Well it is, but in all honesty I haven't really been gaming that much, I mean in a sense of playing lots of games. Hence the big posts about movies since I pretty much only play Modern Warfare 2 these days. It's a funny story...(if this were like Scrubs it would probably cut to a dream or flashback sequence but, it's just a crappy blog so...) Actually it's not, basically I had boycott the game, not because of all the dedicated server BS that went down, but pretty much because my history of first person shooters growing up has been strictly PC. Now I played shooters on consoles, but I never could fully get the grip of them, I just work better with a mouse and keyboard. For a long while the only shooters I played were Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. Oh, and that dreaded Counter-Strike.
I played the SHIT out of Counter-Strike let me tell you. I was never anywhere near OGL standards or anything, but I could hold my own. I got pretty damn good at Scout no-scopes which was always fun. But I loved CS, I played almost every night with friends. For a long time I barely touched other genres of games, esp when HL2 came out with, followed by the awesome-ness of the Orange Box. Thinking back to my days in college playing CS, it's just funny. Since those were the days when I had little money being a college kid with no money for anything but food and probably DVD's but not high quality gaming headsets, I had a crappy pair of regular walkman style head phones and what I liked to refer to as a "pencil-dick mic" and I would have to lean all in and speak directly into so teammates could hear me. My roommate and suitemates would always ask what I was shouting about or who I was talking to. Now I have a great Logitech headset that I don't think I could live without. Anyway, we got off topic there, so yea, I played a lot of CS, got pretty good, and quit as I do when most things get boring. The influx of cocky, brash 12 year old kids and ratio of people with mics grew, and I got tired of being pissed on and shit talked by some kid who goes to bed at 9PM. I moved on and played a TON of RPG's, a good deal of Blizzard games, finally settling into World Of Warcraft for a solid 4 years. And as I said above, I got pretty good, and got bored again.
When this new game came out that people were blown away about (COD4:MW) I was in a TF2 phase and didn't care much for Modern Warfare. I never touched the first one at all, my brother gave me his copy, but since it was his I couldn't always go online or whatever with it. When the second one was announced, I figured I'm steering clear. I had put in my time with military shooters and was happy with my RPGs and 360 games. So game comes out, I don't get it, life goes on. My gaming world didn't come to a halt or anything, I played Borderlands and was perfectly happy...until New Years.
We head over to the greatest EVE player in the world's house (I had a submission for fun, but I couldn't find the legendary DEERBIRD 4 LYFE picture to edit, I will find it dammit) and he had gotten it for the holidays. Before the major drinking and fun began we were watching him play, and I got lost in the game. The next day we sat around recovering for a bit and passed the controller around and each took a turn playing. To say I fell in love with the game is sorta an understatement, because even though I got destroyed my first time playing, the next day when we left, after a 1h45m drive home, I rushed to Target(sold out) and Best Buy (1 copy on shelf) to get it before they closed and proceeded to play til like 1-2AM. The game is amazing.
Now this is commonplace to most people who played the first one, but since I never touched it, I was blown away. The way they incorporated slight RPG elements into a primarily FPS game works wonderful. The addicting grasp of multi-player fun has just hooked and reeled me in once again. As it stands, I'm decent at the game. At the end of most matches, I've sucked and come in last but I don't even give a shit about scores or leaderboards or any of that. What I love is just the thrill of playing, getting that game winning kill, calling in a Predator missile, or just working with my team to win the match. Yea, it's awesome and I feel good when I come out with a positive kill-death ratio, but for me, it's just the thrill of the game. And isn't that what it should be about? To most, probably not, to most it probably is all about the leader-boards but whatever.
In short, but not really because my posts are never short, I've been playing and will be playing MW2 for the next few weeks. Mass Effect 2 comes out next week, which I am really looking forward to, but don't plan on picking up right away...maybe. As it stand ME2 comes out on the 26th, I have yet to beat the first one because I have gaming ADD. Two weeks later on 2/9 Bioshock 2 comes out. I'm really excited for BS2 and don't want to pick up Mass Effect 2, only play it fleetingly between MW2 rounds, and then move to Bioshock without giving it the proper time frame to play. If I can burn through Mass Effect in the next few days, maybe, just maybe I'll pick up a copy.
For now, Modern Warfare 2, my heart belongs to you and only you.
Thanks for reading!
- Nerdsbeware Out
Friday, January 22, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
All aboard the hype train! Choo Choo... Part III The Finale
Last stop, all off folks. This week I finish off my retrospective of movies that I've viewed over the past few days, one generally tied to some sort of major marketing, insane buzz or general chatter. Today we touch on comedies! Over the past few weeks I've watched NUMEROUS comedies, and sad to say that most of them were just not funny at all. Since there are quite a few here, I'm going to just go with small blurbs about each one.
Land Of The Lost: Terrible. It wasn't even that the movie was bad, I mean it was bad, but it was just boring. I didn't laugh once. The plot was weak, but again when you are trying to make a movie out of a 70's Sid and Marty Krofft show, you don't have much to go on. My two biggest grips with the film were first while I never watched the original show, I knew that Rick, Will and Holly were a family, a father and his two kids. In this iteration, Rick was a fumbling scientest, Holly falls in love with him (shes some college age woman?) and Will is a redneck who loves fireworks. Not related at all, pretty lame. The second thing that bothered me is once again Will Ferrel was playing Will Ferrel. There was nothing new about his character. Hey I'll scream a bunch in an angry voice, I'll make dumb comments so on and so on. It was weak. Danny McBride (who I really like) just played the same guy he did in Tropic Thunder. The only saving grace was the beautiful Anna Friel whose performance even fell short (go watch Pushing Daises). Over all bad movie.
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard: From the outside this movie looked like it could be good. With a decent cast and a glimmer of comedy gold, I had hopes for this one. They were quickly squashed about 15 minutes into the movie. Another flat comedy that just was trying to hard. I'm sparing plot descriptions for length here but basically its about a super car salesmen played by Jeremy Piven and his team of sales people. Basically the reason this movie sucked is that it pushed the "random" envelope to much, it was trying to be a new Anchorman. Anchorman is probably my all time favorite comedy, with its super random moments(News team street gangs WTF?) and the idiocy of people("They say 60% of the time, it works every time.") being the main reason for this. Surprising enough the only part of the movie that made me laugh was Will Ferrel in a small cameo. The Goods tried doing the whole random moment, people saying and doing absurd things way to much with a weak plot to stand on and in my book, didn't sell me shit.
Adventureland: I put this in the comedy post, since it's billed everywhere as a comedy, but my god this movie was so a drama in my book. Yes, it had parts that could make you laugh if you were so inclined to do, but I never was. If you had told me off the bat this was a drama about kids growing up in the 80's or something, I might have had more interest and enjoyed it more. What we got was a bunch of commericals and trailers picking out what I guess "they" (whoever "they" are) thought were the funniest parts, mainly consisting of Bill Hader saying something that people would find funny. As dramatic movies go, it was decent, as comedies go, it was bad. Ryan Reynolds was ok, for once he didn't play himself, Jesse Eisenberg was decent but as my roommate put last night "a poor mans Michael Cera." So true, this dude does skinny, nerdy and awkward pretty well, and what makes me question the movie is that it's directed by the guy who did Superbad, staring Cera. Was that role originally intended for him? Either way, dullsville.
500 Days Of Summer: Finally starting to get to the good stuff. This one is short, not much to say really. It was a good romantic comedy, I truly enjoyed it. I love Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was really good in the movie. The simple fact that he can play Cobra Commander in one movie, and the play the lead in a romantic comedy is pretty cool. The story wasn't mind blowing, boy meets girl, falls in love, girl doesn't feel the same, and we have our plot. What I liked about the movie is that it doesn't take a linear path recounting the 500 days. We start in the 400's and then skip around to see how the relation developed and fell apart. Normally I would hate it, but in this case, it worked so well for the movie. Again if were defining things in comedy standards, it wasn't laugh out loud every minute of the movie, but there were a few parts that made me laugh and smile. I definitely recommend seeing this one when you can.
