Yesterday I saw the trailer for Iron Man. So for the past 24 hours I've had Black Sabbath stuck in my head.
It looks a fun movie, but it is getting a little tiring watching them dredge up every super hero they can think of for a movie. Heck, I was surprised they made Ghost Rider. A lot of these movies are too similar to each other. Really, what was in Daredevil that wasn't already in Batman or Spiderman? What's going to be in Iron Man that wasn't in Superman? Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely going to see it, and I'll probably like it very much. I don't really consider Iron Man the bottom of the barrel, but he's close. I just hope they don't get to Sub-Mariner - that's where I draw the line.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Monday, September 03, 2007
The Bourne Redundancy
We saw The Bourne Ultimatum today. To fully appreciate the movie and this review, you need to remember the details of all three movies. To recap:
The Bourne Identity - 2002
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.
The Bourne Supremacy - 2004
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.
The Bourne Ultimatum - 2007
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.
Truly, there hasn't been such a wild variety of unexpected plot twists since the Rocky movies. Which is not to say that The Bourne Ultimatum is bad, but it sure isn't anything new. If you liked the first two, then you'll like this one... but you might not remember which is which. The Bourne Ultimatum is a perfectly adequate action movie. In fact, it's incredibly adequate, mind-bogglingly mediocre, and brain-bendingly bland. In fact, it's so fantastically average, that it would actually have to be worse just to be any better. The movie so unmemorable, that even if every actor had gone through the entire movie in the nude, painted blue, and on fire, I still would have forgotten what I'd just seen by the time I got to my car. And yet, it's still a decent movie. It's just so.... so.... "so-so".
Ben Aff- I mean, Matt Damon (MATT DAMON!!), a.k.a. overrated generic actor No. 235, does his usual adequate job in portraying the untouchable hero devoid of any personality. Since it's obvious they were going for "average" anyway for this series of movies, Damon is probably the best actor they could have gotten. Or "most appropriate" actor, I should say. The words "Damon" and "best actor" should never belong in the same sentence.
By the time I got out of there, I wasn't quite sure if I'd just seen the newest Bourne movie, or one of the earlier ones again. It doesn't really matter; they're pretty much interchangeable. Tell someone you're going to show them the Bourne trilogy, and you can either show them all three in a row, 1-2-3, or you can get creative and show them 2-3-2 or 3-1-1 or 2-2-2. They won't know the difference. You could probably even put them in one of those 3-DVD disc changers, and have it show scenes from all three in random order, maybe even mixed in with with Good Will Hunting or Saving Private Ryan just for the heck of it. Mix it up, it can only make it better.
An Open Letter To Filmmakers:
Using a hand-held shaky-cam was a nice little gimmick a few decades ago, but it's time to move on. Having the film shot by an epileptic Chihuahua doesn't make the movie any more immersive. It doesn't make the movie edgy or raw or interesting. All it does is make the action scenes harder to follow, and makes your audience nauseous. If you can afford to spend 100 million dollars on a movie, you can spend 50 bucks on a tripod. For Gawd's sake, now that the MPAA rating has gotten so detailed that they include every little offensive thing... "Rated R for Brief Nudity, Pervasive Crude Humor, Light Drug Use, Violence, Language, and a Bad Haircut"... could they not start listing things like "Vomit-inducing shaky-cam"? I find that a lot more offensive than nudity.
The Bourne Identity - 2002
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.
The Bourne Supremacy - 2004
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.
The Bourne Ultimatum - 2007
Amnesia-suffering former assassin Jason Bourne seeks to reconcile the events of his past, while government agents try to hunt him down and kill him.
Truly, there hasn't been such a wild variety of unexpected plot twists since the Rocky movies. Which is not to say that The Bourne Ultimatum is bad, but it sure isn't anything new. If you liked the first two, then you'll like this one... but you might not remember which is which. The Bourne Ultimatum is a perfectly adequate action movie. In fact, it's incredibly adequate, mind-bogglingly mediocre, and brain-bendingly bland. In fact, it's so fantastically average, that it would actually have to be worse just to be any better. The movie so unmemorable, that even if every actor had gone through the entire movie in the nude, painted blue, and on fire, I still would have forgotten what I'd just seen by the time I got to my car. And yet, it's still a decent movie. It's just so.... so.... "so-so".
