Sucker Punch Review.

"There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again." - Joe Bowers, Idiocracy.

I was genuinely excited for Sucker Punch when I heard that Zack Snyder, director for 300 and The Watchmen, was doing a triple (writing, producing, directing) for this film. Girl gets put in an insane asylum and has to escape before she gets lobotomized by her stepfather after her inheritance. It sounded like the perfect vehicle to tell a visually engaging story. Unfortunately the film does not deliver.

Sucker Punch was boring. That's the cardinal sin of movie making. I struggled to find why I wasn't engaged in the film. Hot looking chicks kicking ass in a beautifully rendered world. I really shouldn't have been bored. I came to the realization that I didn't care about any of the main characters. Sucker Punch is similar to the movie within Idiocracy. There's an ass on the screen that farts for 2 hours.

Spoilers ahead

The film starts in the 'real world' when Baby Doll's evil stepfather (presumably) murdered Baby Doll's mother for inheritance. Turns out the mom left everything to her two daughters. Angered, the stepfather decides to go and molest Baby Doll, but when Baby Doll fights back, he goes after the younger daughter. Baby Doll gets a gun and fires at the step-dad, but she misses and hits a light-bulb. The shrapnel from the light bulb apparently kills the younger sister. The stepfather puts her in an insane asylum and pays Blues, the orderly, to arrange for her to be lobotomized. This will happen in five days. The film then does a cool-guy montage and skips to day 5 when she is getting lobotomized. Wait a second. We are suddenly placed inside of a whore house where the mental patients are now suddenly whores. The Insane Asylum runned by Blues is now a Burlesque owned by Blues. In this second world, Baby Doll's virginity will be sold to the "High Roller" in five days. She intends to escape before that happens. She is joined by two sisters named Sweet Pea and Rocket, and two interchangeable characters named Amber and Blondie.

At every major plot point, Baby Doll goes into a third world that is filled with CGI. Once there, she and her team fights demonic statues, Nazis, dragons, and robots to fetch an item that will help them escape. Things go wrong for some of the characters so that in the end only two girls remain. Baby Doll chooses to sacrifice herself so the last girl can escape. That's why she gets lobotomized. At the end we see that events in the Burlesque world pretty much all happened. Blues, the main antagonist of the movie, gets what he deserves.

So, why didn't I care about half the scenes in this movie? Let's start with the third tier worlds. They are entirely formulaic. The characters are briefed by a 'Wise Man' who tells them what they need to do for the mission. They then do the mission. There's absolutely no jeopardy in these scenes because we see these girls do absolutely unrealistic moves. When the robot Nazi punched one of the girls, she was fine. When the girls fall from a plane 200 feet high, they were fine. Once it is clear that the characters won't get hurt at all and that they would (probably) obtain the object that they need, I lost all interest.

Another problem is that the third tier worlds are supposed to represent them doing something in the Burlesque world. For example, one girl is supposed to lift a lighter off of a fat guy. In the dream world, they're fighting dragons and hordes of monsters for magic stones that can create fire. It feels like there's such a huge disconnect between world two and world three that I couldn't care. What does it mean when the bridge fell in the dragon world? What do the monsters mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Five seconds in the burlesque world is stretched into 10-15 minutes in the cgi worlds.

"A while ago I had written a script for myself and there was a sequence in it that made me think, 'How can I make a film that can have action sequences in it that aren't limited by the physical realities that normal people are limited by, but still have the story make sense so it's not, and I don't mean to be mean, like a bulls--t thing like Ultraviolet or something like that... It's as crazy as anything else that I have ever done. It's a movie that nobody can get made with the ending that it has and the subject matter." - Zack Snyder

I think that's where the main problem lies. The plot was just a vehicle to have these action scenes and those scenes are in a reality where the characters can't really get hurt. Having the burlesque world just puts another barrier to my caring for the movie. I'm not even looking at what 'actually' happens. The real version to the story is similar to the burlesque but with minor differences. So if what I'm looking at isn't what actually happened, why would I care about the events in burlesque world? I don't. What does dancing mean in the burlesque world? Heck if I know. What happened in the real world when Blues shot/raped those girls? How can an orderly have that much power?

What's the solution? Merge the insane asylum with the burlesque world. They're similar enough that the story doesn't have to change much at all. Have Baby Doll take some 'medication' which causes her to imagine the world around her as a burlesque. Have characters/elements phase back and forth from their counterparts in the two world. It would have been interesting visually at least.

This film is bad. Easily one of the worst films I've seen this year. I'd rather re-watch The Last Airbender than see this again. The CGI fights are good, but becomes meaningless. It is like watching someone play a video-game with god mode turned on. Cool man you just killed all them monsters, congratulations on your hard work.


Possible Plot hole: Why didn't Baby Doll just tell the female psychiatrist that Blues was planning on forging her signature to lobotomize? Baby Doll was present when Blues and the stepfather were talking about it. That's why she was planning the escape. The least she could have done was raise the concern to the psychiatrist that she doesn't want to be lobotomized and maybe the psychiatrist can stop it. Can anyone explain?

