Pride of the Valkyries
Posted on | January 1, 2009 at 4:04 pm | 4 Comments
The girlfriend bought me a movie theater gift card for Christmas (among other things), so since I’ve been on vacation this week I availed myself of its use and went to see the latest Tom Cruise revival vehicle Valkyrie. I kind of wanted to seen The Curious Case of Benjamin B*tton more, but since that’s one that N wants to see too, I choose the historical suspense thriller instead. Plus, Sue says that B*tton has some material that I would find objectionable.
I’ve been really interested in finding out more about this Hitler-assassination plot since I first saw it dramatically rendered in an old Winds of War (or whatever) miniseries. The movie goes into a lot more detail about the plot than the TV show I saw, and I realized there was a quite a bit I didn’t know about it. For example, the movie spends a lot of time setting up the plan for what would happen after Hitler’s death, which in some ways is more important than the actual assassination itself. The German resistance was interested in not only offing Hitler, but in stopping the war and preserving Germany. It doesn’t do much good to chop off the head if the body continues on its bloody way. So I was fascinated to see the details on all that, and was really surprised to see how the conspirators even got Hitler to (literally) sign off on part of the plan to bring him down. The resistance came amazingly close to achieving their objectives and were done in by a few pieces of bad luck, including a table leg. It’s really edge-of-the-seat stuff.
I wasn’t totally convinced by Cruise’s portrayal of chief conspirator Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, although I do have to say he bears an amazing resemblance to him. Director Bryan Singer made the decision to have everyone act using their own accents instead of a German one, in order to keep dialog distractions at a minimum. I can see why he did it, but it ends up sounding odd, especially since Cruise is one of the few people with an American accent, and most of the rest have British ones. Even though Cruise is in nearly every scene, he at least doesn’t dominate the picture as much as you’d think. There’s some nice ensemble acting. Bill Nighy does a great job losing himself in the role of General Friedrich Olbricht, and I didn’t even recognize Kenneth Brannagh until the end credits rolled.
I had a good time and was fitfully entertained. I just wish I hadn’t drunk a big old pop and had to pee really bad for the last half hour or so. I didn’t want to miss any of the movie. I gotta stop doing that!
I found it interesting that the admonishments before the movie about not talking and turning off your cell phone now include warnings about “texting”. The times, they are a-changing.
Happy New Year, everyone! Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Actually, this one’s a major peeve. The theaters that I go to now have changed the way they serve soft pretzels. It used to be they heated them up in a toaster oven-like thing, like they do at pretzel stands in the mall. Now, they heat them in a microwave inside a bag. They give you a couple of packets of coarse salt along with the pretzel inside the bag, and you’re supposed to add the salt to the bag yourself and shake it up so that the salt covers the pretzel. Not only does this method inadequately coat the pretzel with the salt, but microwaving soft pretzels results in a less than satisfactory culinary experience, especially after they start to get cold. Guess I’ll have to switch to popcorn.
Unknown Fact Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “peepios are cereal with apple juice in it.”.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS). Massive addiction to this game!
Strange Japanese Beer Product Placement
Posted on | December 27, 2008 at 4:52 pm | 5 Comments
I’ve been catching up on my DVDs and Blu-Rays lately. One DVD I bought a few years ago (I believe on the recommendation of the villain) was The Great Yokai War. I finally got around to watching that one last night. It’s a live action Japanese movie geared towards kids, yet it’s directed by prolific director Takashi Miike (whom I know from Audition and Ichi The Killer, two of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen), so I knew it wouldn’t be very Disney-esque. It does have a bit of a Terry Gilliam Time Bandits vibe to it, or maybe a seriously twisted Wizard of Oz. It’s the story of 10-year old Tadashi who lives with his recently divorced lush of a mother and nearly-senile grandfather, and who gets chosen to be the all-important Kirin Rider (not to be confused with Duffman), defeater of evil spirits. The movie features a fantastic variety of Yokai, whom I gather are spirits/demons/gods from Japanese folklore. The Yokai, though ugly and weird, are mostly friendly, but someone is turning them into evil machine creatures and turning them loose on Japan. Tadashi teams up with some of the good Yokai left and it’s up to him to reclaim the Kirin Rider sword from the Great Tengu and whup up on some bad guys. Standard fantasy quest plot, not so standard execution. (Note: The DVD has an English dub, but I watched it with the original Japanese audio and English subtitles.)
