One of the most visually stunning directors to make games!

Now if you have seen a somewhat large amount of movies, the name Guillermo Del Toro may ring a bell for you. If it doesn’t, chances are that you are familiar with his work, directing such visually stunning movies as both Hellboys and one of my all-time favorites Pan’s Labyrinth.  Now after he finished the second Hellboy, sources said that he was going to start working on a remake of The Hobbit, the predecessor of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Hobbit chronicles the story of Bilbo Baggins, who in the first Lord of the Rings is a very old man).

Well about a couple months ago, we found out that Del Toro had been scrapped from The Hobbit, and that he would be moving on to “other ventures”.  This article on kotaku pretty much cements the fact that Del Toro will now be working on games, and I couldn’t be more excited!  Being able to interact and experience through the worlds that he could make is going to be a thrilling experience, because if there is any director that I would trust to make an engrossing game captured in a stunning would, it would be Del Toro.

For those looking to see the original article posted on Kotaku, the link is below, and I will update with as much info as I can when I find out about it.

Original link:

http://kotaku.com/5599221/guillermo-del-toro-going-to-do-video-games

Superhero fans unite!

Over at a website that I go to, screened.com, they have a trailer up for the new Thor movie.  Now its a full 6 minute long trailer, and it seems to hype the movie quite well, so if you are into that kind of film, I would definitely go check it out (it was the trailer shown at this years comi-con which happened last weekend) because I don’t know how much longer it will be there.

Inception Review

I’ve been meaning to write a review for this film for a while, but everytime that I try to start, it’s almost as if I can’t even find the words to describe it.  In case you haven’t heard of this movie, Inception is the Christopher Nolan summer blockbuster that many probably know from the trailer that “doesn’t really say what the story is about but makes you want to see it even more anyways.”  It stars some pretty big names in the lead roles that you have probably seen in other movies, and even the lesser known actors seem to play their roles very well, just like all of the other Christopher Nolan directed movies, which include The Dark Knight and the cult classic Memento. In order to properly review this movie without giving away too much as to ruin it for those of you who havent seen it yet, I want to quickly touch on the main actors and actresses that made this movie the caliber that it is.

The main character, named Cobb, is played by an ever-impressive Leonardo DiCaprio. He does a very emotionally fitting job of playing a main character who, for all intensive purposes, has more problems going on than all of the rest of the cast put together.  DiCaprio does an impressive job of capturing the character of one who is so close to falling into a sense of insanity, yet holding onto a single sliver of his past that keeps him alive and sane.

Cobb’s partner in crime is named Arthur, and is played by the Very underrated Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Really every movie that I have seen that he has been in has been a fantastic one, and he compliments DiCaprio well, with both of their characters sharing that sauve “we-know-what-we-are-doing” vibe that leads the viewer to believe that they have been doing this for a while.  Arthurs character doesn’t really delve any deeper than skin deep, which I thought was ok considering the amount of “past” that Cobb has.

The third of the “main” characters is played by one of my favorite actresses of the past decade, Ellen Page. She plays the “architect” (which I won’t go into anymore so that it doesn’t ruin anything) that is introduced to Cobb by a cameoed Michael Caine.  After they have met, Cobb has to do the traditional “see if she lives up to her expectations”, but luckily this part doesn’t take too long, and within moments, they are back to doing “the regular routine”.

Other parts played by Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy bolster the “stardom” of the movie, and ultimately the quality of the plot.  One of the things that I really enjoyed about this film is the fact that whether or not you watch the trailer, you don’t really know what is going on, and in fact if you do watch the trailer, you may be more confused as to what would happen with the movie as opposed to if you just watched the movie without the trailer.  While the trailer is confusing, the story does make sense over time, I think for me, it was about 15 minutes in that I put all of the pieces together, and once that happens, the movie takes off.  It blends a sci-fi vibe with realistic settings, and there are a few scenes that are very action packed.  This movie will have you talking with your friends after, comparing opinions on what happened, which I personally love when going to the movies.

Up until the last minute, I can assure you that you will be on the edge of your seat if you go see Inception.  With an all-star cast, a plot that will keep you guessing, and an ending that can only be described as marvelous, this is the summer movie that we as fans have been waiting for, and I am here to tell you that it doesn’t disappoint.

Inception:

5 out of 5

Revolver Review

Ok, so although my review is a couple days late (I was going to write it before my trip to Canada, but I ended up getting caught up and busy and was not able to put it up until now,) I fully intend on bringing you the review…NOW!!!

Any Guy Ritchie film has a few things going for it from the get-go: All have stars that you have probably seen before; all have an Extremely “British” feel; and a personal opinion is that all should be watched when you are completely cognizant of your surroundings (a.k.a. not tired, intoxicated, in other words operating on a “clean” mind), yet every time I seemed to have watched one of Mr. Richies films, that last part has always evaded me.  Even though I try to soak it all in, watching his movies, which are already somewhat muddled, while tired is quite a Herculean task.