3 out of 10

Supernatural (Anime) Episode 1+2.

The Alter Ego

This series starts with a creepy man sharpening a knife. There’s a woman tied up in the background. The old man claims to be her husband ‘Zack’ and promptly stabs her thirteen times.

Next, we finally see Sam and Dean driving the Impala talking about the case. Apparently the murderer could be in two places at once, and there have been cases like this in the past two years. Doesn’t take much to realize that the old man is a shape shifter. (I much prefer skinwalker like in the original show.)

Anyway, Sam and Dean, and the hot female detective of the week visits the scene of the crime. The female accidentally cuts her finger on the door frame. (THIS IS IMPORTANT) The female establishes that she was a friend of the murdered wife from the start. The two brothers find a trail of blood leading to the sewers. Sam asks “How can he leave a trail of blood like this?” I want to know how the cops missed this.

The brothers head to the sewers to pursue Zack. They get ambushed by the shape shifter. Sam wakes up tied up and sees the shapeshifter Dean.  It isn’t the real Dean because the real Dean just received a shoulder injury. Through the power of exposition, FakeDean says that he resents Sam had a normal life while he had to hunt with Dad who leaves without a word. When FakeDean leaves announcing his plan to attack the hot female, real Dean wakes up. He frees himself and slings around on his injured shoulder as if it wasn’t injured. I guess that plot point wasn’t important huh. 

Real Dean goes to the female’s apartment. Turns out the shape shifter kidnapped her and took her form. Dean identifies this by the lack of a cut on her finger. She escapes. 

Sam and Dean drives on the road when suddenly Dean pulls a gun onto Sam while driving on a busy highway. “I know you’re not Sam. You think I don’t know my own brother?” Sam claims that Dean is the fake. They fight each other (while the car is still going) but Sam ultimately gets the gun.

At this point, we see realSam walk into a busy highway holding his gun towards the Impala. He fires and the car dramatically stops inches away from hitting realSam. fakeSam shape shifter is dead. The story effectively ends here.

I’m just aghast at the thought of Dean deciding to out fakeSam while driving on a busy road. That’s not even the worst crime. He decided to have a conversation while holding a gun to fakeSam’s face while driving. This is a level of stupid that I can’t handle. It wasn’t like Dean was trying to press for information. All he says is that he knows Sam is a fake and that he knows he’s a shapeshifter. You could be doing that while parked or inside the hotel. Instead he needlessly endangers the rest of the people on the road by pulling this stunt.

Why is RealSam on the highway miles away from the building anyway? How did he know that the Impala was coming when the road is completely packed? It doesn’t make sense. 

As a pilot, the Live Action version is much, much better. It was able to set up the story in terms of the Yellow-Eye Demon / backstory more coherently. Here, we get flashes of scenes that will probably be explained in future episodes. One of the strengths of Supernatural is the ability to explain the actions or motivations of the monsters in a realistic way. What was the shapeshifter’s plan? Torment women? He left the Female alive. What was his plan in the apartment when he was acting like her? At no point in the story am I able to see a rational plan from the shapeshifter. The original show had the benefit of using 42 minutes to tell the story so I guess it is only fair I view the next episode too.

Roadkill

There’s not much to say here. The episode is almost an exact remake of the episode Roadkill from Season 2, Episode 16. I just want to comment that Dean is a terrible driver. Once again he swerves and almost hits a target. At one point Sam says that the most important thing is to take Molly away from the forest. Sam and Dean then continue to explore the haunted house. Good going, Sam

.

In the original, there was an accident which occurred 15 years ago. Molly accidentally kills Greely with her car. She also died. Greely’s wife was so distraught that she commits suicide after burying Greely. It is a custom for folks to plant a tree with the dead. Similar thing happens in the anime except that there’s multiple photographs of (an adult) tree. Sam comments on one photo and that’s how they realize where the body is buried. But wait a minute, how can there be photos of an adult tree when it was planted fifteen years ago? That means that Mrs. Greely must have stuck around for years after her husband died. Her suicide must have been recent. Unfortunately, the appearance of Mrs. Greely’s ghost matches the ones before her husband died. This means that she killed herself soon after. What if she did survive for years? This wouldn’t make sense because for the last 14 years, she would have seen Molly run through the woods into her cabin asking for help. What’s going on here?

Another change in the story is that Mrs. Greely also haunts the road after her suicide. At one point she drags Molly into the river and tries to choke her out. Sam jumps into the river to try and save her while Dean disposes of the body. Why would Sam jump into the river to save a ghost from a ghost? When Mrs. Greely is destroyed, he showed concern over Molly telling her to breathe. I want to make it clear that Sam knows that she’s a ghost. Molly’s a ghost. She can’t die again. She doesn’t even breathe.

David (Molly’s husband) mentions in the anime that she was cremated. According to the lore, cremated bones can’t have ghosts. Ugh.

After the credits of the episode, Sam freaks out and we see a tease into the history of the characters.

Bottom Line.

I’m not impressed with the anime. While Jared Padalecki reprises the voice of Sam Winchester, Dean is portrayed by an other actor. I think having only half the cast actually makes it worse. I don’t want to be reminded that Dean isn’t actually Dean. :/ I feel like if they spent any time reviewing the show that they would realize the mistakes in lore or logic.

Battle: Los Angeles Review.

AMERICA
HECK
YEAH.

BEATING ALIEN SCUM WITH OL' FASHION dumb luck.

The movie is focused on US Marine Staff Sargeant Gantz (played by the incredibly handsome Aaron Eckhart aka Harvey Dent). He's a veteran soldier who has commanded a few too many soldiers to their deaths from no-win situations. Gantz filed for retirement but he's been called for active duty because of the invasion. He's assigned to a unit with an officer that's fresh from the academy. (Commissioned officers are higher ranked than enlisted people.) The unit has been ordered to retrieve some civilians in an area which is about to be blown up. They have to race against the clock to rescue these people while fighting alien foot soldiers. Good people died from impossible situations and the fresh officer freezes up. Gantz gave a motivating speech to the officer. It doesn't matter if they are ordered to go left or to go right. They will follow orders as long as it is made. Gantz makes an addendum later in the film that there are no-win scenarios where left and right both lead to good men dying. The unit finds civilians and helps them escape while discovering that each alien force is commanded by a 'command centre'. If this Command Centre was destroyed, then all of their machines would stop functioning. Wow. more heroic sacrifices are made and in the end they win.

The Aliens in this film are unusual. They arrive on Earth via disguised meteor-spaceships crashing into the waters near major coastal cities. Los Angeles, Tokyo, and New York are just three out of twenty such ships. Immediately, ground soldiers pour out of these vessels and start murdering people. Oh yeah, they landed in water because that's their primary fuel source. Earth is one of the rare places in the universe where water is predominately in liquid form. I didn't think it would be too hard to melt some asteroids or to melt an ice planet. The aliens are able to survive in 'Earth temperatures' so unless frozen water makes powering their ships uneconomical, its just kinda weird to expend all of this alien-power (and potential casualties) for slightly warmer water.

Aliens have been tracking us for years according to behind-the-scenes material. They know what kind of technology we use and are able track us using our radios. They've abducted our people and know of our weak spots (anyplace where the flesh is soft). Here are some simple mistakes that future alien invaders should follow if they want to successfully invade Earth.

1) Make more than one robot/equipment that can function as a command centre. Let's call this a 'backup command centre'. You know, just in case your command centre gets blown up, or has a slight power outage. Redundancy is good.

2) Make it so your robots don't fall out of the sky without active commands being sent. Modern designs for robots that explore planetary bodies in our solar system has to work with something called a "Time Delay". Although radio signals travel as fast as the speed of light, the distances across space is so huge that it'll take about a second to travel from the Earth to the Moon. It can take tens of minutes to travel from Earth to Mars (depending on orbit). It is impossible for us to constantly control the mars rovers from Earth. Not with a 10 minute delay. By the time we receive the result of the commands we send, thirty minutes would have passed. Not easy to drive a car that way.  The robots are designed to be able to interpret the surrounding areas and make intelligent navigational decisions. So why is it that the 'drones' in this movie just fall down when the command ship is destroyed? It makes absolutely no sense. I can understand that they might go into an automatic shutdown mode, where they'll slowly land on the ground. It's like the alien drones are 100% controlled by the command ship 100% of the time. That's ugh.

3) Destroy all of the (major) military bases around the world. It isn't hard. Go on wikipedia and search for military bases. Launch nukes (or whatever cleaner equivalent the aliens might have) and you will take away 90% of the resistance.

4) Destroy the Earth's power grid. Unless they're going to tap into our power plants, this seems like a no-brainer to me. It would disrupt communication and make survival a bit tougher for humans. Oh yeah, getting rid of the power grid would have stopped the army from discovering your secret base. Good job Aliens.

5) Put more armor on your alien cannon. So during the film the aliens bring out a cannon the size of a ride-able lawnmower. Literally took two burst of machine gun fire to destroy it. The cannon also had to be (hover) pushed around. To be honest, the weapon didn't seem that much more destructive than their own laser/blaster weapons.

6) Use the magical boring machines to your advantage. They were able to bury a ten story tall command centre in the middle of the city without disrupting the ground near it. (The asphalt breaks near it when the machine became erect.) Why not use the same machine to tactfully move the only command centre away from the combat zone? Naw, let's have it crawl out of the ground so everyone can see it and it becomes more exposed to aircraft fire. IF YOU KEPT THE BUILDING UNDER THE GROUND (and made them think it was destroyed), THE US AIRFORCE WON'T TARGET IT SOME MORE. THEY WOULD THINK YOU HAD SOME SORT OF REDUNDANT BACKUP COMMAND CENTRE.

