This Week in the Media

Boom Blox:

Boom Blox is a game made for Nintendo’s Wii by Steven Spielberg and Electronic Arts. It is a puzzle game that involves the player knocking over, pulling, sliding, colliding, and blowing up blocks. There are hundreds of puzzles to solve by yourself and many games to play with friends, such as shooting games and a Jenga-like mode. There is also a creation mode where you can build your own puzzles.

Puzzle games are one of my favorite genres of games. That may make me a nerd, but when they’re good, puzzle games can be addictive and lots of fun. And Boom Blox is a good puzzle game. The Single player mode is a lot of fun, mostly thanks to the motion controls of the Wii. The motions to move a block or tile mimics the motion you'd use in real life very well. The game simple and enjoyable, a lot like Tetris. The best part of the game is the Jenga multiple player mode. I have been playing it with my room mate most nights since we got it, and it’s exciting to see who’ll mess up first and make the structure crash. It's as exciting as Jenga is, at least. Bonus note- It makes a fun drinking game, too.

The game is good, but it costs $50, and I can’t endorse that price tag for a puzzle game. It probably cost so much because Speilberg’s name is attached to it. If you’re interested in it, either rent it or wait for it to go down in price.

Choke:

Choke is a 2001 novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, who is also the author of Fight Club. It is about a man named Victor Mancini who purposefully chokes on food in restaurants in order to con the person who saves his life out of money. Victor does this because he works at a terrible minimum wage job and needs the money to keep his mom in the nursing home she is in. Also, Victor is a sex addict. I’d go deeper but I don’t want to give out spoilers just in case somebody reads this and wants to check out the book.

I never read any other books by Palahniuk, but this one hasn’t made a fan out of me. It isn’t bad, though. The story is interesting enough, although I have a slight phobia of nursing homes which made it hard to read at times. Victor being a sex addict and knowing other sex addicts added a lot of interesting material, but in the long run I just didn’t like it.

I don’t like Palahniuk’s writing style. He spends the first chapter telling the reader not to read the book. That’s a unique way of starting off a book, true, but I don’t like being toyed with. If you tell me not to read your book, odds are I won’t. Reverse psychology is dangerous that way. Also, he repeats a lot of things. Stale isn’t the right word, but it’s the first that comes to mind.

Palahniuk was a very popular author amongst my friends, so I guess I was just expecting something more. But like I said, it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t my style.

Season 1 of Burn Notice:

Burn Notice is a new show on the USA network. I have a long history with USA, and it’s a good history. The War Next Door, a show about Kennedy Smith, a super secret agent who just wants to retire, becomes next door neighbors with his seemingly indestructible nemesis, Kriegman, debuted on the USA network. It was a fun show, but only lasted 13 episodes. As a side note, it was made by the people who created The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Also, USA brought me Monk and Psych, both shows I like a lot. Especially Monk. I watched that show religiously for a while. But anyway, on with Burn Notice.

Burn Notice is about spy Michael Westen who gets fired for an unknown reason. The government virtually banishes him to Miami to start a new life, but Westen wants to know why he was fired. The show is good. It has a great blend of action, intrigue, and comedy. The writing is smart and the actors were well chosen my favorite casting job being Bruce Campbell as the lush best friend. The first season is over, but the second will premiere on July 10, 2008.

World War Hulk:

World War Hulk is a Marvel comic book miniseries that takes place after Planet Hulk. In Planet Hulk, the Hulk was sent against his will to an alien planet where he could live in peace without injuring anybody on Earth. The planet turned out to be ruled by an evil King, and the Hulk led a revolution against him. Once the revolution was won, Hulk was crowned the king and married his love interest. But then the spacecraft Hulk was sent on exploded, killing Hulk’s wife and unborn child. The Hulk suspects the spacecraft was detonated by the people who sent him to the planet, the Illuminati. The Illuminati is made up of some of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe, such as Professor X, Blackbolt, Iron Man, Reed Richards, Namor, and Dr. Strange. Enraged more than ever before, the Hulk decides to come back to Earth to get revenge on the ones who did this.

