Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Let's see what surprises lie behind door number two!

First things first. Let's address the title. Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Apocalypse. The destruction of the world. So, you might gather this film is going to be about the T-virus spreading across the world and wiping out the whole human population. Not so. This movie takes place solely in Raccoon City. Basically, the Umbrella Corporation went back down into the Hive after kidnapping Alice and Matt. In doing so, they released the virus into the city and now the zombie outbreak is going down. Luckily, Umbrella was at least smart enough to quarantine the whole city before things got too out of hand. Still, losing a city to a zombie outbreak hardly qualifies as an apocalypse. But I digress...

Last we saw Alice, she had woken up on an examination table in Umbrella's research facility. She walks out into Raccoon City, now in shambles, and picks up a discarding shotgun. "What exactly happened to her?" you might ask. Well, Umbrella exposed both her and Matt to the T-virus... and, well... Alice is basically going to discover she's a superhuman now. Run at lighting fast speeds. Leap 20 feet in the air. Take a punch from a super strong monster and still keep on kicking. Yup, that's what she does now. Although, the writers decided they finally need to bring some explanation on how the T-virus came to be, so we're introduced to its creator, Dr. Ashford. He's some genius researcher who he and his young daughter are suffering from some degenerative disease. To correct this, he made the T-virus. Apparently it's original intention was to help humans heal and regenerate from any illness or injury. Unfortunately, it turns them into zombies and in rare cases mutates them into horrible creatures. Alice is the exception to the rule and is the only person to have successfully bonded with the T-virus without succumbing to its horrible side effects. She is the Umbrella Corporation's prized possession... so it only makes sense that she was left behind to die in the research facility when the outbreak began. Oh, but they do get Dr. Ashford out and Matt -- or what's left of Matt. 

Anyways, this film is basically about Alice (and a handful of others) trying to get out of Raccoon City alive even though Umbrella has barricaded everyone in. They do find a ticket out, though. Dr. Ashford's daughter who got trapped in a car wreck while being transported from school. Ashford establishes contact through pay phones and security cameras with Alice and gang (who are now probably the only survivors left in the city) and offers them a chopper out of the city if they can locate his daughter. 

I'll make the rest of the movie simple. With a many zombie/mutant fights... they find the little girl... battle against Umbrella (who use Matt -- now a giant, powerful mutant under their control -- to fight Alice)... and make it out of the city. Only, one of the last scenes is of the escaping helicopter crashing in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of the city after Umbrella sets a nuke off destroying Raccoon City -- and, hopefully, containing the outbreak. 

Few points I need to raise. One, I'm confused about Dr. Ashford's role with Umbrella. Yes, they establish him as the creator of the T-virus. And, because he's a cripple in a wheelchair, I guess he just works from home which is why he didn't perish in the Hive in the first film. What's also weird is that his daughter is the avatar for the Red Queen (the Hive's state-of-the-art security system). In the last film they made a reference that the computer's avatar was designed after the maker's daughter. So, Dr. Ashford isn't only the creator of the T-virus, he's also the designer of the Red Queen. Which also begs the question, shouldn't he have known shit was going down the second the Hive went into quarantine mode? When you first see him in this film, Umbrella is in the process of collecting him before the city is sealed in. He greets the Umbrella henchmen at the door to his house and is somewhat confused by everything. He only says, "How bad is it?" I feel like this guy should have been thought out a little more. If he's responsible for everything gone wrong in Umbrella, he should at least have some insight into it. 

My last grievance is the final scene. As the helicopter goes down during the nuke blast, Alice takes a piece of shrapnel in her chest saving Dr. Ashford's kid form death. Presumably, Alice dies and the rest of crew survives the crash and escapes into the woods. Next, we see Alice wake up in Umbrella HQ in some sort of water tank. Was she saved? Is she a clone? No clue. But in a matter of seconds her memory returns to her and she remembers who the enemy is. She kicks ass and makes her way out of the research facility. Next thing you know, she's greeted by all of her old cronies from the Raccoon City disguised as Umbrella henchmen sitting in a getaway SUV. They (apparently) came to smuggle her out. What? Was this all planed? How the fuck did they know, "Oh, this is the day they're waking Alice up from a regenerative sleep so we got to bust in and sneak her out." Much less, one of the men in crew was a wise-talking pimp from Raccoon City who somehow managed to survive. And now he's prepared to fight elite mercenaries? No. I don't buy that. I don't buy any of this shit. 

Still... show me more!

I know all of this should just be ignored. Focus on the crazy, over-the-top battle scenes and have fun, but some of these plot holes are so glaring it's ridiculous. Can't wait to rip into the next film, though. (I've got some serious problems with that one.) But -- sadly -- that will have to wait for 2014. 

Happy New Year's everyone!

Pitch Perfect

My Dad works from home and because of this tends to have movies on in the background. He'll start a movie in the middle on HBO and watch it dozens of times in the background. Everytime I would come home my Mom would make fun of him because he had seen Pitch Perfect the most of all. Well, turns out, I come home on the night before my wedding and Pitch Perfect was on. And ya know what? I watched it. Apparently my Mom didn't think this was a fun way to spend the night before your wedding, but I liked it just fine! She got me this movie for Christmas to remind me of that and I just watched it again. It's cute! Anna Kendrick is an outsider at college and joins an acapella group at her Dad's insistence. She has new and bold ideas that the group leader just doesn't want to roll with. Making things more complicated, she has a crush on a member of the rival acapella team which is VERBOTEN! Taking a page out of the Step Up plot book, the group does moderately well and begins to become friends, something dramatic happens which causes the group to split apart, and the group comes together and respsects the ideas of Anna Kendrick to win it all! You go girls!

