Film – Page 17

The Ryanland Horror

So I just watched “The Amityville Horror”. Not a great movie, but it had some disturbing imagery, so I’m satisfied. The ghosts and the basement scene towards the end gave off a really strong Silent Hill vibe, and that’s actually a movie I really want to see. I don’t like the Silent Hill games for gameplay value so much as the atmosphere and storytelling, which is different for me, because usually I don’t give two shits about the story and whatnot. With that in mind, I believe that it could make the move to the big screen faily well. But anyway, onto the main point of the post.

I’ll admit it, “scary” movies (excluding slashers) do strike some irrational fear into my heart. I don’t have any idea why, but I always have trouble with darkness and sleeping after a horror flick, no matter how cheezy/stupid/boring it is. You may think less of me for this, but that’s the way it’s always been. I’m trying to overcome it (I’m typing this in the dark), but the fear is always there. The wierd thing is, I’ve never been scared by a videogame, even if they contain essentially the same things as the movies that send chills down my spine. I mean, SH4 should scare the living daylights out of me, cause it’s filled with ghosts and horrid imagery (To be fair, there is a single room in the game that I refuse to enter, because it does creep the hell out of me), but no such fear. Even the first Silent Hill should be horrifying even though its graphical prowess is limited, but again, nothing.

I do have a sort of conclusion though. See, in the games, I’m always in control, and I’m able to defeat, overcome or escape anything that threatens me. Thusly, my brain interperets that if anything like that were to come at me, I should be able to defeat it as I did in the game, even though it may have involved some crazy voodoo magic which I don’t happen to possess. The movies however, do not put me in control, and as such I’ve never tackled those forces even indirectly. It’s always someone else doing the dirty work, and more often than not, the movie ends with the evil still intact, ready to get revenge on whoever may still be alive or plotting for its next victim. Since the antagonist is rarely vanquished in the movies, I subconsciously think that there would be no hope to escape such a menace, should it happen to be real. I know that nothing like this can actually happen, but unfortunately, that little voice in the back of my head wants to believe it could, so it ends up poisoning my entire psyche in the end. It may be hard to comprehend what I’m trying to get across, since you’re not privy to my thoughts, but I’ve explained it to the best of my ability. Hell, you’d probably go out of you mind if you had to decipher all my thoughts.

But anyway, that’s just something I needed to get out into the open. I even feel a little more comfortable now that I’ve got it off my chest. As a reward for reading this drivel, I’ll tell you a secret. The article will be up later today. I kinda slacked off today, but it’s almost done. If you didn’t read the whole spiel, then shame shame double shame on you for cheating and skipping to the last paragraph to see if there was any article news there. Also, this week’s comic is going to be hilarious. At least, that’s what we think.

The mind of a killer

Last night, I watched one of the coolest movies I’ve seen in a while: The Cell. The basic plot is that this psychotherapist (played by Jennifer Lopez) goes into the mind of a serial killer and tries to figure out where he’s got his latest victim hidden. Anyhow, I started watching because I flipped by the channel and I saw Vince Vaughn, and figured that I haven’t seen a bad movie with him in it yet so why not. A while in, it occured to me just how similar this movie is to one of my favourite PS2 games, Silent Hill 4: The Room. Honestly, if you’ve played the game and understood the whole story, you would just be blown away by when you watch The Cell and see just how many things they have in common. Or vicey versa, whatever. They’re not entirely the same, but you’d be hard pressed to not see similarities between the two. The point is, if the guys who wrote SH4 said they weren’t at all influenced by this movie, I wouldn’t believe them for a second. My advice is to play SH4 and watch The Cell. Awesome game, awesome movie. It’s just like how the original Silent Hill had a lot in common with Jacob’s Ladder (which are also awesome, by the way). That is all.

Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children

Ok, before I start this up, if you’re a Final Fantasy 7 fanboy/girl, and refuse to believe that anything relating to the game can be wrong, just stop reading now. If you hate FF7 and are looking for a good bashing of the movie, stop reading now. Finally, if you don’t want spoilers, stop reading for the love of Odin. This review goes over pretty much every little nuance of the story (as weak as it is), so it’s absolutely loaded with spoilers. Anyone else may continue. And if you’re a hot chick, you may E-mail me some naked pictures of yourself.

As the title may have lead you to believe, I’ve now seen the Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children movie. What I have to say about it is pretty much irrelevant to how I feel about it, and the technical stuff here is more or less for me to nitpick and tell anyone who wants to see the movie (and doesn’t mind spoilers) what to expect. So let’s get the show on the road already.