Zombieland: I loved this goddamn movie so much. When I first read about it I thought "ok awesome another comedic take on the whole zombie genre!" Shaun of the Dead is by far in my top 10 favorite movies of all time, and they did so much to establish the whole zom-com thing that I knew I had to see this movie. What was nice is that it didn't look like Zombieland was TRYING to be Shaun either, it looked like it wanted to establish its own place. Woody Harrelson was actually fantastic in this movie, he hit his points perfectly while still being able to be more than a one dimension character. Jesse Eisenberg worked in this movie, unlike Adventureland. His quirky, shy, spaz act worked wonderful for the character. Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin were awesome. Again as for zombie movies go, it's not to heavy on the gore and zombie stuff, which I actually liked despite the movie being called Zombieland. It was more about how these four people learn to live and survive in a world over run by zombies. I hope they do as planned and make a whole bunch more sequels in the Zombieland universe. My biggest complaint, the movie was only 1h24mins, way to short. Overall this movie falls into my Top 10 of '09 movies for sure, watch it cause it's awesome.
The Boat That Rocked (aka Pirate Radio): I posted this on my facebook in a conversation with a friend, for the US release of the movie they changed the name to "Pirate Radio" and it bothered me. The movie is a British ensemble cast (save for Philip Seymour Hoffman) about rebel DJ's broadcasting rock music in the late 60's that was not well favored on regular British radio airwaves. As I said before, my suspect for the name change, America has an obsession with pirates and since the three Pirate movies are well liked over here, I assume the higher ups decided that noone would want to see a movie called The Boat that Rocked, we should rename it Pirate Radio because people love pirates! Whatever, I watched it under the banner of The Boat that Rocked, and really enjoyed it. The movie is really about the music since nothing really happens other than the DJ's play music and hang out while British government tries to can them. I'm not a fan of the music in the movie, I'm not a fan of Brit pop from that time period. Before I get flamed to Hell and back, I respect what a lot of those bands did for music, they just aren't my style or what I enjoy listening to. All that aside, the movie was great. An amazing cast, a good director and parts that made me laugh out loud. I really enjoy the whole British movie scene, and hope to see more movies make their way over here.
The Hangover: And finally we come to the end. I choose to end this with Hangover because these three posts were all about hype, and by far The Hangover garnered the most hype over the summer for being the "comedy of the year" from many people. The first time my girlfriend and I watched the movie, we laughed a lot, it was funny. I like Todd Phillips as a director, I really liked his other movies which include Old School and Road Trip. So when we finished the movie we were just like "eh it was good, but not as good as everyone made it out to be." I went on to watch the movie again at another point, and again and it began to grow on me. The movie was unapologetic. They made fun of everything and everyone, but did it without going overboard like The Goods did. Having watched the movie a few times now, I've grown to love the movie, and I can't wait for the supposed sequel that is being worked on. Most people have had a night of drinking (granted in their case there was other factors...) when they wake up and just think what the hell happened to me, and where Dude, Where's My Car failed hardcore in terms of the whole lets retrace our steps, The Hangover did perfectly.
With that we come to a close on our three part look at what hype can do for a movie, good and bad. I still have a bunch of movies in the bank to check out, so expect some more reviews, maybe in a more timely manner, but as you all know this is a gamers blog, and to be totally honest, when I get home from work, I'm playing Modern Warfare 2 and just pass over writing in this damn thing. What can you do?
As always, thanks for reading!
- Nerdsbeware out
Land Of The Lost: Terrible. It wasn't even that the movie was bad, I mean it was bad, but it was just boring. I didn't laugh once. The plot was weak, but again when you are trying to make a movie out of a 70's Sid and Marty Krofft show, you don't have much to go on. My two biggest grips with the film were first while I never watched the original show, I knew that Rick, Will and Holly were a family, a father and his two kids. In this iteration, Rick was a fumbling scientest, Holly falls in love with him (shes some college age woman?) and Will is a redneck who loves fireworks. Not related at all, pretty lame. The second thing that bothered me is once again Will Ferrel was playing Will Ferrel. There was nothing new about his character. Hey I'll scream a bunch in an angry voice, I'll make dumb comments so on and so on. It was weak. Danny McBride (who I really like) just played the same guy he did in Tropic Thunder. The only saving grace was the beautiful Anna Friel whose performance even fell short (go watch Pushing Daises). Over all bad movie.
