Hugo 3D Movie Review
Martin Scorsese throws a nod towards Steam Punk.
I find myself in a weird spot reviewing this movie. I mean, who am I to review the work of a true movie making genius like Martin Scorsese? He is responsible for so many of my favorite films, including Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Shutter Island, and The Aviator. Of course, he has done a lot of stuff no one has ever heard of, including a ton of documentaries. However, for a movie amateur like myself to offer criticism feels like I am hanging around giving advice to a brain surgeon.
But then I remember that I have an obligation to deliver my unbiased and honest opinion to you, my beloved reader. Fortunately, Hugo is a decently fun movie, and even if I didn’t know Scorsese had directed it I would have enjoyed it. It was fun, well acted, extremely well directed, and overall a quality movie experience. Like pretty much 100% of the movies I nit pick apart it has a few items I can take issue with, but overall pretty cool. I think one of the things that really works for me on this film is it is so different from any of Martin Scorsese’s other films. It’s great to see a director head into something new.
It is the story of young Hugo (Asa Butterfield-the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the Return of Nanny MacPhee), the son of a clockmaker who has been orphaned and now lives in a Paris train station, winding and maintaining the clocks. His only legacy of his father is a mysterious steam punk automaton that was rescued from a museum store room and is in need of repair (steam punk Sonic image courtesy of the Video Game T Shirts). He gets caught trying to steal parts from a grumpy toy shop owner named Papa George (the great Ben Kingsley-Sexy Beast, Ghandi, Shutter Island, Schindler’s List), who confiscates Hugo’s fathers notebook. He gets Hugo to work for him repairing windup toys to make up for the stolen goods. Meanwhile Hugo befriends George’s goddaughter Isabelle (played most excellently by Chloe Grace Moretz, the Hitgirl from Kick Ass. She was also the vampire from Let Me In. What a talented young actress. I am sure we will see some amazing things from her in the future), who is something of a bookworm and looking for adventure. She sees the potential with Hugo and together they work on the mystery of the mechanical man.
I don’t want to get too much into the story, as I don’t want to hand out any spoilers. Hugo is beset by the station inspector (Sasha Baron Cohen-Borat, Sweeney Todd, Bruno, Ali G) who adds an element of danger to the story. Papa George has a mysterious past that he wants to keep secret. Clocks get wound. Mysteries are solved.
The stars. All around quality film. Direction, story, and overall experience excellent. Two stars. The acting was awesome, although how could you expect any less from Ben Kingsley? Chloe was decent too, although occasionally she and Asa seemed to have forced the scenes. Two stars. The camera work and visual were really, really good. Two stars. The story overall was very immersive. You really felt like you were in the Montparnasse train station in the 30’s. One star. Steam punk-ish. One star. Based in part on a true story. One star. Total: nine stars.
Now, though it galls me to do this, I have to award the black holes. The biggest one is going to have to be the fact that 3D sucks. It really did nothing to in any way enhance this film, and it is obvious Martin Scorsese, being new to the 3D art form, was looking for and writing in extra visuals to better display the 3D effects. Unfortunately this really did nothing but aggravate the next two black holes I am about to give. One black hole. The movie, perhaps due to the extra visuals, seemed to really drag at points. The fun of watching Hugo wind his was through the massive gears and cogs of all the clocks in the station kind of loses it’s magic when we have to watch it a second and third time. Plot progression seemed really slow. One black hole. The movie, supposedly for kids, runs a whopping 127 minutes. I saw more than one family have to leave early after the kids got bored of watching gears spin, and even I had to take a bathroom break about 3/4 of the way through (the ocean tanker sized Diet Coke did not help). One black hole. Finally, while Sasha Baron Cohen was probably the best actor in the film, his role as the menacing station inspector was significantly compromised by his comedic bearing and delivery. It literally felt like Hugo was being chased by Inspector Clouseau, and it is tough to feel concern for anyone in that situation. The rest of the movie is actually really poignant and serious with whimsical element, but every time Sasha got on screen the slapstick-o-meter dipped deeply into the red. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of five stars. Not bad, but not awesome. Hugo is a fun, quality movie. But it in no way compares to Shutter Island or Goodfellas. Worth seeing? Yes. Worth seeing in a theater? Yes. Worth seeing twice in a theater? Probably not, unless you are into the 3D art form or the movie history portrayed. Good date movie? Sure, as long as your date is a visual person. Not my first choice.
Thanks for reading, and don’t hate me for not gushing all over this film. I really am a Scorsese fan. Just not his best film. Perhaps he was so distracted by the details of 3D he couldn’t apply as much focus as usual on the other aspects of the film. Short review, but that’s what usually happens when I enjoy the film. I will write up the Descendants tomorrow, and hopefully see something else then for Monday. Maybe Arthur Christmas. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Contagion movie review
Ever feel like you don’t have enough germophobia in your life? Contagion has the cure.
