Last night I rewatchedAkira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and I was reminded about how awesome samurai movies are when done right–sometimes even if they are done really wrong. It gave me the idea to write about one of my absolute favorite samurai movies. When I first heard of this movie, many moons ago, it was spoken of in hushed tones. It was supposedly so awesome that upon viewing it there was a chance that your face would melt like the asian dude from Raiders. No one we knew had, or even knew of where to get a copy of it, but we luckily had the first few minutes on a beat ass warped VHS tape. After the first few minutes, however, the picture would turn to mush and all that was left was to be teased with sounds of slicin’ and dicin’.
I was completely sold after watching the short intro, and I made it my mission to find this video. Over the next few weeks the intro to the movie played through my mind like a familiar melody. It was like having a song stuck in your head and yet not knowing which song it is. But no matter where you go you hear snippets of music that bring it back to the forefront of your mind and hopefully closer to recognition. Everywhere I went I could hear it playing, but it was an incomplete tune. For the sake of my sanity I had to find this movie, and let the full melody of samurai savagery be unleashed. After weeks of procuring small second hand stores, retail outlets, and garage sales, I finally found someone that could order me one, but it would be expensive. Was it worth it? There was only one way to find out. I had to complete my quest pick-up the wooden carpenter’s cup and take a drink (if you’re counting that makes two Indiana Jones references in one post).
A few long weeks later my copy came in and we all decided to make an event of it. We bought beer, food, and then crowded around our TV like the first cavemen upon encountering a fire sent down by the gods in the form of lightning. Could this movie live up to the incredible hype that we had created around it? Of course it could, but would it? This movie, Shogun Assassin, melted my brain with its sheer awesomeness. One of the greatest martial arts or samurai movies ever created. Our brains quivered, heaved, and spasmed as OgamiItto embarked on his quest for revenge with his toddler son strapped to his back. Facing the Masters of Death, ninjas, and countless hordes of samurai all with his son on his back completely unscathed or fazed by the danger (in fact the movie is narrated by his son). All enemies were mere sword fodder for Itto. His skills were unmatched, his form flawless.
This movie is a definite must see if you like good movies that don’t bore the shit out of you. If you haven’t seen it you may have heard it before. The movie inspired Quentin Tarantino, and can be heard in Kill Bill 2 during the scene where Beatrix puts her kid to sleep. Luckily you won’t have to go on some arduous trek to find this movie. Thanks to the conveniences of modern technology I found it on YouTube in about thirty seconds. It is only the first 10 minutes, but it will give you a taste of this movies greatness. I’m sure there is a digital copy out there somewhere. If someone finds it let me know. This movie is best seen with friends, alcohol, and on a real TV, but its greatness is in no way diminished by watching it on the computer:
It’s been around 24 hours since I have seen Avatar. I have let it percolate in my head and I have also had the chance to to hash out some of my thoughts with fellow geeks. What follows will be spoiler heavy so if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t wish to know anything then stop reading.
First I’ll start with my gripes.
One of the biggest annoyances in the movie was the lack of any character development for the villains. They were all just evil dudes who were bent on destruction no matter the cost. In the case of Col. Quaritch he was just a Marine that was hell bent on kicking ass and killing whomever, or whatever, was in his way. Understandable but he was like a person devoid of any human emotions who seemed to hate the Na’Vi for no apparent reason. If he was the only person in the movie like that I would let it slide. However, virtually all the Marines (except for two) in the movie were also one-dimensional characters devoid of any moral compass or any semblance of a human emotion. I find it hard to believe that out of the thousands of people there 99.9% of them were completely on board with massacreing the aliens just because they wanted to get some unobtainium (stupid name btw). Besides I don’t think there is a need for anymore stereotyping of Marines as crazy, evil whack-a-doos. There was just too much black and white in the movie, and rarely were there any shades of grey–morally speaking.
