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| The Incredibles (review) |
| 11.30.04 (6:47 pm) [edit] |
To put it shortly, this movie lives up to it's name.
The whole thing absolutely shines with polish and the story is easily one of the best super-hero romps ever. Add great animation, awesome set designs, spectacular fight scenes, and great music to sum up to one of the best movies of the year.
Again, if you're concerned about seeing it 'cause it's a Disney Film, don't be. It honestly doesn't feel like one. It feels like a normal action film (albiet with a good sense of humor).
Also, it adds a couple things fairly rare in American animated movies (especially Disney ones). It's almost 2 hours, breaking the 90 minute taboo. It's actually violent, like a Return of the Jedi PG rating violent. There's no dippy cute side-kick. It's actually really really good. Dang, there were a couple of other points, but I forgot what I was going to write ....
oh well. Just go see it. It's that good.
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| Boundin' (pixar's animated short with the Incredibles) |
| 11.27.04 (6:24 am) [edit] |
k, I actually have a few things to review now, so I'll just get a start on it and go over the little animated short "Boundin'" that's playing before the incredibles.
Bassically, it's a failed boring experiment. I wouldn't suggest showing up late in order to miss it though, since you might miss a preview for "Madagascar" or "Revenge of the Sith," but in and of itself it isn't worth your time except to show itself as a bad example.
It seems that the premise was to do an old short with the dippy but lovable cuteness from the old Disney cartoons. You know, through a story told through song.
Well, it didn't quite make it. The storyline itself is deadon, and the character designs and single set peice are also keen stuff. The narrator's voice also has the same texture and whatnot. The animation was also pretty good.
Where it goes wrong ...
The narrator's voice is bored and uninspired. there's very litttle inflection on it. He sounds like he's a better voice actor, but with a song this long and dull, I don't blame him for not having any sort of enthusiasm in the least bit.
The song itself is very uninteresting. It's dull. There's very little to no chord changes, repetative in a bad way, and not catchy in the least bit. (The whole catchy song bit was one of the major redeeming factors to the old school disney shorts.) Also, the music did very little to go along with the emotion of the story (another thing the old shorts did superbly).
It also didn't have any little catch-you-off-gaurd-well- timed mini-gags. The reason this is a bad thing is that this is something that keeps the story from going to plain boredom. A narrator is rarely the best way to go (often times it's the worse). Unless you have something happening on screen to actually make you laugh it's bound for dull zone.
Now, all this leads up to the final note which drives me absolutely mad ...
A pixar film suffered from "mobil-camera-itis." This is an acute swelling of camera movement that seems to plague amatuer 3d modelers. Basically ...
A 2d anamated short usually doesn't have the luxury of moving the camera through the set. If the set's hand drawn, the set can only be seen the way the person drew it. With 3d environments in the picture, the camera is able to move around inside the set since it's all there. Now, this disease occurs when someone goes giddy and thinks "wow! I love how the camera moved through the sets on some of the scenes in Tarzan*. I think I'm going to use the same trick whereever I can!" ( * side note: that movie still had excellent cinematography). So, the end result is that the camer doesn't bloody stay still. Not for a dang second! That stupid idiot behind the camera rigging just couldn't get over the fact that you can move the camera in a 3d picture. 85% of the camera shots in there are moving in some manner or another. Typically, this is accompanied with a pan/rotate motion (frequently with the rotation point going in a circle around the set piece. Pan left rotating around the center piece, pan right rotating the central character as he's running in circles around the set, pan left again rotating around the snake, pan left rotating around a bush, pan right rotating vertically around the idiot director who's seems to think that a motionless camera is a very bad camera.
Basically, it's VERY immature. Real life motion pictures don't have moving cameras ALL THE TIME. Sure, they move the camera for an establishing shot, action sequence, Jerry-Bruckheimer triumph pose on top of a mountain, and the climax of intense arguments. But they don't rotate the camera when a person is say: talking about non-critical stuff in the plot line while having a coffee break.
