Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Lazy Basterd’s Jukebox: Bye Bye Beautiful by Nightwish

Oh look, I found a quarter for the jukebox.

My music taste is all screwy. “Weird Al”, Beach Boys, Beetles, soundtrack scores and symphonic metal Nightwish.

Concern for Captain America

Seems like every other day we get a new casting announcement for Captain America. How many people are gonna be in this thing anyway? I’m beginning to sense the ‘to many characters/plots trap’ being laid.

Steam, The Devil’s Mistress – an update

So I had initially bought Borderlands (still great, lvl22) and was looking at the THQ bundle..

A week later… This feisty minx is stroking me while rifling through my wallet. Stupid ‘Perils of Summer’ sale.  I did get the THQ pack (Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40k Dawn of War, and stuff),  Shatter (2.50 impulse buy), Torchlight (lost my key with the new computer) and Zuma (PopCap is evil).

Four days left in the sale. Primus help me!

***Cookies for those you know Primus

Friday, June 25, 2010

Movie Review: Armored

Armored is the story of guard on a armored truck who’s colleagues decide to rob the truck. On the verge of losing his house and custody of his kid brother who he’s guardian of, the main character (whatever his name is, not important) decides to go along with the plan on the condition no one gets hurt.

So of course someone gets hurt and our hero decides he can’t be a part of this anymore. Said hero locks himself in the armored truck while the rest of the gang has about 50 minutes to get in and continue with the plan.

Armored is a slightly above average.. I guess you’d call it an action/thriller though there’s little action and it’s not that thrilling. The film has two failings which make it watchable but not necessarily good. First is the plan itself: basically the crew is going to stash the money and blame it on non-existent thieves. Forgive me but this ‘plan’ just seems retarded to me. Have these people never seen CSI? And the second the homeless guy wanders in and gets shot throwing the plan off track, that’s it. There’s no way these bozos can recover from this. But they spend the next hour trying to break into the truck. Yes, the armored truck. Gil Grissom and Mac Taylor would have these bozos before lunch.

The second problem is the movie’s hero. The guy’s an idiot. When a social worker stops by the house to check up on the delinquent young brother after he missed more school than attended, he proudly pipes up ‘I didn’t know he missed school’. Way to stay on top of things. Are you sure foster care is a bad thing? And not only is he an idiot, he’s a criminal idiot. This is not an innocent bystander that rises to the occasion when his former friends and colleagues make a run for the money, he’s in on it. He just chickens out when some homeless guy is in the wrong place at the wrong time. The movie’s ending completely ignores this and tries to wrap things up with a ‘lived happily ever after’ moment, and it’s total bullshit. If he told the truth about what happened he’d probably be going to jail for life – you know after the murder during the course of a felony.

Just another average action(ish) movie

***Update***
I must also point out it’s criminal this movie isn’t better considering the cast. Lawrence Fishbourne and Jean Reno, I expect better. And Fishbourne, put the Twinkie down and hit the gym. Morpheus wasn’t that long ago.

3 out of 5 Stars

Game Review: Borderlands

I know, it’s been out for how long? Bite me, I got a list and when/if I get to said list may or may not be in an acceptable timeframe for others to care about my opinion. But that’s what cool about the internet, nobody cares anyway.

Anywho, the game. Freshly downloaded off Steam (see last post for non-insightful rambling) I hopped into the game not quite knowing what to expect. It’s a shooter obviously, but with RPG elements? Well, that might be stretching things. You have skills and levels and quests but… wait, that’s an RPG.

Story progression is driven by the quests and level progression (so far level 10) have kept pace with the enemies you have to kill. Game itself is fun, I love Claptrap and the graphics are cute but slick at the same time. It reminds me of World of Warcraft in the graphics department – I’ll take a silky smooth stylized engine over ‘realistic with frame rate problems’ (looking at you Conan) any day.

The game itself is fun though I do have two complaints: in-game menus and the manual.

  1. The game is obviously designed for a console and navigating the menus with a mouse is infuriating. It’s a freakin’ mouse? Seriously, how hard would it have been to fix the menu to use a mouse intuitively.
  2. The manual offered by Steam appears to be a PDF copy of the X-Box 360 version (cleared references to Right Button, Left Trigger and such, not a mention of left-click in sight). Either Steam is retarded and didn’t realize they sell PC games or the developers didn’t bother making a manual with PC commands. Either way, I find this infuriating and unacceptable.

Overall I like it, thought the menu and manual issues keep if from a higher score.