The first thing I’m going to go over is the story. That shouldn’t take very long, since it’s the most bare-bones plot I’ve seen since Super Mario Bros (the game, not the movie). It starts off summing up what happened in FF7, and then goes on to tell you how people have become poisoned or whatnot by some mysterious force. Not long after, we learn that these people (all children, by the way) are sick because they have Jenova’s DNA or whatnot and the world doesn’t like them for it. Then these three dudes appear (with Jenova DNA of their own), bearing a resemblance to Mr. Oh-so-cool himself, Sephiroth. Turns out they’re looking for the remains of Jenova so that they can have a reunion of some kind. Blah blah blah. Cloud and company enter, cloud fights bad guys, Turks appear, say they want to help restore the world, secretly hold remains of Jenova. So stuff goes on, fight scenes happen, and the bad dudes take all the infected kids to a pool, brainwash them, and then attack the city. Leader of bad guys (forgot his name, not looking it up) summons goofy-looking Bahamut, kids become un-brainwashed, Cloud & friends defeat Bahamut. Rufus (Turk leader) reveals Jenova remains, bad guy leader gets them, Cloud chops them, bad guy cries, fight scene, bad guy turns into Sephiroth (Ooh! What a surprise!), more fight scene, Cloud wins, gets shot, come back to life, lame ending.

And that’s it. I should mention that the entire plot is completely obvious after the first ten minutes or so of the movie, so it’s not like you’re going to be surprised at all even if you didn’t read the summary. I mean, nothing at all happened, with the exception of Bahamut, that I didn’t see coming from a mile away. The tale was interesting to watch, but it was more predictable than a clock. But whatever, I’ve never been to worried about how good a plot is anyway. Unless of course, I’m reading a book.

Now while the plot is passable, there are a few things I have to pick out. For one, the brainwashing of the children was totally irrelevant. They did nothing but stand around mindlessly while they were brainwashed, and as far as I remember, the bad dudes never even mentioned using them for anything. But I digress, there are some bigger issues abound. Like Rufus, for example. When he first appears, he’s in a wheelchair, all cloaked as if he’s horribly scarred or whatnot. Later on, he hops off the wheelchair and throws off the cloak, revealing that he looks just as normal as ever. But he’s still got an eye-patch. Any guesses? Yep, it too gets thrown off, and under it is a perfectly good eye! Why? Why? There was no logic behind pretending to be crippled and deformed. Maybe he just wanted to fool everyone. But there was no real reason presented.

And the biggest issue I have with the movie is the entire Bahamut scene. Firstly, the leader of the bad guys takes the Bahamut materia and absorbs it into himself. The game had us believe that materia was clipped onto your armor/weapon or whatnot, and not that you’d absorb the damn thing and create a neon tumor. Then when the big dragon appears, he looks like a total homo, with stupid-looking armor and terribly designed wings. I swear, this incarnation of the King of Dragons does almost as much injustice to him as his FFX representation. And then to top it all off, the good guys start attacking it! Why would you attack a goddamned summon monster? Theoretically, they should just be able to summon it again. but that’s not even the worst of it all. Near the end, Bahamut flies way, way up to the top of a tower, and Cloud has to follow him somehow. Let’s see, what’s the best way to do this? Well the idiots that made this movie decided that each character from the FF7 game should fly in and throw him up a bit more. It’s impossible to describe this pile of shit scene with words, so I drew a diagram. and then, finally, Cloud actually manages to carve this gigantic beast – the most revered summon of like ever – right in two. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And Cloud wasn’t even using any materias. At least, I didn’t see any tumors of colour on him.

That’s pretty much all I found unacceptable there though. Otherwise, it’s only extremely nitpicky, like physically impossible fighting maneuvers and hair that was never meant ot look realistic. And to be fair, it’s time I said what was good about the movie.

Firstly, and most obviously once you’ve seen their first couple scenes, Reno and Rude make great comedy relief. Nearly every scene they’re found in is hilarious or at least will make you smile a little. then there’s the fact that Reno can crawl up walls like Spider-Man, which I found extremely entertaining, especially when Rude tried to climb up with him on one occasion and promptly fell flat on his back. they’re easily the best characters in the movie. I was never too big on any characters from FF7 (with the exceptions of Vincent and Barret), but if these guys played a role in the game at all similar to the one they had in the movie, I can’t believe that I missed it. Another thing that was awesome is Barret’s gun arm. In the flashback at the beginning, the gun was tiny and I made an angry note of that right away, but when he popped in later on, it was huge and shot like fifty bullets at a time. After rereading it, that sentence sounds unnecessarily phallic.