Just watch for the imobilcameraitis when you see this short (which you probably will end up seeing since EVERYONE should see its accompaying movie "The Incredibles" since it's easily one of the best movies of the year period.)
Basically, I don't know why Pixar decided to air such a cruddy short with such a spectacular movie. Unlike their other shorts, this one didn't win any sort of awards. You'd think that'd be a sign to them. Oh well ...
Whatever ... anyways, use this short to put retarded children to sleep when it comes out on DVD.
Oh, and don't hold your breath to see "Cars" next year. It's gonna suck in the same aspect that Monsters Inc. Sucked. Sure, the graphics are cool. But when the story line's gonna really suck who gives a flying flip. Besides, seeing as how Eisner's evil empire (responsible for single-handedly revolutionizing and destroying hand animation) completely pissed off most everyone at Pixar, I dont' see why Pixar would put any actual quality movie effort into their last partnership. I know I'm not going to see it in theatres.
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| Missing is me |
| 11.25.04 (7:11 am) [edit] |
In the unlikely event that you've been wondering why I haven't posted recently: I'm on vacation.
Down in Pheonix AZ having Thanksgiving with my brother.
That and I ate at Claim Jumpers yesterday ... mmmmm... Baby back ribs ... ahhhhhahhhhhahhhh .... *drool*
Oh, I also went to Fry's Electronics. Talk about dying and going to heaven, it's basically a Walmart sized Radioshack. The goods for sale goes all the back into the suplies stocking area.
Anyhoo, happy holidays.
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| Why is everyone drawing anime? |
| 11.21.04 (8:36 am) [edit] |
Ok, this is another post from an art forum. Here's the initial post:
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no offense but what is the purpose of so many people drawing anime?
half of them can't draw it well and the other half is just copying a style that is way over copied and is no longer original
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And here's my response.
=========================
I'll go ahead and echo everyone else's comments ...
Here's a reality check:
Explain to a 3 year old kid who's picking up his pencil for the first time that the best way for him to learn how to draw is through figure study. The kid will probably say "draw naked people? eeeewwwwww!"
I'd say a good 99% of the time, people start drawing by making fan art. Me? I started with Mickey Mouse, Roger Rabbit, TMNT, and those little Army Ants collectibles. Later on I added Street Fighter.
But, it wasn't until I was late into high school that I actually started taking myself seriously. My drawings are heavily anime influinced, but I'm learning more underlying art principles and I'm taking figure drawing classes.
Now, this next statement's supposed to be a slap in the face. If this isn't the case, it's an innocent mistake and my apologies are forthwith, hence no rebuttal in necessary.
What makes the choice of anime being an influince any different from any other influince? Is someone more original because they look at a different artist for inspiration? Is the director who looks at Jerry Bruckhimer (sp?) less original than the director who looks at Tim Burton? As far as going for originality, atonal music is about the least derivitave out there. (that's music without key signatures, chord structres, meter, or actual phrases)
If you judge a genre by the ammount of bad fan art it recieves, than there really is no good art genre. It'd take me a while, but I can dish up some really crappy Superhero, Alternative, Gothic, Furry, Realistic, Horror, Disney style drawings for you.
Besides, one has to bear in mind the source one goes for artwork. Take the internet for example. For the most part, anyone can post a website. And most people who have websites online don't have a normal job in the graphics industry.
One factor that skews the perception of everyone drawing anime is that there's a lot more anime artists on the internet than there are other genres. One is that the rising generation of young hopefuls are all raised on anime (pokemon etc.), and the rising generation is very apt for computers. Hence these little tykes make their websites with their not really good anime stuffs.
A second factor is that anime fans in general go to the internet in order to find their favorite shows. Most dubs, subs, and whatnot aren't readily available on television stations, so they nab them from any of the P2P networks on the net. And hey, since they're on there, they can post their webpage as well.
Anyways, point is: be careful about type-casting styles of artwork.
Scott McCloud does a hell of a better job explaining the principles behind this folly in "Understanding Comics." Particularly Chapter 7 (p. 162) hits the concept pretty hard. So, if you want a more professional response, go there.