Out of all that I have seen though by Mr. Richie, I would have to say that Revolver sticks up there as one of my favorites.  Maybe it was Andre 3000, maybe it was the well done leads by Jason Statham and Ray Liota, but Revolver goes past other Richie classics (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch) as my favorite piece of work that he has done.  I thought that Andre 3000 and “that guy from the Sopranos” (Vincent Pastore) played the role of Jake Green’s (Statham) allies very well, and Liota delivers a certainly memorable performance as the films villain Dorothy Macha.  All of the other parts for the most part are quite minor, as a large part of the dialogue is an internal monologue of Greens head as he tries to figure out the situation that he has found himself entwined in. While the film does wear itself thin at points (much like many of Ritchie’s pieces), the parts that are played are very consistent, and Statham plays the “Ritchie Role” as I like to call it, very well because, well, he Is very British.  The monologue idea seemed to work Quite well in my mind because there is really no better way to convey a sense of “what just happened” more than putting the viewer in the mind of the person whom that event just happened to.

Its hard to say whether or not I would recommend this movie, because Ritchie has a style that is very off-kilter from many other directors. The style and humor that he goes for may deter many people from watching, but I would suggest that you do try to get your way through this movie, because the jokes are more mainstream than in other Ritchie productions, and the twist at the end is something that a viewer would never really expect unless looking for it directly.

If you happen to like Revolver though after watching it, or are enthused to watch it after reading this review and enjoy it, I would highly recommend that you watch his other movies, mainly the two previously mentioned, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and if you really enjoy those two, you could even delve deeper into Ritchies catalogue (the only other film of his that I have seen is Rock n’ Rolla which I can’t have an opinion on because I was VERY tired and was falling asleep throughout the movie).  I have done some delving with the Coen Brothers filmography (I still need to see The Hudsucker Proxy), and I can say that it is a very rewarding thing to see how the directing has changed throughout the films that they have made.

In summation, Revolver is definitely a movie that I would recommend you see. A Classic? Maybe Not, but a movie that you can watch and get some laughs with some close friends? Definitely. While the movie (and most of Ritchie’s works) appeal mostly to those of us with the XY chromosome, laughs can also be had by the ladies, which makes this a very solid Comedy/Drama/Action film.

Revolver: 4 out of 5

Evolution 2010

Now although most of the time when I am involved with videogames it is watching, when I do play some, my favorite type is the fighting game genre, and a game that I have been getting into recently is called Super Street Fighter IV (my review for this game will go like this: If you want to put in time to get good, I believe that SSFIV is one of if not the best fighting games out on the market today).  Since I just started getting into this community, I have started to learn the in’s and out’s; who my favorite live streams are, who the best players are, and when the biggest tournaments are held.

One of the biggest fighting game tournaments in the world took place this weekend, Evolution 2010 (think the superbowl, stanley cup, or NBA finals of fighting game tournaments) in Las Vegas.  Now while I was gone for a large portion of the live stream of the event, tonight was the grand finals for SSFIV, and I was at home with no plans in site!  And while the winner of the multi-thousand person tournament was no real surprise, watching these tournaments and assimilating into a culture was a Very rewarding experience.

If there was one event that could sum up the “shock factor” of this years EVO, it would no doubt be that the top 8 was absent of what many call the best player in the United States, one Justin Wong.  In fact, rewind time to a week ago, and almost any avid fan would have predicted the final to be Justin Wong vs. Daigo Umehara (Daigo widely considered the best player in Japan, and some may say the world, and who in fact did win the tournament).  Instead, Wong was knocked out early by a fairly unknown player, to the chagrin of many American fans who believe the only way to defeat Daigo is through “our prodigal son” Justin Wong.  What is even more interesting is that Wong and Umehara have a severe dislike for each other, which strangely creates a Rocky Balboa-Ivan Drago type of relationship that fans hungry for action just seem to eat up.