So tonight it was Contagion, a movie about a plague that kills millions and causes Purell sales to skyrocket. Overall a decent flick, if a little dry and, ironically, low impact. What do I mean? Let’s find out.
The movie starts off with Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) coming home from a wild trip to Hong Kong filled with drinking, casino gambling, and adultery. She comes home not feeling well and falls over to shuffle off this mortal coil, followed shortly by her young son. Her cuckold husband, Mitch (Matt Damon) is somehow immune. Meanwhile, the camera runs around the world showing major metropolitan cities where people traveling from China are infecting their local communities. We cut to several CDC lab scenes and officials, including Lawrence Fishburne as Dr. Cheever, the head. Plague chaos and medical research ensues. A local blogger manages to disrupt things by claiming a homeopathic remedy is the cure and runs around San Francisco in a homemade bubble suit (never underestimate the power of a well crafted blog. Of course, for this blog underestimate all you want. Also, did they really have to make the crazy conspiracy nut reside in San Francisco? Weren’t their other stereotypes they could exploit?).
This movie was well written and directed. The most interesting part for me was the progressive degeneration and break down of society they showed, although I think a few steps ended up on the cutting room floor as at one point the chaos went from fairly concerning to chaos on a massive scale in one scene change. The science seemed pretty solid as well, with nothing obviously stupid being done. The movie did manage to illustrate how the US has a really hard time moving quickly when dealing with drugs and vaccines that have to get out to the population in a timely manner, and there were undertones of pharmaceutical companies intending to exploit the health needs for profit, something I firmly believe they would do without hesitation.
Why, then, do I say kind of low impact? The fact is, after the two initial deaths, for the most part none of the main characters died or were connected to people who died, in spite of any number of secondary characters introduced seemingly to provide fodder to make the movie more poignant. There were a couple of mass grave scenes, but nothing that really looked like more than a bunch of carpet remnants being buried. One doctor died, but the guy who was supposed to care didn’t even mention her again. Basically the deaths took on a number aspect with little to no real emotional impact. It started to feel like racking up kills in a video game. The movie tended to be pretty dry anyway, with no violence to speak of or any kind of real conflict between characters.
Of course, I spent a lot of the movie hoping the corpses would get up and start trying to eat the flesh of the living, so maybe I’m a little skewed here. I guess not all deadly diseases can be as cool as the T Virus (image courtesy of the video game t shirt category).
The stars. Very well and intelligently written. Two stars. Nobody did anything stupid that made me want to scream. One star. Acted very well across the board. One star. Marion Cotillard (the hot French girl from Inception), who is one of my favorite actresses and hopefully my future wife, spent the movie looking pretty good. One star. The progression of anarchy and the CDC and government responses to the epidemic felt very real and well thought out. One star. Good science. One star. The research episodes appealed in the same way CSI seems cool. One star. Overall a good movie. One star. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. The whole “death lacking impact” thing I just mentioned. One black hole. The CDC seemed to spend a lot of time trying to figure out where the disease came from rather than working on a cure, and as part of that pursuit spent a lot of time looking at security footage that looked exactly like it had been shot by the same film crew that did the normal scenes. Most movies at least try to make security footage look grainy and black and white, without sound and/or full effects. One black hole. They laughingly list the population of San Francisco as 3.6 million people. Most people don’t know this, but it is actually a fairly small city, with a population at last census of 808,976 people. I guess they were trying to increase the effect of an outbreak in SF. They can’t even claim to be using the population of the entire Bay Area, as that exceeds 7.6 million. They were doing this thing where they listed the population of each area and probably felt something that low would feel less impactful, but it took me literally 10 seconds to look up and that kind of lazy writing always bugs me. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
There were a couple in the irksome category. First off, I can’t decide if this movie was too gory or not gory enough. We get treated to a semi-graphic autopsy of Gwyneth Paltrow (would you like some surrealism with your coffee?) but other than people foaming at the mouth don’t see much. I think the lack of gore, while appealing to my desire to see movies not rely on that banal Hollywood crutch, kind of aided the lack of emotional content. A couple scenes of people coughing up their lungs while dying a painful, prolonged death might have brought it home more. I also found a few of the many sub plots kind of unnecessary. Not enough to hurt the plot. Just kind of dead time on the screen.
So a final tally of six stars, a very respectable score. I think if you are into medical dramas or CSI style crime investigation you will really enjoy it. However, there is nothing visually that really cries out for a big screen so if you want to save a few bucks wait for NetFlix. Not at all a good date film, as your date will not want to have anything to do with human contact after this film, and odds are neither will you. To be honest I went to the bathroom afterwards and really washed my hands. I think I will now give my bathroom and kitchen the scrubbing of a lifetime. OCD, here I come!