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| Pacers v. Pistons v. Idiot fans |
| 11.20.04 (7:44 am) [edit] |
For those of you who didn't see it yesterday: turn to ESPN sports center, they'll be playing it all day.
Anyhoo ... there was a mini riot involving the two teams yesterday. It was pretty much a small scale version of a baseball riot. One of the pistons shoved a pacer in the face. He got kinda hurt so he laid on the stats table while the physicians looked at him. Then a fan landed a cup of beer on his chest. The pacer stormed up into the crowd, everyone backed away from this drunk with a nervous smile on his face and POW! fan goes down.
Then everyone else went crazy.
Now, all the hype and comentary aside ... I have one very important question to ask: What the **** were those fans thinking. It showed one fan on the ground tough guy challenging one of the players. The guy's probably 5'1", pretty chubby and out of shape. The player is the usual 6'6"+ lean muscle machine. The stare eachother down, the player throws an extremely fast punch and connects with the fan's face, the fan goes down unconcsious.
Again, what kind of idiot stands up against a REALLY BIG FAST MUSCULAR guy who's very pissed. That's real genius there.
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| Sly 2: Band of theives |
| 11.19.04 (8:29 am) [edit] |
what's this? low and behold! an actual game review!
well, actually not.
I rented Sly Cooper 2 over the weekend. I was able to put in about some 5 hours or so into it (and 22% complete). And from what I could tell I was actually pleasently surprised.
Of course, this is primarily becuase I was very skeptical of it and that some minor failures in some aspects kept that skepticism running. This is due to me thinking that it'd suffer from the same platformer unoriginality that other titles do (read: Spyro).
One of the surprises first off is the plot-line. Namely: there actually is an overall plotline and it's actually pretty good. That and the jobs they have you do are actually pretty clever. That and there's a handful of scenes and scenarios in there that just sparkle with 100% finished polish. I'd make mention of them, but that'd ruin the surprise.
My guess is there's about 13 or so episodes. The basic structure of these episodes is a reconosance mission (finding the target), initial preperations and info gathering, final job preps, and the heist itself. What keeps it fresh are a handful of curveballs they throw at you and the general methods of the heists themselves (which a couple that I've seen were just plain cool). That and the brains of the outfit keeps player in the dark about how the plan will actually work until you go to pull it off.
Now, gameplay ...
Firsts off I've heard people say it's kinda like a MGS for kids. Which is partially true, but not really. I'd say it's more of a MGS 2 for kids sans ambiguously gay protagonist and hour-long cutscenes. The reason I say that is that stealth more frequently than not is an option, not a necessity. While not being seen is required for some missions, when it isn't you can actually fend yourself from the gaurds. This isn't so much to blame on the AI but the decent controls the game gives you. And in Sly's case in particular, the relative ease to find some sort of secret escape that the enemies can't follow you on. But still, the battles can be pretty tough, so you end up sneaking anyways.
miscelaneous production values:
music, it's not a pre-recorded track and it goes with the gameplay. It's decent music actually, and the transitions between the different game states are actually pretty good. However, it honestly isn't memorable.
animation: in game animation is about as good as you can get without using the insanely cool animation engine Jak and Rachet & Clank employ. It's very expressive and moves along at a very smooth, fluid, and natural rate. HOWEVER, the cutscene animations are really stinky. It's the annoying unnatural-snap-to-differe nt-poses with lip-synch bit. Sure, it's functional, but when viewed right after the very smooth gameplay animation, it jars you a little bit.
Voice: EXCELLENT VOICE WORK. The Murray rules. Bently's actually quite lovable in a Millhouse sort of way. And the villains range from pretty good to best in the game. (the best in the game title goes to the villain of the first episode. His voice alone cracks me up.) HOWEVER the two main protagonist couple (Sly Cooper and police officer Carmelita Foxx) are stale. Sly has that "kid's game protagonist" voice that makes you want to punch him for being so cheesy. Fortunately, it's not grateing though. I just really don't like it. And Carmelita is just stale. She sounds like the same stale monopersonality voice as the lead female in "The Dig." Anyways, I'm glad she's not in it for long periods of time.