The announcing throughout the whole weekend I thought was actually pretty decent.  There were two main announcers sat through Friday and Saturdays events, which included all the other fighting games and SSFIV pre-lims.  The other games that were shown at the show were:

-Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (a cross-up game that had Capcom and Tatsunko (a japanese roster) bashing it out),

-Melty Blood (an extremely Japanese, lesser-known fighter for the PS2),

-Tekken 6 (probably the second most “well-known” at the tournament),

-Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (another cross-up, this time with Marvel superheroes fighting capcoms roster of fighters), and

-Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (a downloadable mouthful that was one of the predecessors to SSFIV)

Nonetheless, the announcers had Fairly good knowledge of fighting games as a whole, and seemed to commentate as well as any of the stream commentators that for the most part commentate for just one game (while these commentators did multiple).  Once Sunday evening rolled around though, these commentators were nixed in favor of Seth Killian (the community manager at Capcom and whom Seth the character is named after), and Adam Sessler (of G4 fame, who was just there because EVO had a deal with G4, and they had to send someone because in late July, G4 will replay the finals, and they need a spokesperson).  Seth has narrated and watched many of the big matches, so his commentary was pretty on par, but for obvious reasons Sessler was kind of out of it, not really understanding the game too much, which I didn’t have a real big problem with, although most people did.  What I have to say to those people though is that while Sessler may have not been the most knowledgeable, if you watched the stream, you could hear that he was Trying to learn, and he was interested in the match, even though his technical skills and terms may not have been the best.

And after viewing the draft of all of the words I have written thus far, I think that I shall end my post here. To summarize my article in less words, I was very impressed with EVO, and I can’t wait to see what the fighting game community has up its sleeve next.

Enjoy your screen-time, my friends!

Saw VI Review

Let me preface this review by saying that every time I tell people that I watch the Saw movies, they always ask the same question…why?  I hope to answer this question in this review in addition to giving a review of the movie itself.

Saw movies have become a staple in American society, but I always wonder how they have become so.  Every year for the past 7 years, they have released a new Saw movie around Halloween time, but whenever I show excitement, my friends show disgust towards me, asking why and how I could like a movie that, and i’ll be completely honest here, makes its fame off of the incredibly gory and sadistic ways that people are killed.

Just to clear the waters, this fact is not the reason that I enjoy watching these movies, now back to my review!

The reason that I initially got interested in the Saw movies was, just like everyone else, the suspense factor; how these two people trapped in a room could get out, and whether they had the “will to appreciate life”.  But unlike many others who watched the films in this series, my devotion towards figuring out the entangling story lines and pseudo complex characters never wavered.  I knew that although I may have to muscle my way through a gory scene or two, that would be made up by the oddly interesting sense of suspense that the movies gave off.  If I could make it through a few scenes where people get brutally dismembered, I would in turn be rewarded with the end-of-the-movie twist, that Saw movies have always been good at.  I say good in the fact that most of these twists come out of left field, something that the viewer never suspects, but makes them wanting to come back for more.

Just like the others in the series, Saw VI captures this suspense and tension in its traditionally, blood-filled way.  Instead of having the tension of a cop investigating the areas where jigsaw was, this one captured tension by taking the viewers knowledge of who the new Jigsaw Killer was, and placing him right in the area where he can do the most damage, the center of the police agency of this nameless town.  The tension culminates in a scene where the department is unscrambling one of the tapes from jigsaw, as the one who recorded that message stands in the room with the two police chiefs in charge of the jigsaw case.  Lets just say that once they finish decoding the message, and find out who it is, things don’t go too well for the chiefs…

But now that I have given the reasons why I like saw, I have to inform you, my loyal viewers, that from a cinematography point of view, this movie is pretty bad.  Besides Tobin Bell, most of the acting is pretty dry and for a large part of the movie just consists of people screaming as they realize they have woken up in a Jigsaw trap.  For example, Agent Hoffman after the title card is listening to one of the tapes of the “tests” (the one that is shown at the very beginning of the movie), and after they become cognizant, the audio he is listening to is nothing more than two people screaming as they have to “sacrifice” the most amount of flesh.  Unsurprisingly, there are no really big name actors in this film, and as hard as it is to admit it as a Saw fan, I can see why.

My recommendation?  If you haven’t seen the others, start with Saw 1, and see if its the type of movie that you would enjoy.  Around Saw 3 or so, the traps start getting more and more sadistic, so if you can stomach your way through the first 5, and enjoy them, I think that Saw VI is a good rental, but other than that, I would skip this one.

Saw VI: 2 out of 5

Impressions on the 360 “S”

So eventually I will have a full on  description as to how I got this particular piece of hardware, but for right now, I am going to discuss my impressions on the new features of it, SO LETS GET TO ANALYZING!

Noise

One of the biggest selling points that Microsoft made about the new 360 was that it was much quieter than the current system (which sounded pretty similar to a jet-engine in ones room).  The new system does it fact make noise, but because of design changes, the noise is much more muted, and with a new 250 GB hard-drive, installing any game onto the hard-drive is a completely viable option.  After installing Super Street Fighter IV onto my hard-drive, I noticed that the only noise that I got was a Very small noise from the fan in the power block, but the sound (and weight for that matter) of the block is a lot quieter and lighter.  When the system is running a disk, the sound Is there, but is a lot quieter as compared to a disk ran through the “old” 360.