Secondly, I get the whole allusions to slavery and the plight of the American Indians, but it was a bit much. Actually it wasn’t even an allusion it was pretty much a straight up comparison to the westward expansion of the United States. The unobtainium is gold, and the Marines are the evil frontiersman who murdered and pillaged their way across the west. Now is not the time for a moral or historical debate about that time period. What bugged me was the ham-fisted attempt to wed that time period with the modern one. Throwing in phrases like “shock and awe” and “fight terror with terror” took me out of the movie momentarily. I get it you’re against the Iraq War, slavery, and westward expansion. Good to know, but unfortunately it was all shoe-horned into the story. Plus there are other movies that have done a better job with those themes–namely Return of the Jedi. The ending of both movies is basically the same. The peace loving simple people defeat the technologically superior, but moralistically inferior people–except in Avatar there is the added element of a Deity that interjects and helps out.
Ok now you may think that with all that griping and complaining that I hated the movie, but if you thought that you’d be wrong. Watching this movie I got the same feeling I got when I watched Jurassic Park, Star Wars, or Terminator 2. This movie is a game-changer. All the work that was done by ILM over the years in creating digital sets and characters was put to spectacular use in Avatar. The interaction movie is virtually seamless in blending all the real with the digital. Watching this movie totally blew my mind. (And despite my gripes with the story, the story was actually pretty good. There is a decent and simple plot line to follow, there’s a bit of a love story, and there are some moral themes that could have been powerful if I wasn’t beaten over the head with them.) The 3D was great because it wasn’t a gimmick. The characters weren’t breaking the fourth wall trying to engage the audience. There wasn’t an overabundance of spears, vehicles, or whatever coming directly at the camera. Instead the 3D was used as a way to create a more immersive environment. Pandora felt more real. There was more depth to the world, and this helped to draw you in. This is how these technologies were meant to be used. I finish by restating what I’ve already said. The movie is a game changer, and it must be seen in 3D. This movie should become a blueprint for how 3D and CGI should be used to create new immersive worlds. If it does and other directors keep improving it then there should be a lot of exciting movies in the future. It’ll be amazing to see where this all leads too. So if I was going to give this movie a grade I would say it’s a solid 95%, so go see it now.
I have consistently been a late adopter of technology. The last time I jumped on the techno band wagon from the get go was when I bought an mp3 player back before there was such a thing as an iPod (it was the equivalent of the Zack Morris cell phone). Needless to say I got burned and I learned my lesson. Since that time I have always waited and waited for new technology to go through a few iterations before I buy it. Last Friday I decided to finally jump on the iPhone band wagon, and although I wish I would have done it sooner I am glad that I waited for them to work out some of the bugs.
Anyways I have been trolling the app store looking for good apps and wanted to promote one of my favorite apps so far. The app is from BeamItDown Software and it is a collection of 150 Great Books (and counting). Usually I feel the same way about digital books as I do about new technology, I really don’t like it. There’s really nothing that can beat reading a real book, as opposed to the digital incarnation, but the price was right so I figured what the hell I’ll give it a try. Up until this point I have only really read research papers and the like in digital form, and those usually don’t exceed fifty pages or so, but even those few pages are taxing on my eyes. Now with all my complaining and griping about digital books you might be asking “well I thought you liked this app?” I do but I just had to get some minor complaints out of the way first.
Lately I have been packing–in preparation for my imminent move to somewhere, don’t know where just yet–and I filled up two twenty gallon plastic storage containers with my books. And when I went to move them into the other room I almost gave myself a hernia. Seriously books are fucking heavy and annoying to move. I had forgotten about that. So until the time comes where I settle down and have a room dedicated as my library I think I am going to calm down on buying books. Secondly, I went to do my laundry the other day and usually along with my colossal bag of dirty laundry, detergent, softener, and bounce sheets, I usually take my phone, iPod, and a book to read. Now instead I just grabbed my bag of laundry and my iPhone and I was off listening to my music during the long trek to the laundromat, and once there I dove into A Tale of Two Cities, which is a book I have been meaning to read for years. Despite my aversion to digital books I really enjoyed it and so far I haven’t really felt that I am missing that much by reading it off of my phone. Actually it’s pretty damn great, and bonus because there are so many choices of books to read I will never be without a book. And besides it’s much better than carrying my satchel (it’s not a man purse it’s a satchel) into the city filled with books and what not.
