Movie Reviews!

I recently got out to see not one, but three movies. OMFG! In 3-D no less.

Walking with Dinosaurs
This was a real kid's movie that tried it's hardest to be as obnoxious as possible. The movie is book-ended with real-life human actors because a movie about dinosaurs killing each other apparently needs humans that aren't in danger of being eaten. This part of the movie is about a whiny bitch teenager and his Uncle trying to lead him and his little sister into the woods where no one can hear them scream. The kid's shrooms he took apparently before the movie started kick in as a bird starts talking to him then morphs into a prehistoric bird so he can narrate the whole movie in the inexplicable Mexican accent of John Leguizamo.All the dinosaurs have terrible voice-overs. It's like the old Garfield cartoon where Garfield's lips never move while he's talking, only Mondays haven't been invented yet. The voice-acting itself is attrocious. It's worse than early video games where the actors had no prep-time before being given the script and told to read their lines.
The entire film is set in Alaska, using actual modern-day Alaskan scenery, which kind of detracts from the uber-realistic CGI, which is the movie's only saving grace. It seems to suggest that topography and fauna hasn't changed in millions of years. It would have been interesting to see the megafauna of the past instead of the backdrop for Sarah Palin's Bridge to Nowhere, but what can you do? The movie follows the life of one dinosaur, which is like a Triceratops but isn't. The movie stops and shows the names of all the dinosaurs as it goes along, along with the name's definition -which is educational, but I forgot each name instantly. A lot of the Latin names are less than inspired. Edmontonsaurus means Edmonton Saurus? Tell me more! Yes, the movie is educational and goes into subjects such as herds, species, migration, and the differences between carnivores and herbivores. It'll probably end up being shown to Grade 6ers while the teacher goes out and smokes.
The narrator tells you what's going to happen before it happens, lessing in the impact so you care even less about a barely-there paint-by-numbers plot. "The sad part is coming up," he says at one part.
"Well I guess I'll go and get some more popcorn," I said.
The main character also keeps cutting into the narrator's story, which is bizzare, because it's being told from the narrator's perspective to the teenager by a magic crow, who shouldn't be able to hear the dinosaur.
The movie is about the story behind the fossil of a dinosaur's tooth, but the tooth itself doesn't come from the protagonist of the story. So really, the story isn't even about the story.
The whole time, you're thinking about how they could have taken all the CGI and made a new Jurassic Park. You technically still could. All you would need to do is CGI in Jeff Goldblum running from things and you'd have money up the ass. Or you could have used Morgan Freeman as the narrator doing his March of the Penguins shtick and classed things up.
How immature is this kid's movie? It has a dinosaur shitting on another dinosaur within the first ten minutes, then has about three minutes of dialogue about the shitting.
The movie is called, "Walking with Dinosaurs," and that's pretty much all they do. It's like Lord of the Rings without the Lord or Rings.
Honestly, if dinosaurs could talk, all I'd want them to say is, "Fuck you, other dinosaur! ROAR!"
At the moment, it only had a 4.7/10 score on imdb.com.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
That's a terrible and clunky title, but that phrase is actually in the movie. It's like in Family Guy, where Peter goes, "So that's where that came from," when he hears the name of the movie in the movie.

The movie theater was also serving alcohol, so I imagined a scenario where I'd drunkenly attack the screen trying to save Bilbo from the dragon, also like Family Guy.

So pretty much everything ever is like Family Guy. 

This movie had all the stuff you wanted to see in the first movie, but didn't because Peter Jackson like money. It had elves killing orcs, the dragon, a romantic subplot that made no sense and felt forced, and they actually get to the fucking mountain and find the dragon and the stone they're looking for. Then it ends like Matrix Reloaded and you realize you have to go see another fucking movie next year, and you should have waited for the Blu Ray box set and watched them all at once over an eight-hour marathon.

It featured the most batshit ridiculous fighting scene since the Big Wheel scene in Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, and also featured Orlando Bloom. 

In it, Bilbo and the Dwarves are riding a rapids inside of barrels while being chased by both orcs and elves, who are also fighting each other as well as the dwarves. Legolas shows up and start literally hopping on the dwarves' heads as he jumps from one side of the river to the other. One dwarf gets and arrow in the leg, which I beleive is the closest any of them come to dying in any of the three movies. When you think about it, that completely negates any drama in all three movies. The movies have a death toll in the hundreds, but not one of the heroes suffers more than a boo-boo. It's like every 80's action movie times 10.