Follow me on Twitter, where you can stay in touch with no chance of any kind of disease transmission @Nerdkungfu. Warrior next, I think, if I can muster up the testosterone. Thanks for reading this.
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II
Yes, I liked it. I’ve pretty much liked the whole series. I now realize there is no way I could have fairly reviewed it without having seen the rest of them, so I think I took the right path. I will also say that there was a lot of stuff I didn’t understand, and some stuff that came up in this movie that I probably could have used about five movies ago, so I guess I’m now at the point where I pretty much have to buy and read the books. Do they all have to look so goofy on the cover? One thing the Lord of the Rings has always done right is made their covers as dignified and ominous as possible. I think I would have bought the books years ago if they hadn’t all featured a skinny, bespectacled kid who has a goofy smile on his face.
By the way, after my rant about carrying a ton of extra wands and using a wand in both fists my best friend Dave invented the Gatling wand, so I want to give him props for that. I think it’s brilliant.
I am going to keep my questions down to the ones I feel won’t spoil the plot at all, in case someone like me has not seen it yet or read the books. I will also keep the story synapses to a minimum. Basically Harry and his friends are still on the horcrux Easter Egg hunt, and it leads them to Hogwarts, where the imprison the entirety of Slytheryn (finally) and then are besieged by Death Eaters. Cool stone statues come to life to defend. Stuff gets blown up. People gets killed. Everyone seems to have forgotten where they hid their brooms again. Voldemort rains unholy nostril-faced hell on pretty much everyone. Two of my three predictions pretty much came true.
The stars. Great ending to a pretty awesome story. Two stars. Great special effects and CGI. One star. I’ve gotten so used to all the characters that none of them bug me, and they have all matured nicely as pretty good actors, especially Daniel Radcliffe. One star. The story, in a very real way, was extremely satisfying. One star. They didn’t waste any time with a recap of Part I at the start of the film. It was a huge F you to anyone who didn’t see the first one, but really who is that dumb? Besides almost me. One star. Snape had a really cool, integral part that actually gave him a lot of depth. One star. Despite my fears, Draco Malfoy manage to not end the movie dead or in a horrible situation. One star. The plot was fast paced and made a lot or sense. One star. Ron and Hermione finally kiss. One star. They didn’t try to get a softer movie rating by holding off on the massive carnage. One star. Two more bonus stars for an all around great movie experience. Total: thirteen stars.
Now the black holes. I am going to give one for all the stuff that I would have known had I read the book but they couldn’t stuff into the movie for illiterate morons. I know this would be almost impossible to pull off in a less than six hour movie, and I don’t hold it against the film, but I still see it as somewhat of a failure. One black hole. Voldemort seems to play pretty fast and loose with his last remaining horcrux. One black hole. Dumbledore resurfaces to ruin all the respect he gained from me in the last couple films in order to prove he was exactly the manipulative, heartless bastard I though he was in the first few movies. One black hole. A couple of the deaths of characters I liked kind of really harshed my buzz, especially Ron’s brother. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of nine stars, an excellent score for an excellent series. I feel pretty good about this. However, it would not be one of my Harry Potter reviews if I did not come up with more dumb questions to ask.
Back on wands. I now understand a bit more of wand lore, thanks to one scene where a wand loremaster kind of lays out some details, but I am still intrigued by the idea of size and shape. Could you make your want the size and shape of a baseball bat? Then, if you are in a duel and your opponent is kind of kicking your ass but you are up close you could give him or her a magical concussion. What if you made your wand into a broom stick? Then you could fly around and 
basically dive bomb people. What if you made it into the shape of a boomerang? Then, if someone disarmed you it could come back. For that matter, could you just make a wand the size and shape of a shotgun stock? And then just maybe mount a shotgun to it? That way, just as you are doing one of those different colored firehose duels, with minimal effort you send a load of buckshot at him. Sure, most if it would probably get vaporized in the conflagration, but if a couple pellets managed to hit Voldemort in the shin that would be a pretty huge distraction. (Shotgun image courtesy of the video game t shirt category).
There is a scene in the movie where a bridge gets blown up with explosives, along with a bunch of bad guys. That kind of implies that explosives have an effect on wizards. Why, then, instead of stone guys armed with medieval weapons does Hogwarts not just have a couple of self propelled artillery pieces? The part where the Death Eaters are all together on a hill shooting at Hogwarts could have gone pretty bad for them if someone had called in an airstrike. I don’t know if magic really has to mean you can’t occasionally throw in some modern technology, especially if your life is in danger.
Is Snape not still obligated to protect Draco Malfoy due to his unbreakable oath? He seems to take a pretty lax position with regards to that, letting Draco run around and get almost burned to death. If I were obligated to protect some kid on pain of my own death I’d have him locked up in an oubliette with crate of canned food and a Game Boy until the fireworks were over.