Ben Aff- I mean, Matt Damon (MATT DAMON!!), a.k.a. overrated generic actor No. 235, does his usual adequate job in portraying the untouchable hero devoid of any personality. Since it's obvious they were going for "average" anyway for this series of movies, Damon is probably the best actor they could have gotten. Or "most appropriate" actor, I should say. The words "Damon" and "best actor" should never belong in the same sentence.
By the time I got out of there, I wasn't quite sure if I'd just seen the newest Bourne movie, or one of the earlier ones again. It doesn't really matter; they're pretty much interchangeable. Tell someone you're going to show them the Bourne trilogy, and you can either show them all three in a row, 1-2-3, or you can get creative and show them 2-3-2 or 3-1-1 or 2-2-2. They won't know the difference. You could probably even put them in one of those 3-DVD disc changers, and have it show scenes from all three in random order, maybe even mixed in with with Good Will Hunting or Saving Private Ryan just for the heck of it. Mix it up, it can only make it better.
An Open Letter To Filmmakers:
Using a hand-held shaky-cam was a nice little gimmick a few decades ago, but it's time to move on. Having the film shot by an epileptic Chihuahua doesn't make the movie any more immersive. It doesn't make the movie edgy or raw or interesting. All it does is make the action scenes harder to follow, and makes your audience nauseous. If you can afford to spend 100 million dollars on a movie, you can spend 50 bucks on a tripod. For Gawd's sake, now that the MPAA rating has gotten so detailed that they include every little offensive thing... "Rated R for Brief Nudity, Pervasive Crude Humor, Light Drug Use, Violence, Language, and a Bad Haircut"... could they not start listing things like "Vomit-inducing shaky-cam"? I find that a lot more offensive than nudity.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!! ...and Stuff.
It's been an interesting wiik. Wii've been having troubles wiith our internet connection since Sunday (a wiik ago today). Every day, our internet has gone out for an hour or two. The cable TV hasn't gone out, so wii don't have a clue what's been causing it. Wii called Comcast a few times, and they gave us their typical newbie solutions (Did you try resetting the modem? Duh. Did you unplug the modem and plug it back in? Double duh. Did you try resetting the router? Duh.) And of course they still try to blame the router (because nothing is ever Comcast's fault), even though wii'd tried bypassing the router and plugging the modem into the computer directly, with no success.
They sent a tech out on Friday to look at it. He fiddled wiith my configuration settings, and declared it fixed. I left for work right as he left, and when I got there, I already had a voice mail from KJ... yep, it was out again. So wii had the tech come back. He gave us a new cable modem.
So this morning I woke up to find our internet out again. Wii called Comcast yet again, and they scheduled a "better" tech to come out this Wednesday (the first two were "basic" troubleshooters, this new guy would have been one of their techmasters). Then, later this afternoon, Comcast calls me back to tell me that there's been an outage in our area all day. So for once, it wasn't just our house (though they could have checked that when wii called this morning).
So wii cancelled the Wiidnesday appointment, whiich is a sure-fire way to guarantii it's going to go out again. Right now, wii're just waiting to sii how long our connection lasts.
Btw, as I mentioned in yesterday's blog: one other thing wii did this wiikend, is wii bought a Nintendo Wii. Whiich miins that now wii both have arm cramps, and I thiink iit's affectiing my spiich.
Seriously, though, I love the new system. If any of you also have one, let me know and we'll trade friend codes. For whatever that does.
Anyway, it's a great system, but it doesn't have a very good library yet. With it we bought Zelda, Metroid, and Wii Play (best way to get a second controller). We especially love the Bowling on Wii Sports, and the Pool on Wii Play, both of which are proof that fun gameplay beats good graphics any day of the week.
