The Geeky Guide to Nearly Everything

[Pink News] imMoral Protest Activities This Week

2009-11-22T12:08:00.000+08:00

In the continued efforts to pressure the Philippine COMELEC to change their ruling that Ang Ladlad is ineligible to run as a party list in the coming elections on the grounds that the group is "immoral" and is a "threat to the youth", there are a number of protest actions being planned as we fight for our right to representation.

The following message is making the rounds around the web and of course the Geeky Guide supports this movement and all that it stands for.

Stand up! Be recognized! Equal rights for all, people!

Dear Human Rights Defenders and Protectors a.k.a Friends,

The Motion for Reconsideration (MR) was filed today, Nov18 at the Comelec.
We will wait for the Comelec's decision to reconsider LADLAD's accreditation to run for party list in the 2010 election.

Comelec has the option to sit on this and let time pass until LADLAD, due to technicality, will not be able to register to run in the 2010 election because the Comelec has only a few days to finalize the list of party-list groups that would be included in the ballot.

WE NEED TO PRESSURE THE COMELEC TO COME UP WITH A DECISION.

JOIN US IN SAYING WE ARE NOT IMMORAL AND ARE NOT A THREAT TO THE YOUTH.

JOIN US FIGHT FOR OUR LGBT RIGHTS!

As Amnesty International would say,
ALL HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL!!

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1. JOIN THE PROTEST ACTION ON WED. NOV 25, 2009
Because of Manny Pacquiao's motorcade on Friday, Nov.20 around Manila, Ang LADLAD decided to move the rally to next week.

TENTATIVE DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 25
ASSEMBLY TIME: 9:30AM
VENUE: COMELEC

Your group can send your message of solidarity & support to LADLAD at their FB page or email at darnalipad_2000@yahoo.com, danton_ph@yahoo.com

Your group can bring placards, streamers, anything rainbow, be in costume on that protest.

imMORAL white shirts are being sold at P250. I’ve attached the design to this email. Contact Mj Yap thru FB or email her @ mjoyap@yahoo.com
- Send your name, contact info, number of orders, & t-shirt sizes. I think they have male & female sizes

2. LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN
The Internationall Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), together with Ang LADLAD will have a letter-writing campaign to pressure Comelec to come up with a decision the soonest time possible.

We will inform you once we have uploaded the letter at the www.iglhrc.org website. You can copy & paste the letter together with the email addresses included in the article and send to the Comelec Commissioners, Commission on Human Rights (CHR) who have been so supportive of LGBT rights especially Atty. De Lima.

3. REPOST THIS INFO

Please inform us of your intentions/interest for proper coordination with LADLAD

Again Thank You.

[Movies] Tootsie (1982)

2009-11-20T12:08:00.017+08:00

Whether we like it or not, there are certain stereotypes that we've all come to accept in terms of mainstream Hollywood cinema. We know exactly the kind of stupid things action heroes do time after time after time, we instinctively react to the incidental mood music in romantic pieces and so on and so forth.

At the same time, there are those somewhat negative stereotypes that have managed to survive over the years. Gay characters are meant to be flighty, loud and shallow. A woman's cup size is bound to draw more ticket sales than an actually compelling plot. Remakes are cheap, safe ways of making money in movies. Cross-dressing is just a device for comic relief.

But it wasn't always like this. There are those movies out there that try to challenge the norms and present alternate views, whether or not the film is meant to be a drama or a comedy. Just because we're laughing doesn't mean the movie makers don't have a point they want to convey.

One lazy afternoon, I finally managed to catch Tootsie on HBO after wanting to see the movie for years but never getting around to it for some reason. The movie is about a struggling actor named Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) who is very talented but not exactly easy to cast anymore. As much as his peers recognize his talent, they also know he's a bit of a pain to work with given his rather perfectionist work ethic.

So when an opening for a soap opera comes along, on a whim he decides to cross-dress as a woman to see if he stood a better chance of getting the part that way. Lo and behold, "Dorothy Michaels" (his female persona) actually wins the role and starts to gain a following among viewers. So he now has his new-found fame to juggle along with his growing romantic feelings for one of his co-stars (Jessica Lange) and how he tries to keep all this a secret for long.

Image via Wikipedia

Now take note of the year ladies and gentlemen - this actually pre-dates more popular cross-dressing comedies like Mrs. Doubtfire. But it's not really a laugh-your-insides-out kind of comedy. It has a comedic premise and a few humorous moments but overall it carries itself as well as any other more "serious" drama. The struggles of Michael Dorsey as an actor are all too real and his resorting to creating Dorothy Michaels is truly an act of desperation gone wrong.

I realized that I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected to. I mean come on, who would have thought that Dustin Hoffman could play such a believable woman without appearing too much like the over-the-top performance managed by Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire. This was truly him straight playing a woman as best as any man could and it just works. You feel his pain and you truly want to empathize with him but then there's also the outrage at his supposed success despite lying about his true identity.

There's a lot more to this movie that it originally seems to be and one reallyneeds to give it a full viewing to truly appreciate it. Plus Jessica Lange did win the Oscar for her performance here while the movie was nominated in many other categories at the same time.

Tootsie is a refreshing look at the actor's life and treats cross-dressing as a means to an end and not just a comedic gimmick. Given all this, Tootise deserves a full 4 acting clinics out of a possible 5.

[New Worlds Alliance] The Geeky Guide to TV

2009-11-19T12:08:00.001+08:00

When I decided to better organize the way I approach Geeky Guide entries, I picked a category of entries for each day of the week. Mondays were for new movies while Fridays were for old movies and so on.

Thursdays was meant to be my TV day and that hasn't quite gone well since I tend to favor reviewing entire seasons of shows and not just individual episodes. This means that unless I've actually finished a TV show's season, then I had little to write about. Thus Thursdays have been joined by theater reviews and video postings from YouTube to help supplement for content.

Now I've just gotten into an agreement with my fellow geeks at the New Worlds Alliance to become their associate editor for TV content. This means that I finally have more of a venue for TV news and individual episode discussions and I'll probably cross-post a few Geeky Guide entries to the site as well.

So yes, let's all welcome my new column, The Geeky Guide to TV. Yeah, It wasn't a very creative title, but it certainly maintains close ties with this blog.

If you're interested in contributing science fiction and fantasy TV news or content to the site, feel free to contact me directly and we'll work something out.

[Cameras] Mega Zoom Options

2009-11-18T20:08:00.003+08:00

Image via Wikipedia

I've always had a pretty liberal approach to cameras and photography. I hate twiddling with too many settings and I have no ambitions of lugging around variable lenses and the like. I feel you just need a decent camera with a good amount of optical zoom and good photo editing skills.

I used to have a Sony CyberShot DSC-H50, which was an awesome camera for both still photography and the occasional video. But this got stolen and I've been hurting ever since. Not I'm thinking of getting a camera again and here are the main options I'm considering. I could just get the H50 again, although it's still retailing for at least Php 23k. Yikes.

The next logical choice would be to get the upgraded version of the H50, the Sony CyberShot DSC-HX1. It's another great camera with new options like panoramic shots and now a full 20x optical zoom. However it's retailing for up to Php 38k, which is definitely beyond my budget, even though I'm planning to pay for it on installment using my credit card.

So that got me thinking about scaling things down a bit and just going for a more compact mega zoom camera since (1) I'm just after increased optical zoom for close-up / macro shots and (2) both the H50 and the HX1 are pretty bulky cameras and I do appreciate a more compact option.

Now there's the Sony CyberShot DSC-H20, which is a more compact mega zoom with 10x optical zoom and HD video capability. It's still pretty costly when purchased at retail prices. It has gotten pretty good reviews though except for its rather narrow lens, which makes wider shots or photos involving larger groups more challenging. It's currently retailing for Php 25k, which is actually more than what the H50 is going for, which certainly gives me pause.

Now the last option that I came across was the Panasonic Lumix ZS3. My former boyfriend had gotten himself the upper range Lumix and I certainly appreciated the workmanship and features, so I feel comfy exploring this line. The ZS3 is being positioned as a hybrid camera - both still photography and HD video, and it seems it does both decently well. It has little in the way of manual controls (which I stated I wasn't interested in) but it does have 12x optical zoom (better than the H20) and the reviews indicate the preset modes work rather well. I'm not sure how much this retails for in terms of credit card installment options, but I've seen online offers for as low as Php 18k, which isn't bad at all.

So what do you think? Am I thinking along the right lines by looking for the Lumix camera? Do you still think I should stick to the Sony options? Are you a Canon / Nikon fan boy who wants to convince me they have a bridge camera that fulfills my camera specifications? Feel free to leave your questions (and perhaps offers?) in the comments!

[NaNoWriMo] Week 3 Update

2009-11-17T20:08:00.001+08:00

Good grief, we're past the half way mark and it's already the start of the third week for NaNoWriMo. Just today I officially crept over the half way mark in terms of my word count with 26,726 words despite things like Facebook, geeky network TV, a new writing gig at the New Worlds Alliance website and of course real life concerns like work and enjoying time with my partner. Oh yes, so many things seem to want to stand in the way of my NaNoWriMo efforts to no avail - I shall keep writing!

My science fiction story is coming along decently enough. I know it's not exactly going to be the "next big thing" or anything like that. It's just a novel that will have at least 50,000 words but more importantly it will be my silly science fiction novel. So there!

As always, you can read the continued updates to my story at my Google Site dedicated to more creative efforts - The Gossamer Tower

Enough of this - back to writing!

[Movies] Astro Boy (2009)

2009-11-16T12:08:00.023+08:00

There are those elements of your childhood that you'll always remember. There are those toys that you'll always look for in bargain bins or the TV shows that you enjoyed. One of the more major parts of my childhood are all the cartoons that I used to watch, and believe me there were a lot of them.

In recent years, it seems to have become hip and highly marketable for movie studios, TV networks and even comic book companies to revisit the cartoons of our youth and update them for modern times in order to tap into that fan base with hopefully lucrative results. This has resulted in a few campily fun products but more often than not we end up with some pretty lousy versions of classic cartoons.

Naturally such translations tend to be significantly controversial amongst the fans and I'm doing my best to remain as neutral as possible in the crafting of this review.

Yeah, good luck to me and all that.

Image via Wikipedia

Astro Boy is a CGI-animated update of the classic anime / manga series of the same name (or 鉄腕アトム in Japan). It remained faithful to many elements of the original series but naturally took some liberties with the tale for...I guess we'll just call them "Hollywood" reasons.

In the movie, the world is divided between Metro City and the surface world. Metro City is all about high technology and it floats above the world. The surface is essentially Metro City's dumping group and is littered with tons upon tons of robot debris. Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) and Dr. Elefun (Bill Nighy) of the Ministry of Science for Metro City have discovered two amazing power sources - a blue core and a red core with correspond to positive and negative energy types. In a demonstration of the power of the red core, Tenma's son Toby (Freddie Highmore) is accidentally killed and this drives him to create a robot replacement for his son. He downloads Toby's memories into the robot and powers it with the blue core in the hopes of replacing his lost son. At the same time, President Stone (Donald Sutherland) does everything in his power to recover the blue core once he discovers that Tenma has stolen it.

Now for the most part, the movie makers did a decent job of capturing certain key elements of the original Astro Boy. Flies with jets in his feet - check. Has cannons for arms - check. Can shoot light beams from his eyes like flashlights - check. Guns in butt - check. However it also skipped out on a lot of other key element like fighting pretty much in skivvies, or the presence of a robotic sister created by Dr. Elefun. But that only matters to fan, so let's move on.

The story was just...decent. I felt it was a bit sloppy in some points and there was definitely some shoddy plot development all around. Things get even worse once he gets to the surface and meets all the kooky people around there. Plus the whole President Stone as the antagonist was just a really weak plot piece that was pretty much on par with how they characterized Obadiah Stone in the Iron Man movie. Just some shallow, single-minded brute looking for a bigger gun.

Animation was pretty nice, that much I have to admit. It was made by the same studio that did the TMNT movies and it certainly shows that they're managing pretty well in terms of how they're refining their art style. I like how they present the whole cell animation made into CGI, and quite well too.

If you were a fan of the original series, you're going to enjoy some parts but you'll definitely be disappointed over all. If had no idea what Astro Boy was before, then you'll just be okay with it but it's nothing amazing or signficant.

Astro Boy gets 2.5 cute little trash can robot dogs out of 5.

[Pink News] Ang Ladlad Rejected By The COMELEC...Again

2009-11-15T20:08:00.004+08:00

Unless you're a Filipino queer hiding under a rock, you should know by now that the COMELEC has rejected Ang Ladlad's second party list bid for the second time. Back in March 2007, the COMELEC rejected Ang Ladlad's application as a party list on the grounds that it could not prove that its membership was national in scope. Now they've totally changed their tune for the worst.

For those not so familiar with the group, Ang Ladlad is a Filipino political party devoted to fighting for the rights of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) by promoting a thrust for equal human rights for all. They've been active since 2003 and have been trying to get into Congress as a party list group starting with the 2007 elections and were hoping to get in time for the 2010 elections.

However the COMELEC decided to cite passages from both the Catholic Bible and the Muslim in their resolution that ultimately denied Ang Ladlad primarily on grounds of morality. To rub salt in words as a gay community, they added the statement that they were not actually condemning homosexuals, however said that "We cannot compromise the well-being of the greater number of our people, especially the youth..."

Seriously? Morality?

It's ironic that they use this as a basis when we continue to have the legal option for the death penalty, which is essentially killing people. That doesn't sound very aligned with the Catholic faith. Oh, I know that's an extreme example, so what about the fact that we maintain armed forces and policemen can use lethal force when they need to? Isn't lethal force never warranted in Christian teachings? Shouldn't we just turn the other cheek?

We have politicians who have admitted to having affairs, second families and children with their mistresses. Not very moral either, but they continue to remain eligible to run for office.

Image via Wikipedia

Morality is subjective when you really get down to it. And to try and cite religious basis for rejecting any political party is wrong and against the supposed provisions in our constitution for keeping Church and State separate. Then again, who are we kidding, right? The Church remains to be the only group with political influence that doesn't actually need to be elected into office. Politicians and presidents alike constantly need to seek the advice of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines in order to get their support on certain decisions and motions. On its own, the CBCP regularly makes statements on political actions whether to express their support or displeasure or even to pass judgment on any politician's rights to hold their positions and offices.

So yeah, we're not exactly good at the whole Church and State provision. But this particular action is just so blatant, so in-your-face that we can't just stand by and ignore what they've done. Ang Ladlad is but a single group trying to figure for gay rights and true equality in the Philippines. We haven't even been able to pass the Anti-Discrimination Bill in Congress, which also gets blocked on the grounds of "morality" or some other poppycock like that.

So yeah, I have to admit I'm feeling pretty bitter about all this.

Damn you COMELEC and Fuck You for good measure. You're not actually following the spirit of the laws that empower you and you're just showing how backwards and medieval you are in terms of your thinking. Now we need to take to the courts and even the streets if need be to continue our fight for our rights to representation and true equality in this country.

I'm sure there are going to be protest actions and forums planned in the days and weeks to come - stay tuned for updates around the web or even on this blog. I guess it's about time that the Geeky Guide better organize its own entries to ensure I devote time every week to discuss LGBT political issues, events and news and the best day for that is Sunday, the so-called Lord's Day. On this day everyone rests and on this day, we should remember that we are all equal in the eyes of whatever deity you choose to acknowledge or support.

[Movies] History of the World: Part I (1981)

2009-11-13T12:08:00.001+08:00

I love Mel Brooks movies.

For this, I only have my dearly departed father to blame. He got me into this particular brand of comedy, including the Airplane! movies and Leslie Nielsen's Naked Gun movies and this probably helped contribute to my overall geekiness over the years. Mel Brooks humor is rather unique in its dry humor, generous use of puns and sight gags and other elements of "lower" humor. However he's known for doing this in a dynamic and witty way that requires the viewer to exercise quick thinking when watching his movies. You need to keep up with the sheer volume of jokes in order to catch them all.

And yes, I do think geeks are those most likely to be smart enough to keep up with all the jokes, hehe.

History of the World: Part I remains to be one of my favorite Mel Brooks movies of all time. It's a pretty extensive parody of the epic films of the time involving a re-telling of history starting from early cave men all the way to the French revolution. For synopsis purposes, the main areas covered by the movie are the Dawn of Man, the Old Testament, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition and the French Revolution. Most were just short bits which were essentially a series of comedy sketches while the Roman Empire and the French Revolution were much lengthier portions.

Image via Wikipedia

Naturally Mel Brooks himself had a variety of roles in the movie ranging from Comicus the stand up philosopher, Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition and King Louis XVI during the French Revolution. Mel Brooks was never known for being an amazing actor or anything like that but he brings his own unique style of comedy to things, which only makes sense in his movies.

A lot of Brooks regulars were also in the film. I'll always give kudos to Madeline Kahn's performance as Empress Nympho, which remains one of the funniest roles in the movie. I mean seriously, how else could you turn the selection of men for the nightly orgy into a bouncy musical piece? Yes, yes, pun intended there as well.

There are a whole lot more notable comedians involved in the movie to varying degrees including Dom DeLuise as Emperor Caesar, Harvey Korman as Count de Monet and other cameos including Bea Arthuer, Gregory Hines and the best narrator of all, Orson Welles.

Sure, the story is stupid and the comedy is rather low brow but that's exactly what makes this movie great. It marked a completely different era of comedy that relied a lot more on the writing. These days you tend to get stuck with gross out, sexual comedies that rely on shock value and vulgarity to try and get a laugh. I miss movies like this.

Oh, and the movie has had its own significant impact on our social history along with key phrases like "It's good to be the king" creeping into conventional usage here and there.

History of the World: Part I is an epic comedy in itself and it's not easy to sum it up in a couple of paragraphs. It's just plain funny and worth a viewing no matter how old the movie may seem to be. This is comedic writing as it should always be - smart, witty and essentially timeless.

History of the World: Part I gets 5 mighty joints out of a possible 5.

[TV] The End of the Road for Dollhouse and Eastwick

2009-11-12T12:08:00.000+08:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Well, it's not like the news was a TOTAL surprise, now was it?

Despite the fact that the show managed to come back for a second season despite poor ratings, FOX has finally decided to cancel Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. This was pretty much a sure bet as soon as they announced that the show was going on a month-long break for November and would come back in December.

At the very least, it's been announced that the network will at least finish the show's current 13-episode run in order to give the series some closure. It doesn't mean it makes me understand or forgive FOX for killing yet another budding science fiction series (can anyone say Firefly?). Damn you FOX, damn you.

At the same time, ABC has just announced they're also killing the fantasy series, Eastwick, which was based on the books and the movie by the same name. I wasn't an actual fan of the show but a lot of my friends are and I'm man enough to admit I am more of a fan of Matt Dallas (hello Kyle XY!), especially when he's shirtless.

Sure, the series wasn't exactly the smartest show on air but it was a nice mash-up of fantasy and the kind of soap opera style dramas many viewers have also come to love. Again they expressed commitment has been to air the remaining episodes with the showing ending on #13, but how that will be executed remains to be seen.

Frankly, today has just been a disappointing day for the worlds of science fiction and fantasy with the death of these two shows. This whole debacle has me remembering the pain of losing Pushing Daisies around the same last year. This is the season when the networks evaluate their shows and decide who lives and who dies. Science fiction and fantasy shows hardly survive this period when you think about it (I say again, FIREFLY!)

Well, here's to hoping that new shows like FlashForward and V survive to manage a decent run at the very least. It's all we can hope for in these trying times.

[Google] AdWords, AdSense and Analytics

2009-11-11T12:08:00.007+08:00

Image by suzukik via Flickr

My more die hard Google loving readers will probably not need this entry. For the rest of you who get AdWords, AdSense and Analytics confused, this post may be for you. I'm not promising anything spectacular - I just wanted to take the time today to discuss what each one is.

Yeah, I guess I'm in a geeky training mode today. It is my job after all.

I will warn you - this entry is going to be boring, but highly informative. Honest.

AdWords - In a nutshell, AdWords is Google's advertising platform. It allows users to post ads (1) on Google Search in the Sponsored Results section, (2) on Google's various search partners like Ask.com or (3) on Google's Content network which includes thousands of websites and blogs including the New York Times.

It's really simple to use - the main way is to think of keywords your customers might use to find your website. They can be terms related to your services or perhaps even actual brands and product names that you sell. When customers search for these key words, ads are displayed beside the search results - these are the ads sold via AdWords.

There's a complex automated bidding system involved where based on how much you're offering to pay for a click on your ad (thus sending someone to your website), the quality of your ad and how much everyone else is bidding. You can control how much you're willing to spend on an ad and how much in total you're willing to spend per day. Thus you can totally control how much or how little you'll spend, which will ultimately have a direct relationship to how often your ad is displayed and how often it is clicked. Remember, you only pay for clicks and now for the hundreds or thousands of times your ad may display.

Who Needs AdWords? - People with business who want to try online advertising or are very interested increasing their internet traffic and are willing to pay for it.

AdSense - AdSense is the system that allows website owners to display Google Ads (yes, those sold through AdWords) on their websites for free. By displaying Google Ads on their website, they have the potential of earning money every time someone clicks on those ads (thus fulfilling the goal of the AdWords advertiser who paid for that click). These ads are related to the articles or websites they're displayed on since the system looks for keywords in nearby text in order to determine which ads are most likely to be relevant. Thus you don't get garish ads that are totally unrelated to your content.

Don't even think about trying to click your own ads in the hopes of making money - Google has entire development teams dedicated to studying human behavior on the internet in order to figure out which clicks are valid and which ones are invalid clicks done to increase AdSense revenue or to force an AdWords advertiser to spend more.

