So I stupidly forgot that I had my pocketknife in my camera bag while going through airport security today. Needless to say when my bag went through the x-ray they found it and confiscated it. Darn.
To be honest, I don’t know where to start with this one. The Room was released by Tommy Wiseau in 2003. He not only wrote the movie, but also produced, directed, and starred in it. The problem is that Wiseau is a man so out of touch with reality that seeing the world through his eyes is both terrifying and hilarious all at once.
The plot is pretty simple, girl cheats on guy with his best friend, guy gets pissed. Its the way that the story is told that sets it apart. Knowing how human males live Wiseau manages to capture every facet: pillow fights, daily trips to the flower store (without his sunglasses on, the clerk had no idea it was him when he was wearing them), football tossing from 3 feet away, paying for a random kid’s college tuition, and saying “chip chip chip” to antagonize your friends. It’s all there. Is this seriously how Wiseau envisions people living their lives?
While you may not be able to count on this movie for good acting, or believable situations, or really even a decent grip on reality, what you can count on is horrifically awkward dialogue. In the beginning of the movie people keep saying “I’m really busy, I cant talk right now”. While this isn’t inherently funny or ridiculous, the first time it happens the person saying it is sitting in traffic. The second time the person has just ordered a pizza and is then pictured reading a book. Busy indeed. Another gem is when Lisa, the cheating girlfriend, is talking to her mother… and the mother recounts her brother trying to get her house… shes not having it… too bad shes dying. What? Yep she just got those tests back, she definitely has breast cancer. Lisa has no real reaction and instead says “Don’t worry about it, everything will be fine.” This breast cancer thing is never talked about again. At another point in the movie Johnny (Wiseau) is telling his best friend Mark (who is bopping his girlfriend) about a new client they picked up at the bank he works at, Mark wants to know who this new client is buy Johnny cant say. Johnny responds, “I don’t want to talk about it, so how is your sex life?” Needless to say, Mark doesn’t want to talk about that either.
All in all this is probably the worst movie in existence. As such it has somehow managed to bend the laws of the universe and be enjoyable to watch if only to observe its absurdity.
For the past few days I’ve been playing quite a bit of Blaz Blue. I’ve been through the story mode a few times, played through the Arcade mode, and done some Online as well. The online mode especially is so much better than any other online fighting game I’ve played. I like how you can have multiple people in the room and have even more spectating. Now for someone like me who is awful at this and fighting games in general, I don’t necessarily want people watching me lose, but its nice to know I have the option.
The story mode is, as they said in the Giant Bomb quick look, “aggressively incomprehensible” but who comes to these games for story. The fighting is where it counts, and Blaz Blue has that shit down. The combat is deep and rewarding, and the characters all feel very different. Litchi for example can put her staff into the ground and you can use that at any point to attack, or you can use it to stand on top of and get out way of the enemy’s attacks. If you like great 2d graphics and fast paced inventive fighters you should give Blaz Blue a try.
Lets hope that it ends there. Over the past several weeks I’ve had to deal with a lost-in-the-mail camera lens, a double charged iPhone + applecare plan, and now today a sickly computer. I would very much like this to be the last of these events.
Today Liz was playing LOTRO and the computer started crashing. I assumed it was a driver issue so I updated them. No good. Looking inside the case to make sure that the connections were solid I noticed a dust issue. Maybe the CPU was overheating. We went and got some canned air at Best Buy and I blew out the inside of the case. According to CoreTemp that dropped the CPU temp by about 7 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately it didn’t fix anything. I uninstalled the drivers in safe mode and let it reinstall them on its own. It seemed to work, but a few hours later when she went to play it flipped out again eventually crashing to a blue screen. Even after restarting the computer was flashing green and pink and showing hundreds of flashing squares ( had to reinstall the drivers again to get it to stop). I ordered a cheap new nvidia video card (which will probably still be more powerful than my now 4 year old 8800 GTX). If this solves the problem awesome, if not… maybe its the RAM? Whatever, that’s cheap too. Past that though… They say that bad things happen in threes.