There were some other really cool things going on in the movie, like Cloud’s bike. the sides of the thing fan out, and reveal a rack of swords for him to choose from. And by the end, he’s used and lost all of them. The fight scenes were pretty fun, except for the fact that a few maneuvers that various characters pulled off were just plain impossible. And I’m not talking run-up-a-wall impossible here. I can accept a lot of over-the-top stuff, but they crossed a couple lines here. Other than that, though, lots of swordfighting and a cool fistfight with Tifa and one of the bad guys.

I’m sure there was a lot else that I both liked and disliked about the flick, but I can’t think of ’em at the moment, so I’m gonna wrap this baby up. Like I said before, everything I mentioned was for the sake of the review. None of it really impacts my final judgement. All things good and bad aside, I will say that this movie was a success on the grounds that I was entertained. That’s really all it takes for me to give something a good review these days. As long as I find a movie/game/song/what-have-you entertaining, chances are that I’m gonna end up giving it a positive rating. So the FF7 movie, although a lot of things about it made me angry, gets a solid A-. Somewhere between 85 and 90 on the percent scale. If I’d seen it in a theater, I wouldn’t ask for my $10 back. I would watch it again, but I surely wouldn’t buy it. It was much better than I’d anticipated (I expected very little. Video game movies are always the suck), but it wasn’t perfect. I’ll recommend it, just don’t tell me that it’s the best movie ever (not even in the top 50). I know it’ll be way overrated, because the game was, and those sheep that are Square fans (I personally like Enix a lot) will fall in love with anything that has Cloud or Sephiroth on it. Example: Ehrgeiz. That was one of the worst fighting games I’ve ever had the misery of playing, yet many loved it for its FF7 tie-ins. But now I’m way off-topic. Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children is worth your time. Go watch it. Just don’t ask me to talk about it any more.

The Good Stuff:
Reno & Rude = HALARIUS!!1! Pretty. Very pretty. Barret’s got a frickin’ sweet arm-gun Cloud’s bike is also frickin’ sweet Action scenes are engaging

The Bad Stuff:
Story moves pretty slow, and is mostly irrelevant Smells like fanfiction The Bahamut tower scene Goes too far over the top now and then

Moooooo…. Braaaaainsss…..

Ha ha! I am not dead! Just got a little delayed due to some unexpected time constraints. Anyway, I just got back from the cottage, which is a perfectly good excuse for the lateness of this here posty.

Now as I was saying. Destroy All Humans. A decent game to say the least. While I had originally preceived it as an extraterrestrial version of Grand Theft Auto, I was somewhat surprised to find that it’s not entirely the same. First of all, it’s obviously a different context, and killing is a lot more fun when you’re an alien with psychokinetic powers and a vast array of alien weapons to put the hurt on them with. The game itself is set way back in the fifty-somethings, and as far as TV has taught me, is pretty much faithful to the era. People are hicks, Elvis is still relatively unknown, and communism is the number one cause of everything bad. The story is a pretty nifty one. You’re this Furon alien dude, Crypto, and your species has a bit of a problem. See, they’ve relied on cloning to propogate the species for so long, and now their DNA is going stale and they’re getting dumber by the generation. So your task is to visit Earth and enslave the human populace to steal their precious DNA, because it contains a little Furon DNA for ages ago when the Furons landed on Earth and did a little mating. A bit messed, but it’s great as far as alien attack stories go.

The game’s idea is similar to that of the GTA, but you’re confined to levels, rather than a huge city to explore. Fear not though, you crazy GTA fanatics, as the levels are pretty huge and will each take at least half an hour to fully explore. Also, your missions are handed out to you on the mothership, instead of finding them among the various levels. But other than that, you’re pretty much free to roam to your heart’s content and cause as much havoc as you desire. You can’t steal cars or anything, but you do get to pilot a flying saucer, and that almost more than makes up for the lack of driving. Obviously, you’ll be spending most of your time on foot, and the game gives you several great ways to torture the humans. Crypto is equipped with four main weapons: the Zap-O-Matic (obvious), the Desintegrator Ray (obvious), the Ion Detonator (think remote mines), and best of all, the Anal Probe. All have their charms, and all are a bunch of fun to play around with. But the best weapon against the humans is easily PK. Crypto can pick up pretty much anything (once the required upgrades are purchased) and swing it around, bash stuff with it, or just huck it at people. You’ll have a lot of fun probing and ionizing humans, but the real good stuff lies in simply flinging them around like dolls.