Where did the giants and spiders come from? Did they just see the action brewing and come along for the ride? Does Voldemort have an account with Rent-a-Monster, but his credit limit isn’t enough to get dragons so he just ordered the two he could afford? For that matter Hogwarts can afford to hire dragons, as they did for the Tri Wiz competition. I think I’d have a few of those locked up downstairs in case a huge army of Death Eaters, spiders, and giants happened to come calling.
So every single kid at Hogwarts is some kind of super brave hero? Sure, Slytheryn is evil and all got locked up while Gryffindor is supposed to be the brave ones, but there wasn’t a single Hufflepuff who was like “Hey, I’m just here to get an education. I don’t want to get mixed in this dark master crap.”? If an army of unimaginable evil had laid siege to my high school and I had access to a flying broom I would have bugged out so fast your eyes would spin, and I probably would have set up on a hill nearby with popcorn to watch the show. (Actually, if an army of unimaginable evil had had destructive intentions towards my high school I probably would have gone out the them with a bunch of Cliff Bars, in case they were hungry. However, we are not here to discuss my high school experience).
That’s pretty much it for now. I have to run. Thanks for sticking with me on my Harry Potter marathon. It has been a blast. New movies this weekend. Talk to you soon.
Harry Potter Plans
Ok, I guess I can’t not see the new Harry Potter, as it is breaking all kinds of records. The problem I have is that I have never seen a single Harry Potter movie or read any of the books. My first instinct was to just see the most recent and then try to review it blind, but while I might write something funny I don’t think that would be fair. In addition, I don’t want to get on the bad side of all the rabid Harry Potter fans.
So what options have I? Really only one. I am going to borrow all the Harry Potter movies from my friend who is a rabid fan (hi Liz) and watch them all back to back, marathon style, next weekend. Then I will watch the one in the theaters on Sunday night and right possibly the best review ever for it. I don’t know any other reviewers who are dedicating a whole weekend to this.
The only problem I have is I can’t decide if I should be looking forward to or dreading this weekend. I guess I’ll see.
(Wizard image courtesy of the video game t shirt category)
Guns don't Kill People. Magic Missiles do.
Nerd Dating: the greatest date ever-movie night in-Part 2 the cleanup
Yesterday we talked about how having her invite you over for a movie is in most cases a good thing. What, on the other hand, if she wants to come over to your place?
To be honest, this is 100% a test. She want’s to see what kind of place you live in, if you actually have furniture and not just milk crates, and make a more accurate assessment of what your probable net worth is. This is actually a huge pain in the ass as it requires you to do a ton of prep work, mostly in the cleaning department.
Yes, you will have to clean up, and not in the “Just run the vacuum around the living room” sense. Before even cleaning the grime and crud out you have to clean up your life. This means get all forms of pornography out of your place. If you feel the need to store them put them in your garage but I guarantee if you just stuff it all into a closet at some point in the evening Murphy’s law will dictate that you or her will find an excuse or need to go into your stash and will be rewarded with an avalanche of magazines and old DvDs. Move it out of there.
By the way, if you are planning to watch the movie on your DVD player be sure to empty said DVD player of whatever you were watching the night before. I can’t stress that enough. If she sees you unload a DVD she will see it as an opportunity to gain a clever insight into your personality, and if the last thing you were watching was porn or Jackass or whatever she could really get the wrong (or right) idea. Same goes if you are going to stream NetFlix. Make sure you que is not visible if you have anything embarrassing.
Second, get rid of anything you bought while in college, even if you are still in college. This means that poster of the two hot girls kissing on the bed, the other poster of the thong wearing girl bending over to reach into the refrigerator full of beer, the poster of different kinds of pot, the bear bong, the bong, the moldy couch that smells vaguely like a dead dog, the St. Pauli Girl neon sign, the lava lamp, the samurai sword, the collection of novelty shot glasses, any anything else that reminds you of your Freshman year college dorm.
Third, arranged a pleasant movie watching environment. Furniture is pretty much required. Couch>futon>easy chair x2>easy chair x1>bean bag>folding chairs>old mattress>picnic cloth on the floor>carpet>hardwood floor>concrete floor>dirt floor. A coffee table for drinks is great. TV positioned at a good angle and distance with remote on coffee table. Make 
sure your wires are hidden and are not creating a fire hazard. Put the Xbox or whatever game console you use away, along with all the games (Bioshock image courtesy of the video game t shirts). A couple of throw pillows and a comfy quilt folded up at the end of the couch will add a lot of she is in a snuggle mood. A candle or two will add mood. Also make sure you draw the blinds. Girls will not generally make out with you if they think that there could be someone watching.