7) Defend your command centre better. If your entire operation hinges on keeping one structure intact, I think it might be important to make sure that the structure stays intact.  This means having enough troops to fight off any human intruders. It means having aircrafts that can kill five soldiers on the ground. I guess they did kill one soldier with the four dozen aliens that were sent. Good kill ratios.



So, what did I think of the movie? I don't dislike it. I feel like the aliens are designed to fail just so humans can face a technologically advance force and still win. I wouldn't have minded if humans lost in this film. Like any good military film, the soldiers are presented as heroes who would obey their DUTY to SAVE LIVES and SUPPORT FREEDOM. It gets a little heavy handed at times. I enjoyed it on a visual level. There's just too many tiny details that are dumb for me to really dig the movie. If I were to place a numerical score to the film, it would be around a 6/10

Tsunami. We're all gonna die.

Well, maybe not me. Two things.
1) Vancouver Island is a pretty good shield.
2) Richmond will get sunk :(

We're just getting a tsunami advisory, which isn't supposed to be a big deal.
Source

Justin Bieber: The Board Game.

This makes me want to punch things. Do people actually buy stuff like this? :( :(

Resident Evil: Afterlife.

3D movies don’t really work well for me. I’m getting tired of things being shot at my face.

A few issues I had while watching the movie.

1)      Where are all the janitors? In the underground headquarters of Umbrella Corporation, everything sparkling clean. Supposedly, everyone has been living underground for years. Can things look a little dilapidated? All the vehicles are neatly parked and shiny. Awesome. Wesker must have had several hundred janitors stowed away in his underground stronghold. Same goes for the field of planes which have been left in the open for months. In the world of the film, all industries are dead. Alice found no (other) survivors at all during the six month journey from Japan to Alaska to California. Who has been providing Umbrella with electricity? Food? Ammunition? Soap? Toilet Paper? New tires? 

2)       One of my biggest complaints for the movie franchise is that the character of Alice has been given magical powers via the “T-Virus”. Yes, a virus that makes people turn into zombies also gives people super powers such as making a ground shockwave with the mind. I was actually surprised when Wesker took the ability away from Alice. “Thank you for making me Human again.” Oh, if only you still were human. Alice has still shown extra ordinary abilities with her speed and strength. At one point, she was hit with a mallet into a wall (which actually broke the tiles on the wall.) She was out of commission for about a minute (so that Claire can have her action scene), but quickly sprung back into action with apparently no injury. Great job stating that you depowered her only to have her still do inhuman things. Oh yeah, since Alice was on the Chopper the entire time, why didn’t she kill Wesker the moment he started to punch in the code to destroy the Umbrella Facility? Because it serves the plot.

3)      What is Umbrella’s plan anyway? I don’t recall the specific plot for the films, but I believe the T-Virus was made as a bio-weapon. It was accidentally released at the end of the first film. The second film is about the initial spread of the virus at Raccoon City. By the third film, the virus has spread worldwide. Supposedly, they’re interested in studying Alice because they believe that her blood or genetics contain the secret to curing the whole zombie infection… or at least make them dormant. Now, they’re all about making monsters and doing extremely unethical experiments. I wonder what all the survivor security guards and janitors are thinking about all of this. I was hoping that we get to see some director in charge of some facility that isn’t PURE EVIL. Maybe they exist, but Alice killed them all. (There is a short conversation between the characters stating that the crew of the Arcadia was so disgusted at Wesker that they all fled on life rafts. I guess the guys at the prison missed this part with their night vision/heat sensing goggles. And I guess the crew decided to not take the four or so choppers with them and instead try to make it out alive on boats.)

4)      Wesker’s plan made no sense. When we see him on the chopper the first time, it was a little bit ridiculous that he was able to inject Alice so quickly without Alice being able to fire. I guess he knew she was on the chopper all along, because he was holding on to the syringe the entire time. Alright. Neat. He protected himself. I get that. So why would he leave the chopper unpiloted for a minute while he had his confrontation with Alice? I actually thought it was on auto pilot or something. Wesker is dumb. The plane crashes and Alice wakes up first because she is entirely human while Wesker is a super human.

Let’s follow this movie from Wesker’s perspective at this point:

I wake up from the burning wreckage. Dang. That chopper was brand new and sparkly. Now it is all burning and dilapidated. Well, at least I’m still alive and I’m super human.
Oh no. The T-virus isn’t bonding to my body correctly. I need to eat human flesh to stabilize myself.
Where’s Alice? I want to eat her. She is the only known human to fully bond with the virus. Eating her will allow me to become super powerful. Oh. She isn’t here? Darn. She must have woken up before me somehow. Wait a minute, I thought I was the super human here!

Where do I go now? Let’s go to one of Umbrella’s many secret base. It is a ship. It is a ship named Arcadia.

*Six months later*

There’s a plane? Someone’s flying to Arcadia? Who is it? Let’s use the magical Satellite Voice amplifier along with the Umbrella Heat signature finder. If we had this technology all along, why didn’t we use it to capture that Claire girl?
 But, Arcadia is moving south to LA for no reason. Should I tell the crew to stop and wait for Alice to land on the ship so I can eat her? Or at least head back north and send out flares or radio signals to the plane telling her to land? Let’s not.

*A couple of days later*

Oh look, Alice landed at a prison facility along with other survivors.
I most definitely want to consume her, so I’ll send some bio-monsters to go and kill her. Yes, these monsters must be deadly. I hope Alice makes it out alive.

*Another few days later.*

Gee, is that a plane that’s heading to the boat? Does everyone know how to fly a plane? Apparently. Is it Alice? No? Hm.
Wait, that’s Alice and Claire coming on a boat. Alice is coming to this room right now! Let’s talk. And not seal the room via the computer controls so anyone can sneak through at any time. Besides, I like to fight more people while my horribly mutated dogs fight other people.
Muahaha. Look at their slow bullets fly. I can move so fast. I am powerful. Now, the Redfields are out of commission.
Should I use my super speed (fast enough to dodge bullets) to knock Alice out and finally eat her? Nope.
Let’s slow motion try to eat her. Ow! There’s a knife in my brain. Good thing I can recover from that! Let’s try again. Hopefully, Alice doesn’t have another weapon that can be shot in my face. 

Darn, I guessed wrong. She did shoot it in my face. I am going to fake die. 

Muahaha I am alive again, and I’m going to eat this old man to regain my complete strength. Since I’ve proven that I am too dumb to even kill three ‘normal’ powered humans, I’m going to escape. I hope that the one chopper out of a dozen or so isn’t booby trapped by Alice’s only self destruct device. 

Bah. I am now dead. Darnit. I was so dumb and unlucky.

So what is Wesker’s goal? It is apparent that he doesn’t care about the Company Directive anymore. He just wants to become a super-being of sorts. Having a character seek out power for the sake of seeking power is pointless. With the way he does things, there will be no human left alive? What’s the point of being all powerful when you’re the only one alive?

That’s not to say I hated the film entirely. I loved seeing Wentworth Miller (who played Michael Scofield in Prison Break) trapped in a prison within a prison, trying to break out. I found it to be hilarious. The end of the film had a teaser for the next installment of the franchise. Jill Valentine is now apparently controlled by Umbrella, and they’re flying towards the Arcadia to capture some people for experiments. I’m guessing that these people are controlled by an AI like the White Queen. (People at theatres are retarded. They just have this urge to head out as soon as the credits roll. THE LIGHTS ARE NOT ON YET. IT MEANS THAT THE PRESENTATION IS NOT OVER. I love it when the scene continues and people who are on their way out turns around to watch it.)

Ultimately, is the film worth watching? I think so. Just expect that characters will do dumb things. The film isn’t worth paying full price.  It is probably better than spending time watching old episodes of Star Trek though.

Going to Pax.

So long, suckers!

Girl who Leapt Through Time. 2006.

Japanese Animated Film.

Spoilers in review.

This movie is set in contemporary modern day Japan about a girl (Makato) who... leaps through time. That is, she finds out that she is able to literally jump and travel through time. Like any adolescent, Makato starts by changing minor things so that they work out better. Suddenly, she is able to have all the extra sleep that she wants. She gets perfect grades. Eventually, she uses this power to avoid some decisions in life. One of her best friends (Chiaki) wanted to ask her out on a date. Makato couldn't handlethis so she goes back in time to avoid the whole 'asking her out' part from ever happening. She uses this power to avoid facing any major changes to her life.

Anyway, it turns out that there are consequences to her time-leaps and that there's a finite amount. Blah blah blah. Saw it coming a mile away.

There's a serious flaw to this story which was very distracting to me. The way that 'time' works does not make sense at all. In the original timeline, Makato has a tempura (fire) accident during cooking class. The brakes on her bike is also broken, which eventually led to a fatal accident...which was undone by her first, accidental time-leap.
To solve the tempura problem, she asks another student to fry it first. He became the one who accidentally causes the fire. This shows that certain events 'must' happen. Later in the movie, Makato's other friend started riding a bike which lead to another fatal accident. Yeah. People need to ride their bikes more carefully.

By the last act of the film, it turns out that Makato gained her timeleaping ability because she accidentally fell a time-nut, which grants the user power over time. I'm not even kidding about this. The time-nut was originally lost by the time-traveller-Chiaki, who is desperately trying to find it. Chiaki only came to the past to see a famous painting which was destroyed in the upcoming world-wide catastrophe. Unfortunately, the painting is still being restored, so he hasn't had a chance to see it yet. And he never will have that chance because he must disappear. He can't go back to the future because he used his last time-leap to save Makato's other friend from a fatal bike accident. He disappears and Makato is a sad panda.

Later, Makato finds out that she has one time-leap left because Chiaki went back in time before she used her time leap. WHY DOES SHE STILL REMEMBER THE OTHER TIMELINE IF SHE NEVER HAD THE CHANCE TO USE HER LAST TIME-LEAP? PLOT HOLE. To help Chiaki go back to the future, she time-leaps before he used his last time-leap so that he still has one more to go to the future.

Some sappiness occurs where the girl and the guy reveals that they love each other, etc..

And then the most retarded thing happens.

Chiaki still goes home, but he says that he'll wait for her in the future.

Makato is alright with this, and she replies that she'll be 'running towards it'.

What does Chiaki mean by he'll wait for her? It'll only appear to be a second to him when he travels. Makato will be much, much older in the future.

Also, Makato only finds out in this film that she kinda loves Chiaki. Now she'll remain single her entire life for an unspecified point in the future when they'll meat? This shit is retarded.

Inception (no spoilers)

Saw it Tuesday.

Dreams are uniquely human, as far as we know. We all experience dreams at one point in our lives. Dreams can be a way for the subconscious to reveal desires or yearnings. They might show stresses or fears.
(I once had a dream where I was trying to convince the person I was talking to that he/she was dreaming, and that I was a figment of their imagination. I knew that I was real though. I was just being a dick. And then I woke up. What the heck does this say about me?)

I think that a lot of people would want to explore their dreams if they could, which is why this film resonates with so many people.

There are a lot of concepts and layers within this movie and I'm sure that there will be thousands of articles and essays devoted to this film.
I think its nice to look at an artwork to try and derive meaning. Some people say that the movie is a metaphor for the interaction between film making and the audience. Various people in the film would represent different roles for the movie making process. Archetects, writers, chemists, directors, financiers. Neato. Yeah, I guess you can look at it that way, but is that what Nolan intended, or is it just a coincidence?

Inception was enjoyable for what it is. The story is straightforward for me. It was quite easy to understand. Yeah, you will have to simply go along with certain ideas with the film, but they are really minor points.

That being said, this film is incredibly overhyped. The ending is a huge cop-out. Yeah, I understand that the final scene is like an "Inception" for the viewer. You can say that the point is to make you question what you just watched, but I feel that a good film doesn't need to rely on such a gimmick. I recommend everyone go watch the movie, just don't expect any great twists or deep psychological answers which will blow your mind. It sure didn't blow mine.

With regards to the film's ending question... does it really matter if the spinner top fell? No. Whether real or not, you are only watching a film (which isn't real.)

The Last Airbender Review.

I was really hesitant about watching the film. On one hand, there were a lot of people who seem to hate the movie. On the other is that Avatar was one of the few animu that I enjoy. On the third mutant hand is that if the movie was truly terrible, I don't want to contribute to its success.

Well, after the first weekend box office results, I was content to know that the paltry sum I paid won't make this film a financial success.

I want to comment that I watched it on Tuesday. Cineplex apparently now has a special deal where for the same price as normal, you also get a regular popcorn and a regular drink. Neato. I might watch all of my films on tuesdays now. When I got into the theatre 10 minutes before the preview started, I walked into an empty room. All alone. By the time that the movie started, there were less than ten people. Flop.

The Last Airbender is by no means a great film. I'm not sure if it is a good film either.It definitely isn't the theatrical disaster that some people are calling it. This is definitely not Battlefield Earth of the decade.
So, I have seen all three seasons of Avatar, so I understand the story behind the movie. I don't know for sure if a non-fan can properly follow the story or understand its significance.

Bad

1) Tone
Avatar is supposed to be for kids to enjoy. The animu had a lot of silliness to many of the scenes. I can recall only two instances in the movie which had the light hearted scenes of the show, and they both involve Katara accidentally splashing Sokka with her faulty waterbending.

While the story of The Last Airbender has a lot of serious elements, the humour in the show helped create more rounded characters. It showed that despite only being kids, they were fated to do such incredible things. I don't think Aang smiled or laughed once in the film. He definitely doesn't have the same playfulness as the series.

2) Dialogue / Treating people like Full Retards.

“Do you have a spiritual place I can meditate?” “Yes, we have a very spiritual place.” 

When Aang goes to the very spiritual place to meditate, he first talks about how the record for the longest meditation was four days, and that it took a lot of concentration.


“We need to show them that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in their beliefs”
The dialogue in the movie is bad. I was cringing about once every minute. I can't really blame the actors for being shit when they are forced to work with this type of material. Then, each of the characters announced to everyone else what they were going to do in the scene. Yue and Sokka both says that they were going to leave the room. And they do. Katara then announces that she is going to stay. And she does. Its as if the audience is incapable of seeing what the characters are actually doing, so the writer decides that it is necessary for the characters to say exactly what they are going to do.

AND THEN Katara starts to talk with Aang, who just started to meditate.
"Aang, can you hear me? It's Katara."
Shut up, Katara, HE'S TRYING TO MEDITATE. YOU ARE SO STUPID.


Oh, and Zhao / Fire Lord Ozai's various conversation about Zhao going into a lost temple and finding a scroll which will lead them to victory. They had to constantly bring it up because M Night doesn't believe that the audience has the capacity to understand what is going on. If we don't get to see Zhao getting the scrolls which contained this awesome secret, we don't really need to hear about him doing it five times. They could have excised all of those scenes and just had Zhao show up at the end.


3) Pacing:  Trying to fit 440 minutes of content into 100 minutes.
Obviously, the movie will not be a direct translation simply because of the time contraints.
 I understand that not every single line of dialogue or every single episode can be filmed. There's just a problem when Aang, Kitara, and Sokka arrives at the Southern Air Temple, and they didn't know each other's names.

Another example of pacing issue is that the 'romantic' relationship between Princess Yue and Sokka was reduced to one of the many narration dialogues. That's fine, I guess, except that they placed such a great deal of time later on their emotional goodbyes. If time was not spent developing the relationship, then time shouldn't be spent on them at all.

According to casting and promotional posters,  the Kyoshi Warriors were going to play a major part with the film. Extending the film by another 20-30 minutes and incorporating more of the episode content would have definitely helped create more rounded characters.

4) Bending / Movement tracking.
I thought that they should have made the computer animation sync more with the movements of the actors. It just seems kinda silly for the actors to swing their arms a couple rotations in front of them just to have the water animation remain the same.

The fire in the fire bending is far too slow. It feels like a really slow fireball that is heading in a direction. I did not like this.

There were scenes lasting about 30 seconds when Aang and Katara are practicing water-bending by doing Tai Chi. Practice is good, except that the movements between the two characters aren't even consistant. One of them would hold their hands together, while the other would have them apart and uneven. The director should have told them to do it again.


What I did like:
Wonderful set/costume design. I loved the 'feel' of the world. The movie made me believe that it was possible for a city to exist like the one in the north pole. Yeah, the artists had the animu to base everything on, but I thought they did it wonderfully.

Zuko's story - I think the actor and character is very consistent with the show. He is driven with the same passion and anger of the series. The only WTF moment is after he kidnaps Aang, we see that Zuko has been having a soliloquy while staring out the window. Didn't need to see that, and its not really the appropriate time. I just wish that we had seen Iroh try and calm Zuko down some more. The Iroh/Zuko relationship is one of the best in the series.

Summary:

It feels to me that The Last Airbender could have genuinely been a good film. The set designs were there. The whole concept about the look was spot on. There were problems with dialogue, which can't easily be fixed. There is definitely a problem with some of the pacing. Hopefully there will be a director's cut that can somehow salvage this mess. Reincorporate some of the other side stories and cut around the stilted dialogue.

I really do wish to see a second and third installments, but I wouldn't want to have the same writer involved. I think he's a capable director and a good producer.

The Last Airbender was directed, produced, and written by M. Night Shyamalan

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Day 25 – Prague’s Viet-town and Munchen

In the morning we went to the Viet town in Prague. Apparently there is a huge Vietnamese population in Prague due to a soviet communism exchange program. (Vietnam is communist, and the Czech republic was under Russian control.) Many Vietnese people stayed in the Russian Federation so there is apparently a lot of Vietnese people everywhere. Interesting stuff.

We took the train and then a bus to Viet town. According to our Viet Friend, there is supposed to be a bustling market, but it turns out that the market is more of a distributor for goods made in Vietnam. That is, the items are only sold by the dozen. Of course we had Vietnamese food. Had another beefy noodle thing.

Spent the rest of the day agonizing in the car. We were planning to drive to the bridge and castle, but that was the biggest mistake in the history of mistakes. What would have taken us 30 minutes by public transit ended up taking 2 hours by vehicle. There also simply isn’t any parking space in the touristy parts.

We arrived at Munich late in the evening, and vent immediately for the world famous (or at least German famous) Hobflaradfausdfagafalsdfagtn Bar. It is the biggest and liveliest bar in Germany. The reason for that is that it is the brewery for some of the best beer in the world. Om nom nom.

Day 24 – Berlin to Prague

I just couldn’t stay away from Asian food. Went to another Vietnamese place in the morning for lunch. Om nom nom. Beef noodles.

The drive to Prague took way too long, but it was ultimately worth it. Arrived at probably 7-8 pm. There was a restaurant right at the Hostel, which is the most impressive one I’ve seen. The food wasn’t that great, but there’s everything at this hostel, and it was cheap. Had some pizza and some Czech Goulash. We rented all 8 rooms for the 5 of us, which cost a fraction compared to other cities. Internet was free and flowing. Everything is good

Day 23 – Berlin, Wall

Five hour drive to Berlin. Arrived at approximately 3pm. It was at the autobahn that our car broke the 200km/hr barrier. I would post photos, but I don’t want to have any incriminating evidence of any sort.

The architecture of Berlin is a little bit interesting. I’m guessing because of the Berlin Wall, there were different styles on each side as time went on. The east side seems more heavily focused on the ‘red’ Moscow-ish buildings.

Just walked around most of the day. Saw a big giant bear, an inverted ‘little Paris’ section in a mall. It was here that I met a group of travelers from Hong Kong. By meet, I mean I just followed them and acted like I couldn’t understand the language. Was particularly funny when a bunch of them had trouble ordering meat at the fancy French meat place. The staff was speaking English in a French accent trying to explain to the Chinese why they’re getting charged more while in Germany.

Went to a really boring museum. Afterwards, we went to see a boring old victory celebration thingy.

The Berlin wall was interesting. Apparently it is illegal to deface or vandalize the walls, but not because of historical significance. All along the wall, there are murals and paintings with the whole hippy message of one world, everyone being prisoners, love one another, etc. I saw some that were painted in 2004. I liked some of them, but others are way too abstract for a 30 second viewing experience. The rain interrupted and cut the day short.

Ate dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant which was by the train station. I enjoyed the meal and thought it was delicious and fair-priced.

At the hostel, I watched the finale of Lost. Disappointment.

Day 22 – Nurburing (Race track), Koln (Cologne)

From Amsterdam, we took a train to Essen and picked up our car. I got to ride in a VW Jetta or whatever.

Brian had the BMW car. I was stuck with the naked one for the entirety of the driving trip.

So, from Essen, we were supposed to drive to Nurburing, which is a race track that is apparently quite popular in the Grand Turismo games. Brian told us that we were going to get some food first. We didn’t. His aggressive driving caused us to lose track of his car. At this point, we didn’t know where our hotel/hostel is, so we had no way of meeting up with the rest of the people. All we knew was that Brian wanted to race his car. We got to Nurburing at approximately 1 pm. We waited a while to see if Brian shows up, but he never did. The naked one and I were definitely at the correct place. It was the place where we ordered our ticket to ‘race’ on the track. There was only one parkade, so we decided to just park and have a siesta (nap) while waiting for them. Three hours passed without interruption. The chance of meeting them now is incredibly low. If only we had a way to communicate with the other group.

We were ready to leave to head to Berlin, which was our next stop after staying in Koln. By chance, we stopped and turned into a parking lot. Didn’t see anything, so we were about to head out. At the last possible second before we turned, a car honked. It was Brian. We met up and spent a little time on the tracks.

When we got to Koln, we went for a mexican dinner. Om nom nom. Delicious. I had spare ribs.

Day 21 – Amsterdam Proper. Laundry Day.

Apparently none of the museums were open on Day 21 due to a public holiday. It seems like this kind of situation has been happening a lot. We’re just going to places when other places are closed. Anyway, we had to split the team up in order to plan for the rest of the trip. Team Alpha goes to do the laundry while Team Omega goes to the library, gets internet, and book hostel and tickets.
I navigated my team into success. Laundry was done. We split the teams again to try and get train tickets and other stuff. Failure. Due to the holiday, the library was closed early. We walked around as a group and bought some goods.
The naked friend decided to go ingest mushrooms all by himself. The smart shop seller said that it was absolutely amazing if he did it at the park, which was a little ways away. The rest of us went to an absolutely amazing Indian restaurant. I. Love. Butter Chicken.
Since I knew better from the previous night, I did not sample the local goods. Two other people did, and I tried my best to freak them out and to take care of them. One of the people was completely afraid. Not sure how to describe it other than in compooter terms.
Imagine that all the sensory data that a person obtains is only 10 MB/s. When you are on drugs, you can only process 8MB/s . As time goes on, you start to get data that is obtained seconds behind. The overall result is that if you focus on one thing (visuals), you can get the data in almost real time. Senses like audio or sensory feelings might come in a little bit slower. The two data streams are not necessarily synced. You also never fall behind so much. I’m guessing some sensory data just goes away.
Taste is also affected. There is definitely a delay on taste, but the flavor seems to come all at once. The first few seconds of ‘tasting’ something is pretty mild. A couple seconds later, the full force of flavor comes. If you’re still eating the thing a couple seconds later, then the taste becomes unbearable. I thought everything would taste incredibly salty. Bleh.

Day 20 – To Amsterdam

We started the day late and went to the train station. One of the ideas which popped up the night before was to perhaps rent a car and then drive to Amsterdam. It would have saved us more money than having six people ride the train to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, no cars were available and we stuck with the plan. Had to make a reservation for a later train leaving Amsterdam just so we can have more time. We boarded the train at approximately two in the afternoon and arrived at about seven in the evening. There were intermittent problems with the electrical system of the Phallus train.
When we arrived at the station, I immediately went to one of the wall vending machines. Kip Burgers, I missed you. In case you don’t know, there are vending machines connected to a kitchen on the other side. You just insert coins into the slot and then open up the box on your side. The burgers or snacks found in these vending machines are usually very fresh.
I navigated our way into the hostel, which is situated on a boat to the east of Centraal.
The two drunkest people from the previous night just passed out in their bunks. The three more active people decided to scout around the city and look for things. When we came back, the sleepyheads were just stirring. Got some local delicacies. Ate some Chinese Food. The rest of the night is a blur. Pretty sure I time travelled some.