It's really easy to setup as long as you have code-level control over your website. For example, if you run your own Blogger-hosted blog, this provides options to insert the code to display the ads. If you just have a blog hosted on a site like Friendster or Facebook, you don't have the ability to end the code and thus you can't post AdSense ad modules.

Who Needs AdSense? - Website owners (including bloggers) or anyone who has content on the internet along with code-level controls for his or her website / blog who want to make money without having to go directly marketing ad spaces on their websites. You won't make a lot of money unless you get a sizable amount of site traffic and your users actually click on your ads, so don't think of this as a get rich quick scheme.

Analytics Google Analytics is a back-end product that allows a website owner or blogger to gather more information on the behavior of users on their website. This includes a lot of data ranging from just how many times your page was viewed in a given time period all the way to the internet speed, browser and operating system of your readers.

Analytics is free to use and all it takes is a piece of code inserted into the source code of the website in question. Once installed, it starts to track data and you just need to visit your Analytics account to get a variety of ready-made reports, charts and data tables or you can customize and create your own dashboards and reports.

Analytics has connections to both AdWords and AdSense. If you have either product and choose to link your Analytics account to them, you can get additional information related to that product. AdWords users with Analytics installed can track how effective their ad campaign is and how many users visit your site because of your ads and what they are actually doing once they land. AdSense users can track how many users clicked on their ads and gather related data on them in terms of their behavior on the site to some extent.

Who Needs Analytics? - Website owners and bloggers who have access to their site's source code who want to gather more information on their visitors. Think of this as a highly complicated hit counter, as was popular in the day, but it gathers a whole lot more information and is very simple to install. Thus it provides information that even a business could use all for free.

I hope this helps folks differentiate one from the other and know their value. If you want to know more information, post your questions in the comments and I just might get around to answering your question in the form of a standalone entry.

[NaNoWriMo] Week 2 Update

2009-11-10T20:08:00.000+08:00

The second week of my first-ever NaNoWriMo is well on it's way and I'm happy to report to you all that I'm happily at 14,001 words.

Sure, based on my daily quota I really should be at around 16,667 words, but that doesn't mean my current word count is not cause to celebrate. Admittedly, I never thought that I would have gotten this far a month ago and so I'm going to keep pushing on in the hopes that I get somewhere with my writing. It'll be even better if I actually get to finish the darned thing!

My apologies for the lack of Geeky content on the site - a "problem" that will probably get worse as we get closer to the end deadline of NaNoWriMo. In case you're bored or looking for something geeky to waste time on, then feel free to check out my novel-in-progress over at my geeky literary site, The Gossamer Tower. I have to admit I'm playing a bit of a long game in terms of revealing to the reader what exactly is going on, but hopefully smarter folks will get it sooner rather than later.

Oh well, it's back to writing for me!

[Movies] Inglourious Basterds (2009)

2009-11-09T12:08:00.001+08:00

Quentin Tarantino has become known for his violent yet quirky movies that are not quite like anything we've seen in a while and yet they're also very, very familiar. He has a passion for classic film genres and he celebrates a lot of the more eccentric movies as seen in the homages he manages to insert into his productions.

And thus he's developed quite the fan following and I myself had a passion for Tarantino films. If you can get past all the swearing and the cartoon violence and gore, you'll be just fine.

Not all of his movies become universally popular though, that much is to be expected of any filmmaker. Personally, I loved Grindhouse, but I know many people didn't appreciate it, as an example. Either way, he still makes some pretty entertaining movies and each of his releases deserves a viewing at least once in the movie's lifetime.

Inglourious Basterds is the latest Tarantino production that has been touted as a "spaghetti western but with World War II iconography" I can understand why Tarantino describes this movie that way.

The movie follows two main plots - the first being that of the Inglourious Basterds themselves and that of a young French Jewish survivor named Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent).

The Bastards are a unit of Jewish American soldiers inserted into France with the sole missions of engaging in guerilla warefare. Their personal mission is to kill as many Nazis as possible and in the end scalping them as the American Indians did in order to fulfill their quota to their commanding officer, 1st Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), also known as Aldo the Apache. They're a pretty diverse and savage crew with members like Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), also known as the Bear Jew and a German recruit Oberfeldwebel Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) who appears to be a psychopath of sorts who killed many SS Gestapo officers while serving as a soldier in the German Wehrmacht. The Bastards are eventually tasked to assist British Lieutentnat Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) in a mission to attack a premiere of a new German film that will be attended by many members of the German High Command.

Shosanna on the other hand is the sole survivor of the massacre of her family by Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) of the SS, who is known as the Jew Hunter because of his out-of-the box thinking in finding hidden Jews. He had let Shosanna escape the massacre as a child and now she's become the proprietress of a small French cinema. After young German hero turned actor Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl ) falls in love with her and manages to convince the movie's creator, the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), to host the premiere of their movie in her cinema, she realizes she now has the chance to revenge herself on the Germans by burning the theater down.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Thus the interesting development of the movie as these two separate groups plan out how to stage an attack on the same movie premiere does become rather interesting and the interplay of the various characters makes for some pretty entertaining storytelling. Tarantino chose to divide the film into chapters once more, which was similar to how he handled Kill Bill as well. It helps the audience understand each major plot on its own in terms of the character backgrounds until you get to the final act where all parties begin to converge.

The movie's writing was classic Tarantino with a generous amount of dialog, a decent amount of swearing and cursing and a lot of moments that almost seem absurd. There's a fair amount of violence too but it's not the same level of almost comic gore that we've seen in Kill Bill and Grindhouse. Despite the fact that the Basterds actually scalp people on-screen, it turns out to be not all that bad.

The movie somehow lacked that kind of strong-willed vibrancy that we've come to associate with Tarantino films, as if this one was a lot more mainstream that his previous releases. It didn't feel necessarily edgy or avant-garde in any particular way - it was just an entertaining movie to help pass the time, but not much beyond that.

I guess things just didn't quite tie up neatly for me towards the end of the movie. Normally the diverse elements come together and manage to be pretty surprising and interesting in Tarantino films and this tie around it just sort of finds a resolution and goes with it. And that's about it. I'm not saying it's a bad movie - it's pretty good in that respect. What I am saying is that it's just not quite Tarantino's best and perhaps this statement is colored by potentially high expectations when it comes to his movies.

Inglourious Basterds gets 4 glasses of milk out of 5.

[Movies] The Descent (2005)

2009-11-06T12:08:00.002+08:00

I'm really not good with horror movies.

It's not that I don't like them entirely or anything like that - I can definitely see the entertainment value in this particular movie genre. It's just that I know very well that I'm a fairly excitable person, one who's very prone to stress and I just don't handle getting scared very well. I mean seriously, I was really scared when I first played Phantasmagoria and Alone in the Dark back in the day, despite the cheesy graphics! I know, I need help.

But I have gotten better over the years and my ability to extrapolate potential plot twists, predict character behaviors and quickly identify movie patterns and cliches has definitely helped me. I don't think I'm perfect at it, but I've gotten good enough not to get too scared by such movies any more.

Now when you're the kind of person who can't handle horror well and you happen to fall in love with a guy who really loves the horror genre, you know you're in for some interesting movie choices here and there. One night, my partner made me watch this particular film and I was definitely terrified out of my wits!

Image via Wikipedia

The Descent is a 2005 British horror movie written and directed by Neil Marshall, who has recently been rumored to being asked to direct yet another Dune remake but has yet to agree. The movie tells the tale of a group of young, adventurous women who decide to help their grief-stricken friend Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) deal with the death of her husband and her daughter in a tragic car accident. Their plan is to go caving / spelunking (I did say they're adventurous) but after a cave-in seals them off from their entry point, Juno (Natalie Mendoza) reveals that she's led them to an unknown cave system and so they'll need to find their own way out.