For a long time now I’ve had an iPod touch (1st gen, and 2nd gen), the iPhone’s semi-retarded cousin. With the release of the 3Gs I decided that it was time to move up to the real deal, so yesterday I stopped by an AT&T store near work and picked up a 32GB one. Half way through the transaction the computer crashed (just my luck) and I ended up getting charged twice for the phone and the apple care plan. Awesome. I am still getting that double charge sorted out.
I love the device itself, despite the trouble that getting it has been. It is a great iPod, movie player, GPS, and a decent phone to boot. I’ve noticed that the amount of signal I get can be finicky. Sometimes I’ll have 5 bars and other times I’ll only get 1 in the same exact place. Overall I get better signal in my house and at work and most of Chicago has 3G so I can browse the internet and download shit quickly no matter where I am. Its pretty convenient.
The camera is kind of weak in low light, but outside or in well lit interiors it works fine. I am pretty impressed with the video and the auto focus and tap to focus stuff.
Last night I was playing around with the voice recognition stuff and its pretty awful… oh well, I’ll never use that anyway.
I have been working on getting some videogame ringtones on there. So far I have stuff from crystalis, mario 2, zelda 2, and team fortress 2. I found this website that lets you convert an mp3 into the correct file type for iPhone ringtones then you just drag it into the ringtones section of itunes.
Right now I would be talking about the Olympus Zuiko 8mm Fisheye lens, but FedEx lost my package. Ugh.
I imported the Asian version of From Software’s “Demon’s Souls” a few weeks ago. I’ve been playing for about 10 hours so far and I feel I’ve gotten enough playtime I’m to formulate some feelings on the game. The first thing you’ll notice about Demon’s Souls is its difficulty, which will be extremely polarizing. You’ll either appreciate the challenge and work really hard to overcome it, or you’ll be turned off by it and never want to see this game again.
Now a bit of back story. Demon’s Souls takes place in the fictional kingdom of Boletaria, a once great nation now being ravaged by a demon scourge. As a result, people who die are trapped in what is called The Nexus. After a brief tutorial level you are thrown into a battle with a gigantic boss, who proceeds to kill you in one hit. This sets up the game’s story and gives you a bit of a taste for just how challenging the game will be. The Nexus is the game’s main hub where you can teleport to the various stages, buy or store items, and learn or upgrade skills (after you beat level 1-1).
When you start the game the only level available to you is 1-1. This serves as a time for you to learn the combat, and the basic skills in the game like dodging, attacking, and blocking. Over the course of the level you open up shortcuts which let you get back to areas deeper in the level without having to fight through the whole thing again if you die (which you most likely will). There will be enemies you just cant beat in the beginning so these shortcuts act as a path to get to various parts of the level to revisit these super enemies. Anyway, at some point in level 1 you open a large gate to the first boss. Once the first boss is dispatched all 4 other areas levels become available as well as the ability to go deeper into level 1 (and giving you a second entry point to the level in the process), it also opens up the ability to purchase skill upgrades and magic. Enter souls. Souls are the game’s money–they are used to upgrade your stats (strength, endurance, vitality, etc), buy or upgrade and fix your weapons, and purchase magical spells. Part of this games difficulty comes from the way in which souls are handled. You gain souls by defeating enemies. Weaklings can give you 6-60 souls, and bigger guys and bosses can give you thousands. If you die however, all of the souls you have at the time are dropped, but you can fight back to where you died and pick them back up, but if you die on your way there a new set of souls drop and the original (usually larger) sum disappears.
There are also various online features to the game including 4 player co-op, and a sort of MMO style online mode where you can see other players as ghosts in your world. You can also leave messages on the ground for others to read and to warn them of danger or of secret items. If you see a message that you find helpful, you can rate it which will give some life back to the person that left the message. You can also leave messages if there is a part you’re having trouble passing and passers by will be able to lend a hand by rating your message and refilling your life. This is why you’ll see a ton of “This is harsh. Evaluate me.” messages. There is even a PVP system in the game where players can force themselves into other someone else world and stalk and kill them as a phantom.
I am having a lot of fun with Demon’s Souls so far, and I cant wait to see some of the later areas in the game. Though, I think I’ll level up a little bit more first.