There are some sweet unlockables in the game too. While one set of said extras are unlocked by scouring the maps for alien probes (think hidden packages), others are opened to you by simply playing through the game. Most of them are promotional movies or artwork, but there are two videos that really stand out from the rest. First off: Plan 9 From Outer Space. Sadly, they only included the first 15 minutes or so (haven’t actually seen the whole movie) and it could have been absolutely amazing, but is only a little amazing because it’s only an extended clip. The film is notorious among pretty much everyone who likes a good cheese flick, and is commonly referred to as the worst movie ever made. From what I saw though, I’m sure the rest would have been hilarious. Anyhow, the second sweet video almost makes up for the skimping on Plan 9. Ever heard of “Teenagers From Outer Space?” Neither had I, but all two-and-something hours of it are there to be watched, should you complete the game. It’s a horrible movie, and I loved it. I’d rent DAH again just so that I could take screencaps and review it. And you should find some way to watch it, and Plan 9 as well.

To sum it all up, Destroy All Humans is a great game. It’s fun to just screw around and wreak havoc on Earth, and doesn’t get boring after half an hour like the GTA games. Some of the missions are actually pretty tough, and hunting for the probes will probably take you forever without the aid of a map. Production values are great (the dude who voiced Zim does one of the main characters) and the fact that it contains an entire movie is certainly a plus. It’s a rental for sure. If you like it, pick it up. Hell, I’d consider buying it just for Teenagers From Outer Space. Man I want to watch that movie again.

Wario’s Guide to the Galaxy

So I’m browsing the Fark, and I find what is possibly a faint glimmer of hope for gaming.
Someone copied WarioWare. Now I always figured that WarioWare had such
a bizarre (yet highly successful) concept that nobody would ever try to blatantly use it for their own game. But there it is. Based on the movie “the Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy”, it’s only got 42 games, but they only last a couple seconds each and they’re fired at you in rapid succession. It’s WarioWare. Just something I thought was really cool and worth mentioning.

It goes with everything

I just finished up a mini-review for youse. I really should have waited until later this evening to do it, because I have to get up for work in less than five hours, but what’s done is done. Also, a full-size article is on the way, and we’re looking at Sunday as a projected deadline. May be longer, we’ll just have to see how the rest of the week plays out. I just bought five seasons worth of South Park on DVD, so I might be a little distracted by those.

Oh, and as of yesterday, I’m finally excited for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Might have something to do with me buying the original trilogy on DVD, might be that I bought the Clone Wars cartoon series DVD (which kicks ass). No-one can say for sure, but it feels good to care about Star Wars again.

April whine

I started writing an article today, but got bored and quit. Sorry to tease you and stuff. It’ll be done tomorrow. Won’t say what it’s about, but I’ll tell you this: it’s a sequel. Exciting.

In other news, I had a kickass weekend. We went out to the cottage and I pretty much played Timesplitters: Future Perfect and Mario Party 6 the entire time. I also got to play with my grandpa’s air rifle. We even taped a flashlight onto the end so we could use it at night. Ah fun. But the beautiful tapestry that was the weekend did have one small stain on it. You see, my parents decided that It’d be a good idea to rent Garfield: the Movie.

What’s even worse than the fact that they based a movie on a comic strip that is always the same boring crap over and over is that they went and pretty much messed it up as bad as they could have. I’m not a fan of Garfield by any measure, but I hate when a moive tears apart its source material, be it a comic, a game, a TV show or whatever. Firstly, they made Jon a character you don’t hate. They actually moulded him into the kind of person I would love to be. The worst part is that while in the comic, he utterly repulses women, in the movie, he doesn’t seem to have any trouble at all getting lucky. Then there’s the fact that Garfield is animated, while no other animal is. Odie, at the very least, should have gotten the CG treatment. Oh, and the actors really could have used some sort of reference object for when they had to interact with Garfield, as it looks really bad most of the time, particularly when someone’s supposed to be holding him. And to add the finishing blow, the movie was just plain bad. It was even more predictable than most crappy movies, and wasn’t entertaining at all. I would have rather watched Open Water again. Oh. Wait. I did. I told them not to rent it, but nobody listens to Ryan.

Final score: A for “At least Jennifer Love Hewitt is hot”. (but really I’d give it an F–)

Kaaaatamari Damasheeeee!~

Here’s the sitch: I’ve been slacking, and my weekend is totally booked, so the new article might not make it up until next week. I’m gonna do my best to have it done for Sunday night, but a man can only do so much with a small amount of time. It will be done before month-end though. That, I can assure you.