Fourth, minimize your nerd hobbies. I know, that is more or less contrary to what I have been preaching since starting my blog about being proud to be a nerd, but great deeds require great sacrifices. At this point odds are she knows you are a nerd, but you don’t want to keep reminding her of it even if you met her at a comic book convention or something. I am sure you want to fantasize about her being a super model. Odds are there is a piece of her brain that wants to fantasize about you being one of the cool kids. You don’t want to burst her balloon by having your Warhammer miniature painting table right next to the couch, of your souvenir Starfleet Academy graduation certificate framed above the TV. Shove it all into a closet or spare room. You will have plenty of time for that after she is your girlfriend and her fantasy has died a natural death.
I have to get going today, but will continue this process with tomorrows post. Talk to you soon.
Movie review: Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides
Before I get into my review I would like to say a few words about the tragic death of Randy “Macho Man” Savage. I have never been a huge pro wresting fan in spite of wrestling myself in high school. However, I became a fan of Macho Man when he played Bonesaw McGraw in the first Spiderman movie. I also enjoyed him immensely when he played Rasslor in Dial M for Monkey from Dexter’s Laboratory, one of the best episodes they did. It’s obvious he had a great sense of humor, and I will miss hearing his signature “Oh, yeah!”
Anyway, Pirates of the Caribbean. This has always been my favorite ride at Disneyland, although as a kid I (according to my mother) called it Pirates of the Can-o-beans. I also have to admit in spite of my natural inclination to despise anything with the Disney stamp on it, kind of enjoyed the first two films. I missed the third one, something I think might have damaged my enjoyment of this one somewhat. I should also like to warn you that I am a huge fan of the great book On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, and author who either produces some of the greatest fiction on the planet or complete boring garbage. He writes like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Boring.
So On Stranger Tides is one of his best (second only to Last Call, in my opinion). However, when I heard this I have to admit that the bar was raised considerably for me, which is always a mistake. This film didn’t suck any more or for any other reasons that the other ones did (although they managed to avoid the stupid three barreled gatling gun cannon that Davy Jones had in the second film), but when it committed all the usual annoyances it wasn’t so much that they tripped on the bar as clotheslined themselves with it.
As an aside, I was really expecting them to keep some of the great story elements from the book, but except for the facts that the story involved pirates looking for the Fountain of Youth and using zombie crewmen, they more or less ignored the book entirely. It’s like the writers chewed up and swallowed the book and, twelve hours later, excreted a steaming On Stranger Tides flavored pile of script. It’s unfortunate, as the book is really good and would have made an amazing movie, but now that Disney has marked that territory it will never happen. (Zombie image courtesy of the video game t shirts category)
Those two paragraphs are a little unfair. Pirates offers up an entertaining two and a half hours in the standard Disney formula. The only real problem is if you have seen any of the first three movies you have pretty much seen this one. I challenge anyone who is not a screaming Johnny Depp fan to sit through a Pirates marathon. You’ll be keel hauling yourself by the end.
Anyway, the movie. I really don’t want to throw in any spoilers, but there are a couple points I need to make that might do it a little. I’ll put in spoiler alert when I do, but really if you hate spoilers you might want to skip the next couple paragraphs. So, Captain Jack Sparrow is without a ship or crew and needing to recruit them all. Some dumb filler crap happens in London and he ends up shanghaied into the crew of Blackbeard, who for some reason has super hot Penelope Cruz as a first mate is is somehow his daughter and one of Jack Sparrows ex love interests. Blackbeard has been prophesied to die at the hand of a one legged man. By coincidence Capt. Babarossa has resurfaced missing a leg and having complete hatred of Blackbeard. Anyway, Blackbeard wants to find the Fountain of Youth in order to cheat the prophesy. Babarossa has been sent by some foppish English lord to find the Fountain of Youth and, as a floating deus ex machina, the Spanish have sent three ships to find it too. At that point the movie basically becomes Scooby Doo meets the Amazing Race as the three groups progress towards the fountain.
Pirate hijinks ensue (literally. The action was pretty goofy. Disney is to action scenes what Twinkes are to dieting). Mermaids attack. Zombies are promoted to middle management. Johnny Depp is charmingly self centered and irreverent. Barbossa and Sparrow get involved in the stupidest teeter totter ever. The physics of sailing vessels is more or less disregarded entirely.
First the stars. The story is linear and entertaining. One star. Johnny Depp is extremely engaging as an actor. Two stars. Pretty much all the rest of the acting was well done, especially Blackbeard (Ian McShane, from Deadwood). Two stars. Penelope Cruz is hot. One star. Casting was great. One star. Filming and editing were really good. One star. They restricted the comedy relief to Jack Sparrow. One star. Overall, the story was more like Curse of the Black Pearl and less like the lame second film. One star. Dialog was clever and funny. One star. Total: eleven stars.