Cute fun movie which isn't too annoying for a singing movie.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 2

Oh boy, shit sure does go down in Season 2 of Sons of Anarchy. Season 2's main villian is Ethan Zobelle. He is allied with a white supremicist group and is bringing drugs into Charming and stealing the Irish gun trade from the Sons. Don't you know not to mess with Jax and his crew? Ethan Zobelle is also in bed with the Mayans, a rival crew of Samcro. Somehow the Niners, another crew, also get involved. The seasons starts with a real upsetting uncomfortable scene which sets the tone for the whole season. There's a lot going on which makes the whole season real exciting and upbeat. There are explosions and gun fights and motorcycle gangs and jail time and some real extreme guilt over something that ended last season. The season goes out in an unexpected but surprising way and really sets the tone for season 3. It was a really exciting season of television that I look forward to watching again some time.

Just Kids

So at one point in time some of my friends tried to start a book club. That was the reason why I read Where'd You Go, Bernadaette; The Language of Flowers; and this book, Just Kids. Just Kids was easily my least favorite of the three books. Just Kids is a memoir by Patti Smith. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the book more if I knew who Patti Smith was. Patti Smith was the lead singer of a punk band called Scandal. She was BFFs with Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer. They came of age in the '60s and '70s and this book chronicles their journey which includes drugs, art, sexuality, and homelessness. This book won the National Book Award in 2010. It was a well told detailed story, but I just didn't have enough interest in it to consider it an enjoyable book. Here is a picture of Patti Smith taken by Robert Mapplethorpe:

The Big Bang Theory: Season 6

That's my wife, dropping fifteen posts on us in rapid fashion, knocking herself off the front page five times in one afternoon. She even told me, "you're welcome for getting us to 400 posts." Wow!

Anyway, this is the sixth season of The Big Bang Theory. No one needs any in depth analysis on The Big Bang Theory. A lot of people actively hate The Big Bang Theory. All the same, I'll offer one quick criticism of The Big Bang Theory.

Episodes of  The Big Bang Theory just sort of end. They don't really conclude themselves as much as they run out of time and just sort of stop. This hardly matters, since so little of The Big Bang Theory is plot-driven. Still, The Big Bang Theory is a multi-camera sitcom in a world increasingly dominated by newer formats. You'd think it would adhere rigorously to the classic episodic structure of so many sitcoms before it, with an A story and a B story and sometimes a C story, all of which introduce some sort of conflict and ultimately resolve it in some way. But that's not the case with The Big Bang Theory. I'll provide a simple example in the form of this season's Christmas episode, "The Santa Simulation."

In this episode of The Big Bang Theory, Leonard has set up a Christmas-themed game of Dungeons & Dragons, largely because Sheldon hates Christmas and Leonard would like to infuse some holiday cheer in him. Meanwhile, the girls go out for a night of drinking, and take Raj with them in order to find him a girl. Now, there a number of ways for each of these plots to play out and for various hijinks to ensue, but there are really only a few ways each plot can conclude, given the limitations of the half-hour sitcom format.

We'll start with the B story. Raj can either succeed in finding a girl to hook up with, or he can fail. Now, he will fail, and most of the audience knows this, because that's the kind of sad sack character he is. The only reason he shouldn't fail is for the joke to be on someone else. If he does succeed, he can show up back at the apartment with a girl in tow while the rest of the guys are playing Christmas D&D and then the joke's on all of them. Because there has to be a payoff somewhere, right? If he fails to pick up a girl, the joke is on him, and if he succeeds, it's on everyone else, because it has to be on someone, right? An alternative outline is possible, in which Raj succeeds in spite of the efforts of his female friends. Like, maybe they go about things all wrong, and only by being himself can he succeed, or something, and then the joke is on the ladies who thought they knew better. Instead, this is The Big Bang Theory, so Raj fails right away off screen at the bar and the rest of the B story focuses on him telling the girls how he used to have the hots for each of them, except for Amy, the token awkward nerdy one. None of this is new information - we've seen Raj lust for both Penny and Bernadette in the past. All this B story is doing is reiterating what we already know, with a few easy jokes thrown in. Penny and Bernadette are attractive, Amy is not, and Raj aims unreasonably high and sometimes for his friends' girlfriends. There's no guest casting stunt where some "celebrity of the moment" fills in as a girl at the bar for Raj to pursue. There's no subversion of roles in any of this. Nothing really happens. The arc ends with the group leaving the bar and Raj making the joke that even Amy seems attractive to him now that she's unavailable. Nothing ever comes of this and no attraction is teased again at all for the rest of the season. It's just a completely dead B story. Nothing happens and no one changes. The whole thing was shot around a table at a bar.

Now, back to the A story. Again, though the paths here are infinite, there are really only a few ways this can end. The stated goal is for Leonard to get Sheldon to like Christmas. If he succeeds, there's no real joke, unless he succeeds to such an extreme extent that Sheldon is now unbearably enthusiastic about Christmas and suddenly Leonard is the grouchy one. At the same time, there's no real reason for him to fail, unless the joke is that he's succeeding so well until something goes awry - perhaps a bad roll of the dice or something - that totally saps any budding excitement Sheldon had mustered up. As it turns out, Leonard does initially succeed in getting Sheldon excited about Christmas, and Sheldon seems like he's really getting into it. Instead though, Sheldon waits for the climax of the game - the party has found Santa chained up in the corner of a dungeon - before trolling his teammates by paralyzing them and killing Santa. It's sort of darkly comic, and it's enough of a twist ending that it should work pretty well. Except it doesn't, because Sheldon justifies the move by explaining that his hatred for Santa stems from an incident when he was a young boy and he asked Santa to bring his dead grandfather back to life and Santa couldn't do it. It just rings so false. Sheldon has often been described as a genius from birth, and someone fervently opposed to all the religious beliefs that pervaded his upbringing. For him to have been holding a grudge against a mythical creature all these years over a biological impossibility seems untrue to the character. And the joke doesn't even really land, either, since once Sheldon ruins the game, the story just ends with Leonard upset over how he wasted his night. Finally, in the episode's coda, Sheldon has a nightmare in which Santa is angry at him for leaving him chained up in a dungeon. Again, no payoff. The nightmare doesn't leave Sheldon liking Christmas any more than he did, and it's not like the game had succeeded in making him like Christmas only to have a nightmare later to ruin it.

