Three Days of Christmas: Santa's Conquest: Part Three

frosty the snowman turned out to be foe

though santa flinched not; his friend had to go

victory achieved and presents to send

a war fought and a holiday to mend

Merry Christmas everyone! For those of you who followed along for the last few days, thanks for sticking with this albeit kinda of silly Christmas story. I hope the little poem underneath each was tolerable and wasn't eye-rolling in its execution. Anyways, I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas Day and you get everything you wanted. I hope that the year has been kind to you all and know I'm thinking of each of you today! So once more: Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and God bless us... everyone!

Three Days of Christmas: Santa's Conquest: Part Two

santa and the yeti, they shot and shot

saving christmas was good; some blood or not

thoughts of sad children fueled st. nick's great rage

the naughty list in need trimming a page

Three Days of Christmas: Santa's Conquest: Part One

he jumped on his robot with all due haste

for them a fireball was meant for to taste

screaming his eyes filled with such happy hate

for Christmas is no time's discriminate

Review: Avatar

Avatar is the new kid on the block. That movie you've all heard about that's supposed to change the way we watch movies, revolutionize cinema, and make you forfeit your religion and worship heathen computer generated gods of film. If you're anything like me, you really want to dislike this movie. The trailers aren't all that impressive, the CG doesn't look that groundbreaking on TV, and for some of you I'd gather that it looks like Dances with Wolves in space. On all three of those points, you'd be absolutely correct and if I were not to preface this review with the fact that I shared these sentiments as I walked into the film I would be committing a great omission. Instead, I believe it is important to acknowledge the decks stacked against Avatar by a large percent of its potential audience because when I state the fact that it almost effortlessly crushes all of these preconceived notions, I want you to realize the gravity of what I am trying to say.

Let's take a moment here to emphasize the absolute NECESSITY of seeing this movie in 3D. Don't be a fool and scoff at the extra three to four dollars you're paying to walk into the theater and put on the silly glasses. I actually hate to admit it, but this movie does things visually that will change your perception of what it is to 'experience' a movie -- and YES, I am perfectly aware of how pretentious that sounds. That's the thing I discovered early in Avatar and it will be a running theme of my review: for all the grand statements of revolutionizing movies and changing your perception of 3D and how horribly stock it all sounds; it's all shockingly and begrudgingly true. Visually at least. Critically this film had already gained some impressive inertia early on, and having read a lot of it I cynically assumed that it was reviewers being reviewers. Of specific note, a particular review boldly told me that there are moments in Avatar that will, regardless of the story, have you shaking your head in amazement at what you're seeing on the screen. This particular point stuck in my head as the movie progressed and even with that in mind there were moments my jaw almost dropped and I had to marvel at the scope that this movie was operating. Assuming you're not extremely jaded, this movie will grip you visually at some point or another. For me, it was early in the film during a nighttime run through the jungles of Pandora which at night apparently becomes lit by phosphorescent plant life and micro organisms. It's during these scenes that you suddenly feel uniquely drawn right into the scene in a way that feels ten times more immersive than any film I can think of in the last half decade. The film continues to impress as the movie bit by bit reveals more and more of the gorgeously lush and magnificent world that the filmmakers have crafted. Like I said before, I actually very much dislike to admit it, but this movie will knock you on your ass a few times.

All of this would be completely distracting if you could not get behind the main characters -- an entirely CG albeit motion captured race of nine foot tall blue aliens called the Na'vi. As a benchmark, I've considered Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy to be the most fully realized computer generated character of all time. Thinking back, I believe his effectiveness relied heavily not only on the skill of the technology, but the degree to which the filmmakers made him feel like he was in the world interacting with other characters and objects. To say the Na'vi have moments in which I had to stop and wonder if there wasn't at least some practical element to their portrayal is the highest praise I can think of. They feel tactile and weighty; their eyes don't seem 'dead' as with most of the Robert Zemeckis mo-capped films recently; and most importantly you start to believe this could be a real race on this planet. The amount of emotion displayed on their faces and the reality of their movements do wonders to immerse you as opposed to pulling you out of the experience (there's that word again).

You may notice at this point that I haven't really mentioned the plot of Avatar, but that's not to say it isn't worth mentioning. In the most sobering terms, the plot of this film is probably it's weakest link but it simultaneously demonstrates director James Cameron's greater strengths. The story itself is one that is pretty standard and it's been told many times over. Any reasonably astute viewer will be able to predict the film from the first moment to the last in the first half an hour, but the thing about good science fiction is taking something conventional and familiar and making it new again. Personally I took the fact that Cameron was able to take a plot I knew before the Na'vi had been properly established and make me genuinely invest and care in its proceedings was one of the more astonishing things happening in an otherwise astonishing film. It's been suggested elsewhere that the plot was knowingly simple in order to fully exploit not only the revolutionary setting constructed around it, but the various emotions intended to be evoked. I have to agree with this idea as its not so much about what is happening on screen, but the sum of everything together. Cameron seemingly takes something that in the hands of pretty much any other director would fall to pieces and mediocrity and handles it with such a degree of mastery and craft that you never stop to break it all down.

Of the few negative things I can assign to Avatar, many of them are minor enough to not detract from the overall experience. Firstly, a small deal of the suspense usually generated from such a huge movie is removed because of the decidedly generic plotline. Some would say Cameron overcame the same hurdle to a degree with his last movie, Titanic. Everyone knows at the end the ship is going to sink and a lot of people are going to die, but it's the 'how' of it all that Cameron proves to be in the most control and this carries over to Avatar as well. The second negative here is that if you're really scrutinizing there are moments when humans are interacting with Pandora at large and the Na'vi in particular where you definitely get the feeling that you're looking at CG elements mixed with green screened humans. It's easy to ignore, yet it's still a problem. Lastly, Avatar suffers from being a bit too heavy handed in it's allegorical elements at times and for those of you like me, this will be a bit tasking from time to time. The Na'vi in particular and their struggle to fight off more powerful usurpers heralds a bit too strongly to Native American archetypes, and obviously the idea of lesser equipped natives overcoming great militaries is as common as Return of the Jedi. The environmental allusions as well add to the moments that it feels like Avatar is trying to force-feed half heartedly veiled messages to you and it grates after a fashion.

All of these things aside, Avatar can be marked largely as a success. While watching the movie and silently reviewing it in my head as I watched (a funny habit I've developed since writing this blog), the word 'spectacle' continued to pop into my head. The movie is so epic in scale and scope that you feel dwarfed by the whole thing. The technology, in 3D of course, is enough to change the way you define the word 'epic' in correlation to movie going experiences and the story is primal enough that it speaks to parts of all of us regardless of how many times we've heard the tale. If you're on the fence about venturing out to give Avatar a try, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to make that venture because even if you go in with a jaded mindset chances are good you will walk out surprised in at least one way. Will this be the next cultural phenomenon some of the ads make it sound like? No, I don't think so. Is Avatar something special? I would like to think it is and worth seeing now so you can remember what it was like when 'epic' took on a new meaning.

Why We Eat the Holidays.

It's the holidays again and, for me at least, that means an excessive amount of opportunities to eat. Why is that I wonder? Firstly, I imagine that having Thanksgiving lead into a whole month of Christmas frenzy can only promote festive treats and festive meals of colorful cookies and candies. Secondly, and this point may indeed only apply to those of us living in the frozen North, winter is not the most friendly time to be going outside and partaking in various tangents. At the very least it becomes that much tougher to convince oneself to get up and go outside instead of just staying in, having a cookie or six, and watching an old movie. Food is such a fascinating social element in human interaction. Simply speaking we eat to give ourselves energy to keep living, but it's not hard to see that food and the consumption thereof has a much greater significance in the lives of almost everyone on the planet. We eat on a first date; we eat when we get together with family; we eat at work to celebrate nondenominational holidays; we eat when we're happy and sad; we even eat when we have nothing better to do -- people eat for so many reasons and factors that the idea transcends the act.

An average human being eats over one thousand pounds of food in a year. On the basic level, our bodies urge us to do this for 'building blocks' needed to grow and repair our bodies and for fuel to give us the energy to go about our business and eat more. But is this the reason we eat, and if so why then do we eat more during the holidays? Some have suggested that many times we eat in a 'zone' of 'biological indifference' wherein we are neither hungry nor sated. The next time you sit down to eat, examine if you're legitimately in need of sustenance or if indeed you are responding to environmental cues. "Environmental cues," you ask? These can be any number of things ranging from the company with which you dine to emotional state and even - surprise, surprise - the time of year (more appropriately categorized as 'social circumstance').

The holiday season in particular fires on all three of the aforementioned cylinders of the eating engine. Obviously during the holidays family is in town, old friends come home, and as previously mentioned there are an abundance of treats and sugars to ingest. If we meet with a group of friends at an acceptable social gathering place like a restaurant, the stigma falls to us that we are required to eat. We do so in most cases without even being aware of what it is we're eating or if we even need it. The very nature of the holiday season can evoke the emotional triggers that cause a flux in eating patterns. From experience the string of seasonal merriment can affect a range of emotions from bliss to absolute melancholy. Being such a staple of our day-to-day stimuli, eating easily becomes a safely habitual haven for those of us overcome by either end of the spectrum of feeling. Our emotional state and the amount and types of food we eat are so closely tied together largely because of a closeness in the experience of existing. In essence we eat to stay alive and we experience emotion because we live. The conflux of the two activities, while seemingly unrelated at first glance, inevitably becomes much more apparent given the greater complexities at work in our minds and lives on a continuing basis.

In most of ones life, eating is never such a pervasive topic in a normal day of thinking, but that is not to say it is not prominent in our thoughts. It is prominent but in an almost subconscious way. It is such a primal instinct that it bleeds through to the more actively engaged impulses in the course of a day. Simply because of this fact eating and, by extension, food affect and in turn are effected by almost every stimuli we encounter be it internal or externally prompted. These reasons are chief among the factors that make topics such as weight-loss and healthy diets so frustrating to corral. While it is easy to assign logic to how we should relate to food; the biological tangle of stigmas, environmental cues, and ingrained behaviors make it a much more complex topic.

So why are the holidays usually such a catalyst for us to partake in consumption? I think it comes down to a perfect storm of stimuli. Christmas time has a way of throwing everything that makes the act of eating part of our daily lives at us in greatly exaggerated amounts. To me, the increased frequency of eating indicates that we are indeed alive and living. If this is the case, it means that things could be worse and maybe we should all be looking forward to a new year and a chance to experience everything life has to offer while we have the opportunity.

Would you believe I write outlines for these kinds of posts?

Review: Paris, J'etaime... Oh, and You Too New York

I've been neglecting discussing media here lately, but that is not to say I haven't been seeing a lot of it. Unfortunately, when you wait so long to discuss something, the topics really stack up. Therefore, I will review two movies here and endeavor to cover the rest in a future post.

I heard about New York, I Love You about a month ago through the vast Internet and I was immediately intrigued. The premise behind this film is that it is actually a series of short, yet in some way interconnected, vignettes that in some way deal with love. Each short is directed by another person as well as stars some relatively big name in the world of acting. Obviously the bigger connective tissue here is that each story takes place within the backdrop of New York City. The stories in New York, I Love You range from intimate conversations between two people to slightly dream-like sequences that cover a more ambiguous aspect of love. A good portion of these stories are comical or have unexpected twists. I imagine this is a byproduct of two things. The first of which is that love and the pursuit of love are often laced with comedy, embarrassment, or misunderstanding. The second reason for their inclusion probably owes to the format of a short story. Under these confines, a director would be implored to do something to engage the viewer in a short time and leave a lasting impression.

New York, I Love You has more or less solid performances from the entire cast which ranges anywhere from Hayden Christiansen and Rachel Bilson to Shia Lebouf, Anton Yelchin, Bradley Cooper, Orlando Bloom, Christina Ricci, Ethan Hawke, Blake Lively and, my personal favorite, Natalie Portman. This list barely scratches the surface of talent in this movie, so if you're a fan of even one of these actors you will find some performance to like in this film. The main strength of each performance largely lies in the fact that they play it straight. No one's attempting to do any acting acrobatics here (with maybe the exception of Shia Lebouf), and it gives the film a very genuine feel that makes each tale that much more engaging. It also helps that none of the stories involved in this project drag or bore. Each one is distinct and different enough that you won't find yourself anxious for the next segment to begin.

The movie only benefits from being filmed intimately in New York City. Many of the scenes and venues are places that are often glossed over in classical portrayals of the Big Apple, and it makes everything seem that much more special. While the previous statement holds true, I also feel like to some extent the movie could have been filmed in any city and been the same. Perhaps the point is that these stories don't try and blatantly showcase NYC, but as a backdrop a more rich tapestry to paint against cannot be found. If I had one complaint about the film, and this complaint only becomes visible when juxtaposed with it's predecessor Paris, J'etaime (which I'm about to review!); it would have to be the fact that each vignette for the most part focuses on romantic love between two people. There are a handful of films attempting to stretch themselves into more introspective territory, but on the whole New York, I Love You is a movie about falling in love or being in love. Besides that minor gripe, the film ends with a story about an elderly couple that, unless you're emotionally dead inside, will tug at a heart string or two and reminds us that love is difficult, it's hard, it's funny, and it's enduring. I think that's a good message to leave an audience.

Paris, J'etaime is a movie I've been dancing around seeing for about eight months now. Torn between the impulse to see it because it sounded interesting and a general lack of want to go and seek the movie out, having seen New York, I Love You essentially cemented my resolve to see the original.

Right from the start, it's clear that Paris, J'etaime contains directors and short stories that are much more willing to traverse the subtle and sometimes bizarre in an attempt to examine love. Without spoiling any of the stories, I was most taken aback by a story about a martial artist beautician, a story about a vampire and its lovesick victim, and a story about the ghost of Orson Welles. Unlike its sequel, this film also has more stories dealing with love of other kinds. Off the top of my head I can cite the story of a grieving mother who is having trouble accepting the loss of her son and has a very surreal dream featuring Willem Defoe as a cowboy. The wonderful thing about Paris, J'etaime is that all of these high concepts pay off beautifully and never feel silly or forced. Each increasingly bizarre scenario only lends itself to a greater metaphor about love. Of course, there are an ample amount of straightforward short stories that entertain and surprise in more direct ways.

While this film also has a number of famous actors including Elijah Wood, Steve Buscemi, and Natalie Portman (again) I feel that Paris, J'etaime contains a much more recognizable list of directors behind the cameras. This fact perhaps explains the more lofty heights that some of the stories contained reach. This film also showcases its titular city in a much more connected way. Each venue chosen for each film feels like it supplements the story being told, as opposed to being a simple backdrop. If there is one complaint about his film, it would arise from the same juxtaposition with its sequel. While New York, I Love You from time to time either swaps scenes or characters between vignettes lending to a more connected and somehow meaningful throughline, Paris, J'etaime only decides to tie all its stories together in the last two minutes of the film. While the effect here is similar, somehow by subtly implying the connections the sequel leaves the viewer with a greater satisfaction at the deft weaving together of otherwise disparate plotlines. While New York, I Love You reminds us that love can be many things from confusing to hilarious, Paris, J'etaime demonstrates that love has no bounds and that its scope is endless in the span of a human lifetime. This sentiment alone is worth the price of admission.

On the Merits of Christmas Music and Human Happiness in December.

It's that time of year again. Before Thanksgiving can even fade gracefully from our memories, radio stations across the city are ramping up the Christmas tunes for all to hear. For many this is a yearly annoyance. These types are content simply to think of Christmas one or two weeks out from the actual day. And who could blame them? It's a tad unsettling to be driving to Thanksgiving dinner only to be serenaded by 'White Christmas'. Will I eventually be dreaming of a white Christmas? Yeah. Am I dreaming of it on my way to Thanksgiving? Not until I heard that song. And that's really the point. More and more the familiar 'Christmas spirit' is being foisted upon us at earlier and earlier dates. From a purely cynical worldview, one could imply that this push is done largely to encourage retail surges in the weeks leading into the most joyous of days. Realistically this is most likely the most astute assumption. Stores want more customers with more dollars going through their stores earlier and earlier to garner a higher yield when the season is said and done. Me? I like to imagine that the Christmas music is coming on so early these last few years at least in part because we as a society need it. You may notice that Christmas music in general hasn't changed too drastically since you were a child. For some of us that's a couple of decades and for some us it's considerably longer. I think it's safe to say that Christmas music is timeless, and because of that the amount of memories attached to it are substantially greater in volume.

I guess it is my hope that somewhere out there playing Christmas music is a way to cheer people up in what is otherwise a dismal time of year (especially in my hometown of Milwaukee). The sun goes down at 5pm, the weather is becoming increasingly unforgiving, and the rush and stress of the holiday season can take a toll on a person. Christmas music, if given enough thought, can be a reminder that if we slow down and really take in the season there is a lot to be joyous about.

