movie, I was feeling monumentally lazy and couldn’t force myself to move the tiny little bit it would have taken to just shut it off.

I believe that if one is going to make a movie out of a great piece of literature and try to structure it for a younger crowd, one should not completely butcher said work and destroy all the meaning behind it. I would like to point out that I did manage to read this in the fourth grade and grasp everything that was going on pretty goddamned well. I think that treating children like they’re idiots is just breeding a generation of the borderline retarded. What happened to challenging young minds? Building them? Making them grow? What happened to giving kids something to read and then helping them to understand it instead of dumbing everything down so that we don’t have to explain it? This really pisses me off. I’m sure you couldn’t tell (sarcasm, it’s fun).

I hated this movie. HATED IT. There is a burning loathing happening in my heart right now, and all of it is radiating outward in the direction of the writer of this movie. I’m a little disappointed in James McAvoy, too, for willingly going along for the ride. I think I’d rather just imagine that somebody was holding a loaded .45 to his head the entire time, or keeping his cat hostage until he completed recording.

This movie offends me right down to the depths of my soul.

Breaking Bad

I had heard from a good number of people that this was a really good show. So, since Netflix decided to have the first three seasons on streaming, I decided to give it a go.

What I discovered disappointed me some. Okay, more than some. I really wanted to like this, and I even watched all three seasons to give it a really fair shot at hooking me. It just failed to.

The elements are there. Good actors. An interesting plot idea. But from there, it falls off. The writing itself isn’t bad, either, not totally. It’s just drab. I feel as if the writers sat around their table and came up with really great episode ideas and then just fell asleep. They let it fall to the wayside, and did nothing to try to recover it. Then followed this model for each episode.

It’s really not a good thing when you fall asleep in the middle of an episode, in the midst of what is supposed to be really heavy or important moments, wake up at the end and not only are able to figure out what’s gone on, but also don’t give a shit about starting where you dropped off. When you can move on to the next thing and not care what the characters did or said in particular, it’s a very bad sign.

I hate to say it, but I have to. I found myself bored. Through all three seasons. There is not one episode that I can think of that made me sit up and take notice. There is not one moment where I felt whatever emotion was supposed to be elicited from me. Not one character that I connected to.

I’m kind of really surprised, now that I’ve seen it, that so many people that I know have enjoyed it. Not saying anything against them. But what am I missing out on? What key thing passed by me without my notice? What part of my brain did not light up in response to what I was seeing?

I know that everybody has their own tastes, and we can’t expect to all like the same thing. That would be stupid. But when so many people have given something praise and I feel like I missed the boat, I have to ask myself these questions. Is it me? or is it them?

Beautiful Katamari

When I first got this game, I really adored the concept. I loved the story that set up what you had to do. Everything about it suited me just fine. I was excited to play it, and popped it into my machine as soon as I got it home.

I enjoyed it for about 20 minutes. A couple of levels.

After that, it was just tedium for me. I stopped being intrigued by all the things that I could roll up into a ball with me. Then, on top of it, the music started to make me feel like I wanted to put a hole in my head. There were all these little annoyances that I might have been able to handle individually, but all together, were just too much.

I put the game down for three years. I didn’t touch it, and I didn’t look at it. I didn’t even think about it. I’m not against giving something another shot after I’ve had some time away from it to cool down and maybe get out of whatever mind set I might have been in at the time. Look at it freshly, you know? Under different mental circumstances.

So while I was going through all of my partially played games, I noticed that it was still there, and decided to add it to the end of that pile. I figured by the time I got through all the other games, I would be ready for it again. I could give it that second change. Let it show me that I had been wrong, or just in a bad place for it the last go around.

It’s time finally arrived. I popped it into my Xbox and sat down to play.

I discovered that I felt the exact same way.

I went ahead and did a couple more levels, just to be extra sure. But nothing changed for me. I wanted to like this game, I wanted to like it so very much. But I just didn’t. I couldn’t even get halfway through it. There was no way to force myself. I ended up giving it to a friend who I knew would appreciate it more than I would, and she did. She played through it pretty quickly, actually. I’m glad that somebody got joy and enjoyment out of it, because I couldn’t.

There haven’t been any sort of large number of games that I have started and were unable to finish because of my dislike. In fact, the only two I can really think of are this one and Watchmen: The End is Nigh. Oh, and don’t get me wrong. My apathy toward Katamari is nothing close to my loathing of Watchmen: The End Is Nigh. I am of a general indifference toward Beautiful Katamari. I hated Watchmen deep into the core of me. There was nothing redeeming about that game, and I think if anybody handed it to me, I’d light it on fire.

It does actually make me a little bit sad that I couldn’t get into Katamari. I know that a lot of people had fun with it. It makes me wonder why I couldn’t manage to have fun with it.

Oh well. We can’t win them all, can we?

But considering my point of view compared to all the others out there, I can’t honestly say that anybody should or should not pick this one up. I feel as if I’m in the minority here, thus making me an unreliable source.

Cowboys & Aliens (graphic novel)

Wow.

I … I really don’t know how to say this, guys. I’m really… I’m really sorry.

