It'll Never Fly

First, let me say, I’ve never read the book. It is, however, sitting on a shelf at arm’s length as I write this, so I have every intention of doing so.

The interesting thing about this movie is its use of interpolated rotoscoping to achieve a cel-shaded look to it (don’t worry, I had to look it up, too). Gives it a very strange look that keeps you slightly distracted throughout the film. I’m sure that was the intended result, and they put it to good use. There were some effects in there you probably couldn’t do otherwise without it looking really hokey.

As I watched, I really started to wonder what this movie was supposed to be about. Basically, an undercover narcotics agent gets too entrenched in his role, and gets addicted to the same substance he’s supposed to bring down (think Jack Bauer, in the third season of 24). The first part of the movie follows Bob Arctor and his buddies on their drug-enhanced day to day activities in comedic style. Then it takes a darker turn when Arctor starts to realize he may have passed the point of no return, and that people might not be who they seem.

The first 24 minutes are available for viewing at IGN’s Filmforce (age verification required).

Hmm, what can I say about this movie? Well, it caused me to have to create a third graphic for my movie reviews. The yellow open hand cautioning you can mean a few different things:

1) I liked the movie, but probably have no interest in seeing it again.
2) I desperately wanted to give the movie a thumbs up, but either found enough faults with it not to, or couldn’t justify giving it a full recommendation.
3) I desperately wanted to give it a thumbs down, but yada yada yada…

I thought it was okay, but it was slightly disappointing. I haven’t seen the original Wicker Man (or read the book it was based on, Ritual), but I think I might have to just to see how the story unfolds, which was my biggest problem with the current version. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I was separated just enough from the characters to guess the conclusion fairly early on. Then again, most movies with a twist work better the second time around, after you know what the twist is, when you can watch to see how well they mix it in.

I think I would’ve liked to see more of the weird goings-on in the community. There were several scenes where they’d show a weird character or a weird situation, and you’d wonder, “Ooh, I wonder how that fits in to the story,” but then they’d never go back to it. It was just there to hit home the point that these people are royally messed up. That’s it…. Meh.

Spoiler: Like why were all the guys silent? Obviously, the allusion to worker bees was hard to miss, but were their tongues cut out or were they just uneducated? Did the pilot really need to be killed? There didn’t seem to be anything ritualistic about his murder, although the way in which he appeared to die made it seem like there was something going on there, but of course they don’t go into it. So are they against murder or aren’t they? Are they witches or aren’t they? I’m guessing this is what I was supposed to have taken from the movie, but it just pisses me off more than anything.

I definitely had flashbacks to the village from “The Prisoner“, which came out in 1967, which was also the same year that Ritual was published. Coincidence? I think not…

It has the always beautiful Molly Parker in it, which was nice. That reminds me, the “Twitch City” DVD comes out on October 17, 2006. YouTube has some clips.

All it really did was make me look forward to Ghost Rider next year.

After months of endless anticipation, it finally arrived. Would it be the movie to end all movies, or just another rushed Hollywood hack job hoping to cash in on its star power?

Well, I just went and saw it with Kent (of Kentcer.com fame) and the survey says… it was really good (and DVD-worthy). For the type of movie it is (copious creatures senselessly attacking), I definitely put it in the upper echelon, in the same vein as Lake Placid and Slither. This movie is about snakes. And it’s about a plane. And it’s about said snakes on said plane, for which it makes no apologies. Nor should it need to.

The real question is: if Snakes on a Plane takes off (pun intended), will this be a new trend we’ll be seeing in Hollywood? Would Pulse have been a better movie if it had been called Ghosts in a Cell Phone? Would more people have gone to see The Descent if, instead, its title had been Hot Chicks Kicking Ass in a Cave? I think so, too. Now the important thing is to not go overboard like those crazy Brits.

• Technoslice
  (tags: howto macbook windows virtualization totry)

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Everyone has their list of top games without which they can’t imagine ever having gone through life. It’s kind of like Desert Island Movies, but with video games. It’s not so much a list of games I’d want if I were on a desert island, rather than a list of games I’m recognizing as having influenced me and my life in some large or small way.

I started off trying to do a Desert Island Video Games list, but, having tried, I don’t think it’s possible to come up with as small a list for games as it is for movies. Movies from one decade to the next don’t really change that much. Sure, technological advances mean better and more realistic special effects, but the actual story telling aspect of movies hasn’t really changed since the earliest days of humankind. I could see it being possible to create a Desert Island Video Games list for a particular console, but not for an entire lifetime.

I tried keeping the list to just my top 5 favourite games, and quickly realized that was too limiting. Then I tried 10, but that didn’t work, so I thought I’d shoot for 25, then 40…

So here it is in all its glory! My top 129 video games of all time, presented in chunks in reverse order, starting at the last (but by no means the least) and eventually reaching my bestest, most favouritest game in the whole world of all time (yes, including the future).

[I haven't started writing it, yet, but I'll provide a link once I do. This is just a teaser to let you know what I'll be up to for the next little while.]