I really liked the story line of the miniseries, and the writing was good enough. It wasn’t the same caliber of the Civil War miniseries, but it was above average. There were plenty of good fights, culminating in the fight between the Hulk and the Sentry. The art was different from what I was expecting, but still good. It was just cartoonier than I was expecting. Overall, if you are in the need of a comic book miniseries, this is as good as any other.

Slow Days

I am officially out of school for the semester, and this will be the first summer semester I've taken off since beginning my quest for higher learning. What this means for you, is that I will be updating more frequently. Eventually. It's going to be a slow start, but I'll work up to a good speed. Scout's honor.

I mean, with The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight coming out, how can I not have anything to say. Plus, you can't forget Hancock, Get Smart, and any of the myriad of films debuting this season. Summer is a great time for the media.

By the way, I saw Iron Man. I might have mentioned that before. I'm working on a review of it. I don't it to be some half-hearted pile of words. I want it to reflect my experience. It'll be coming within the week.

One movie I forgot to mention my excitement over is the new Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The Indiana Jones trilogy (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade) is the only collection of movies without a weak point. The Jurassic Park, Rambo, original Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop trilogies, along with others, all had at least one ungood movie. Maybe it wasn't a terrible movie, such as Die Hard with a Vengeance, but it obviously didn't live up to the other two. Indiana Jones is different though. Temple of Doom is hands down my least favorite, but it is still a great movie.

So, I'm curious as to what the next one will bring. Harrison Ford is now older than Sean Connery was when he played Indy's father in the Last Crusade. Will Ford's age effect the quality of the new film. Shia LaBeouf appears to be a main character, and while I think he is a good enough actor, will he fit in to the Jones universe well? Also, the Nazis, Jones's classic adversaries, will be replaced with Russians. So many things are different, I wonder if it'll feel like one of the other movies or not.

If it doesn't feel like one of the classic Indiana Jones movies, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I just hope it is good, in some sense of the word. I hope it's entertaining, thrilling, funny, action-packed, and most of all, nostalgic. Watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was a Christmas tradition in my family, and it was the most awesome tradition my family ever had. I grew up watching these movies, and if this one sucks for one reason or another, I will be very disappointed (re: Star Wars Episode I, II, and III).

But enough about things I am looking forward to. What have I been up to? Well, WiiWare debuted for the Wii on May 12, 2008. For those of you not in the know, WiiWare is a channel on the Wii menu where you can download original games made for the Wii. They are small sized games as to save you space on your Wii's hard drive, and they cost, on average, between $10- $15. I played one of the games, LostWinds. In this game, you play as two characters at once. With the Wii Remote, you are a wind spirit. You can blow gusts of wind and move objects and etc. With the nunchuk, you control a kid. You, as the player, have to use both characters to solve puzzles and bring peace back to the game's fictional world. The game cost $10 and was about four hours worth of game play. That works out to $2.50 per hour of game play, which I am okay with.

The game was good. The graphics were surprisingly nice. I wasn't expecting much, so maybe I was easy to impress, but I was put in a minor state of awe all the same. The game play
was smooth. Pushing the kid around with wind was fun, as were the other techniques you learned (I'd prefer not to spoil anything). As far as a puzzle/adventure game goes, this one was pretty good. However, I am looking forward to more of what WiiWare has to offer.

Also, I have been watching past seasons of House, MD. I'm currently in the middle of the second season. The show is good, but it's been on long enough for you to know if you like it or not. I like it, and it's neat to compare and contrast the current season with the past seasons. I'd say they are different shows. House really grows into his crankiness in the current (4th) season. This is a good thing because if House was a nice guy, I wouldn't care about him or the show. In the earlier seasons I like how big of an impact that soap opera House is addicted to has on him and the show. If there is one thing the same between the two seasons, it's that I still love Foreman. Best character in the show. He's smart, not afraid of House, and has a good set of morals/ethics.

Unfortunately, this is all I have for now. Expect to hear from me again soon about the Iron Man movie.

Ranting

Let me speak a moment about video games. This argument has been made by better people than me, but, as far as I can tell, I am one of the stronger proponents of it. Video games need to stop sucking. Well, they don't "suck" per se. At least not in the typical definition. What video games are doing is trying to be overly mature like an annoying younger brother. This recent occurrence is best shown in the fact that colors are disappearing from our video games in lieu of a brown tint. For simplicity, I will entitle this happening as "The Browning."

