Guitar Hero 3

by Marcus on November 27, 2007

We're seven guys at the school who play a lot of Guitar Hero 2, so we split the price of the third one and it arrived today! We're currently unlocking all the songs in Career Coop, and we've managed to get most of them on hard so far. The songs are awesome as well, Sabotage, Paranoid, Welcome to the Jungle, Ruby, etc.

The Seeker is a piece of shit movie

by Marcus on November 17, 2007

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I feel compelled to blog about movies that suck ass, and that's why I'm here today. I'm frustrated and getting your frustrations on paper usually help, so here we go. Synopsis: "On his 14th birthday Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) finds out that he is the last of a group of warriors – The Light – who have spent their lives fighting against evil – The Dark. Will travels through time to track down the signs that will enable him to confront the evil forces. The Dark is personified by The Rider (Christopher Eccleston)." The movie starts off pretty good, Will seems like a good guy, and the setting in a small, English village is pretty nice. The suspense start when Will is kidnapped by two security officers. As they investigate him about the signs, they slowly turn into monsters and eventually crows, that fly after him. It's a nice, scary scene, but after that it goes down hill very quickly.

The Powers
I was pretty excited when one of the Old Ones, Merriman, tells Will that he has super powers, but that feeling goes away pretty fast. He's got super human strength, telekinesis and the ability to control fire. He uses these powers to push his brothers, flirt with a girl and blow cars and stuff up when he's angry. Why give him powers if he doesn't use them? Also, when he's told he's got powers, he goes "can I fly?", and you just have time to think "fuck, that'd be awesome" before the other guy says "of course not." Meh.

The Signs
Apparently who ever hid the signs "all over the world" didn't really give a shit and hid them at random places around the village. Places where Will just happen to be at the right time. The first sign is a necklace inside a big mall, for fucks sake. Also, the last sign is not an object, it's something that "isn't hidden from him", and what do you know, the last sign is himself. Wauw, I didn't see that one coming. Fuck you, script writer. Another thing, they have a castle The Dark can't enter so why didn't they just hide the signs in there?

Time Travel
Will travels through time to find the signs. Initially it sounds pretty cool, but it actually sucks. The first time travel is to a dark church in the 13th or 14th century, and all you see from this time era is from within the church, it would've been cool to actually see some more of this world, but I guess not. In the scene the group is attacked by something, one of the Elders thinks it's a dragon, and you immediately go "holy shit, it would be awesome if they were attacked by a dragon", but alas, the director would rather disappoint the audience once again, so he sends in an old lady who turns into snakes. Snakes that don't really attack anyone, but just kinda cuddle with you. Oh, also, Will is saved by a corpse. No, it doesn't make any sense, and yes, the director is an idiot. The next time travel is to some village being pillaged by vikings. One of them seems to be the chief, and he's got one of the signs on his shield, so Will follows him to his boat, and the chief sees him and throws him into the water. The chief picks him back up and it looks like he's about to cut his head off, but then Will's digital watch starts beeping, and apparently the chief wants it, so Will fucking trades his watch for the shield. Why THE FUCK didn't the viking just kill the snotty kid, take the watch and go back to raping stuff? So, in the next time travel he goes back to a small market place in 1690. The sign is a small object attached to a feather, it seems to be the prize of a cock fighting competition. He goes back to his own time, and in the bar that had the competition he find a glass case with a plate saying "Champion – 1690" and the winning chicken, stuffed. Don't ask me why they chose to stuff this very cock (it couldn't have been the only competition, right?), don't even ask me why they would stuff the fucking cock in the first place.

The Dad's Thesis and The Rider aka. The Dark
Will had a twin brother, who disappeared when they were infants. At the same time the dad was writing a thesis about light and darkness, we see his documents about this several times throughout the movie, and the father seems troubled about continuing the work. It seems obvious that it's got something to do with The Dark, but you never get to know what it's about, and he's apparently only hesitant about his work, because he feels that's the reason he didn't protect the twin in the first place. What's even more ridiculous is the fact that The Rider kidnapped the twin, and held him hostage for 14 years! He says himself that he's annoyed he took the wrong twin, this raises a lot of questions. First of all, how the hell did he know that one of the twin brothers was the last member of The Light? Also, why did he kidnap one of them, why not just kill them both? Throughout the movie he's got a lot of opportunities to kill Will, but he doesn't, until the end. He's supposed to be this incredibly evil guy, who's trying to destroy the world, and all he had to do to accomplish that was to kill the boy. Instead he tries to force the boy to give him the signs, since the boy is the only person who can find them (which is why he should get it over with and kill him). He's also one of the least intimidating villains I have ever seen, when he's not dressed as The Rider, he's this geeky doctor with glasses.