Now the black holes. The “action” started off lame and got worse as the movie progressed. I’m sorry, but two guys carrying a plank are going to notice a fully grown man jumping on the plank, not keep carrying him perfectly level through the crowd. I know these movies are supposed to be dopey on the action, but this stuff felt like a toothache that got worse as the movie progressed. One black hole. Claiming to be inspired by a great book but then ignoring it completely. One black hole. Mermaids were kind of dumb. One black hole. SPOILER ALERTS! They had a really interesting plot conundrum in having to transport a mermaid over dry land in a big aquarium but as soon as it became inconvenient she magically grew legs. One black hole. The Spanish had a secret goal they could have accomplished about 45 minutes into the film by destroying some artifacts but didn’t. One black hole. So much deus ex machina that God must have been working as a Production Assistant on the set. One black hole. A shockingly anticlimactic ending. One black hole. They crowbarred in a really dumb romance that made almost no sense. One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
So a net total of two stars. Not bad, and if you can stomach dumb Disney action entertaining. If you can approach it with the right attitude (cough cough stoned cough cough) it will actually be a lot of fun, and for the most part good for kids too (I had another crying baby in the theater, BTW. What is up with you parents???). Worth seeing in a theater, in my opinion.
Not sure what I have on deck for tomorrow. I have a lot I am doing this week and am getting ready for a big gaming convention this weekend. If any of you are going to Kublacon stop by and say hi. Talk to you soon.
Update on what is going on in my nerd life.
Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately, but this last weekend I was going to go to the SAWS Challenge Warhammer Tournament in Sacramento. While not huge, it is big enough and been around long enough to be worthy of being called a Grand Tournament and therefore worth my full attention. This meant I spent a big chunk of last week painting some new models and rank fillers. I was up until 2am Thursday and barely made it.
The tournament was fun and frustrating in equal measures. I won’t get into specific details in this as most of you readers probably wouldn’t understand the nuances of the game, or even care much for that matter. I had a conflict with one of my opponents regarding his willful misinterpretations of the rules that cost me a lot in the course of the tournament. Let’s just say I don’t want to play that guy ever again. Otherwise it was a typical tournament; lots of really great opponents, some awesomely painted armies, and a lot drinking going on before, after, and during the event. I place 8th overall in spite of getting screwed and had 4 great games and 1 horrible one.
Something that may interest my female readers is the girl to guy ratio stayed about the same as usual at 1 to 30. If you are a girl that feels you need to have your ego stroked by having a large number of desperate guys paying a ton of attention to you I can’t recommend another type of event more. Even comic book conventions seem to get a decent number of women, but gaming conventions and tournaments might as well be held in the men’s locker room for the number of women present. Something to consider.
Other drunken gamer hijinks ensued. One of my inebriated friends locked himself in the bathroom of our hotel, vomited into the toilet, and then passed out on the tile, blocking access to the bathroom and forcing another one of my wasted friends to wander outside in his boxer shorts to relieve himself behind a bush at 3am. Another group of our friends had an “upper decker” rendered unto them, adding to the general hilarity of the weekend. If you don’t know what an upper decker is you should count your lucky stars. I won’t say if I know the guilty party was, but I can say odds are the victims will never find out.
Anyway, in spite of the 5’9″ fly in my soup I had a good time. However, now that the event is behind me I have the time to work on things like this blog. I am also going to get on with my elaborate t shirt descriptions. If you haven’t seen them I think they are really good. This 8 Bit Revolution shirt from the video game t shirt category is one of my personal favorites. It kind of spans the scope of what I like to do in these.
Anyway, tomorrow I think I am going to do my final review for WOW Cataclysm, and on Wednesday probably a review of the movie Priest, which I have been looking forward to for a long time. I only hope it comes out better than Dylan Dog.
Nerd Dating: Online Dating pt 8: understanding poster’s careers
I’m actually having a blast writing these, and in my very humble opinion seem to be coming out with some brilliant stuff, so I will continue. Incidentally if you have a careers you haven’t seen me list or I seem to be in danger of missing email me and I will try to address it.
Software engineer. These people are almost exclusively men, at least online. The extremely rare female software engineer is so surrounded by geeky, desperate single men that they will never have to go online to meet anyone. For guys, they tend to fall into two camps; spiteful ego destroyed cubical code monkey-drones and gung ho super creative free spirits who loves their job and company. The first guy will suck you down like a giant squid in an even more giant flushing toilet bowl. He is a spineless despair magnet. The second guy is obviously the cool one and will be fun to hang out with with tons of weird, cool trivia for witty conversation and will be more or less a great boyfriend. The problem is at first appearance these two guys look shockingly alike. The cool guy is often overworked and presents himself remarkably like the despair guy trying to front a positive image. The trick is to ask them how they feel about there job and hope the despair guy is not good at lying.