Video games were born of color, once the technology came into existence. Obviously, Pong was not in technicolor. However, look at games on the Atari 2600, Colecovision, and Intellivision. Every game from Frogger to Bomb Squad contained vivid colors and for more reason than colors are pretty. They were colorful because what the games were depicting were fantasy; just figments of somebody's imagination. Video games weren't trying to be realistic. Developers knew their audience, and their audience wanted to feel like they were tripping on LSD. That is perfectly admirable. But now things have changed.

Video games aren't only for the fat, loser kids who sit alone in their darkened basement trying to beat the next dungeon in Legend of Zelda. Video games are, for lack of a better word, "cool" now. Well, some are. See, games like Mario Galaxy for the Wii or Ratchet and Clank are considered to be either gay or childish. The "cool" games are, of course, sports games (Madden) and games that have succumbed to The Browning. These are primarily first-person shooters, like Crysis and the poster child of them all, Halo. However, The Browing also affects games in the third-person shooter genre such as Army of Two and Gears of War.

I'm not saying The Browning shouldn't exist. I imagine myself feeling the same way if every game was an ocular assault of colors so powerful I went into convulsions. It isn't the fact that these games exist that bother me. It is the fact that these are the games that create the future trends. Halo, with all of its marginally-fun glory, has been a juggernaut in sales. Game developers, as standard human beings, care about money and their own wellbeing, so they take what made Halo so popular and apply it to every game they make from then on.

But, like I said, developers are only doing this to make a buck. If the public would stop buying these games, then they'd stop making them. So, there are two things that need to happen for me to be happy. First, internet game critics need to take their heads out of their rears and judge a game objectively. I know avoiding the media and their hype is difficult to do, but just because WWE.com says Army of Two is going to be amazing, doesn't make it a fact. Hear me Tycho of Penny-Arcade? I love your style of writing and wit, but you have lost your spine when it comes to gaming. I haven't heard you say a bad thing about an over-hyped game in years. Sorry for that tangent, but it had to be said. Anyway, critics need to get back to doing what their job entails: Criticizing.

Secondly, and here is the big one, consumers need to stop buying these games. A game can be perfectly fun without having a dirt-colored tint. Super Mario Strikers, Super Smash Bros.: Brawl, and No More Heroes are all fun games that have many colors. It is you, the consumer, who is stifling the creativity of the video game industry, and, most importantly pissing me off.

To end the video game rant portion of this update, I would like to thank Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation for providing the public with criticisms of games, even those he likes.

Moving on. It is less than two weeks from the Iron Man movie. I am very excited about it, to say the least. Every time I see the trailer I perk up. The action looks great, the acting looks great, the effects look great. This entire movie looks great. I read a review from Australia and they seem to agree. From everything I have been reading, the general public agrees, too. I was very nervous about this movie for a very long time Considering it was first scheduled to be finished by the summer of 2005, I think my anxiety was well placed. However, if you want something done well, it takes time. Look at Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Both of those games had enormous delays, but are considered to be one of the best games for their respective systems. I hope for the best, and if a sequel is created, that it involves either Titanium Man or The Ghost. Both are badass villains, in my opinion.

Even though I am wary of new television series, I will give one a try if it recommended by a friend. So, with said recommendation, I gave Life a try. It is a drama on NBC about a detective who was wrongfully imprisoned for more than ten years and has recently been released and put back on the force. I wasn't a fan of the premise, but I gave the show a shot and watched the first season, and I have to say it was good. It didn't blow me away, and I have small problems with it, such as the weird facial expressions and over0bearing zen-like attitude of the main character, but it is a good show none the less.

Of course, I can't talk about TV without mentioning the recent return of two of my favorite sitcoms, The Office and 30 Rock. The debut episode for both of these shows sucked. The Office was overly dramatic and awkward, and 30 Rock was filmed with a different vibe and hardly even seemed like the same show. However, this last Thursday's episodes were great on both ends. The Office, while still awkward, went back to its roots of taking place at the office. 30 Rock brought back one of my favorite characters, Dennis, and it was a comedic masterpiece.