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard: From the outside this movie looked like it could be good. With a decent cast and a glimmer of comedy gold, I had hopes for this one. They were quickly squashed about 15 minutes into the movie. Another flat comedy that just was trying to hard. I'm sparing plot descriptions for length here but basically its about a super car salesmen played by Jeremy Piven and his team of sales people. Basically the reason this movie sucked is that it pushed the "random" envelope to much, it was trying to be a new Anchorman. Anchorman is probably my all time favorite comedy, with its super random moments(News team street gangs WTF?) and the idiocy of people("They say 60% of the time, it works every time.") being the main reason for this. Surprising enough the only part of the movie that made me laugh was Will Ferrel in a small cameo. The Goods tried doing the whole random moment, people saying and doing absurd things way to much with a weak plot to stand on and in my book, didn't sell me shit.
Adventureland: I put this in the comedy post, since it's billed everywhere as a comedy, but my god this movie was so a drama in my book. Yes, it had parts that could make you laugh if you were so inclined to do, but I never was. If you had told me off the bat this was a drama about kids growing up in the 80's or something, I might have had more interest and enjoyed it more. What we got was a bunch of commericals and trailers picking out what I guess "they" (whoever "they" are) thought were the funniest parts, mainly consisting of Bill Hader saying something that people would find funny. As dramatic movies go, it was decent, as comedies go, it was bad. Ryan Reynolds was ok, for once he didn't play himself, Jesse Eisenberg was decent but as my roommate put last night "a poor mans Michael Cera." So true, this dude does skinny, nerdy and awkward pretty well, and what makes me question the movie is that it's directed by the guy who did Superbad, staring Cera. Was that role originally intended for him? Either way, dullsville.
500 Days Of Summer: Finally starting to get to the good stuff. This one is short, not much to say really. It was a good romantic comedy, I truly enjoyed it. I love Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was really good in the movie. The simple fact that he can play Cobra Commander in one movie, and the play the lead in a romantic comedy is pretty cool. The story wasn't mind blowing, boy meets girl, falls in love, girl doesn't feel the same, and we have our plot. What I liked about the movie is that it doesn't take a linear path recounting the 500 days. We start in the 400's and then skip around to see how the relation developed and fell apart. Normally I would hate it, but in this case, it worked so well for the movie. Again if were defining things in comedy standards, it wasn't laugh out loud every minute of the movie, but there were a few parts that made me laugh and smile. I definitely recommend seeing this one when you can.
Zombieland: I loved this goddamn movie so much. When I first read about it I thought "ok awesome another comedic take on the whole zombie genre!" Shaun of the Dead is by far in my top 10 favorite movies of all time, and they did so much to establish the whole zom-com thing that I knew I had to see this movie. What was nice is that it didn't look like Zombieland was TRYING to be Shaun either, it looked like it wanted to establish its own place. Woody Harrelson was actually fantastic in this movie, he hit his points perfectly while still being able to be more than a one dimension character. Jesse Eisenberg worked in this movie, unlike Adventureland. His quirky, shy, spaz act worked wonderful for the character. Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin were awesome. Again as for zombie movies go, it's not to heavy on the gore and zombie stuff, which I actually liked despite the movie being called Zombieland. It was more about how these four people learn to live and survive in a world over run by zombies. I hope they do as planned and make a whole bunch more sequels in the Zombieland universe. My biggest complaint, the movie was only 1h24mins, way to short. Overall this movie falls into my Top 10 of '09 movies for sure, watch it cause it's awesome.
The Boat That Rocked (aka Pirate Radio): I posted this on my facebook in a conversation with a friend, for the US release of the movie they changed the name to "Pirate Radio" and it bothered me. The movie is a British ensemble cast (save for Philip Seymour Hoffman) about rebel DJ's broadcasting rock music in the late 60's that was not well favored on regular British radio airwaves. As I said before, my suspect for the name change, America has an obsession with pirates and since the three Pirate movies are well liked over here, I assume the higher ups decided that noone would want to see a movie called The Boat that Rocked, we should rename it Pirate Radio because people love pirates! Whatever, I watched it under the banner of The Boat that Rocked, and really enjoyed it. The movie is really about the music since nothing really happens other than the DJ's play music and hang out while British government tries to can them. I'm not a fan of the music in the movie, I'm not a fan of Brit pop from that time period. Before I get flamed to Hell and back, I respect what a lot of those bands did for music, they just aren't my style or what I enjoy listening to. All that aside, the movie was great. An amazing cast, a good director and parts that made me laugh out loud. I really enjoy the whole British movie scene, and hope to see more movies make their way over here.