By the way the app is now 50% off and is only $4.99–which when added to the price of a new iPhone is cheaper than the Kindle, and the Kindle doesn’t play music or make phone calls (suck on that amazon). That $4.99 price tag is also cheaper than buying even one of the books on the list. Speaking of the list here are some of the highlights of what books are included on the app: a collection of Dickens, Twain, Doyle, Dumas, Hardy, London, Poe, and Wells. Oh but wait there’s more it also includes political tracts from Hamilton, Locke, Marx, Milton, Paine, and Plato. And there is a ton of other stuff including Epic Poetry, regular poetry, and fables. There is really a grip of worthwhile books on the list just begging to be read, and hey did I mention it’s really a phenomenal deal. The app itself works smoothly and saves where you left off in every book that you are reading. Instead of simulating a book and page turns this app works like a “teleprompter” which makes it easier to read. You can set it to move automatically so that you don’t have to touch the screen and can just keep reading. Personally I hate the mode because I either feel that I am being rushed or that it’s moving too slow–I haven’t found the “just right” speed yet–and besides I like to read well written passages over and over again so I can fully appreciate them. So I’d rather move the script on my own, but the option is there which is nice.
However, there are a couple add-ons I would like to see. One is a way to highlight, mark, or dog-ear certain passages. I have the tendency to write notes and bracket particularly good passages, but the ability to write notes is probably asking for a bit much so I would settle for a way to just highlight passages for reference later on. Secondly, I would like some kind of page reference that lets me know the approximate page number that I am currently reading. One of the benefits of reading books is noting the progress you make each time you sit down and read for a few hours, and that is really lost on this format. Other than those minor gripes the app is the tops and well worth the money. I don’t think I’ll ever go completely digital but being able to have so many good books on hand at all times is priceless (cliche I know, but also true).
Today I drug myself to my computer to begin the process of writing more cover letters and to scour the internet for more jobs. It never happened though because I made myself a pot of coffee and turned on the TV and as I was searching around I saw that G4 was having their E3 coverage. Some days it is down right fantastic to be a nerd and today was one of those days. I spent the better part of the day watching Microsoft’s XBOX 360 E3 presentation. It was two hours chalk full of surprises that whetted my appetite for the fall releases. So for those of you that are gainfully employed here are some of my favorites (in no particular order).
The Beatles Rock Band–even though I generally suck at Rock Band I will think about getting this game just because it looks great and I love The Beatles. Besides how cool would it be to play Drive My Car in Shea Stadium in front of 50,000 screaming fans?
Modern Warfare 2–the first Modern Warfare was awesome and I didn’t even explore the multi-player features, a mistake I won’t make again. It looks like Infinity Ward upped the ante on this version and the level displayed at E3 looked great–especially when you get to drive and fight on a snowmobile, which had a Bond feel to it. The 360 version will also have two exclusive map packs.
Halo: ODST–Bungie is one of those developers that I will pretty much buy anything they make because they are one of the best out there. The fact that this is a new Halo game, which plays differently than previous incarnations, and you can count me hyped and excited to play this game. Also Bungie teased a prequel to the Halo series entitled Halo: Reach.
So I have been hard at work on my paper this entire weekend. Actually, I was supposed to be working on this paper all weekend. However, instead of doing actual work I have been procrastinating, well, like it’s my job. So Sunday I turned on my XBOX 360 so I could listen to some music whilst writing, but before I started playing my writing music, I started looking at some of the new arcade games. One game in particular caught my eye, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai (and also check the developers blog). I decided to check out the demo, and damn I was hooked with a quickness. Although $10 can be a steep price for a broke ass student like myself I didn’t think twice about buying it. This game is amazing and I spent the better part of my Sunday afternoon furiously killing some fools.
