Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Now this was a Halloween movie. A remake of 1978's Dawn of the Dead, this movie of the same name is one that many friends of mine have raved about for some time. But I had never seen it until tonight. I didn't have many expectations going into it, but I did want a few things: at least a little humor, at least a little over-the-top gore, and plenty of zombie headshots. I got all three. I was on board with this movie almost from the get-go. There was literally maybe a minute of the movie in which the zombie apocalypse had not yet begun. At the very beginning, the chief heroine comes home from work and falls asleep next to her boyfriend. She awakens with a fright as a zombie child knocks heartily on her door. A struggle ensues. Child bites boyfriend. Boyfriend attempts to bit heroine. Heroine flees in her car. All around her, suburbia is succumbing to the zombie plague. Enter the opening credits, interspersed with mock footage of news stations around the world portending the end of the earth, all set to Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around." Easily one of the top five opening credits I've ever seen. At any rate, the rest of the movie wasn't so bad either. Typically, a "survivalist" movie follows one of two death patterns. Either everyone dies (with maybe one survivor or a surviving couple), or nobody does. And rarely do we ever see an influx of survivors. I won't ruin the ending by giving away the final survivor count, but what struck me was how new survivors would merge with the group in waves. Two met up with three, then that group of five found three more, and so on. And the deaths didn't follow a pattern of any sort. Sometimes two will eat it concurrently, and sometimes we'll go a full twenty minutes or so with no deaths at all. In short, it's very unpredictable. And pretty darn good. Well, I'm done here. It's time to cap off the night with my one remaining horror movie. Onward!

Saw III

Ugh. What happened here? While every Saw movie is supposed to be gruesome and boring, I thought they were also all meant to contain a moral or philosophical message of some kind, twisted as the messages may be. Here? Nothing. Just tons of death. I saw this movie in theaters three years ago, and while I'm usually pretty good (in other words, unaffected whatsoever) when it comes to blood and gore on screen, there was one particular ten minute segment in which a man finds himself drowning in liquefied pig carcasses and then the movie segues into a graphic bout of brain surgery with a power drill. Blech. No thank you. This movie wasn't terrible, but at this point, there's no denying that Saw has ceased to be a series that cares about anything other than graphic and brutal torture and murder scenes. These are fine when combined with memorable plots and characters, and some of the all time memorable movie scenes involve torture or murder to an extent. But when it's just torture and murder for the sake of torture and murder, and no substance accompanies any of it, what's the point? The coolest part of this movie - and it was a novelty at best - was seeing Braveheart's Robert the Bruce as a down-on-his-luck angry suburban dad. I'm not positive about this, but I think that every character in the film with any speaking role whatsoever ends up dead, except for good old Robert. And this includes the torturous murder of one man who had no speaking part. Among the dead, of course, are Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda. So it seems safe to assume the series is over at this point, right? Wrong! The sixth film has just hit theaters and films seven and eight have already been confirmed. What the fuck? Now, I've always been a completionist (somebody who must own all of a series if he owns part of it), but this is patently absurd. Eight films and counting in this shitty series that was undoubtedly "done" by film number three? Are the next five films prequels? Sequels? Does Jigsaw manage to come back to life in the future films? I just don't get it, and I probably never will. Legend has it that Saw IV, the last one I own, is the worst film of the series to date. I gleefully anticipate watching it, hopefully as soon as tonight. After all, it's Halloween, and if I wait just one more day, I'll never have an excuse to view it again for another 364 days.

The Blair Witch Project

I bought this movie for $2.99 at Newbury Comics three and a half years ago; it was the second-oldest DVD in my backlog prior to my viewing it today. I'd never seen this film before. When it came out back in 1999, many people raved about it. "It's the scariest movie I have ever seen," said some of my peers. Admittedly, these frightened people were just eleven or twelve years old. But then, back in 2006 when I bought it for the low low price of three dollars, my girlfriend scoffed at me, saying, "That was one of the worst movies I've ever seen." Several other reviews I had heard agreed with hers. "It's about some dumb kids who run around in circles in the woods shitting themselves," was the general gist from the anti-Blair Witch crowd. So which side of the fence have I just fallen on, having just viewed the film myself for the first time? Did I like it or did I hate it? I certainly had a strong opinion one way or the other. Alright, it looks like I can't build suspense half as well as the movie could, so I'll come right out and say it: I thought it was an excellent movie. Even if you neglect the fact that it was made by a few broke college kids (which certainly adds charm to any movie - see: Clerks), it's easy to say that everyone involved did a great job. The grainy VHS-quality doesn't detract, but rather, it adds an element of rawness to the film. I likened it to Cloverfield (naturally), only without all of the glitz, special effects, and professional touches. There really wasn't much to dislike about this flick, as it was short, memorable, and solid throughout. Most impressively, it was scary without resorting to cheap tricks such as things popping out at you or ominous music. We never once see the antagonist and only barely and vaguely hear her (him? it?). Yet, for the final hour of the film, we're just waiting around for the triad of college kids to die, and I for one was doing so in a state of moderate anxiety. (They're still alive? Oh, no!) It's officially been ten years since The Blair Witch Project came out, and in my book, that means we should be able to definitively answer the question, "Does it stand the test of time?" And, yes, it does. It holds up. It feels more timeless than dated. Two hours ago, I wouldn't have thought I'd ever be saying that about this college project of a film. Well done.

Mega Man 2

Another Mega Man game, another two hours well spent. There's really not much at all to cover here that I didn't say in my recap of the first game and don't expect to go over at some point in the next six installments. However, it's worth pointing out that many fans cite this game as the best in the series. I'm not saying it was bad or anything, but if this is true, then I'm in for six more games that don't live up to this one, which wasn't exactly spectacular in any way. But I think a lot of the praise had to do with its improvements over the first one - a password system, a health-replenishing system - and little to do with actual gameplay. Because as far as I can tell, gameplay doesn't change one bit from Mega Man game to Mega Man game. The Mega Man X series is a different story, and I'm sure Mega Man 7 and 8 differ as well, as these games debuted on the SNES and PlayStation respectively. But for now, the path to backlog completion takes me straight through a gauntlet of four more mostly identical Mega Man games. It's a good thing they've been more enjoyable so far than I had anticipated. Here's hoping the entertainment levels hold through for the next several games. Onward!