I saw a pretty weird movie a while ago. It's called Six String Samurai. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of the 1950s U.S., and the main character is a martial artist Buddy Holly lookalike with a sword in his guitar. The story is bizarre, but in a good way. The action scenes are actually really well done. A lot better than my expectations. The cinematography was weird, but it went well with the vibe of the movie. If you are an action movie fan, or a fan of weird movies in general, I say you should give it a shot.

Ha Ha, Dangly Parts

See, here's the thing, sometimes life throws you a curve ball, and the curve ball stomps in your windshield. I never posted last Sunday because I had an altercation last Sunday that involved my car being vandalized. As you can imagine, I wasn't in a writing mood after that. I was in more of a "Oh my God, my car is vandalized!" mood. However, everything is better now, and as a result, I am writing today instead.
In the life of video games I have been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl a lot. However, the difference is that now I have the American version and I can play it on my own Wii. I have unlocked every character and almost every stage. I've touched on everything else already, so now I will talk about the online aspect of the game. Playing online with friends is a lot of fun. The custom taunts are funny, and if you're geographically close to the person you are playing then the lag isn't too bad. It should be noted there is lag, though. The lag is bad enough that it may cripple some players, but I personally don't have much of a problem. Playing against strangers is fun as well, but the odds are much higher your opponents will be father away. This, of course, means more lag.
I watched the first two episodes of a new show on Fox, Unhitched. It is a show about these four friends who all recently ended long term relationships. The commercials looked distasteful and crude, which normally doesn't interest me. However, I gave it a shot because it stars Rashida Jones, who was on a number of episodes of The Office. The show is crude and distasteful at times, but there is a heart to it. I'm not saying I am in love with the show, but it could be a lot worse. The main actor, Craig Bierko, is pretty good. He delivers witty lines with grace and cool. The two other main characters, the naive Indian doctor and the trashy best friend who has been through three divorces, haven't impressed me much. I'll keep an eye on the show.
I watched Point of No Return. I may be typing hastily, but it is basically a remake of the French film La Femme Nikita. Bridget Fonda was a good choice to play the lead role, but the film lacked the seriousness of its French counterpart. Also, Louis Letterier has a lot more style as a director. To say the least, I was disappointed. Oh, also I hate Gabriel Byrne. I cannot tolerate him as an actor. I will touch on that subject later.
My uncle came to me and suggested I watch American Psycho 2. I hardly ever turn down a movie, so I said sure. There are only two movies in my entire life that I couldn't finish, so cheesiness and poor quality have little affect on whether or not I'll watch it. So, I popped in the DVD and began watching it. However, 20 minutes in something happened that I will not tolerate in film: The senseless murder of a cat. To be fair, I do not know for sure if the cat died. I turned it off like I mentioned before. The cat was placed in a microwave and the microwave was turned on, though, and I think that is evidence enough.
Cats are vilified in nearly every form media I have ever seen. It starts when you're young and watching cartoons. The only time Sylvester the Cat ever won a fight was when it was against another cat. In every other fight, whether it be against a dog, bird, or mouse, Sylvester always fell off a building or had an anvil dropped on his head. Then in movies cats are always subjected to torture for little reason. If there is something in a movie, then it should be important to the flow of the story. Actions push the story forward, so if a cat gets murdered, it should be important to the story's progression. This is hardly ever the case. In Mindhunters a cat was hung for no apparent reason. In Willard a cat was not only devoured by a fleet of rats, but it was tortured and chased for a five-minute long scene before eventually dying. A dog in the same movie just was bitten and then set free. There is no reason to film a cat's death besides realizing some perverse fantasy. And I think we have reached the point in film where if you want to see a cat die, there are dozens of movies you can watch instead of filming a new one.
Also, I saw a new movie, The Bank Job. It stars my favorite actor Jason Statham and some other people. It's about a bank heist that takes place in 70s Britain, and it is based on a true story. The story isn't bad. It had twists and turns, and it had many different stories that all wound up tying together. The thing is that, the characters just weren't interesting. That's the one downfall of the movie. Everything else is fine, but the characters aren't compelling. This leads to the movie being moderately boring. It isn't bad, but it just isn't interesting. Instead, go rent Snatch. You'll be happier.