The game is about some dude who washes dishes–amazingly I don’t think he is Mexican haha–who dies or something and somehow lives and wants revenge. Someone also kidnaps his sister and he needs to save her. The cut scenes are done as comic strips and the whole style of the game is very comic booky. The game does a very good job of feeling like a comic book come to life. Each level feels like individual frames of a comic book that you are slowly progressing through. Obviously this is all part of the design, but the fact that it comes through so clearly, and works so well, speaks highly of the designer not dropping the ball on his vision. The actual gameplay though is kick ass and the closest approximation for it is Ninja Gaiden. If you like Ninja Gaiden you’re going to like this game. If you like the action of Ninja Gaiden, but your fingers aren’t nimble enough to hit the combos (coughneverbesocialcough), you will most likely enjoy this game. It has all the cool action without the mind-numbing and finger contorting combos of Ninja Gaiden (although if you play for long enough your hands will cramp up like the caretakers). Oh yah by the way did I mention that there are zombie in the game? No? Well there are, so bonus points for the zombie slayage, and you even get a chainsaw in the game to slash those zombies back to hell. Also of note there are sweet executions that you can perform to finish off your enemies. One of my favs is when the Dishwasher grabs the psuedo-FBI agents gun and uses it to splatter said agents brains onto the wall.
If I have said it once I have said it a million times YouTube is one of the biggest time vampires in my life. Sometimes I really don’t know how I get anything done at all. For instance, right now I should be wading my way through 70+ pages of notes and writing out practice essays for the big test on Friday, but instead I have been meandering my way through videos on YouTube. I just can’t help it sometimes I hit a good thread and just keep going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. Here now are a couple of the gems that I found today (incidently I got started on this topic by finding this website that tracks TWSS comments over twitter). The first is every (almost) “That’s what she said” from The Office and the other one is some TWSS from the Star Wars trilogy. Maybe it’s just me but TWSS jokes never get old. It’s now time to go back to (or start) studying. It’s going to be hard, but I have to tear myself away from the interwebs. Enjoy.
Yesterday after I got back from school I decided to take a break from studying for the night and play some video games. I downloaded the new MLB 2K9 demo and hoped that it would be a vast improvement over the previous incarnations. My hopes were shattered as the 2K series continued its tradition of suckery. For some reason the powers that be decided that competition amongst sports games was a bad idea and so they embarked upon all these exclusivity contracts. Unfortunately for baseball fans 2K received the exclusivity on Xbox and the MVP series ceased to exist, and because of that I haven’t played a good baseball video game since MVP ’05.
My main gripe with the 2K series is that there are way too many layers. Back in the day video game baseball used to be fun when all I had to do was worry about pressing a couple buttons in conjunction with the D-pad. Now things have just gotten ridiculous; let me count the ways. Swing stick = lame. You know I don’t want to sit there and decide if I want a 40 degree downswing, or 55 degree swing, or a 30 degree upswing. I just want to swing the fucking bat. I don’t need to ‘mimic’ a real swing. I just want to hit the ball. Pitch stick is likewise lame. I don’t want to ‘mimic’ a slider, curve, circle change, or whatever. If I wanted to mimic the real motion of a slider I would go outside and throw sliders on my sidewalk, and if I was any good at it I wouldn’t have to play the goddamn video game to begin with. So what else is annoying? Running the bases with any degree of skill is pretty much impossible and usually I end up getting two players tagged out at one base–a la J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent in the ’06 NLDS–because I didn’t have the manual dexterity to hit the required 12 button combination to advance the lead runner but not the other runners. How did they fuck this up when I never had any problems with this on my old Nintendo? It’s because 2K is terrible and they make everything as complicated as possible. Speaking of the Nintendo at least they had a good excuse for crappy looking four pixel characters, but in this day and age how does 2K keep churning out shitty models. Why does Prince Fielder look like he weighs 180 lbs.? Why does Ryan Howard look like Jimmy Rollins? Seriously are you guys even trying anymore?
I’m assuming that next year they will go beyond baseball simulation, and do something a bit like this:
Last night I finally got to see Jimmy Eat World live in concert. After all these years of being a fan of them, and constantly missing out on their shows, I finally made one. First off I will always be grateful to neverbesocial for introducing me to Jimmy Eat World back in those halcyon Phoenix days. (Actually I have to thank him for introducing me to quite a few of my favorite bands. He has been a sort of musical Gandalf guiding me through the perilous path of new music. Although I still can’t stand Mates of State or Portugal the Man, but hey whatever I can’t be expected to like everything he does.) Anyways I got to the show earlier than I did for The Black Keys a few weeks ago, but despite that, there was still a huge line–over a block long–by the time I got there. The people at Terminal 5, however, kept the line moving quickly and I was able to get inside before I froze completely to death.
