Avatar: Insanely good and insanely stupid

Avatar, for a while, looked to be the kind of insanely ambitious film that would put the venerated James Cameron under for good.

The good news is, despite some script problems, it’s such a visually amazing ride that it actually makes good on Cameron’s promise to be the Citizen Kane of 3D films.

The story follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as he takes over for his deceased twin brother in piloting a 10 foot tall alien avatar Na’vi on planet Pandora. What follows after that is essentially what you would expect, a Dances With Wolves with aliens that features Jake turning on his human employers and making sweet, sweet creepy love to Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).
Avatar is the Citizen Kane of 3D films in the sense that it doesn’t use it as a gimmick. Instead it works together with the mesmerizing special effects to absolutely draw you into the world of Pandora.

Holographic displays jump through the screen, vegetation zooms past the audiences head’s and multilayered sets take on true depth. It enhances every frame in a way that is, to put simply, amazing.

It also helps that the CGI is equally well done. The Na’vi look and act real, with never one texture or animation giving away that you are watching something that isn’t a living creature.

The performances of Worthington and Saldana have a large hand in achieving this, with their facial expressions mapped to their blue characters. While this isn’t a new practice, Avatar is definitely the first movie to get it right, as it feels truly organic and never falls victim to the glassed eye zombie syndrome you see in The Polar Express or Beowulf.

The biggest wrench in the experience is the story and dialogue, which gives us the kind of cheesy lines and plot holes that would bog the experience down in lesser movies.

Also, the reason the big bad military corporation is on Pandora? To harvest a mineral called “unatainium.”

Yes. Seriously. This is a movie with such a ludicrously large budget that nobody could of bothered to pay a decent writer to come up with something better than “unatainium.”

But before you can really reflect on that sample of brain nuking stupidity, you’re flying through the trees again in one of the best movies of the year.

It has a few problems, but Avatar does so many things right you don’t care.

Helen & Troy: The Real Review

Have you ever been to a high school play where there is one guy who doesn’t really act, he just mumbles through his half memorized lines? Doesn’t really have any reason to be there except that he thought it would get him closer to the girl playing Juliet?
Now imagine an entire one act play with every actor being that guy. As well as the writer and director.
You now have a rough idea of what it is like to sit through Helen & Troy, a production that feels so half assed that it borders on having no ass at all.
The actors aren’t actors. They just sort of talk to each other on stage, with no emotion. They sometimes talk slightly louder, as if they have some kind of clue as to what this gosh darn thing called emoting is, but can’t quite figure it out.
Helen is supposed to be drunk, but you would have no way of knowing if the other two on stage didn’t say so. She seriously fails at acting drunk, something 12-year-olds who have never even heard of Vodka know how to at least attempt.
The story focuses on Troy trying to break up with Helen, so he can be with her mother Tina.
It’s not an original story. It’s not an interesting story. It’s a story that exists as a threadbare excuse for drama, drama that isn’t conveyed by the bored zombies on stage.
I had to write a critical review of this for JACC, and I seriously could not find one redeeming quality in this thing. Oh, wait. Helen had a giant ass.

There you go.

Twilight review: Dear lord I tried

It’s a new semester, and with it comes a new staff at the Student Voice.
In addition to this new staff, we have a slew of new columns, such as returning editor Serena Swanger’s Go Green column and Benji Guerrero’s fashion column. Both are pretty damn good. I have a friend who is almost metrosexual, and he tells me that the fashion column is pretty useful.

So, in essence that means I have my work cut out for me. And the only way I could step my game up was to try and watch Twilight.

I should probably elaborate on this point. See if, being an examiner of the “geek culture” means I have to be relatively well versed in a large number of things considered “geeky” or having the chemical composition of “nerd.”

Vampires for a while existed somewhere in this culture, not quite mainstream and yet not quite on the level zombie romantic comedies.

The first Twilight movie changed that. It took the soft vampire romance image that had been introduced in the work of Anne Rice and evolved overtime with books such as Twilight.

So I decided that if I was going to continue making fun of Twilight, I had to make sure it was as bad as it sounded. So, I borrowed a copy of the film from someone on staff, and tried my damn hardest to make it at least 30 minutes before throwing something through the TV.

The first thing you notice about the film is that it stars a girl who’s character is card board thin, so that the teens and tweens watching can project themselves onto her and be the center of attention for vampire and non vampire pretty boys.

You also notice that the supposed vampires in the movie WALK AROUND IN THE FREAKIN DAYLIGHT. Granted it’s not direct sunlight, but that’s still pretty damn blasphemous.

I’m all for reinterpreting classic movie monsters for modern times, but taking out one of the central characteristics? Then it’s no longer a vampire.

I also had heard that when the vampires are in direct sunlight, they glitter instead of bursting into flames. I decided that if I could make it to this point in the movie, I could stop watching. And have visual proof that there is no god.

I made it to this point, and I was literally stunned. If you’ve ever wanted final and definitive proof that Twilight is literary porn for 12-year-old girls, it’s this scene.

So after viewing this insanity and making the horrible images stop by throwing my printer through the screen, I took a moment to reflect on how bad Twilight really is.

It’s undoubtedly an insipid movie that has a protagonist that amazingly has no personality, and yet enough to make you want to hold her head underwater until the bubbles stop.

But, to be fair, it’s no different than any other work that’s just as shallow and geared towards men, such as Transformers 2. Actually I think it’s safe to say that, since there are no racist robots, Twilight is better than Transformers 2.

So, there’s that at least.

Inglourious Basterds Review: Nazi killing for fun and profit

At some point in his career, Quentin Tarantino decided he was done with making
regular movies.
Instead, he developed a crush for making movies about other movies. With Kill Bill it was kung fu and samurai epics, and this carried on into Death Proof as an homage to classic 70 B-movies.
He’s continuing the trend with Inglourious Basterds a film that is a love letter to classic cinema.
Basterds is an intentionally misspelled fantasy WWII movie where a group of American GI Jews, led by Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, infiltrate Nazi occupied France with the goal of killing said Nazi’s in ludicrously graphic ways.
The story is told through separate acts, or vignettes, that focus on the Basterds as they go about terrorizing the Third Reich, as well as a few segments that don’t seem to directly relate with Nazi scalping.
At first this seems to be the fatal flaw of Basterds; the segments give the film a disjointed feeling, and with it a weird flow.
The movie moves past this awkward phase, however, and comes together to form a story that is Tarantino at his best; violent, overblown, and brilliantly hilarious.
The story feels like a modern day propaganda film, with Hitler being exaggerated to the point of being a cartoon character and the Basterds, as cruel as they may be, only doing what their country feels is absolutely necessary.
Featured is also polished writing that revels in long scenes of dialogue that seem to have no point to the main story, reminding us how rare it is to see a scene where two characters just talk amongst each other. No quick cuts. No action. Just dialogue.
Its impossible not to fall in love with Pitt’s Aldo “The Apache” Raine, with his thick Tennessee accent and charismatic gruffness. His speech is even more intense and strangely humorous then what is featured in trailers, and he most definitely gets his scalps.
Christoph Watlz’s Col. Hans Landa is the only other performance worth mentioning, but it’s for a good reason. He absolutely steals the show, showing an energy and aloofness that he manages to maintain even when speaking French, German and Italian. He has an unpredictability to his character that makes one act of violence towards the end downright shocking.
The direction is just as polished as the writing, with Tarantino holding back on the flourishes and dramatically epic shots that would make a movie such as this feel cheap.
It’s important to note the “fantasy” before WII, as this movie has as much historical accuracy as the Lord of the Rings. Tarantino doesn’t take liberties, he takes entire parts of our second World War history and throws them out the window.
Despite this, Inglourious Basterds manages to be one of Quentin Tarantino’s best movies in years.

Geek Culture: A salute to James Whitmore

James Whitmore, veteran actor of the stage and cinema, passed away recently from lung cancer. He was succeeded by his many sons and eight grandchildren.
I’m one of those eight grandchildren. My grandfather had a tremendous influence on our family. His passing was a slow one, as he was ill for 10 weeks after being diagnosed.
It still had a pretty severe impact when he finally left us, but not before the stalwart Obama supporter could watch the inauguration, and remark on how we may finally start getting it right from here on out.
The reason this is a column, and not a tribute article, is the fact that James Whitmore has contributed a great deal to the classic world of science fiction, and it only seemed right that this geek scholar took a minute to recognize that.
He would tell me how he enjoyed his work on the “Twilight Zone”, in an episode called “On Thursday We Leave for Home.” He also had a hand in the original “Planet of the Apes”, where he played the head ape of the assembly. Other then a genuine interest in the script and concept of the film, I honestly believe he took on the role (and grew to loath that decision thanks to some stuffy costume design) to have the opportunity to dress up as a bipedal primate.
Most importantly, he was in the movie that arguably kick started the genre of B movies that focused on mutated insects and animals wreaking havoc on civilized society, the aptly titled “Them”.
In the film a series of gargantuan ants make life difficult, and my grandfather played the soldier type of character who does his damndest to make life difficult for the ants.
The thing that I thought was interesting about my grandfather was that he wouldn’t turn his nose up at script if it had all tell tale signs of science fiction.
He also was one of those actors who never really sold out. He was an Obama supporter because he truly believed the man could bring change, and while a good number of people may know Mr. Whitmore as the Miracle Grow spokesman, he took on that role after discovering a passion for gardening on his own time.
James Whitmore embodied what made early science fiction movies like “Them” and “The Day The Earth Stood Still” so remarkable, an honest examination of mans follies, but with a tinge of optimism for the future.
One of his most memorable sayings, which I believe he said at a Thanksgiving a few years back spent in Mammoth, was “Lord knows we’ve made some mistakes, but I like to think we can change.”
This echoes early sci-fi movies, which condemned us for our use of nukes or reliance on warfare, but usually ended with a step towards realizing a way to abolish these facets of our culture.
It’s possible this was just an idealism that permeated the 50’s after the victory of our involvement with World War II, which eventually fell apart with the Vietnam War and the onset of the 60’s.
James Whitmore never lost that viewpoint however, and that’s why even though there has already been a good deal written about him already, this grandson wanted to honor one of the original kings of science fiction.

A call to imagination (still waiting)

So I haven't updated this blog in a few days. That is a fact that I have acknowledged, ever so painfully, as I attempt to begin the new semester at Moorpark College and attempt to pass my classes to become the gay and lesbian farm life journalist the world has been waiting for.

The monstrous amount of classes (apparently I need to know how to fly a biplane to cover gay farmers) has made keeping track of nerdy enough news for this valley a tad bit hard.

I've also met the unnatractive and yet seductive lady that is writers block, so even coming up with fake news has become a chore.

That's why I'm going to just shill two publications I currently work for.

Student Voice: If you go to Moorpark, Oxnard or Ventura, this is a student run newspaper you should be familiar with. If you don't, it's still an impressive paper and news site that manages to be fair and unbiased.

The Acorn: I've only written for the Simi Valley branch of The Acorn, but the others are just as well written and informative. The Acorn, no matter where you live, is a must if you want to keep up with the news in your community.

Ventura County Community College Spotlight: Moorpark College

Here's the Moorpark College arcade as previously noted, brought to you in gloriously crappy Ipone-o-vision.

The arcade, compared to others at community and (gasp!) UC colleges, isn't too shabby. Granted a lot of the cabinets are in less than ideal condition and one of the games, Marines Training, is not only cheesy as hell but also completely borked.

There are seven machines total, with two of them being devoted to the digital fighting arts and the rest what you would expect in this kind of establishment.

They are Street Fighter Third Strike, Marvel v. Capcom 2, the shittacular Marines Training, a cabinet that has a wide variety of games loaded onto the motherboard, an SNK machine that a few of their finest offerings, and lastly a Blitz machine.

It also has a relatively new trackball bowling game, but that bastard replaced the cheesey brilliance that is Area 51, so I'm not a big fan of that particular one.

Also, this arcade wins and makes most nerds salivate for Third Strike.


For those backwards mouth breathers who aren't familiar with Third Strike, I have nothing but sympathy. Because ironically anyone who hasn't heard of the brilliance that is Street Fighter: Third Strike will probably remain a virgin forever.

Thankfully this person doesn't exist, and everyone knows that Third Strike is the greatest fighting game of all time.

Sadly this machine has seen better days, with most of the buttons having an unidentifiable grime around them and a few of the buttons replaced with convex ones, as opposed to the western standard of concave.

The sticks also don't work quite as well as they should, with stiffness that can make it hard to pull off a semi circle move and a serious lag in responsiveness.

The Capcom v. Marvel 2 machine has the same problem, except to a much lesser degree. And of course the entire machine has a coat of that wonderful grime.

The rest of the cabinets work as expected, with the SNK machine being particularly noteworthy. The sticks and buttons all have a tight responsivness to them, making Metal Slug 3 just a little bit less hellish.

The arcade, as a whole, is in better shape then other places, with most of the machines in working order. The Third Strike and Capcom machines are too beat up for serious competitive play, but that's to be expected considering the kind of sweaty attention these two gems get.

Rise of the ghetto arcade machines

The Spring semester for most colleges has finally started, meaning other than enduring class cuts and the wonderful system that is public transportation, sweaty freshman and seniors will once again cram themselves into a run down remnant of an on campus arcade like clowns in a small car.

The Moorpark College arcade, which is where I am currently finishing up my education to become a Gay and Lesbian Farm Life Journalist, is in better condition then other colleges.

Still, it's disheartening to see the cracked paint and loose joy sticks on cabinets that haven't been mass produced in some time. Arcades are where a section of nerdom was born, and after those finally limp off into that sweet release of death, what will become of us who just want to spend $.25 and waste a few minutes?

A Mushroom Kingdom we can believe in.

You had me at hello.

This is probably older then dirt at this point, but I just stumbled upon Super Obama World.

Basically the game is a clone of  Super Mario World, but with Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama in place of video gamedom's favorite Italian stereotype.

Not exactly mind blowing stuff, but enough fun to at least waste an afternoon. Also, it's important to note that this isn't as heavy handed as other political flash games, barring the fact that most of the enemies in the game are pigs with lipstick.

http://superobamaworld.com/

Obscure Ancient Porn Parody Review-o-rama: Edward Penishands.

I have had a friend who throughout my life who would occasionally bring up a movie, in mixed conversation, that just about every part of my brain that is hardwired to coincide with reality completely rejected, thereby preventing me from even allowing myself to consider the possibility of it's existence.

This movie, with the kind of title that captures all the brilliance of a work with a few skillfully chosen words, was Edward Penishands.

Finally the functioning parts of my brain shorted out not long ago, allowing me to do a torrent search and see once and for whether this movie actually existed.

And it did.

Against all odds, all sanity, all taboos and social structure put in place to keep such a thing from possibly manifesting, Edward Penishands was a reality.

And it might just be the greatest thing our species has ever managed to accomplish.

Before we get into the actual review, let's just get one thing out of the way:

There he is, ladies and gentleman; Edward Scissorhands. Except with two cheap dildo gloves in place of scissors.

I can't get over it, really. An entire studio decided not only to create a parody of Mr. Burton's opus, but they actually replaced the scissors with male genitalia.

Somebody pitched this idea. Then an entire production team stopped laughing long enough to consider the idea seriously. Then they made this idea a reality.

This fact alone gives Edward Penishands a decent shot at dethroning Citizen Kane as the greatest film touched off by the hand of person.

The story to the film is something I won't dare spoil, if only for the fact that it follows the original source material surprisingly well.

The only major difference being that the kindly middle aged women selling door-to-door cosmetics is replaced with a kindly middle aged porn star selling door-to-door dildos.

She finds Edward in a drawing of a castle, wherein Edwards seemingly sentient mandibles get to work on the purveyor or marital aids, which of course leads her to bring him home with her and set about the events that would change the face of porn parodies with $14 budgets FOREVER.

The only problem with this film is that it utterly fails at being truly "arousing" in any way. Watching a women caress a man with a dildo glove kills any chance of attaining a "nerdrection."

This permeates the entire movie, almost as if Edward's wrist monsters are constantly watching over the actors from the scenery.

Still, Edward Penishands will probably stand as one of those porn parodies that not only overshadows the original work, but manages to make the rest of man's accomplishments look pathetic in comparison.