So in the end, the A story ended in failure, but very little comedic payoff, and the B story ended in immediate failure and no comedic payoff whatsoever. The characters at the end of the episode are exactly who they were at the beginning of the episode, and no one has succeeded at anything or been made the butt of any jokes longer than a one-liner.

And that's more than enough words to spend on The Big Bang Theory.

World War Z

This is not a good movie. It just seems like they figured "Hey, we've got Brad Pitt. We don't need a compelling story." Anyway, this movie takes itself way too seriously, yet asks you to suspend your disbelief far too much. From grenades going off in airplanes to Brad Pitt, a stay-at-home dad, being the only one who can solve the Zombie issue, there's just too much BS in this movie to stomach. The one thing I will say is that these Zombies are pretty cool. Rather than being motivated by eating, they are motivated by passing on their infection to all the humans. They will stop at nothing to get to humans. One even banged his head on a windshield repeatedly until he could get through to a family. That just reminded me that a zombie was locked in an airplane bathroom for hours during a flight without making a sound rather than trying to get out. Inconsistent. A lot of this movie is inconsistent. Don't bother.

Grey's Anatomy: Season 4

Great news, here is a summary of what happened in Season 4: http://tvdramas.about.com/od/greysanatomyspoilers/a/greysseas4synops.htm

The highlight of this season is when Meredith brought her dead mother's ashes into work and dumps them down the drain of the (previously) sterile surgical room. Because ya know, that's what her mother would have wanted, for her to dirty the clean room.

Highlight 2: Becky from Friday Night Lights is a patient with a tumor. She's pretty perky though. Tommy from True Blood plays her love interest who also has a tumor. They have sex for the first time with a dangerous surgery impending. Which one do you think lives?

Highlight 3: Boy sits in cement to impress girl. Boy gets stuck in cement. Boys is seriously in danger. #dontworryhelives

Season Lowlight: No more Addison. She was fun but now she has her own unsuccessful show called Private Practice. Apparently everyone was pissed she got the spin off and they didn't.

This was not a particularly good season of television, even compared to other seasons of Grey's Anatomy.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 1

 

Why did no one ever tell me the main character of Sons of Anarchy looks like a dirtier version of Thor and that I would love this show? Because so far I do. Sons of Anarchy is super cool! Jax is a member of a bike gang called the Sons of Anarchy. It's a cast full of fun characters like Juice and Tig and Opie.

Basically, the Sons are the best bad guys in their small town of Charming. Only they are allowed to do bad things and it's all to "keep Charming safe." Obviously, they do bad things like sell guns that don't benefit Charming, but hey, you can't expect that much from them. They wear sleeveless cuts and have old ladies. They are living the life. Adriana from the Soprano's is Jax's baby mama but she's a hot mess. Tara is his high school love who is a doctor. Can she cut it with the gang? Gemma is Jax's bad ass mom. Jax's dad, the former president, is dead, and now his mom is married to the current president. Is there more to that story than meets the eye? Opie served hard time for the crew and is having a hard time balancing family and the demands of the club. The club's propsect is Chili from The OC. Clay is el Presidente. Will he and Jax, the VP, butt heads?

Only time will tell!

Grey's Anatomy Season 3

So in the second half of 2013 I was spending 3-6 days in Maryland every month for work. What's a gal to do after work when she's bored? Naturally the answer is watch TV but so much of the TV I watch Steve wants to watch with me. So what would Steve not want to watch that would be a significant time commitment for all future travel and general lazy time? Grey's Anatomy! It passed both criteria: huge time commitment and Steve would never want to watch it.

I arbitrarily started at Season 3 because I know I had watched most of Seasons 1 and 2 and I couldn't remember most of the Season 3 plot lines, so it seemed like a fair place to start. Season 3 is when Grey's Anatomy took the Thursday at 9pm time slot and never let it go. Last season Izzy got engaged to a guy with a bad heart who she tries to get a good heart by cheating the system, then he dies. In this season she is pretty sad and messed up. Meredith and Derek spend a lot of time on and off again. Cristina and Burke are about to get married but don't. George fails his intern exam. McSteamy enters the picture. Addison is generally awesome. That's about it. Oh and Meredith drowns and dies and then lives.

I thought this was a pretty good season. There was a lot of fun personl drama and a ferry accident. I hear the accidents only get more dramatic and unrealistic as the seasons progress. Looking forward to it!

No Easy Day

This book was downright good. I knew of this book as the Bin Laden book, but man was this so much more. This book follows "Mark Owen" throughout his career as a Navy Seal. It shows his entry into DEVGRU the elite Seal unit trusted with only the most important missions. It was really interesting to hear about his training and what he struggled with. What it was like in the new unit. How important it was to him. It also takes you from mission to mission that he performed over his time as a seal, including the Captain Phillips mission and the Osama Bin Laden mission. To hear all of the planning of the mission and then how it actually went down was so interesting. I came away from this book with the utmost respect for Navy Seals. It doesn't seem like there are many people more badass than the DEVGRU team.

Every Day

Wow, this book was not good! Also part of the Amazon 2012 collection, this is a young adult novel (part of the reason it is not good) that follows a teen boy who wakes up in a new body every day. Crazy right? Obviously, he falls in love with someone and spends the rest of his days trying to meet her again and fall in love again. Pretty tricky to do when he wakes up as different boys or girls each day. It's filled with teen melodrama and was pretty lame. Apparently he is writing a sequel from the point of view of the love interest, yuck!

Live by Night

When I was downloading Gone Girl, I accidentally also downloaded Amazon's entire list of top books of 2012. Live by Night was on this list, and I had read Dennis Lehane before (Shutter Island) and liked it, so I decided to read this next. It was very very different! Apparently this is the second book following Joe Coughlin, but it was the first I read... so there! This book starts in Boston in the 1920s travels to Miami and then ends in Cuba. It's the story of a petty thief who turns into outright outlaw (but a smart one). I would highly recommend this book. Joe Coughlin is an interesting character to follow and he sure gets into some fun situations. It reminds me of Boardwalk Empire, and I think that's fun.

Gone Girl

Well wasn't this book a doozy! I had heard that this book was popular but I also knew nothing about it. Turns out it was the story of Nick and Amy. Then Amy disappears. Dun dun dun. Plot twists and turns ensue to a surprising twist and then a lackluster ending. Seriously, I think I read like four books in a row with really bad endings. Stupid writers.

Anywho, this book was a real quick read. I enjoyed it the entire time up until it ended. I read this in Hawaii and I was telling Steve about it and we were fake casting who would play the charming country boy (Ryan Gosling) and wealthy city girl (Blake Lively). Turns out it already is going to be a movie with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. (Who?) Ben Affleck is a fun casting call though.

I'll leave it to you to read the book and not spoil any of the fun!

Revenge Wears Prada

Here is a great example of a mindless easy lady read - the sequel to Devil Wears Prada. As you may remember from that book and movie, Meryl Streep tortured poor Anne Hathaway until she quit. Her life was hers again but she lost her boyfriend through that crazy job. Revenge Wears Prada picks up with Andy who has a new and great life. She and her former nemesis (Emily Blunt) reconnected over their Miranda hatred and started a wedding magazine which gained success. Andy is marrying Max, a finance dude from a rich New York family. HOWEVER, her world comes crashing down when Miranda comes back into her life along with her former love interest, Alex. Turns out Miranda still sucks and the ending is just picture perfect with Andy getting divorced and rekindling her relationship with Alex. Real lame book, real lame.

And the Mountains Echoed

I was a huge fan Khaled Hosseini's two most popular previous books, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. They were captivating stories that were very well written. However, this book just didn't do it for me. It took me a large portion of the book to become invested in the story, and then when I was really interested, the book ended.

The most interesting part of this book was the structure though. Each chapter followed a particular character. The next chapter would follow a character that was just introduced in the previous chapter, and of course, all of the chapters were all connected in some way. There was: a father, his son and his daughter, their stepmother, her brother, his boss, the boss' wife, and then three other characters who were introduced into a more modern day Afghanistan. Really fun structure, but unfortunately the beginning parts were too boring and I didn't have anything invested in them yet emotionally.

Where We Belong

Where We Belong is written by Emily Griffin. She writes lady books that focus around lady drama and man problems. They lack substance but are generally entertaining and quick reads. They made a movie out of one of her first books, Something Borrowed. I remember liking this book a lot but I couldn’t recall one plot point which speaks to the type of book it was.

After a quick little refresher I can confirm that this book is about a successful television producer whose daughter that she put up for adoption came back into her life. They face problems but grow together and individually. Very inspiring stuff here!

Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

This book was weird. I’m not sure if I liked it or was every really completely engrossed in it.

Bee: Main character and daughter

Bernadette: Mother, infamous architect, now crazy

Elgin: Father, rich CEO of tech company

Spoilers ensue! Bernadette moved her entire family to Seattle after some sort of fall out in the architecture world. She bought an old leaky gigantic home which she intends to renovate but never does so they mostly live in squalor. Bernadette asks for everything from Manjula, her Indian virtual assistant who we later find to be a gigantic scam artist. Bee goes to a private school where she doesn’t quite fit in and neither does her mother which later leads to a large problem involving blackberries that leads Bernadette to go missing. Turns out Bernadette was in Antarctica.

This book was very funny and had a very scattered organization. Some parts were from Bee’s view or Bernadette’s or an email from Bernadette to Manjula or an FBI agent. It was easy to read but at some points lead to me not connecting with the story. It took me too long to get invested in the book and by that time it was almost over.

Iron Man 2

I like the Iron Man movies. They have the makings of a Marissa classic:

- Over-the-top action? Check.

- Unrealistic plot? Check.

- Humor? Check.

So yea I liked it. My favorite over-the-top plot point: Tony Stark creating an element. My least favorite plot point: Pepper Potts. 

I Love You, Man

Last year for Christmas (real behind here!), Steve got me a pack of Paul Rudd movies because I love Paul Rudd (and Steve). So I Love You man is about Paul Rudd (Peter) and how he can’t make guy friends. So he meets Jason Segel (Sydney) and begins a budding relationship. Jason Segel is a ridiculous character. He really likes Rush, and is an “investor” which I’m not actually sure about. He messes up something for Peter and uses a loan to buy some ridiculous billboards to help Peter. But Peter gets all angry and is all like we can’t be friends anymore. Both turn out to be very saddened by this but do not rekindle their friendship. UNTIL! Peter’s wedding where Sydney shows up as his best man. How nice!

I would give this movie a 5 out of 10. Fairly average in terms of comedies. Not overly funny but not incredibly stupid. Would I watch it again if it were on TV? Questionable.

The Language of Flowers

Sorry that I suck at blogging, okay? Steve keeps threatening to kick me out of the blog if I don't post. It was a very busy year which made my terrible blogging skills even worse. I did however keep a list of what I watched and read, so I decided it would only be right for me to do my part in reaching 400 posts this year.

The Language of Flowers is a lovely book about a girl turned women who has had a rough upbringing. She has some real trust issues which lead to misbehavior and she bounced from foster home to foster home growing up. One foster parent tried real hard to connect with Victoria. She first introduced her to the so called “Language of Flowers”. Each flower represents a meaning and can be used to depict emotions and feelings. Something mysterious and awful happens with this foster relationship which leads to her running away and not speaking to Elizabeth (foster parent) for a very long time. When she is 18 and living on the streets, she finds that she has some skill in arranging flowers and grows close with a local florist. She begins to make a living and even reconnects with someone from her past, Elizabeth’s nephew.