Firefighter. Please. Do you really think a male firefighter has to go online to meet women? This guy is a complete and utter fake. Occasionally you might see a female firefighter, and if you are cool with women who are literally more manly than you are (in a fortitude sense, although occasionally in a physical sense too) than go for it. However, the few that I have met are so sick of all the excess testosterone flying around at work that they will most likely grind any semblance of machismo you may or may not possess into the ground.
Police officer. Cops actually do show up online once in a while. It’s not easy to meet women when most of the people you are interacting with are criminals of one type or another. On the other hand, there are women who will sleep with any cop, so they don’t have a ton of trouble. They do tend to be kind of controlling, and your friends will be on edge when they meet him or her. Female officers have a lot of the same issues that female firefighters have, and carry guns. On the other hand, if you date a cop and are into it they generally have handcuffs with them, which can be fun in the right circumstances.
Sales people. Another area I have entirely too much experience with. Sales people actually fall into two camps; hard sales and relationship sales. Hard sales people are essentially used car salesmen. They tend to be really good liars and think fast on their feet. They also feel no guilt in ripping people off. Relationship sales people work with the same customers year after year and tend to be more honest and concerned about their customers well being. In both cases sales people all tend to be freakishly charming, tell great stories, and have weird yet harmless hobbies. They also tend to have pretty loose schedules, so if you are looking for someone who can take a weekday afternoon off at any time this person is great. Men tend to appear like type B personalities but are actually type A. Women tend to be strait up type A and are generally attractive and excellent manipulators. In general this person can be really fun to date but you have to dig a little to get to their real personalities.
Fitness trainers. Good luck. These people almost always have great bodies and tend to want to date the same. If you somehow charm one of these to go out with you, then expect to receive crap from them on almost all levels of your diet, health, and exercise regimen. They are like born again Christians, so expect to receive crap for eating ranch dressing on your salad. They also tend to be kind of boring to talk to, unless you get into them telling you about all their psycho ex boy or girlfriends. However that that is like trading out boring purgatory for a new kind of hell. On the other hand, every time you get bored you can check out their ass and be reminded why you are there. Don’t expect a real relationship unless you are a fitness nut, but the eye candy is good. For men, these guys are not usually muscle heads but rather runner types. Women are inevitably aerobics freaks and spin class instructors who do yoga to relax.
Retail employee. These people are good to date if they are young, and hell to date if they are middle aged or older. When they are young they tend to be fun, hip, and excited by cool stuff. When they are old years of dealing with customers (who all suck) have beaten them into a bitter little troll who’s only respite is bitching about it to someone, usually you. This can be somewhat offset if the employee is actually a manager, but if the person is 38 and still working the floor at Footlocker than you can expect to hear a lot of stories that all seem to start with “The stupidest customer came in today and…”
That’s it for now. More tomorrow. Please send me the professions you want to hear about via comment.
As for yesterdays question, Donkey Kong versus Mecha-Godzilla, after posting it I was inclined to roll with Donkey Kong, as flaming barrels are a pretty good attack. But then my friend Dave texted me with some interesting research he did. Mecha-Godzilla is protected by a layer of armor made of NT-1 and coated with a layer of artificial diamonds. It absorbs the energy from energy weapons and transfers it to his Plasma Grenade, located on his waist. After all that info I am going to have to go with Mecha-Godzilla. (Donkey Kong image courtesy image of the video game t shirts)
For today, I dive back into the fantastic world of Steam Punk to propose the following question; who would win, Steampunk Abe Lincoln versus Steampunk Palin?
Video Game Review: Starcraft 2
Time to take a break from the dating and get onto other nerd topics. I figure the star/black hole rating system I developed for movies could readily be applied to music, tv shows, and video games, so I am going to play with it as well. This will be for the video game Starcraft 2, Wings of Liberty.
I think it fair to say I have a certain amount of history with Blizzard (see about five years of my life flushed down the WOW drain. I still think the game is great, but I have given them a lot of my time and money) and a lot of it negative. I was not going to play this game, but then the faction shirts from the video game t shirt category started blowing up and becoming the best selling shirts, so I figured I had better see what all the fuss was about.
For those of you living in a cave and not familiar with the national sport of South Korea, Starcraft is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) game that involves collecting mineral and gas resources, using them to create troops, buildings, and vehicles, and then attack your opponent who will be doing the same thing on the other side of the map. In PvP (player versus player) you can play one of three factions, the Terrans (basic humans with cool power armor), the Protoss (high tech space elves with backwards legs and almost no facial features), and the Zerg (biological nightmares blatantly stolen from the Tyranids of 40K mashed up with Alien). Each faction plays differently and more or less requires a different style of play. Also, the Zerg are responsible for the gaming phrase “zerging it”; in other words, rushing in as fast as possible in hopes the boss drops dead before he wipes the party to the sound of Vent recriminations.
