I think? Windows update ran last night and rebooted while I slept. Came back and AIM logged in and Mozilla showed the AIM startup page so it looks like my problem is gone.
Sweet.
Monthly Archives: October 2009
My Bloody Valentine the Review
Since Halloween is right here, I figured I should get in a horror movie. MBV looked good, so I decided to give her a whirl.
A remake that was sold heaveley on it’s 3D effects, MBV doesn’t do anything new.
It’s a pretty straight forward horror/slasher flick. A mining accident happened and the only survivor went nuts afterwards. He kills 20 something people, the cops cap him in the mine and the town moves on from the terrible Valentines Day event. 10 years later, Tom, a survivor from the miners final rampage comes back to town and the miner shows up too! Cue scary music!
It’s not a bad movie, it’s just nothing special. Competent filmmaking in all regards. Hot girls, decent acting, clear direction and editing. There are some inventive kills, but some of them are ruined by the 3D effect that isn’t 3D on the DVD. It just looks like terrible CG. There’s much better horror flicks out there now so if you skip this, you aren’t missing much.
Windows 7
I upgraded to Windows 7 on Monday and it’s pretty sweet! I never had a problem with Vista, but Win7 seems much more thought out. It’s really fast, the new little features are welcome (the Snip tool is a fantastic idea).
The upgrade took almost 2 hours, but went perfectly. Didn’t have to do anything, and everything is how I left it. But…. . When I reboot, I can’t access the internet. It knows my network is there (it knows my 360 is on the network and can stream content to it. I think, gotta test to be sure), but the net won’t work. I have to go to the device manager, go to my nic card (onboard Intel) and disable it. Turn it back on and the net works instantly.
Really weird. I got the latest drivers from Intel and it didn’t fix it.
Nerdcore Rising the Review
First, “Nerdcore”. Refers to a genre of hip hop born from the minds of nerds! Pretty self explainitory, instead of raps about bitches, hoes, tricks, rims and general thuggery, you get more common topics you’d hear from a nerd. Star Wars, math, candy, bullies, anything sci-fi/fantasy related and yes, girls! Some topics don’t deviate too far from their source regardless of musical genre.
Nerdcore is a newer phenomenon, in this great documentary we hit the road with MC Frontalot on his first tour. Considered the godfather of Nerdcore, MC F (Damien Hess) is your average white boy nerd. Growing up he listened to rap and then found that he had a knack for it. Rapping about what he knew, he put his music online and slowly built a following. It got to the point where he though, could I do this full time? Would people show up and pay to see me? He finds that it’s time to pull the trigger and see if his career life is more than an IT job.
MC F piles into a van with his 3 friends and bandmates for a tour around mostly the East Coast (12 dates or so) that ended at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. Whether it was a crowd of 12 in a bar or a flocking mass of fans at PAX (2-4 thousand) he brought it everytime. It’s what rap started out as, taking the unbeaten path and rapping about what you felt, a lone voice coming up to inspire others. A community as grown around this music.
It’s a fascinating story of an average guy really making something of himself musically. Some guy who, through the power of the Internet, found people who thought like him and were willing to listen. He started a movement that has slowly and steadily gained momentum, helping this sub-genre of rap become something. Interviews with others in the business (MC Chris, MC Lars) and on the fringe (Weird Al Yanchovic) help to paint the full picture of Nerdcore. Nerdcore Rising is a testament to what is possible in the digital age.
It’s serious, it’s funny, it’s stupid, it’s a quality documentary worth checking out.
Fast & Furious the Review
a.k.a The Fast and the Furious 4!
Getting right to it, this is just a safe sequel. It’s right in the middle, nothing new or all that exciting, but it’s not a bad picture. Favorite characters from the series are back, it’s got a lot of hot cars and women and a barely there plot. A by the numbers revenge story for Dominic (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) to team together to take down a no good drug smuggling king pin.
The driving choreography and stunt work is often great, but the amount of CG pulls you right out of it. It doesn’t feel exciting or dangerous when you’re zooming down a tunnel that’s just wide enough for a car to fit when it looks like a videogame. It looks like people leaning side to side in the shell of a car. The practical elements are fantastic though.
There really isn’t much to say, if you have an hour and a half to kill and you are looking for an easy movie to watch, Fast & Furious could fit your needs. If you hate the lead actors you’ll want to avoid it, but if that’s the case you didn’t need someone to tell you that.
A good idea.
I looked through some old posts I made here. I started strong for the first 5 months, more than 10 quality posts. And then fell off from there, never hitting that quantity again. That’s not necessarily bad of course. So that lead to the idea that I should write my reviews for everything here. It’ll work to stir my writing up to something living and active and get something worth reading here. It’ll be mostly movie and tv shows, no set limit for content. A paragraph, a page, whatever I feel necesarry to cover whatever subject it is and I’m not going to cover spoilers. It’ll be more of a dialog review between people who have all seen it. Working around spoilers is too limiting, it’s annoying to work vaguely and I’m not going to bother with spoiler tags or anything. I’m not going to have a rating system, just what I like and don’t like, what I think works and what doesn’t.
TV is back in full swing and I just realized Nip/Tuck is starting this Wednesday. I started this blog during Season 2 so it’ll be fitting to get this underway with the last season to my favorite show. The last 2 movies I saw were The Girlfriend Experience and Nerdcore Rising, so those will be first up.
I’ll still make posts about random stuff, but this should offer more content and motivation for me right now. I’ve said that before (more than once) and I’m hoping I’m not lying to myself this time.