Mega Man

As a young lad, one of my favorite Super Nintendo games was Mega Man X. Unfortunately, I had never ended up playing the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth installments. (Are there more than six?) A couple of Christmases ago, one thing I asked for was the Mega Man X Collection, a compilation of games one through six. I was happy to open it on Christmas morning. Another gift I received, perhaps due to some confusion or basic "if he liked that, he'll like this" logic, was Mega Man Anniversary Collection, a compilation of Mega Man one through eight. (For those of you not in the know, Mega Man X is a separate character and series than Mega Man.) Sweet. I'd never played any of the original eight games either. It was a very good Christmas gift. Flash forward a year and a half, to this past summer, as I set out on my quest to beat every backlogged game I owned, and you may understand my immediate hatred for my owning two gigantic compilations filled with games that were, to say the least, extremely similar to one another. I had dabbled around a bit on each game, but not until tonight did I make any real progress on either of them. But now, you can scratch Mega Man, the long-running series' very first game, from my list. This was a quintessential NES game; game cartridges really couldn't hold that much data back then, so programmers prolonged games by making them challenging. This is what makes these games so good for speed runs; do everything right, and entire NES games will rarely take you more than thirty minutes or so to beat. But for casual gamers like myself, certain rooms and boss fights can take half an hour to beat all on their own. I was feeling rather patient tonight as I played through Mega Man, a fact which can be attested to by all three of my apartmentmates. They watched as I tried over and over to perfectly time countless jumps to clear simple gaps or position myself perfectly so as to avoid instant kills. The game was really rather simple. It was composed of six levels (and short ones once you get the timing and shooting down pat) followed by a four-stage final level. Ten levels, really, in all. No boss was very challenging, save for one ridiculously difficult one that nearly made me quit the game. Said boss was capable of firing 19 projectiles at you in a row for every one shot you can get off on him. Patience was really the only "strategy" to use, aside from quick thinking and impeccable timing. Once that guy was dead though, the rest of the game was more or less a breeze. I'd say it took me two and a half hours to beat, all things considered. I'm sure I won't enjoy the long road of Mega Man games ahead of me for the most part, but this one was an enjoyable experience. It was quick, fun, and had an unquestionably classic feel to it. A good use of a Tuesday night.

Back to the Future Part II

Great Scott! I just can't stop logging movies. This one's a classic that needs no explanation whatsoever, and if you've never seen it, go do so. Along with its predecessor and sequel, of course. My recap here will be simple and straightforward: this movie is timeless (yet very dated when it gets to the 1980s vision of 2015), enjoyable, and not worth reviewing here. Instead, I'll use this space to complain, postulate, and wonder about time travel. I've just watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and I am an avid fan of Lost. Both these shows deal with time travel, but each with their own unique set of rules. Back to the Future is no different (by which of course, I mean, it uses a different set of time travel rules as well). I could go on for pages and pages about the pros and cons of each one, but that's been done before and I just don't feel like this is the time or place to do so. Instead, I'll focus on Back to the Future time travel rules and plotholes. Now, right off the bat in this movie, Marty and Jennifer travel to the future and see their future selves. This is impossible! The moment they set off for the future back in 1985, their 1985 selves cease to be. They vanish, along with the time machine, into thin air. So how are 2015 Marty and Jennifer even extant? In order for there to be an adult version of Marty in 2015, there had to be a version of Marty that existed in 2014. And 2013. And so on and so forth, all the way back to 1985. But, again, this Marty no longer exists! 1980s Marty only resumes existence once he returns from the future to the 1980s. But in this movie, the world he returns to is significantly changed, due to Biff's sports almanac stunt. But now, herein lies another problem with Back to the Future time travel rules; 2015 Biff needs to deliver the almanac to 1955 Biff in order to set up his own success. But once successful, the "alternate universe" Biff has changed history enough such that it's doubtful Doc would ever have invented the time machine in Biff-run 1985. And without the time machine, how does 2015 Biff give himself the almanac back in 1955? The loop needs to be closed, in some way. Right? But altering the past allows for the loop to remain open, as history runs a different course entirely. Many other franchises have time-traveling rules that maintain that what once happened always happened. This is how Lost does things. If a person goes back in time from the present to the past, then that person was always hanging around during that time in the past. You can't change the future because what's already happened in it is bound to happen again. However, this system, too, is flawed. Let's suppose I went back in time with the intent of killing myself as an infant. Clearly, in the fixed timeline, there is no possible way in which I can kill myself as a baby, as this would eliminate me altogether, which would thus eliminate my childhood self's assailant, which would then permit me to live, which would then permit me to go back in time to kill myself, etc. Clearly, it's an infinite loop. The only way to protect my childhood self from my future self would be some sort of vague restriction that does not allow me to kill my younger self. Yet, if time travel is possible, and I can go back in time and meet myself as a baby, and I am a human being who possesses free will, just what exactly will prevent me from doing so? Divine intervention? This "fixed" timeline system thus cannot coexist with human free will. But then, if I kill my younger self under Back to the Future rules, I set up a paradox that destroys the universe. I suppose the short and easy answer to all of these inquiries is that time travel is fictional and not actually realizable in any way. This makes sense. If time travel did exist, and I could go back and visit any moment in history, this would imply that all moments in history must physically be happening concurrently (in different universes, dimensions, or whatever else you want to call them). Likewise, in whatever former time I visited, I would need to be able to conjure myself up out of thin air. The laws of matter conservation explicitly prohibit this. In short, I would posit that there is literally no way in our physically realized universe that one could travel backward through time. After all, the entire universe would need to "rewind" in some way to get back to the stage it was in at any specific certain time ago. Gravity would work as a repellent, entropy would always decrease, and many, many other physical laws would be turned upside down. On the contrary, time travel into the future is theoretically possible; the time traveler would go into some form of deep stasis in which no aging occurred. After however long, upon awakening, the traveler would be some predetermined time into the future. Of course, he or she could never return to their own time; really, there'd be no point to traveling ahead at all, as you would never be able to "report back" or change the future in any way. Time is a one way street, after all. Well, at any rate, those were my three-in-the-morning, mostly-rambling, hardly-sensical thoughts on Back to the Future Part II. Good night all. I will be sure to post again once we all arrive in the future. See you there, whether it's in a few hours or several days.

Saw II

I could have spent the afternoon working on a big homework assignment due tomorrow morning that I have yet to start. I could have spent it studying for either of two enormous tests I am taking later this week. I could have fought the cold I have by taking a well-deserved nap. Instead, I watched a pair of Saw films. Saw II is unlike its predecessor in many ways; there's still a surprise ending and plenty of gruesome death, but the mystery that the first one was shrouded in just isn't there this time around. Neither are the somewhat character-driven mind games that made the first one - two dudes trapped in a room - so effective. Instead, we've got a house full of people who need to work together to escape, but end up fighting and killing each other along the way. Kind of stupid. But this movie was at least still enjoyable, even if it was to a very small extent; Saw III, which I am bound to watch in the near future, isn't even fun to sit through. And I've heard that Saw IV is downright terrible. But I'll cross those bridges when I come to them. For now, suffice it to say that Saw II was an average flick at best, and probably not even worthy of that much praise.

