Tag: October

Movie Round-Up: October 1st, 2010

Reviews

Case 39: Let Me In The Social NetworkCase 39: (official site)

It’s nice to see Renée Zellweger return to her horror movie roots.  (Her first big role was in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.)  However, this movie was made in 2006, released in other countries last year and finally getting its US release now.  The US release was delayed a few times.  All those delays don’t speak of confidence in the film, so I’m worried this is going to suck.  I want to see it, because it does look a little bit interesting, but there is no way I’ll drop $10 to see it.  Netflix for sure.

Let Me In: (official site)

A remake of the film Let The Right One In.  I’ve had the original in my Netflix Instant queue for a while, but I have to really be in the mood for a foreign film.  Seeing as how I don’t speak any foreign language well enough to watch without English subtitles, a foreign film means more effort.  That said, I’ve heard it is incredible, and I really want to see it.  And I will… probably at some point after I’ve seen the remake.  I’m going to try my best to see this in the theater, but don’t know if I’ll make it.

The Social Network: (official site)

Facebook.  A place on the Internet that I both love and hate.  But this movie isn’t really about Facebook as much as it is about the personalities behind its creation, or at least the perception of the personalities from the outside.  But being directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, I can’t possible see how this is going to be anything less than good.  Early reviews are even saying that it’s great.  This movie will probably be the reason I don’t see Let Me In until next weekend.

Hello 2010!

Random Thoughts

I am excited for this new year.  The job is going well, life is good, and everything is swinging upward.  Awesome.

The best part however is that my birthday, being October 10th, will fall this year on 10/10/10.  I don’t want to jinx it, but that is going to be a perfect day.

So, what sort of resolutions shall I make for the new year?

First, losing twenty pounds over the last year has been great, and I want to keep going.  That said, the new year is going to bring an examining of my diet and a look at shaking up my exercise a little.  I also want to run the Peachtree Road Race in July, so I have a goal.  Lack of a goal is usually the hard part.  I lost my last twenty because I wanted to be under 200 pounds, and since then I haven’t had much in the way of a solid goal.

Second, writing… One of the issues I have with writing is that it is almost impossible to do on my desktop PC.  The location of my desktop is not inspiring, and the PC has too many distracting things installed on it.  Luckily, I may have an opportunity to obtain a netbook, one of those little mini laptops, and that should help, allowing me to take my writing with me anywhere.  We shall see… in any event, I want to spend a little more time writing, and to help with that I have vowed not to start watching any new TV shows.  I refuse to get sucked in to shows that get canceled or wind up being mediocre.  Instead, I will only watch shows I am already invested in and new shows I’ll see on DVD or streaming courtesy of Netflix.

Third, programming… I am still, occasionally, working on my little games and my one business idea (see progress meters on the right).  I hope to be able to finish something in 2010.  I think I will try to work on finishing one of the smaller games and get it posted just to see if I can.  It is going to be lame, and for that I apologize in advance, but finishing something is an important step I need to take.

Fourth, the house… yeah, um, I might clean up the yard or something when the weather gets warmer, and there are a few trees I need to take down.  But let’s not get our hopes up…

Not a resolution, but this year will also be my first participating as staff for the MMO Track at Dragon*Con.  I’ve reached a point with the con that most of the panels are retreads of panels I’ve already seen.  This isn’t a bad thing, as newcomers will find those panels to be as exciting as I did when I was a newcomer.  But it means that the last couple of years I’ve been bored in some of them and more willing to skip them altogether when given the chance.  In fact, I pretty much only go to the MMO and Writing tracks with the occasional special event.  So I decided since I was spending so much time down in the MMO rooms, why not volunteer and help out?  I did, and I am.  Should be a lot of work and a lot of fun.

Anyway… welcome to 2010…

Movie Round-Up: October 23rd, 2009

Reviews

Saw VI:

Another October, another Saw film.  I saw the first one and liked it.  I even saw the second.  I’ve yet to see the third, fourth, or fifth, so I clearly can’t see number six in the theater.  Also, I’m not a big fan of the uber-gore torture films.  The only interest I have in the Saw series at this point is the base plot and how they tie together.  I can get that from Wikipedia.

Amelia:

I didn’t get a chance to see a screening of this one, but it interests me in the same way that all movies about historical people do.  The cast looks great, and while I won’t be running off to see this at the theater, I’ll be eagerly awaiting the release on DVD so I can rent it.

Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant:

Oh great… another vampire movie.  At least its not Twilight, which I finally saw and thought was awful.  But this movie has potential.  First, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, so you shouldn’t either.  The actors are all hamming it up pretty well, so you should join them as you romp through this tale together.  Its fun, maybe not worth full price, but probably worth a matinee or early bird showing.  I just hope that if the series continues it remains this light and fun.

Astro Boy:

The character has been around for over 50 years, and while I had seen the image now and then I have never read any of the manga or other comics or seen any of the TV shows or movies.  Going in to this film, all I knew was “Astro Boy is a robot.”  So the direction the movie took was quite startling to me.  Toby, the son of Dr. Tenma, is killed in a horrible accident, and the doctor, being a grieving robotics genius, builds himself a replacement son using the latest technology and the boy’s DNA.  Tenma quickly learns that this robot is not actually his son, and that having the boy-bot around is just a painful reminder of his loss.  The boy runs away, then is hunted, and eventually winds up on the surface below… oh, did I forget to mention they all lived in a floating utopia called Metro City?  Yeah, and the world below them is little more than where they dump their garbage, at least that’s what they think.  Astro finds new friends among the surface dwellers, but he won’t be safe for long as the President of Metro City is looking for the power source that is running the boy robot.  I thought the animation of this film was superb, and the voice acting was great, but really it is the story that knocks this movie out of the park.  I found myself at the edge of my seat, drawn in to this world and caring about Astro Boy.  Not since The Iron Giant have I cared so much about a robot, and while Astro Boy isn’t quite up to that level of greatness, it is great film.  Go see it.

Movie Round-Up: October 9th, 2009

Reviews

This is going to be short…

Couples Retreat:

The only movie opening this weekend and I did not get a chance to see a screening.  I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks like it might be funny, but there is no way I’d spend $10 to go see this in the theater.  But the moment it drops on DVD or Netflix, I’m sure I’ll see it.

Movie Round-Up: October 2nd, 2009

Reviews

Whip It:

One of my guilty pleasures a few years ago was Rollergirls on A&E.  There is something about people trying to get a sport off the ground, a sport they clearly enjoy and they want to impart that joy to others.  I got that same feeling watching the movie Leatherheads a while back about how professional football wasn’t originally taken seriously.  Anyway, this movie really captures the sport well, and the way many people probably look at the girls who decide to pursue it.  It was fun and funny, and even exciting during the bouts.  Definitely a thumbs up from me.

The Invention of Lying:

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the premise of the film is it takes place in a world where no one has ever told a lie.  One thing to keep in mind before you go see it is that a lie isn’t just what most people consider lies, like telling your boss you are sick when you aren’t or pretending you have a job you don’t to impress a girl.  Every fiction book ever written is a lie.  Every exaggeration of the truth is a lie.  So now, imagine a world without fiction, without storytelling as we know it, without any stretching of the truth.  This is the world of The Invention of Lying.  A world where people go to the movies to see a man in a comfy chair narrate the factual events of historical periods.  I found this movie to be incredibly funny, and Ricky Gervais pulls off the whole thing really well.  However, I can easily see how some people wouldn’t like it, especially religious folks, because, you see, unless you believe that the Bible is a 100% factually accurate depiction of events exactly as they happened, that make it fiction, and fiction is lying, and lying doesn’t exist until Ricky’s character invents it…

Zombieland:

The only movie opening this week I didn’t see a screening of.  I had the opportunity (Thanks Greg and Neil!) but decided to see Whip It instead because, frankly, I’ll always pay to see zombies.  And this is the latest George Romero “I want to make comments on society and don’t care if my movie is boring or stupid” zombie film.  This is going to be funny, and disgusting, and a blast to watch, I can just tell.  So this weekend, Zombieland will be earning my $10.

Revisiting Travian

Gaming

Back in October, I reviewed my experience with the web based game Travian, and now that I am no longer going to be playing it, I would like to say just a bit more.

If you decide to play Travian, bring friends.  If you don’t have friends to bring, make friends, fast.  And if the friends you bring or the friends you make do not play seriously and begin immediately amassing power and strength, dump them and get new friends.