4 out of 5 Stars

Steam… and the Shrinking Shelf

Well I’ve done it. I went and created a Steam account. I was playing Fallout 3 on 360 (I know, I’m trying to get some use out of the damn thing) and I thought, let’s  play a real shooter. What do I have… so I looked over at my PC shelf and looked over the shooters. I have Jedi Knight and Medal of Honor. Wow. I haven’t bought a new shooter in… since high school. Wow, that makes me feel old. No, not old. Not young. That’s the ticket.

Anyway, since neither will most likely even run on Windows 7 (though I’ll have to check out Jedi Knight, loved that back in the day) I pondered what were my options… Well, despite my PC shelf apparently being a decade old (MMOs notwithstanding) , it is actually full. I’m a quasi collector and like to have a box to put on my shelf so I know that stuff is mine. I’ve never been one for for the digital copies or downloads. Still, the shelf is full.

So I headed to this new fangled thing called ‘Steam’ to see what the fuss was about. Lil bit later had an act and was downloading Borderlands. Appears to be fairly painless though the download time itself is annoying, though to be expected.

Also Steam apparently started it’s summer sale today through the 4th. I’m eyeing that THQ pack (all 3 Company of Heroes and the Warhammer 40k’s) and the Call of Duty collection.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

So young, ignorant bastard…

I spoke to a kid, a real little kid. Poor bastard didn’t know who Batman was.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

What. The. Smurf!!

So apparently there’s a trailer for a Smurfs movie… well, a teaser. It’s… oh god, my eyes!  My eyes are all smurfed up, I can’t smurfing see!!

**I refuse to embed it. If you hate yourself google it. And NPH… Dear god, why…?

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Avatar: The Last Airbender

I started watching this on Netflix’s instant watch and I’m fairly hooked. I saw 27 episodes yesterday (yay weekends), I’ll have the rest of the series finished end of the week.

In case your not familiar, shows follows Aang an Airbender (the LAST Airbender) who happens to be the Avatar. This world has 4 tribes, Water, Earth, Fire and Air. Each tribe has people that can control their particular element, or Benders. Only the Avatar is able to master all 4 elements and he/she possesses enormous power. The Avatar is is born into one tribe and when he dies he gets reincarnated into the next tribe in a cycle that’s been going for centuries. The Avatar also has the ability to enter a ‘Avatar-state’ where his eyes glow and he has the combined power and knowledge of all Avatars who have come before, not someone you want to fuck with.

All is peaceful until the Fire Nation (it’s always Fire, Water never gets uppity) attacks in a war  of conquest. The Air Nation is annihilated (hence the last Airbender) and the Water and Earth tribes are barely holding on. Our hero Aang ended up getting froze in an iceberg for a century.  A brother/sister Eskimo duo found him and it’s off to save the world. First he must master the other  3 elements before taking on the Fire Lord and saving the world.

I’ll be honest, the cover art always looked interesting but the big ol’ Nickelodeon logo made me cringe and hesitant to take the lunge. The upcoming live action movie though, sold me with it’s trailer though so I thought I’d watch the source material before the movie (July 2nd, though it’s gonna get stomped by Twilight:Eclipse). Watching the series, wow. I can’t believe Nickelodeon did this. This is Adult Swim stuff here. War, genocide, death, love and serialized stories that can leave you lost if you miss certain episodes. This from the House That Spongebob built. I heartily recommend.

*******Update: Finished. Even the ending is kickass. Can’t wait for the live action movie. Hopefully M. Night wont screw it up.

*******Update2: Still awesome, but I did think of one very small complaint. Basically the whole series was about training Aang to become strong to defeat the Fire Lord who was the biggest badass on the planet. Every said he was badass. Everyone was scared of him. And in the end, he was a badass, but up until then… basically he was a shitty father (very shitty). Up until the last 2 episodes he never actually DID anything (well,  he beat the crap out of his teenage son, evil - not badass).

5 out of 5 Stars

Random Thoughts

“…succeeding in the human species isn't a matter of being crazy or not crazy, but having just the right amount of crazy…”

Courtesy Cracked.com

Sunday, June 13, 2010

France pwned

Robert Whiting, an elderly Canadian gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.

“You have been to France before, monsieur?”, the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously, “Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.”

The Canadian said, ”The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.”

“Impossible. Canadians always have to show passports on arrival in France!”

The Canadian senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, “Well, when I came ashore on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to.”

**************

Courtesy djmick

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Lazy Movie Review: A-Team

Woot, a summer blockbuster that doesn’t suck! Gotta love it when that happens.

Film starts with an operation in Mexico with Hannibal and Face. During said operation Hannibal hooks up with BA by happenstance, then Hannibal, Face and BA make good an escape with a psycho pilot they picked up. They even take a minute during this intro to explain why BA, an Army Airborne Ranger, is afraid to fly (he got in a helicopter with Murdock). The team assembled and successful, they keep working together and the story picks up 8 years later with them the best there is at what they do (Wolverine’s copyright suit is pending).

The team get framed for the theft of printing plates and sent to jail. Four escapes later they good guys set out to recover the lost goods and clear their name. Cast is great. I’ve hear complaints that Rampage whatever isn’t great, mainly it appears to be people complaining he’s not Mr T. Who is? Rampage isn’t distracting so it’s fine. Dude from District 9 plays Murdock and he’s awesome, where’d this guy come from anyway?

The action’s good (save for the climax, see below) and story is fairly easy to follow, though it does get a bit muddled in act 2. But really, what plot with a CIA double cross doesn’t get muddled? Contrary to the show, these are professional soldiers and they know how to aim. It’s by no means gory, but there is a body count.

I have only a few minor complaints. First is the climax. I’m all for big overblown set pieces, but the location for the climax is just… ug, once the bad guy breaks out the bazooka my suspension of disbelief stopped, I can’t see how anyone in the general vicinity survived. Second, Murdock got shafted in the finale with nothing to do. Fo’ shame.

Trailer Round-up:
Scott Pilgrim: The teaser got me really excited, the full trailer made me think of Speed Racer, I’m not as into it as I was
Inception: I have no idea what’s going on. Reminds me of Matrix with mysticism instead of tech
Twilight: Eclipse: Sparkly vampires, my eyes!
Knight and Day: Movie seems to be getting a lot of negative buzz, I don’t get it. Looks like fun

4 out of 5 Stars

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Mortal Kombat short film = Holy@#$%

Wow. Is it a trailer? Game? Movie? Just a goddamn tease?!

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Off to the Movies… Next Week

Wow, there’s nothing playing at the moment. Next week though… A-Team! Woohoo.

You thought I was referring to Eclipse didn’t you? @#$%ing Twilight…

I Beat It… Again

I just beat Ultimate Alliance 2 on PS3 on a second play through, this time as the Pro-Registration forces. The Pro exclusives (Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic and Songbird) are kinda lame, though the Anti exclusives (Captain America, Luke Cage and Iron Fist) aren’t much better. You’d think they’d make Cap and Iron Man fun to play, but they don’t (Spiderman is also a dud, how hard is it to make the most popular characters not suck?). My favorite heroes to run amok with are Ms Marvel, Hulk, Thor and Gambit. Wolverine is also very useful though Hulk and Thor have the melee mashing covered so I usually keep in Gambit. Juggernaut is also a monster and I think is actually better than Hulk, but I keep in Hulk because… you know, he’s Hulk.

Leader lameness aside, Anti side does have the better story with Stark really coming across as a douche, which is sad considering he’s right.

All around I really enjoy this game (and the first one). Yes it’s a button masher, but it’s a fun button masher. At some point I’ll play again on legendary difficulty and level those folls up even more.

Perhaps the best thing though, is during the credits there’s a radio interview with Dr. Bruce Banner, only Hulk shows up instead.

Hulk SMASH!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

The writer was drunk, and the editor high

I’ve been reading a lot of comics recently via Marvel’s Digital Comics. I mean, like a lot… 40 issues of New Avengers, 30+ Ultimate X-Men, Civil War, House of M, 30 of Runaways, World War Hulk and Ultimate Power. I can’t decide if I want to start on Ms Marvel, Immortal Iron Fist or Daredevil next.

I’ve seen some strange things in these reads. Things that make me bust out laughing and things that make me wonder if writers are well in the head. I give you an example from Ultimate Hulk Annual #1. First, there’s no ongoing Ultimate Hulk series, so how did he get an annual? Anyway, Hulk walks into what’s essentially an I-HOP (naked I might add) and proclaims ‘Hulk want pancakes!’

The way I see it, any reasonable waitress would do one of three things: 1) Faint 2) Run screaming in terror 3) Get the man some goddamn pancakes! No, this woman advises the (naked) Hulk, ‘No shoes, no shirt, no pants, no service’, whereupon the Hulk pulls out a wad of cash (from where, we don’t want to know) ‘Hulk has money, wants pancakes!’

At this point, Zarda (Princess Power from Squadron Supreme, herself slumming in the Ultimate Universe) who’s on a road trip decides to step in. See, in her world clothes suck and if she’s forced to get dressed by these silly humans then this big baby does too. Fight ensues and Zarda actually kicks Hulks ass. She drags his ass to the nearest Big & Tall store and get the man some pants. Then they both go get some pancakes.
There’s 2 more pages but it’s creepy so I wont comment.

My point is, writers are drunk and the editors who let this stuff slip by are high.

**Further examples include when Howard the Duck tried to register with S.H.I.E.L.D. after the Superhero Registration Act was passed into law.

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