This shouldn't have been too much of a problem for experience climbers and adventurers like themselves until they realize that there may be something with them in the caves...and they don't seem to be perfectly human. And thus the movie becomes an epic survival piece as they're trapped under the earth with these unknown creatures.

The movie is a bit of a slow burn in terms of plot development, which is actually perfect since it makes it highly reminiscent of more classic horror movies. But instead of a group of stupid teenagers, you have this fiercely independent group of strong women who aren't exactly pushovers. Thus you think they stand a fighting chance against the prospects of being trapped underground or even potentially fighting off mysterious cave dwellers but in there likes the brilliance of the movie. The level of realism is what got me the most - you find yourself thinking that all this is highly plausible and thus the prospects of finding yourself in a similar situation help build the sense of fear and horror as you watch.

Execution was amazing all throughout - the timing of events was done just right to keep the tension level high when needed but still able to lull viewers into a false sense of security every now and then. Plus the twists are totally brilliant and you find yourself trying to figure out the story on so many levels, not just the basic survival horror side of things.

The characters were very well thought-out, at least for the major ones and even the creatures in the cave were pretty unique and logical as well. The movie just made so much sense of all these different levels, that all the more it became scary to me as a viewer.

Note to the wise though - the movie has two endings. Similar to how Pride & Predjudice was handled, The Descent has an ending specific for US audiences. Based on what I've read about it, once again it's a dumber ending and you're better off looking for the original European version. The US ending does explain, however, why they're making a sequel to this amazing film now.

The Descent gets 5 dead adventure girls out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Prince of Persia Trailer

2009-11-05T12:08:00.000+08:00

It's interesting to note that one of the most successful franchises of recent history came out of Disney. What more, it wasn't even an animated feature or anything remotely targeted at children.

With the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, you know that Disney is determined to find the next "big thing" (or think of ways to abuse the Pirates franchise even further) and it seems they're not investing their money on starting a Prince of Persia franchise (and yes, Jerry Bruckheimer is still steering this ship.

The teaser images and leaked photos going around the internet have made some Prince of Persia fans (myself included) a little nervous about how faithful this movie wil be to the original computer game franchise. On the flip side, Jake Gyllenhaal may not look exactly like the prince, but he certainly looks good period. Seriously, he's gotten rather buff for this action role and I can't complain too much about that!

So for your viewing pleasure, the official Prince of Persia movie trailer:

Prince of Persia Film Official Movie Trailer HD

[Games] World of Goo (PC)

2009-11-04T12:08:00.000+08:00

A good game becomes such because it has a great hook - something that draws in players, and ultimately a good game engine upon which the entire gaming experience is built. An ever better game gets players to learn something new or use parts of their brains that they don't normally get to exercise without taking away from the whole "fun" aspect of the game.

Many puzzle games try to aim for this balance of fun and merit. A game can be intellectually rewarding but is ultimately not fun to play or it can become ridiculously fun without contributing to the betterment of the person. Not many games can figure out how to balance these two elements but there's still a generous number who have managed to do just this over the years.

Thank the starts for that fact this one definitely one of the better games and one I'm glad to invest time in.

World of Goo is a puzzle game for the PC, Mac, Linux and Wii systems based around this cute little goo balls (they even have eyes) with a singular purpose - get as many of the goo balls to the pipe at the end of the course. Now to get to the pipe, you'll need to build a variety of constructs while navigating different obstacles, all the while using the goo balls themselves as building materials. And thus the player is made to deal with that classic question of how to balance the building side of things in order to actually reach the two while trying to save as many goo balls as possible as one reaches for the pipe.

Beyond the relative cuteness of the goo balls, the game's main claim to fame is its pretty awesome physics engines that determines just how each goo ball structure will stand or even fall depending on how the weight of the structure itself along with that of the various goo balls still moving around the construct gets distributed. Through in occasional conditions like change in wind speed or the addition of new obstacles and you get a pretty respectable challenge. Additional stages introduce the player to new types of goo balls, which inevitably means new types of challenges, thus keeping the game rather dynamic and quite new in terms of its approach.

As much as it is a puzzle game in its own right, it's also a game that requires a lot of skill as you'll find yourself working with somewhat limited resources as one tries to liberate as many goo balls as possible. Then of course there's the whole physics angle to things since cost-cutting in terms of number of goo balls may lead to catastrophic collapses of your towers or other structures at key moments in the build process.

It's a devilishly fun game and one that I didn't immediately expect to enjoy, but in the end I did. It takes a little getting used to in terms of how to effectively manipulate the goo balls and to learn what does and doesn't work in terms of your goo structures and the variety of ways one can organize the balls. You can read up on the game strategies as much as you want but there's nothing like learning how to play it yourself and really seeing the quirkiness of the goo balls and how they behave in the various environments.

With at least 5 chapters worth of game levels, you're in for a very rewarding game as long as you keep your wits about you.

World of Goo gets 4 pretty goo balls out of a possible 5.

[Movies] The Hurt Locker (2009)

2009-11-02T12:08:00.000+08:00

I've always been a bit of a sucker for independent films - you know, the kind that try to compete in international film festivals. I'm not talking about the local indies that have a 85% chance about practically being homosexual exploitation films but more those movies not from around here that try to address subjects in interesting ways. I'm not saying I'll automatically like any movie that is featured in a film festival either, although there's a decent chance I'll at least give it a shot.

I tend to focus on the more "intellectual" stories that seem to require a lot of though and not necessarily just getting used to a highly creative mode of storytelling. There have been a good share of hit and misses for these kinds of movies since they can either be (a) amazingly thought-provoking or (b) very, very boring and quite confusing. You never really know what you're going to get, but then that's the joy of watching movies in general.

Then there are those movies whose trailers just look pretty amazing and you just KNOW that you have to go see it despite the fact that you're also pretty sure the movie is going to be heavy as heck.

The Hurt Locker is an independent film about the US Army's Bravo Company's Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) unit during the Iraq War. After their team leader Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce) gets killed by a remote-detonated improvised explosive device (IED), the remaining members of the unit, Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) have to deal with getting along with their new team leader, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner). James is highly controversial in his methods and tends to prefer scouting out the bombs personally rather than using the unit's bomb disposal robot and at times the team feels he's overly reckless and is just some sort of a thrill-seeker.

Over time we as viewers are made privy to other aspects of James and how he shows his compassion and humanity in alternative venues and ways. At the same time, we see how the three men respond to the stress of their job and the way in general in highly different ways with Eldridge showing the most difficulty in trying to cope with the war given his repeated conversations with the unit's doctor, Colonel John Cambridge (Christian Camargo). The movie has a specific time set based around the number of days the unit has left before the end of this particular rotation, but that won't necessarily provide any relief in the long run.

The movie is absolutely stressful, but in a good way. The director (Kathryn Bigelow) certainly knew how to translate the day-to-day tension that these EOD folks feel and thus truly involving the audience in the experience on an emotional level. Adding in the choice to use a shakier camera setup helped give it that realistic feel, although it does get a tad dizzying to watch movies like this on the big screen.