Spoiler Alert! What brought me through most of this book was the intrigue at what the large event was that forced Victoria away from a loving and almost permanent home with Elizabeth. Turns out she burnt down Elizabeth’s wine vineyard and blamed it on Elizabeth’s nephew, who actually felt guilt about the whole thing. After you find out that, it seems odd that the nephew would forgive Victoria and actually have a relationship with her. At one point, Victoria and said nephew have a baby but she doesn’t tell him and she freaks out and leaves the baby unattended for a bit. She then decides she can’t take care of a baby (partially because breast feeding was painful…) and drops the baby off at nephew’s home in a bed of moss which means maternal love. Generally, leaving your child is not considered maternal love, but oh well. He doesn’t know he has a child but he takes care of it then takes Victoria back years later. Seems a little unrealistic, no?

The Best American Infographics 2013

Is this even a book worth blogging? It's a collection of infographics (obviously) reprinted on paper with only a paragraph or so of text on each page. But if we're going for 400 posts this year, well, I'd be remiss not to post this. I did, after all, just complete it.

I love good infographics. I think most people on the Internet with some form of regularity feel the same way about them. There's just something so satisfying about seeing a point, or a series of points, being made in a clear cut way using a mixture of data - the statistics, numbers, measurements - and artistry. And this book is, naturally, chock full of good infographics. A few quick complaints, because otherwise I'd have nothing more to say here.

• Many - perhaps most - of these infographics were originally created to be displayed on computer screens; the center seam of the paperback book interrupted a few vital blurbs and pictures here and there, and while this was by no means an experience-ruiner, it defintiely detracted from a few of the infographics.
• Ditto on the text size. What is legible on a computer screen isn't always legible in print, especially in dynamic circumstances that allow for zooming.
• And, of course, interactive infographics just weren't the same at all. It's one thing to take cool static infographics and present them in a book, but to try and show three or four different screenshots of an interactive graphic? It doesn't work. I admire the inclusion of a few such graphs, but a still page simply isn't the right medium for the content.

Those three complaints aside, this was an enjoyable enough, um, "read." It is also only the twelfth and certainly the last book I will post in 2013. That's a book a month! Pathetic!

The Bad News Bears: Breaking Training

This is nowhere near the movie that the first one is. Gone are Buttermaker and Tatum O'Neal. Instead, the new pitcher is a Mike Teevee look alike. This time they go to the Astrodome because they are California Champions even though they didn't win it last movie. Whatever. Don't bother with this one. Tanner wasn't racist enough.

Proteus

There's a game I played a few months ago that was extremely similar to Proteus, and that's Dear Esther, which I called "the most pretentious game I've every played." Proteus doesn't even come close to dethroning that one, but it is certainly along those lines. Just like Dear Esther, Proteus has you wash ashore on an abandoned island with nothing to do but move around and explore. You don't even get to jump in Proteus, you just wander around. It's a randomly generated island that contains a few common landmarks every time, like a graveyard, a little castle-looking building, and a series of statues of people and animals. The game's most notable aspect is its constantly changing soundtrack- walking around the landscape and into packs of little animals will constantly change the music. Eventually day turns to night, which changes the music some more, and when you stumble upon a huge gathering of fireflies you're whisked into a completely different season, affecting the landscape in all sorts of ways. It's all very passive as every single thing that happens in the game is caused simply by wandering around, and after the game's 40 minutes or so there's no sense of accomplishment or finality, but more of a sense that the island is done with you for now. There's no attempt at a story like in Dear Esther, but I think Proteus is slightly better for that. It's hardly a game and I wouldn't recommend anyone play it like it is; to combine a few comments I saw on a review site, at its best Proteus is a like a brief therapeutic vacation, and at its worst it's more of an interactive screen-saver.

Congo

This was a good book, but man was it a bad movie. The special effects sucked. All the gorillas were puppets. Bad puppets. One of them talked and called Laura Linney ugly. The rest shot people with lasers. Ugh. Michael Crichton has great books, but not all of 'em translate well to movies.

Starship Defense

Here's that other 3DS downloadable title I've been playing. This one's from the DSi era, born in 2010 and hidden in some real obscurity ever since. Seriously, there are no walkthroughs for this thing anywhere online and Wikipedia doesn't even have an article for it. The "cover art" you see above is just the title screen, and even that proved to be a difficult image to find. It's almost like this game barely exists at all.

And that's too bad, because Starship Defense was pretty fun. It's a tower defense game set in outer space, and that's more or less the entire description. Thirty fairly unique levels gave the game a decent length and longevity, and while I can't say I was left wanting more, I'd be happy to play another game like this again.

Alright. That's enough DS downloadable games for now. Back to Dragon Quest IX.

Mario's Picross

Mario's Picross is a 1995 game I've long considered buying, so I was thrilled when it appeared as one of the latest Club Nintendo 3DS download games. Alright, "thrilled" is a stretch, but this is seriously something I've had my eye on for several years. I've even had the 3DS version in my Amazon cart once or twice before, but never could quite pull the trigger on the puzzle game.

First, just what is Picross? It's a collection of nonograms - also apparently known as "griddlers" and "paint by number" puzzles - which are grid-based puzzle games not unlike sudoku or crosswords. Check them out on Wikipedia if you've got even the slightest interest; it's much easier to see them than to try to glean an understanding from them based on a verbal description. All in all, there are 256 puzzles in the game. The first 192 are broken into three sets of 64 each, increasing pretty linearly in difficulty from the immediately solvable to the truly complex. Then it appears that the final 64 puzzles are just time trial versions of previous puzzles. In this time trial mode, the game won't tell you when you've made a mistake and won't give you one row and column for free at the beginning of the game, as had been the case in the first 192 puzzles. For this reason, I considered these final 64 puzzles some sort of bonus challenge mode, and can safely call the game beaten. It was a decent little distraction, and something it was easy to play in front of the TV, but as I'm sure you can imagine it grew repetitious and monotonous as hell. I found myself falling fast asleep doing the puzzles in bed by the end of the game. Hey, whatever. Onward to bigger and better games now.