So yeah, at least rent it. I'm going to buy it once I see it at a good price.
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| WAAAAUGGGHHHH! |
| 11.18.04 (10:03 pm) [edit] |
Letter Time!
Nothin' better to cure my insomia than to respond to the buckets of personal e-mails asking me to give advice for their love life.
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Dear Butcher,
I have recently found a special someone in my life. She's a sweet spirit and I'm really attracted to her as well. Unfortunately she doesn't really get along with my family. She says that she likes me, but that she finds my family to be annoying morons. Is there a way I can cope with this?
Sincerly,
- torn
------------------------- -------------------
Well, she has a right to say that. Your family really does consist of morons. They're all a bunch of blathering idiots who should be drug out into the street and shot. Just be grateful she hasn't done the same with you.
Best of luck!
- Butcher
========================= =
Ryan Butcher is a collumnist for 7 national newspapers. He enjoys a nice cup of herbal tea. Do feel free to drop him a line.
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| Personal Business policy |
| 11.17.04 (7:30 am) [edit] |
Not really sure why I thought of this again ... This entry's more of a journal/blog rant thing. Just a quick mini-theory on how I do business with other people.
anyhoo ... just a quick insight on my own personal business politics approach. (I'm talking about those stupid office politics games that occur). Just me personally, I much prefer to just be myself and play face up with people. This usually means that I'll end up cussing on the job (which some people I've worked tried to find fault in me for). However, this also means that I'm never going to be a pleasant faced sneak. So at least you'll be able to rely on me being honest with my emotions.
Of course, I'm also very not naive. I'm really good at reading people and discerning their motives, so any attempts to try and get the better of me will be for naught.
So ... yeah. that's me.
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| clever sing song |
| 11.17.04 (7:21 am) [edit] |
Here's something. It's actually kinda catchy in a suessian way.
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("Ode to the Left Be-Heinz")
by Tom Graffagnino
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When polls were closed,
We all supposed
It couldn't be much closer!
Now Libs are torn,
Downcast...Forlorn,
And Soros is moroser!
The votes were cast,
And now at last
The counting could begin.
Monsieur LaMoore
Was very sure
His flick would do George in.
But now instead,
The states are Red,
And Hollywood is Blue.
Ben Affleck's mad,
Sarandon's sad,
And Whoopi's come unglued!
Begala whines,
The Left Be-Heinz,
"The Boss" just wonders..."HOW!?"
James Carville pouts,
O'Donnell shouts...
No time to Ketchup now!
The Kerry Crowd
Was brash and loud;
The cool and hip were pumped!
In Franken-Land
They took their stand...
"War Hero" John's been dumped.
At CBS?
Lord, what a mess!
Dan Rather wears a frown.
He's quite distressed...
Some say depressed.
Poor Dan,
He's goin' down.
There's "Hardball" Chris,
Who loved to kiss
The rear of liberal guests...
Convention night
Ol' Zell was right...
To that we may attest.
At CNN
It's sinkin' in...
Oh my! They're all in shock!
"Ohio's RED!"
John Kerry's Dead!"
"By George! We've been out-Foxed
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| Evil Dead |
| 11.13.04 (10:13 am) [edit] |
I saw this movie about a month ago or so. I just haven't gotten around to reviewing it until now.
Anyways, it's an amazing movie at it's own expense. Sam Rami's odd camera angles, goofy sense of misplaced humor, and love for stupid zombies coupled with a young Bruce Campbell's honestly crappy acting skills make for an awesome movie.
In case you're not familiar with the plot-line, Bruce Campbell and some freinds go up to a cabin in the middle of the woods. There they find the Necronomicon (book of the dead), some audio tape translations, and a red herring skeleton knife. After playing the audio tape, all hell breaks loose leaving Bruce Campbell's character (the famous Ash) to fend off the monsters.
Like I said, in all respect, it isn't a high quality movie. It seems like Rami was trying to make it scary. But, it's funny instead. It also includes a 5 minute death scene of a zombie about half way through the movie. Nothin' like a good B movie to warm your spirits.
