Geek Culture: A few games to wind down with

It’s around the time of year when mid terms rear their ugly misshapen heads, and if you aren’t freaking out about that essay for your economics class, you really should be. A good grade in that one can be the difference between the transfer college of your choice and working as a McDonald’s manager for the rest of your days.

But after you’ve read several thousand pages of text, tattooed crib notes on every surface of your body and memorized facts that will never help you in the real world, how do you wind down? How do you keep your stress in control so your head doesn’t explode in class?

Surprisingly, there are a few games that can help with this. As a master of Geek Jutsu, I’ve played several games that people have described as “relaxing” and judged their effects. Also in consideration of your average students budget, most of these games can either be played free or bought for dirt cheap.

You are probably aware of this thing called Facebook.com, and the thousands of games that have spawned from it. Probably the most prolific is Farmville, a simple farm sim where you can raise crops and manage live stock. The fact that you can’t really lose, or win for that matter, detracts from the enjoyment somewhat. Still, it can be almost therapeutic to manage a plot of virtual land after a hard day of mind flaying.

Peggle is another free game that can be found on myspace.com, yahoo.com, popcap.com, or a million other places on the world wide web. A physics puzzle that plays like a mix between pachinko and pinball, you shoot metal balls at pegs and try to clear the board while racking a high score. The free demo that is on most sites is enough to sate any tired student, with the full game for PC and DS going for around $20.

If you are a red blooded American that needs a little ultra violence, there is Quakelive.com. This is a version of Quake 3 that plays right in your browser, on Mac and PC internet machines. This game is essentially the classic act of shooting people in the face while trying to avoid being shot. After a hard night of cramming, a few rounds of death-matching can be surprisingly cathartic.

Finally, that brings us to Pokemon. Most people my age have fond memories of training pocket monsters to kill each other, and these games are just as relaxing today as they were when we were kids. I recently picked up the DS version used for $20, and you could probably get the earlier Gameboy Advance or Gameboy Color versions for less.

Now get back to studying, future robot war lords of the world!

The Apple iPad and you

Apple finally lifted the veil on their tablet computer, a device which had reached almost mythical levels of fanboy hype through rumor alone.
This wasn’t just a device that would change the face of personal computers, the Apple cults chanted, it would fly in the face of mortal gods and punch them in their pompous kidneys. It had to be, it was Apple and Steve “Messiah” Jobs.
And...it turned out to be the iPad. Which is a giant iPod Touch. That isn’t a joke. Or an insult. It’s exactly what it is.
So let’s just say you are a college student who needs something to take notes on with a decent keyboard, and you just love the Apple. But you need guidance. You need alternatives.
You need...a Geek Culture Expert. That’s where I come in.
I’m not here to tell you not to buy an iPad, I’m just here to let you know what your (cheaper) options are.
The most obvious one would be a laptop, and you can get a decent Macbook for about $1,000 with a 13 inch display without extras. The most expensive iPad will run you $829 with 64GB and $30 a month for 3G from AT&T.
That’s also excluding the keyboard dock, which you’re going to need if you want to type without your hands falling off from the touch screen. So add another $70 to the iPad’s price.
Granted the iPad is still cheaper by a hair, but also keep in mind it can’t run Flash in the web browser or run multiple Apps at once. If you want to be even remotely productive as a student, you need a device that can do those two things.
Go to someplace like Best Buy and you can get a good non-Apple lappy for under $500, which will have enough hardware for all your student needs.
If you’re still dead set on the tablet, you can also go with the cheapest option and get an iPad without 3G and 16GB for $499.
Really, though, you might as well get a Netbook if you’re willing to sacrifice that much functionality.
You can get an Asus Eee PC Netbook for $300 from Best Buy again, and that’s not even the cheapest option. If all you want to do is browse the web and use word, a Netbook is perfect.
I’m not against the iPad. I just think the smart thing to do is wait and see if Apple can update it and implement features that are desperately needed.
It’s name also sounds like a Maxi pad. Either add wings or change the name Jobsy!

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.