I'm also curious as to why any of the dwarves bothered to go along with Bilbo, as the entire plan centres on him and him alone. They're really just there for moral support.

Frozen

Frozen is a classic Disney movie in the Pixar style. It's really about how every Disney Pricess is fucking stupid. The Princess falls in love after meeting a man for the first time then gets cursed by a sorceress. She has something that talks and sings that should do neither of those things because it's supposed to be an animal/inanimate object as her companion. That's 90% of al Disney movies. At some point, the movie collides with an 80's movie ala Sixteen Candles when she realizes that she's been chasing after the wrong man. The main difference between this and every other Dinsey movie is that the evil sorceress isn't evil. Somewhere in there there's a metaphor for Rogue and Iceman. I'm not joking.

The Princess gets the same white streak in her white hair. There's even a thing where the Ice Queen wears gloves to cover her hands and never wants to touch anyone because she doesn't want them to know she's abnormal.Also: What's with Marvel/Disney and chicks with red hair? In Marvel there's been Mary Jane, The Black Widow, Crystal, Jean Grey, Mystique, Phoniex (Jean Grey's daughter), to name a few. Surprisingly, the Scarlet Witch is a brunette. In Disney there's been Belle, Merida, Anna, Jessica Rabbit, Ariel, and Lindsay Lohan. Since the two companies merged, they've been producing more red heads than exist in the world today. It's extra weird because Anna is a redhead and her sister is blonde.

In a weird way, the movie's like a sitcom with the dialogue and plot points. You'd almost expect them to start dancing in a fountain with umbrellas and having wacky neighbours.

The biggest sore point for me is the villain of the movie. If the villain had done absolutely nothing, he'd proabably end up winning. Instead, he goes on a triade and goes overboard. His entire shtick was that he was pretending to be good and loving to become the King. If he kept with it, he'd either have an adoring wife and be King, or else he'd just be the King. Instead, he went overboard. He basically fucked up as bad as he could fuck up.Who was he going to marry if not Anna? 

To me, the greatest villain in Disney movies is Jafar. He wanted the Princess, the Kingdom, and infinite wishes, and he was a dickhair away from all of that. He had the broadest scope of anyone ever and he had a pretty damn good plan. The bad guy in Frozen just wanted a kingdom, and not a good one at that. Legally, he'd probably end up having to go through an ellection or else be cast aside by a distant relative of the Queen. 'Dem's the rules, fucko.

Lando Calrisian: The Real Jedi Knight

Typecast

Super Mario Bros. is really just about being defined by your job. Super Mario is a plumber who kills goombas by jumping on them to save the princess, but all anyone really mentions when they explain what he does is that he's a plumber. In exactly 0% of the games he's been in over the past two decades has he ever fixed anyone's plumbing. No one has ever called him on their cell phone to come over an unclog their toilet. He's officiated boxing matches, played tennis, gone to parties, brawled with lightning rodents and raced cars on rainbows, but he hasn't used a wrench to tigten a seal on a pipe. In the TV show starring the professional wreslter from the Cyndi Lauper videos and the movie no one wants the remember, his carer as a plumber is part of the premise, but it's nowhere in the games except for perhaps the earlies manuals. Even his brother, Luigi, who works with him is better known as an amature ghostbuster. The Three Stooges have had a more successful carreer as plumbers, even though Curly keeps getting himself trapped inside of the pipes. When you play Super Mario, the only reference to plumbing comes in the form of the pipes scattering the landscape, which oddly have fire-breathing Venus Flytraps growing out of them.
Mario is so much more than a plumber, but that's all anyone cares about. You have to have a title, and that's his.

GTA V Problems

A week after the GTA V Online release, I have yet to play more than ten minutes online with other players. Any session I find with online with other, living human beings I'm immediately booted from. My last session lasted only about one minute. I logged on, looked to see who else was in that world and saw only one other human. Then I was booted. Only one in about six attempts to log in lands me on a world with other players. The first character I created seems to have been permanently deleted from the main servers.I had to replace him with a new character and go through the first few trainging missions again. There's no telling if this won't happen again. I wasn't even able to connect for most of the past two days. I can't progress without playing with other living people.