The Yokai are brought to life in a number of different ways, including makeup/prosthetics, puppetry, CGI, and what appeared to me to be stop-motion animation (the machine creatures). There’s a big walking wall with a face in the middle. There’s a one-eyed, one-legged closed umbrella with a huge tongue. There’s a lady who can extend her neck like Plastic Man. And there’s an annoying guinea pig/cat creature that makes whimpering noises and is a puppet that looks less lifelike than a tribble. (Tadashi falls hard for this insufferably cute furball.) And thousands, yes thousands other. At times the special effects look really cheap and obvious (especially the people in rubber suits), but it does seem to fit the vibe of the movie just like in old Doctor Who episodes. Chiaki Kuriyama (from Kill Bill and Battle Royale) makes an appearance as the bad guy’s underling, and she sports a stunning white beehive hairdo and a clothing ensemble that spontaneously changes at will. If your movie has Chiaki Kuriyama in it, you know it’s got to be good. Or at least weird.
The movie definitely held my interest and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. I would love to show it to my niece and nephews to see what they think. There are some pretty scary and gross scenes in it, especially as Tadashi comes gradually into contact with the spirit world, but I’m sure it’s nothing worse than what they’ve seen on the screen countless times before.
The movie also features a journalist who spends much of the movie drunk (which helps him to see the Yokai), although it doesn’t appear to be Kirin Beer that he’s drinking. And hey, there’s a giant flying monster in it that crushes much of Tokyo and whom the locals mistake for Gamera, so if that’s not an enticement to see a movie, I don’t know what is. Also great: Tadashi’s reaction when he puts on the traditional Kirin Rider garb (”It’s a bit much, isn’t it?”). And the moral of the movie is “don’t throw anything away, even if it’s broken, dirty, or worthless”, which is a lesson we all could learn.
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: I did my first session at the fitness center yesterday, which included the fitness orientation. I learned how to use the various strengthening machines, which I’ve barely even seen before. I wasn’t sore afterwards in any of the ways I thought I would be, although the calf muscle in my left leg has really tightened up. I think that was from the run on the treadmill, although it forgetting to stretch was probably an issue. Paula, you’re right. Running on a treadmill is not like jogging. I was most surprised at how disoriented I was after dismounting the treadmill.
Disturbing Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “corbin bernsen hairy chest”.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS), Castlevania Chronicles (PSN), Wipeout HD (PS3)
The Golden Skulls
Posted on | December 24, 2008 at 11:21 am | 5 Comments
Movie Mention Christmas Eve!
For those of you complaining that I haven’t watched enough action movies lately, I just did a double feature over the last two nights. Some spoilers await below.
The first was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I didn’t think it was as bad as people said, but it wasn’t that great either. An enjoyable little romp. In the extras, George Lucas says that since the original Indy trilogy was a homage to the serials of the 30s and 40s, this new one was supposed to be a homage to the SciFi B-movies of the 50s. Well, okay. Then it all makes a little more sense. Or not. It still seemed a lot like an Indiana Jones movie than a 50s schlockfest to me. Simply putting aliens (excuse me, “extradimensionals”) into your movie does not make it a 50s B-movie, especially when said aliens don’t really do anything except merge together, turn Cate Blanchett into her component atoms, and disappear in a big saucer. That’s more like a Steven Spielberg movie than an Ed Wood one. Although having Indy survive a nuclear blast by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator, and having Indy and the gang survive multiple spills over very high waterfalls, does definitely land the movie into B-movie territory.
Much better was Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. It just did everything better than IJ4. Even the requisite emotional subplots (”Liz is pregnant!”, “Abe’s in love!”) somehow seemed more engaging and “truer” than the ones in IJ4 (”Indy has a son!”, “Indy’s old!”). And of course it was much more of a feast for the eyes. Guillermo del Toro knows a lot about putting fantastical creations on the screen. I thought the the humor was… funnier, too. The sequel was definitely better than the original. Kudos for giving the supporting cast, esp Doug Jones’ Abe Sapien, more to do this time.