Personally, I didn't really embrace the Christmas music push wholeheartedly until last December. For whatever reason I was listening to the festive music for a good month and a half before Christmas ever happened. Generally in years past, thanks in large part to my time served in the retail shopping world, I loathed the idea of having to be reminded that increasingly angry customers with increasingly insane demands would soon be pouring into my checkout line and berating me. This year, as an extension of last, I have decided to attempt to let listening to holiday music a whole month before the holiday become a tradition. While not the most original tradition ever generated; for me it represents a time where I'm going to try and redouble my efforts to really appreciate the season and the winter to the full extent. As with any tradition, it will likely take a year or two more before I am fully confident I'll even want to embrace this tradition. For the time being though, I have decided to allow myself to drop my defenses and give in to what I would in years past considered 'cliche'. Sure, my attitude is pretty much exactly what retail chains everywhere are banking on to make some extra scratch in our hobbled economy, but so help me if somewhere years and years ago this music wasn't written to bolster the holiday spirit for the sake of bolstering it.

It's that last sentiment that I am placing all of my childlike Christmas hopes upon: That the world is inherently good, and that even though things can seem bleak, things are ultimately what we make of them. Christmas can be one of two things. It can be a stress-filled couple of weeks fraught with anger and frustration, or it can be a time to revel in the unnaturally cheery facade of everything around you. Personally, I plan to make it my own and enjoy it because in personal experience it will be over before I know it. And that's all having to listen to Christmas music this 'early' in the year really is; an invitation to attach your own personal emotions and memories to a time of year that is otherwise pretty unbearable. So in the meantime I'll be listening and getting in the spirit of the season, whatever that may be. And who knows? While I may be shuffling into someone's pre-planned scheme to get me to spend my money; if I come out of it with even a smidgen of personal joy isn't that more than worth it in today's world?

'White Christmas' - Bright Eyes

To All My Friends and Readers, a Video: Turkey Day Love

I don't know how many of you who read this are people I don't personally know, but I welcome you all the same. Heck, let's go ahead and say I'm thankful for you. And to all my friends whom I know in person, may your Turkey Day be good and may it remind you what in all the world you have to be thankful for however minuscule that may be.

Thinking of you, and thankful all the same. Happy Thanksgiving! This is for you:



Here's a YouTube Version too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-WgzvwUVX8#watch-main-area

Diversion: Dinner Parties and Shiny Shores

The new post I'm writing is proving extremely difficult to get through. It very much feels like a school paper which means, I imagine, the few of you who do end up reading my humble rantings will probably become fewer. Anyways, in an attempt to keep new content rotating onto these intertube pages I have decided to slip in with some MORE sunrise pictures (because I'm staying up longer and longer and sleeping less and less) and a few snaps from a recent dinner party I hosted for my friends at my apartment.

Firstly, here are some sunrise shots from a new but favorite location, and taken with a much fancier camera. As everyone knows, the fancier the camera, the better the pictures you take. Right? These pictures fall right into my 'World in my Mind' series in that I've tweaked them passed the point of being realistic outside of my own brain. Honestly though the scene was pretty magic before I got my fingers on them.


On this one I only slightly tweaked the contrast levels and I also desaturated the picture. I took some color out because, while the picture does not convey this, it was absolutely freezing out Wednesday morning. I feel like taking away some of the color made it feel like less of a warm, cozy morning at the beach.


I didn't really mess with this one so much. I just upped the red and darkened the shadows. Like I said, it was cold out, but looking at these pictures off my camera it really could be a warm day.


This last one I didn't retouch at all. I snapped this as I was leaving the lakefront, and honestly I can't think of a better way to start a morning.

Last order of business is a quick snapshot of this spaghetti casserole thing I whipped up for a meal for some people. It's not quite scenery, but I feel like it definitely classifies as art.

Picture: Saturday Morning Sunrise

It's funny how some of the most stunning imagery in a day is only available for about three quarters of an hour at night and in the morning. While I was out taking this (a rare occurence for me to be up so early), it dawned on me that the idea of a burning ball of gas hundreds and thousands of miles away that provides life and light for our entire planet is actually both very profound and absurd.

Good morning, everyone.

Philosophy: John Cusack Explains It All

I was watching a John Cusack movie the other day, and like a lot of John Cusack movies it also costarred Joan Cusack. Seriously, I get they're related but she's scary looking. I digress though. Like many John Cusack movies, Martian Child has scenes of the actor waxing philosophical about life and how it works. In this particular movie is a scene in which John is speaking to his adopted son about his problem with thinking that he is a Martian. The means in which he uses to convince his son to stop thinking he's an extra-terrestial struck me as pretty heady for a six year old boy, but it got me thinking. It's very poetic so in the interest of not mucking it up with my paraphrasing I'm just going to post up the word-for-word:

Dennis, can I just say one last thing about Mars? - which may be strange coming from a Science-Fiction writer - But right now, you and me here, put together entirely of atoms, sitting on this round rock with a core of liquid iron, held down by this force that seems to trouble you, called gravity, all the while spinning around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour and whizzing through the milkyway at 600,000 miles an hour in a universe that very well may be chasing its own tail at the speed of light; And amidst all this frantic activity, fully cognisant of our own eminent demise - which is our own pretty way of saying we all know we're gonna die - We reach out to one another. Sometimes for the sake of vanity, sometimes for reasons you're not old enough to understand yet, but a lot of the time we just reach out and expect nothing in return. Isn't that strange? Isn't that weird? Isn't that weird enough? The heck do ya need to be from Mars for?

In the context of the movie it works very well. Personally, I feel like it speaks to a much more intrinsic and basic understanding of the human condition - a topic I have been increasingly interested in over the last few months. The thing I like most about the above speech though is that it does not offer any answers. It's content to simply lay it out how it is. In a universe in which our existence very well may be a product of random chance, we as humans do things everyday that in the most basic rational sense do not coalesce with the enormity of the circumstances of our actuality. The implications of this thought process caused me to put in context a lot of the things in life that we may take for granted.

First among the many thoughts that I had was the idea of 'growing up' - something that from a young age we are aware that we will do, but never get a clear idea on how to make happen. I'm speaking here about the figurative growing up, and not the literal aging and growing we do as part of being alive. So what is 'growing up', really? In the grand scheme of things it's really only a perfunctory title we apply to ourselves to reassure us that we're living life correctly. Of course this doesn't mean that 'growing up' in a greater, more philosophical sense is not important. Maybe assigning titles and stages to our lives give context to the greater complexities that comprise our being here. In other words we assign greater purpose to our own lives in order to further allow ourselves an existential pivot point in which the rest of our lives settle around. This all flirts dangerously close with the 'meaning of life' discussion; something I don't find myself capable or qualified to even attempt to tackle. Instead what I am trying to say is that in our quest to discover the meaning of existing (something I believe is essential to the natural progression of all human life and its fancy higher brain function) we set rational parameters to what amounts to an otherwise irrational circumstance. I'm aware that this may come off as a slightly bleak outlook on things, but it's simply my attempt to pull back the ordinary focus on things to take a look at the bigger picture.

So let's analyze what growing up entails. On the surface, it's the taking up of greater responsibilities both on ourselves as well as those around us. Logically this opens us up to all kinds of opportunities to cause harm to ourselves, or at the very least make us more vulnerable to both emotional and sometimes physical aggressors. At basic face value these risks we take are completely unnecessary, yet in the greater definition of our lives established over hundreds of years of civilization, the risks are entirely inevitable. Essentially in order to satisfyingly justify our lives, we put ourselves out there against all rationality and leave ourselves vulnerable to harms and sensitivities that, outside of a realistic world, we'd be foolish to allow. But life is one which risk can often yield great reward, and perhaps it is the promise of such rewards that make all the so-called pain of living worthwhile. What is life without experience, and in the context of an existence that is weirder than many ever slow down to take note, is the rite of growing up a means to enrich oneself with said experience?

It's hard sometimes when you're in the moment to contextualize the reasoning behind many of the experiences a person will encounter in life - be it death, heartbreak, sadness, apathy, or sometimes even joy. A lot of the time our minds may never be able to fully comprehend the effects of these things, for many of them are only byproducts of actions and chances we've taken simply for the sake of it. It would be a mistake though to look at life through a primarily singular vision. Though we experience life almost exactly this way, the brunt of the human condition is communal. Just like life and living it are sometimes counter intuitive to the cosmic logic of existing, reaching out to others is very similar. Attachment in and of itself goes against the very nature of singular experience, but we do it anyways. Perhaps it is to justify our own actions. The approval or condolence of the fellow kind may in fact be the closest we ever get to justifying our existence. By the same token, to have another disapprove of our existence on however minuscule a level may in fact be the greatest harm we could expose ourselves to suffer.

So why do we do it? In the depressing, bleak philosophical view of life (one which I have never been a fan) life should be about staying alive from day to day and doing that which best serves yourself. There are a lot of people who do this very thing; sometimes in an insular way, and sometimes in a way that serves themselves through the manipulation of people around them. And who's to say that this method is wrong? In the greater picture it is certainly a more logical way of handling attachment and self-preservation. In the end, we live and we experience because life is too weird not to. We're all going to be okay because life will always adjust. All we have to do is figure out what we want to do when it does. Like John Cusack said, we're all just molecules roughly hewn together spinning around a universe chasing its own tail and in the end isn't that profound enough to justify almost anything we do with the time we have?