That may seem a little hardcore, but it is pretty much true.  Travian is a PvP game.  Building cities takes more time than conquering cities.  So if you don’t join a big alliance and start conquering other people, other people will start conquering you.

So, to that end, while I said previously that I wouldn’t be playing the game anymore, I won’t… but I would consider it if a big group of people were planning to play it and let me join in with them.

The Advertising Twist

Gaming

Assassin’s Creed has been out long enough that I don’t feel any remorse discussing the game.  If you haven’t played it and you have managed to learn nothing about the game, then please stop reading.

When the game first came out, people I knew who played it kept talking about “the twist”.  So, when I finally got the game, in October as a birthday gift, I jumped in and started playing.  As the story unfolded, as it drew me in, I kept looking for the twist… but there never was one.  In fact, I was kind of startled when the game ended because I was still waiting for the twist.

I went looking.  Did I miss it?  Was there an alternate ending that I didn’t get because of some tiny detail I missed in the game?

What I found was that “the twist” wasn’t in the game.  It existed only in the space between the advertising and the moment you booted up the game.  Well, not exactly the moment you booted it up… you had to get through the first tutorial mission type thing and exit the animus once.  Of course, even before then you could see the “glitches”, flags with a glow around them that looked like computer code, people who flicker during dialog.  The twist of Assassin’s Creed was that the advertisements made the game look to be about you as an assassin in the past, but the reality of the game is that you are in the present (or maybe the future) and you are reliving genetic memories of one of your ancestors through the use of a machine in an effort to help some people find out some information.

I really hate when games, or anything really, does this.  Its like when the trailer for a movie makes it out to be a slapstick comedy, but it turns out that all the funny bits were in the trailer and the movie is actually a tragic tale about cancer or suicide with occasional humorous scenes.

As for Assassin’s Creed… I enjoyed playing it.  Climbing all over the city and performing the tasks, I even enjoyed looking for the flags (still haven’t found them all), but I didn’t like the end of the game.  I was waiting for the twist, and in the final moments of the game nothing happened.  Not just no twist, but the story of the game, which had been great until then, had no ending, it just sort of petered out.  I uncovered the conspiracy, found the bad guy in the past which let my future overlords find the information they wanted, and then they walked out of the room, into what I have to assume is going to be Assassin’s Creed 2.

Lame.

I don’t mind sequels.  Telling another story with the same people in the same world can be good.  But breaking one story into two (or more) games is irritating.  I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed, but I’m glad now that I didn’t buy it when it came out, and I won’t be buying the sequel when it comes out.  I’ll be waiting for the discount racks again.

The PBBG

Gaming

It stands for Persistant Browser Based Game.  To be honest, until recently, I didn’t know this term existed.  But then, that itself is the point of The PBBG Project.  To get the term out there.  And considering that a PBBG is the kind of game that I want to make someday, I want to do what I can to help out.

In September, for my 30 Days of Game post I reviewed Travian…  October turned into a mess as I became unemployed and also because I picked a horrible game to review.  I won’t even bother to name it since I don’t think I can review it properly since I barely played it and hated every minute that I did.  In the future, I’ll be picking my games to play and review from the PBBG Project website.

Anyway, October didn’t work out, and November is pretty well shot… so here’s looking toward December…

October`s End

Random Thoughts

Halloween.

It is my favorite holiday, and it marks the end of my favorite month.  Tomorrow is November.  Tonight, I’ve got people coming over to the house, where we will hide in the basement watching scary movies.

This October has been a roller coaster for me.  My birthday, Halloween, and all the usual stuff has been good, but I also became unemployed, which sucked.  Tomorrow is November.  Thirty days of possible unemployment, and thirty days of participating in the NaNoWriMo.  The bad and the good.

Tonight is Halloween.  Tomorrow is November.

Countdown to November

Writing

I love October.  It contains my two favorite holidays: my birthday and Halloween.  However, in the last couple of years, passing through October has also held a certain growing level of dread… November is coming, the NaNoWriMo is almost here.

Once again I’ll be attempting to participate in this annual event.  The worst thing that could possibly happen to me within the next month is for me to not find a new job and have to start juggling finances until I do.  The best thing that could possibly happen for the WriMo is for me to not find a new job and have the month to split between looking for work and writing.

We’ll just have to wait and see how this one goes…