On the analysis side ... several people say that Evil Dead 1 was trying to be scary but wasn't, Evil Dead 2 was trying to be scary but with Ash's groofy attitude, and Army of Darkness was just all about Ash's goody side. In my opinion, the series actually goes goofy at about 2/3 of the way through the first movie. There's a number of odd ball cartoon sound effects and whatnot.
It would be rated R for Zombie blood and gore, and a brief flash of nudity from an unattractive woman.
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| Lichty's Lectures -- Part 1 |
| 11.11.04 (7:15 pm) [edit] |
Ok, I have an interesting teacher for economics up at the University. He's an old retired man who's doing this to pass time.
Anyways, I'll go ahead and post a sample lecture from him. (derived from notes, memories, and other sources.)
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Well ... where were we. Hmmmm .... welll .... yeah we were talking about how the Average Variable costs were computed. Now you see, you go over here and draw a graph. Now watch carefully ...
see ... you just ummm ... *makes some decripid scribbles and arcs on the board* ... ya take these arcs here. But you already knew that didn't ya! That's 'cause you're all geniuses!!
That's right! you're all geniuses, every damned one of yas. There's no tellin' what you little bastards are gonna think of next. Oh, if only I was as smart as you.
You know, that reminds me ...
here's something for you geniuses to invent ... I call it a heat trapper! You know those giant buildings like Walmart? They lose millions of dollars a year trying to heat those things. You know where the money is lost, the FRONT DOOR! That's right! Everything out the front door. So, I was thinking a person could get filthy rich by inventing a way to keep that damn heat in. The idea is that you take a dead animal, string it's guts across the walkway of the front entrance. Then send a special radiation that you'd have to invent called "Lichtorays." These Lichtorays would generate a "NEGATIVE HEAT." This negative heat would suck the warm air into the rotting carcass. Then the heat would get pumped back into the heating system. Yup, that's how you'd do it.
And you'd be damn rich too! HA HA HA HA!!! Shit, your so smart! If only I had your brains. Then I'd ...
i don't know what I'd do.
I think I'd kill every f***in' republican in the US. Damn fools are always trying to mess with the free economy. The "LASSIE FAIRE" economy. (edit - I actually lack msn word on this computer, so I wasn't able to spell check that one. Sorry if it's wrong.) Damn fools.
(it's about this time of the lecture that he goes into a 15 minute blue streak followed by him ripping the spine out of one of the students on the front row. Then he pops in an old skit from Abbot and Costello.)
Gee ... wasn't that something!
Well ... I better not let you stay here longer than's necessary. So I better let you go.
....
Gosh, you're all geniuses!
(he closes his lectures by leaving the room either clutching his beer-belly or flailing his arms over his head)
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If you want me to drop another one of his lectures in the blog, please let me know.
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| Burnout 3 |
| 11.06.04 (2:04 pm) [edit] |
The long and short of my review for Burnout 3 is that you need to buy this game.
It's basically a racing game with a heck of a crash engine and gameplay suited towards making your opponents crash.
The idea is that offensive driving will fill your boost meter (i.e. drving into oncoming traffic). When you slam an opponent off the road, your boost bar gets longer and completely refilled. However, you loose these bonus segments when you crash. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out how aggresive it gets.
Another thing is that when you crash, you can make the camera go into a slowmo and actually control your car to a small degree. Slam your wreck into another racers and it counts for an takedown, meaning you get a full boost bar without loosing any bonus segments.
They have a few race modes, as well as a full out crash mode where you set up the most costly damage possible. With the artificial physics of controlling your wreck, it actually makes for great gameplay.
Plus a whole slew of unlockables for doing fun things and really fun multiplayer (I've heard the online stuff's about the best there is, but I wasn't able to connect during my sampling.)
So, yeah, buy it.
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| voting district results |
| 11.05.04 (4:43 pm) [edit] |
well ...
I knew I swore off posting about the elections ...