As Metal Gear fans around the world watch Kojimas Countdown > Countdown > Countdown the anticipation for the next game in the series grows. In the past few days there have been reveals of several “familiar faces” including a raiden look-alike with brown eyes and what appears to be big boss. I threw together a quick wallpaper (1920×1200) using some of the counter’s image assets. Enjoy! (click the image to get the full size or click below) You cant really see it in the preview but it says MGS5 very faintly in the top section and has a diagonal line pattern.
Kojima’s Countdown has finally revealed something other than a field and numbers slowly ticking down. In today’s countdown update after several lightning strickes Big Boss’s face emerges. I cant wait to hear more about this game. I just hope that it is a full game for PS3 and not some PSP game.
I’m going on a trip in a few days. My step brother is getting married so I figured I’d be taking a lot of photos. Right now I just have a single 2GB SanDisk Extreme III CF card, while the card is great, it doesn’t let me take all that many photos. Today I realized that I may need additional cards. I looked at Best Buy and Walgreens and both placed had 2gb cards for around $40. I went online to adorama.com (my new favorite camrea stuff store) and right on the front page they had a sale on 5 2gb SanDisk Extreme III CF cards for $50. WTF!? Even though I wont get them in time for the wedding, an additional 8GB of storage for $10? yes please.
Seriously, buying stuff in stores is fucking dead to me.
Before I begin, I feel that I have to give a little but of a warning. I’m going to be pretty much be gushing over this movie for the next few paragraphs, I loved it, so with that in mind, keep reading.
The Brothers Bloom, right from the start, made its way onto my list of “favorite movies ever”. Almost everything about it is exactly what I want to see in a Con-Man movie. It keeps you guessing, and just when you think you know whats going on it pulls the rug out from under you and you’re left wondering how you were so wrong. Its smart, funny, and beautifully shot and has intelligent people in unpredictable situations reacting in very smart ways, plus it has a really hot asian lady, that doesn’t hurt either.
The first thing I noticed when the movie started was the camera-work. This is not taking place in our world. Its some world where these people and Amélie Poulain live, where everything looks breathtakingly beautiful, and everything is framed and cropped just so. The scenes have a great depth to them. Characters walk down a dark path in one part of the frame, and some lights will flick on in sequence in the background. There is just so much to take in. I feel like I could watch this movie a hundred times and still see new things with each subsequent viewing.
Mark Ruffalo, Adrian Brody and Rachel Weisz are charming, witty, and immediately likable characters. I really liked how they managed to show the differences between the two brothers and how Bloom (Brody) is always getting crapped on while his brother Steven (Ruffalo) is coasting through life without a care. They manage to distill this down to simple use of props at times like the interaction with the sugar shaker. Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), even though silent for the majority of the movie, has tons of personality and her fair share of charm as well. Plus shes really hot.
I really cannot recommend this movie more. It was awesome.
I rely on quite a few firefox add-ons for day to day use of the internet. Delicious Bookmarks, Colorzilla, Web Developer Toolbar, Firebug, Measure It — Most of my them are pretty practical. Tonight I stumbled upon an add-on that is just down right cool and I had to install it.
It’s called Cooliris, and transforms pages of images like flickr or google images into one long 3d wall of photos. It has nice smooth animation and allows you to look at all the photos without having to click next page over and over. You can also click on any image and it zooms in and downloads a higher resolution version of that image. Using your mouse wheel zooms the camera in or out so you can see either more or less of the thumbnails at once.
Its just sooo cool! Give it a try!
Back in the day of the original Playstation King’s Field was one of my first games. I fell in love with it, despite its slow plodding pace, almost complete lack of story, and brutal difficulty. Demon’s Souls, a new PS3 game by the same developers, is out in japan/asia, and I’m thinking of importing it. The asian version has english voice/text so it should be easily playable, and I dont think they are bringing this guy over to america. decisions…
This week PSN is giving away Rag Doll Kung Fu for free. Unless you’re an idiot that hates free things go download it. For those in the dark its by the same guys that made Little Big Planet, and plays a lot like Super Smash Bros. DO IT.
The upcoming June issue of Game Informer magazine has a 10 page cover story for Modern Warfare 2. There have been a few small teaser trailers so far including a 15 second gameplay movie, but really, this game is a mystery. It looks like I’m going to actually have to pick this up. I loved the previous Modern Warfare, and played the multiplayer for a long time. Hopefully this time I can get my friends on board.