The World in my Mind

This post serves as both one of those new ideas I've been mulling over, and a slight diversion from regular goings on here at my blog. I cannot say if this will become more frequent from now on, but the kind of content found here may begin to vary as per my very first post. No worries though, I'll try and keep movie reviews and such coming as they interest me.

My dad recently told me that, to him, photography is a person's attempt at showing others the way that they see the world. I've carried this around with me the last couple of weeks and it occurs to me that it is very profound in its own way. At a most basic state, a photograph is really just a still representation of something that exists in this world. In other words you could say that it is mundane. When one thinks then as my dad does, a picture becomes something much more interesting. The way a picture is taken, its subject, and even the location all inform the viewer of the unique way that a person views the world; the mundane can suddenly mean a lot more. Taken this way, the act of photography is actually intensely personal, however intentionally a picture is taken.


With this thought process recently in mind, I set out to not only take a few new pictures, but to search out some of my old ones and figure out something about myself. Why did I take the picture? What did I feel? And what was I trying to say to everyone else about my world view? It's actually a very interesting process to discover something about yourself that you may have only been subconsciously aware.

I consider myself a bit of an artist, or more realistically someone with an artistic mind. I often find myself looking for detail and symmetry. Colors that really stand out. I especially like light and especially that at night. With this in mind I found it intriguing that it apparently seems in almost all of my own photography I'm desperately trying to capture whatever it is that I am seeing and feeling in that moment. The funniest part about this endeavor, as with most art, is that I often times struggle to succeed. Very seldom does it seem I ever really capture the essence of my own vision. I find this frustrating, but admit freely that sometimes the most beautiful moments can be captured by accident. Allowing myself to accept this fact, I poured over the last six months of pictures stored on my computer with an eye to spot not only the beauty in any particular moment, but my own emotional and artistic intention...


... And found lots to look at. Sometimes the picture felt close to what I was aiming for and in some cases I'm so far removed from those moments that the pictures become something else. Nevertheless I started picking out images that I felt I was relatively close to capturing and decided to see if I couldn't maybe coax the last bit of personality out of them. In other words, make those visions uniquely mine to the world. This involved a heavy amount of photo manipulation on my part. Normally I am trained to scoff at the practice, but it occurs to me that by adjusting these images I am only making the effort to expose in some manner the feeling of the things I am seeing.

Now, in a lot of cases the editing began slowly and I attempted to keep the changes minor. In some cases this was all that was necessary to achieve my desired effect. In others I made a discovery that perhaps the moment I was in and the picture I was taking were an attempt to emulate the scene I wish I could see. It's natural to want your own perfect version of life and it's also natural to never really achieve that. As I slowly pushed the contrasts and the color balances in differing and more dramatic directions I realized I could turn the world I've seen into the world in my head. There's something oddly poetic about the process that I really appreciate -- taking the real world and adjusting it ever so slightly to match the ideal version in my brain.


I realize the practice is slightly counter-purpose to photography. There are some that would argue that when you take a photo, you're trying to capture that moment as real as it is forever. And while I can imagine the practical applications of such a practice I cannot help but be bored by it. If, as my dad so helpfully put it, the purpose of photography is to share your unique view of the boring everyday, then maybe what I've done is an extension of that. Some of the pictures featured here say a lot about me, or at least how I'd like to think I see existence. They represent places I've been and, at the same instant, places I'll never be. That's a really tough nut to crack, but I can't help but believe that it's a lot like living.

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Greetings and salutations noble people who may happen to read these things that I write! It's been some time, and in the interim between then and now I have been pondering what else I can do with this space. Suffice it to say I have many ideas, and with the summer movie season winding down movie reviews just don't entice me the way they have been. Make no mistake though, I'll continue to review the ones that warrant doing so and hopefully in a more timely manner. I suppose the point of this introductory rambling is to say sorry for being gone so long (as if anyone legitimately cares), and to promise perhaps differently purposed posts in the future. Without further adieu then, onto the review.

At the outset here before we really get into the heart of the review, I must admit that I don't have a close or intimate knowledge of the original Maurice Sendak penned Where the Wild Things Are. To wit, I have probably read this source material maybe three times in my life; the last of which was likely a decade ago or more. I am familiar enough with the general plot of the book and of course the art style and the monsters within. When I heard that Spike Jonze was going to be making a movie based on what essentially amounts to a thirty-five sentence short story, I was intrigued yet wary of the extra material that would be needed to fill out a feature length. Still, after viewing the fantastic trailer and reading a few interviews with director Spike Jonze (of whom I've always assumed good things, but never really acclimated myself with), I was genuinely excited to go and see the movie.

Most will know the basic three part plot of Where the Wild Things Are. Main character Max misbehaves (what a little monster?) and is sent to his bedroom without dinner. Upon said banishment, Max suddenly finds himself in a deep jungle where he meets a group of monsters of which he becomes King. From here on he has wild and exciting adventures which eventually culminate in him finding his way home to his dinner and assumingly good vibes with his mother. The film version is essentially the same story though fleshed out and buffered to both evoke a more real connection with the audience, and give slightly more purpose to the existing narrative. Max is now a troubled nine year old with an estranged father and a sister he adores who is becoming tragically more adolescent and less concerned of his time. To top this all off his mother is a workaholic who cares but has trouble dodging distraction. Adding to Max's childhood frustration is his mother's new boyfriend (a blink and you miss it appearance by Mark Ruffalo). The Max of this film is clearly a troubled kid who acts out not because he's a brat, but more because he's dealing with anxieties that he doesn't quite know how to handle in his young experience. He's still a real nuisance, but you get the sense he's acting out. The movie follows suit, but instead of following the book Max runs away from home and finds a wooden boat which he of course takes and sails away to a mysterious land.

Max then meets the Wild Things and they have many dangerous if not bordering on non-sequitor adventures. This is where Jonze's film really establishes itself from its source material. The monsters who befriend Max are much more realized characters now all with their own neuroses and personality traits. Audiences at first will try to assign analogues in Max's real life to the monsters in his fantastical life. One of the most intriguing and bold moves perpetrated by the filmmakers is that no one Wild Thing wholly embodies a part of Max's real life. Instead much of the interpretation is left to the audience; a practice becoming more and more rare in big Hollywood movies these days. While the main Wild Thing, Carol (James Gandolfini), may at first seem to be an embodiment of Max's unseen father, moments of anger and jealousy over being displaced by easy-going KW (Lauren Ambrose) suggest a completely different association. This element of the film is what ends up being its strongest suit. By never deliberately taking the viewer's hand and bashing them over the head with the meaning behind each and every story beat, Where the Wild Things Are allows much like its source the ability for the audience to assign their own personal experience to the film. While the film never strays far away enough to confuse its narrative concerning Max and his own struggle, it leaves the actions of the characters within ambiguous enough that the motivations and effects of them are entirely up to the viewer. While I feel that this may deter younger viewers who perhaps would be the main draw for such a title at first glance, the value of this film I imagine will reveal itself through time as that same young audience grows to understand more deeply some of the things that are alluded to.

Where the Wild Things Are is an ambitious movie. Moving at a nearly break-neck pace, the adrenaline-fueled chaos of the proceedings effectively evokes the confusion and frustration of being a child. The monsters at once symbolize the myriad dangers both real and imagined that can surround one as a child, while at the same time being the most extreme visualizations of the disarray, anger, joy, and sorrow one feels during that time of life. The film's biggest strength may lie in its ability to remind us all of what it felt like to be a kid; that it may not have been as innocent and easy as we always remember, and that while we all grow up eventually we may have forgotten how tempestuous it was getting there.

Guest Review: Pandorum

My brother Jamey returns this week with a review of the new space horror movie Pandorum. I was most intrigued by the Crunch Master 6 aspect of the movie, though in full disclosure I never saw it.

Pandorum is a film about an underwear model who wakes up on a spaceship after a prolonged hypersleep only to find that he has no memory (hibernation sickness, though his eyesight returned on the spot), and that the ship seems to be abandoned. After peeling off several layers of skin from his nap (perhaps the only thing about the character that I identify with) he begins to search about his immediate surroundings. Now, I know what you're thinking, but don't worry because in the future every Hyper Sleep Chamber is fitted with a Crunch Master 6, so our hero is sporting rock hard, tasty abs right from the get-go. Equipped with nothing but a pair of sexy briefs, which I can only imagine were custom made to be specifically the length of his penis, and a pair of legs that are apparently immune to the effects of atrophy, the protagonist (Corporal Bower) locates some clothes from his own locker and can thankfully continue with the story.

After a few moments of ambling, we are introduced to the next principal character; the less talented Quaid brother (Dennis). Bower quickly attends to his newly awakened comrade, whose Crunch Master, it seems, must have malfunctioned during hypersleep. They quickly search for things that they have in common, and though they can't remember what their favorite colors are, or whether or not they both love cashews, they do realize that they are part of the flight crew and that Randy Quaid's brother (Lieutenant Payton) is the superior officer. They agree that they would like to find out what happened onboard, and attempt to escape their confines. Bower is elected to climb through a vent to open the door from the other side, as the ship has no power. They realize that they have to recalibrate the nuclear reactor, of which Bower is intimately knowledgeable because he is the ship's mechanical engineer (thank God, right).

This movie, as far as I am concerned, shoots itself in the foot early on by not allowing itself to be scary. The scary setting is there sure, but the problem is that instead of allowing the setting to be frightening by its own merits, the filmmakers decided to give the audience aural queues. The creepy setting is usually always accompanied by creepy score. Now while that might sound like it makes sense, it really just panders to the audience. You should not underestimate the effect of silence and ambient noise. In fact the few times there is silence, it is such a departure from the norm that the audience should realize that something scary is about to happen, which is exactly how it goes, but since it's so obvious, it doesn't pack any suspense. If there is silence all the time or only slight ambient scoring, then the viewer truly begins to fear for the characters at all times, as there's no distinction from when the characters are in a safe mode versus danger mode. The ghost is also given up a little soon for my tastes. The encroaching menace of space monsters is revealed, basically, immediately upon the realization that there might be the menace of space monsters onboard. The creatures themselves are postulated as being evolved humans, or at least mutated humans, which isn't a stretch given their similar appearance, minus a few details such as the, obviously evolutionary, loss of nose. I don't know about you, but when I think "evolution of man," the first thought in my head is, "Voldemort's got it; vestigial, plain and simple." It seems, in this regard though, that the filmmakers were not planning on using these creatures as the source of suspense, rather they intended to use the titular Pandorum (a fictional psychosis brought on by deep-space travel that is accompanied by hallucinations and, eventually hostile, paranoia).

Pandorum, as a means of suspense or terror, falls a little bit short as well, in the regard that, except for one or two instances, it is again accompanied by obvious queues that it is taking place. To its credit, though, it does lend an idea of what the characters are going through psychologically, and that at least helps you to fear for them. Besides this the movie only offers tenuous backstory that doesn't so much rally the audience to the plight of the protagonists, so much as it merely offers up that they were real people once, before they got into this mess. Given the circumstances of the story, though, whether or not Bower had a girlfriend before they launched really wouldn't have an effect on what his goal is, and accordingly in the movie, there is only one (maybe one and a half) moment where it actually does affect him.

Now, as if the aforementioned reason weren't enough to sway the movie away from being truly suspenseful, the film also falls victim to some of the usual post-apocalyptic tropes of movies today. Through Bowers search of the ship he eventually runs into survivors. It seems, by way of the plot, that there are a few people on the boat in a similar situation to Bower. These characters follow the usual archetype of grizzled survivors who hate you for being so clean and are too hard-bitten to fill you in on what has been happening. Characteristically though, and this could be a good thing (in the hypothetical situation of the movie, not for plausible fiction) every survivor is luckily trained in the Martial Arts. One such person Bower runs into is a Vietnamese Agriculturalist who doesn't speak a word of English but is luckily fluent in cock-punch. I can only imagine how lucky he felt when he woke up realizing that although he wasted his life studying agriculture, at least he jogged every weekend to the San Shou Kung Fu temple just for kicks (and punches I guess). Of Bower's other comrade I am less convinced. A shockingly stab resilient German scientist who, I'm pretty sure, was handed a pamphlet when she awoke and was told to "CHOOSE YOUR MARTIAL ART", to which she replied "knife". The super-human fighting ability phenomenon would be a little harder to swallow had the monsters actually been terrifying. As I said before, they are basically just ever present, and as I learned as a child while watching From Dusk till Dawn, if the monsters are always visible, they are not scary. When they are dumb and obvious, they are even less scary. For example, despite setting a rather elaborate trap, baited with a live survivor; assumingly to draw other prey to his cries; apparently our hungry friends are so thrilled at the fact that it actually worked, that their plan goes from setting a clever trap to blitzkrieging down the hallway towards their prey wearing blowtorches. Really. Despite all that, the survivors refer to them as hunters several times, which I guess is true enough, in the same sense that a retarded boy chasing a cat with a sprinkler is essentially a hunter, too. As far as characters go there's really only one more important one. Payton, not to be outdone, also finds a survivor while sitting on his ass in the first room he woke up in waiting for Bower to fix shit. This character is one of the previous team's flight crewmembers whose face you want to punch. The actor's actual name is Cam. Finally, there is a brief performance by Norman Reedus, whom douchebags will recognize from The Boondock Saints, and everyone else will recognize from The Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day (that's not a joke).

In the end, the film isn't bad. It's entertaining, it just wasn't what I was hoping for as it only went for the cheap scares (BANG! Whoa!) and it sort of didn't mind being an action flick. It is enjoyable as long as you don't expect anything new. There is only a hint of romance implied in the movie, but it's so small that it doesn't interfere with the plot, or plausibility(of plot progression). While I won't say that everything in the plot is callable, I will say that none of it is surprising. In this movie climate, audiences are conditioned to expect the twist ending, and while this movie sort of has one, it's little more than a big "who cares?" Besides being another cautionary tale for Gothic stylish space architecture conclusively being curse-prone, this is a movie that I didn't ultimately regret paying money for. Take your girlfriend to see it, put your dick in the popcorn, it might be scary enough (to girls) to get away with. The movie, not your dick.

Grade: C - for cock punch

Review: 9

9 is the kind of film that you watch the trailer and feel a sense of anticipation over whether the movie itself can live up. Smarter viewers may have had the foresight to realize that the chances of this movie being as cool as the trailer were very slim. The main problem with 9 is that it ends up being what essentially amounts to a more drawn out version of the trailer. Things happen fast in this movie... really fast. From the opening moments where main character 9 awakens to a very post apocalyptic world, the plot moves at a bullet's pace. One moment he's becoming self-aware and the next he's meeting another sack-goggle-man. Then a mysterious cat robot is attacking and stealing a mysterious rune found by 9 in the first few moments of the film. All of this transpires in the first ten to fifteen minutes, and while it is very cool to watch, the movie starts to feel like all flash and no substance. This is not to say that 9 doesn't attempt to inject moments of exposition though. Instead the movie does try admirably to introduce the world and the little mechanical characters within. The only problem here is that when this movie slows down, it doesn't do a good job of informing us while not simultaneously boring us half to death.

9 relies far too heavily on the draw of its art style and quirky look of its characters. Passed the fact that they are cool looking sack robots that run around fighting with exacto knives and have staffs that have gears attached for style, there's not much presented in this movie to make it all seem intriguing. For instance there's a sack-pope leading a highly insular group by staying secret... but outside of the fact that he's wearing a cool pope-hat and a cape, the character is sadly one dimensional. He's afraid of the outside world and he's awfully close-minded. That's it. Even main character 9 is little more than the eager minded new guy who asks dangerous and controversial questions. The most interesting character in the film that did not feel shoe horned into some cliche archetype was voiced by John C. Reilly. Number 5 plays slightly naive, but overall is the only character going through a believable set of emotions and reactions that don't play specifically to his strictly defined character description.

Characters come and go in this movie so quickly and events transpire likewise. It's hard to stop and care about what you're seeing passed the occasional "oh man, that was cool looking". In the end the movie basically follows a predictable throughline which will have you more or less guessing the sequence of events. 'Blunt' is the best word I can think to describe 9. If it isn't set out right in front of you in plain terms, then there is no use thinking about it further than that. To its credit, the movie does try to end on a slightly ambiguous, interpretable note that leaves the viewer the task of deciding what is going to happen next. The biggest problem here is that in a movie where everything has been spoon fed with a pat on the head, the audience doesn't really care to engage themselves enough to meet this haphazard attempt at mystery halfway.

9 is based on director Shane Acker's short film of the same name. I think this is probably the main reason the feature length version falls so short. As a brief and silent vignette, the style of the movie and the pacing of the events works insanely well. It's evocative, it makes you think, and you don't have to sit through cliched dialogue coming from predictably defined characters. Obviously stretching the movie to fit a feature length, the short story had to be padded and expanded in multiple areas. Unfortunately for as cool and edgy as the film ends up being, the heart and soul of the source material was never meant to be spread so thin.

In the end, 9 is one of those films you try so hard to love but it never pays you back. If you still feel an irrepressible need to go out and check this movie out, I'd suggest waiting until it's either free on cable or available to rent. At best a diversion, at worst boring; 9 is another product of ambitious scope and a lack of execution.

The City From My Roof

You're going to have to click this picture to see it in a bigger resolution, but today was an amazing day in Milwaukee. It's recently dawned on me the intricacies of the city and I find myself appreciating it a little more than I have in my previous 22 years. Anyways, this is the view from my roof; a view good enough to warrant my renting of this particular apartment.

*Disclaimer* There was some tweaking down in Photoshop to filter out some of the grey from the sunlight and inject some warmth into the whole thing. The view is still fantastic.

Review: Adventureland

Oh Adventureland... The cinematic equivalent of a cocktease. Honestly, presuppose that some person you know suffers a traumatic head injury and remembers everything except for what a cocktease entails. First make them watch the trailer for Adventureland. They'll love it presuming they remember teenage-comedic films that have preceded it. I'm thinking Superbad mostly here, maybe Sex Drive. Ok, now you've got them excited for the movie. Rent the DVD (really, really don't buy it) and sit your unfortunately injured friend down in front of the TV. At this point they're going to be pretty confused as to why your explanation has turned into a tangentially vexing movie night. If they voice these concerns, be sure to punch them soundly in the throat. Over the course of the next hour and a half you can safely bask in the dawning realization in their faces as they begin to perceive that the hilarious movie they were promised in the trailer is in fact anything but. No, the truth of the matter is that Adventureland, like any run-of-the-mill skank who promises wonderful sexual adventures but gets psyched out before delivering, is an all-too-ordinary movie about teenage angst.

The movie follows a young man who has just graduated from college and moved home to discover that finding a job after school isn't as easy as it may seem and before long he settles into a summer job at the local amusement park; the aptly named 'Adventureland'. Right from the get go, there's no crazy premise or zany antics that lure you into the story. I think most people, even those still in school or who never went, can relate to the mediocrity life takes on when you have nothing new to look forward to and you hate your job. For me, that's a strike against the film because the last thing I need is to watch a slightly less real version of my own life play out in front of me.

Ok, so maybe the film will pick up once main character James begins his job working at the park. Hmm... Nope. Looks like this job sucks about as much as you'd guess. Oh hey! There's Kristen Stewart. Finally we'll be able to see her play a character who doesn't seem like they're one Lifetime original movie away from jumping into traffic. Wait, aw man, she's doing the same thing she does in every movie. That sucks. Well, she's sorta cute but boy is James smitten. Here comes Ryan Reynolds. He's funny. Bring on the laughs! What the fuck!? He's pretty much playing an average older dude who works with kids. I suppose that's better than his annoying character from Waiting but... I really want to laugh. Wow, this movie is a little too much like anyone's life without any of the fun stuff that would make it enticing as a movie. Oh well, maybe we'll get some chuckles as James tries to get with Kristen Stewart's Em. Wait, she only likes him as a friend. Shit that's too close to home. Wait... She's sleeping with the much older Ryan Reynolds? God that blows.

I'm hoping my point is coming across here. The movie has almost NO comedy in it whatsoever. I don't really know if this is a failing on the part of the script and director, or if it stems from the film being marketed as something it's not. And herein lies the main problem. If Adventureland had been marketed as a drama from word one, I think the fact it's so depressing would not come across as so egregiously offensive. But no. The trailer for this movie would have you believe that you're going to get a laugh a minute comedy about working at a slightly off-center amusement park. Then you go to the theatre and watch a crude reproduction of your aimless early-to-mid twenties as it assaults you with the crappiness that life often slips into. Who exactly needed a reminder of any of this? When all is said and done, Adventureland could be forgiven its sins and accepted as a drama were it not for the fact that it seems to fall prey to the same bait-and-switch it served up in the preview. I am referring here to the casting of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. These two have really been two of the funniest people to come out of Saturday Night Live in decades, and they're placed into this film to provide the surreal humor. The mistake of course is that juxtaposed with the sheer reality of the rest of the movie, both Wiig and Hader come off as overdone when they let loose some of the otherwise hilarious material they're presented with. It's a shame because in a movie that adhered closer to the outrageous comedy of its teen-angst predecessors, these characters would be infinitely more entertaining. As it stands, they serve simply as a reminder that you came to see a comedy and got served a steamy helping of melodrama.

All of this and more is why Adventureland is the perfect film to teach your selectively retarded friend the meaning of 'cocktease'. The film gets your hopes up with promises of wonderful laughs and then slaps you in the face for your belief in it. If it had just come clean from the beginning about what it truly was, maybe I wouldn't be so sour about my experience. As it stands I wonder if Adventureland ever knew that it was its own worst enemy. Either way, if you're going to see it know what you're getting into.

PSA: Fuck Halo, every story ever, oh, and God bless George Washington. No More Heroes 2.

Here you will find the second guest review ever featured on my site. Not so much a review as it is a PSA, please welcome my brother Jamey Scerpella as he delves into the video game series No More Heroes. He was very adamant about editorial control being at a minimum and thusly what he wrote is what you get. Without further adieu then...

No More Heroes 2 is a love letter to guys my age. The kind of love letter that can't help but murder its intended recipient, while thinking up imaginative new shapes for electric guitars. No More Heroes 2 is like if a rock viper wore a leather jacket, and then slept with your girlfriend. No More Heroes 2 is the kind of game that I talk about with my friend Jim and when someone overhears us and asks, "Oh, how is that?", the most cerebral thing we can simultaneously think to respond with is, "::sigh::... it's really fucking cool." If you're reading this right now and are thinking, "I don't know, I need some proof it's that cool", you're in luck, because there's an "x" button in the corner of this browser. This game is so manly that the disc itself wears a muscle shirt, and doesn't care that you can see its back hair.

To start, the basic premise of No More Heroes 1 is that you are Travis Touchdown and you've recently won a beam katana off an internet auction. After receiving the weapon, Travis proceeds to locate and murder the world's top ranked assassins, naturally, at the suggestion of some girl he met in a bar. The combat is, in a word, super fucking violent, otherwise labeled, as most parents know, "cool." You basically run into a crowd of people and start swinging until the game prompts you to finish them off. To do this, you can use a bad-ass wrestling move, or just cut them in half. In battle, in order to charge your weapon, you have to jerk it off. The image of this dude masturbating a lightsaber, is something I never knew I would identify with. In order to facilitate this particular sociopathic neurosis, which I can only assume is called "super-multiple homicide," Travis takes on odd jobs of a suprememly mundane nature (collecting coconuts, filling up gas, picking up garbage). Once Travis has approximately enough money to take on the next assassin, he goes on a killing spree ending with his target, a complete fucking stranger, the goal being that eventually he'll be ranked number 1. The reason this concept is so appealing to me, is because I was raised right.

Travis himself is a narcicist. In fact, one of the (only) distractions from the game's central theme of "work only as hard as you have to until you can buy killing someone" is a dress-up game. You can visit a clothing shop and, granted you've gathered enough coconuts to have some extra spending money after "The Most Dangerous Game" tax, you can buy rather expensive clothes. This may be the only time, outside of selecting which ribbon Chimchar should wear to the Pokemon beauty pagent, that I have ever willfully engaged in a dressup game, and done it with a smile on my face, no less. And the manner of clothes that is available to Travis, is nothing short of breathtaking. Some highlights: a shirt depicting a thonged ass which reads, "Miami Bass"; another shirt sporting a pair of tits, which aptly reads, "Love Tits"; blood-stained pants; assorted jackets, and so on.

The last, and possibly the only logical plot point, is that the girl who recommended going after the assassins in the first place, is a total cock tease. After, dispatching one assassin, Travis meets with the girl (Sylvia Christel) and attempts to bed her. Just as he's about to summon a mushroom, she stops him and barters, the seemingly reasonable deal, that if Travis becomes the number one killer, she will then uncross her legs for him. Slut. Travis tucks his blue, heartless testicles back into his pants, and is reinvigorated on his quest to murder countless innocents standing just in front of paid assassins.

The game itself is peppered with little references that make me feel like I'm not all alone in the universe. There's an unlockable 2-D bullet-hell game called "Glastonbury", that just fucks my shit up, everytime. Travis is an anime otaku, wrestling fanatic, and the proud owner of a cat with a people name (Jeane). I myself (like many my age) have been raised on the trite, ambiguous Japanese insights into humanity's desire to never give up, ever. I own a Macho Man Bash'n'Brawler, as well as a VHS tape of his greatest hits; I'm not gay. And Jeff sits quietly beside me even now, purring; his eyes barely open; mocking me with his coy permanent cat smile.

What really tickles my vas deferens is that this game calls to something (i-n-a-l-l-o-f-u-s) specifically in me. Monotonously working dead end, nowhere jobs until you have enough money to pay someone to tell you where you can kill someone and not rat you out, all in the pale hopes that if you kill enough people, some barfly will have sex with you(ain't that always the case?);meanwhile, in the interim, watching old wrestling tapes and driving around town, with total disregard for traffic law, on your oversized motorcycle "Schpeltiger"? That sounds like it was ripped out of my autobiography, "The Anatomy of Romance: Can Robots Remember?"

Oh, and by the way, this game has the best ending ever conceived by man's lizard brain. I'm convinced that the only way this ending can exist is if it was written by 100 George Washingtons* feverishly typing on 100 Truth Typewriters, which can only print childlike innocence, all while World War 3 wages on, as the world's super-powers ravage the land for the newest fossil fuel: George Washington's fingers. This is how you end a video game (or any fictional work). Not like that pussy Halo 3 ending where Master Chief finds out that from years of using alien technology he's developed a debilitating case of agoraphobia, and as he holds his Commanding Officer for no less than 17 minutes, Chief looks up from under his running mascara, and he wimpers out, "I can never go to space again." Meanwhile Samus Aran's screw attacking from planet to planet getting the upgrades knocked out of her every time she lands, and she just stands up, brushes herself off, and says, "Gonna need a Grappling Hook to get that missile expansion... better go get those upgrades."

The game's plot is so good, that they figured, "If we're gonna make a sequel, we might as well use the same plot." The same God-damn plot. Travis wants to be No. 1. Gotta beat the top ranked. It's the same. And it. Is fucking. sweet.

If you've never played No More Heroes 1, go get educated. If you don't have a Wii, go find the nearest light-socket and marry it in God's eyes, because without the system you're even further from His judgmental stare than an abortion. (God: "Way to live, fetus." Fetus: "I tried my be--" "God: "PURGATORY!")

When I saw the first trailer for No More Heroes 1, I smiled for 3 weeks. After seeing the trailer for No More Heroes 2 I can't stop repainting my bedroom walls any one of 3 colors: semen, nosebleed, or poetry. I hereby bestow the rank of "A+(copyright)" to the game No More Heroes, which is the same rating that, in a double-whammy decision, I've also given to No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, which has the rock solid release date of "TBA 2010."

No More Heroes- A+
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle - A+

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Trailer 1

Trailer 2

* (George Washington is a time traveling psycho-bandit who repairs tears in space-time, as well as adopting several pseudonyms with which to go back in time and write the most important works of fiction of all time [because if he doesn't write them, how can they exist?]; also, according to conflicting reports, he may or may not have been America's first President. He also invented the peanut.)

Comic: Superman/Batman #63

There's always something to be said about a comic book with a monkey on the cover. In this case it's a gorilla; Gorilla Grodd to be exact, but that does not matter. What matters is that Superman/Batman issue sixty three is a done-in-one story about how a psychic gorilla takes over the ENTIRE world and banishes Superman from the planet using keen gorilla trickery.

Like most apes, Grodd has to be taken down a level and who better to do that than a bearded, one-eyed, crazy-as-beans Batman. Yeah, you read that right. You get both a psychic gorilla controlling the whole world AND a crazy bearded Batman running around defying him. It's like cookie dough and ice cream. Two good things that go great together. Top this off with that fact that the whole issue is set in a post apocalyptic future where the sunset is green (GREEN!), and I'd be hard pressed to name a more enjoyable comic lately.

It doesn't hurt that the issue is drawn superbly by Rafael Albuquerque. The way he draws a gorilla getting punched in the teeth by Superman is out of this world. That's neglecting to even mention the way he's portrayed Batman. It's so cool I can't even fathom words sufficient enough to do it justice. Also, Albuquerque's Joker is the coolest Joker in comics at the moment.

All in all, I'll buy anything with a monkey on the cover. I think any logical person would. It's a good thing too when I read an issue of any comic more than once in a week. Not that any of you are going to spring up and haul yourselves to the nearest comic book shop, but for a psychic gorilla maybe... just maybe... you should.

Pellet Reviews: G.I. Joe, True Blood, and District 9

Whoa, so I'm a little behind on all of the media I've been intaking lately, but such is life my friends. Anyways, in an attempt to catch up in a manner that won't take up three posts and take me hours to write, welcome to my first edition of pellet reviews! That is to say, I'm aiming to keep these shorter than usual.

First up: G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Hoo boy this movie had a lot stacked up against it going in. I mean, did anyone see the trailers? One has to question whether the PR team behind this film was asleep at the wheel or purposefully trying to sell the movie as brainless. Granted, what you see in the trailer is fairly close to what you get in the film, but fortunately for the movie itself the package fairs better as a whole.

To begin, G.I. Joe like Transformers before it is a chance to cash in not only on a profitable toy line, but also the dreams and fantasies of man-children everywhere. The plot is as simple as Duke (Channing Tatum) and his best pal Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are tasked with escorting a new nanotechnology weapon to a secure location when they are ambushed by the hotter-than-usual (not counting the Alfie remake) Sienna Miller as Baroness. Wacky hijinks ensue and the elite but mysterious G.I. Joe unit swoops in to save Duke and his pal. Managing to save the nano weapon, the Joe's are impressed enough by Duke's action (Ripcord doesn't do anything but lay on the sidelines, but they recruit him too) to enlist him in their elite program. Cue the montage and before you know it, Duke and Ripcord are the best G.I. Joe operatives around, magically excelling in every training routine. It's not long before we learn the attempt on the nano-bomb was in fact a cunning ploy by the weapons designer, McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), to get his weaponry into the terrorist market. You see, he lives by the evil weapon maker code of playing both sides of a conflict. I believe the filmmakers were attempting here to comment on the state of the arms trade, but thankfully the surrounding plot and characters are so cartoonish and inane that the message never seems to penetrate the subconscious.

Anyway, before long the would-be Destro pinpoints Joe HQ using a tracking device in the nano weapon and his minions break in a decimate the unsuspecting Joe army. Before long the Joe's are on a revenge mission to retrieve the weapon before it can be used on the public, and the audience is treated to a number of fantastic set pieces which see the Eiffel Tower get destroyed, super suited soldiers running down the street dodging missiles at 80mph, and an assault on a subarctic underwater base. Somewhere in there the filmmakers attempted to shoehorn in a love story between misunderstood Baroness and Duke, and the shared loss they feel over the loss of her brother Rex (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). It's pretty tame and predictable, but it's nice that Sienna Miller gets to survive the proceedings if only for the chance she may sauce up the sequel.

G.I. Joe is a pretty mindless film, but it so embraces this idea that it actually ends up working much better than anyone may think walking into theatres. Honestly, it never tries to take itself too seriously, presenting itself at face value while not shying away from its share of eye-rolling jokes. This scenario works best in the favor or Marlon Wayans, who in most appearances only manages to annoy and distract from the rest of whatever movie he graces. Also on his side is the fact that supposed main character Duke is played by the acting equivalent of silly putty. Channing Tatum does well enough to deliver his lines without sounding like an idiot, but does little else to emote or evoke a connection with his character. This is a shame considering Duke is destined to become the charismatic leader of the G.I. Joe forces. Unfortunately, the best that can be said for this movie is that exceeds expectations, but that only amounts to a passable film. There are most certainly some cool action sequences presented here, but I felt they always just missed the peak of their potential. Luckily, the film keeps a brisk pace moving from one element to the next fast enough to keep the viewers distracted that there is hardly any substance to speak of.

Some credit must be given to Joseph Gordon-Levitt who apparently realized that this film allowed for a spectacularly over-the-top delivery so much so that when he delivers some of the hammiest lines in the film, you can't help but grin at the cheese factor. I imagine this was intentional, and it was also fun to see a villainous turn for the actor so soon after 500 Days of Summer. Credit must also go to Sienna Miller who pretty much embraces the fact she's there for eye candy. It doesn't stop her from being sufficiently both a combo of nasty and campy. It plays right until her inevitable redemption scenes which come off as forced and unnecessary. Almost-points finally go out to Dennis Quaid who hams it up in the bad way, and seems satisfied with punching in for a paycheck. See G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra as a second-string movie theatre day or if you really think you can't handle engaging your brain on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

True Blood: 'Timebomb'

I've been very bad about my True Blood reviews as of late, and I definitely missed the boat on the episode before this one. This is not to say that the show has taken any kind of dip in quality. Quite differently, True Blood has cranked itself to eleven and all of the carefully established dominoes of the season thus far are tipping.

This week sees the tensions between the Fellowship of the Sun church and the vampire law of Texas come to a boil. Sookie's trapped in a basement with a turncoat human who's betrayed her to the Fellowship, Bill's trapped in his hotel room with his maker Lorena who has absolute power over him, and Jason's still an idiot. Meanwhile, back in Bon Temps Sam Merlotte is on the run and paranoid on account of demon-god Maryann running amok carving hearts out of people while causing everyone to have sweaty, black-eyed orgies. Tara and Eggs of course remain oblivious, and it's getting harder to ignore how ignorant they are becoming over the increasingly weird happenings around them. Also, vampire Jessica and Hoyt finally get it on for each of their first times and its very sweet until Bill barges in and surprisingly does not dismember the human.

This week pretty much had my jaw on the floor the entire episode. There were so many revelations and just plain cool moments that one would be hard-pressed to deny this may very well be the highlight of the season thus far. Godric the two millenia old vampire makes his appearance and Eric quickly finds him and Sookie. We are treated to a hilarious moment where Eric affects a bumpkin persona to try and non-violently escape from the Fellowship church, and before long all hell breaks loose. Surrounded by the Soldiers of the Sun, Eric and Sookie seem to be cornered... UNTIL all of the Texas vampire law-people bust in the front door and through some awesome vampire speed and power turn the tide of the fight in about four seconds. Bill knocks Lorena out with a 52-inch plasma screen TV and super-speeds his way to his woman, just in time for the fireworks. Steve Newlin, crazy in his desperation, holds Sookie at gun point until Jason saves the day; finally coming through and doing something not stupid. Right before the blood begins to spill, Godric appears and brings an unexpected peace to the proceedings, despite Newlin's prodding. One gets the impression that Godric is a different kind of vampire in this show, choosing to learn from his two thousand years of unlife and evolving as opposed to becoming more separated and routine. Given the fact Godric is played by a younger, shorter actor it is very fun to watch the rest of the vampire cast go sheepish around him.

The day saved, there's obviously an after-party in which Godric seems bored with the state of his unlife and the vampire snobbery, Jason apologizes to Bill and everyone about what a moron he is, and Lorena is banished by Godric. You almost, almost feel bad for her when Bill tells her he never wants to see her again. She's just a love sick murderer after all. The episode cuts out as one of Jason's pals from the Fellowship crashes the party, announces himself, and reveals a chest strapped with live explosives and what look like mini-projectile stakes. He presses the button and credits roll. Elsewhere Sam is still on the run, discovers Daphne's heartless body in a frame-up, goes to jail, and finds himself being able to trust only Andy. Tara and Eggs end up eating Daphne's heart thanks to Maryann's deceitful but delicious cooking skills, and proceed to beat each other senseless most presumably at Maryann's demonic behest. Lastly we are treated to a heart-breaking scene in which Jessica realizes she is an eternal virgin (at least physically) thanks to the timing of her vampirism, and you truly feel for her with Hoyt.

This is the kind of episode where you wonder how it all fits in an hour so satisfyingly. Revelation after revelation pays off, and no stone is left unturned (except for stupid Maryann, but it looks like we'll get some resolution next week). The story never seems to betray itself for the sake of melodrama, and instead lets the well established characters play for themselves. This is television at its escapist finest, and it's pitch-perfect. Wonderfully now that all of the disparate plot lines are all molded into a cohesive whole, it will be interesting to see what happens once the main cast and vampires return to Bon Temps and view the weirdness Maryann has laid bare. There's no real hanging what-if's, but the storyline is left wide open for some really great developments; not the least of which is the cliffhanger bombing this week.

True Blood is firing on all cylinders right now, and presuming it keeps it up with next week's installment, season two is shaping up to be a grander, greater version of the first already fantastic season. Do yourself a favor if you're not already and check out this show any way you can.

District 9

Where did this movie come from? In one night I very quickly found the third best film of the summer for myself. This is sci-fi at its very finest, telling a compelling and intriguing tale with some minor yet not blatant parallels to modern society.

The plot follows Wikus Van De Merwe (newcomer Sharlto Copely), a worker for the MNU organization tasked with evicting District 9. What's District 9? Oh, just a huge colony just outside Johannesburg, South Africa that happens to be inhabited by millions of an alien species that mysteriously showed up twenty years earlier. If it sounds intriguing, then this movie is already for you. The premise revolves around the concept that a massive mother ship appears in the skies above the city sometime in the mid 80's, and after months of inactivity, humans take it upon themselves to fly up to it and see what's inside. Instead of a creepy, malicious alien race akin to Ridley Scott's Aliens, or the kind from Independence Day we are treated to a malnourished and terrified race of bug-like aliens hopelessly lost without leaders. Doing the 'humane' (haha) thing, the world shuttles the aliens to earth and into shanty towns which become known as District 9. Flash forward twenty years and we jump into the film proper. Tensions between humans living in the Johannesburg area and the alien squatters are high, and the humans want the aliens to move.. Because it would seem the race is aimless and almost clueless even unto its own inner workings, it would seem that the only solution is to evict them from their shanty town and move them a number of miles away to a new one.

Unfortunately for Wikus who has just been promoted to head of the task force assigned to serve eviction notices to the alien squatters, District 9 has become more like a slum -- rampant with crime, arms dealing, illegal inter-species prostitution, and a well-entrenched human contingent content on exploiting everything around them for power and weapons. The opening third of the film is told in a documentary style that for me hearkened back to Cloverfield in its sense of conveying the illusion that what we're seeing is real, but with not nearly as shaky of camera work. The universe they've set up is exceedingly believable, and as we watch the early scenes as Wikus uses his know-how and expertise to evict the aliens while navigating the complexities of their culture and lifestyle, one is drawn willingly into the desolate world of shaky civil rights and complex moral lines. Apparently, the script is reminiscent of director Neill Blomkamp's time growing up in South Africa during apartheid, and its easy to see the invocations between that and the fictional eviction of District 9.

Everything is going fine for Wikus until he evicts an alien the audience knows to be up to something nefarious at best. Stumbling upon a mysterious canister which we later find out to be a fuel cell, Wikus is sprayed in the face by a mysterious black goo. From here his life more or less cascades out of his control, and the audience gets to watch a very Kafka-like transformation evocative of the Metamorphasis. Wikus slowly begins to literally come apart at the seems, treating us to disturbing visuals of finger nails being torn off, teeth falling out, and grotesque alien exo-skeleton growing beneath his skin. Not the least of his problems, Wikus' newfound transformation allows him to operate the genetically encoded, and until recently, useless alien weaponry that the MNU has amassed but been unsuccessful in actually firing. This makes Wikus a valuable military commodity and after a close call with the chopping block, he retreats and must take refuge in District 9. What follows is an interesting character study of how a man can change both literally and figuratively in such extreme conditions. Watching Copely's progression from slightly nerdy office-man to jittery, end-of-his-rope refugee is at once heart-breaking and believable. Given to extreme circumstances, Wikus must try and survive in the harsh conditions of the slum and he eventually stumbles upon the very alien whom created the fuel cell that is transforming him. Turns out that this particular alien and his son are a breed apart from the aimless, shiftless creatures populating District 9 and have taken the initiative to repair their command ship and intend on reviving the mothership. With a promise to repair Wikus if he were to help retrieve the cell, the movie transitions into one man's quest and the lengths he will go to escape his plight.

District 9 has some pretty impressive effects for a movie made for a relatively small $30 million. The aliens in the movie feel real enough to not be distracting, and emote enough believability so as to connect with the viewer in a way that involves one passed the fact they are a fancy CG effect. Once Wikus gets his hands on some of the cool alien weaponry, we are treated to some light action scenes in which some extreme violence ensues. It becomes pretty commonplace to see people literally burst like bloody water balloons in this film, and that is only the most common way random soldiers bite the dust. The important part of all of this is that even though you can kind of predict the character arc for Wikus, you never quite know the circumstances of how it will happen or where everything will end up. The movie also raises a lot of questions about basic civil liberties and it definitely left an unsure feeling in me as to which side had the moral high ground. Tensions run high in this film the entire time so that you are riveted to the screen for the duration of the running time.

By the end, you've seen Wikus' journey from naive, office nerd to hardened and bewildered refugee. The closing moments of the movie remain ambiguous, offering no solution to many of the grand problems of the situation or revelations as to the future of many of the main characters. Instead, District 9 leaves audiences with a sense of uncertainty which I am sure is intentional by the filmmaker to echo various scenarios in many parts of the world. Does war lie on the horizon for Earth? Is violence the only outcome of such a parasitic culture? Is there a peaceful solution in the end? It's the mark of good science fiction when you can walk out of the theatre without the pleasure of a tidy ending and still be satisfied with the film you've seen. District 9 may just be the sleeper hit of the summer, as it surprised me in a way none of the summer movies of this year have. Just behind Star Trek and 500 Days of Summer, District 9 deserves to be seen if only a passing interest is involved. Don't miss a chance to see a movie that is refreshing in it's new take on a familiar genre and it's ability to make you care.