Saw

Halloween is but a week away. What better time to start checking some horror movies off of my list than now? Let's start with Saw. I first saw this movie four years ago at a friend's birthday party. I was never a big fan of horror movies. In my mind, they were either really stupid or really frightening - where was the entertainment? All of this changed when I saw Saw. It's not so much a horror movie as it is a grotesque mystery of sorts. Everyone's familiar with the series by now, I'm sure, even if they've never seen any of the films. But if you're holding out on Saw because you're not a horror movie fan, take it from me: this is actually a pretty decent movie. It's been sullied by how shitty its sequels have been. (I've seen the second and third ones, and own the fourth. I'm sure I'll own the fifth and sixth as well before all is said and done. I just hope dearly that they don't make a seventh.) But while the latter movies became more and more grotesque and brutal (and less and less, well, good), the first movie stands the test of time. The acting is subpar (the main two characters are downright laughably bad) and the plot gets a bit too convoluted toward the end, but these flaws aside, the movie is suspenseful, intriguing, and surprising. After all, it's essentially just two men trapped in a room trying to solve a puzzle. What beats that, in terms of simplicity? Now, don't get me wrong; this is far from a perfect movie. Spoilers will follow, as I begin to gripe about some parts of the film. Ready? Good. First off, it's overtly stated that the Jigsaw Killer "is not a murderer, technically; instead, he finds ways to make his victims kill themselves." This is blatantly false! While he often (or even always) gives his victims a "way out," he places them in situations where if they do not escape from a certain confinement within a time limit, they will die. This is murder! Cut all the "he helped me appreciate being alive" bullshit, Saw; your antagonist, Jigsaw, is a ruthless murderer who likes to play games with his victims. In many situations, one victim must kill another in order to survive. Thus, not all of his "games" can even end with 100% survival amongst the participants. Come on! Now let's look at the most enduring scene of the film, at the end, when the blonde guy amputates his own leg with a hacksaw to be free of his chains. Seriously!? The hacksaw could have been used to saw through almost anything else - the chains, the pipes he was chained to, the padlock on the chains. Worst case, couldn't he have just sawed off his heel, allowing for the shackle to slip off his foot? I know it sucks, but it beats losing your entire foot. And I'm not buying the chains being capable of electrocuting their prisoners for a second. I won't bore you with the details, but there was no pathway for an electrical current to go through the bodies. Furthermore, the chains appeared to made from cast iron or some other heavy metal; such metals make or terrible electrical conductors. Aluminum and copper would work best for such purposes, but of course would be a cinch to saw through. Impossible! And was it just me, or was the brown-haired annoying guy way too calm after hearing that the blonde guy's mission was to kill him? And how about that part where the cops find Jigsaw's hideout and another victim-to-be? Not only is the Asian guy (Lost's Miles Straume, everybody!) barely capable of preventing the man's death when given twenty seconds to turn a key in a lock, but he never even bothers to free him from the device! Instead he runs off after Jigsaw, and once he runs into that shotgun tripwire, Danny Glover is the only man left who can still free the screaming victim. But he doesn't! He just hobbles off instead. I guess I could go on and on, but I don't really want to; the movie is enjoyable (if not feasible), and isn't that more or less all we wish for movies to be? As for the sequels, well, so begins my four-DVD journey downward into the depths of torture porn hell. More on them coming soon!

American Lion

Here's a book my girlfriend got me last Christmas that I have been working on basically ever since. It's sort of a biography, but only starts just before Andrew Jackson won the 1828 election, already at about sixty years old. The book goes into great detail regarding his personal life, claiming that Jackson was incapable of separating it from his political life. He was a very stubborn man. When the book dealt with historical goings-on, I enjoyed it. It was great to learn about the Indian Removal Act and Nullification Crisis, among other things, through the words and actions of Jackson and his allies and enemies. But when the book spent too much time on Jackson's personal life, I must admit, I became bored enough to start skimming. There's really not a ton to say about it, other than that author Jon Meacham (editor of Newsweek) has certainly put in his time and effort to research all kinds of 170-year-old letters and documents in order to perfect his biographical story. Kudos to him. If you're a huge history buff, or even a fan of personal politics and gossip, this is a book I bet you'll like. Otherwise, stick to the condensed version: a few pages from any American history textbook.

Madden NFL 09

(Disclaimer: Please excuse the excessive amounts of Brett Favre already included in this post. Sorry. Truly, I am sorry.) So this past August, I flirted excessively with the idea of buying and playing Madden NFL 10, but the sheer weight of my backlog prevented me from making such a purchase. Then, just a couple weeks ago, one of my roommates acquired Madden 09 from a friend who had acquired it for free through a parent. Neither wanted the game, and I was told it could be mine for the low, low price of one slice of cake. (Sold!) Now, everyone would probably agree that in order to "beat" a football game, you've got to play through a season and win the Super Bowl. No arguments here. Still, I set another (lesser) goal, and said to myself, "the bare minimum thing I can do is [this]." What was "this," you ask? Right the wrong that was the '09 Patriots season. For those not in the know, my beloved Pats lost their captain and best player, perennial MVP candidate Tom Brady, and still managed to be led to an 11-5 record by career backup Matt Cassel. But they missed the playoffs. Meanwhile, the perpetually overhyped and underperforming San Diego Chargers went 8-8 and made the playoffs. Even Colts fans cried foul, as the Chargers then Hosted the 12-4 Colts in a playoff game which the Colts lost in overtime without ever having seen the ball. In short, fuck the '08 NFL season. My goal, then, was to make things right by making the playoffs with Matt Cassel leading the charge. First things first; I altered Brady statistically down from a 99 rating to a 35 overall. (I figured even gimpy ACL-less Brady was still 35 points better than nothing). I made Jerod Mayo a little bit better (he was rated far too low!), I made Laurence Maroney a little bit worse (he was rated way too high), and I improved Cassel's ratings from backup levels to those of a decent starter. But enough about the offseason; let's move on to the preseason! I decided to play all four preseason games to get a feel for the new Madden games, having no played any extensively since the 2004 offering. It took a while for me to warm up to some of the changes made to the series, and ultimately, I'm unsure whether or not I liked '09 better than the decade's earlier offerings, and from a franchise that promises every year that enormous upgrades have been made, I'm not so sure that that's okay. Still, the game was by no means bad, even if certain aspects could be described as "quirky" at best. The coolest new feature, undoubtedly, was called something like "EA Sports Rewind." It was essentially a one-time mulligan on almost any play. Didn't mean to throw that game-ending pick? Use your rewind, and the play will start all over. Other team just score on an 80-yard play? Use the rewind and suddenly, no they didn't. This little feature is something everyone who has ever played Madden - or any sports game - has wanted to have. I went 4-0 in the preseason, and my "My Skill" levels increased accordingly. This is probably the second-coolest "newer" feature I saw in all of Madden 09. Rather than playing every game on one of four levels (rookie, pro, all-pro, or all-Madden), players have the option of playing on the "My Skill" level, an adaptive system that changes the difficulties of various meta-games such as running, passing, run defense, and pass defense. Run successfully, and your "My Skill" will reflect it by increasing your running difficulty. Definitely a very cool and long-overdue feature. But also a pain in the ass. I'll share why as our story continues. At any rate, I came chagrin out of the gate winning my first four regular season games with ease. Then along came those bastard Chargers. I lost that game in overtime, blowing several opportunities to put it away along the way. I came back with several wins until it was time for the big Colts showdown. The Colts were undefeated at this point in my season. And undefeated they remained, as Peyton and his boys put an absolute shellacking on my team. Now, remember that "My Skill" feature I was gushing about earlier? As the season wore on and my record got better and better (save for the two aforementioned losses), the games got harder and harder. Eventually, things got too hard; I closed out the regular season by losing two of my final three games to Buffalo and Oakland. A disappointing finish, certainly. But, at 12-4, Matt Cassel had done it; it was playoff time. I had earned a first round bye, and my first game happened to be against those awful, no-good, terrible San Diego Super Chargers. I wanted to wipe the floor with them, still angry over my overtime loss in the regular season, and still upset that the real version of the team had made the playoffs last season with an 8-8 record. I ended up getting destroyed. Three or four times, in fact. I only got more and more pissed off (naturally) every time I'd blow a lead by throwing a pick or being unable to stop them from marching down the field and scoring. But I wasn't entirely to blame - all of my "My Skill" levels had ventured into the most difficult setting of all: all-Madden. I finally caved and played on all-pro instead of all-Madden, and bested those God-forsaken Chargers once and for all. Bitch about that one, LT. You fucker. Sorry. Moving on, it was AFC Championship time, and Peyton's 15-1 Colts were to be my gracious hosts for the affair. I didn't even fuck around here; I played on "pro" and decimated my worthier rivals. Super Bowl time. My opponent? Somewhat surprisingly, the New Orleans Saints. I decided it was only right for me to play this game, my final game, on my "My Skill" level. And what a game it was. It had a little bit of everything - big plays, big returns, missed PATs, two-point conversions, two minute drills, and costly turnovers. In the end, I prevailed by two touchdowns (although the game had been tied as late as the third quarter). I had done it; I had beaten Madden NFL 09. More importantly, I had made things right for the 2008 Patriots and their fearless zero-turned-hero leader, my boy, Matt Cassel. As if by divine intervention, the final screen of the postgame celebration was one of Cassel standing alone, head tilted back, arms spread out, screaming at the top of his lungs with all the exuberance in the world. The cherry on top? He was named Super Bowl MVP. Now that's a football season. Good night, everyone. Sleep easy. I know I will.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Here's a GBA game Biron let me borrow early this year- A Link to the Past. I've been a fan of the handheld Zeldas- The Oracle games, Phantom Hourglass, and Link's Awakening, all of them were great, so I started playing LttP with high expectations. Unfortunately, about 1/3 of the way in, I just wasn't happy with it. The dungeons didn't have that great design Zelda games are known for, the story was going nowhere, and I was at a boss who you're supposed to hit with a hammer that I just couldn't beat. I put the game down for months, picking it back up periodically just to get frustrated again. Finally about a week ago I decided to get back to this one one more time with the aid of a walkthrough. It helped. A few minutes past that boss, the game picked up, and I got really into it. The combat is pretty standard for top-down Zeldas, and you can see a lot of the items and game play here influenced later games in the series. The game was at points difficult, but I never found it frustrating (aside from that one boss). Overall, I'm glad I picked this one back up, and it's got me hungry for more Zelda games- Wind Waker is just begging to get played. But we'll see what I backblog next.

