Archive for June, 2009

Transformers 2: not good but awesomest

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Transformers 2) is not what one would refer to as a good movie in the sense that Forrest Gump or Seven Samurai might be considered good. Transformers 2 is, however, an awesome movie in the sense that summer blockbusters are designed to be awesome. It’s pretty typical to see a movie that’s got crazy effects and action but with a story/plot that mostly exists to give pause and glue to hold things together, which is somewhat farcical, in my opinion.

The logical conclusion to the trend of summer blockbusters is that story/plot isn’t actually that important and, if done wrong, can really drag a movie down. So, what happens if you reach that logical conclusion and make a movie that is an open acknowledgment of the frivolity of plot in summer blockbusters? You end up with something that is a gorgeous, shiny, moving piece of art, that pleases your senses but not your intellectualism; you end up with something that every traditional movie-watcher will think is terrible as they hunt for plot and a, so to speak, good movie.

This is the case for Transformers 2. Critics, in looking for plot and traditional quality, have failed to see the gorgeous, shiny, sense-satiating, monster of an experience that Transformers 2 is. The critics made a similar experience with Speed Racer, which was not very compelling but nonetheless excessively beautiful.

In addition to the amazing experience that Transformers 2 is, its quality has also inspired, what is probably the finest review of anything, ever. io9 puts it quite well in their review, Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, which I completely agree with. Excerpt below:

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because people don’t understand that this isn’t a movie, in the conventional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

In short, read this review; ignore the other reviews; go see Transformers 2; get overstimulated; and enjoy the culmination of all that is the summer blockbuster.

Posted in movies & tv | No Comments »

[PROTOTYPE]

Monday, June 29th, 2009

At the suggestion of my good friend Rodin, I grabbed a copy of the game [PROTOTYPE] (which I am going to refer to as “Prototype” because the brackets and capitalization are annoying to type) for my Xbox 360. Rodin’s suggestion was a very good one and so I am passing it on to all of you; Prototype is awesome, you should go get a copy and start playing it.

Discussing the story behind Prototype won’t really give you a sense of why you should be playing it so, instead, let me start off by saying that it’s a game where you can jump kick helicopters. Let me say that again, you can jump kick helicopters; this includes apaches, and you can destroy them by so doing. Other things you can do include consuming people for their knowledge and powers, shooting spikes through the ground to destroy entire city blocks, or throwing tanks at mutated monsters. All of this massive destruction and awesomeness takes place within the context of being able to run up the sides of buildings so as to jump and glide from one to the next. Your character is truly superhuman in a ridiculous and completely amoral manner; you will consume civilians just to restore a little bit of health.

The controls are tight, if a little complex, the camera is ok, and the gameplay is as cathartic as video games get. I’ve sunk, and enjoyed, enough hours of Prototype to say that it’s worth the $60 that I paid for it. It doesn’t matter what you’re playing these days, you should put it down and go get a copy of Prototype; unless you’re boring, you’ll thank yourself for doing so.

Posted in video games | No Comments »

Oubliette (was Abyss)

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

I recently considered the naming of abyss and decided that the word oubliette made a better name. Oubliette is a much more appropriate description in understanding the theme and purpose of the machine as a replacement for thevoid.

The name change happened a while ago but I’m bringing it up now because oubliette is on my mind. Having just purchased six Western Digital 1.5TB drives and another SATA controller, it is finally time to obsolete the last remnants of thevoid. This actually stirs some amount of sentimentality in me but, even though the hardware and operating system are no longer that of thevoid, oubliette will carry the purpose and data forward. It is almost as though oubliette is my ghola thevoid.

For those with technical interest, the drives will be arranged in an mdadm RAID6 array with luks dm-crypt. This should provide me with 6TB, secure storage, and two drives worth of failsafe.

Posted in computers | No Comments »

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Thanks to hunch, I recently discovered the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or just Gurren Lagann, which I have really been enjoying.

Gurren Lagann is, at its heart, a mecha anime and, as anyone who knows my love of Transformers and Battletech will understand, that is a plus in my book. The art is great and the battle scenes are just awesome. On top of that, there are some pretty great characters in the show; I am especially fond of Kamina. Also, Gurren Lagann has already run its full 27 episode course, which means that I can watch it and enjoy a degree of completion, which is a thing that I really enjoy being able to do.

As far as anime series go, Gurren Lagann is the first one that I’ve seen and really enjoyed since Trigun. I wouldn’t say that Gurren Lagann is not Samurai Champloo caliber but it’s certainly worth hunting down and giving a shot.

Posted in movies & tv | 2 Comments »

Sleep and stress: inversely correlated

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

I have noticed in my life that there is an inverse relation between the quantity of sleep that I get and the degree to which I am experiencing stress. It is unclear to me in which direction causality lies and it may be nothing more than a correlation but I recall times in my past where I went as many as three nights without sleep. All but the last of those such times were before I understood the sensation of stress–such is my disconnect from my emotional state.

As I think about it, I am inclined to suspect that not sleeping is a sort of coping mechanism. In the extreme of those three night vigils, I would reach a level of exhaustion that was so strong and pervasive as to be able to wash over any other stress that I might have been feeling. Eventually, I would sleep and the rest would be needed to such a degree as to make everything else seem insubstantial.

It seems as though, for quite a long time, I have had to approach my emotional state from an indirect point of view; sussing out how I might be feeling by watching my reactions and back-tracking to the most appropriate descriptor for my state. This is an arrangement that I have come to accept and although it often works well enough, it can be a little slow as far as processing is concerned.

I’m sure that there exist other thoughts on these matters and things that I might express but, mostly, I am finding the issue rather pertinent at this (just after) one in the morning time. I intended to go to sleep a number of hours ago and, at this point, I will not get much sleep, which causes me to suspect that I am avoiding sleep in some manner correlated to stress. Unsurprisingly, this continues to be my standard way of being; such is my life, I guess.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »