Other than people asking me what I think is the best (insert anything here) EVER, whether I prefer Coke over Pepsi, or what was the last (insert anything here) that I (insert something within Gamespot's TOU here), I think I get asked what was the first (you get the idea) that you (this joke has run its course methinks). Obviously for reasons involving my inability to warp time my choices tend to be dated a bit farther back than most people on this particular board. So for no particular reason I'd thought I'd grab a few of my favorites.

First Anime/Cartoon -

Back in 1969 other than the excitement of being given a dinosaur pop-up book (conveniently my first dinosaur book) later that year at Christmas, I distinctly remember falling in love with Kimba the White Lion otherwise known as the incredibly famous Jungle Emperor series from Japan courtesy of the legendary Osamu Tezuka. I lived in Pasadena at the time and so our antenna easily picked up the signal but I would be sorely disappointed by my parent's choices of dwellings soon after this as we began a series of moves which tended to put us in fairly distantly located trackhomes in which PBS type channels (which is the channels that aired Kimba) were very hard to receive. So over my childhood years my beloved Kimba and Speed Racer were rare commodities and I treasured every moment that I could successfully grab a signal no matter how fuzzy.

First Comic Book/Magazine -

As a child I was a voracious reader. I read almost anything I could get my hands on and stories about the Greek and Roman Gods featured big into that equation as they offered up fantastic stories of superhuman feats. Then in one of those book club magazines (Dynamite I believe it was) they often had a feature on comics reprinting the origins of various heroes. I was fascinated by these articles but in those days no comic shops existed and only the occasional grocery store had a spinner rack with comics.

Unfortunately for me my parents had recently moved to Orange County which at the time was a barren wasteland as far as stores go. No grocery stores had comics and so the only comic happiness I could find were the short features found within magazines. Then in 1974 I discovered a drug store that occasionally got in a few of the Marvel magazines that they were marketing at the time in an attempt to bring in a more adult audience. I picked up an issue of Savage Tales No. 6 featuring Ka-Zar (Lord Plunder to you!) and read it over and over again with much glee! Much to my delight it also featured women in...well sometimes in little to no clothing and since it was John Buscema art it was very...um, well done. :oops:

Soon after that we moved once again to another distant series of track homes in Oceanside and I very quickly located what at the time was an oasis of comic book goodness...A 7-ELEVEN!!! I quickly biked to it as soon as I had the chance and snatched up a comic of my favorite series The Fantastic Four and so finally I had my first actual comic -- Fantastic Four #158! With trembling hands I read quickly through the comic only to find a cliffhanger at the end! :cry: I was saddened as I was so use to rarely being able to find issues that I was sure I'd never find another one after that. Luckily the regular deliveries proved me wrong and thus was born my love for comic collecting in 1975.

First movie in a theatre -

I was a mere 4 years old when I was taken to a showing of the legendary film 2001: a space odyssey. Why my father decided a 4 year old should attend a movie like this I'll never know but I would have to assume he thought it was merely a space adventure movie and there would be lots of color and explosions to keep me occupied. Regardless, see it I did and although I don't have clear recollection of actually being there, I do have very fond memories of growing up with the big deluxe vinyl soundtrack album. I used to play it over and over as I found the very odd tracks by Ligeti to be entrancing and spooky. It could be my natural passion for Hallowe'en as I often played the soundtrack in order to make our house seem more spooky to passer bys.

First vinyl album -

Throughout most of the '70s I had a best friend that was really into Johnny Cash. I mean really into Johnny Cash. As a result I pushed aside the Led Zeppelin albums littering most people's rooms at the time and mainly listened to Johnny Cash myself over and over again. Late one weekend night I caught this weird rock band wearing outlandish outfits and strange make-up and combining this with big pyrotechnics and a driving rock sound and lyrics. Well that was it for me as after that I was a solid Kiss fan!

The very next time my parents went out shopping I stopped by the record area and picked up their newest album for $5.99 and just played that sucker to death much to my parents chagrin. I slowly accrued all their older albums and soon started buying any magazine I could afford which featured them.

Good lord it all seems so embarassing now.

For the record, my first piece of music that wasn't children's music that I bought was a ABBA 45 single of Fernando! Then my first 8-Track that I was allowed to buy for a long road trip was Steve Miller's Book of Dreams. Luckily the early '80s came along and I developed an interest in music that was a tad less embarassing. My first Compact Disc ended up being Roxy Music's Avalon which I still have sitting on my shelf.

First movie I watched multiple times in the theatre -

When Star Wars hit the theatre in 1977 I just went nutzo! It was the single most amazing thing that I had ever seen and I somehow managed to convince my parents to attend multiple showings. When I was young I was exceedingly tiny and anytime somebody sat in front of me I really just couldn't see a damn thing. As a result I took to sitting in the very front seats which solved the problem as the seats weren't really all that close to the screen.

However one particular screening of Star Wars my parents went to some new fangled over-sized theatre and when I sat down I was looking almost straight up at the screen. Let me tell you that opening sequence in which the Imperial Cruisers come slowly flying down from the top of the screen is something I will never forget thanks to that HUGE screen. :shock:

My first pet -

I had an older brother and sister when I was growing up and although we often had pets in our family, the pet was always the family's or my brother's or sister's. While I was living in Oceanside and wandering the surrounding miles and miles of thick fields covered in high brush and railroad tracks I captured a California King Snake! I convinced my parents to let me keep him and despite the reservations of my sisters and mother concerning my ability to keep him caged I at last had my first pet!

Ah my goodness what a great snake he was too! Wild snakes, once they adapt to their surroundings, are a lot more docile than their raised in captivity brethren as they really appreciate their captivity. They're always in a warm environment, they always get fed, their owner who takes them out is warm and doesn't hurt them -- what's not to love?