Second Post

Good morning. This is my second actual post, and I'm on schedule. The first last Sunday, and now this one today. What's next? Will I manage to post next week? Well, we'll just have to wait and see.

I have been playing Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. I am a whopping one mission further than I was last week after a dozen of failed attempts. And now, I don't think I can complete the game. The game has screwed me so much, I think I am stuck. Ike, arguably the main character, has to fight an enemy called The Black Knight one on one. Apparently I haven't leveled Ike up enough, so he does hardly any damage (one damage point, to be exact) to the Black Knight when he attacks. And if I can't kill the Black Knight, then I cannot beat the mission. So, I am stuck.

On a more cheerful note, I have also been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl and I have been getting better at it. I was pretty good at the predecessor, Melee, but the physics for this game is different. Not worlds different, but different enough to screw me up. However, with some practice I have gotten better. The characters I have chosen for my team (spoilers warning) are Kirby, Pikachu, Diddy Kong, Snake, and Robot. I like Kirby for his jumps and aerials; Pikachu for his speed and smash attacks; Diddy Kong for his unique fighting style; Snake for his ability to control the stage; and Robot for his special moves. I think I'll eventually be able to take on anybody.

I watched a new game show Amnesia recently. It is ok. It is better than Pick-A-Box (Deal or No Deal) and Racial Stereotypes (Identity), which are the two last game shows I gave a chance. Dennis Miller hosts the show, and the premise is the contestant has to answer questions about their past. For example, a guy who was a high school cheerleader had to answer what was his high school quarterback's jersey number. A decent premise for a show, but I don't know. The show is still trying to find its groove. I'll give it a couple of more chances. I've only seen two episodes so far.

I have seen a few movies. First I saw a movie called Chinatown. It's a film from the 70s and it stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Nicholson plays a detective who investigates the death of an engineer. There's more, of course, but I don't like spoiling things. I love young Nicholson. In this movie he plays a smartass and I've never seen him funnier. The plot and writing for the movie are both good, with one of the most famous twists in film history coming near the end. And the acting, as I kind of touched on, is amazing. I strongly recommend this movie.

I also saw a movie called Sunshine. It stars Chris Evans and Cillian Murphy. It is about a group of scientists and astronauts in the future who live on an Earth with a dying sun, and they are on a mission to deliver a bomb to the sun in order to create a new sun. This was a pretty good movie. It started out as an exploration type film, but past the halfway mark it became more of a thriller. It was a neat turn, and I liked it. Also, I'm a sci-fi nerd, so it was hard for me not to like it, at least somewhat. The acting is really great. None of the characters are too amazing in themselves, but the actors do a good job portraying them, and make me care for the characters. I would like to personally congratulate Chris Evans and Cliff Curtis on their jobs. I like Curtis in what I've seen him in. He usually plays a kind of badass, or at least a no-nonsense kind of guy, and he shows a lot of humanity in this role. I am congratulating Evans because, honestly, I didn't know he could act so well. I mean, his acting highlights so far are the Fantastic Four movies and Cellular. Also, for those of you interested, it was directed by the same guy who did 28 Days Later.

The third movie I watched was The Chumscrubber. In a film class I took, I heard a fellow student recommend this movie to the instructor. "It's a lot like American Beauty," he said. The movie has been in my mind ever since because I would consider American Beauty to be an exceptional film. After watching Jumper, my friend mentioned to me Jamie Bell was the main character in The Chumscrubber, which she owned on DVD. My ears perked up and I asked if I could borrow it. She agreed and I watched it immediately. It was a roaring disappointment. This is about a bunch of rich, white people whose only real problem in life is that they have become too rich and have grown complacent in their lives. Jamie Bell and his girlfriend in the film are the only two people worth watching. I was just screaming at my TV when anybody else spoke. The acting is ok, I guess. My problems come with the story/writing and the directing. You could tell the director just got done watching American Beauty and tried to recreate it with his own touches. If he had left out his personal elements, it would have been a subpar ripoff of American Beauty, which might have made it better. However, he put in his own touches, such as the Cumscrubber video game ads, and just made it a terrible film. I contemplated breaking my friend's DVD, but that would be mean. Instead, I'm just going to throw it at her face when I see her again.

That covers my week in dealing with media. Hopefully I have better news next time we talk.