The Blu-Ray HiDef presentations of both were spectacular, but I again have to give the nod to HB2, in both the visual and audio departments. The picture for IJ4 looked a little washed-out, not so sharp, like it was done on purpose to look more like those old 50s movies and like the original Indy trilogy. HB2 is one of those movies you could watch over and over again and see or hear something new in the details.
I think Spielberg and Lucas (not to mention Ford) are just getting too old for this sort of thing. Luckily, there’s a lot of torch-passing going on.
Have a great Christmas, everyone!
Latre.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “where are they now loud family”.
Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Tried To Be Fit
Posted on | December 20, 2008 at 5:19 pm | 5 Comments
I know it’s a bit early for New Year’s Resolutions, but…
As I mentioned a few days ago, I haven’t been doing any jogging lately. It’s a combination of factors: laziness, cold weather, icy/snowy sidewalks, no time (going to bed too late). The usual. Wintertime makes it very hard to run outside. Although sometimes in the summer I use the excuse that it’s too hot.
So I’ve taken a radical step and done something I’ve never ever done before. I actually signed up with a gym (excuse me, “Fitness Center”). 24-Hour Fitness is currently having a promotion (which ends tomorrow) where you can get all access at any one club for one year for $200 if you prepay. That’s less than $17/month. No commitment (aside from the upfront money), no additional fees, no monthly charges. Even if I end up only using it a couple of times a month, it would still be worth it. There’s a huge facility just over three miles from my house, and it’s on the route between home and work. It even has a pool so I can swim some laps. The group classes (yoga, cycling, etc) are included. If I had known gym membership was so cheap, I would’ve signed up sooner.
I like having the one year limited time membership, since that gives me a long time, all four seasons, to see if this is something that fits my lifestyle. My current plan is to stop at the gym on the way home from work a couple of times a week for some cardio, and then maybe work up to some resistance training and such. It will be a switch for me, since when I jog, I do it in the morning to get it out of the way for the day. At the end of the work day, I don’t feel as much like exercising. But something in my body seems to be telling me I need to try a different schedule. I am a tad worried that after-work is peak time and I may not always be able to find a machine I want (especially the treadmills), but we’ll see how it goes. I may try some weekend morning sessions too.
I’m also kind of worried that I don’t know the first thing about using a gym, but I’m sure I’ll adjust. The center provides a fitness orientation session, which I have scheduled for late next week, so I’m sure that will help. I just have to be sure to not overdo it and injure myself. You all know how prone I am to injuries.
So, cross your fingers that this isn’t just another one of my crazy ideas or fads. I hope the membership is something I’ll actually use. And of course, it doesn’t preclude my morning jogs, though I’m sure if I use the gym regularly I’ll be doing less jogging. Although I can’t be doing less than I’m doing now!
I just know I’ve got to do something, anything to get into shape. I feel like such a lardbutt, it’s ridiculous. I weigh more than I’ve weighed in many, many years and I get sore and injured way too easily. Time to get this body into shape. Woo hoo!
Okay, now my hands are tired from all the typing. Time for a nap.
Latre.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: PlayStation Home (PS3, beta), Lego Indiana Jones (PS3), Wipeout HD (PS3)
The Brash And The Brazen
Posted on | December 18, 2008 at 11:13 pm | 2 Comments
Cartoon Network has a new weekly Batman animated series called The Brave and The Bold. It’s named after the old (and recently revived comic book series) that for most of its run featured Batman teaming up with other heroes. The cartoon follows that theme. So far, it’s seen Batman team up with the likes of Blue Beetle, Plastic Man, Aquaman, and Red Tornado. Each episode also has a action sequence teaser at the beginning that is largely unrelated to the rest of the episode and features the end of some other (non-fleshed out) adventure of Batman and a different hero.
The bizarre thing about this new series is that the tone of it is diametrically opposed to the tone of the current series of Batman live action movies. No “dark and gritty” here. B&B is the closest thing to the old campy 60s Batman series since the George Clooney Batman and Robin movie. The drawing style is sparse with clean lines. The animation sometimes has still action frames, like you see a lot in anime and in old cartoons from the 60s and 70s. Batman has short ears like in the 60s series. (As a general rule of thumb, you can tell what the tone of a Batman series is going to be by the length of his ears.) And Batman makes jokes. Lots of jokes. I guess that’s not surprising, since he’s voiced by Diedrich Bader. Sometimes he even smiles. This is a very light-hearted take on the Batman legend. All it’s missing is Robin, though I’m sure he’ll appear eventually.
The plots are pretty outlandish with villains concocting extremely elaborate plots that have very little basis in scientific reality, requiring an immense amount of suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. Of course, that’s da rigeur for the superhero world, although it does violate the recent trend from the last few decades to inject a slight bit of realism here and there. B&B throws convention to the wind. When a couple of mind-controlled pteradactyls can lift a cruise ship into the air, you know that any pretense of logic is not going to make an appearance. The show also seems to exist in its own separate little dimension of the DC universe, as the characters are not real consistent with their appearances in the comic books or other shows. For example, in the show, Plastic Man’s origin is tied into Batman. (Batman knocked Eel O’Brien into a vat of chemicals while Eel was in the middle of a robbery, turning him into Plas. Shades of the sometimes-origin of The Joker!) Aquaman is a genial, pompous idiot who reminded me more of The Tick than of any Aquaman from the comics. I half expected him to be voiced by Patrick Warburton. His half-brother Orm (Ocean Master) is now suddenly Atlantean, instead of being the human son of Aquaman’s landlubber father. I understand they need to cut corners so that the viewer can quickly come up to speed on what’s going on, but some of those alterations don’t really seem necessary.
It’s not surprising that B&B The Show is so out of continuity with everything else DC, since in the heyday of B&B The Comic, it also existed in its own little world. Those Batman team-ups of the 70s were mostly written by Bob Haney, an old-time writer at DC who was obviously given free reign to play in his own sandbox and create his own universe that didn’t have to tie in with anything happening in the rest of the company. He would do things like have Batman team up with heroes from alternate Earths as if those heroes existed on his Earth. (This was before DC collapsed their multiverse, and “Earth-2″ heroes had to actually travel to “Earth-1″ to team up with the heroes there.) For just one example of Bob Haney craziness, see here. Here’s more. Haney was also responsible for the Super-Sons in World’s Finest Comics, who so annoyed me that I quite collecting comics for a few years in the 70s because of them.
So, anyway, the show is Bad. Horribly Bad. Yet I can’t stop watching it. The pinnacle of animated Batman was the series from the 90s, and I doubt it will ever be surpassed. The series from this decade that recently ended it’s run on the WB was pretty bad, although it did get better near the end. It’s not that I’m so starved for Batman fare that I’ll watch anything that comes along, but I just have this need to see what comes next and how bad it will get. And as loathe as I am to admit it, there’s something actually fun about B&B. And we can all use a little fun, can’t we?
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Christmas cards with glitter. Why do I keep buying them? Actually, I didn’t buy any this year, but I had some left over from last year. That stuff gets on everything.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “phobias and damage to life”.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
How To Get Rid Of Crabs
Posted on | December 17, 2008 at 8:33 pm | 4 Comments
Tenacity: That’s how.
Regular readers will notice that I’ve been playing the Nintendo DS game Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia a lot lately. In fact, I’ve been neglecting my PlayStation 3 because of it. The reason is because I was stuck on one particular stage, and became obsessed with defeating it. Well, today during my lunch hour, I finally defeated that stage. I feel immense relief. And a soreness in my right arm and shoulder.
First, a little background. You may remember about how addicted I am to the Castlevania series of games, especially the ones on Nintendo’s handheld systems. I recently finally finished Portrait of Ruin after playing it for like two years. At that time, I said I was going to rush out and buy the next game, Order of Ecclesia. But then I started researching it. The reviews were almost unanimous that the game was interesting and somewhat different from the other CV games, but that it was also punishingly hard. And if the reviewers, who are hardcore players, are saying it’s too hard, then it must be impossible for us more casual players. But the lure was too strong and I gave in and bought it.