Hector: Badge of Carnage

Here's a random one from the Telltale Games bundle I bought recently. Unlike most Telltale adventure games, Hector: Badge of Carnage wasn't made from an existing franchise, and with this new freedom Telltale decided to get really weird with it. The core gameplay is the same as any other point-and-click adventure game, but it's got a completely different tone than any game they've put out. For one, Hector is British, and it's laid on thick- half the time I couldn't understand what people were saying due to accents, there's tons of chav culture, references to EastEnders and Helen Mirren, all sorts of stuff like that to make the game really blatantly British. Actually one of the puzzles required me to find a "spanner" to fix something and I was completely lost. Does anyone know what that is without looking it up? It surprised me. Anyway in addition to being very British, the game is also very dirty and dark, unlike the absurdist humor of the Sam and Max series. One early puzzle requires you to pass off a passed-out heroin addict as a sex doll. Dozens of cops get their heads blown off before the opening cutscene finishes. A final puzzle requires launching a giant vibrator in the sky. Still though, it made for a pretty solid game and seems like a good introduction to the genre if anyone's got the adventure game itch- it's fairly short and not too hard, so if you're curious I say give it a shot.

The Rainmaker

I knew next to nothing about this moving going into it. Even its description was somewhat misleading. It follows Matt Damon, a new lawyer who has yet to try a case against a big insurance company who unjustly denied a claim by a poor family with a son suffering from Leukemia. He, with the help of Danny DeVito, took on Jon Voight in the court room. If you like movies about courtrooms, this is a pretty entertaining one. Matt Damon is likable as always and Jon Voight is easy to hate. Danny Glover presides over the proceedings and Claire Danes is thrown in for fun. Though enjoyable, I found this movie to be rather odd in some ways. For instance, it felt very much like a TV Show in that it had weird cuts with long black pauses that felt like commercial breaks. Also, a lot of scenes seemed to be cut short and some even appeared to be out of order even though they weren't. I guess I feel like some weird editing decisions were made. Also, I was flabbergasted to learn that Francis Ford Coppola directed this movie because everything about it seemed to be made by someone who didn't quite know what he was doing. That's ironic because Matt Damon throughout was shown as a lawyer who didn't quite know what he was doing. Anyway, it was entertaining, but nothing you need to go out of your way to see.

The Bad News Bears

Wow. This movie is so racist. It's crazy. Well, Tanner is really racist. This movie is just a bystander who does nothing about it! But anyway, this is thoroughly enjoyable. From the swearing to the bullying, this all feels like the 70s. None of this shit would fly anymore. The star player smokes and rides a motorcycle without a helmet despite being 11. Their shortstop utters every racial slur in the book. The coach is drunk the entire movie. If he doesn't have a beer in his hand, he is blowing the smoke from his cigar into the face of innocent children! But behind all that, this movie has a lot of heart and one hell of a catchy name. There are sequels and even a remake, but none of 'em are quite as good as the original. If you haven't seen it, I suggest it. You can't help but smile.

Home Alone

Wow. I love this movie. Christmas movies are damn fun and this one might be the most fun of them all! I mean, it is called the Family Fun Edition after all. Anyway, Kevin McCallister was my hero growing up. I dreamed of a day in which I would get the opportunity to take on home invaders just like he did. Perhaps this movie wasn't aiming to put real life children in danger, but it quite possibly could have. Now, that dream has morphed into my crippling fear of home invasions. But, it's all worth it just to have this movie in my life. I love Culkin's one-liners and Pesci and Stern are so great as the bumbling idiots aka The Wet Bandits. I'm sure you have all seen it, but if you haven't seen it in a while, go check it out. It holds up. Buzz's girlfriend. Woof!

Elf

I feel like I've gone a few years between viewing on this one, but apparently not. I'm not sure why exactly, but I imagine it has to do with that brief period of time in which Will Ferrell was so over exposed with shitty movie after shitty movie that I just wanted nothing to do with him. He's reigned it back a little bit, and he's growing on me again. Anyway, this movie is awesome. It's one of the few newer Christmas movies that I believe we will be showing to our kids like our parents show us Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, etc. It's just freaking heartwarming beyond belief. It's so damn entertaining. It's a great message. And it's just so damn quotable. Who doesn't like this movie? Merry Christmas!

Blackfish

I remember really wanting to see this documentary when I first heard about it. Probably just because I think they chose a great title for it. Also, I just fucking love documentaries. They're usually just under 90 minutes and pretty engaging. This one was no exception. It follows the captive life of Tilikum, a 12,000 pound Orca Whale all leading up to the day that he killed one of his trainers at Sea World. This doc certainly had an agenda, which was basically that keeping these whales in captivity is very, very wrong. And that the longer we keep whales in captivity, the more trainers will die. I think it's a pretty easy story to tell with which most will agree, and this story was told pretty well, but it was so incredibly biased that it took away from the message. The story is told through interviewing 5 trainers who used to work at Sea World. However, after doing some quick research, it looks like only 3 of the 5 had any interaction with Tilikum and only 1 actually worked with him in shows. Also, none of these trainers are apologetic in the least, but instead make excuses as to why they share no guilt in keeping these whales in captivity. It's all about the big bad Sea World. I get the sense that all these trainers have a profound sense of guilt, but they all made the decision to paint Sea World in such a negative light that they can clear their consciences for good. Anyway, none of them seem that credible. But whatever, like I said, this was a pretty easy story to tell that is very interesting. If you like documentaries, check this one out.

Two random observations:

None of the 5 trainers interviewed call these whales Orca Whales. All of them call 'em Killer Whales. Is "Killer Whale" acceptable again?

Tilikum was a male who Sea World kept despite his violent nature because his sperm was so valuable. They "milked" him every day. His name could be interpreted as "'til I cum."