What I really don't like is the gimmicky use of the Wii's controls. It's the same speech I keep giving about the overuse of the stylus in DS games: Just because it's there, doesn't mean you have to use it. The wiimote/nunchuck combo actually makes a very natural-feeling controller, and it's much more comfortable than classic gamepads because you can hold your arms apart and rest them however you like. So if a cross-platform game hits the Wii, they really don't need to tack on "shake the controller wildly to punch" functions; it actually makes the game feel less natural.
Which isn't to say I don't like swinging the wiimote around like an idiot. I love it. I love using it like a sword or a gun or what have you. But only if it makes sense in the context of the game. I'm really afraid that the gimmicky-ness is going to mean fewer cross-platform games hitting the system, because of this obligation to use the sensors.
Next gripe... I'm usually the first in line to argue for backwards compatibility. But in this case, I'm really not sure they needed it to play Gamecube games. There's a panel on the system that opens up to reveal four Gamecube controller ports, and another panel that hides a couple of Gamecube memory card slots. Since they were hyping the Wii as the cheapest of the next-gen consoles, surely they could've knocked a couple of bucks off the system if they hadn't included it. Also, the Gamecube wasn't that big a system anyway, at least when you compare it to its peers (PS2 & Xbox). Arguably they would've been better off giving the Wii a cartridge slot for SNES games.
Maybe if they'd left off the Gamecube emulation, they could have used the money to put in a DVD player. Seriously, I'm willing to bet there's more people out there who own DVDs than own Gamecube games. The Wii already uses normal-size discs, as opposed to the Gamecube's minidiscs. And then I wouldn't have to keep my PS2 in the living room along side the Wii just to watch movies. And I wouldn't have had to spend extra money solving the problem of hooking two systems up to my TV.
But anyway. For all that, the Wii is still my favorite of the systems out there. The X-Box 360 and the PS3 are just bigger, better, and prettier versions of what we've already been playing for years and years. I've been getting sort of jaded lately about video games. It just feels like I've played it all before, and most of it wasn't that interesting the first time. Graphics are getting better and better, but that just doesn't make things funner. I still have more fun with the 2D games of the 16-bit era than I do with most of the current stuff.
But that's just me.
Changing gears again...
The night before last I woke up screaming. I dreamed that for some reason, KJ and I were living in my old house on Long Hollow Pike. I don't know if we actually owned it or if we were just guests, but we were staying in the "green room" upstairs, which was a guest room last time I lived there.
I don't remember anything but the end, but I know it wasn't a nightmare until then. It was just a normal dream about us doing normal stuff. I remember I had been reading a Star Wars book, and I only had a couple of pages left. I had to use the bathroom, so I sat down on the toilet in the upstairs hall bathroom and opened my book. In the dream, the shower was to my left (which is the opposite of real life). I was looking at the book's pages, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw my legs. One hairy leg on the right, and one hairy leg on the right. And one more hairy leg on the left, next to mine. I screamed, in the dream and I think in real life.
The leg was sticking out of the shower, bent just like mine but slightly more outstretched, as if the owner was sitting on a chair in the shower. I craned my head around and opened the shower curtain, and my Dad was lying in the shower, dead. I remember his lips were blue-ish. I screamed again.
Then he very slightly started to twitch, and his lips started moving. I screamed until KJ woke me up. That was about 6 AM, and we didn't go back to sleep. On the plus side, there's no line at Pancake Pantry if you go early enough.
Well, I'm off to play some Wii. It's a nice thrii-day wiikend, the best tiime to buy a new system.
They sent a tech out on Friday to look at it. He fiddled wiith my configuration settings, and declared it fixed. I left for work right as he left, and when I got there, I already had a voice mail from KJ... yep, it was out again. So wii had the tech come back. He gave us a new cable modem.
So this morning I woke up to find our internet out again. Wii called Comcast yet again, and they scheduled a "better" tech to come out this Wednesday (the first two were "basic" troubleshooters, this new guy would have been one of their techmasters). Then, later this afternoon, Comcast calls me back to tell me that there's been an outage in our area all day. So for once, it wasn't just our house (though they could have checked that when wii called this morning).
So wii cancelled the Wiidnesday appointment, whiich is a sure-fire way to guarantii it's going to go out again. Right now, wii're just waiting to sii how long our connection lasts.
Btw, as I mentioned in yesterday's blog: one other thing wii did this wiikend, is wii bought a Nintendo Wii. Whiich miins that now wii both have arm cramps, and I thiink iit's affectiing my spiich.
Seriously, though, I love the new system. If any of you also have one, let me know and we'll trade friend codes. For whatever that does.
Anyway, it's a great system, but it doesn't have a very good library yet. With it we bought Zelda, Metroid, and Wii Play (best way to get a second controller). We especially love the Bowling on Wii Sports, and the Pool on Wii Play, both of which are proof that fun gameplay beats good graphics any day of the week.
What I really don't like is the gimmicky use of the Wii's controls. It's the same speech I keep giving about the overuse of the stylus in DS games: Just because it's there, doesn't mean you have to use it. The wiimote/nunchuck combo actually makes a very natural-feeling controller, and it's much more comfortable than classic gamepads because you can hold your arms apart and rest them however you like. So if a cross-platform game hits the Wii, they really don't need to tack on "shake the controller wildly to punch" functions; it actually makes the game feel less natural.
Which isn't to say I don't like swinging the wiimote around like an idiot. I love it. I love using it like a sword or a gun or what have you. But only if it makes sense in the context of the game. I'm really afraid that the gimmicky-ness is going to mean fewer cross-platform games hitting the system, because of this obligation to use the sensors.
Next gripe... I'm usually the first in line to argue for backwards compatibility. But in this case, I'm really not sure they needed it to play Gamecube games. There's a panel on the system that opens up to reveal four Gamecube controller ports, and another panel that hides a couple of Gamecube memory card slots. Since they were hyping the Wii as the cheapest of the next-gen consoles, surely they could've knocked a couple of bucks off the system if they hadn't included it. Also, the Gamecube wasn't that big a system anyway, at least when you compare it to its peers (PS2 & Xbox). Arguably they would've been better off giving the Wii a cartridge slot for SNES games.
Maybe if they'd left off the Gamecube emulation, they could have used the money to put in a DVD player. Seriously, I'm willing to bet there's more people out there who own DVDs than own Gamecube games. The Wii already uses normal-size discs, as opposed to the Gamecube's minidiscs. And then I wouldn't have to keep my PS2 in the living room along side the Wii just to watch movies. And I wouldn't have had to spend extra money solving the problem of hooking two systems up to my TV.
But anyway. For all that, the Wii is still my favorite of the systems out there. The X-Box 360 and the PS3 are just bigger, better, and prettier versions of what we've already been playing for years and years. I've been getting sort of jaded lately about video games. It just feels like I've played it all before, and most of it wasn't that interesting the first time. Graphics are getting better and better, but that just doesn't make things funner. I still have more fun with the 2D games of the 16-bit era than I do with most of the current stuff.
But that's just me.
Changing gears again...
The night before last I woke up screaming. I dreamed that for some reason, KJ and I were living in my old house on Long Hollow Pike. I don't know if we actually owned it or if we were just guests, but we were staying in the "green room" upstairs, which was a guest room last time I lived there.
I don't remember anything but the end, but I know it wasn't a nightmare until then. It was just a normal dream about us doing normal stuff. I remember I had been reading a Star Wars book, and I only had a couple of pages left. I had to use the bathroom, so I sat down on the toilet in the upstairs hall bathroom and opened my book. In the dream, the shower was to my left (which is the opposite of real life). I was looking at the book's pages, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw my legs. One hairy leg on the right, and one hairy leg on the right. And one more hairy leg on the left, next to mine. I screamed, in the dream and I think in real life.
The leg was sticking out of the shower, bent just like mine but slightly more outstretched, as if the owner was sitting on a chair in the shower. I craned my head around and opened the shower curtain, and my Dad was lying in the shower, dead. I remember his lips were blue-ish. I screamed again.
Then he very slightly started to twitch, and his lips started moving. I screamed until KJ woke me up. That was about 6 AM, and we didn't go back to sleep. On the plus side, there's no line at Pancake Pantry if you go early enough.
Well, I'm off to play some Wii. It's a nice thrii-day wiikend, the best tiime to buy a new system.
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