In the meanwhilst, there’s a new Steve article up. I don’t necessarily agree with it, and posting it might comprimise my integrity or some crap like that, but I barely know what integrity is, so screw it.

I know there was something more… Oh yeah! I watched “Open Water” the other day. It kinda blew. Though I only really watched it cause I heard there were lots of boobies. You can go over to X-E and skim through the blog to find Matt’s short review of it. I don’t care enough about it to even start.

I’ve been reading some of the classic The Sneeze, and I swear that Steven is the most hilarious man ever. Plug plug plug. I’ve been giving out lots of links lately, it seems.

Oh yes, and there’s one last thing. Bear with me for a second here. OMG!!11!!1 DS online stuffs! And Katamari Damacy DS!! Imessage board far too much…

😀 …Katamari…

Bugged out: Act 3

Twice now, my PC has fucked up while I’ve been typing out this post. And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it, because the error screen is French techno-babble. I barely understand English techno-babble. So here’s the contents of today’s post, summed up very concisely because I’m annoyed at typing it for the third time.

-No article yet. New one this week sometime.

–Thing Feet

-See Alfie

-I’m pissed cause nobody’s got this yet. Release was the 16th. Get cracking, assholes.

-Nedstat says people still find me from Google. Score.

-Steven of The Sneeze just sold burnt popcorn for about $43 US.

–Musashi pwnz j00.

Prolonged dumpage

This one here’s kind of a follow-up to yesterday’s post. Some continuation, some new thoughts, it’s all good. Unless you have no interest at all in what I think about.

I was out all day, and again took the liberty of playing my DS all over the place. Today I attracted the attention of no less than three people, and on a broad range of ages too. I’m starting to feel like the Nintendo DS version of that dude from the Wendy’s commercials. I’mma have to get out more, and make sure I get selling those DS units. Maybe somewhere along the way, I’ll find a friend who will play with me. Maybe I’ll be able to beat a human opponent at Madden. Oh yeah, I bought that. I have to say, I made the right decision. Not only does it interest more casual gamers, but I’m quite enjoying it as well. I really needed something different, and football has answered my call.

My next article will not be so much an article, but something akin to this, should I ever figure out how to do it. After looking at the source, I could probably put it together, but it’ll take a long damn time. Possibly all week, or longer, depending on how ambitious I feel. Or maybe I’ll just rush it and not mind it looking like crap. And that’s all you’re getting for now.

I also picked up The Urbz for DS, under my brother’s counsel. He was right. I really like the game. The only problem is that it uses both the face buttons and the touch screen, so you either fumble between stylus and thumb or just use your finger on the touch screen. The game doesn’t really call for extremely precise pointing, so the latter is acceptable, but after being stylus-trained by WarioWare and Feel the Magic, it feels kind of odd not to use it. Anyhow, it’s a really good game. I’m kind of upset I didn’t know this earlier.

I finally found a Tesla CD! Thank you, Music World! I mean, it’s the newest one, which is excellent, but I really wanted The Great Radio Controversy. Still no show from Firehouse though. I did pick up Foreigner’s The Very Best and Beyond, which is also great, so I’m not too disappointed.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance is no longer available anywhere. I’ve looked through around six electronics stores, three gaming stores and two trade-in stores, but nothing. I’ve found Sons of Liberty, and even The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2, but no Substance. So here’s the deal. You find it anywhere, you pick it up and bring it and the recepit to me. I’ll pay you the cost, plus a $15 bounty. The same goes for the Evil Dead 2 DVD. I’ve found Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, but no Evil Dead 2. Maybe I’ll put up a bounty chart of things I want but cannot find, and cannot be arsed to buy online.

I found the first season Corner Gas DVD today. I can’t recall exactly why I didn’t buy it on sight. As I said yesterday, I love the show. Possibly even more than Futurama, and I have all the Futurama DVD sets. Mmm, I love material posessions.

I can’t eat 40 timbits without getting sick. I’m a sham of a man.

The problem with me constantly buying CDs (aside from the rapidly depleting storage space) is that I’m never going to get around to doing that article on my CD colleciton. Maybe it’ll have to go under the pseudo-articles and be updated as new discs come and (God forbid) go.

That’s all for today. I’ll try not to bog down the blog with so much impertinent information during the next week. I’ve got the weekend off, so I’ll be making sure I devote (at least) Saturday to article production. That is, if I’m not too wrapped up in Samurai Legend Musashi. Two days, baby.