Once inside I went back up to my spot on the third floor railing, grabbed an empanada, a couple beers, and got ready for the show. I can’t tell you how excited I was for this show. I have been looking forward to seeing JEW for a long time now and the fact that my first concert was going to be the Clarity tour only added to my exhilaration–as Clarity is one of my all-time favorite albums. So I suffered through the opening act–they actually were not that bad, but I just didn’t feel like waiting any longer to see JEW. A little bit after 9:00 JEW came out to the rousing cheers of the crowd and commenced to playing Clarity in it’s entirety–including Goodbye Sky Harbor. It was a fantastic show and they sounded great, and considering this was their first show on the tour, I expect that as the tour rolls on they will tighten up their sound even more. After they finished playing Clarity they left so they could take part in the obligatory encore–bands really need to stop doing that as it’s pretty contrived–and then they came back out and played some of their b-sides and then finished off the show with Work, Pain, The Middle, and Sweetness. The crowd went absolutely ape-shit for Sweetness and it really is the best song to finish the show to as everyone left completely pumped after that song. Well there is not really much more for me to say that the pics and videos can’t say on their own. So enjoy the pics and videos. (By the way Jimmy Eat World if you all are upset about me posting these pics and videos online just twitter me to take it down. No need to release the hounds.)
HBO has had quite a few shows lately dealing with the war in Iraq, and they have all been well done and even-handed. Taking Chance is the newest HBO film that revolves around the Iraq war, and like the others it is non-political and just tells the true story of one Marine escorting another Marine home. I don’t want to try and deconstruct this film like some film nerd, instead I will just say that it is well worth your time. I watched it last night–instead of the craptastic Oscars–and it was an emotional movie. If you can watch this film without tearing up then you must not have a soul or maybe you’re just a cynical hippie (or both). Anyways watch the trailer then check it out:
Yesterday I awoke bright and early and immediately turned on my Xbox so I could download the new GTA IV DLC: The Lost and Damned. (I never realized how long it takes to download 1.7 gigs of content. It must have taken me at least 3 hours.) Once it finished downloading, however, I jumped right in and started it up. I got in about an hours worth yesterday before class, a few hours after class, and most of the day today (I finished up the main storyline today). All told I have 11 hours of game play and I am at 71% completion. So is it worth the $20 (1600 MS points)? Personally, I think it was definitely worth the money, but then again I really like GTA IV.
The Lost and Damned follows the story of Johnny Klebitz the Vice President of The Lost Motorcycle Club. The story is vintage Rockstar complete with crooked politicians, drugs, sex, the Mafia, and everything else we have come to expect from a good GTA game. Although Johnny’s story is new it does take place at the same time as the events of the original GTA IV. So you will see some familiar faces and you will play a couple missions from the original except you will play from Johnny’s perspective instead of Niko’s (this helps flesh out some of the details from the original without coming off as cheap or lazy). This all leads to a rewarding gaming experience. Although the main story is only 10+ hours long there are still plenty of other things to do. There are gang wars, 12 new races, sea gull killing, and other side missions that Rockstar has put in. So there is plenty more game play past the main storyline–as long as you’re the type of gamer that likes doing side missions. By the way the motorcycle races are loads of fun. Racing a bunch of other chumps and then bashing them with an aluminum bat as you pass them by never gets old. Speaking of bikes I rarely rode them in the original, and this game forces you to ride a chopper (obviously), but after a couple missions on the bike it felt like an old friend, and I really enjoyed riding it around. It’s way easier to lose the cops on a bike, but you can’t pick up hookers on a bike (but you can still blast them with a shotty haha).
I think the shortness of the game adds to its single-player re-playability, and I will probably play it again sometime soon. There are three missions in particular that are extremely fun to play and worth the price of admission in and of themselves. On top of that it there are new multi-modes. So a good story complete with humor, intrigue, drugs, and sex; and the over-the-top violence of giving some chump the ol’ shotgun blast to the mug equals a kick ass gaming experience. I forgot how much I enjoyed rampaging around Liberty City. Thank you Rockstar!
Now check out some screen shots, then go download this add-on, and then start blasting away at some chumps:
