Sam Kahn’s glorious return to the blogosphere
Gabe sent me the trailer for David Cronenberg’s upcoming movie, Eastern Promises. As many of you already know, I loved A History of Violence, so you can probably imagine how excited I am about this new movie.
The trailer for 1408, a movie about a haunted hotel room, left me intrigued. I love a great horror flick, but the trailers for most repel me. This trailer, however, made me feel like there was something more to 1408, and I was right.
1408 isn’t an incredible horror film, but it is definitely excellent. John Cusack’s performance comes together with great atmosphere to make the movie really work, along with the way the short story was adapted.
The film has lots of “shit jumps out at you” scares, but that sort of thing isn’t what makes a horror movie great. What makes this one truly excellent is that the atmosphere Håfström creates is genuinely unsettling. That, along with the writing — not in terms of dialogue, because that wasn’t stellar, but in terms of how the short story was adapted. Whatever it is that haunts room 1408 doesn’t try to kill you, it just fucks with you until you kill yourself or die from natural causes. The room draws from the psyche of the victim in creating it’s horror, which results in a very character-driven horror film. From what I understand, none of that stuff is part of the original Stephen King short story.
That being said, this “character-driven horror” hinges on a strong performance, and John Cusack definitely gives us one. His psychological journey is palpable. I should also mention Samuel L. Jackson, who gives a short yet memorable turn as the hotel’s manager.
If you’re into horror, you shouldn’t miss a chance to see this movie. Especially if you’re already creeped out by hotels as it is, like me.
Last night I finished watching the first season of Heroes. Overall, I really liked the show. It wasn’t quite as melodramatic as I expected, and the strong characters and story kept me consistently interested.
I felt the first half of the season was stronger. This isn’t to say the second half wasn’t good; maybe the amount of coincidences driving the plot made it a bit thin for me. My biggest complaint is that the season finale is a bit underwhelming.
Still, I can’t wait for season 2.
After much badgering from several friends, I finally broke down and started watching Heroes. I watched a couple episodes over the weekend, and then today I’ve watched three more so far. It’s pretty obvious that I’m hooked at this point.
The pilot was really intriguing, but the writing bothered me a bit. The second episode was a marked improvement and since then the show’s only gotten better. Well, off to see episode 6…
Concept art by Sam and Max creator Steve Purcell
Kotaku posted that there’s a rumor going around that LucasArts is considering making a fifth Monkey Island game. This would be the first adventure game LucasArts has put out in years, and probably be better than anything they’ve made in-house recently.
Hopefully this will be the one positive outcome of the Pirates of the Caribbean travesty.
I loved Knocked Up. While I thought 40 Year Old Virgin was funny, this one was hilarious, and I liked it even more. It feels very honest, yet it’s still consistently full of laughs.
The writing and performances are perfect, and there’s some great chemistry between the cast members. Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd are proving to be a great comedy duo.
After these two solid movies, I can’t wait to see what Judd Apatow does next. I’d gonna have to Netflix Freaks and Geeks.
Lately I’ve been playing the free games available on ijji.com. The most popular of these is probably Gunbound, an artillery game, but I’ll leave that for later. Last night I started playing Gunz, a third-person action deathmatch shooter.
In Gunz you’re dropped into an arena with other players, and you must kill as many as possible. For each kill, you get “bounty,” points with which you can buy new weapons and gear for your avatar to boost your stats. The game plays like a first person shooter, but is in third person for a very important reason, the mechanics that make the game special. You can dive while shooting four directions, Max Payne style. Most impressively, you can also wall jump and run on walls. The game also has swordfighting, which is fun.
Now, as awesome as that my sound, there is a downside. While these features sound super cool, the implementation is very rudimentary. The acrobatics are never as smooth or as easy to pull off as in games like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; in fact getting them to work correctly is at times frustrating.
All that aside, the game is a lot of fun… and I can overlook some of the bumps because, after all, it’s FREE.
My computer problems have finally been resolved! Let’s pick up where we last left off, shall we?
Last time I posted an update about my computer, I had just taken it in to Apple for the third time, this time to a different Apple Store. I got a call back a couple days later that my computer was done and nothing was wrong with it. I asked what tests were done, and they told me they just ran some tests under the current configuration – meaning they didn’t add RAM. I demanded that they check it back in and add RAM before testing it, because that’s when it would crash. They agreed to, and said they’d call back.
I called almost a week later to ask what was up, because according to their website my computer was ready for pickup. They said it had just sat on the shelf all week waiting to be picked up, so I explained to the guy on the phone how two techs there had caused me to waste over a week of my time by not listening to a word that I had said about the issues. The guy I spoke with this time was very understanding, and promised me he’d personally run the tests I requested. I got a call back from him within a couple hours, saying that yes, it was in fact a hardware problem, and that he’d replace the logic board again.
So, the board was replaced, and I picked up the machine a few days later. The problem was then that I couldn’t test the machine, because I had sent my monitor to LaCie to be fixed. About a week later, the monitor came via FedEx, and I set up the computer. I set up a render in Final Cut Pro, and the thing immediately has a really ugly crash. I picked up the phone and called Apple right away.
The guy I spoke with was really nice, and listened to all I had to I had to say about the issues, despite me being a bit pissed off. He read over my history and was very apologetic, and said that if it was up to him, he’d replace my computer, and then transfered me to higher level tech. This technician listened to my whole story again, and asked me what I thought Apple should do to resolve the issue. I thought about it for a moment, and said, “If Apple can’t adequately repair my computer, they should replace it.”
She had me hold for a couple of minutes while she went over my history, then came back on the line and said that Apple was very sorry about all my problems, and that they would replace my G5 with a brand new 2x Intel Xeon Dual-Core 2.66 Mac Pro.
They had me ship my G5 back (at no cost to me), and then overnighted the new Mac Pro to me, which I received yesterday.
I love Apple.
I wasn’t expecting much from Pirates 3, but I was expecting to at least be entertained. Instead, I spent much of the two hour and forty minute running time bored.
The movie is a long, bloated, unfunny mess. A major weak point is the thing doesn’t stand on it’s own at all; it depends far too much on plot developed in the previous two films of the trilogy, which as a whole feels even more poorly planned than the Matrix series.
Pirates 3 makes it obvious just how hard these movies are trying to be the Star Wars trilogy. At several moments I couldn’t stop thinking of Return of the Jedi, and then how much happier I would be watching that. I didn’t pay too much attention, but it even seemed like the two movies are structured in a similar way. For example, Pirates 3 opens with a kind of rescue mission into an exotic enemy fortress. Characters even have similar motivations. In the end, the movie’s just like Return of the Jedi, except at the end Luke becomes Emperor and then fucks his sister. It’s not worth watching again to make a detailed analysis, even if I might be wrong.
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