I kept him as long as I could but eventually, as our family did so often, we moved on down the road and I let him go back into the wild. It still makes me sort of sad to think about it as no snake that I've owned after him has ever been as super awesome as that darn snake. I loved you Mr. Snake! :cry:

My First Vehicle -

It took me quite some time in my life before I actually got a car as I had a rather rough entry into the adult world through my own confused non-actions. One thing that my father did do for me however is to buy me this nifty Honda 450CM in order to get around a little bit. It wasn't great to ride on the freeway or anything, but it did allow me to get a job and get around the neighborhood in which I lived. This in turn led me to meeting what would be my first serious girlfriend which was quite a change in my life. Not bad for just a little putt-putt of a bike.

Well that's a small trip back through a few historic firsts in my life. What are some of yours?

Although I posted this elsewhere I get rather tired of seeing my old blogs and just felt the need to push it down further away from my eyes. I also though that there are a handful of folks who I don't see in movie topics and maybe, just maybe, they won't mind reading what I wrote about ye big old blockbuster extremis - Star Trek.

I also refuse to plan these things out and edit lightly so sorry if it's all arranged a bit haphazardly as my mind kind of fires off at strange moments and I suffer from spasms of lucidity that are uncontrollable. I would warn you not to take the things I say seriously but honestly I don't think anybody I know here is unprepared for the things that I ramble on about. :P

So one shiny bright day my friend informed me that the hoidy toidy theatre up the street had installed an IMAX system into one of their theatres and just by chance that happened to be the week after the weekend premiere of the new Star Trek film! So off we went with his sister and her wife in tow for an evening of very sharp and quite loud entertainment.

Star Trek - The future begins

So Star Trek it was and I was mighty excited to go see it! There had been nothing but good reviews and good word of mouth and I plunged into it fully expecting to be fully entertained with a roller coaster of entertaining 'splosions, witty dialogue, cutting edge effects, great characters, and some rather taut action scenarios.

Unfortunately I really did not enjoy the film.

What went wrong? Why did so many people overwhelmingly enjoy this film while I just thought it was a big boring loud snoozefest? It's not as if I have these heavenly standards that can only be met by broadly paced esoteric foreign films. I enjoy watching Judge Dredd for goodness sakes!

I suppose I should state for the record that I'm not a big Trekkie-type person so I don't have any holy canon issues with the material or the characters. Sure, sure...I enjoyed the series when I was young but it's nothing that I have a deep emotional connection to in any way. The idea of a fresh more visceral approach to the genre sounded mighty fine to me.

Right out of the gate I was fine. Jumping into the chaotic action of the film was a really nice approach and it was nice to see some of that Battlestar Galactic aesthetic jump in there with the mixing of the intensity of the battle with the cold and silent embrace of the surrounding space. Unfortunately that was the moment when things slowly began to spiral downwards for me and I slowly began to lose interest bit by bit.

I really feel that other than Spock that Abrams just has no idea what drives the characters and doesn't really want to bother to develop them in any sort of natural way. Kirk, instead of being a intelligent wise-ass, is just an ass who seems to demonstrate very little intelligence most of the time and he just seems to run around being a huge ass, running around in a state of panic, or getting the holy hell beaten out of him (really did you notice how often he gets beat down in this film?. When he cheats on the Kobayashi test and is confronted by Spock in front of the conference I expected some sort of great exchange between the two, but instead the moment just faded.

Also -- Kirk was raised in Iowa right? Where the hell did the Grand Canyon come from that he drove his stepfather's car into?

I really thought that the framing and many of the action scenes were poorly shot. Abrams still seems to think he's filming a TV show and has too many characters way too close to the camera and then employs the jitter camera quite liberally and as a result actions are at times confusing and hard to follow.

There were a few characters I enjoyed. Karl Urban was bloody hilarious as McCoy and I really enjoyed him a great deal. I thought the Zachary Quinto was scary good as Spock and really enjoyed his portrayal of the character. He conveyed a high intelligence and carried himself with the proper airs, but you could just feel this feral presence in his character and you were ready to him to just explode. The internal struggle between his mind and his heart was a refreshing change from what I felt was a mainly cardboard cast.

I understand the point behind the reboot. Abrams thought that Star Trek was too wordy and I thought it would be nice change of pace from the child-like humanitarianism that Roddenberry tends to espouse in most of his works. Just take the characters and thrust them into a giant space opera action fest! Sounds good no?

Unfortunately I think he went too far and I really felt that I was watching Star Wars by way of Star Trek. There were these random shots at bars or at station where suddenly you would see a quick shot of a super odd alien thing and then it's gone and off we'd go to another adventure. Then there's always that odd sidekick of Scotty's. It all just seemed terribly out of place despite my love for iconoclasm.

Scenes just seemed to present themselves for no reason other than the director's desire to create an action scene. Why was Kirk dropped off at a remote ice planet when there are plenty of solitary brigs on their ships? Why did a giant out of place creature that looks like a reject from Cloverfield grab a nice mouthful of a meal and then throw it aside just so it could chase this tiny, tiny human being all over hill and dale?

And like the serial films that inspired Star Wars it all just seemed terribly shallow and lighthearted with very little real threat behind every situation of terror. Any time a situation arose that would complicate things *bam* some deus ex machina type device, skill, or technology would present itself to fix it all up nice and shiny! All that neat fixin' just took all the tension away from pretty much every scene and it all just seemed rather sloppy.

Then there's this weird obsession with the need to have giant over-powered ships in science fiction movies. They are fine if explained and introduced properly. But I'm supposed to believe that the Romulans built a mining ship that's the size of a small planet? How could they possible run a ship that size? And how is a mining ship a mere 100 years in the future and retro-fitted with some missles so incredibly powerful that Federation war ships can't take it down?

In the end I just ended up feeling empty and hollow after watching this film. I liked Spock and Bones and I really liked the unexpected dynamic between Spock and Uhura. I was puzzled by her commands to him earlier in the film about what ship she was going to board and then laughed when I realized what was going on.

But overally I just didn't like the film. Adding a visceral kinesis to what a is generally a rather stoic universe was an interesting idea, but without the conviction that the threats are a real hurdle to overcome in the end it just felt cheap. Much like the serials it is emulating, the revelation of the solution tends to be largely unsatisfying, which is how I felt.

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Cinema Cat promise that Damon will attempt to keep from savaging the newest Pixar film Up if he ever gets the time to attend a theatre again. But said cat also feels compelled to remind the readers that despite Daemon's general disdain for Pixar's overall oeuvre, he really, really enjoyed and was quite impressed with Wall-E so there is hope.

Also he is still grumpy that he watched every E3 conference and Gamespot show and has yet to receive even a single emblem. :(

There are times when ordinary, seemingly mundane events happen that can have a dramatic or extraordinary impact in our lives. A random stop by a retailer carrying CDs or DVDs can yield surprising finds, having to retrieve a forgotten item could prevent an auto accident, taking a different path to school could result in a physical confrontation, a conversation with a friend could spark an interest in a passer by -- a myriad of possibilities and conclusions resulting from the most commonplace activities.

Who knows whether buying that much needed bread after work could lead to their demise! Should I stay in and play it safe or should I leap before I look? Over the last week a couple of random things in my life went forward or were abruptly halted which has resulted in nothing quite so dramatic as all the noisome scribblings that preceded.

I suddenly received a notice at my quiet little email account that some person at Gamespot had suggested me for the role as a new forum moderator. Of course it would have been a minor role as a moderator in training or some such title in which I would no doubt be hazed mercilessly in the form of Nick making me clean his motorcycles or perhaps Hungry Bunny demanding that I create an animated bunny sig a day for a month until my training was complete -- "and they better be damned funny and charming as all Hell as well!!!"

But we shall never know as I decided to politely decline the offer. I don't have any issues with the job itself and I have no problem laying down the hammer or letting minor shenanigans go unpunished if they are engaged in a polite and/or amusing fashion -- for a little while anyway. But I have a full-time job that has increasingly become very physically and mentally punishing to the point that I find it hard to become motivated about almost anything and so I felt that this just wasn't the best time to be engaging in watching the kids.

To be honest, I thought it might be kind of fun and help me come out of my Gamespot shell a bit, but it's just not in the cards right now. I still don't know who nominated me but I thank you for thinking of me and perhaps in the future I'll be a bit better off in order to help Gamespot keep from becoming a fetid wasteland of agressive cliques and softcore porn advertising that I've watched so many other boards become. Did I make a mistake in turning it down? Who knows?

Much like the creation of my personal little MySpace site, one very late night during a period of incredible, restless boredom a Facebook page was created by your odd little author. I'm not particularly social and the friends that I do have are loathe to communicate through these popular sources of a social nexus. But I was in one of those moods in which filling out forms and lists which represent your likes and dislikes seem like a fun thing.

What? :(

Anyways...there I was all ready and willing for this big old bad networking site that has seemingly supplanted MySpace's amazing popularity. It was the king of the kings! Every tech show I watch or read about can't go a minute without bringing up the MASSIVE popularity of Facebook and how it's taken over the world! I connected, filled out all my info, added a quick profile pic which, in true Daemon fashion, was not actually a picture of me. Then I stood back and checked out my handiwork.

What I saw appalled me.

What?

This was...it? It couldn't be!

I started poking around at every option that I could find and nope, nada, nothing. Facebook is just this big empty sheet which has your likes and dislikes in nice clear text and...well that's it folks. MySpace is like having your own web site in which the sky's the limit! You could totally write all sorts of HTML code like crazy and create an animated, media heavy environment, you could plug in movies and videos and songs...well pretty much anything you wanted -- or just leave it nice and plain for your friends with slow 'puters. Again, whatever you wanted.

Now I know I'm not particularly tech savvy but I see none of this on Facebook. It kind of just looks like I filled out a dating website profile and now I feel a tad foolish and bit dirty for jumping onto this particular bandwagon. It looks like the kind of social website that would've been created ten years before the advent of MySpace and most certainly not the next step. Can somebody explain to me why anybody would use this site over anything else? I just don't get it.

So there my Facebook sits, just kinda blah and empty. I added a couple of TV shows just to see something there and I guess I could post some pics of paintings I like or some such thing but honestly...what the hell?! But who knows, perhaps something unforeseen will result in this seemingly boring and incredibly underwhelming act. I suppose I shouldn't become too jaded about the small things in my life.

Because you run the risk of making events that are actually amazing and shocking seem mundane and then nothing seems exciting anymore.

With all the Sturm Und Drang swirling about the internet involving the Watchmen movie I decided to take a different approach and completely steal something I found rather amusing. It's from the only blog I read on the internet called Chris's Invincible Blog written by the great Chris Sims.

Also I'm rather busy at work with inventory this weekend and I'm a bit under the weather with a chest cold and I tore my left eye so I'm still a tad double-visioned and the meds I'm taking make me kind of tired and woozy and rather hard to focus at times and...well gosh I'm not sure how many excuses I need not to write a Watchmen review at the moment. Until then...enjoy!

There I sat a mighty lump on my broken couch/bed. Tired as all hell from 7 days in a row of work and wanting to play some games and enjoy the night but just completely unable...or pehaps unwilling, to leap into anything heavier than a light Animal Crossing session.

Somehow I managed to make it until the wee Pacific Time Zone hours of 4am (give or take) and I was suddenly hit with a voice party request. After some initial 360 Elite headphone issues which rendered the voice of my unknown companion something akin to an alien attempting to declare war, I discovered my new XBL friend wanted to do a little DOA4 boosting and chat a bit.

After that was all done for the "night" I initially was amazed that there had been no lag despite the fact that my friend was located in Great Britain. Determined to at last go to bed I suddenly discovered that after many days of little to no activity the folks at XBL had uploaded quite an array of demos! Reeling with the fantastic knowledge of not having to go anywhere for the next two days I jumped right into them.

Here are my rough and poorly written impressions.

Wanted - Weapons of Fate - The game takes off directly where the movie left off as you play Wesley Griffin, master assassin and something of a one man army. The game is a 3rd person shooter which utilzes an engine similar to the cover and shoot method found in Gears of War -- but a bit faster thank goodness.

The demo was okay and I found it easy to navigate and shoot my opponents down like the dogs that I have to presume that they are in order to justify my love for violence. I found it odd that for a film that pushed the concept that the whole "bending the bullet" skill was the key point of the movie it isn't even mentioned in the demo as a skill. I figured out where it was but I didn't find too many places that it would be any more effective then to just gun or stab them down. I had mixed results as far as effectiveness goes as well but that may just be a case of not being overly familar with how to best utilize the skill.

Acceptable shooter but somewhat plain and the demo didn't bring much excitement. It basically cried "Look at me! I totally work okay!".

WWE - Legends of Wrestlemania - I have to admit that I was initially excited at the idea of playing around with Andre the Giant so I was really looking forward to this demo. There are two basic modes included -- exhibition mode with Andre and Hulk, and a Wrestlemania event with The Rock and Austin.

In the exhibition mode you are pretty much left to do whatever you want with no agenda. I played with a manager and without and I was mightily amused to see my manager come up and distract my opponent so that I had a free opening. I wasn't initially happy with the engine as the slightest hit seems to completey stun your character and one of the things I can't stand is losing control of my character. I learned to be careful however and pretty soon I was mauling the Hulkster like there was no tomorrow.

The engine left me fairly unhappy. It's a bare bones affair and it seemed like a huge step back as far as technical wrestling is concerned. There are just a couple of canned ground grapples and ground strikes when your opponent is down and this disappointed me greatly as I am a big fan of submission wrestling.

The reversal system is somewhat easy to perfom as it is just initialized by a series of quick-time event button pushes, but I was confused by it as it seemed to randomly come up and somewhat beyond your control. Perhaps you can increase the movesets and ability to reverse more often but from what this demo offers that wasn't clear and I was somewhat let down.

The Wrestlemania matches have an agenda in that you gain extra points for reenacting key moments with those wrestlers. Those goals were kind of fun and not too hard to pull off but the overall ease of doing so made the goals not too challenging.

There might be fun to be had but to me it looks like a pretty bare bones affair.

Wheelman - I really didn't have much hope for this demo. It's from some of the team that brought us the Driver series which is a series I really, really dislike. In this game Vin Diesel replaces "driver" and his job is to infiltrate the mob in Barcelona and help bring them down.

Good lord the key story vehicle combat is really bloody good fun! You can slam cars chasing you with a simple flick of the right analog stick and if you time it right they wreck with quite a satisfying crash. The basic controls of the car are intuitive and easy to just pick up and gun your way into action. You can shoot your opponents as well as perform special vehicle attacks in which you spin your vehicle around in order to gun down you pursuers. Fun stuff indeed!

Then I hit the side parts of the game in the form of racing and chasing and...yeah, not so happy.

Your opponents in racing all take off like crazy leaving you to play the catch up game. The ambient traffic seems to clearly have it out for you and do whatever they can to attach themselves to your bumper. You opponents seem to move somewhat tron-like in the turns and the whole process just seemed to be a recipe for big frustration.

The chasing elements weren't too bad once I got used to jumping from car to car but again the ambient traffic is just a big, big pain. The cars you chase seem to turn better than they should and their ability to accelerate no matter how large the vehicle is was quite annoying.

The core game was fun but the side missions and racing left me scared and annoyed for a purchase.

Watchmen - The End is Nigh - It's a basic wandering old fashioned beat 'em up with some nice modern touches. You play as either Nite Owl or Rorschach and you pretty much have 30 mintues (in the free demo version) in which to run around and beat the hell out of a bunch or rioting prisoners.

The game starts off REALLY basic at first with very few moves other than light punch and heavy punch combos. You pick up icons that give you more moves though and before you know it you're grappling, evading and counter attacking your way through the unruly pack of thugs. As you get more abilities and get your opponents in various aspects of being stunned or knocked down/back, you are often give the opportunity to do some very brutal attacks with the simple push of a button which was quite satisfying.

Overall I had a great time playing it and I'll probably buy it. It's nothing amazing but it's a fun beat 'em up and I'm always a sucker for those. One annoying aspect however -- the game is bloody dark. Even on my 1080i TV I had a hard time seeing my characters in certain environments.

The Chronicles of Riddick - Assault on Dark Athena - Basically a rerelease of one of the best games on ye olde original XBox and one of those pesky games that couldn't be backwards programmed to work on the new system. A great 1st person stealth game I had forgotten how unforgiving it was and died quite a few times while fooling around with the demo.

If you like carefully stalking your opponents and tearing them a new one and don't mind Vin Diesel grumbling at you during the cut scenes then you should probably pick this up when it's finally released. It has an added campaign for those who played the hell out of it already so there's a good incentive to relive a great, great game.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think my cat and I are starting to hallucinate as we are rather overdue for a nice long sleep.

Yea verily my friends we gather once again to take notice on Daemon's most recent ability to acquire ethereal goals in pursuit of an empty dream. Aye, there is the occasional passerby that puts forth a tasty tidbit of apocryphal information from the Gods on high at Microsoft that perhaps someday, in some fashion, we will all be rewarded for our constant acquisition of these points.

Aye...someday mayhaps.

But the Gods are spiteful beings full of remorse and anger towards their followers and rarely will they allow the sunlight to truly shine upon those willing, but wholly undeserving, masses. And so we toil and struggle to make ourselves appear and feel that we are truly an accomplished gathering of humanity and attempt to keep going forward. Many games have helped me in my goal and here are a few of the most recent.

Fable 2 - I really wasn't sure what to expect from this game. I never got around to playing the old XBox iteration of this title but all the online reports I received from my friends sure made it seem like a good time. With that I jumped at the chance to literally dive into this game (no really, I actually jumped onto the box in my living room. Don't look at me like that!) and I had a blast for most of the way. I didn't really like having everything taken from me at one point but other than that it was pretty damn fun.

Hey guess what? I actually got all the achievements for this baby as well! 1100/1100 which was very sweet! Sure most of them weren't hard, but a few involved online antics which, if you note my star rating, is not something I do very often. A few also involved those damn gambling games and at one point I was fairly settled into the fact that I just wouldn't get those. But guess what again? I bore down and attacked the pub games and played those damn games and it turns out it wasn't really that hard! What a big silly goof I had been for avoiding them like the plague! Silly Daemons!

The last piece of the puzzle was finished by a postively lovely gentleman floating around the Fable 2 board whose name I wish I could recall in order to thank him once again. He allowed me to mooch the thrice-damned doll collector achievement off of him and I couldn't be more happier for hitting that goal. He even danced a little bit with me to get me the last co-op achievement and that was that. Did I mention that the online community around Fable 2 is really a nice bunch of folks?

Afro Samurai - I was really looking forward to this game as I'm always happiest when I'm wailing away with a nice run around beat-em-up game. The aesthetic is there, the music is unbelieveably great, and the fighting engine is rather bloody and fun. The problem is the boss tactics are very boring and/or random so you don't feel particularly skilled when taking them down, and the little bits of platforming are painfully bad.

Those facts coupled with my atypical literal diving technique (there I go again) of gaming made Daemon a very angry boy on his first playthrough of the game as my friend can well attest to. But now that I've looked into matters and found out that I wasn't alone in my anger (as well as a few tips that proved useful) have now helped me to calm down and enjoy all the slice n' dice action attributed properly to the various types of cannon fodder available in the game and just have fun. I still haven't got all the achievements but I've gotten quite a few and I was just about to finish them up when...

F.E.A.R. 2 - Project Origin - Yet another game in which I never played the original game! This game came out of nowhere on the XBL and I had such a blast playing the demo I quite literally ran out (well...I biked out to be specific and actually literal) of the house...er, tiny studio apartment, and reserved it right away!

Currently I'm about halfway through the game and I'm really enjoying it. I really like the mix of traditional 1st person OPS firefights mixed with really messed up freaky scary horror stuff hitting you suddenly like a cannon messing with your ability to control your surroundings and keep your zone comfortable...but in a good way if that makes any sense.

From what I've seen I guess the first game had mainly nigh impossible achievements so, if that's true, it's nice to see a large assortment of more obtainable goals. There are a decent amount of online dreary deathmatch achievements though so I suppose I'll never get those.

Wall-E - Confession time. I get a lot of these license games for free as I know folks who actually put a lot of these games together. Some I do buy as I'm a rather impatient type of person and I actually enjoy playing silly license titles, but many I receive as gifts. I received this game as just such a gift and as it was handed to me the person winced just a bit and noted "It...it's not very good.". Undaunted by this comment I sallied forth...and put it on my wall of games neatly in the "W" section.

What?! I just got Saints Row 2 on the same day and do you know how awesome that game is?! Do you!? It's like somebody took all the story out of Grand Theft Auto IV and replaced it all with insane fun!

Some time later I finally got around to watching the Wall-E movie and lordy I was surprised as to how much I enjoyed it. This may sound surprising to some of you that don't know my movie tastes but other than The Incredibles I don't really like most Pixar films. To me they are just characters on a constant fetch quests running back and forth on the screen yet accomplishing very little in terms of story or character development. So delighted was I by Wall-E however, that I decided to sally forth (for realsies this time no foolies) and play the damn game.

*wait for it*

Hey! I actually liked the game! What the...hell? I guess my friend was just pulling a trademarked Daemon attitude and just demonstrated some grade-a lack of satisfaction with everything they've accomplished. Well life is pretty hard for developers of official license products -- unreal deadlines, sudden last minute changes demanded by the licensee, little room for improvisation and creativity; quite difficult conditions to work under indeed. I assume that he just wished they had more time to fix things up to their satisfaction before release time.

Regardless, I had fun playing it. The only problems I had were in the last level in which there were some odd little platform puzzles involving a auto-magnetic strip whose physics engined didn't always work correctly and occasionally you would be hurled to your doom. Now if you're just playing it for the heck of it then you wouldn't have a problem as you would just respawn very close to your area of demise. But there's an achievement for not getting killed for every level so it made some areas very...tense to say the least. But overall I had fun reliving parts of the movie and listening to those funny voices once again.

Hey...it made me smile.

EVVVVVVEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! :)

As a few of ye out there in yespotland might have noticed I was not around so much during the latter half of 2008. I had a computer meltdown right as I was headed into an unfortunate and rather problematic time in my life. It had been a few years since I'd bought a new computer so normally I would just thin down some spending and pick one up but unfortunately my aforementioned times were a bit tougher than normal and I had larger bills to pay for what I perceived as more important things. I have a rather bad connection at work but I'm rarely at my desk and it's a bit of a problem if anybody else wants to use it at the same time (I know...such a sad work).

Then suddenly it dawned on me that my sad and rarely used Wii console has a web browser on it! Sure it's just awful and slow and glitchy and the full screen doesn't fit and it's rather ugly and...did I mention it's slow? But regardless of all these faults it did allow me to stop by from time to time and say hello to a few people here and there albeit for short periods of time and with somewhat tersely written text as the keyboard I has likes to cut out now and again -- but still I existed!!! Finally at long last my Wii console proved useful for something other than terrorizing my cat (a story for another time).

Of course in November I picked up Animal Crossing and now it gets a daily workout but still up until the computer meltdown I pretty much never touched it. Such a strange little sad system for my household but I got it as a gift so I don't feel too silly for having the old waggle machine laying about my apartment.

