David’s Ramblings

A Stephen King classic, The Shining has become one of my new favorites. I just finished reading it and I must say that King is in danger of becoming my favorite author.

The story centers around a young boy named Danny, who’s rather bright, and his family. We quickly learn that Danny’s not the average 5 year old boy. He knows and understands at a level many adults couldn’t grasp. This is not because he’s some super genius, though he is rather smart, but it’s because he has “the shining.” Psychic ability, shining, intuition, call it what you will, but Danny has it.

Alone, that makes for an interesting story, but that’s just the beginning. The boy’s family is going to be living in a hotel called the Overlook over the winter, since his father has been hired as its caretaker and the hotel gets completely snowed-in during the winter. Unfortunately, there’s something sinister to the Overlook, and that’s where King’s horror story skills come in.

I don’t want to give too much away, because my description couldn’t hold a candle to King’s literary talent. The book makes for a riveting read, and is worth looking into if you don’t mind the fact that you may have to sleep with the light on for a night or two after you finish it. I’ll give it 4.5Ï€.

“The Prestige” is, without a doubt, the movie of 2006. Awesome acting, tremedous plot, and a last second twist all add up to make for an awesome movie. It just came out on DVD. I recommend buying yourself a copy. It’s one of those movies worth owning.

With Christopher Nolan writing and directing, one couldn’t really expect any less. He’s the same guy who made me actually care for the Batman story again with “Batman Begins,” and freaked out my brain with the backwards story telling of “Memento.”

The movie stars Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, or, if you prefer: “batman” and “wolverine.” The two aspiring magicians are working as assistants to an aging illusionist, but after a horrible accident occurs during one of their perfomances the two become bitter rivals bent on outdoing each other. They quickly escalate to sabotage and other dirty acts of one-upmanship, right up to the conclusion.

“The Prestige” follows Nolan’s preference for non-linear storylines. We switch scenes from present to flashbacks, to further back flashbacks and back again, so one needs to pay a bit of attention to keep track, but the end result is that you’re left with an awesome story that keeps you guessing. This movie gets 4.8Ï€/900º.

2.9π out of 900º

Superman Returns – Not so super.

I saw Superman the other day and I just have to say I wasn’t completely impressed. Sure, the special effects were amazing enough, but overall I didn’t find it quite as interesting as I would have liked.

First, I have to admit that I have not seen the old movies. I know they were trying to just pick up where that left off and I couldn’t expect to fully appreciate everything going on without seeing the older movies. Still, I think Superman Returns was lacking. It seemed more about showing what Superman could do with new special effect abilities than about a storyline.

Speaking of storyline, the ending seemed to me to have one glaring plot hole. (Spoiler follows:) If the island is Kryptonite-ish, how in the hell does he just pick it up and throw it into space? Sure, I get that he was really straining to do it, but does that mean he’s just being a pussy in the older movies when people are using a single little chunk of Kryptonite against him? I mean, if he can tough it out to lift an entire island made of it, why in the hell can’t he tough it out with a little chunk of the stuff?

I will say there was good casting in the guy they picked for Superman. He was definitely a good choice for someone to look like Christopher Reeve.

Really though, other than the special effects and the reminiscing for the people that saw the old ones, Superman Returns was just not that great. I know there was a need to cash in on the comic book movie craze, but they certainly could have done better. With the Superman name and legacy, I expected better of it.

I saw Silent Hill the other night with my roommate. For those of you that didn’t know, it’s a video game movie. And for those of you who realize that video game movie is equivalent to crappy movie: I’ve got news for you – you’re wrong. I think this is perhaps the first big Hollywood movie based on a video game that was actually worth the ticket price.

Silent Hill is a story about a little girl who has very vivid dreams and sleepwalking issues. They’re constantly getting worse, and her parents can’t really do anything about it. Sometimes she talks about Silent Hill in her sleep, and sometimes she ends up wandering off into dangerous situations involving cliffs or highways.

