Thursday, March 29, 2007

And now for something completely different...

Nope.

I believe I have remembered the biggest reason I've not been into the RTS genre before. The RTS is a life sucking, time sapping, deep resonate hole in the earth which pulls my soul in a relentless hold that can not be sated.

I've been playing Supreme Commander, in the hopes of learning it's wondrous secrets. It has bestowed upon me a massive amount of hatred for my inability to manage my time better. I don't know what makes me think that I have an hour and a half of my life available to skirmish play, let alone 2-4 hours available for multiple skirmishes, yet, that's exactly the tact that I have taken.

HELP!


Shooter

Mike and I went last night to Showplace 16 to see Shooter.

This film wasn't bad, on the contrary, I found that I enjoyed it quite a bit. The problem is that there's a lot of really bad elements to the movie that prevent it from being great.

Firstly, the movie has all the action you can imagine, there's also plenty of blood and guts which is always good. Mark Wahlberg is a Marine Scout Sniper, he and his spotter get into a bit of trouble on a black op some time ago and end up being left alone 8 klicks inside of a country in Africa they had no business being in after being spotted by insurgents. Alone, they begin the process of capping as many of the 100 opfor as possible. Then there's a helicopter, which misses Mark Wahlberg's character, but tears his partner apart with machine gun fire. Marky Mark gets pissed and takes out the chopper, and some 70% of the over 100 enemy soldiers.

Cut to 36 months later, he's now a hermit living in the mountains of some state where you can live in the mountains and be the only person. An Army Colonel comes to recruit him to scout out positions from which the snipe the President of the United States at a distance of at least a mile, because they have intel that says someone will do this. He's one of the few people who could make the shot, and outside of the government, and therefore the best man for the counter intel. At first he declines, but his sense of patriotism is too strong and he begrudginly goes to work. Once he recommends the position the shooter, and then is on hand the day of the speech.

Instead of capping the president, the Arch Bishop of a country in Africa is capped, and, without even a little surprise, our man gets framed.

There are loopholes a plenty in this, from the reasons why the Arch Bishop is capped here and now, when he likely could have been killed any time, to the to the way that Danny Glover and his Senator cohort celebrate their 'victory' in the end, as though Marky Mark was just gonna leave well enough alone.

The biggest complaints I have from this movie come in the way of Danny Glover's apparent stroke, which leaves him talking through his teeth with hardly an expression at all, the fact that every scene is subtitled as though the film makers didn't think we could discern from the scene where we were (the best example is at the end, when the subtitle says "Department of Justice" while the camera hovers over an official looking building, we cut to Mark Wahlberg being brought into the room in an orange jumpsuit, capture, and through the double doors can be clearly seen a massive seal that says "Department of Justice".). The other frustrating thing is the dialogue, which is so corny it's hard not to laugh at it. Most of this is delivered poorly from Danny Glover, but, there's also a scene where the guy that played Casey Jones gets his thumb shot off and starts cackling about how he can't believe he took the shot.

There are other problems too, but, for the most part, they're consistency issues. The problems are not enough to keep me from enjoying the flick for what it is, but, it's still enough that the person I watched it with couldn't help but think out loud, as a group of high ranking officials sit around a massive table, "What if that guy stands up and he's not wearing any pants?" It's at that point that it becomes clear that you weren't riveted.

Like I said, it's not a bad film. But, it's not great. Seriously, I don't remember character names, except Marky Mark's was something like Bobby Lee Swagger.. it had a Lee and a Swagger, but it could have been Billy or Franky... I just remember thinking, duh, three names, he's going to get blamed for the assassination, because all assassins have three names.


Bridge to Terabithia

I've been meaning to review this... the problem is that I have a hard time doing so without ruining the movie. This is the best I've been able to come up with so far:

I have one word for this movie: Wow!

I knew very little about this movie going into it, save the fact that it was supposed to be a fantasy. I was aware that the much of the talent of this movie came in the form of actors and actresses that are no stranger to the kid show/movie genre. I was also aware that it was done up by Gabor Csupo, very much a part of the Nickelodeon pantheon.

What I did not know was how moving this story would be. I will say that this is the first time in a while that I've cried during a movie. Secondly, it's the first time in a while that I've been surprised, nay, blindsided by a film. Worst, is that these events coincided.

The story is about imagination, growing up, and love. The story is about expression, and feeling. It delves into the far reaching depths of misunderstanding, and childhood ridcule.

Jess is a young boy, an artistic middle boy in a family of girls. His family is poor, his mother and father are struggling under the weight of an economy that doesn't favor the farmer. He's an introverted boy who doesn't have friends, and seems to rely on his drawing skills to keep his mind occupied. He meats a young girl, Leslie, who seems to understand him, she's quirky, a true outsider, from a family of writers who seems to have inherited the gift.

When they become friends, they decide they need a place that is their own. Terabithia is born as they imagine the forest across the creek is another world, it's inhabited my the metaphors for they're own lives, and it becomes real for them.

I won't say more about where they take the story, because I don't want to ruin it for you.

The feelings that this film evokes are real and moving. I don't know what else to say, I was absolutely amazed by it.


MS Paint Adventures

One of the guys found this, and it's pretty funny...

Level 1

Level 2 - Option 1

Level 2 - Option 2

Level 3

Continued from beginning?

The funniest part are the idiots on that forum who don't take the clues intentionally left for them and insist on driving the story into idiocracy (which is a title of another movie I saw recently and need to talk about...).


That's it for now...

But, I will try and quell my insatiable thirst for Supreme Commander and come back soon...

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