Anyway, I played the original SC a lot and enjoyed it, so despite my annoyance at giving Blizz more of my money I was happy to be playing it again. Let’s get into the review process. Stars first.
The game is still a lot of fun. I quite enjoy RTS’s and this one has all the best elements of one. Three stars. The campaign story is actually pretty cool, with choices you can make to directly influence your future actions. One star. Each of the three factions is a different style of play and fairly interesting. One star. The map scrolls with admirable speed and game play is bug free. One star. Resources are limited and require careful choices of where to direct it. You never end up with a huge surplus of resources (the Dune II issue). One star. The maps are cool, complex, and incredibly varied. One star. The between mission interface is relatively seemless, and the NPC characters are pretty cool (especially Tychus Findley). One star. If there is one thing Blizzard does extremely well it’s multi player over the web, and this game is no exception. Two stars. The graphics are extremely good, if a little cartoony. One star. When you get a mission that requires you to keep a specific NPC alive they don’t deliver said NPC in a short bus and equip him with tissue paper armor, Nerf gun, and the inclination to run straight into certain death. One star. In fact, the missions were varied, complex, and hardly ever infuriating. Two stars. The game controls and UI (user interface) are simple and extremely intuitive. One star. The AI, while not the super-genius monster the long load times would imply is coming, is smart enough to make for a challenging, complex battle. One star.
Now the black holes. The game is created by Blizzard. One black hole for personal bias. They took 12 freaking years to develop it. One BH. The game, when set on a decent graphics level, takes about 10 hours to load one mission. Two BHs. If you fail a mission and have to go to an earlier autosave it STILL takes 10 hours to load. One BH. The between game interface, while cool and entertaining, also takes about 5 hours to load. One BH. Since they aren’t getting a monthly subscription from us Blizzard has opted to screw us by only giving us one race campaign in the game, requiring us to pay $50 for the Protoss experience and AGAIN for the Zerg one. One BH. They don’t tell you what the achievements are until AFTER the mission is done, requiring you to go back at least a couple times. One BH. The mini map still tends to send your troops straight in exactly the direction that will get them killed ASAP instead of somewhere useful. One BH. You still find yourself micromanaging pretty much everything and end up with three SCV’s scratching themselves on the ass end of the map while you are distracted by other stuff. One BH.
That’s 17 stars and 10 black holes, for a net of 7 stars, and extremely good score for me. If you played Starcraft 1 this will feel like taking an old, extremely well fitting shoe and giving it booster rockets. If you didn’t but are familiar with RTS games you will pick it up with relative ease and enjoy it. If your RTS experience is limited to playing Angry Birds on your iPhone prepare for a fairly long, painful learning curve.
That’s it. Dating advice tomorrow.
Nerd Dating: Casual Dating
I was going to review a couple movies I saw recently, but had something happen last night that got me thinking about this subject and I think it will write about it.
First of all, I am not talking about casual sex, but rather keeping it casual on the date. Here is the situation:
I had an urge to get out of my office for the first time in about a year and see a movie. I decided on Skyline because it looks interesting and I can review it for another blog post. I called a couple of friends to see if they want to come along but in a bizarre twist everyone had something to do. What is up with 
that? Doesn’t everyone spend Friday night photographing t-shirts, playing Starcraft 2, and writing product descriptions? What is this thing called a life and where does one procure one?
(Starcraft 2 Terran logo image courtesy of the video game t shirt category)
Anyway, I did not want to go alone, so on a lark I went to the holy land of all things weird and sleazy in the dating world, Craigslist (that’s a little unfair. I have met some great girls on CL. However, for every cool girl I meet I end up dating about 14 psychopaths, so I tend to tread lightly). I posted something like this:
“I’m bored and am going to go to see Skyline at 10:20. If you are so inclined and want to do something totally casual send me an email and we can meet up at the box office. Here is a pic so you can recognize me, although odds are I won’t even shave so don’t put a lot of effort into getting ready. Please send one and we can set this up.”
Extremely casual, and I got two quick responses, both really attractive. I went to the movies with one of the girls. We met out front, chatted a little in the theater, and enjoyed the movie. The whole thing was totally relaxed and surprisingly fun. Neither one of us really had any major expectations and it worked out great. At the end of the movie I walked her to her car. I sent her a thank you email and today she responded with her phone number and an invitation to call her again. Kind of cool.
I can say this is actually really fun and even if the girl is not a good match, really good practice for your rap with girls in general. The three secrets to being good at anything are practice, practice, practice. And who knows? This thing with the girl from last night could take off and even if it didn’t, at least I didn’t have to go to the movies solo. All around good thing.