I know we all really liked the movie version of Cowboys & Aliens, Daniel Craig did a really fantastic job running around in chaps and hurting people a lot. Really, everyone did a rousing performance in that movie. We enjoyed the way they made the aliens look. We like that the shitty kid got hurt a lot. In general, we just really liked the film.

And in really liking something, we tend to want more of it. So we go around looking for things that can prolong our experiences. Things to make us happy. Things that will bring back that joy we felt while watching shit blow up on the big screen.

Which might lead some of us to the graphic novel. And those of us who find it might become very excited. We might order it on Amazon and wait anxiously for it to be delivered. Once we get it, we might sit for a while, just looking at the cover (a new cover, by the way, not the old one, this one is mighty pretty). We might, then, crack it open to the front page, ready to nestle into our favorite reading spot and relive our glee.

Then we might find ourselves very, very disappointed.

It’s kind of like when you see somebody do something really stupid, but they don’t end up hurting themselves. Or watching a car blow through a red light right in front of a cop, but the cop doesn’t do anything about it. It’s that kind of let down. Enormous. Soul crushing (Okay, that might be going a little too far, maybe).

Pretty much the entire thing is different from the flick, and I can really see why they’d choose to change everything right down to the character’s names, because really, other than the concept, the whole thing sucks. From the start, right to that very last page, you’re going to find yourself wondering what the fuck you just read. Then you’re going to wonder why the fuck you just read it. Believe me, you won’t find a good answer for that. All the reasons previously stated, all that wonderment brought about by the movie, and that need for more of it, it’s going to be gone. Right down the tubes.

Luckily, the movie is so completely different from this bound colorful wad of paper that you won’t even be able to bridge your disappointment of the one to the other. It’s like you’ve seen a Muppet movie and decided to read a how-to guide about frogs to further your fun. There really are only very vague similarities, and those you can ignore or wipe from your mind completely. Don’t fret too much over it. It can be forgotten. I’ve nearly already done so, and it’s only been a couple of days.

I suppose I’ll keep the thing around, because the cover is really very pretty, and I spent money on the thing, so I feel bad doing anything else aside from letting it have some shelf space. But I feel like I really need to spare you from the same fate.

Do not buy it. Do not even read it. If a friend has it and offers to loan it to you, they’re likely trying to pawn it off on you, don’t fall for it. Say ‘Thank you, my good friend, for your thoughts of me on this subject matter, but I must respectfully decline on the basis that you are a liar’. And then maybe quickly leave before your friend tries to sneak it into your car or backpack.

It does make me sad that I have to write words like this about something that should have been good. But I cannot bring myself to lie when things are bad. It’s unfair to the rest of the world. I suffer so that you do not have to. Don’t let my suffering be in vain.

The Vanguard

I know this was a requested movie. Somebody said that they wanted me to review it, but I can’t think of who it was now.

Whoever you are? I’m sorry. But I couldn’t get any further than about 10 minutes in. It was so very bad. The acting was horrible. The story stopped appealing to me entirely right away, and even the way it looked turned me off.

I’m not a big budget snob, I’ve had plenty of low budget films I’ve enjoyed that look low budget, but there was something about this one I couldn’t tolerate. Maybe because of the other factors. I don’t know.

I tried. I’m so sorry. But I did try.

But obviously I can’t give this a full review.

The guy on the bike also pissed me off for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint.

Five Girls – Request

I watched less than ten minutes of this movie before I had to shut it off.

The sad thing is, Ron Perlman is in it.

But it was just that bad

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.

Cell – King (and kind of Lisey’s Story)

I just don’t know what to say. I don’t. I’m not quite as angry about this book as I was when I read Lisey’s Story. But I’m still pissed off. This was… it was so bad. It was like King just wanted to, or had to, write something to put out and didn’t have any real solid ideas.

I mean, granted, this book has a lot more going for it than Lisey’s Story did, but really that’s not saying much. Since that book was a COMPLETE WASTE OF MY TIME.

I really enjoyed the characters in this book. I won’t lie. I did like them. I did like the general idea of the book, as well. The end of the world brought about by cell phones. It’s a pretty solid idea. The problem is, the idea behind the idea wasn’t fleshed out. At all. It almost seemed as if King was avoiding anything to do with the background because he didn’t know himself what was going on. There was so much missing. And so much other stuff thrown in randomly that wasn’t followed up on.

But again, Lisey’s Story was lacking even that much. Lisey’s Story is apparently what happens when King has to take a giant shit and uses a notebook to do it on. It’s not the first book I’ve ever been angry at, but it was the first of his, and I had hoped it would be the last. It wasn’t.

Though, maybe I can use the fact that Cell and Lisey’s Story were written back to back as some sort of an excuse for King. Because I really dislike hating anything he’s written, especially now when I’ve made my way through so many other books and I adore them. It’s not easy to hate something a writer you love has written. It’s quite difficult, actually. You want to love everything. You want everything to be good. It’s just heartbreaking when everything’s not good and you end up loathing a piece. Or two, in my case.

