Archive for April, 2005
Maybe these aren’t really my “first” impressions, since I’ve been slowly playing Doom 3 for the last couple months, but these are my impressions so far. Doom 3 is the SCARIEST game I’ve ever played - hands down. Half-Life 2 definitely had it’s scary moments, but Doom 3 is ALWAYS scary and then some. All of the maps (so far) are very dark, the lights flicker (or just shut off entirely), and you hear odd and disturbing noises mostly in the distance, but sometimes close by (usually indicating a nearby zombie). Also, the rooms are very crowded and have lots of nooks, crannys, and hidden panels for monsters to jump out of.
But for me, that’s what is going to force me to play the rest of this game in cheat mode. I am so overly cautious while I move through the maps, that it is going to take me FOREVER to finish this game. It’s just too much. I really liked Half-Life’s style - there are some puzzles, some scary parts, some vehicle play, and a lot of combat. It’s a great mix. Doom 3 also requires a pretty high-end system to run properly. I know my hardware isn’t the most up-to-date, but Half-Life 2 didn’t give my system the severe beating that Doom 3 does. On that note, I found a really good walk through and a great tweak site for Doom 3.
I would say Doom 3 is a great game if you feel up for a real challenge, you want to get your pants scared off, and you have a nice, new computer system. I obviously won’t be charting my progress with blog posts, since I’ll finish the game soon on cheat mode, but I do have photo gallery that will get updated as I go. Right now the shots are boring because I don’t have the luxury of being able to take a screenshot of monsters while they are attacking me. You don’t see monsters until they are right in your face.
April 27th, 2005
There has been a lot of hype around Sideways, especially after it got an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and being nominated in other categories including Best Picture. I thought the movie as a whole was good, but many parts of the movie were great. Sideways is about two friends, Jack (Thomas Haden Church) and Miles (Paul Giamatti) that take a trip into the California wine country to celebrate Jack’s last week of bachelorhood. Miles, a wine connoisseur, intends on it being an innocent trip while enjoying the taste of great wine, but Jack has more carnal ideas and tries to get Miles to join in his plans.
What most impressed me in this film, was the depth and development of the characters and the juxtaposition of Miles and Jack. Church and Giamatti do excellent jobs portraying and executing their characters. There is also a hefty amount of realism in this movie that has a lot to do with disappointment, which I thought was done well without depressing the heck out the audience. I also have to note that there was a really cool camera effect done in a scene where Miles is very drunk and calls his ex-wife. The camera kept going in and out of focus and switching different angles at random. It sounds easy and simple, but I’ve never seen it done that well and effective. So, why did I not rate this higher? This movie didn’t ever capture me, like most Oscar-caliber films do. In fact, when the movie was over, I didn’t have much to say about it and was wondering what the movie was really all about.
April 25th, 2005
I’ve been wanting to keep a list of movies that I want to see that are coming to theaters, so here they are in order of their release date:
- Sin City (already out)
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (4/29)
- Crash (5/6)
- Kingdom of Heaven (5/6)
- Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (5/19)
- War of the Worlds (6/29)
- Fantastic Four (7/8)
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (7/15)
- The Island (7/22)
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (12/9)
- King Kong (12/14)
- A Scanner Darkly (March 2006)
- Indian Jones and the Lost Continent (June 2006)
- Superman Returns (6/30/06)
- Lady in the Water (7/21/06)
I think I might have to make this a permanent page on this blog somewhere, cause I’m sure it’ll change.
April 19th, 2005
I’ve had De-Lovely at my house for a while because something inside me was telling me not to watch it. I can’t even remember what prompted me to rent it in the first place. I should have listened to my inner voice and sent the movie back. De-Lovely is basically a biopic about the famouse composer, Cole Porter (Kevin Kline), and his struggle between the love for his wife (Ashley Judd) and other men.
It’s not that this is necessarily a really bad movie or that I don’t like musicals, or even that I don’t really like to see movies about gay men. It’s the fact that those things have all been put together very badly into a movie. This movie is no Chicago or Moulin Rouge - two of the best modern musicals of our time. I think the intent of this movie was to showcase Porter’s music through the marketing of popular singers. The story never really went anywhere with the gay aspect, but they definitely wanted you to know it was there. And the ending took FOREVER to wind down. The moral of this story - I should trust my instincts.