Plus this movie really feels like it's just showing us day after day in the lives of these men. There's no major story arc trying things together or a perceived antagonist for them to fight or outsmart in the end. It's just day after day and bomb after bomb that you end up dealing with, and thus the tension level remains very high throughout the film. This is not for the weak of heart.

Jeremy Renner was absolutely perfect for the role of Staff Sergeant James. He's able to convey both his eccentricity as a bomb disposal tech and his softer side as an actual human being as well - the key is probably the nature of his eyes, which have probably made a girl or two melt in their seats over the years. The role was definitely a difficult one to manage and one that required a significantly wide range of emotions and thus kudos to him for really pulling it off.

Plus now my partner is convinced that Renner would make a great Midnighter should an Authority movie ever be made.

I'm glad he was able to win the Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Breakthrough Actor and was nominated for several others. If they're lucky, they might get a few Oscar nods come next year. Here's to hoping...

Watch out for the cameos in the movie - you'll be surprised to see a number of major name stars hidden in relatively smaller roles in this movie. Then again, that's pretty much par for the course for independent films like this, don't you think?

The Hurt Locker is an intelligent, intense and overall great movie that I'd recommend to anyone, regardless of their appreciation of the war movie genre. It's still in a limited run in certain QC theaters this week, so hurry up and catch it before it disappears!

The Hurt Locker gets 4 unexploded IEDs out of a possible 5.

[Writing] NaNoWriMo 2009

2009-11-01T00:08:00.007+08:00

I've always had a passion for writing, and this everyone can probably determine based on the volume of entries that I post here and on my personal blog, Beyond Dinobot Island. However a lot of my writing has become very work-focused or has been largely limited to blogging. There's nothing wrong with blogging, mind you, I guess I just miss my fiction writing.

So this year my partner encouraged me to attempt NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - as an effort to get some fiction writing done and largely feel that sense of accomplishment if I do manage to manage to write a piece of fiction at least 50,000 or 175 pages long. It's a daunting goal, but we'll keep pushing!

For regular readers of this blog, this may lead to a decrease in terms of my posting frequency, although at the very least I will try to have at least 3 entries a week posted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

For those interesting in seeing what I come up with, I've linked the active Google Document to the Google Site that I use to store all my writing - the Gossamer Tower. This year's NaNoWriMo page can be found HERE.

Wish me luck fellow geeks!

[Movies] Proof (2005)

2009-10-30T12:08:00.001+08:00

There are those movies that you promise yourself to one day see but for some reason you never quite get around to it. Even if it starts showing on cable TV or you happen to have a copy of the DVD, it just seems to linger there and you still don't quite get around to seeing it.

I hate it when that happens - seriously. Worse, it seems to happen most for movies that I'm bound to like but remain sort of uncertain and so I keep delaying the decision to go see it. In the meantime I pass the time with all these more useless movies that just annoy the heck out of me and make me lose more faith in the dwindling creative potential of Hollywood.

But then that day eventually comes when you break the dead lock and finally find the time to go see the darn movie that's been evading your attentions for so long. You may end up disappointed given the length of time that has passed may have inevitably hyped it up too much. From personal experience, I find that I end up really liking the movie since it becomes somehow more fitting to see the movie precisely when I do, for whatever reasons there may be as related to my life at the time.

This was one of those movies for me.

Proof is an interesting drama based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name. The center of the story is Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a recently deceased mathematician Robert (Anthony Hopkins) who has to deal with the loss of her father and the very real possibility that she may have inherited the same mental illness he did. Two people feature in her life at this time - one is her sister Claire (Hope Davis), who has come home for the funeral and to help settle their father's affairs. The other is one of Robert's former students, Harold Dobbs (Jake Gyllenhaal). "Hal" eventually makes his feelings towards Catherine known and their new bond leads her to trust him enough to reveal a hidden notebook with the mathematical proof for a highly important theorem. The work is absolutely brilliant but doubt enters the picture when Catherine states the proof is hers and not her father's.

Given it was based on a play, the movie comes up with a rather intelligent face and very complex characters, which was quite a relief compared to a lot of the other mundane movies out there. You can clearly see it was pretty much a four-person play since all the development is centered around them. The movie tried to avoid adding too many other characters to complicate things and the core story seemed to remain more or less intact.

I can completely understand why Gwyneth was nominated for a Golden Globe for this movie - she was very, very good an clearly understood her character and how to present her. She wasn't just the daughter of a brilliant mathematician but was a genius in her own right and thus shared more than one thing in common with her father. Her struggles in terms of how she had to deal with her father's declining mental health in his later years and eventually her own fears that the same thing would happen to her made for a very interesting range of emotions her character had to go through.

Image via Wikipedia

And Jake Gyllenhaal is sooo cute. And hot. Oh better yet - he is so geekily hot. Rawr.

The story is told from multiple time periods and so you'll find yourself being dragged back and forth between the past when her father was still alive and the present where the trio try to figure out whether or not the proof is authentic and if Catherine in fact authored it. There are moments when this may be a tad confusing, but overall you'll pick up the pattern well enough. The director did a great job of trying all the various plot points together while making sure the final reveal was both logical and quite rewarding.

And Jake was really adorable in a majorly geeky way. Extra points for naming a song i!!!

Proof was a nice, refreshing drama for me that was quite enjoyable and a pleasure to watch after a long day at work. I gets 4 time-worn notebooks out of 5.

[Movies] Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009)

2009-10-29T12:08:00.004+08:00

Ron Moore's reimagination of Battlestar Galactica was a landmark creation that helped bring science fiction to a broader audience and give hope to other science fiction fans that there was hope yet for the genre. In a time when major science fiction serials like Star Trek weren't at their best, to have a show like this come along and bring new life to science fiction entertainment was quite the relief.

Of course when the show ended with four power-packed seasons, a lot of us BSG fans were left wanting more. Naturally Hollywood won't let such a marketable franchise disappear into the vast darkness of space just yet, and thus we've seen new BSG-related projects like the potential TV series Caprica and then of course movies like this one.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is a direct-to-DVD TV movie that attempts to tell more of the story of the Cylons set during the first two seasons of the original show. The "movie" of sorts features a lot of clips from those seasons along with new material that has been sort of "inserted" into the story to give us a new perspective on the whole series. The movie was directed by Edward James Olmos, who played Commander Adama in the show.

Image via Wikipedia

The story starts out interestingly enough - the movie is set from the perspective of the Cylons after all, and thus this immediately brings One (Dean Stockwell) into the forefront of things as he fulfills his role as de facto leader of the Cylons. Given his knowledge of many things that the others were oblivious too, he clearly uses this to his advantage to manipulate events as he saw fit. At the same time, we get to see more of the other Cylon models that didn't get as much screen time in the original series, with Four (Rick Worthy) being one of those who benefited the most given his expanded story.

The show had a lot of good points, to be fair, like how they decided to explain the story of Boomer (Grace Park) and how she executed her missions as a sleeper agent and even the little bits about other models like Five (Matthew Bennett) and why he wears those darned suits. It has its share of serious moments and lighter campy bits which certainly help expand the universe.

However in terms of the supposed "Plan" that the Cylons were following, I didn't feel like the movie actually explained that well enough. If we just use what they presented as the basis of this plan, then it's not at all complex. Item 1: Destroy the 12 Colonies. Item 2: Keep the Final Five alive as long as possible so they suffer their humanity. Item 3: Destroy the human survivors from within.

Obviously, they failed at their mission except possible for Item 2.

The overall look and feel of the movie felt rather odd as well. It seemed somehow...brighter than usual. The shots were clearly different and overall execution didn't make it truly feel like part of the BSG universe. Plus given the volume of recycled clips from the original show, the entire thing ended up feeling a lot some very long DVD extra feature that doesn't stand too well on its own.

If SyFy is going to continue to attempt to milk the BSG franchise, this is not the way to do it. Seriously.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan gets 2 silly costumes for Cylons in the Fleet out of a possible 5.

[Games] Machinarium

2009-10-28T12:08:00.000+08:00

The casual gaming market is pretty much dominated by arcade-style games that rely on a player's skill in an environment not entirely dependent on story. Hence the reason it's casual - it's something that doesn't require long term commitment that becomes easy to leave at any time in order to return to your primary task (i.e. the work you've been putting off by playing a game) and pick up again quickly when you have time again.

The casual gaming market has grown significantly because of the easy promotion granted by joint efforts like Yahoo! Games and MSN Games, but other genres have practically died out at the same time due to lack of popular interest.

So when my partner managed to find this interesting little adventure puzzle game, I was pretty surprised and quite happy to see an actual adventure game on the market. And even better, it turned out to be a pretty good game to boot.

Machinarium is an adventure game created by the Czech gaming studio Amanita Design. It's set in an unusual robot-filled world where you are a lone robot on a quest to do...something. Your mission, along with everything else in the story, is up to you to discover completely. You'll do this by solving a variety of puzzles of various forms, shapes and sizes and the whole time there won't be any dialog or significantly clear instructions.

Now in most adventure games, the first instinct is to click on anything and everything on the screen to see what happens. Machinarium opted to break that formula by limiting the user to interacting with objects in the immediate vicinity of the robot. Thus one truly needs to navigate the robot protagonist around each screen in order to carefully determine what areas may or may not be actually part of the puzzle.

The level of difficulty of the game starts out decently enough but picks up steadily as you progress through the game. For those who get stuck, each screen or level has a possible hint that the player can investigate, which manifests itself as a thought bubble appearing above the robot. If that's not enough, each screen also gives the option to access a detailed walkthrough, although the book itself has a mini-game guarding its contents and the walkthrough is presented in the form of more comic-style pictograms. Yes, even the solution can be like a puzzle in itself!

I was surprised to find out that the game was created on a budget of only $1000, which pretty much came out of the pockets of the game developers themselves. The game is just filled with some pretty deceptively simple but richly beautiful art that serves as the backdrop of every scene and pretty much how every character in the game is drawn. The music is also simple, but perfectly apt for the game in order to complement the scenes instead of competing for attention.

Machinarium is a rare game that I wish would get developed into a larger series of adventure puzzle games given its gameplay feel is similar to Oddworld with less chances of dying. Plus there's a subtle humor at work all throughout the game and of course the mystery of the actual story that is given to the player in bits and pieces, and not necessarily in order as well.

Machinarium is more than worth the download and at least a day's worth of playing. The length is my main issue, but then I can't fault them for that - this game deserves a full 5 robot insects out of a possible five.

[Comics] All Star Superman

2009-10-27T12:08:00.002+08:00

I was never really big Superman fan. I’m sorry, but I’m just not. The guy is practically omnipotent in superhero terms apart from the weaknesses to Kryptonite and magic. He can fly, he can shoot heat vision beams out of his eyes and he can freeze things with his breath. He has super strength and is invulnerable to harm. Heck, he even generates some sort of a protection field around him, thus the reason his clothes hardly every get damaged in fights. The guy is just too perfect to be really fun as a hero.

And yet Superman will always have such a major fan following and I doubt that DC Comics will ever truly get rid of him as a character. They tried that a few years back and of course eventually brought him back to life despite supposedly dying. What can I say? It’s a comic book thing after all, and DC doesn’t have the sole license on doing that.

So I guess it takes a lot for me to really appreciate a Superman story, whether in the context of a group like the JLA or as part of a major multi-title crossover, and yet this particular title managed to remain pretty interesting.

Image by food_in_mouth via Flickr

All Star Superman is a 12-issue comic book series written by Grant Morrison that explores various aspects or elements of the Superman mythos (if you can call it that) but outside the confines of normal continuity. It's certainly an interesting effort and not too far away from the Elseworlds concept that DC likes to play around with so much, but not as extreme. Art was handled by Frank Quitely.

The loose story that the storyline follows involves Superman getting exposed to an extreme amount of solar radiation that apparently overwhelms his cells and causes them to slowly die out while at the same time giving him increased super powers. While this happened during a rescue attempt, the entire series of events was orchestrated by none other than Lex Luthor, who pretty much spends much of the series watching and waiting for Superman's eventual demise. With all this going on, Superman then tries to fulfill a lot of items on his personal wish list like making his feelings (and his identity) clearly known to Lois Lane and a series of trials of some sort that also come his way. Each issue covers a different story within the Superman universe touching on various elements and story plots that have been revisited in many ways over the years in various Superman titles.

At first, the whole thing just seemed to me like another typical Superman story. But then as things progressed and his new (lethal) powers were revealed, the story was certainly brought into a significantly new direction. You have a super powered version of Superman who is now faster, stronger and even smarter than he used to be, and thus he's able to do a lot of things that he couldn't manage before. He invents a serum that gives Lois super powers for a day or he is now immune to green kryptonite, and many other crazy concepts.

Each issue largely stands alone except for the overall theme that Superman is dying. Thus each one is a solid story on its own and it tackles all the things that have made up the Superman universe one at a time. There's time for Lois and even for Jimmy Olsen to shine in their own ways. Naturally he needs to confront Luthor and he also has to face fellow Kryptonians coming to Earth. Oh, and how I could I forget the Bizarro story? It may not seem like a tightly-knit series of stories leading to one powerful story arc by instead it's a diverse series of shorter stories set in the same Superman universe. This probably the greatest strength of the comic and to some people it's probably one of the downsides too, depending on your perspective.

The series certainly accomplished its main goal of being able to explore Superman as a character without dealing with the restraints of the decades worth of storylines and plot developments. What we got was Superman more powerful than ever, thus almost a caricature of what his powers have come to represent, but at the same time at his most vulnerable given the certainty of his death. that in itself is quite a powerful topic to have tackled in the span of 12 issues and Morrison certainly handled things quite well.

All Star Superman gets 4 high tech ray guns out of a possible 5.

[Movies] (500) Days of Summer (2009)

2009-10-26T12:08:00.001+08:00

Over the years, I've grown to be quite the sucker for the art film and those films which try to emulate the style of an art film. You know what I mean - the movies that seem pretty common in terms of appeal but tweak their stories so they can get into film festivals around the world, thus somehow earning that artsy kind of label. I know, it's not a precise way of classifying these movies, but given the modern context, that's generally how these movies have turned out to be.

You can name major indie hits like Juno or sleeper drama hits like Crash and The Constant Gardener - whatever it is, by now you should have a decent enough idea of what kind of movies I'm talking about. I guess it's more because of their focus on the value of the story itself and the need for skilled storytelling as opposed to big name actors or amazing special effects. The movies don't even need to have to discuss a major news event or something of that kind - it just has to tell the story well.

Oh, and it needs an awesome soundtrack, too.

(500) Days of Summer is a romantic comedy at its core with all the trappings of an art film - it did feature at Sundance, after all.