GTA V Online: GTFO

GTA V Online debuted yesterday, despite the game having been out for weeks. It follows a similar open-world sandbox style of Red Dead: Redemption, with customizeable characters and a thin storyline. You pick your grandparents, your parents, how much you like like any one of them, and that determines your character. The game forces you to sit through opening credits when first starting, because it clearly wants to punish you. I ran one race, which presumably I was supposed to have been pitted against other living players, but instead I ran against the NPC LVL 99, Lamar. When that was finished, the game glitched the fuck out for about five minutes, showing me nothing but a cloudy white background. When things went back to normal, I saw a car fall ontop another car as it spawned and then the cutscene played twice. I found myself placed in a group with two other live players after entering the aforementioned car, on my way to kill some gangbangers. The one dude, of course, decided to shoot out the windows as we drove, despite it being unecessary. He would later run me over and pin me against a wall and a car outside a store as I tried to enter, because this is a game made for griefing. Another cutscene ensued after I died, telling me I could watch other players. After respawning, I decided, "Fuck it," and went to the strip club, getting two lap dances. I could have taken the stripper home, but I didn't have an apartment yet. Shrugging, I went off to the next mission, where I held up a store. Another player jumped in as I was robbing the place and tried to take my stash. I responded by quickly grabbing the loot and ducking out the door as he shot at me. I saw his car parked outside, and stole it and took off. It is, after all, GTA. He chased me halfway across the map, despite me doing hairpin turns and ridiculous jumps over overpasses. As I approached the next targetted mission, I saw him narrowing in on me. That was when I saw that I couldn't gain any progress in my mission because I was in another player's owned car. He legally owend that car I just stole. That was a real thing inside the game. He shot at me as I exited the car, and I shot back. None of our bullets seemed to even connect. We sort of just snuck by each other, got in our separate cars and went on our own ways. A moment later, I was kicked from the server. I griefed another player without even realizing it, even though he'd started the whole confrontation.
When I tried logging in again, the game informed me that I quit a job prematurely and was accuring a bad reputation, even though I hadn't willingly quit anything. I tried moving on to the next mission, all by my lonesome.
I was kicked from the server again, just as I was starting the next job. Again, when I came back the game toled me I was getting a bad rep. I hadn't so much as seen another human being. It warned me that if I kept it up, I could be banished to the realm of griefers. I tried starting the next job, but apparently I was the only person in that world, and couldn't progress without more players. So I tried jumping servers. Same problem. And again, with a warning each time.Basically, it was just me, alone in a city-sized world and nothing to do.

Trevor Phillips vs. Wolverine

The characters in GTA V have similiarities between themselves and previous characters in the decades-long series, like Michael De Santo and Tommy Vercetti.Trevor Phillips, however, shares more in common with everyone's favourite Canadian mutant than Niko Bellic.
 
Seperated at birth? No.
First off, he was raised in Canada, despite living and working in America, a fact that everyone he knows makes fun of endlessly because of his slight accent. He also sounds exactly like Wolverine does inside your head, like a drunken Canuck that smokes two packs a day. Trevor Phillips also has a special abillity that makes him virtually invincible. He uses this ability while going on berserker rampages where he kills everyone in sight. His friends have a habbit of coming back from the dead. For Trevor, that person is Michael. For Wolverine, that person is every X-Man and his roster of nemesises. They're both basically hillbillies that like drinking, fighting, and country music.