April 18th, 2005
Spanglish is about a mother (Paz Vega) that immigrates from Mexico to the US with her daughter where she becomes a housekeeper to a chef (Adam Sandler) and his eccentric wife (Tea Leoni). A series of events unfold between these characters that makes for some good comedy.
If you’ve seen any of James Brooks’ films (Terms of Endearment, As Good As It Gets), you can definitely tell that this one has his signature on it. His movies are usually very character-driven with a good amount of mush - and this movie is no exception. While I thought the actors did a fine job with their characters (especially Leoni), I found the story to have little grip to it until the end, which pretty much let me down. I haven’t seen Sandler’s first take at a drama (Punch Drunk Love), but this is the first one I’ve seen and I think he did a good job.
April 18th, 2005
It was announced a few days ago that Ubuntu released the latest version (5.04) of their Linux distribution, codenamed Hoary Hedgehog. I was currently using the previous version (4.10 and named Warty Warthog) and figured I would have to download the ISO and do some type of upgrade or reinstall altogether. But to my suprise, as I was reading the release notes, I saw that I could just upgrade while I was running Ubuntu.
All I had to do was change my apt repositories to point to hoary instead of warty, then perform a couple other simple steps. I thought this was surely too easy to be true, but decided to try it anyway. AND IT WORKED!!! All I had to do was answer a few questions during the upgrade and they all had to do with upgrading software that had configuration files. This was actually really nice because it would let you use the new config file, your old one, see the difference between the two, or skip the package upgrade. In all, I think the total time to upgrade took about 30 minutes.
Now I think Ubuntu is pretty much sealed as my distribution of choice for a desktop operating system. It is very easy to use, has all the software you could ever want, and is very easy to upgrade. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu, and you are either new to linux or an old pro, please try it now. You won’t be sorry.
April 10th, 2005
I didn’t think I would have liked this movie at all, and only rented it to pacify my wife. But, I have to admit, Mona Lisa Smile was an OK movie. Although, the basic theme (a teacher changing the lives of students) is tired, there is some good acting by the women in the movie. Julia Roberts plays a liberal art history teacher that begins a new job at a very conservative New England all-womens college where all the girls are very educated, but more interested in marrying and staying at home.
I thought the best acting in this ensemble was done by Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Marcia Gay Harden (who played a small part, but very well). I don’t know what it is about Julia Roberts, but she has never really impressed me as an actress even though she’s been in some good movies. I think the closest she’s ever gotten was for her role in Erin Brokocvich. Anyway, the rest of the cast was decent and while the story was good, it was really predictable.
April 10th, 2005
Ladder 49 starring Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta is a slightly original movie about the life of a firefighter, but full of cliches. The movie is really just one big flashback of the life of Jack Morrison (Phoenix) as he waits to get rescued from a large factory fire by his fellow firemen.
I think if you were or are close to someone that works as a firefighter (or even police), then you will be very touched by this movie. The reason is because of the good job this movie does with developing the character of Jack and getting the audience attached to him. This is why I think this movie stands out from other firefighting movies that I’ve seen. There aren’t any mysteries, corruption, or arsonists to catch. It is simply about the life of a public servant and why he is driven to do his job. There is also plenty of the typical action you’d expect to see. Unfortunatlely, “typical” might be the word to describe most of rest of the movie. There a lot of the cliches that go along with being a rookie and being a firefighter. But, overall, the acting and story was decent.
April 10th, 2005
Finding Neverland is not so much of a biopic of the author of Peter Pan as it is an account of how the story came to be. It basically introduces us to all of the events and situations that inspired the author, James Matthew Barrie (played by Johnny Depp), to write his famous story.
This movie has great acting, especially by Depp and Freddie Highmore, who plays the boy that is Peter’s namesake. Another thing that I kept thinking about while I was watching the movie was how great the timing and tempo of the screenplay was. The story didn’t move too fast or too slow. Maybe I was analyzing it too much, but I’ve never really took notice of that in a movie before. But still, there was something about this movie that didn’t quite put it in my Netflix 5-star category. I can’t put my finger on it, because I liked the movie a lot, but I think it had something to do with not becoming attached to the characters in the movie - specifically Kate Winslet’s character. I’m sure I’m not spoiling anything, because it’s quite apparent in the trailer that she is going to die at the end, but I wasn’t really all that sad when it happened.
April 7th, 2005