Unfortunately, while this game was great, my DS suffered while I played it. The top of my DS is now only half-attached to the bottom, and while it appears gameplay won't be affected, I think it's time to put the old boy down. After all, I didn't even pay for it, Trev gave it to me as a gift. What a generous guy. Anyway, a new DS may be purchased in the future- there are still plenty of DS games I need to play. Perhaps a DSi, if I'm feeling crazy. But as for now, I think it's time to get some TV-console games done.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 1

I got really into the Terminator franchise late last spring. Hype was building for Terminator Salvation - which turned out to be horrible, by the way - and I had never seen the first two movies in the series. You know, the ones people liked. So, I bought both of them (and the third one, which in my mind is incredibly underrated) for around $5 each and had a little mini-marathon of sorts, watching all three with my friends from home in the course of a week. Now, I had known about this show since its inception during the winter of the strike-shortened '07-'08 TV season. Like many, I guffawed at the concept. A completely dated franchise launching a TV spin-off? The whole thing reeked of, "We need to air something during this strike; let's take that Terminator pilot off the shelves and run with a few episodes." As it turns out, the first season (it was nine episodes long, and I can't tell if it was a strike victim itself or if it was never meant to exceed the length of a midseason replacement) was pretty good. But the whole reason I bought the first season is because a good friend of mine swore up and down that the second season was amazing. And maybe it was. The first season certainly wrapped up in a way that allows for an amazing second season to occur. But then, don't most seasons of most shows? I don't mean to sound skeptical; I'm just trying to prevent myself from expecting too much. Regardless, I haven't even purchased the second season yet, and it'll be at least a little while before I get to find out for myself just how good it could have been. After all, its ratings did plummet and it got canned almost immediately after the finale aired. (Again, I'm being intentionally pessimistic about it; I fully take my friend's word on this.) I will of course let you know, dear reader(s), my opinions of Season 2 once it's been added and removed from my backlog. In the meantime, I've got some shooters to beat.

Left 4 Dead

In the spirit of Halloween season, I decided a few days ago that this would be my next game to check off. The premise is simple. You control one of four human survivors after a zombie apocalypse, and must find your way to rescue. There are four campaigns included in the game, and each is under an hour in length once you get the hang of the game. I finished the fourth and final one earlier tonight. All in all, the game is a very typical shooter. There's nothing spectacular about it, although the amount of cooperation required is pretty unprecedented. It really is a game best enjoyed with friends. At least, you would think so. Allow me to explain why I was better off alone. You see, after I completed the first mission on my own, I invited two apartmentmates to join in on the fun. We partied up and the three of us set out to vanquish the second campaign. We made it to the final act in relative harmony, and then very late in the game it all went to shit. One friend found himself nearly dead and without any first aid kits to use upon himself. Another was in good health and held a health pack in his inventory. Naturally, it was expected that the health pack would be used upon the dying comrade. Only, it didn't happen that way. An enormous horde of zombies ambushed us just as the rescue boat was arriving. I was low in health myself, and also lacked health packs. Naturally, I sprinted toward that rescue boat, hoping that once I reached it, the level would end. But it didn't. My weak and dying friend was still several hundred feet away getting ambushed by zombies. My friend with the medical pack now had a tough decision on his hands; should he risk his own life to go back and deliver that health pack? Or would he be better off joining me on the ship and leaving our hopeless ally to fend for himself? While I can't say what I would have done in his situation, I can say what he did. He lived up to the game's titular phrase and left our ambushed friend for dead. Excuse me, "4 dead." Our friend died, and the two of us sailed off on the boat as little "Achievement earned!" messages flashed up on our screen for surviving the level. No such achievement was given to our poor martyred roommate. There was an awkward silence, followed by a curt, "Yeah, I'm done with this game," from the victim. And who could blame him? I apologized for the situation, but in a half-hearted way. (This was, after all, only a video game.) I also tried not to throw our other apartmentmate under the bus, even though he had clearly been the one who could have been the savior. Flash forward. It's just the two of us now, at the end of the third campaign. The rescue plane has landed, and it's time to board it. We're both in good health and great shape, and my roommate gets on the plane with ease. Suddenly though, a horde of zombies appears and just absolutely begins to destroy me. I'm wading through the mob, slowly but surely, approaching the plane. All my roommate needs to do is leave the plane and shoot some of these guys off of me. It's even easier than running back and giving a fallen ally medical assistance. I'm literally standing on the plane's loading ramp, inches away from ending the level, when I die. Our roommate has done it again. "Yeah, I'm done with this game," I mutter. At least, done playing with our self-interested roommate after he sat back and allowed one of us to fail to complete the level for the second consecutive game. But again, it's just a game. It's no big deal. I wasn't playing Left 4 Dead to earn achievements, dear readers; I was playing it to beat it. Nothing more. You play to win the game, folks. You play to win the game. Anyway, a few hours later I lone-wolfed the final campaign and it went more swimmingly than any of the previous ones. So much for cooperative multiplayer. Ultimately, I can't say I disliked or hated Left 4 Dead, but nothing about it struck me as amazing. Halloween aside, part of the reason I wanted to play and beat this game was that its sequel is due out in a month or so. The thing is, having played through it, I really don't crave the next installment in this series. I suppose the game is essentially just like the typical zombie movies it tries to emulate: quick, fun, simple, and totally forgettable.

Something Happened

Please pardon my lack of recent updates. I've been busy reading this 570-page tome for more or less the entire month of October. It's a book I've had for several years now, purchased in the aftermath of my fascination with Heller's classic, Catch-22, my favorite book of all time. I tried rushing headstrong into this book back in high school, perhaps even as early as freshman year. But I couldn't get into it. About 100 pages in, I gave up completely, only to try again some many years later (now, the present). Having finally conquered Something Happened, I can't blame my adolescent self for quitting on it. It's a slow read and it's a long read. But I'd be remiss to say it was anything less than a good read. The book is nine chapters long, but the first chapter and final two come in at 27 pages combined. That makes for six middle chapters whose length approaches (and in two cases, exceeds) 100 pages. Again, it's a long and slow read. Bob Slocum, the narrator, is living the 20th Century American Dream. He's got an upper-middle management job, a wife, and three children. But he's not happy, at all. In a sense, the book is kind of like American Beauty, only it's not pretentious and shitty. At times, it also reminded me of the TV show Mad Men. A big criticism (really, the only criticism) of this book is that nothing at all really happens. And that's true. The title can only really be described as a summary of the final five pages. Yes, something does happen - something big - but after 560 pages of build-up, the "something" in question doesn't feel big enough. Nor does the falling action feel detailed enough. I mean, after this something does indeed happen - and it's a big something, again - there's a final five-page chapter that felt way too short. And when a book is 570 pages long, do you really want any part of it - especially the ending - to feel too short? This said, I liked Something Happened, and not just because I felt like I should. I genuinely appreciated the long-running stream-of-consciousness monologues and the quick, all too realistic conversations the narrator has with his family and co-workers. When Heller's humor was on, it was on. But it wasn't on even one tenth as much as it was on in Catch-22. In comparing the books, I'd say that Catch-22 oozed with comedic irony and witticisms juxtaposed (toward the end of the book) with very dark and solemn subject matter. In Something Happened, the tone is solemn and cynical from the get-go, and the infrequent puns and deprecating observations made by the narrator seem more like comic relief than the type of brilliant irony found in Catch-22. Bit in a way, this is like comparing apples and oranges. One book is a frantic-paced masterpiece, teeming with memorable characters and moments, that is both hilarious and iconic. The other is a deep and drawn-out series of repetitive internal monologues that never really earned much recognition or praise outside of Kurt Vonnegut. If you've got a lot of time on your hands and enjoyed Catch-22, give this one a shot. If you didn't enjoy Catch-22, it's because you didn't read it. Please, do yourself a favor and go do so. You really need to. I wouldn't steer you wrong, would I? Just do it.

The Beatles Rock Band

On my way home from work today, I planned a few things that needed to get done tonight. Yes sir, I was going to have a full evening. About a half hour after I got home, my friend Steve (Sheridan, not my co-blogger Stan) called me up and made me throw my plans out the window- our friend Winna had purchased The Beatles Rock Band and was ready to play. I quickly headed over to her house, and six of us jumped right into the game. I didn't stray much from lead vocals most of the night, but played a few songs on guitar and drums. The controls are consistent with previous Rock Band games, with a few minor tweaks- extra microphones can be used for background singers, and drum solos to activate overdrive (Beatlemania this time around) don't exist- just a specific drum hit sets it off. The catalog is a lot smaller than previous installments of Rock Band, but considering that there's only one band here, it makes sense. I've never been that much of a Beatles fan, so I guess I never realized just how many iconic hits they had over their career- I think the number of songs I had honestly never heard of didn't exceed 6 or so, and some of these unknowns were worthy of repeat listens and plays- Don't Let Me Down and I Want You (She's So Heavy) being a couple of standouts. The overall experience The Beatles Rock Band provides is short, sure- but a quality few hours of gaming are available, even for non-fans. I probably wasn't going to purchase this on my own, but I'm glad Winna did. The game was very fun, but I don't know if I'd shell out a full 60 dollars for it. Those extra instruments also seem like a rip-off, but again, I'm not a huge fan of the band. If you are, then you've probably already bought this. If not, it's at least worth a rent.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Ah, Professor Layton, one of the few video games out there that has an actual ad campaign. For those who don't know (only Stan will read this), the Professor Layton series is at its heart a collection of mini puzzles. This time around, there's about 150 puzzles, which I believe is about on par with the last game. This game won't take up much of your time, but it's nice that there's a bit of replay value- after the initial story mode, downloadable puzzles are released for free once a week. I've found that it's nice to go back to Professor Layton after a few months and have a bevy of new ones waiting for you. Anyway, the puzzles this time are about the same quality as the ones in the previous installment, Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Some will be a breeze, some will be tough but possible with a little thought, some will require all the hints you can get, and a small number will make you say "that was the worst puzzle I've ever tried, why did they think that was a good idea?" Luckily, there aren't many like that, and with 150 puzzles, there's bound to be a few that just aren't good. The game did introduce a few new styles of puzzles, all of which I enjoyed. First, the flower puzzles. Given a grid with some walls, and an unlimited supply of flowers, you must make sure that flowers can be smelt from every spot on the grid, all the while keeping the scent from being overpowering. Another new style of puzzle is the sliding ice block puzzle- Legend of Zelda veterans know these well and I was always a big fan of them. These puzzles were great, and I wish there were more in these styles, and much bigger ones too- puzzles that would take more than a minute or two to solve.

One thing the first Professor Layton game struggled with was a decent plot. The game play, animation, and voice work were all top notch, but for a game so heavy on dialog I just couldn't stay interested. The twist at the end was horrible and just didn't seem to fit at all with the story as a whole. I'm sorry to say, that this problem really hasn't been fixed in the new game, but the twist was at least a little less jarring. I guess it would be nice to see the protagonists, Luke and Layton, actually solve a mystery in some brilliant way that ties together all of the loose ends. The conclusions to both Curious Village and Diabolical Box are on par with "aliens did it." To me, that has always been the thrill of a mystery- seeing things that can only be described as supernatural, finally explained as something that could happen naturally under the right circumstances. Even with this letdown, I can't complain much. The puzzles themselves are what I got the game for, and Professor Layton delivered in the area that mattered most.

Out of the Dust

Home for Columbus Day weekend, I decided to give another children's book a go. This time around it was Newbery Award winner Out of the Dust, the fictional diary of an awkward girl living in 1930s Dust Bowl Oklahoma. I went in with expectations that could best be described as "exceptionally low," given that the last Newbery-winning teenage girl historically fictional diary I had read, A Gathering of Days, was one of the most pointless and substance-lacking books I had ever read. But this one was better. Much better. It was written in some kind of poetic broken verse. By this I mean that it was grammatically fine, written in punctuated and complete sentences, but with random sporadic carriage returns that probably served to add some kind of rhythm or emphasis but did nothing of the sort. But they made the book a much quicker read, and 227 pages were done in about an hour. Perfect. The book itself was also much stronger and less sugar-coated than I expected any children's book to be. There were passages in the book that made me wince and grimace, physically, as I read them. Descriptions of foodstuffs caked with dust and livestock drowning in mud weren't the most pleasant to imagine. One particular scene involving a bucket of kerosene was especially gruesome and powerful. Kudos to author Karen Hesse for writing a kids' book without neglecting the gritty bits. I liked this book much more than I expected to like any of my remaining backlogged Newbery winners. Does this mean I'll now look forward to reading the rest of them? Hardly. But it does mean I finally felt rewarded, even if only a tiny amount, for daring to merge my childhood's backlog with my present-day one. Oh, and I think I might finally be done with '30s-era tales, both in print and on video. But we'll see.