The movie follows the life of greeting card writer Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his confusing friendship / relationship with Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). This is documented in a non-linear format across the 500 days and you'll find yourself being whisked back and forth between the beginning of the relationship and a significant cool off period declared mid-way. Of course given the linear markers for the entire story, you know this almost means there's an end to things and naturally the larger question remains of what happens on the 500th day. Do they stay together? Do they drift apart? Does one day? Our media-trained minds are bound to filter through all these possible options over and over again during the movie.

I really liked the way they handled the transitions between the various time points as represented by the changing of the number on the sort of transition title page. And it's not like your typical movie where you explore each time period at length - there are instances when you will visit a point in the "past" very briefly, if only to explain certain parallels or connections to events later in the "future". This is all relatively speaking mind you - it's hard to describe the non-linear nature of things in a single review.

Both Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel were pretty impressive in their roles and they certainly knew how to play to their strengths as actors. We know that Gordon-Levitt has the geeky guy next door archetype pretty much figured out and Deschanel is great as the quirky, interesting girl.

The biggest strength of this movie definitely has to be the writing. The lines are witty but realistic - not the kind of over-the-top stuff we get in a lot of the recent comedies released. Plus there are just so many parallels and lines sort of quoted back from one to the other over the 500 days that it becomes important to be observant all throughout in order to better appreciate the overall design of the plot.

It's a feel good movie, to a certain degree with an ending that is rather atypical but not too unrealistic. It's not your typical Hollywood created marketable love story and so I can see how it probably didn't fly too well with certain audiences looking for stories with the same level of complexity as fairy tales.

Oh, and yes, the music was absolutely awesome - but this is a statement that one can only truly agree with if he or she already has an appreciation for music from the 80's.

(500) Days of Summer gets 5 witty greeting cards out of 5.

[Movies] Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

2009-10-23T12:08:00.006+08:00

My budding love of the Blues as a genre of music combined with my appreciation for the various incarnations of Saturday Night Live over the years inevitably lead to me enjoying the Blue Brothers. From their zany sketches to their first major motion picture, I totally loved the comedic duo no matter how absurd the situations they found themselves in happened to be.

Now such movies from the world of Saturday Night tend to remain as one-shots with little potential for advancement. Sure, they're funny but they tend to be just an "okay" level of funny and rarely generate the kind of income needed to warrant a sequel of any kind. So it's rare when such movies manage to reach the point of a sequel such as the Wayne's World movies.

Then there's this movie, which continued the grand tradition set by its predecessor - the need to enjoy good music while still laughing at itself and the absurdity of it all.

Blues Brothers 2000 is the sequel to the original 1980 movie that no one thought ever could be made. The main reason was the tragic death of John Belushi, who originally played Jake and helped create the duo. This had happened only in 1982 and thus the notion of returning to this franchise seemed unrealistic to say the least.

And yet it still happened.

Cover of Blues Brothers 2000

It's now 18 years after the events in the original movie and lone Blues Brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) is released from prison only to find his brother Jake (Belushi) and his mentor Curtis (Cab Calloway) dead. He eventually discovers that Curtis had an illegitimate son, Cabel "Cab" Chamberlain (Joe Morton), who had no idea about his birth father. Elwood then takes it upon himself to find the last vestiges of "family" that he has left in the world in the form of Cab, and along the way ends up reuniting the band and finding new additions in the form of a bartender named Mighty Mack McTeer (John Goodman) and an orphan named Buster (J. Evan Bonifant), who behaves eerily similar to Elwood.

This sequel doesn't pretend that the original movie doesn't happen. In fact, it blatantly tries to practically copy all the major elements of the first film in a campy celebration of what made that movie so memorable (but not necessarily great). This means massive car chases (and the eventual car wrecks and pile-ups), surprise musical cameos by great musicians and some very low brow humor. Ah yes, this was certainly the good stuff.

I know, the movie ends up being really stupid, but then it never pretended to be anything beyond that. It's pretty much just a silly excuse to get all these kings and queens of the blues in a single movie to perform under ridiculous pretenses. I mean seriously - you have B.B. King as a used car salesman, Jonny Lang as a janitor and Erykah Badu as a voodoo witch queen? This movie is not at all meant to be taken seriously.

But if you enjoy the blues or good music in general and you don't mind dealing with the ridiculous and absurd for about two hours, then this movie will certainly hit the spot after a long and stressful day. Oh, and try and name as many musical celebrities and cameos as you can!

Blues Brothers 2000 gets 3.5 reused cliches out of 5.

[ImprovEverywhere] Grocery Store Musical

2009-10-22T12:08:00.000+08:00

Thursdays are all about television and theater here at the Geeky Guide and it looks like we have yet another alternative musical on our hands!

Food Court Musical remains to be one of my favorite ImprovEverywhere stunts. Let's face it - I'm a sucker for musical theater in all its forms! I figured they'd never try to repeat a stunt like that, but I'm glad that I was wrong.

Looks like those crazy kooks at ImprovEverywhere decided to give the surprise musical another go, but this time they used a grocery store as their stage. The song makes a lot less sense than Food Court Musical did, but it's still pretty fun for what it's worth!

Grocery Store Musical

[Firefox] Integrated Gmail Extension

2009-10-21T12:08:00.001+08:00

Despite my eternal love for all things Google, I still use Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. Sure, I can certainly appreciate how brilliantly fast Google Chrome is and I'm glad they've worked out the initial bugs the browser had in its early months, but the lack of full extension support always holds me back.

I know, I know, there's experimental extension support currently being toyed with in the developer version of Chrome, but that doesn't account for all the fun bells and whistles I get with the robust library of Firefox extensions already out there on the web.

Today is all about discussing one of my newest extensions of interest that pretty much taps into my love for Google as well.

Integrated Gmail is a pretty nifty Firefox extension that conveniently places many Google services all together on a single page. This is not an entirely new concept - I remember I had previous extensions and Greasemonkey scripts that allowed me to integrate Gmail and Google reader into one interface prior to the current release of Gmail. Of course when Gmail upgraded, it broke the older extensions and I was left without a way of viewing multiple Google services at once.

Integrated Gmail manages to pull this off even with the current version of Google's webmail platform. Plus, it goes the extra mile of not just integrating Google Reader into the site but even other services like Google Calendar, or whatever else you want to add it. This certainly pushes tab economy for those who are into the multi-tab browsing experience given you can now have all these different services accessible in one place.

Now a natural problem of such extensions is the issue of space - services like Google Reader are best viewed with a full screen and not limited by the various sidebars that Gmail has. Integrated Gmail has an answer for that by giving the user options to collapse the top navigation area or the left-hand sidebar in order to save space and maximize your reading experience. You can also change the order of whatever Google services you've integrated into Gmail or open / collapse the different "windows" so you can focus on one thing at a time.

Of course, this will mean extra loading time since this will still run with the equivalent bandwidth load of viewing all these Google services separately - they just get loaded in the background once you launch Gmail. Thus on slower connections, I wouldn't recommend adding too many services.

Also, various Gmail Labs features may not necessarily work well with Integrated Gmail. One obvious one is the option to place Chat or Labels on the right hand side since this will eat into your screen real estate for Reader. Others I chose to disable were the Google Calendar in Gmail app (since you can now get the full-featured Calendar through Integrated Gmail) and I'm not going to use the multiply inbox option for now for similar reasons.

Still, for the power Google user who tends to have many different Google services open at the same time, this is a great Firefox extension for you. Integrated Gmail gets 4 Google Doodles out of 5.