The Hangover: And finally we come to the end. I choose to end this with Hangover because these three posts were all about hype, and by far The Hangover garnered the most hype over the summer for being the "comedy of the year" from many people. The first time my girlfriend and I watched the movie, we laughed a lot, it was funny. I like Todd Phillips as a director, I really liked his other movies which include Old School and Road Trip. So when we finished the movie we were just like "eh it was good, but not as good as everyone made it out to be." I went on to watch the movie again at another point, and again and it began to grow on me. The movie was unapologetic. They made fun of everything and everyone, but did it without going overboard like The Goods did. Having watched the movie a few times now, I've grown to love the movie, and I can't wait for the supposed sequel that is being worked on. Most people have had a night of drinking (granted in their case there was other factors...) when they wake up and just think what the hell happened to me, and where Dude, Where's My Car failed hardcore in terms of the whole lets retrace our steps, The Hangover did perfectly.
With that we come to a close on our three part look at what hype can do for a movie, good and bad. I still have a bunch of movies in the bank to check out, so expect some more reviews, maybe in a more timely manner, but as you all know this is a gamers blog, and to be totally honest, when I get home from work, I'm playing Modern Warfare 2 and just pass over writing in this damn thing. What can you do?
As always, thanks for reading!
- Nerdsbeware out
Thursday, January 7, 2010
All aboard the hype train! Choo Choo... Part II
Moving swiftly down the tracks to our next station, we come upon Avatar. What is/was being hailed as James Cameron's biggest project ever, a holy grail in terms of CGI, story, setting and many other wonders. The hype meter behind this one nearly burst raining shards of nerdy fanboyism all over the place. There is a lot of history behind this movie, and far be it me to try and tell things that Cameron explains so much better, go check out the wikipedia page or the 100's of other movie sites boasting his words about the story and technology behind the movie. For now, this is a review of a movie brought to us by the man responsible for Terminator 1 & 2, True Lies, The Abyss and Titanic. This is about Avatar.
Now before people flame me and blow up at me after reading the first few paragraphs of the review, I'll put this out in the open. I ENJOYED AVATAR. Meaning I did not think it was a bad movie at all, in fact I liked it a fair amount, that being said it didn't blow my mind like it blew everyone else out there. This one for me, fell short of the buzz that it was generating out there. So again, please do not think that I hated the movie, or that this will just be a bash to the movie, I am simply here to point out my likes and dislikes with the movie. Also spoiler free here folks so enjoy.
No cold feet here, I'm jumping right into what I didn't like about the movie. First off was the story, not that it was bad or anything, it was good, it was just something that I have seen (presented in so many different forms) before. No one pegged this movie to be about the story really though, I mean yes it's integral to the movie itself, but hell I wasn't expecting it to be some fancy well known novel. The plot had that all to familiar man undercover who gets to involved with the organization he's infiltrating and ends up wanting to help his new friends. This had a better moral scale to it which I liked, Worthington's character was fighting for something he had grown to love and become a part of rather than the whole good guy turns to bad guy in turn becoming a bad guy but helping the somewhat likable villain...I pretty much just described the plot to The Fast and the Furious, and it just go to show how Avatar didn't fall into that trap of lamedom. Either way the plot fit the movie, and I wasn't expecting something like Terminator 2. I never pegged Cameron as a great writer, since I much more stand by his work with technology and directing as his strengths. The pacing of the movie was ok, I felt it was a bit to long, with way to much time setting up for the big battle that we all knew was going to come in tn the end. With the huge digital landscape that Cameron set up, I wanted to see more of it. Yes, there was a fair amount of Pandora shown, but I craved more, I wanted to see every valley and cave that this planet had to offer. Oh well, maybe in Avatar 2!
But out with bad in with the good, while I had a few gripes with the movie, I generally enjoyed it, mostly because I really like Sam Worthington as an actor. Granted he really hasn't done much stateside, really its only this and Salvation until Clash of the Titans comes out, but this was a different role for him, in my eyes. In Terminator he had the task of just being an action hero, a robot and a supporting actor. In Avatar, he was the show. There was much more of a dramatic element to Jake Sulley, while still holding onto that hero's edge. Granted for a good chunk of the movie it was his face somewhat grafted onto a 10ft. tall blue alien but still, the scenes with him in it I loved. Sigourney Weaver and Joel Moore filled out the science team well, and I really enjoyed Stephen Lang's tough as nails Colonel Quaritch. I haven't seen him in anything else expect Public Enemies in which he pretty much didn't say a word the whole film. The one thing that I don't think needs any recognition is the technology and CGI. I mean there's not much else to say other than it was amazing. Pandora looked fantastic, and the fact that the main female lead is completely CGI just proved how far we have come in terms of graphics. Again, the technology has been talked about to death, and I can basically sum it up in one word, amazing.
The hype was huge for this movie, and now I never went into it thinking that it was going to change the face of movie making (even though in terms of CGI & 3D it will) or be the best movie I have ever seen, but I was still looking forward to it. But I walked out of the theater generally apathetic to the whole thing. I walked out and thought it was cool, but at quite a few parts in the movie, I was thinking about scenes in Sherlock Holmes which I had scene a week before. I didn't walk out jaw dropped in awe of what I saw, and part of me felt sad about that. I WANTED to love the movie more than Sherlock Holmes, Dark Knight or even District 9, but I didn't. Maybe my tastes are changing, maybe it's just the fact that when movies build that much buzz it can't be as good as everyone says. In some cases it can be that good, Dark Knight had a lot riding with it, and it delivered. The story kept me hooked, the action kept me on the edge of the seat, the acting was awesome, it was 5/5 for me, Avatar hit like 3.5 out of the 5 for me.
In the end, the enjoyed the movie, I plan to buy it on Blu-Ray because the movie looked fantastic and will only look better in high def. While it didn't blow my mind all of the theater, I respect what Cameron did with the technology and can't wait to see what he has in store for everyone next. Maybe the sequal will better impress me. With that, my somewhat uninformative review (only because I wanted to leave out spoilers) comes to an end.
We finish up this three part review with The Hangover, but now I'm hungry and its lunch time so I take my leave of this digital journal.
Thanks for reading,
-Nerdsbeware
Now before people flame me and blow up at me after reading the first few paragraphs of the review, I'll put this out in the open. I ENJOYED AVATAR. Meaning I did not think it was a bad movie at all, in fact I liked it a fair amount, that being said it didn't blow my mind like it blew everyone else out there. This one for me, fell short of the buzz that it was generating out there. So again, please do not think that I hated the movie, or that this will just be a bash to the movie, I am simply here to point out my likes and dislikes with the movie. Also spoiler free here folks so enjoy.
No cold feet here, I'm jumping right into what I didn't like about the movie. First off was the story, not that it was bad or anything, it was good, it was just something that I have seen (presented in so many different forms) before. No one pegged this movie to be about the story really though, I mean yes it's integral to the movie itself, but hell I wasn't expecting it to be some fancy well known novel. The plot had that all to familiar man undercover who gets to involved with the organization he's infiltrating and ends up wanting to help his new friends. This had a better moral scale to it which I liked, Worthington's character was fighting for something he had grown to love and become a part of rather than the whole good guy turns to bad guy in turn becoming a bad guy but helping the somewhat likable villain...I pretty much just described the plot to The Fast and the Furious, and it just go to show how Avatar didn't fall into that trap of lamedom. Either way the plot fit the movie, and I wasn't expecting something like Terminator 2. I never pegged Cameron as a great writer, since I much more stand by his work with technology and directing as his strengths. The pacing of the movie was ok, I felt it was a bit to long, with way to much time setting up for the big battle that we all knew was going to come in tn the end. With the huge digital landscape that Cameron set up, I wanted to see more of it. Yes, there was a fair amount of Pandora shown, but I craved more, I wanted to see every valley and cave that this planet had to offer. Oh well, maybe in Avatar 2!
But out with bad in with the good, while I had a few gripes with the movie, I generally enjoyed it, mostly because I really like Sam Worthington as an actor. Granted he really hasn't done much stateside, really its only this and Salvation until Clash of the Titans comes out, but this was a different role for him, in my eyes. In Terminator he had the task of just being an action hero, a robot and a supporting actor. In Avatar, he was the show. There was much more of a dramatic element to Jake Sulley, while still holding onto that hero's edge. Granted for a good chunk of the movie it was his face somewhat grafted onto a 10ft. tall blue alien but still, the scenes with him in it I loved. Sigourney Weaver and Joel Moore filled out the science team well, and I really enjoyed Stephen Lang's tough as nails Colonel Quaritch. I haven't seen him in anything else expect Public Enemies in which he pretty much didn't say a word the whole film. The one thing that I don't think needs any recognition is the technology and CGI. I mean there's not much else to say other than it was amazing. Pandora looked fantastic, and the fact that the main female lead is completely CGI just proved how far we have come in terms of graphics. Again, the technology has been talked about to death, and I can basically sum it up in one word, amazing.
The hype was huge for this movie, and now I never went into it thinking that it was going to change the face of movie making (even though in terms of CGI & 3D it will) or be the best movie I have ever seen, but I was still looking forward to it. But I walked out of the theater generally apathetic to the whole thing. I walked out and thought it was cool, but at quite a few parts in the movie, I was thinking about scenes in Sherlock Holmes which I had scene a week before. I didn't walk out jaw dropped in awe of what I saw, and part of me felt sad about that. I WANTED to love the movie more than Sherlock Holmes, Dark Knight or even District 9, but I didn't. Maybe my tastes are changing, maybe it's just the fact that when movies build that much buzz it can't be as good as everyone says. In some cases it can be that good, Dark Knight had a lot riding with it, and it delivered. The story kept me hooked, the action kept me on the edge of the seat, the acting was awesome, it was 5/5 for me, Avatar hit like 3.5 out of the 5 for me.
In the end, the enjoyed the movie, I plan to buy it on Blu-Ray because the movie looked fantastic and will only look better in high def. While it didn't blow my mind all of the theater, I respect what Cameron did with the technology and can't wait to see what he has in store for everyone next. Maybe the sequal will better impress me. With that, my somewhat uninformative review (only because I wanted to leave out spoilers) comes to an end.
We finish up this three part review with The Hangover, but now I'm hungry and its lunch time so I take my leave of this digital journal.
Thanks for reading,
-Nerdsbeware
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
All aboard the hype train! Choo Choo... Part I
There are many types of hype that gets put out there in the world these days. There's good hype, bad hype, hype about hype and general fervent craziness over something. Over the past two or three weekends I got a chance to see a few movies that all bought a ticket to ride they hype train.
Normally I reserve this space for gaming stories, but as you all know sometimes I like to change course and talk about other stuff, mainly movies as they are my 2nd great passion. This review will be split into a few pieces so that I can formally review each of the movies, without stunting them in some form. The three movies in question are Sherlock Holmes, Avatar and The Hangover (a little late but whatever). First stop on our journey, Sherlock Holmes! PS these will be spoiler free so don't worry, read on!
I talked a bit about Holmes a few posts ago and talked about how excited I was for this movie. In relation to the title of this post, the hype and talk behind this movie wasn't HUGE, but it was there. I mean first you have Robert Downey Jr. who is riding high right now with Iron Man and Tropic Thunder boosting him back into huge fame and now with Iron Man 2 coming out in May, plus a few other good movies up his sleeve, hes rising fast to the top once again. You have a huge leading man, a great supporting cast of Jude Law and Rachel McAdams, as well as Guy Riche (famous for the awesome London gangster trilogy that is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and RocknRolla). To me at least that's already a winning combo. With the setting of the story in the dark, seedy areas of London, we get a MUCH different look at the world of Sherlock Holmes.
Again in keeping with the whole spoiler free deal, I won't go into to much detail about plot, but this one seemed to have a nice old school Holmes feel to it. Now I say that in somewhat ignorance because as I write this I haven't actually seen any Holmes movies. Fail on my part. Either way the first complaint I heard about this movie was that it wasn't like the older Holmes movies. The trailers show you that Holmes is a man of action, relying less on intellect and more on beating the ever living crap out of people. First assumptions of this couldn't be further from the truth. Watching Holmes break down something like a fight or figuring out where he is or who something was, were some of the biggest highlights of the movie for me. Yes, Downey plays Holmes as a cocky, brash, some what crazy shoot first and ask questions later character, but at the same time, can switch on a dime and be as smart as the character that many people have grown to love.
Jude Law was awesome as Dr. Watson. While he was the more straight laced, think first, he played the perfect foil for Holmes. The dynamic between the two characters worked perfectly. The banter and teamwork came so natural to the two actors that you could swear they have been working together for years and knew each others beats and rhythms. I guess that comes from having two top class actors playing leading roles in your movie. The plot itself was really cool, a good mix of mystery, supernatural occurrences and a villain trying to take over the world. Mark Strong played Lord Blackwood, a man with what many believed to be powers rooted in the occult trying to take over London and bring a new reign to power. Again I am keeping this as spoiler free as I can so I can't really go into much more detail other than I really enjoyed the story. The pacing kept me hooked, the beats worked perfectly with the story going from a strong action sequence to great bits of mystery solving and deduction to move to plot, right back into action. The movie had a fair bit of comedy too, mainly coming from Holmes interactions with Watson, but the biggest laughs and stupid wide grin that came from me were the simple scenes of Holmes just figuring things out. Again I wish I could say more, but without giving anything away (mainly because I want everyone to go see the movie for themselves) that is all I have for now.
I HIGHLY recommend seeing this movie, while you don't have to rush out to theaters to see it (even though I would) I strongly urge watching it when the DVD/BD drops in the coming months. Tomorrow we pick up steam on the hype train as we roll into our next station: Avatar!
Thanks for reading, welcome to 2010!
- Nerdsbeware out
Normally I reserve this space for gaming stories, but as you all know sometimes I like to change course and talk about other stuff, mainly movies as they are my 2nd great passion. This review will be split into a few pieces so that I can formally review each of the movies, without stunting them in some form. The three movies in question are Sherlock Holmes, Avatar and The Hangover (a little late but whatever). First stop on our journey, Sherlock Holmes! PS these will be spoiler free so don't worry, read on!
I talked a bit about Holmes a few posts ago and talked about how excited I was for this movie. In relation to the title of this post, the hype and talk behind this movie wasn't HUGE, but it was there. I mean first you have Robert Downey Jr. who is riding high right now with Iron Man and Tropic Thunder boosting him back into huge fame and now with Iron Man 2 coming out in May, plus a few other good movies up his sleeve, hes rising fast to the top once again. You have a huge leading man, a great supporting cast of Jude Law and Rachel McAdams, as well as Guy Riche (famous for the awesome London gangster trilogy that is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and RocknRolla). To me at least that's already a winning combo. With the setting of the story in the dark, seedy areas of London, we get a MUCH different look at the world of Sherlock Holmes.
Again in keeping with the whole spoiler free deal, I won't go into to much detail about plot, but this one seemed to have a nice old school Holmes feel to it. Now I say that in somewhat ignorance because as I write this I haven't actually seen any Holmes movies. Fail on my part. Either way the first complaint I heard about this movie was that it wasn't like the older Holmes movies. The trailers show you that Holmes is a man of action, relying less on intellect and more on beating the ever living crap out of people. First assumptions of this couldn't be further from the truth. Watching Holmes break down something like a fight or figuring out where he is or who something was, were some of the biggest highlights of the movie for me. Yes, Downey plays Holmes as a cocky, brash, some what crazy shoot first and ask questions later character, but at the same time, can switch on a dime and be as smart as the character that many people have grown to love.
Jude Law was awesome as Dr. Watson. While he was the more straight laced, think first, he played the perfect foil for Holmes. The dynamic between the two characters worked perfectly. The banter and teamwork came so natural to the two actors that you could swear they have been working together for years and knew each others beats and rhythms. I guess that comes from having two top class actors playing leading roles in your movie. The plot itself was really cool, a good mix of mystery, supernatural occurrences and a villain trying to take over the world. Mark Strong played Lord Blackwood, a man with what many believed to be powers rooted in the occult trying to take over London and bring a new reign to power. Again I am keeping this as spoiler free as I can so I can't really go into much more detail other than I really enjoyed the story. The pacing kept me hooked, the beats worked perfectly with the story going from a strong action sequence to great bits of mystery solving and deduction to move to plot, right back into action. The movie had a fair bit of comedy too, mainly coming from Holmes interactions with Watson, but the biggest laughs and stupid wide grin that came from me were the simple scenes of Holmes just figuring things out. Again I wish I could say more, but without giving anything away (mainly because I want everyone to go see the movie for themselves) that is all I have for now.
I HIGHLY recommend seeing this movie, while you don't have to rush out to theaters to see it (even though I would) I strongly urge watching it when the DVD/BD drops in the coming months. Tomorrow we pick up steam on the hype train as we roll into our next station: Avatar!
Thanks for reading, welcome to 2010!
- Nerdsbeware out
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