Movie Round-Up: May 21st, 2010

Shrek Forever After:

I still haven’t seen Shrek 3.  And I’m getting burned out on the 3D.  I’ll probably try to watch Shrek 3 sometime soon and this one when it comes out on DVD.

MacGruber:

I might have to eat my words here, but I predict a success of Wayne’s World proportions.  My reasoning is thus: what made Wayne’s World work where other SNL-skits-turned-feature-films failed was that they used the characters and the skit as a launch board into a complete world.  All the skits with Wayne and Garth were down in the basement doing their cable show, but the movie was “What happens when the camera turns off and they leave the basement?”  Unlike some other films that were more like “Let’s take the one joke of the skit, stretch it to 90 minutes and maybe shoe-horn a plot in that doesn’t spring from the character itself.”  With MacGruber, the skits are always the same: MacGruber is in a room with a bomb and there are a couple other people there, and as he tries to defuse the bomb he gets distracted with odd topics and they blow up.  The movie is basically going to show us what leads up to the room with the bomb, what happens after, and more.  Plus, I watched the trailer and it looks funny.  The only reason I might not see this in the theater is that the wife has no interest in it at all.

Zathura

Did you like ‘Jumanji’? Then you’ll like ‘Zathura’. It’s basically the same movie, but different enough to make it not feel like a retread of the same story. Two brothers, ages 10 and 6 (almost 7), are having a bit of a rough time dealing with each other and the divorce of their parents. The younger one finds a game, Zathura, in the basement of this house dad has moved them into (mom got their house in the settlement). He turns the keys, and pushes the ‘Go’ button sending them, their sister, and their house on an intergalactic journey.

It was just good, pure family fun. There’s only one dirty word in the whole thing, and the kids in the theater I went to see it at were full of ‘Oooh!’s and ‘Aahh!’s at the special effects. They were excited, they laughed, and so did I.

You go long.

It weird sometimes when you realize that you see or understand something that other people don’t. Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life is a team game. Most maps, you and your team protect your flag or key or base, while trying to take the other team’s flag or key or base. Pretty simple.

So I hop into a game, and I’m assigned to the blue team. Before I spawned, I had to do a couple of things (clean up my desk a little, stuff like that). While I’m sitting in limbo I’m listening to the game. “The enemy has your flag.” “Your team has the enemy flag.” “The enemy has captured your flag.” “Your team has captured the enemy flag.” These four lines repeating over and over. I sit back down at the PC and before picking my class I see that the other team has five people and we have five people (including me, not yet spawned). So I choose soldier, and the map is 2fort so I take up residence in the ramp room. The map has 3 choke points inside the base: the ramp room, the basement, and the flag room. By choke point I mean only that it is a room you HAVE to go through in order to get the flag. The flag room is a poor spot to sit, mostly because if a scout gets your flag and you don’t drop him with the first shot you don’t get a second chance, you can’t keep up. The basement is almost as bad, the two entrances are on opposite ends and its so narrow that if you blink you might miss the enemy running through. The ramp room is where its at. Two entrances on the lower floor, two ramps up, two exits on the top. This room offers the best opportunity to stop the enemy AND allows you to have a shot at recovering if they do happen to get your flag.

One of the great things about TFC over the original TF is the footsteps. You can hear people running. In the ramp room, if you are on the upper level, the entrances to the room are below you, so you can hear people coming. You hear them coming, prime a grenade, then when they come in you attack them with grenades and rockets. You even have a resupply room right near by (just make sure to pop a nail grenade before you go so you can hear hasty enemies getting hurt while you are away).

Anyway, I’m in the ramp room and I start killing enemies. I tell my team to avoid the ramp room, so whenever I see a “friendly” face, I know its a spy and blow them up. And just like that, the enemy stops taking our flag. Sure, they get me every now and then, even make it to the flag room once in a while, but I always stop them at the top of the stairs.

I guess I’m not as rusty as I thought I was going to be.