Jan/080
Review of Reviewers
Had nothing to write about for the last few weeks, but now I do, my topic…movie reviews. They suck, sometimes they portray an accurate picture of what to expect but sometimes it’s a load of bull shit. People have their own expecations and for the most part are not in line with those of reviewers that get paid. I personally perfer a friend to tell me if movie is awesome or sucks, but somtimes you can tell just by the preview. I say sometimes… as the quote goes, “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”.
For example, recently I saw There Will Be Borderm… sorry Blood. Previews looked intersting, title sounded cool, good reviews. Personally I did not want to watch it, wanted to see Cloverfield, but a buddy of mine already saw it so got dragged into the other one. Anyways, long story short, that movie was boring, too me. Not to say it was not interesting it had it’s moments but damn was it long and not what I expected. From what I heard and previews I saw, it seemed to be a psuedo-ganster type film, love those types of movies, where the main character would be total bad ass to get what he wants. Well it was there in this film but the way it was done was so slow and drawn out that I lost interest. And there was no blood till the end. Funny thing one my other friends started to snore during the film so that was a sure sign of it’s bore factor.
Now take the new Rambo. You already know what to expect given the last three iterations, part two was the best in my opinion. However the review scores are low, my thinking is reviewers are a bunch of old farts that look at movies with a ‘technical eye’ rather than just the fun factor of it. Of course Rambo has no story, well maybe some basic premise, but the gist is people die left and right and shit blows up. And it’s fun, hell you even laugh at times at how cheesy somethings can be. As I said I kind of knew what to expect, I know this is not going to be one of those movies that supposed move you in some way or be made to win awards like the other one, There Will Be Blood, but sometimes senseless movies are cool and great way to just forget about things and spend two hours having a blast than thinking about characters and detailed story. Of course each person is entitled to enjoy the films they like and walk away from others that are not their cup of tea, but slamming poor reviews on a fun movie like Rambo was just a cheap shot from critcs, I say. There were some decent well rounded reviews discussing good and bad points, but still more focus on the bad.
Oh well, it seems reviewer opinions seem to drive most movie goers to certain films and get paid for their comments good or bad, but honestly lack the value of hearing how something was first hand from a reliable source like a friend. Then again there are contradictions to that statement, take the 300 spoof that is out now, low ratings, like 3% from reviewers, and still people watched it and made it the best box office movie for this week! Now a movie like that is not my cup of tea, but I can see how some probably watched it for the hell of it to have fun, no matter what people say about it.
So again movie reviews suck, just watch stuff on your own gut feeling of it being good or bad, or take the safe route and ask someone how it was, or save your wallet ten bucks and wait for the DVD and not regert wasting money on a movie that people said rocked, but sucked for you.
Jul/070
Best Movie of the Summer
After a couple of dissapointments this summer from a few the so called blockbuster movies, such as Transformers and Spider-Man 3, one movie came and owned them all. That movie was the Simpsons. Pure comic genius, great jokes, slapstick humor and story. I don’t think I have laughed that much while watching a comedy movie in the theathers.
Nothing went wrong with this one. I did not regert watching it, there was nothing blatently wrong, or utterly retarded as seen in other movies. Also there was a small teaser for the Dark Knight duirng the previews, no shots of the Joker or Batman but some dialog cuts that are from the movie and the new bat logo. Not much but has me excited anyways, I mean Batman begins was probably one of the best comic book movies that was released in the last few years.
Got sidetracked there, anyways I got nothing else here except to tell you to go see this movie.
Spider-Pig…Spider-Pig, does what ever a Spider-Pig does… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XQ_GWKvDE.
Jul/071
Transformers
Last week I managed to get a pass from work to go see an advance preview of Transformers along with a few co-workers. I’ll try to keep this as short post and will not spoil anything about the movie (Actually one minor spoiler near the end, but just there for contrast). Before I begin I should start off by saying I am a big fan of Transformers, all of the Generation 1 series and characters were truly amazing and still enjoy watching the old episodes now and then.
Now another small piece of background info, I worked on the DS version of the Transformers game only for a month or so early on in production till I changed projects. Anyways during that time I saw some of the concepts of the characters and I pretty much went into shock. For the longest time I could not accept the new designs that were made for the movie. However, a few months ago I came to terms and began to like a few of the new designs, but still could not get over the fact of what was done to Starscream and Megatron. If your classic Gen 1 fan, and have seen some of the trailers or teaser material out there for the movie then you know what I am talking about. (Or you can ignore everything else in this rant and go straight to end and look at the two images)
Moving on, so now that I came to terms with a few of the character designs, I thought to my self a few weeks before seeing the movie that it may suck in terms of story and I will cringe when I see some of the robots, but in the end the action and heap of explosions would make up for it and and I would walk out midly satisfied.
Well there I was in the theater with some of friends watching one of the worst movies I have ever seen. And out of the crew that went to see it I was not the only one to say that…
I would really enjoy ranting about everything that went wrong in that movie but I won’t since I don’t wish to spoil it for anyone that has not seen it. But word of advice if you really respect and admire the Transformers as they were then don’t see this movie, it will probably kill you on the inside. However as a synopsis I’ll say this, it was a fairly immature take on the Transformers franchise, the “orginal” and only Transformers movie from 1986 was a hell of a lot more better and more focused than the live action version. Well I did hope that action sequences would save it, I was wrong on that, the action was so bloody fast and blurry most of the time I had no clue as to what was going in some of the fight sequences.
Anyways I could go on for hours about everything that went wrong. Point is the reviews and most of the general public have hailed this film as the best ever. Hey everyone is entitled to their own opinion and mine is that it sucked. In the words of comic book guy, ” Worst movie ever! ”
Though I would like close things of on a good note. Transformers the game for DS is actually pretty good. Both of them in fact are good, by both I mean the Autobot and Decepticon version. Yeah, that’s right there are two seperate games the team that worked on it pulled it off quite nicely. Well some of the online reviews think it is ok, but most of the reader reviews are pretty good. I personally have been playing the Decepticon game and have enjoyed it thus far for two reasons. First it has a lot of action, secondly it tells a much better back story as to why Deecpticons are on Earth and what their motive is as compared to the movie. Plus playing it along side the Autobot verison really adds to the story as you see similar missions and cutscenes from a different perspesctive. As for the 360 version I had some high hopes for that game but seems to getting really low scores online. But perhaps one of these days I’ll check it out it may not be as bad as the reviews say, but I sure hope it is not as bad or worse than the movie.
Gen 1 FTW !!!!
This is Megatron:
(http://images.wikia.com/transformers/images/f/f2/Megatrong1.jpg) A bit stylized but pretty much spot on.
Heap of scrap metal, A.K.A Megatron from the new movie. Not even voiced by Frank Welker. (At least Frank Welker lends his classic voice for the games)
( http://thephoenix.com/SlopCulture/content/binary/megatron2.jpg)
Jun/070
Random Update
Been while since I posted anything new, but the hits keep coming in. Thanks to all that visited. Looks like people actually read this stuff.
Anyways couple of new things about guess a good place to start would be with games. Recently I downloaded Prince of Persia classic off xbox live, and so far I am quite impressed. Though at times the game has been frustrating, it is still fun and true to the orginal design from 1989. So far I have gotten a good handful of achievements but they were not easy to get. The biggest difference that has increased the difficulty of the game is the AI. This time around they are not that stupid, and easily parry and counter-attack anything you can dish out. For the most part combat is a game of patience, taking turns parrying with the AI till you can find a weak spot to stab them a couple of times. Being in the Prince of Persia mood I dug up my copy of Sands of Time and started playing that again as well.
This past weekend I watched Ocean’s 13, overall it was pretty good, a lot better than the second one. The last two movies that I saw that had trilogy, Spider-Man 3 and Pirates: At Worlds End, were not so good. The action was there but story kind of fell flat for me at least and expected the same for this movie.Â
May/070
My Thoughts About Spider-Man 3
It’s 3:30 in the morning, just got back from a midnight premier of Spidey 3. Overall it was good but there were somethings that really did not make it great. Just to get it out of the way my post is spoiler free so please do read on.