GTA V: Living in Los Santos

Like every other white male aged 18-36, I've been playing GTA V since it first came out. I showed up to the midnight launch at 11:30, and proceeded to wait a hour-and-a-half to get the game. The collection of people who's company I was forced to keep made me question the decisions I've made in life. A few feet in front of me was one of those guys who are constantly puffing away on their e-cigarettes, which ironically is something they make fun of endlessly in the game through joke advertisements. There were people who apparently had been waiting since 4:30 p.m. until midnight for the game. Still, they would mock everyone else in the line as they left with their purchases, saying how we'd have to wait forever to get ours. Some quick math indicates that the people there first were factually waiting half-a-day, while the people there last were waiting about an hour or so to get the same thing. Still, I considered robbing them. I mean the parking lot outside is pitch black, and I've got like forty-pounds on these kids easy. It would have been in the spirit of the game.
What really blew me away about the game isn't necessarily the scope of it, or the graphics, or even the ability to play as three different people and switch seamlessly between them across an entire city. It was that they changed their clothes on their own. If you leave them alone, and play as another one of the three characters, and come back, they will be in a different part of the city than you may have left them, and they might have changed their outfit on their own. It's like they don't even need you to be playing the game, they're so independent.
The next thing I noticed was how hard it is to make a buck. I've done about 36% of the game and pulled off two major heists, and my characters are broke. They're constantly doing missions, and they don't have enough between them to buy a goddamn thing. I tried picking up a hooker exactly once, and the game told me I didn't have enough money. For a hooker. That's the saddest thing I've ever seen in a game. That's sadder even than when Aeris died. Does that ever happen in real life? Do dudes drive up to prositutes and comparative shop to get the best deal on a BJ? Who haggles with a whore? How many johns turn down hookers because of their cost? Who is that sadder for when the john drives off? The hooker, or the john?
As a spoiler, Johnny from the Lost and Damned expansion gets killed off unceremoniously in a cutscene.The dude probably has killed more guys than all three characters in GTA V combined, but he gets killed in a beatdown. There's a lot of callbacks from GTA IV, like Packie. Laslo, Lovefist, and Fernando from multiple games are in there too.
What I really like is how each of the three characters feel different. Sure, they all have the same basic stats you can level out, but they have different lives and types of missions. Michael's the 80's guy having a breakdown. losing his family and dealing with tough choices.Frankie's the rookie street hustler. Trevor's the psychopathic hillbilly meth dealer who grew up in Canada. There's more bromance than romance in this game.

Takedown

I've taken down all of my novels off of the Kindle store, mainly due to poor sales. I've sold maybe four copies in two years, without seeing a dime. To continue sales, I'd have to give all of my tax information, which I'm not about to do for a whopping $0 and 0 cents. Apparently, there's a deadline set for giving over all of my info to the U.S. government, despite not being an American, and despite the fact that the N.S.A. already has all that information and all of my dick pics, (I go by the name Carlos Danger on chat sites).

GTA Cover Chicks

 
GTA V is still weeks away from being released, but I'm going to go ahead and call it that the bikini chick is nowhere in the game. Why?

 
Lolipop chick wasn't in the game.
I
Martini girl wasn't in the game.
There were alway prositutes/bikini girls in the past decade of GTA games, but they were never true to the art in the load menus, promos, and covers for the game. Why? The series never shied away from overt sexuality. It even produced, "The Ballad of Gay Tony," expansion pack for GTA IV, which wasn't really about Gay Tony. Look at the cover for GTA IV. Everything else is in that game, including the gondolas, which weren't a big draw to begin with. (Do you even remember the gondolas? They were available.) The chick with the lolipop isn't. Apparently an NPC licking a lolipop was too much for the Next-Gen technology to handle, but gondolla rides weren't. .
Also, as for the selfie girl in GTA V: How is she taking that selfie? She's on a beach. There's no mirrors nearby, and she's using a cell. Is someone taking a pic of her posing as she taking a pic of them?It's GTA V, by the way, and she's flashing the peace sign, which is also the number, "2." What if she were flashing five fingers? No? Too stupid? What about three for all three playable characters in the game... What? I'm fired? Well FUCK YOU TOO! I SHIT IN YOUR COFFEE THIS MORNING!

De-Manning

Bradley Manning, after being convicted for 35 years for treason (instead of being executed like in ye olden times) now says that he's a she, and to call him Chelsea. The media is going along with it to such an extent that they no longer call him a "he" or, "Bradley," although he is still legally a "he" and named, "Bradley."

Cue, "Dude Looks Like a Lady."
I don't understand the sensitivity to a man who endangered countless lives and threw his own freedom away by leaking sensitive documents. If Bennedict Arnold had told everyone he wanted to be called, "Fanny McGina," and that General George Washington shoudl pay for his boob job and give him kisses, do you think the Founding Fathers would be on board with that? I know Jefferson would be all over that, but not the rest. Manning is essentially a less murderous Wild Bill.