Take this humble woods man of the wild nerd plains advice, and torrent this movie. It may just change your life. 

Living in fear of the brainless

Today Nintendo revealed a patent for a system that may finally kick open the door to the pearly gates of the serious narrative driven video game for the main stream audience.

The patent, which you can read more about here, essentially allows video game virgins the option to watch a video of a developer playing the spot they are in if they are unable to figure out how to continue, or even have the computer take over completely and allow the player to jump back into the action when things look fun.

What's interesting about this news is the reaction it has been getting online. 

Forum dwellers and Kotaku Kommenters are acting as if this feature will finally drive the nail into what they believe has been a dieing feature in interactive entertainment; challenge. 

Any challenge, or neccessary build up of tedium even, can be skipped to reach the sweet creamy center of success. Instant gratification without any work, essentially turning our valued entertainment into an even cheaper source of "fun."

While I can understand the need to freak out and whine, I think that it's hard for these online social sevants to understand that this is no way meant for there kind.

It's for the people who have a hard time even comprehending how to control an avatar in a three dimensial plane. This system can allow them to come to terms with the fundamentals, and much like a toddler standing on shaky legs, learn to explore the world around them without help.

Fear and loathing in Las Vagas (CES)

This years CES came and went, and with it brought the continual steady drum beat that is technological progress. This of course brings us that much closer to Apple launching Sky Net and using our Genius preference list to destroy the human race.

Because I put even less effort into things then there are people who read this blog (-0), here's the link to a much lazier site that actually went:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5126932/ces-day-one-our-top-10

The biggest news was definitely the Palm Pre, a device that has finally made my Iphone look like a primitive cave man phone constructed of feces, shame, and more feces.

What makes the Pre so damn cool? It's just better than you, and to make matters worse, it's too humble to admit it. And you know you shouldn't, but that just makes you hate the bastard even more.

It also has an amazingly intuitive user interface that bridges the gap even more between personal computer and phone, along with a full keyboard and touch screen display.

The best part is undoubtedly the web browser; it is able to load full pages in a mere 10 seconds.

That officially makes the original Iphone look like a pile of three day old Chinese food on fire in the rain, with the 3G only looking slightly more appetising.

People who still use Apple's abortive attempt at cell phone technology are holding back the human race, as well as any other so called "smart phone."

In pure disgust of the travesty that has become may own communication device, I threw it into a clogged toilet that happened to be within three feet of my own toilet, and then urinated on it for good measure. 

Then I realized that I don't have the currency for the Pre thanks to the wonderful state of our economy and my own lack of mental stability, so now I sit in the corner, writing this blog on my failure of a Blackberry. The smell isn't as bad as you think.

The unending fun uselessness of the Iphone apps

Somebody turned me on to iSPINNING and iNewLeaf, two free apps for the Iphone that are super serious workout aids. 

These things don't wander around the game/serious application that Wii Fit resides in, and they manage to be more fully functioned than a simple widget or pedomater.

They are applications for the Iphone that are, amazingly, genuinely useful.

That's something I'm not quite used to yet. I'm so used to downloading something on the level of the lightsaber or LOL speak translator. Fun little diversions that aren't even close to useful, but still manage to bring a smile to your face.

It's interesting that I find these wastes of time more engaging than the actual fully featured games on the app store.

So long sweet prince.

Recently one of the juggernauts of the video game "journalism" industry, Electronic Gaming Monthly, was revealed that it would be left in the cold when Hearst media buys up the publishing company Ziff Davis, essentially giving the venerable magazine the axe.

To add insult to injury, just about every decent writer is also being made "redundant" on the 1UP.com website, which has long acted as the online alternative to EGM.

If this humble blogger may speak freely for a moment; this is just all different kinds of fucked up. EGM has been one of the main motivators in my life to pursue journalism as well as examine the fascinating creature that is the nerd.

In fact, the entire reason I pursued a career as a writer was the possibily of someday carrying the oxymoronic title of "video game journalist" while editing reviews of Kitten Palace. A silly dream to be sure, but one that has been dashed thanks to the grim realities of dwindling ad revenue and the publics continuing allergy to quality print.

So, what better way to intoduce this blog then on a sad note?

Welcome to the Valley of the Nerds.