Despite loving the characters in Cell, the main character, Clay, leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. The things he does at the very end don’t fit his personality at all. They don’t fit what he’s evolved into during the course of the book. He just goes off on this wild tangent. Several things are wrong with the ending, several, but mostly it’s what Clay does and what he doesn’t do. And who he decides to leave behind. I’m sorry, but Clay is not that big of a fucking idiot, and I don’t honestly believe in my heart that he would have done what he did. I don’t give a shit if it’s written that way, it’s not him.

The book is pretty bad from the get go, however. Which is something I noticed because despite how hard I tried to keep myself involved, parts of the book itself were pushing me back into reality. Not in any thoughtful way, either. In a very abrupt and unfriendly way. It was really hard to keep reading this book, but I have to always finish. I’ve never started a book that I didn’t finish. I just can’t do it. I have to know the end, even if I hate the rest of what’s gone on, the characters, the story – whatever.

Which is PRECISELY why I sat through reading all of goddamned Lisey’s Story when I hated her, and her stupid thought process and her stupid weak and pathetic unwillingness to live her motherfucking life. Despite the fact that I detested where the story went and how long it took to get there, I read the whole thing. Even though I felt that it was some of the worst writing I’d encountered from such a lauded author, I finished the stupid book.

After I was done reading it, I sold Lisey’s Story to a used book store for significantly under a quarter. I believe that Cell will follow the same path. I, the queen of keeping books for future re-reading, want this book the hell out of my house. I never want to see it’s idiot cover again.

An American Haunting

Oh, how I tried to like you, movie. I tried so very hard. You had so many elements that I find enjoying. So very many of them. It started, but didn’t end, with Donald Sutherland. I know, not everything he’s been in is the best thing on the planet, but he’s done better at choosing his roles as he gets older. Knowing more what will have public appeal and what will just fail. So I had hopes for him, I did. You were also a movie about haunting, from everything that was written or said about you – EVER. I do like hauntings, movie. I like them quite a bit. It’s really not difficult to please me in this realm, movie. Even if I don’t think I’ll watch a movie again, I can usually derive something from some part of it and come away feeling as if I’ve not wasted two hours of my life.

But you, movie. You did not pass muster. You did not even attempt to meet up with Muster on the battlefield of cinema. I’m pretty sure, actually, that you couldn’t even see Muster from where you were standing – back there in the woods, over an embankment, hiding behind that tree.

What you turned out to be, movie, was a colossal waste of my time. I came away feeling cheated and sad. Used and put away wet. I feel like you didn’t even try to be a real movie after the first twenty minutes. If we’ve learned anything from Pinocchio, it’s that we must try when we want to be real, we must put effort into life, or it’s meaningless.

You, movie, are meaningless.

I was so disappointed as I watched you and you just kept getting worse. I didn’t think it was possible, but it kept happening. I should have known when my gut said “My, those slaps are awfully silly.” But I didn’t. I tried to reason that away with the excuse they tried to give in the script. I should have listened to my gut, really, I should have.

But that hope, it lingered. It lingered until the very end when I just had to finally give in and recommend that they take you out and shoot you, to put you out of your misery. Because you are a lame horse, movie, and you’ll do nobody any good. You’ll probably just suck on the fence and hurt yourself by trying to run when all of your legs are broken.

I do have a tip for you, movie. Hopefully if you ever get reincarnated, you can hold onto this – if you are putting entire scenes that are use IN THE MOVIE with your “alternate scenes” just to have more padding and content, you are failing. If most of your “alternate scenes” are just the same exact scene from a different camera angle, you are failing. And, should I watch your “alternate scenes” and not actually be able to tell the difference between what I just watched and what is supposed to be new, you have failed completely.

I have to give you an F, movie. In all subjects. Believe me, it makes me sad. But remember, I tried – oh so hard – to like you. I was rooting for you from the start. I was behind you, cheering you on, and you let me down.

I hope I never see you again, movie. Because I feel that if I do, I may have to find some matches.

The Stepfather

Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap.

Seriously. I don’t know what they were even trying to do here. It could have been such an interesting movie, and it’s not. It’s a flop. It’s worse than a flop, it’s so lifeless that it can’t even flop.

You have this guy who gains entry to families with no father, then when something goes wrong, kills them. Seems pretty basic and straight forward. But you’d think that a guy who has done this as many times as they’re hinting at in the course of the movie would be better at it.

But he’s absolute shit. He can’t keep things straight. He’s got people suspecting him right away. Alright, I can buy that. But if he has all these people who suspect him, yet his bride to be doesn’t, does that mean she’s a complete idiot? I mean, it would be one thing if he weren’t forgetting things like his own supposed daughter’s name, but something that big, even if brought up by a possibly spiteful older son, would certainly be something worth checking into. And the whole thing with him not wanting to give his ID to people. In this day and age, that’s so commonplace that a refusal definitely sticks out.

This movie was an hour and forty minutes long, and it seriously took me over two hours to get through it, cause I had to pause to do something else and wake my brain back up.

There is no redeeming feature of this movie. There was no point where something really neat happened, or I thought that it might get better. It didn’t get worse, thank god, but it was definitely flat lined through the entirety.