Shin
May
31

Summer 2011 movies

What movie are you looking forward to this summer of 2011?

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(Let’s see if this poll thingy works…)
So people, which movie are you looking forward to this summer? Vote for your fave or if it’s not listed leave a comment.
And if you like, tell us why you’re looking forward to that one in particular.

Here’s all the trailers if you want to have a look.
Cars 2:

Cowboys & Aliens:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 2:

Green Lantern:

Kung Fu Panda 2:

Transformers: Dark of the Moon:

The First Avenger: Captain America:

Rise of the Planet of the Apes:

Thor:

May
29

Movie critics

Movie critics ought to be drug out into the street, and shot in public. In the face.
I mean, what’s their point? Do we really need ‘professional journalists’ to tell us if a movie is worth seeing? Don’t we have an opinion and a way to voice it these days?
So people get paid to review movies. Sounds like a sweet cushy job to me. And yet somehow it isn’t, given some of the bitter, unbalanced or even downright stupid remarks some of these critics make.
It’s one of the reasons I loathe Rotten Tomatoes with a passion.

Let’s take the Tron Legacy review as an example. It got a rating of 50%, which is pretty bad by itself. But some of the comments by the ‘Top Critics’… /facepalm.


Yes, because a guy looking for his long lost dad doesn’t add a human touch. Because a dad, sacrificing himself for his son doesn’t add a human touch. Because people fighting for what they think is right doesn’t add a human touch.


The same thing I said above could be said here, but in addition he also manages to diss the original Tron while he’s at it, a cult classics among geeks. And no people, only liking Big Bang Theory does not make you a geek.


This one, working for USA Today, really takes the cake and was my main reason for writing this post. I cannot recall someone talking so much crap in so few words.
The movie “The Social Network” is a soap series rendition on the starting days of Facebook, loosely based on the story of a disgruntled person who felt screwed over by founder Mark Zuckerberg. It’s fake, it’s lame and the only reason people watched it is because anything associated with Facebook is big at the moment.
It’s not thought provoking in any way, nor does it teach us anything about the virtual realm. It’s gossip celebrity news in movie form.
Tron on the other hand is about the real virtual realm, advances in computer science, artificial intelligence manifesting itself and the possible ramifications that spring from that. It’s Science Fiction as it should be, thought provoking, intelligent and exploring the possible future.

Humanity, I pity thee. And to think these people actually make money writing this kind of crap.

May
27

Sexist much?

TV commercials these days fascinate me. Partially because I hardly watch any tv and partially because it shows a glimpse of modern society I feel quite detached from.
I have noticed a trend that made me go ‘huh?’ and that’s the portrayal of women.
There’s more and more commercials celebrating women in control, being independent and able to stand up for themselves. All very good and about bloody time I’d say. But why do they then have to depict women portraying behavior to illustrate those points which, if a man were to do the same, would be considered obnoxious, sexist and most certainly not funny?

It doesn’t make any sense to me, but then again that goes for a lot that goes on in the world today.


May
26

Tron: Legacy

I finally watched this sequel to the 1982 classic Tron.
In a nutshell: epic.

Reviews I’d read along with my own fears had kept me from seeing it thus far. Let’s face it, it’s a sequel to a cult classic, 28 years later, in a time when lots of 80′s movies get raped for sequels, quick cash ins that have little to nothing to do with the original. Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, Terminator, Aliens, the list goes on.
Boy was I wrong. And how happy I am to be wrong.

Just about everything about this movie is perfect.
For starters the original crew is in it, playing their old roles. And they actually made good use of the fact that so much time has passed since the original. Bruce Boxleitner is back as Alan Bradley & Tron and Jeff Bridges plays the part of Kevin Flynn & CLU. Olivia Wilde makes for a nice addition in the role of Quorra.

The movie starts off with a bit of history to set the mood and draw you in. Flynn disappeared in 1989 and no one has heard of him since. Alan thinks he’s still alive but ENCOM has moved on. Sam, Flynn’s son, is their biggest shareholder but doesn’t actually do anything with it other than playing an annual joke.
But then Alan shows up saying he’s gotten paged by Kevin even though that number has been disconnected for years. Sam decides to go check it out at his dad’s old arcade, where he discovers a server farm still running in the basement. And then….

Well, watch the movie.

Needless to say it’s CGI heaven. I’d go as far as to say it’s CGI heaven in the way the original was. The architecture of the grid (the digital world) is awesome and breathtaking, the choreography of the action sequences make the Matrix look like a Youtube fanboy experiment and the execution of everything is just spot on.
But also for example in CLU (he’s the one on the right in the picture above). CLU is a program created by Flynn to be his virtual copy that can run whenever he’s not around. As such, it looks like he does all those years ago. They did this through CGI as well, and it just works so well.

(click for the big version of this picture)

The soundtrack for the movie was made by Daft Punk, whom I’ve always liked but they really outdid themselves this time. In such a way that this is now my fave Daft Punk album. By far. In a way it reminds me of Kavinsky’s Testarossa Autodrive, but where Kavinsky hasn’t been able to remotely come close to that fantastic debut, they take the feel of it and run with it, far far away to a troubled digital universe.
Oh, and they’re actually IN the movie as well.

This redefines slick. This redefines sci-fi, not so much in way that it is a giant leap forward as that it’s a giant leap to get it back on track. The whole concept of a digital grid/world/matrix is immensely fascinating and hasn’t really been explored much in a serious way. This does. And it does it in a way that opens a world of possibilities for sequels, spinoffs and franchise heaven. And for once I’ll actually be applauding it, if it’s done with the same integrity and artistic vision as this movie.

So do I have anything bad to say about the movie?
Ehm, it ends. But there’ll be more.
It doesn’t explore the vastness of the grid as much I’d like, but on the one hand that’s easily explained through the story (standalone servers, not hooked up to the rest of the world) and automagically opens up a potential landslide of options for sequels. After watching this movie, just imagine what would happen if the grid somehow went online and started spreading across the internet.
So no, I can’t actually think of a single bad thing to say about the movie.

Flynn lives!

Some Tron Legacy Wallpapers:

May
18

It’s the little things that count

Sometimes it’s just a stroll around the block

or acting goofy with the kids

or seeing them be happy.

May
17

The big black hole

of the world wide web. Or anime pictures and the degradation of teh interwebs. Where have all the pictures gone?

The first time I got online was around 1995 or so, and it was marvelous. I felt like a whole new world literally opened up before my eyes. Anything you can imagine, you could look it up in a search engine and voila, there it was. I think it’s hard to imagine for people who grew up with this but at the time this was revolutionary. Interested in Star Wars trivia, there it was. News about technology, computers, games, all for free online whereas previously the only way to get this kind of stuff was buying magazines.
And for those of us interested in more exotic things, say Japanese anime or even cooking recipes or Japanese culture in general, it made mission impossible suddenly possible and anything you wanted to know, learn or see was a few clicks away.
I remember looking up info on one of my childhood favorites, Captain Future, and being amazed by fan sites full of info and pictures.

But where has it all gone? Popular myth is that once something gets posted on the internet it stay online forever. I beg to differ. A LOT has disappeared. And a lot more will. Back in the day it was popular to build fan sites on free sites like Geocities, but all of those have vanished over time, the sites along with it. Or they got taken over by biggies like Yahoo & Google and the old content got deleted after a period of inactivity.
And the people who made that back then have since moved on. Well most of them, some like me are still around. The problem is that since then the act of creating sites has somewhat gone down the shitter. Hardly anyone makes a fan site anymore for example, like on their favourite anime. So good luck finding anything on an 80′s or 90′s anime. Sure there’s still some stuff floating around, but it pales in comparison to what used to be available.
And that’s sad.

Although I’m focused on anime pictures I could have just as well said , if you remember the 90′s internet and everything you could find then just go ahead and try and look it up now.
Oh, and video is next:
Is Google taking the ‘you’ out of YouTube?
(hat tip)

May
15

Maison Ikkoku

Ending song 2

Godai is a ronin (someone who has failed university entrance exams) living in a run down apartment house called Maison Ikkoku. Among the other residents are the nosy Ichinose, the sexy Akemi Roppongi, and the mysterious Yotsuya. The others are given to having wild parties which makes it difficult for Godai to study. Into this mayhem comes the recently widowed Kyoko as the new live-in manager. Godai falls for her, but doesn’t have the nerve to tell her. As time passes, their relationship slowly develops amid life at Maison Ikkoku, despite all sorts of romantic hurdles.

Opening song 3

It’s a dime a dozen now, but not back in ’86 when this was originally made. And it’s fun, good fun. You can’t help but feel for poor Godai as he struggles to win the heart of Kyoko while dodging his most annoying neighbors. But despite being mostly lighthearted it also adds a lot of depth by going into all the sidecharacters so you even sympathize with the annoying Akemi & Yotsuya, or his rival in love Mitaka.
I also love the soundtrack, all the different opening and ending themes are classic 80′s stuff at its finest. If slice of life is your thing you can do worse than checking out this classic, and with 96 episodes there sure are a lot of slices.

May
15

Rogues do it from behind

This post serves no purpose whatsoever but to celebrate the awesome fun of levelling a rogue in PvP. With heirlooms. :D
And to show off my Warsong Gulch achievements.

May
06

Johnny – Big in Japan

If you’re interested in Japanese food and culture I’d suggest hopping over to Johnny’s blog, he’s studying over yonder in Hiroshima for the next year and is keeping an online journal with lots of pictures and posts about his life in Japan.

Work in progress... not home!
Trying to get all/most of the new code working before I start on the eyecandy.