Untraceable

For those keeping track, I've only backlogged one movie previously, and while Stan is moving through a huge stack of DVDs, I'm simply catching a movie on t.v. now and then and giving it a small review. Traditionally my Saturday mornings are pretty open, so today I decided to find any movie I could that looked interesting. Unfortunately, no such movie existed so I picked Untraceable. Maybe you've forgotten Untraceable, given that it's a shitty "the internet is scary" thriller, but this actually just came out last year, and it was pretty bad. No, I take that back. The performances of Diane Lane and Colin Hanks, and directing by Gregory Hoblit were more forgettable than bad. The only thing that was really bad was the plot: A serial killer kidnaps his victims and broadcasts their executions online. The more people who log on and watch, the faster the victim dies. When the FBI attempts to find out about the guy who registered the site, they learn that it is -gasp- untraceable! If this doesn't raise some questions in your mind, then you haven't been on the internet long. I won't list the plot holes here, as there are other websites out there that detail them, but I will say that later on in the movie the killer hacks Diane Lane's car, cutting the power in the middle of a drive. Stew over that for a minute. The finale when Lane escapes from the killer's trap was just embarrassing to watch. The line the killer uses about how all executions will be broadcasted for money in the future was eerily reminiscent of Stone Cold Steve Austin's The Condemned. That's not a movie you want to remind viewers of. I can't think of much else to say, other than the fact that Diane Lane is pushing 50 and is still a stone cold fox. I mean goddamn. Anyway, don't watch Untraceable.

Aegis Wing

Aegis Wing is a game much like one you have played before, I'm sure. It's a generic space-based sidescroller in which you must destroy incoming fleets of ships, dodging their bullets all the while. There are a mere six levels, and each one is maybe three to five minutes in length; all said and done, the game takes half an hour to beat, and is no challenge at all if you've got even two people going at it at once, as was the case earlier tonight in the apartment. The game is downloadable for free from Xbox Live Arcade, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone mostly due to that low, low pricetag. There's really not a ton to say here. It's generic as can be, and even more quick and easy. Why not give it a go, even if only for 200 potential "Gamerscore" points? Consider this bad boy logged, and let's all move on with our lives.

Oil!

On a recent trip to the library, I grabbed Upton Sinclair's Oil!, knowing only that it was the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's movie There Will be Blood. Seriously, that's it- I hadn't even seen the movie, nor had I read any previous Sinclair novels (although at some point I would like to give The Jungle a spin). I admit, I was surprised by the book. Given Sinclair's reputation as a muckraker, I expected most of the text to go in depth about how evil the oil industry is, or maybe the evils of corrupt businessmen, all with a loose plot to tie all the exposition together. Instead, I got about 100-150 pages of how the business works, and then another 400 of a pretty decent story. For those who have seen the movie, here are some of the differences- the son's name is Bunny, and he is the main character of the book; the father never goes insane; and the book deals much more with socialism than it does with oil. Most of the plot comes from Bunny's refusal to carry on with the life of luxury his father has set for him. While at college, Bunny learns about Socialism and becomes so infatuated with it that he becomes an essential piece in a Socialist movement in Southern California. He struggles to deal with his contrasting double-life- is he a rich oil baron's heir, or is he a compassionate leader of the revolution? I don't usually study politics, so a lot of the ideas here definitely went over my head, but I feel that Sinclair did a good enough job of detailing the facts about Socialism and Communism without pushing an agenda. The story comes first, and the reader is allowed to draw his own conclusions- that is until the last page when Upton randomly claims that two good people (some main characters) died because of the cruel oil industry. Way to stay neutral, man. I can't complain too much about the abrupt shift in the ending though, because the rest of the book was a decent enough read. I wouldn't recommend it unless you were really interested in the subject though. Or maybe if you're some hardcore fan of the movie.

Metroid Prime

Don't let the image fool you, I haven't beaten the entire Metroid Prime Trilogy. Just the first one, Metroid Prime. A little background: Prime and Prime 2 came out on the Gamecube, and one of the few criticisms anyone had with the games was messy controls. When Metroid Prime 3 was released on the Wii, most called it "more of the same," but lauded the much improved motion-sensing controls. I had only played Prime 3 on the Wii and loved it, so I was understandably excited that Prime and Prime 2 were being ported to the Wii with new controls, all on one disc. I've been playing Prime 1 off and on throughout September, finishing it tonight with a 3-boss marathon. Stan has given a review already, so I'll be brief and highlight the main points. First, this game has absolutely genius level design. While the graphics are dated by now, the settings are memorable and creative. Not one thing is linear, but the backtracking is what makes the game: each time you get an item, you can make it a little further in some other direction. This is the type of level design I've only seen rivaled in the Legend of Zelda series. Second, this game has atmosphere, and tons of it. Few words are spoken at all, most of the game's story comes from reading about the ancient civilization whose ruins you are exploring. The music perfectly sets the mood- things can be fun, or tense and scary. Third, there just was nothing I could complain about. The one painful part was thankfully over within a few minutes (platforming up a large shaft while underwater). That's it, everything else was great. Boss fights were always frustrating at first, but could be completed within 2 or 3 tries. Metroid Prime was a blast, and given the somewhat small library of superb games on the Wii, any self-respecting Wii owner should probably pick this up, unless of course you played these the first time around.

NHL Hitz 20-02

Boom, baby! I just finished the final hockey game in the 50-game "Midway Cup challenge," winning the cup in convincing fashion, so I'm calling this game beaten. I had a lot of fun with it, mostly with friends playing right alongside me. I started the franchise mode at home back in June with some friends. We made ourselves as hockey players on our own custom team. For a logo, we chose some kind of flaming wolf. Naturally, we named our team the "Hot Dogs." Laughs ensued, but they soon gave way to a sneaking suspicion that we had a pretty lame team. After a two-game losing streak, we decided it was time for a new image, and rebranded ourselves altogether. Using some of the reward points we had earned, we entered the hockey shop in search of some new heads. You know: ponies, snowmen, soldiers, zombies, aliens, pirates. Nothing too crazy. We settled on sharks, and picked uniforms to match. I forget which one of us the pun came to first, but we called our team the "Sealers" - you know, like the Whalers, and the Steelers of football. Because sharks eat seals. Hilarious! Right? At any rate, our season really took off from there, and we rattled off another ten wins or so with ease. But then we stopped playing the game for some reason. I blame the quest for personal statistics. On our team, we had a center, a winger, and a defenseman, and we tried too hard to play into our own characters' niches. Our center always shot the puck, rather than setting up decent plays, because he really wanted to set a scoring record. Our defender just spent the whole game checking the opposition, racking up his "hits" count. Our winger struggled to find a role on the team, alternating between trying to play defense and trying to set up our center. He (I) ended up atop the leaderboard only in assists and fights. Still, things were working; we had our roles, and stuck to them. But as the games got harder and harder as the season progressed, our team only got worse and worse. Our center, frustrated by the fact that goals became harder to score, only took more and more shots on net to compensate, instead of finding the open man or setting up a one-timer bid. Our defender became complacent just to keep on checking opponents, and never really aided in our attack but still rarely found himself playing good defense. Our winger became all the more irritated by his (my) teammates' lack of discipline, and just complained about their sloppy play. With 35 games or so to go, we gave up on the game once and for all one night, putting it away for the summer. Enter autumn. Now, here at my apartment on campus, two roommates joined the quest for the Midway Cup. They made themselves and signed with the Sealers. As we won more games and earned more attribute points, they began to boost all of their statistics concurrently, rather than concentrating on a few areas. At first, I protested. I told them we needed dedicated attackers and defenders. But I was wrong. We three played each game with no predetermined roles whatsoever. And we just kept winning. Sure, we lost a few games here and there, but only early on. In fact, I think we ended the season on a 15-game winning streak, and with all of our starting skaters' statistics maxed out. Sometimes both roomies joined me for a game; sometimes it was just one. Hell, I played five or ten games alone. It didn't matter. We just kept winning. We dabbled with a few codes that did some silly things such as make our heads bigger or award goals to the winners of fights. We even started to use the "infinite turbo" code excessively. It's not like we needed it; we won even when we didn't use it, even in the final games. The code just made the games more fun and higher scoring. Anyway, earlier tonight, as I've already mentioned, we took home the Midway Cup. Game over. Game beaten. Game very thoroughly enjoyed. I really love NHL Hitz 20-02 (and that's pronounced "twenty-oh-two"). Other arcade-style sports games like Blitz, NBA Jam, and EA's Street series all seem far too over the top. But Hitz was aided, if anything, by the absurdity; while simulation-style series like Madden and Live are the best out there for their respective sports, I have never played a hockey game, sim-style or otherwise, that I've enjoyed half as much as Hitz 20-02. Go Sealers!