Since she can’t ever remember these occurrences when she wakes up, her mother, Rose, decides that perhaps the best thing to do is to find Silent Hill and take her there so little Sharon can remember. They figure it might have something to do with her birth parents, as Sharon is adopted. As is often the case in horror movies, this turns out to be a very dumb idea.

Rose and Sharon head into Silent Hill, and crash trying to avoid hitting a child crossing the street. When Rose wakes up, Sharon has once again disappeared. Rose tries to find her daughter in what seems to be a completely abandoned town. Occasionally she sees a girl darting around town, and she tries to catch her. After following what she hopes to be her daughters footsteps down a dark alley, sirens go off and she finds that Silent Hill is pretty much (in the literal sense) hell when that happens (with really awesome CG transition from foggy, ash covered Silent Hill to metallic, rusted, burning Silent Hill).

To go on would – of course – ruin the story, but the surprising thing about this movie is that there’s actually a story to ruin. Most video game movies are so horribly lacking on storyline I didn’t expect this one to be much more than a thinly veiled attempt to show lots of monsters killing things. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to find myself completely drawn into the very well written story that is very psychologically deep (almost as good as Donnie Darko).

For other important things in movies, soundtrack and acting, the movie was not at all lacking. The soundtrack was completely haunting and my roommate and I want to find it for sale somewhere so we can buy it. I thought the acting was very well done. The father character probably didn’t have a strong enough role for most people to fully connect to him.

I think the critics don’t give it enough credit because there’s a very healthy amount of nightmarish violence and gore, or because they’re unable to fully understand what is going on in the movie. This is the best video game movie ever made. My roommate and I both hope the DVD version has the full length cut, which was rumored at 3 hours+. This movie will definitely become part of our collection. 4.7Ï€ out of 900º.

Excerpt I found in a respectable scientific journal like Mad Magazine:

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WoW. It’s the new pr0n. Startling new evidence from the Department of Agriculture has confirmed, after much devoted research (some of it probably far too in-depth) that internet pornography is losing it’s edge. Just in the nick of time for the nerds too it’d seem Ð since parents were starting to realize what the word pr0n meant. The interesting part is it’s unlikely replacement Ð the game World of Warcraft.

This shocking graph tells a disturbing picture Ð one that puts all that “internet smut” (ª) in the trash, along with those that make a living from it, as early as 2009, which is just in time for Blizzard to release it’s sequel to World of Warcraft entitled, “No More Jokes, Just Heroin” which comes pre-packaged with a needle.

With their newfound addiction to World of Warcraft, nerds find themselves no longer in need of their beloved pr0n. One such nerd was quoted as saying: “d00d, that guild robe thingy totally makes my undead boobs bigger. W00t lol roflmao [1337-speak translation: I'm so never going to get laid, better enjoy this while I can].” There’s one nerd that won’t be needing any more porn.

“With all the time spent trying to my character to level 39, who has time for sex?” questions Banana Splits, a somewhat-well-known adult actress. “I sure don’t. Good thing too, because now I can catch up with all of my old fans and go on a dungeon run.”

So, in short, you may want to hold on to some of those secret files you’ve got stashed on your hard drive (under C:/Documents and Settings/User/Faxes/important/dontlook/confidential), because they’re about to become collector’s items. Porn is on the out. World of Warcraft is on the way in. With an addiction to WoW, who needs anything else?

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I agree whole-heartedly. Really, who needs things like blogs?

I got sucked into World of Warcraft this week, and, well, it’s stolen my soul. It really is addicting. I was tempted to try and get a wireless signal from bed and play it instead of writing this post. Awesome game. Give it a try if you’re not afraid of the distinct possibility of never again leaving the computer. 4.8¹ / 900¼

Oh, and yes, I’m sure someone else has already done this kind of article somewhere on the net.

PS, if you’re Blizzard, don’t hate/sue me, I love your game. I was just joking around, honest. Please don’t delete my level 14 ‘lock! I love him!