I'm the Juggernaut Bitch Review

Intsead of completely comparing X3 to the previous films, might as well compare it to other sequels similiar to it. It's by no means a Batman and Robin, but it's quite like another "X" sequel, xXx: State of the Union.

To start off; the action since this is an action oriented comic. Overall I was bored to tears. This isn't to say there weren't some great moments. I think one of the better moments was during the danger room, Colossus gave Rogue a bit of his power in order to protect her from a debris attack. Juggernaut vs. Wolvie was incredible. Wolvie vs. Morlock Guards was decent enough, but other than that every other battle seemed old hat.

The next thing that most people would want to know is, what about the mutant powers? How were they used? Were they cool as fuck? As I mentioned before, some powers were used creatively, Magneto had his moments but as the movie progressed it became clear to make Magneto the equivalent of a metal tossing catapult than being a master of magentism. The very first use of Jean's powers in the first scene was amusing enough but as the movie progressed there's so much of a Hey look at me, I'm a destructive force overload it fails to actually instill any real fear in the audience.

It's hard to say what they were trying to do with the mutant powers. I imagine they were trying to stuff in so many cameos/mutant possiblities, in such a way to distract at how bad the rest of the film is. There is a lot of "introduction of powers" scenes in the film, that were produced for the sole reason of showing off a power or ability. But it lacked the certain natural introduction of the previous two films.

An example would be Kitty in X1 being like a typical student forgetting her book and then just phasing through a closed door after her fellow classmates. Iceman in X2 creating an icewall not to seperate them from Stryker's men, but also seperating Wolverin from Stryker himself. But in X3 it almost felt like a mutant audition. Even Magneto asked one mutant: "What's your power?" as if he was prepping an amateur for some porn shoot. Basically, powers were expressed in such a way that was more like the comic than a basic action film. The imaginative use of powers descresed greatly with this film. It's one thing to see Pyro set off cars and send them into the air. It's just really boring to see it happen again, only this time with Magneto as his B-assist tossing the cars for him.

Finally, the dialogue. Guess what? My feelings of deja-vu in comparing the dialogue to Triple X wasn't all that far off. Guess who worked on the screenplay of X3? Simon Kinberg the same guy who wrote xXx: 2. I'll just leave it at that.

I'm by no means a comic book purist, in fact I wasn't really intrested in this film in the first place. It might have been AICN swaying me a bit with it's talkback and weekly rumours of the slightly change. I wouldn't go so far as to say: "This isn't X-men" because I imagine to there is enough people here and everywhere who believe it is. But it does bring up the point, do we want the films to exist and be produced so haphazardly to remind us of the comics only by reference and not by the nature of the film? Do we want these adaptions to exist even though they are more like a common movie than another genre by itself?

Post E3 thoughts....

Another E3 has come and gone. Geeks had flocked to the gaming saltlick of demos, trailers, and mini-films laid out by the oh so cunning hunter in suits and cosplay costumes. And yet another year I feel really disappointed.

I talked to Rob a little before E3 was about to start and said that it doesn't excite me at all. This E3 is pretty much boring and lacklustre. Rob disagreed and blamed my cynicism of me saying that every year. I don't say it because it's a 50/50 chance of me being right...but because E3 has basically been pretty boring for a great deal now. This isn't by any means an old skooler crying about the sins of graphical whoring and nostolgia, but there were really only a few games that piqued my interest and one gripping me entirely; that being Metal Gear Solid 4.

But it goes to show that games are beginning to really show lack of innovation. If I couldn't have told the difference between Metroid Prime 3 and it's predecessors, then it's concerning on how Nintendo is going forward with it's next gen gaming. Many of the games look like working model demos as opposed to finished products of a next gen calibur. The only things that stood out for me was Fire Emblem and Disaster Day, both of which could have been pre-rendered and not real time.

Sony adding a seemingly last minute POS motion detecting controller just makes me cry but not as much as the price point in which a lot of gamers are debating whether they should skip their mortgage payment or monthly rent to acquire the next level of gaming.

Microsoft, of which I am indifferent to, seems to have come out as a great console. There were a lot of games that caught my eye...even though it doesn't excite me, a lot of the more realized games seem to be on the 360. It doesn't mean that they were good games, but I recognize a potentially better line-up compared to others.

However what did impress me the most, aside from MGS4, was some of the advancements in animation. They seem far more realistic and fluid, less repetitive and with the very much puclicized and acclaimed Assassin's Creed (I wonder if people know creed is pronounced crid and in bid) even though it's premise doesn't interest, just seeing it move really does impress me a bit.

But me...I'm a seriously stoked for next year's E3. I think next year will be a great one, in fact one of the greatest ones because it'll be second gen development by then and we'll see what'll happen. It'll only go to show how much the gaming industry will be shaken up after 12 months.

I'm not good at lying.

Well it's kind hard to lie sometimes. With the customers who are insistent to know what our business is doing, or why it's so empty, we decided to use the term "renovation" to describe the reason we are going low on stock. Each time I say the little white lie though, it's easier and easier to say really. I think because some customers are so nosy about it all, fibbing to them makes it much easier and less stressful to explain what the fuck is going on.

I don't see why people think the store is getting low on stock because even one time when a customer asked my mother why there isn't anything in the store anymore...she asked him what he wanted. In the end he found all that he needed so basically unless you're looking for oven cleaner or atificial rum extract...yes we are getting pretty empty. We currently made one aisle empty for the sake of efficiency, and suddenly people think we are empty. We merely utilized space a bit better.

I do hope that not many customers get our contact information for our new place or else they'd probably phone us up and ask us to reopen the store because they need us.

Results of the sugar experiement

After two weeks of drastically lowering my sugar intake, there seems to be more health benefits than taste benefits from it all. It does show how much sugar I do eat given a day or a week, which is far too much. Even my mother noticed a difference in my behaviour which became less fidgity and moving around a bit too much. I had a sugar binge yesterday, more than I had about last weekend which made me tense, on edge and even my thinking was in a noticiable haze. I couldn't think straight as if something was blocking my focus and I seemed to have noticed my heartrate increased slightly. That or else I seemed more senstive on feeling my pulse buldge through my neck.

What of the purpose of my sugar drought? I ate a pizza a few days after my no sugar intake and I could taste the sweetness of the tomato sauce. I imagine being a store bought one, there is a bit of sugar in it, and I've always kinda tasted a hint of it, but this time the sweetness came through clearly on my tastebuds. A sandwich I ate the next day tasted extra tasty. I don't know if it was because my tastebuds going into sugar withdrawal, desperate enough to make any food tasty, but it's good nevertheless. I think a breakthrough is that I could eat fruit without hesitation anymore. It does show that because of my dialy intake of junk food that made fruit seem extremly bitter to me, but in cutting that out, fruit tastes just good period.

Meeshun Impossibre Tree Review

Let's cut to the chase. Better than #2 but almost as good as #1.

With that said, Ethan Hunt is back doing the impossible missions to avenge the death of his protege. There really isn't much to expect from this film because if you want action that is unpretentious and just full bore on entertaining...this is it. I would have to say this is about as smart as blockbuster action you'll see without being too gracefully chereographed such as The Matrix or Equilibrium. However it's not so outrageously Brukheimerian to insult your taste in film. However saying that...did it succeed?

In someways I don't think it did. I did think it was a great movie, but it wasn't a great Mission Impossible movie. A lot of conventions of typical action films eventually seeped into the plot of the film; which even though done well enough, does leave me a little deflated in expectations. Another problem that arose is that essentially, it's become a James Bond version of Mission Impossible. What really impressed me most about Mission Impossible was the use of gadgetry and pulling off the impossible in unique ways. With James Bond, it's always felt that gadgetry was there for the pure sake of creating a unqiuly specific scene in the future. However with MI, it always seem like more, gadgetry was used to aid in a situation that required thinking to solve rather than gagetry alone. Even though this time around more focus was put upon a team dynamic, they haven't seemed to command a large enough presence to be actual characters to care for.

Another problem is that after watching 24, any form of interrogation is pretty much tame compared to anything else that happens in MI:3, aside from an excellent performance from Phillip Seymour Hoffman. One scene shows Ethan basically pretending to be as badass as Jack Bauer, but it truly falls flat. The moral conflicts are pretty much typical.

But overall a good film to check out, even though we had basically 1 year of Cruise mania grace our media, it's good enough to make you ignore that for about 2 hours.

3/5 stars.

SPOILERS Silent Hill Review SPOILERS

It's quite hard to say what to make of Silent Hill. It had mixed reviews along all spectrums of movie goers. The fans, the critics, the general mass. Even it's Box office tally was very lucky to even clinch #1 for a weekend at $40 million in which a lot of people could say is a moderate but not entirly sucessful amount. I personally have been waiting to see this for quite a while and when I did I came walking away with some mixed feelings.

Basically to say, this is a film that is probably the most accurate video game movie adaption to date. The video gamer in me appreciated the sentiment to take careful detail in expressing correctly the details of the game. The visual feast that came from it all really gives you a sense of nervousness, especially when you enter the dark world of Silent Hill...filled with metal rust and blood. The story itself, I found to be a tad disappointing that instead of a cult worshipping for the birth of a demon god, they were instead a cult who was bent upon burning anything they see as blasphemous. Instead of a pagan/alternate religious demon, we get a vengeful spirit along the vein of The Ring or The Grudge. I thought the original Silent Hill demon would have produced a more engaging and more weird aspect of the movie, but instead they opted for a more simplified version.

However it does lend itself to a moral conflict on behalf of the main character Rose, of how far is she willing to go and save her daughter. Is she prepared to accept and assist what was essentially pure evil to basically fullfill a long overdue vengence ass kicking upon a lot of misguided (but clearly deluded) cultists? Was it right to assist someone basically trapped people in a hellish version of Silent Hill through a pact with a demon. Who exactly won in the end? In the moral conflict is akin to the Jennifer Lopez movie Enough who actively searches out her ex-husband to actually kill him and set him up to have him attack her in a bout of self defense. But with Silent Hill, there is some sort of empathy that arose from me when I saw so many people that deserved to be killed. It isn't so much that they are evil themselves, but because they are misguided that perhaps makes them so empathetic at the same time...also just as fucking dumb. But gore there is..there is a lot of gore and a lot of painful moments that makes it worth of a R rating.

This does bring up the more mixed reaction on video game adaptions. Basically what we as gamers want from a video game adaption. I personally think with movies such as Silent Hill and Doom, that in some respect we are stepping into the right direction for video game adapted movies. That perhaps in some way movie technology has caught up to reproduce fairly accurately what a video game should look like on the movie screen. But possibly more importantly that video games themselves has gained more respect and exposure to mainstream culture, *and* the that games themselves are becoming more like movies lends more emphasis on making an accurate movie.

This brings up the question...do we just want to see a video game in a movie format? The thing is I feel that I want more than just walking away or even expecting something from the game to occur on the big screen. That I want something more than just seeing Pyramid Head appear in Silent Hill, more than just Cloud fighting Sephiroth in Final Fantasy Advent Children or more than just seeing a FPS moment in Doom. In other words I want something more than fanservice. A long time ago when I still actually pined for many games to be made into movies or become translated into television shows, I wished to have video game movies as validation of my interest...my hobby. That to show the world or even share with the world a bit of joy that I get from playing a video game.

Nowadays after many failure after failure, what I want is a film. I want a movie that can be considered or even be mistaken for a film upon it's own while still satisfying the fanservice craving I would want. And perhaps the main problem (as with most other adaptions) is the fact that games storytelling and movie storytelling are different, much like books to movies or anything else. They are just different requiring different pacing and what not. I still consider Mortal Kombat to be a better film despite being directed by Paul Anderson because when I came out of it, I gotten more than just seeing my favorite characters be put onto the screen. I got to see something that could have been considered a film in the first place. The Fatal Fury series of anime I consider to be even better because it not only manages to satisfy the requisite appearance of characters, it does so in a way that is entertaining and makes it engaging.

So it's a good advance, however I hope that this doesn't merely produce carbon copies of video games onto movie screens for the sake fans and ignoring everyone else.

Sugar the deadly drug

The past few days I decided to cut out sugar or anything sweet altogether. This isn't so much a dietary choice as it is a culinary choice. As I browse through cookbooks, I've read a while back how that our tastes are just too accustomed to sweetness nowadays. That in someways we don't even know what real natural sweetness is since white sugar itself is a very refined and very pure sweet. I wouldn't be surprised that after all the junk food and soft drinks that people consume that they absolutely hate fruit because by comparison it's bitter. No wonder our kids are fucked up.

Anyway, it's day two and I've seem to have gotten past the withdrawl for the most part. I do have certain bouts of cravings, which shows how natural reaching for something sweet and unhealthy is at times. I want to get it to a point where I could actually taste the sweetness of milk...of all things. But we'll have to see how well I'll do in the end.