But then Xmas made its annual appearance and lucky for me it coincided with the offices at THQ busily getting rid of their computers to get all nice shiny new ones replete with all those extra cool shiny new things that those crazy tech kids like to talk about excitedly amongst themselves. A very good friend of mine is a semi-muckity muck over there and so for a very nominal fee I once again was ready and raring to go on the internet with a used and plaing looking, but very happy, computer all prepped for civil duty outside of the gaming industry!

Since it's not a computer meant for public use I keep finding little things that should be in there that just aren't and, with the mighty help of my cat Shoes, we are slowly getting it into a nice state of normalcy; normalcy for me that is. Sorry if it seemed like I was just ignoring people or not commenting in your blogs and all those things but it was very difficult to load up media heavy things like blogs on my little Wii machine and it's been a slow process in getting my 'puter all up and running. I'm not much of a computer guy but I'm fairly decent at poking and poking and polking until I get it working.

That's my long-winded excuse anyways. So hello again people!

Curses, be they literal or figurative, are rather a double-edged sword type of affair. Although they may damn you beyond your ability to reason and/or make you something of a social pariah, quite often they can be the impetus behind long periods of self-reflection as you are forced to reassess what it is that makes you truly you.

Now that you've been forced into a situation that you would have never imagined being in, what are you going to do now? Are you going to fold and just curl up and wait to die? Are you going to desperately fight your plight and attempt to reclaim all that you feel is rightfully yours? Or perhaps you have a deep-seeded cauldron of hatred bubbling oh so gleefully to full boil deep down in your gutty works and now is the right time to make them pay -- THEY WILL ALL PAY!!!

Take my recent zombification at the hands of Samwel X....

Elizabeth was a pretty girl but not drop dead gorgeous by any means. But what she did have was a whip-smart intelligence and a keen sense of aesthetics so strong and to the point that she would argue with the Gods themselves over the improper use of shadows in whatever murky forest they would contruct in order to insnare some hapless travellers. No I don't know why the Gods continue to do such things especially in lands that I rule over. But I do think that they bring a certain flavor to the place and so they play their little games and fight over this and that -- I try not to get involved in all honesty.

Elizabeth was a rather adventurous woman but she didn't quite have the strength that she desired to strike out on her own and stake her claim in the world. Sure it was a world that marched to my tune and she had my protection (for the moment) but she was strong-willed and had things to prove and goals to accomplish. Art and mind were not enough to sate her, she needed physical proof of the veracity of her beliefs!

That's when she met the sword. Or did the sword meet up with her? I'm not sure as I wasn't there and omniscience is a slippery slope so I haven't dug in deep but regardless the two did meet. Then the screaming started. Unfortunately for the screaming masses I had hunkered down in my abode for an all night marathon of Shaw Bros. films (honestly you people should seriously watch "Martial Club") and with all that constant praying, screaming, and cursing that regularly gets hurled my direction on a regular basis I have a tendency to just tune them all out for long periods of time -- I got stuff to do folks!

The next day when I finally became tad more of a receptive deity I realized that it had suddenly gotten very, very, quiet. I was so wrapped up in creating my own false sense of silence on a regular basis as a matter of course that it never dawned on me that the voices might all one day be silenced. Such a strange awful silence it was that fell upon my once mighty land. The whole place was dead, every plant was burnt, every building was rubble, everything that was once alive was now very still and quite lifeless. Well...there was still Elizabeth.

It was one of those amusing little soul sucking swords that you often read about in dreary fantasy pulp novels in which everyone is all oh so sad and depressed all the time over the power they need but are hesistant to use. Elizabeth and the sword had become hopelessly merged and she had gone quite insane as you can imagine. It's not often that people become hosts of for an untold amount of screaming corpses formerly known as the population of a world. How she ever got so much killing done in such a small space of time I'll never know.

Oddly enough the whole scene was rather...beautiful, albeit in a rather horrific fashion. It was like looking at an unending Witkin photograph in which you are horrified by what you see but you can't help but appreciate the quite daring sense of superior composition that went into the effort. Ever the artistic master eh Elizabeth? Oh! And what she did to the Gods was just something not fit for print but let me tell you that I don't think I've laughed that long in a good long while!

But in the end I couldn't resolve myself to allow Elizabeth to run amuck and possibly go hunting for the Old Ones who we know not to speak of too often lest we become a source of attention for them. So in the end it was indeed I who turned the sword upon its master and watched as the two died screaming in unison. It was strange...although she was fighting me all the way, Elizabeth seemed rather relieved and happy as I watched her eyes glass over and dim. Perhaps she somehow sense my unease with the land as it was and in the end the gift she gave me was rather unique to say the least; and the sword looks rather spiffy over my mantle!

Oh yes! My zombification!

So I awoke to discover the infection had been cast my way and although I do hold sway over the undead and the illness does not adversely affect me, it did serve to attract a rather large crowd of zombies mucking about my dwelling. I quickly put them to work cleaning up the place as bachelors aren't always at their best when it comes to keeping a dwelling clean. Then suddenly there she was! Elizabeth was quietly sitting in the chair near my couch. Saying nothing, refusing any commands or inquiries, she just sat there reading through some of my more recently acquired Gustave Moreau books.

Eventually I just settled in and starting some late night gaming session in which I engaged in my usual practice of screaming at whatever console my game was attibuted to and promising a painful series of blows to the programmer that created it...AND ITS CHEATING CHEATING WAYS!!!..and I forgot about the mass of undead. Occasionally a particularly violent outbreak on my part would result in Elizabeth slightly tilting her head my way and smiling and I could imagine the unspoken tsk tsking being aimed my direction. It was like old times and soon my exhaustion got the best of me and I fell asleep with my head in Elizabeth's lap.

Today is a new day however and all the undead are gone. I have decided to infect Telvisnostic, ShuLordLiuPei, Dhyce, DJ Pulserfan and Mattmaul although in this case you're not so much infected with the zombie affliction as you have quite a large amount of undead assemblage in which to utilize as you see fit. Have fun!

Also...has anybody seen that soul sucking sword? I swear I left it above the fireplace but I'll be damned if I can find it anywhere. Oh well. What's the worse that could happen?

There he sat. Not the usually type of sitting mind you, but a very particular one in which the right leg is bent "just so" leaving said sitter free from the possibility of sudden life-affirming jolts of pain ripping through his knee. He chose this option from a short list of "natural" and his own trademarked "like that" position. Although "like that" could indeed be deemed to possess some therapeutic value, the very fact that it could possibly improve his life despite the possibility of pain was enough to make him take the lazy route on this cold and dreary night -- "like that" was right out. As for "natural"...well let's just say that his painful shortcomings are such that he felt obliged to embrace his false air of iconoclasm in order to dismiss any possibility of commonality being introduced into his daily actions.

"La la la la la la!" spake the Daemon beastie. "There's no way I could possibly lose my job!" he spoke in a tone so insincere that no sane person over 10 years of age would believe. "La la la la la la la!" he repeated in a rhythmic outburst of giddy confusion. "Gosh but I do so love to bike for an hour and half everyday to work and back!" he added doubling-up his lies against reality and further compacting his personal universe of disdain and hate. "La la la la la!" he went on adding all of his life's woes real and imaginary until they soon resembled a rather oddly shaped origami chicken.

But the origami pity party chicken, multi-faceted though it was, did not have nearly enough surface material too encompass the sheer volume of self-loathing and despair unleashed this particular night. On and on the rant went and soon the sad paper avian ended up twisted and confused in an Escher-like room full of lies and bluster with no ending and no beginning until it was hopelessly lost yet interconnected to the make shift life frame in an embarassing Borg-like fashion.

The only creature witness to this entirely unprofessional outburst was the cat named Shoes. Far from being afraid of this localized vocal antic, Shoes was becoming increasingly sure that these babbling words were simply a prelude to the act of his being chased around the apartment and then perhaps a spot of tuna -- such is the ego-riddled world of the cat. But just as the moment arrived when he was sure his keeper would lunge and strike, the babbling halted as the mail arrived heralding some well-timed movie news. No tuna would be had this day.

Times have been a little tough for arguably the most famous man in all of Asia. Sure he's still making money but he's just not doing that well in his homeland and it has begun to irk him somewhat. Reluctantly Jackie appears to be accepting the fact that he's not quite limber enough to play the perpetually child-like kung-fu clown and he has begun to turn to more serious fare.

This time out Jackie is teaming up with veteran director Derek Yee and he is taking on a completely serious dramatic role well away from any martial arts choreography. I quite enjoyed the more serious tone of Jackie's New Police Story and I really liked the short, but well done, appearance he put in as the doomed general Meng Yi in the somewhat forgettable The Myth so I have some hope that this will turn out well. If Jackie can stifle his tendency to revert to his silent film cliched type of overacting then it might turn out rather interesting in Yee's hands.

Official English Site

Hey kids! It's the fun loving and hardest working director in all of Japan Takashi Miike! Just what does he do when he's not thrusting lactating villians at us and constantly redefining just what is an acceptable way in which to end a movie? Why...he makes a kid's movie that's what!

Enter the childhood favorite anime series Yatterman! Hooray! Cue the confusion amongst casual fans and the years worth of smug satisfaction from the Japanophiles out there! Not that this is totally without precendence of course as any Miike fan will be keenly aware of his kids movie The Great Yokai War. Considering how many films Miike churns out I suppose it's almost surprising that he hasn't got around to making another one before this but here it is in all it's technicolor color!

Official Site (Japanese - the trailer is the fourth button over from the left).

Despite it being a kiddie flick I'll probably still give it a spin as...well it is Miike and you never know what to expect. Still though, it be nice if they had some kind of nudge-nudge type of humor (visual or otherwise) ensconced within all the bright color madness and posing. Something that would probably fly over the heads of the younger kids....

Why hello there miss?...Kyoko Fukada? You say you helped to design the costume yourself? Why aren't you just the most helpful movie super villian ever! This of course in no way will influence my decision to watch this film.:|

Last up is an animated CG movie from Thailand called Nek from the good folks that brought you the martial arts brawler Ong Bak. Yes you read that right.

The Story

"Ghost and spirits surround us all, invisible most of the time. Some good ghosts help us, some evil ghosts tease us, but generally the worlds of humans and ghosts leave each other alone.

Until one day when Tee, a young human boy, suddenly gets targeted by an evil force because he is the key to a ceremony to open a large portal. This will allow a large army of evil spirits to enter the human world and reign supreme for all eternity. Bwoohahaha!

Thankfully, the boy is guarded by a group of good spirits led by the legendary and powerful Nak. When Tee still gets kidnapped, his little sister Kaem travels with Nak to the heart of the evil ghost empire to retrieve him in a desperate attempt to save the world."

This film is an extensive who's who of asian ghosts and spooks with all sorts of in-jokes and appearances made with famous ghosts from all over. But the real fun starts when the evil ghosts start to attack our heroic ensemble of benevolent spirits. The main villian in this film is none other than that damned long black-haired girl from the orginal Ring movie! Apparently, in the animated film there is a screening of the Ring movie and the evil Sadako crawls off of the movie theatre screen and begins a reign of terror upon mankind.:o

The word on the street is that it all comes together rather well and is very enjoyable. Not the highest production film in the world, but it's Thailand's first big entry into the animated CG market so here's hoping it does well enough to get the ball rolling on future productions.

Did I mention that they're in the middle of production on a new animated CG Astroboy movie? Ahhh! You already knew that didn't you? Oh well.

La la la la la la! I'm so bloody happy!

*brush brush brush brush brush*

!

Wuh duh heb ar u...

*spits*

What the heck are you doing here? Me? Well yes I was thinking of settling down for the night but I'll probably get through a couple of movies before I actually get to sleep. What? Well yes most people know that I have a fairly heavy home movie watching shed-yule. Other than constantly watching the TCM channel I'm really looking forward to Tom Tykwer's International and Henrik Ruben Genz's Terribly Happy as well as the upcoming DVD releases by the great French director Abel Gance and...what? Oh something different? Well there are some a handful of not that well known films coming out sometime in the future that fit somewhat squarely in the horror and trash cinema circle. Hmmm...squarely in the circle eh? I'll have to remember that.

First up is Quarantine and it might actually be well known amongst a handful of horror films fans out there. It's actually a remake of a film from Spain entitled simply [REC]. While it's generally not in my nature to recommend a remake, I'm hoping that this turns out well enough that [REC] might find a larger audience -- the way that the Japanese version of Ring did before that whole aspect of horror got out of control. The film is shot in cinema verite fashion similar to Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project.

The Plot - "Television reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman (Steve Harris) are assigned to spend the night shift with a Los Angeles Fire Station. After a routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment building, they find police officers already on the scene in response to blood curdling screams coming from one of the apartment units. They soon learn that a woman living in the building has been infected by something unknown. After a few of the residents are viciously attacked, they try to escape with the news crew in tow, only to find that the CDC has quarantined the building. Phones, internet, televisions and cell phone access have been cut-off, and officials are not relaying information to those locked inside. When the quarantine is finally lifted, the only evidence of what took place is the news crews videotape."

Trailer

Next up is Beyond the Grave from Brazilian film maker Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro. I haven't seen anything by this director before but he cites Jodorowsky and Sergio Leone as his big influences so that sounds promising. The effects crew is the same that worked on the legendary Coffin Joe pictures so that's another decent sign that this could be...interesting.

The Plot - A detective has been tracking a notorious serial killer for untold years. As he slowly gathers more and more clues he begins to suspect that this killer may be something...more. Something more evil. Perhaps something more than merely, human.

Although this doesn't inherently sound like the most original of plots did I neglect to mention that this is all going on as the world decends into hell falling victim to an ongoing zombie apocalypse? No? Interested now perhaps?

Trailer

From the far flung mystical world of er...Sweden comes a very interesting take on the coming of age story. The movie is Let The Right One In and yes it is indeed named after a Morrissey song if you were wondering. You weren't? Ah well. This film has been making quite a stir lately in the various film festivals held around the world and looks to be truly touching in a slightly unusual fashion.

The Plot - "Twelve-year-old Oskar lives in a drab village outside Stockholm, where by day he's the victim of relentless bullying, and by night he dreams of revenge. Slipping out of sight of his single mother, Oskar fills a notebook with news on the gruesome killings that have set neighborhood nerves on edge-someone is tying people up, breaking their necks, and draining their blood-and rehearses knife moves in the icy courtyard of his apartment complex. One night, an apparition appears on the decaying jungle gym behind him: Eli, the new girl next door. The two misfits befriend each other, Eli coaching Oskar in bravery, Oskar awakening Eli's hunger for love. But Eli, alas, needs something more-blood."

You see, Eli is a vampire. She tries to warn Oskar away knowing it's a dangerous situation but somehow they end up forming a tight bond despite her reservations.

Trailer

Now we turn to the seedier side of cinema and look at a couple trash cinema interests of mine.

Ah yes a movie called ***** Slap with a trio of sexy women brandishing weaponry really sounds like a night of true cinema magic doesn't it? There's tons of movies like this aren't there? You've seen one you've probably seen them all. Why does this one rate any different than the others? Well first of all this film is basically an homage to the legendary Faster ******** Kill! Kill! movie by Russ Meyer. The funny part is that Tarantino is actually doing a remake of that film but these guys beat him out of the gate by at least a year or more. Who are these people?

Well if you look past the main trio of characters you might notice a few recognizable names, Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor & Michael Hurst being the standouts. Yes indeed, the team that brought you Xena - Princess Warrior and The Legendary Tales of Hercules are the force behind this film! That's either a big drawing point for you or an equally effective repellent, but to me at least it kind of made me sit up and take notice as I rather enjoyed the tongue and cheek nature of both TV series.

The Plot - ***** Slap" follows three bad girls as they arrive at a remote desert hideaway to extort massive booty from a ruthless underworld kingpin. Things quickly spin out of control as allegiances change, truths are revealed, other criminals arrive for the score, the fate of the world hangs in the balance and they are forced to confront a villain much worse than they ever expected… themselves. It's the ultimate morality tale as, one by one, they realize the whole "she-bang" was a set-up and one of the film's characters may not even be human…

Trailer

Lastly we have the movie Pig Hunt. This film fully embraces its trash cinema leanings and goes after it will an amazing amount of gusto. Definitely not one for the film snobs but it could be one hell of a lot of fun if all the crazy elements jam-packed into this film come together in some kind of darkly cohesive manner.

The Plot - "When John takes his San Francisco friends to his deceased uncle's remote ranch to hunt wild pigs, it seems like a typical guys weekend with guns - despite the presence of John's sexy girlfriend Brooks. But as John and his crew trek deeper into the forest, they begin tracking the awful truth about his uncle's demise and the legend of The Ripper -- a murderous three-thousand-pound black boar! Their pursuit leads them through fields of marijuana and into the muddy landscape of Big Wallow, involving high-powered weaponry, the violent and unpredictable Tibbs Brothers, massacred emus, a machete-toting Hippie Stranger, vengeful rednecks, and throat-slitting Cult Girls who grow dope by day and worship a Giant Killer Pig by night. By the time the pig hunt is done, no one is innocent - or unscathed."

Again...sounds fun but cult films are always walking that tightrope of just plain awful and bloody glorious fun. I guess I'll have to wait and see. I can't provide the trailer as it has all kinds of nudity in it which I believe violates that TOS dealie here. So I'll just provide a link to the official site and you can navigate your way towards the trailer and see if it looks like fun to you. It's on YouTube as well but you have to navigate around vids of actual pig hunts.

Official Site

Now...if you will excuse me I'm a tad undressed and I would like to get some film watching in. Good day to you sirs and madams and...others. >_>