Wi-fi

Out of all of the features that the new xbox has, I thought that this one was the most interesting, and also the one that they should have put in from the beginning. Now I know that the ps3 and wii released about a year after the 360 did, but having built in wi-fi and not having to pay for a hundred dollar wifi adapter (although it is 60 now) is a very good selling point of this 300 dollar bundle.  As far as how it works, the wi-fi worked quite well for me. I turned the system on, and it set it up just as if I had an adapter plugged in, and in about 5 minutes from plugging in the system, I was looking at the “Xbox live is up and running” message.

Touch buttons

Another new feature that deserves a mention is that the power button and the open tray button have now been made into touch buttons, as opposed to the regular push-in buttons that were on the other models.  The only thing that I have noticed is that sometimes I accidentally hit the tray button, but that has only really happened once or twice.  Overall, they seem to do the job very well, and it seems like they will last a long time.

Size and Dimensions

Although this system was dubbed the “360 slim”, the size is only marginally smaller. The old xbox 360 was about 3 and a half inches wide by about a foot high, while the new 360 S is 3 inches wide by 10 inches high, so the changes are noticeable, but not to the point of a PS3 to a new PS3 slim.  Another change in the new hardware is that the amount of USB ports has gone from 3 to 5, which i think is cool, but i’m not too sure what I would use 5 ports for. When I had my old 360, I would use one for the wifi adapter, then the others for rock band/guitar hero instruments. But now that the number has been amped up to 5, and my wifi adapter is gone, I dont know if I will end up using All of them, but they are neat nonetheless.  Also, the new 360 S has a separate port for the Kinect, whereas old 360’s Will support the Kinect, but will need to be plugged into a wall socket in order to function.

And thus culminates my impressions on the new Xbox 360 S.  My story of how I came into possession of said system shall be up shortly, but until then

Enjoy your screen-time, my friends!

Toy Story 3 Review

I guess I am still trying to find the words to describe what Toy Story 3 is exactly.  Magical, Fantastic, Amazing, all come to mind, but none of them really seem to truly convey what this gem is.  Now as you may or may not know, I am a HUGE pixar fan; the way that they can just control the viewers heart and bridge generational gaps so well is just mind-blowing to see, and they not only do this, they do it better with every film they make.  You can ask ANYONE what their favorite pixar movie is and anyone, young or old, will give you an answer within seconds.  Although these answers may differ, the fact that they can give you an answer so quickly shows that they have seen multiple pixar productions and have had discussions about which are the best.

Now Toy Story 1 was one of the first movies I ever saw, so it had a special place in my heart from the get-go, and when I first heard the premise of Toy Story 3 (Andy going off to college), I thought it was just so amazing that Pixar had aged Andy along with all of the small kids that in 1995 sat restlessly in the theater ready to see a magical story about Toys who came to life.  Before Stephanie Meyer had even considered writing Twilight, kids could relate with the pokey Woody, or the much more technical Buzz Lightyear, and his iconic line “To infinity… And Beyond!”

4 years after the release of Pixar’s maiden voyage into film, the sequel, Toy Story 2, was released.  While new characters (such as the female woody, Jessie, and Woody’s horse, bullseye) were introduced, the same magic of watching these Toys encounter lessons that not only kids but also parents could learn from was ever present.  As these new toys and old toys teamed up and traversed new, exciting, and large, worlds, Pixar took the 5 year olds from 1999, and the 5 year olds from 1995, and melded them, so that everyone, young and younger, could become immersed in this world.

Now the way that Pixar melds generations shines through in Toy Story 3, the latest in this magical franchise, released on June 18th, 2010.  Now I am not going to write too much on the story, but I will just say that out of all three movies, the story and setting of this one was the most unique and awe-inspiring out of all.  The characters are all so unique, the humor is funny not only to the small kids, but also to the more grown-up kids, and every single one of the toys not only has a story to tell, but will tell it with a personality and flavor.

Much in the vein of Pixar movies, this film also evokes emotions unlike any other piece of media in any other genre.  The movie had me laughing one minute, and on the verge of tears 20 minutes later, signs of a true masterpiece.  And not only were these emotions real and raw, the exact same emotions I was going through, I knew every other person was experiencing the same as I was.  As we sat there, our eyes fixated one the screen, we became lost, once again, into this fantastic, marvelous, familiar world.

Every movie that Pixar makes seems to be better and better and bridging the gap between the generations, making movies easier to watch, whether young or old.  Toy Story 3 does the best out of any of the Pixar movies to date.  Now I may have a bias seeing as I grew up on Toy Story rather than Cars or Wall-E, but being able to laugh at the same time as a 9 year old sitting three seats away from me at the same joke is just such a quality and art that has been lost in movies for so long, and seeing it brought back truly warms my heart.

TOY STORY 3:

5/5