The Ending
In the end we have the cliche battle between good and evil. The Rider has started a snow storm (again, why not approach the boy and slice his head off?) so everyone in the village is hiding in the Old Ones' castle, a place The Rider can't enter. But apparently he can still use his powers inside the house, because he creates these big icicles in the ceiling, and instead of just letting them all fall, killing everyone in the room, he lets them fall one at a time, so they have enough time to wake up and run. We also know that The Rider has an accomplish, and once again the script writers takes a dump on the plot line and reveals the incredibly cliche and pretty fucking stupid fact that the sweet girl-next-door was actually an evil bitch. Will is almost convinced to hand the signs over to her (because he's a twat), but she gets aggressive so he decides not to. Smart move. Then we get to the final battle, they're in the same castle, just back in time, as mentioned, The Rider can't enter the premises, but he masks his voice and acts like he's Will's family, and since Will is retarded and seems to have no will to live, he opens the door. When you think The Dark has won (all the Old Ones and Will has been thrown into a hurricane of shadows or something like that) Will realizes he's the last sign, with all the signs he can now defeat The Dark. The Rider is triumphantly enjoying his victory when Will walks into the room saying something like "I am the last sign, I am the seventh son of seventh son", I wasn't really paying attention, since I was laughing hysterically at this point. As he says it The Rider falls off his horse… Then Will swallows the darkness with this hand (yes, it's very anticlimactic), the twin is saved, and everything is fine.

The Seeker – 2/10.

Replacing Firefox

by Marcus on October 29, 2007

I stumbled upon a browser called Flock and wanted to give it a try. It’s build on the core of Mozilla Firefox, and the beta version 1.0 has just been released, for Mac and Windows. The biggest difference from Firefox is the extensive integration with popular sites, such as YouTube, uploading pictures to Facebook and flickr, adding bookmarks to del.icio.us and posting blogs with WordPress. It’s amazing how easy it is to set up, everything just works and it looks great. So far I’m also very satisfied with the built-in RSS Reader, I use Sage in Firefox, and Flock’s own seem to be easier to navigate.

So far I’m very happy with the browser, since I can access advanced features of my favorite sites in seconds.

You should check out the ‘Getting Started’ page on their own site.

Real Men Love RoboCop

by Marcus on October 29, 2007

It is an indisputable fact, and I’ll tell you why.

The Killing Scene

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When someone mentions RoboCop this is probably the scene most people think about. It’s surprisingly brutal, first Murphy’s hand is blown off, then his arm, and finally he gets a bullet in the head. The gore is typically Verhoeven, it’s exceptionally well done, and a great way to introduce the antagonist. You rarely see gore that explicit these days, and real men love explicit gore. Fact one.

The Transformation

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This is one of the coolest introductions of a character I have ever seen in a movie. Murphy’s mutilated corpse is transferred to a hospital, we follow the events from his point-of-view, starting with him being declared dead, then the mounting of the LED on his vision, a list of commands, short bits of conversations between the scientists, and then eventually, probably many months later, his official awakening, he gets up and for a moment we see a glimpse of him in a monitor, then we follow the other officers frantically trying to get a view of him and finally we see a big shot of him, relieving the suspense that’s been build up since his arrival at the hospital. And he looks awesome, the suit is incredible, probably the best-looking cyborg after the The Terminator. As Morton says in the movie, he’s just a bad motherfucker, and to emphasize that point the transformation is followed by 15 minutes of RoboCop kicking ass. Real men love bad motherfuckers. Fact two.

The News and Commercials

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Another trademark of Verhoeven, the news segments that gives us more knowledge about the world we’re watching, thus making it a lot more interesting. And the commercials, the only humorous part of the movie, work perfectly. Then there’s the ‘I’d buy that for a dollar’ line which is repeated through out the movie, by the low-life criminals as well as the big shot executives, a small thing that adds another layer to the dystopian world and makes it seem even more realistic.

The Stop-Motion

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RoboCop and RoboCop 2 have some of the most incredible stop motion I have ever seen. The guy in charge of it was academy award nominated Randy Dutra, and that really shows. The ED-209 isn’t just an inanimate object, it’s got character with its small tics and curious movements. Some of that is also contributed to its dinosaur-like sounds (remember its whining when it falls down the stairs?), but in my opinion its mainly the incredible animation that gives it character. Kane, in the sequel, is even more fantastic. Effects like these are just awe-inspiring, especially now a days when everything is just made with CGI. Real men love stop motion. If you disagree go watch Army of Darkness, if you still disagree you’re not a real man.

The Soundtrack
DUDUDUDUDUUUUUUU, DUDUDUDUUUUU!

That’s all for now, I’ll write some more facts later if you’re not convinced, for now I rest my case. RoboCop – 9/10.

‘Fuck’ back in Live Free or Die Hard [UPDATE]

by Marcus on October 23, 2007

I had to write about this, apparently there’s an unrated DVD version of Live Free or Die Hard with more than 30 uses of ‘fuck’, blood spurts, and more violent details! If you’ve been following this blog you know I’m a big Die Hard fan, and that I was very disappointed by the fourth installment. One of the reasons for this was Fox’ ridiculous PG-13 rating, which totally changed the character of McClane. This DVD release makes him a bit more than the old McClane, and that is just awesome. It’s not gonna change the fact that the movie sucks, but now I at least have a reason to buy the DVD.

I’m looking forward to actually being able to hear ‘Yippee-Ki-Yay, motherfucker’ in all Die Hard movies.

The unrated edition is released 20th of November.

[UPDATE]

Apparently there are a lot of changes, for example new segments with people getting shot, and stuff like that. Take a look at these screen shots from the unrated edition.