First off, most of the movie was spoiled for me since I worked on the game, the Nintendo DS version that is. Though during production of our game we did not get a ton of info about the movie, but got enough info and concept images to know the main plot points of the movie. So right off the bat I knew how each of the major battles were going to be played out. I guess the fun part was seeing how they did it. Of the many battle sequences I found the subway battle between Sandman and Black Suit Spidey to be really cool. Some glimpses of this have been shown in the trailers but the entire sequence was well done.
Speaking of villians, Venom was pretty decent, but was also not as cool as he could have been. Some Spidey fans, such as myself, think Venom is by far the coolest villian and is equally matched to Spidey’s abilites. Some out there seem to say that though Venom is cool, his motive of hating Spidey as seen in the comics and cartoons, would get stale and boring really fast especially within a two and half hour long movie. Honestly I would have loved to see more of Venom than of Sandman, but in the end the director has the final say. Though Venom, in my opinion, has a cameo role in this film it was done well. Some things that were noteable include the personality, emotions, and abilites. Things that I think did not work for Venom, the look and voice. Even for the ammount screen time given to Venom, seeing an “Ultimate” universe version of Venom would have been awesome compared to what was shown in the film.
In the end if I had to rank the film I would give it about a 70-75%. Hey you may like it more than I did, you may think this movie is the best of the three. That’s cool if you do, because if I had not worked on the game or knew anything about Spidey 3 my personal rating would be a lot higher. On the subject of rankings, a good handful of critics out there have gone to the extent of bashing Spidey 3! Some people out there just don’t get the point that this is a movie based on a comic book franchise, things are going to be a little over the top and in some cases, “cartoony”. Other critics didn’t like the emotional elements either, I kind of agree with them on that but in retrospective of everything that happens in the movie the dramatic/emotional elements worked. Could have been better, but they worked. One things I noticed in most of the “bad” reviews are shots at some cheesy elements in the film. I won’t say what those are but you will know it when you see it. My opinion on that, it’s comic relief, I think that is concept some critics don’t get maybe. Perhaps they were looking for a movie that was exteremly serious and not made for the general audience of Spidey fans. Some of the comic sequences may have been over done, but again it worked within the premise of the movie.
If there is one thing I can agree upon with the “bad” reviews is that that this movie did try to cram a lot into one film. In the end it worked well and was an enjoyable movie, and I will most likely see it again.
Ok I guess I went on about the movie for too long. On to the games! Wait… nevermind. There is not a single review out there yet of any of the games! That is really odd. Hopefully the reviews will show up later today (and hopefully they are good!), but as a game designer that worked on a Spidey game I can tell you that they are fun to play. All of the game SKU’s have elements from the movie that are re-enacted quite well, along with other divergent stroy arcs based on characters from the comic book universe. I personally have not played the console versions that much, but as for the DS version it is really cool. Almost three hours of interesting gameplay. The coolest thing about the DS is the touch screen controls, all the moves and combos are done with the stylus. Everything is very intuitive and easy to learn. Plus the Black Suit is a hell of a lot of fun with new move sets and what not. Also on the subject of handheld, the GBA version is pretty neat as well. I did some work on that early on but another team finished the game.
Well I ramabled on long enough, if you read all of this, I salute you for putting up with me and my rant on Spidey 3. I need some sleep… it is now 4:00 am only six hours till work!
Apr/070
Grindhouse
Just checked out the double feature movie Grindhouse. Three and a half hours of pure movie going fun! Of the two movies “Planet Terror” was somewhat predictable since it was a zombie infestation type movie, but “Death Proof” was not what I had in mind. Of the two I really enjoyed “Death Proof” the most, since it was a little more plausible than “Planet Terror”.
I can only wonder how someone came up with the idea to have an amputee dancer with machine gun for a leg. You may have seen this character from the various movie trailers aired. One scene in particular, which has been shown in the trailer, is when she uses the grenade launcher that is attached to machine gun to boost herself into the air to shoot up some zombies, when I saw that I yelled out “Rocket Jump!” Not sure why, but that is the first thing that came into my mind 
Within the movie itself there were trailers for other Grindhouse type films, not sure if they will ever be made for a sequel or just added for filler material, but enjoyable nonetheless.
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