The fact he pulled this gender card out of his sleeve after the trial is off-setting. Does he think he's a hero for people with gender issues? Heroes don't typically sell out their own country with Lady Gaga CDs. He also wants the government to pay for his gender reassignment when they're already paying for his room and board for the next 35 years. I'm not sure if he's trying to get sent to a different prison, or that he realizes he's going to be a fish and wants to make it as appealing as possible to the other guy. Either way, his genitals are in some trouble.

Explaining Ben Affleck Rage

The internet has imploded from the number of posts about Ben Affleck playing Batman in the next movie. People are angry and talking about breaking away and forming a new society. (If you haven't heard about it, you're not invited.) Why are people angry? Because it's Ben Affleck and because it's Batman. By law, these things are supposed to be kept seperate.

If you don't think Ben Affleck playing Batman will be a big deal, let me let you in on something that almost happened:

This is an image of Nick Cage in a moulded latex Superman costume. His hair is, quite possibly, a bird. Your arguement is irrelevant. This photo exists because Nick Cage was, at one point, going to play Superman, but he couldn't be bothered to take off the hippie necklace to take this tester. That's his level of commitment to playing the character. Still, Nick Cage is fucking serious about Superman. His son's name is Kal-El. He owns Adventure Comics #1 despite being broke. The only reason the movie wasn't made was because the production was run into the ground by terrible scripts and cokehead producers, which means Nick got the green-light.
Flash-forward into an alternate universe where Nick Cage and Ben Affleck play Superman and Batman in the same movie, together. That sensation in your stomach right now is fear.

Ben Aflek as Batman is the Worst Travesty of All Time

Did no one see Daredevil? Did anyone think it was good? It wasn't. Nothing about it was good. It even led to a worse spin-off movie for Jennifer Garner that was so bad I walked out on it... and it was a DVD. I walked out of my own house, still playing Elektra, just to get away from it.
I don't give a rat's ass if Aflek is now an Oscar calibre director. That has nothing to do with being Batman. He was already Daredevil: a costumed vigilante who uses ninja skills to avenge his parent's death by beating up dispondent street thugs. They both even have horns on their cowls and refuse to use guns and refuse to kill bad guys no matter how much sense it makes. They're the same fucking character, except for a trust fund and super-senses. There was evena plotline where Batman was blind like Daredevil. Aflek was Daredevil and he blew it. He even had Kevin Smith as a best friend who wrote a lot of the Daredevil comics. Those comic were conisdered good. Kevin Smith also wrote for Batman. Those comics were considered bad.Batman peeing his pant bad.

That's bad. Inexusably bad. So he's getting less valid pointers from his protege. Also, he has to portray Batman that's distinct from the other five other itterations. He can't be kampy or gritty.
Aflek as Daredevil had the bonus of playing a blind character, so he could stare off in the distance and not emote properly while saying things like, "I'm not the bad guy." He still blew it. Now he's going to rake in millions upon millions of dollars for getting buff and grumbling his dialogue, because, "Hollywood."
When will it all end?

Dog Bites Man

While playing Assassin's Creed III, I came across a "meme" of sorts that's been prominent in video games over the last generation. That is: wild animals and dogs can inflict more damage on your character than knives and bullets. 

In games that boast their, "realism," wolves can own you, while your character ignores bullet wounds to the head. I've had entire rows of soldiers line up and shoot me as one, only to walk away, or fight my way through while being stabbed in the kidneys. A wolf, on the other hand, can kill you in one or two bites to the arm.

This is a prominent feature of most games containing wild animals and hunting, like Far Cry 3 and Red Dead Redemption. In Red Dead Redemption, any wild cat can basically insta-kill you. Your super-macho character is less likely to survive an attack than you are in real life. 

The Call of Duty franchise is by far the worst offender, where in multiplayer unleashing the dog attack is second only to unleashing a nuke. Once you hear the dogs barking, you're screwed. If you see one, you have exactly a split second to aim and open fire at this scud missile with fur on it. 

 

On the other hand, in games like Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Minecraft where you have dogs and wolves as pets that can fight for you, those dogs are incredibly likely to be killed instantly by you with a misplaced blow. I don't know anyone that's accidentally shot their own dog... ever. Even Dick Cheney hasn't. In other games like Fable II and Fable III, your dog is basically immortal... until he's not. In Nintendogs, you have all the responsibilities of being a dog owner without any risks of mortality.

I'm basically just pointing out that no one has gotten dogs and animals right in a video game yet.