There Will Be Blood

I watched this two and a half hour movie this morning instead of going to my two and a half hours of classes. Call it a lazy Tuesday. Hey, nobody said I could accomplish my quest to unclog the backlog without making some sacrifices. My GPA, career, and future? Collateral damage on the road to a greater cause, I'm afraid. Anyway, the decision has paid off so far. (I'll get back to you on this once midterms happen.) There Will Be Blood was a great movie. Everyone's heard about how awesome Daniel Day-Lewis was, but you've really got to see it to understand it. This wasn't just Oscar-worthy; his performance just may rank as one of the top ten of all time. The other true standout in this film was its score. Every piece of background music fit perfectly. This includes the lengthy periods of time in which there was only silence. I'm not usually one to pinpoint specifics when it comes to music, but there's one chaotic scene in particular in which the action is accompanied by several percussion instruments. At first, they're all following their own beat, and the frequencies of their patterns are noticeably disjointed. It causes additional discomfort. Then, as the scene unfolds over several minutes, the different percussion noises all begin to "find each other," so to speak, and before long all the banging is in unison, much like a frantic heartbeat. Likewise, the scene's tone has shifted from chaotic to dramatic. Masterfully done. Now, a lot of people (myself included) are apt to liken this movie to 2007's other big hit with the critics, No Country For Old Men, another slow-paced, long, "thinking" movie set in the wide open west. But they're very, very different. One's about a crazy criminal and a three-way game of cat-and-mouse. The other is a biopic of sorts about an oil tycoon in the early 20th century. People's biggest problem with No Country was that it was a suspenseful thriller for an hour and a half, and then it completely and abruptly dies; you feel like there's an epic climax building, and then there's nothing of the sort. Blood is kind of the opposite of that, in that the extremely memorable and climactic five-minute ending comes out of nowhere at all. Almost like a scaled down Departed. Crazy. I'm sure there were also plenty of thematic and philosophical messages to take away from There Will Be Blood, but I fear that I am not a man who is always capable of grasping these on his own in an articulate way. The movie was great, and I know that it was great, and could sense that it was great, and didn't need all the hype beforehand to come to the conclusion that it was great - all of this is true, even if I can't explain exactly what made it so great or why. But there are other blogs you could read for opinions on that sort of stuff. Here, you'll just find a couple of guys who want to watch some movies, play some games, and read some books. Tune in sometime in the near future for Sweeney's reactions to Oil!, Upton Sinclair's novel that Blood was adapted from. Yeah, that's right. We've got all the bases covered.

The Green Mile

This makes for three straight movies set in the 1930's. I swear, I didn't even mean to do this. In fact, I had no idea this film was set in 1935. I just knew it was about a huge but gentle black guy on death row and his special mouse. In my mind, The Green Mile was just a Shawshank Redemption knock-off. Same setting (prison), writer (Stephen King), and director and screenwriter (Frank Darabont). How foolish I was to dismiss it so quickly; it's actually very unlike Shawshank in very many ways. But it is good. Really good. Tom Hanks anchored a great cast of death row guards that also featured strong performances by Tritter from House and Jack Bauer's dad from 24. Michael Clarke Duncan was the guy who earned the Oscar nod, but really, I didn't find him especially amazing in his role. But hey, props to him. I guess he deserved it. I mean, It's not like I can name five better supporting actor roles from '99 off the top of my head. A few thoughts on the movie. First, I had no idea there were any supernatural elements to it until about an hour in when they first started to occur. I'll admit, I was a little put off by this. The story, up to that point, had already been powerful and attention-grabbing. When the whole thing began to be, well, unrealistic, in the strictest sense of the word, I wasn't completely on board for the ride. The problem with most movies that try to take themselves seriously but aren't strictly fantasy or sci-fi is that oftentimes there's little to no explanation for the supernatural things that have occurred. Like in Benjamin Button. God, did I hate Benjamin Button. But this flick is no Benjamin Button. Thank God. (Have I mentioned how terrible Benjamin Button was?) Another thing this movie does is force the viewer to debate capital punishment on an internal level. The electric chair - who came up with it? It seems one of the most brutal forms of execution imaginable, even when everything goes according to plan. I know lethal injection wasn't really around yet in the 1930's, but come on, shocking somebody for several seconds of agony until they're dead? Is that really even remotely humane? A bullet to the back of the head would be far less grotesque, and that's saying plenty. Besides, this movie doesn't depict the electric chair victims as monstrous murderers at all. There's no getting around it... of the four inmates on Death Row, you only truly feel hatred for one of them. And yes, sure, it helps that the movie leaves out the reasons for their being in Death Row in the first place, despite running more than three hours in length. And that's another thing. I won't bitch about the movie being 188 minutes in length, but did it really need to come on two DVDs? I felt like I was watching something on VHS when, unexpectedly, about two hours into the film, it cut away and back to the main menu. No "please insert Disc 2" message or anything. It took me a few moments to figure out what to do. I mean, come on. A DVD disc offers far more capacity than the guys who made this one cared to use effectively. Embarrassing. Still, all in all, the movie was provocative and sad. Not the greatest movie I've ever seen, but one of the better ones, for sure. Check it out if you've got the time and the desire.

Seabiscuit

Man, I really love this movie. It's a pretty typical feel-good film, complete with elements like a big comeback and an underdog mentality, but something about it hits me right every time I see it. It's easy to think of Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man first and foremost, but honestly, Red Pollard, a feisty red-haired jockey with a heart of gold, almost seems like the role he was born to play. He's simply perfect in this movie. Jeff Bridges (the horse owner) and Chris Cooper (the horse trainer) are fantastic as well. The movie just puts you in a good mood. Just when you're certain that things Seabiscuit and his crew can't recover from their latest setback, they do! Just when you think it's the end of the line for Tobey and his horse, it's not! Add in that the whole thing is very accurately based on a true story, and it feels all the better. The setting - various racing tracks in the Great Depression - helps as well. I don't know, there's really not all that much more to say about this movie. It's just a treat from start to finish.

