Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I saw Scott Pilgrim over the weekend and thought it was one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining movie and had a number of highly stylized fight scenes and music gigs which grabbed my attention. Some of the more interesting moments included enemies turning into a pile of coins after they were defeated just like in a video game and one of the seven evil exes having Vegan powers, which were taken away in a cameo by Thomas Jane, after he was tricked by Scott Pilgrim into drinking half & half.

Never having read the graphic novels it was based on, I had no idea what to expect, other than Michael Cera playing the awkward dude who somehow always wins the girl. He has definitely been typecast and I have a feeling that is exactly how he is in real life. The movie was filled with an assortment of interesting characters, including Pilgrim's gay roommate Wallace, who had the uncanny ability to send text messages to Scott's sister without him noticing, Knives Chau, Scott's 17 year old Asian Catholic school girlfriend who he broke up with to be with to be with Ramona Flowers, and of course Ramona Flowers.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Family Guy Star Wars Trilogy

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the JediImage via Wikipedia
Family Guy is by far my favorite show on television and the original Star Wars Trilogy are my favorite movies of all time. A few years ago they started making hour long episodes of Family Guy plugging in characters from Family Guy in to the original Star Wars Trilogy, with Peter Griffin as Han Solo, Chris as Luke Skywalker, Lois as Princess Leia, Stewie as Darth Vader, Brian as Chewbacca, and Meg as various space creatures.

Other characters from the Family Guy universe include Mort Goldman as Lando, the Giant Chicken as Boba Fett, Carl as Yoda, Quagmire as C-3PO, Cleveland as R2-D2, and Mayor Adam West as Grand Moff Tarkin.

I've been loving those episodes and am looking forward to the next one.

The first episode was called Blue Harvest and was based on A New Hope, the second one (The Empire Strikes Back) was called Something Something Dark Side (a reference from an earlier episode in which Stewie said that the Emperor discovered the formula for perfect Star Wars dialogue by saying "something something something dark side something something something complete"). The newest one, based on Return of the Jedi, will be called It's A Trap!
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Friday, August 13, 2010

Greatest Film Sequels of All Time

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes BackImage via Wikipedia
In reference to movie sequels, people always say that the original is always better, or that a sequel can never be as good as the original. I am inclined to disagree (I'm always up for a good sequel), and apparently so are many others.

I was listening to Paul & Young Ron on the radio the other day and they read off their list of the ten greatest film sequels of all time. Among them were The Godfather II, Aliens, The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, The Road Warrior, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Their list is a good start, but mine would look a little different. Here goes:

10. Superman II
9. The Dark Knight
8. Aliens
7. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
6. Back to the Future Part II
5. Ghostbusters 2
4. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
3. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
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Friday, August 6, 2010

Silent Hill and Resident Evil

Silent Hill HomecomingImage via Wikipedia
My favorite genre of video games is survival horror, ala Resident Evil & Silent Hill. They are the only games that manage to continually shock me, more so than any horror movie I have ever seen. They have the perfect balance of creepy music, atmosphere, gore and interesting plot, although the plot of the Silent Hill games can be a little difficult to follow. I am currently playing Silent Hill: Homecoming for the XBOX 360 and before that I played Resident Evil 5 on 360 and Resident Evil 4 on Nintendo Gamecube. I even have fond memories of playing Resident Evil 2 on Sega Dreamcast back in the day.

As far as the difficulty of the games is concerned, they provide a challenge, but not enough to lose entertainment value. Of all of these games, I would say that I found Resident Evil 4 to be the most difficult. The first level seemed almost impossible at first and I kept running out of ammo too soon, but once I got past that obstacle the game progressed normally. The games are also long enough to make one fell they have not wasted their hard earned money.

Unsurprisingly, I am a fan of the films based on these video games. The first Resident Evil movie was awesome, the second one was really cool, but the third one sucked big time. I'm confident that the upcoming film Resident Evil: Afterlife will more than make up for it. Silent Hill was incredibly reminescent of the feel of the video games and was beautifully done, especially the sequences where the town switched to Hell mode complete with warning sirens and everything. I am definitely looking forward to the sequel.
Resident Evil (film)Image via Wikipedia



Monday, August 2, 2010

Online Dating Sites

As many of you know, it is very difficult to meet people after graduating from college and getting out into the real world. That is why the concept of online dating is such a good idea and why it has become so popular. Unfortunately, I think it is a better idea in theory than in practice. I for one am a member of 3 online dating sites: jdate, okcupid.com, and plentyoffish.com. First of all, a majority of the girls on jdate are unpaying members, meaning they cannot receive and respond to e-mails. They also cannot send instant messages unless the guy messages them first.

I have had many dates with people I have met from various sites, and I can say they all have one thing in common. Most of the girls look nothing like they do in their profile pictures. Its like the profile pictures were taken before they gained a lot of weight and havent been updated since. This is just not fair. I've also had some 'interesting' dates with these same people. There was the girl who I met at Starbucks and her mother was waiting for her in the parking lot the whole time. Then, there was the girl who invited me to her house for a first date to hang out and talk, but she ended up not even turning off the tv while I was there. There was also the girl who was obsessed with sex and wanted to know how many sexual partners I'd had. I hadn't had any, but since she was being so forward I decided to ask her what her number was. Big mistake (she told me her number was 16 and she was only 21 years old). She also brought me a bottle of lube on our 2nd date.
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Sunday, August 1, 2010

Meetup.com

For a while, I hosted a meetup group called the Boca Raton Comic Book/Sci-Fi/Horror Meetup Group. I managed to gradually attract 62 members to the group. I hosted a total of 18 events, ranging from meeting at Starbucks to grab some coffee and talk about these topics to meeting at local comic shops to going to see the newest sci-fi or horror movie. I even scheduled a meetup at an arcade, which no one showed up to. The highest attendance I ever had at one of my meetups was 4 people, including myself (and 2 of those people were my friends). The problem was that a bunch of people signed up for each of my events, but few if any actually attended

I have heard from several meetup organizers that this trend is typical, but those groups tended to be larger than mine, so if their events have less people than the amount that originally signed up its not as big of a deal. I am still active in several meetups, mainly movie related ones which meet rather frequently.

I used to be involved in more meetup groups, but I either lost interest or can't go anymore. There was a sci-fi one which was fairly interesting at first until it became apparent that they did the same thing every meeting (met in a conference room at a far away Dunkin Donuts for discussion and online videos), there was the volleyball one which I enjoyed but can no longer attend because of my back problems, a beach walk one where I was the youngest person by far, and an urban bike ride which I can no longer do because of my back as well.
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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Netflix

Image representing Netflix as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase
Netflix is one of the greatest inventions ever. When I first heard about it I was skeptical, mainly because I was one of the few who enjoyed going into a Blockbuster store and wandering around until I found something I wanted to watch, reading the back covers of all of the DVDs. I enjoyed talking to employees who would give me recommendations and knowing that my movies were being returned to an actual store.

My favorite part of Netflix is the streaming video. More and more titles are becoming available to watch directly on my computer so I don't even have to wait for a DVD to ship to me. Talk about instant gratification. Plus, this way I can watch as many movies as I want for less than $10 a month. Even when I do have the occasional movie shipped to me, it only takes 1 business day. Granted, I can only have one movie sent at a time, but thats ok because I don't use that service very often.
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