And the reviewers are right. I don’t remember ever playing a CV game this hard, except maybe some of the ones on the old original 8-bit Nintendo system. The enemies and obstacles are formidable and the AI actually shows some signs of intelligence. The game doesn’t give anything away – you have to work hard for every inch of progress. In past CV games, if you had trouble getting through a certain area or defeating a certain boss, you could always backtrack and build up your experience level (known as “grinding”) until you reached a level where you were powerful enough and had enough maximum health points to bull through whatever the game throws at you. In Ecclesia, it’s harder to grind. And going up a level or two doesn’t always help you. The game is very spare with providing you with health restoring potions and items. Expect to die a lot. There’s one early level where you’re forced to go through a forest and these flying cyclops octopus things swoop down on you, where they latch onto your head, and lift you up in the air and suck out your life force. They are difficult to avoid and to hit, at least until you acquire the axe weapon. There are swarms of them, and at the same time you’re trying to avoid and/or kill other enemies, including axe-throwing armor guys and arrow-firing skeletons. It’s incredibly frustrating, but also satisfying when you finally make it through.
The bosses in the game are also extremely difficult to defeat. They often appear at the beginning or middle of an area instead of the traditional end. There’s a giant skeleton in the Prison Island level that can only be defeated by carefully hanging out at a strategic spot using a magic sling/tether thing and tediously lobbing axes at it for several minutes until your fingers cramp up or bleed. But that’s nothing compared to the giant crab at the beginning of the Lighthouse area. OMG! That’s the thing took me so long to finally defeat. Normally in a case like this, I would just continually grind until I got to a high enough attack/defense level. And/or I would buy enough health restoring items, in order to take my hits and just mash at the thing until it dies. But extra health doesn’t really seem to help much with Crabby Boy. In fact, it’s pretty easy to learn his patterns early on and avoid taking damage. The problem is that the boss fight occurs in multiple vertical-scrolling stages inside a tower. Between stages, you have to leap up platforms in order to escape the pursuing crab. If it just involved leaping, it wouldn’t be so bad. But this stage of the game requires you to master a play mechanic (the aforementioned sling/tether thing, aka “Magnes”) that is extremely wonky and difficult to control. Most of the time, I ended up accidentally flinging myself into the crab instead of away from him. That means almost instant death.
I did have to end up doing some grinding in order to defeat the crab. I rose up a couple of experience levels in order to increase my health meter. I figured out how to get the shopkeeper to finally sell me health potions, and stocked up on those and meat (which also restores some health). So then, instead of relying on my magic Magnes slinging abilities, I was able to actually get the crab to “push” me up the tower in the final stage of the battle. Every time I fell into him, I would lose a lot of health. But by constantly restoring my health and not dying, the crab’s body ended up propelling me within range of the platforms I had to reach without having to engage the stupid Magnes. Then I just had to drop an elevator on his butt and I was done.
That doesn’t mean I’m done with the game. In fact, I’ve completed a very low percentage of it. From reading the reactions of other players on various forums, it appears that the crab battle is where most people who bail on the game give up. It’s kind of like those introductory engineering classes in college where they try to weed out the people who think they’re fit for an engineering career but really aren’t. I don’t envision clear sailing from here on out, but at least I feel more comfortable in the boat. I’m feeling less frustrated and I think I may have a chance with the rest of the game.
I’m just not looking forward to the inevitable level where you must scale a different tower, one with moving platforms and turning gears, while Medusa Heads try to knock you back down and/or turn you to stone. There’s one of those in every CV game and they’ve nearly made me explode with frustration and anger in the past.
I apologize for the long video game digression, which I’m sure bores and/or mystifies most of my gentle readers. But y’know, there’s few things in life more important than Castlevania!
Next: More Batman.
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: How a certain commonly searched-for phrase in Google leads to a post of mine even though not all the words in the phrase appear in the post. And my post is #1 under the search results! I don’t like this because 1) this search term is not necessarily how I want people to arrive at my blog, and 2) there are so many instances of the term in my statcounter statistics that it ends up pushing other phrases off the results (statcounter only saves the last 500 pageloads unless you upgrade to a paid account). Hint: The target post title has “swindle” in it.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: I don’t have one, since the good phrases keep getting pushed off.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: Guess.