But ...
here's another one:
http://www.hannity.com" title="http://www.hannity.com" target="_blank"http://www.hannity.com
the main thing I want to point out is the map that shows the results by voting districts. (It's the graphic that should be at the bottom middle of the screen when the page loads.)
This just provides some interesting food for thought about the parties. I figure I'd get bitched at if I made any statements, so I'll let you come to the conclusions yourselves.
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| Mail time! |
| 11.05.04 (8:21 am) [edit] |
Well ...
I'm tired at the moment. And I really don't feel like blogging a review on any one of the 6 items that I have in stock ...
So ...
I think I'll reply to one of your letters.
Q: I'm in an neglectful relationship, and I think I should get out of it. But he's giving me all the benefits of a proper trophy wife and I can't bear to depart from these luxuries. What should I do?
Sincerely,
Neglected
A: That's a good question, Neglected. In my opinion, chicken noodle soup should consist of two major ingredients; namely: chickens and noodles. (please note, I did not include the item "shit" in the list. Shit does not belong in chicken noodle soup. It is a serious offense that the Church of medievil times punished by ripping off of the flesh by means of rusty fishing hooks.)
Let us talk about the first item: Chickens. Chickens are hideous blood crazed creature spawned from the depths of Hell. They are malignous beasts that rip the hearts out of fluffy baby seals. These vile demigods of fowl atrocities should be spared no mercy and beheaded at once.
Once subdued, their carcasses should be left in the sun no longer than 3 days to insure that they are at their maximum ripness. To ease one's fingers in the plucking process, the chicken should be dipped in clorax repeatedly until feathers, skin, and any other unwanted material are stripped from the delicious neck meats.
After a quick dicing, you can throw them into the broth, set to a raging boil.
Now, let us consider the second item: Noodles.
Noodles are made by crushing communists under the shining invincible wheels of democracy. The delicious by-product has been enjoyed for centuries by the Romans. It wasn't until 1984 when Fredrico Gonzales III of New Mexico accidently brought the recipie to the Americas when he destroyed several public buildings in Cuba during the great Matanza Real del Navidad.
After boiling the two items together, it is suggested that chicken noodle soup be put into a can and pumped full of preservatives and shipped to stores nation wide, so that angry parents can beat their dogs with it.
And that's why Chicken Noodle soup is endorsed by 4 out of 5 dead presidents.
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Ryan Butcher is a weekly collumist for 7 national newpapers. He enjoys clubbing baby seals. If you'd like him to answer one of your questions, please feel free to do so in the reply bin.
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| Looking ahead ... |
| 11.03.04 (7:00 pm) [edit] |
well, I should have taken the step to say Bush was gonna win the election a couple days ago, that way I could have said "lookit me, I'm cool."
My brother said about it "The wrong liberal at the wrong place at the wrong time."
Anyways ...
Ok, let's go ahead and play campaign advisors for next election. (I figure I might as well get this out of the way now so that I won't have to touch politics again for 4 years).
1) For the Democrats: Hillary Rodham Clinton. $100 bucks says that's their pick.
2) For the Republicans: Someone who can beat out Hillary? That's a hard one.
first off she has the inside advantage of having been inside the whitehouse already.
But the big unfair advantage that she has is that she's a she. (hopefully I'll be able to pull the rest of this off with a nuetral unsexist tone).
Hillary on the ticket means that she's the first female candidate for president EVER. hmmm ... i can hear the endless celebrities saying that people need to vote for her because she's a woman.
Any man she gets put up against won't stand a chance, really ...
Unless ...
Collin Powell?
He'd be the first Black Man to run for president. I hate to say it, but the only way the Republicans have of standing up against the trend vote controversy ballot is one of their own.
Why?
Well, any surface arguments of "we have to vote for Hillary because she'd be the first woman president" would be counteracted with "well, you have to vote for Powell 'cause he'd be the first non-white president." That'd make people stop to think about the actual politics involved and turn it back into a more normal election.
Well, that's my quick guess analysis. Figured I'd just get that out of the way so that I can get back to movie comic and game reviews.
Comments welcome.
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