Halo 3: ODST

Another Friday night in Collegetown, USA; another Halo game beaten in four-player cooperative fashion. This time around, we dared to attempt it on the "legendary" difficulty setting right off the bat. We were, of course, victorious. I'll cut to the chase. ODST plays very similarly to the original three Halo games, and many times you feel little to no difference at all. But something about the game feels lacking, to say the least. Maybe it's the fact that the game was originally intended to be an expansion pack of sorts: mere downloadable content for players. Instead, they fleshed out the story a little bit more, added a generic (but very widely praised) "Firefight" gameplay mode - kill wave after wave of incoming enemies - and ended up with a game that was certainly more than just an expansion, but less than a full game. I don't mean to say that the effort was enitrely half-assed, but come on. It's not a full-fledged game - why sell it for the price of one? In a guilt-assuaging attempt, the game comes packaged with Halo 3's multiplayer mode - all two dozen or so maps' worth. The thing is, I'm sure at least 95% of people purchasing ODST are people who already own Halo 3. The story was also nowhere near as epic or impactful as any of the three Master Chief Halo games. It was still fun to play through the campaign, but it never once compared to any of its predecessors. And that's saying something, because the Halo storylines range everywhere from generically awful to mildly creative. A definite positive worth noting is that this time around, the game never felt too "beat-em-up," even on the legendary setting. There were nine levels, but really only seven if you don't include an introduction and an oft-interrupted "find the clues" level that triggers flashbacks which encompass the rest of the levels. The whole ordeal took us four hours or so, and I'm sure anyone could beat it alone on the normal difficulty setting in even less time. Ultimately, the game can't be - or at least shouldn't be - compared to the original Halo trilogy; it's not even a full-fledged game, and serves as nothing more than a brief interquel between the second and third games. While Master Chief is off saving the universe, this game is about little more than protecting some mostly-meaningless squidlike floating thing. I'll say no more to "spoil" the game, but honestly, there's hardly a meaningful plot to spoil at all. In the end, I don't regret playing or purchasing this game; I just wish its creators had left it alone as a fully fleshed out half-game instead of turning it into a half-assed attempt at a full game. Because it isn't one. It just isn't.

Chrono Trigger

At one point, I was a somewhat misguided critic of rpgs- The combat is slow and repetitive; the characters are all cookie-cutter and overly dramatic; random battles that are forced upon you is a terrible idea. Or so I thought. About a year ago, I was with a DS but without any games for a few days, so I picked up some random Sonic game I had never heard of: Sonic Chronicles. It turned out to be an rpg. Was the plot as terrible as you'd expect it to be? Yes, and then some. But I couldn't deny, the core mechanics of the game were actually pretty fun, and I ended up enjoying the game. Recently I stepped it up a bit and played another rpg-for-dummies, but this time one with a little credibility- Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. This one was a lot more difficult, but was certainly a better game than Sonic. Speaking of the Mario rpgs, I'm going to have to play the second one, Partners in Time, as well as Bowser's Inside Story, which just came out.

So that's two rpgs that were fun enough, but nothing mind-blowing. They dealt with characters I was familiar with, they didn't take themselves very seriously, and the only character with spiky hair was a hedgehog, who by all rights deserves those spikes. About a month ago I was at Gamestop and decided the time was nigh to jump into one of the most critically acclaimed rpgs of all time: Chrono Trigger. Not only have I seen this game show up on top-10 lists in websites and magazines, but at least three of my own friends have beaten it before and have told me how great it is. Even Big J, a guy who hates video games, encouraged me to play Chrono Trigger. How could the game possibly live up to the hype?

Well, it did. Even with the spiky-haired silent protagonist, the overdramatic save-the-future plot, and anime cut-scenes, it was a damn fun game and I can see why everyone loves it. The plot is epic, but rarely drags. Time travelling through seven eras provides a lot of space to explore, but there's enough variety to keep you wanting to explore just a little further each time. Boss fights were challenging but never unfair. The pace was perfect, and on two separate occasions the story went in a way I wasn't expecting at all (or at least I would have, but Stan warned me when an important moment was coming). My only complaint is that towards the end of the game, I lost where my ship was, and therefor couldn't go back for some side quests. Sheridan told me that the same thing happened to him, the game just moves it to a new location without really telling you, but at that point I was ready to beat the final boss and be done with it. That's hardly a knock on the game, I just wasn't paying attention during an important piece of dialog. Perhaps with Chrono Trigger out of the way, I'll start trying some of the Final Fantasy games, but in a little while... in a little while.

Road to Perdition

A March 2007 purchase, this DVD is the fourth-oldest in my backlog. At least, it was, until this morning. This isn't the first time I've seen this movie; that time came five or six years ago, on VHS. I have owned about a dozen and a half VHS tapes in my day, and all but two of them have been replaced by (or "upgraded to") DVD. Some would call it a waste of money to purchase a DVD copy of every VHS tape one already owns, but then again, VHS was a really terrible format. It's easy to forget how big the jump from VHS to DVD was; it was certainly far bigger than the DVD to Blu-ray jump. And, yeah, if I tried to purchase every DVD I owned on Blu-ray, it'd be financial suicide, as well as the easiest way to give up my backlog-clearing quest. The only two VHS tapes I own that have yet to be upgraded to DVD status are The Usual Suspects and Signs. And don't think I haven't searched hard for good deals on both. Oh yeah, that reminds me... not a quality snob? Want some VHS tapes? Hit me up. I've got several left that I will never, ever again use, and am willing to give away readily. Anyway, let's talk about Road to Perdition. It's underrated and overlooked by most, including myself. It's a good movie that has only a few flaws (most notably, a lack of emotional connection to the characters and their tragedies). The cold and dark visual tones that encase the two movie's two hours are masterfully executed, and the cinematographer rightfully won many awards and much praise and recognition for his efforts. The movie is about a Great Depression era Irish mob hitman and his pure and simple quest for vengeance against those that have wronged him. In this regard, the plot is nothing special whatsoever. But it's the performances that make this film stand out. Tom Hanks, Jude Law, and the late Paul Newman are all absolutely fantastic at their portrayals of ruthless murderers. All of the principal characters in the film are devout Catholics (being Irishmen), and while religion does not play nearly as heavily into the film as it does in others like Boondock Saints, it does provide some very simple context for the characters and their crimes. The title itself is essentially "Road to Hell," a nice play on words, as the town that Tom Hanks' character is ultimately trying to reach is called "Perdition;" the "road" to there is thus both literal and symbolic, and it represents the end of his journey, both in the context of his mission and ultimately once he someday dies. In one of the most enduring scenes of the film, Paul Newman's character (the mob boss) laments to Sullivan (Tom Hanks) in the midst of a tension-gripped moment that "the only certainty is that none of us will ever get into heaven." Sullivan soon realizes that his son (played by some kid, naturally) still has a chance, as he has not yet killed a man, despite his involvement in Sullivan's mission for vengeance. This all sets up a very bittersweet ending fifteen minutes later that I can't bring myself to ruin at all. See it for yourself. Road to Perdition is a smart movie, but not in a pretentious way that taxes your brain or makes you sacrifice three hours of your day. It's relatively short, free of fluff, and worth a viewing if you've never seen it.