Shadow of the Colossus

Here's another classic from a PlayStation console more than one generation ago- Shadow of the Colossus. I had never heard of this game until I watched the 2007 Adam Sandler flick Reign Over Me- if you don't remember it was one of Sandler's few dramatic roles, where he plays a guy whose whole family died in 9/11 and he basically turned into a shut-in for years until an old friend tries to help him out of his stupor. The game plays heavily into the movie- at first it appears to be just another form of escapism for Sandler, like so many video games are to so many people, but as the movie progresses Sandler and his old friend bond over the game and you find out the basic plot and gameplay and it actually seems to be a very appropriate choice when it would have been pretty easy to just have Sandler get addicted to, like, World of Warcraft or something. In Shadow of the Colossus a man brings a dead woman onto sacred grounds and it's clear that he will stop at nothing to see her alive again, similar to Sandler and his family in the movie, but of course in the game there's a possibility of this actually happening- the boy, Wander, is told that if he makes a great sacrifice and slays 16 colossi throughout the sacred land his girl may live again. And so this makes up the entirety of Shadow of the Colossus's gameplay- much like how it was very easy to sum up the action in Team Ico's previous game, Ico, the same goes here. Wander will ride his horse across the land with nothing to do but reach his destination, at which point he needs to figure out a way to start climbing onto a giant Colossus and finally attack its weak points enough to kill it. The boss fights are all surprisingly unique considering how few actions can be taken in the game. Unlike Ico there is a small HUD, which kinda annoyed me because I loved Ico's extreme minimalism, but it made sense here. Unlike Ico, Wander can be killed by his surroundings and the colossi so he needs a health bar, and since the colossi will try to shake him off, he gets a little strength bar too, which forces Wander to act quickly whenever hanging on and stabbing a colossi- he'll eventually have to let go and fall to the ground. Still though, that's the entirety of the game- few cutscenes, no smaller enemies, a couple really quick platforming parts. Team Ico's refusal to conform to the status quo is the reason why they always get brought up in the "games as art" debate and the minimalism here combined with the melancholy that pervades the whole game (these colossi are rarely aggressive and the game really wants you to feel like an asshole for killing them all) is what allowed the game to make for such a good fit in a movie that covers a topic as heavy as post-9/11 depression. It's got all the great style of Ico with a much better game, and I was a huge fan. If you haven't played Shadow of the Colossus yet, do it soon.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

It's been a while since my last Castlevania game, so I figured it was about time I played the best one of all. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night came out in 1997 on the original PlayStation to not much fanfare, but over the years grew to become a major cult hit and now finds itself placed on many top-all-time-games lists and available as a port on Xbox Live Arcade. It shed the series' emphasis on linear levels for more exploration-based gameplay, following in the footsteps of the Metroid series. While the game is pretty great, the fact that it's successors follow so closely to its core gameplay probably kept me from being blown away by it- there's not much here that I hadn't already mostly seen in Harmony of Dissonance or Aria of Sorrow, games which long-time fans of the Castlevania series surely find inferior for not improving on the established formula. So yeah if you're looking for a somewhat retro gaming experience or looking to play through one of the highest-praised games of all time then give Symphony of the Night a shot, but you can get a pretty similar experience trying out one of the series' many more recent releases on the GBA and DS.

Sherlock Season 2

This show is just really engaging. The mysteries are cool and the main characters are great. This season was better than last as episodes 1 and 3 were just really awesome. The Hounds of Baskerville might have been my least favorite episode of the whole series, however. This season benefited from one main villain who gave it a more cohesive feel. Anyway, this show is definitely worth the 9 hours I invested in it. Moving on.

The Christmas Toy

Wow! This movie reminds me of my childhood. Rugby the Tiger doesn't understand Christmas and thinks he will get opened every year to be his owner's favorite toy. The rest of the toys are tasked with convincing him that he is old news. From there, we get a plot that seems to be very similar to Toy Story. This came 9 years earlier so I feel like Pixar has some explaining to do. Anyway, I've never watched a Jim Henson movie that I didn't find charming, and this is no exception. I will definitely be showing this to my kids, but I'll never watch it on my own again. Is it sad that I watched this by myself?

Christmas Vacation

I watch two movies every Christmas. This and Braveheart. There is no reason to own this blu-ray when it looks like shit and plays 100 times on TV. This movie is really funny, but it's better just because my dad cries from laughing so hard. It's silly. It's slapstick. It's great. Randy Quaid and Chevy Chase are fucking incredible in this.

Moneyball

My dad liked this movie a lot. My mom said it was boring but interesting. If you like baseball, it's tough not to find something to like about this movie. But in the end, it's a lot of talking. A LOT. Brad Pitt is good in the role, I guess. I really liked Jonah Hill in it. Unfortunately for this movie, the A's didn't deliver and the ending of this movie was anticlimactic. Rather than watching the A's celebrate, we got a little side not that the Red Sox won in 2004 using the same strategies. Whatever. Moving on.

The Social Network

I honestly don't know if this was a good film or not. Can you guys weigh in on this? Part of me wants to say it was dogshit and part of me wants to praise it for being "A BRILLIANT FILM". I dunno, but if half of it was true Mark Zuckerberg is a fuck. Anyway, I don't need to ever see this film again but I wouldn't mind reading more up on the creation of facebook. Maybe I would have liked it more if I saw it while I still liked facebook. Anyway, I plan on crushing more movies tomorrow. Let's get 400!

Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo

Hot ziggity! This remains the only PC game I have ever beaten and I beat it again on the plane on my iPhone. I promise to never blog an iOS game again, but this one deserves some praise for being one of my favorite games from childhood. You are Putt-Putt and are tasked by Mr. Baldini to bring animal chow to the zoo so Outback Al can feed the Zoo Animals before the grand opening of the Cartown Zoo. But, when you get to the zoo, Outback Al has somehow lost six baby animals and, rather than finding them himself, decides to con Putt-Putt into doing it for him. As Putt-Putt, you point and click your way through the zoo, discovering items to help you save the animals. Sounds silly and easy. It is. But, there are just a ton of animations/cutscenes that are INCREDIBLE. If you click on a monkey he puts on a little hat and tells some poetry. Anyway, the theme song of this game is damn catchy and I've been singing it since the first time I played this game 16 or so years ago. You all must play this game.

Elysium

Great premise. Great effects. But something about this movie didn't work for me. Parts of the story didn't make too much sense and characters often made decisions that made no sense in order to further it along. Matt Damon's character Max was just full of contradictions the whole time. But at the end of the day, I just didn't find much entertainment from a movie that looked damn entertaining. For me, this movie just suffered from a certain expectation of quality. It was okay, but nothing special.

The Purge

One night a year all crime is legal! Because of this, unemployment is apparently down to under 1% and violence is down tenfold. Sure. Anyway, if you saw a preview for this movie and were interested, then you will probably love the movie. If you thought it looked stupid, you won't. I fell in the former category. This movie was fucked up. Seriously. And it wasn't particularly well-written. But, it had a somewhat unique premise and extreme violence. Sometimes that's all I need. Ethan Hawke, ironically, makes millions selling home security specifically designed to safeguard families from being murdered in The Purge, only to have his house broken into. The rest of the movie takes place in and around his house. His family suffers, etc. Skip it.

Chronicle

Wow! What a great movie. I had seen a preview for this movie awhile back and was interested, but never got around to seeing it until finally on my flight home yesterday. After reading Trevor's review on it a few months ago, this became a must watch for me and it delivered. On everything. It's one of the best "found footage" movies I've ever seen and one of the coolest takes on a super hero movie I've ever seen. I expected the special effects to be somewhat lame, but they were actually pretty great. The story was interesting and Vince from Friday Night Lights was pretty SUPER in it! Get it? Anyway, I've got three other movies coming so I'm keeping this short. See it.

The IT Crowd: Season 4

The IT Crowd ended on a high note, saving three of its best episodes for last. It ended at the perfect time, leaving me wanting more after only twenty-four total episodes, which would amount to a single season of television in America. So, what's my takeaway at the end of it all? Where would The IT Crowd rank on a hypothetical list of all the TV shows I've ever seen? What's the legacy left behind here?

Meh.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed what I saw and would gladly watch more. They just made a series finale special that aired in Britain a few months ago, and I'll be sure to check it out at some point. The characters were memorable, the situations were absurd, and the jokes were more clever than the jokes I typically expect to get from a mutli-camera sitcom with a laugh track. I want to be clear here; I did not dislike The IT Crowd at all. But at the same time, it didn't turn out to be some hidden gem of British ingenuity up there with the likes of The Office. For my money, it's worth the twelve hours it takes to watch the series in its entirety, but by no means is it something you need to add to the top of your queue.

Alright. Workday over. Stan out!

The IT Crowd: Season 3

That's three! I'm flying through this show, which isn't exactly an unexpected outcome. Six half-hour episodes a season makes for a series that, overall, lasts a grand total of twelve hours. And really it's more like ten given that many of the half hours last for something more like twenty-four minutes. A more detailed write-up is forthcoming upon the completion of Season 4. This one was no better than Season 2, for my money, but that hardly matters with an episodic sitcom.

Timeline

So this movie is based on an early Michael Crichton book in which a company accidentally discovers time travel after trying to develop a 3D fax machine. Anyway, the cast is incredible. Paul Walker, Gerard Butler, Professor Lupin, Billy Connolly and that bad dude from Justified with those piercing blue eyes. They have to travel through time to rescue Paul Walker’s dad, Billy Connolly. Unfortunately for them, their timing could not be worse as they end up right in the middle of a battle between the French and English in 1357 AD. Paul Walker is just as good as he was in the original Fast and the Furious movie and his hair is in rare form. Anyway, this movie was awesome because of Paul Walker but it blows my mind that such a mediocre movie was made from good source material. Still, entertaining and it let me travel back in time myself to a time in which Paul was still with us. RIP.

Gerald's Game

So since I have a giant virtual stack of Stephen King books waiting to be read still, I figured for my next one I'd try out a book that I thought had no reputation at all. But since I've been reading a ton of King lately, I've done plenty of research and have some idea how liked or disliked most of his books are. Geraald's Game however was one I knew absolutely nothing about, so I went in with really no expectations. And really, it started pretty strong. A married couple looking to spice up their love life goes to their remote summer home deep in the woods of Maine for the weekend. The husband Gerald has convinced his wife Jessie to be handcuffed to the bed, but shortly after this Jessie starts having second thoughts and demands to be let out. Gerald refuses- he's gone too far already and assumes Jessie's protests are all a part of the game, so Jessie panics and lashes out, kicking Gerald square in the nuts so hard that it somehow causes a heart attack, and Gerald is down for the count right there in the introduction. So now we've got Jessie, naked and handcuffed to a bed in the middle of nowhere, with her likely dead husband slumped over in a pile, with no idea how the hell to get out of this situation. If that sounds like a boring premise to you, I guess I can understand, as almost the entire book takes place from Jessie's point of view on a bed, but I actually found the book to be for the most part pretty intense. While I was reading this I stumbled upon a list on GoodReads.com where people voted on their least favorite King books, and this came up as number one. Really? I mean I was closing in on the end and it wasn't fantastic or anything, but I'd say that it's at least better than Black House, Insomnia and Dark Tower I and VI. Maybe King just screwed up the ending horribly? Anyway I eventually read to the end and well Jessie's story actually ended very well, King did kinda screw things up with a very unnecessary epilogue. Let's just say something that happens to Jessie over the course of the novel, something weird and mysterious and scary but possibly just a hallucination, is completely overexplained which ruins the scare long after it happens. One of the few times King really has a great ending, and he has to screw it up by not realizing his story was already over. Oh well, I still liked it and if you just stop where the story seems to it makes for a good read.

The IT Crowd: Season 2

I'm starting to see why Sween and Trev made their respective IT Crowd posts on the entire series rather than on individual seasons. There's just not that much to glean from six episodes at a time, I guess. In my Season 1 post, I noted that I was already two episodes deep into Season 2 and that those were my favorite two episodes yet from this British series. Unfortunately, I think those remain my favorite two episodes ever. Which isn't to say that the other four were bad, at all. Just that this season started stronger than it ended. Anyway, Season 3 is already loaded up on my PS3 and ready for watching. Off I go.