Movies I've seen recently...

Into The Wild  (2007)  A

Based on a true story, "Into The Wild" is about a newly college graduate student name Christopher McCandless, who decides with no announcements whatsoever to abandon his family, friends, established life in general, to pursue a quest to be one with nature in Alaska. I personally do not condone what I would call a pretentious and selfish act of leaving everything and eveyone behind and starting anew as a "super tramp." However, his journey and ideals as shown in the film deeply moved me and despite my opposition to his actions, I couldn't help but admire him a little. Sean Penn does a wonderful job of adapting the Jon Krakauer book into what is definitely one of the best movies of the year.  The movie moves at a very deliberate pace, which helps us feel like we are also in the journey as well. There's a lot of beautiful scenery, interesting people he encounters, and great original songs from Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. Emile Hirsch probably just did his most significant acting job as the main character of this story, and I would dare say that he deserves an Oscar nomination for it. This movie is full of adventure, drama, tragedy, philosophy, and many memorable scenes, that "Into The Wild" will probably stay in my memory for a very long time.

Michael Clayton  (2007)  B+

This movie started off as a very mix bag in my eyes, and twenty minutes in I was starting to wonder what the hell I was watching. Confused was what I was, but soon the plot and characters started making sense, and the movie started to really grab my attention, all the way to a very satisfying payoff at the end of the film. "Michael Clayton" is not a law drama, conspiracy mystery, or social commentary piece, but a movie literally about the titular character. Sure it has all those plot elements I mentioned as well, but my mistake was that I was trying to fit the movie into a neat little genre, when really I was just suppose to watch a story about a couple of hard days in the life of Michael Clayton. George Clooney did an excellent job in a very memorable title role, and Tony Gilroy did great work as director / writer of a story that could have easily fallen apart from the dense plot.

Random Broken Toy

Destro and Baroness (video)

tv shows affected by the writers strike (link)

Halo meets Ninja Warrior (video)

Hollywood Scab Writer (link)

sample He-Man movie trailer (video)

british punch (video)

most fans paid $0.00 for Radiohead album (link)

skydivers hitting water (video)

boy caught plotting to murder parents over video games (link)

contra trailer (video)

Last year I felt that I had a ghostly encounter with the PA system at work. Recently I think I had another one, and roughly around the same time as last time; 10:30PM. Once again I was nearby one of the speakers that spiel out the PSA, and this time around I was the one who cut off the spiel. As soon as I did that though, I hear this faint female voice say "help me." Unlike last time, there were people in the area, but it seems like they did not hear anything. So uhhmm, WTF? Admitedly it could have just been the wind, and I could have just been imagining it. I can't say for sure what exactly happened though. DUN DUN DUN!

For the longest time when it comes to movies and tv shows, people usually talk about the actors, actresses, the directors, and ofcourse the stories. However in regards to the stories, most people forget that someone had to write them. Most people usually don't give that much credit to the writers of movies and tv shows, and even if they did it is no where in the same league as they would the actors, actresses, and directors. I find this kinda sad because if it wasn't for the writers, there would be no ground for movies and tv shows to start with in the first place. Writers have always been given the shaft when it comes to respect from people, and with recent events, I completely support the Writers Guild of America's decision to go on strike against the producers and studios of the movies and tv shows. They simply deserve their fair cut in home video and internet sales, from products that they practically gave birth to.

The ugly head of people still not giving writers the respect they deserve is still in full force however. There are many people besides the studios and producers that are actually very very upset with this strike. "Why are they asking for more money, are they that greedy?" "This is just simple extortion through and through." "The entertainment industry is already at a freefall, they are just hurting themselves with the strike." Those are just a couple of quotes from disgruntled people about the strike. First off, considering how important writers are to movies and tv shows, they are simply not getting paid as well as they should. Secondly, the entertainment industry is far from being on a free fall to ruins, so it's not like a little more money tossed at the writers will really hurt the producers / studios. The ones who are the most upset seems to be people who are just frustrated that their tv programming is going to get interrupted. I mean seriously, are they that addicted to the tv?

Unfortunately the real people who are suffering from the strike are the regular folks behind the scenes. The crew men, the construction people, the truckers, the caterers, the make up teams, etc... who rely on Hollywood to make their living. In fact, Los Angeles' economy itself relies on Hollywood, so it's no surprise that the government is getting involved in this.

The last strike back in 1988 lasted about five months, which is really a long time. Most of our tv programming will be interrupted by January or February, not to mention the unknown fate of the still upcoming mid-season replacements. All the night talk shows that are WGA related are already on reruns, which pretty much took away one option for the studios to do promotions from their upcoming movie or tv projects. Most of the movie scripts that were already bought prior to the strike, will help supply some films until at least the beginning of 2009, so that'll be the last of the bunch. There is no saying how long this strike is going to last, so people are just going to have to find their entertainment elsewhere from home videos, video games, the internet, or they could just step out of their house and enjoy what life can bring.

Try Random Again

Hollywood Writer's strike is on! (link)

select a candidate quiz (link)

Darth Vader in love (video)

Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live (video)

toilet commercial (video)

funny bears (video)

Japanese pen spinning (video)

to catch a predator spoof (video)

campfire in a can (video)

Trick Shots & Juggling (video)

*sigh* my love hate opinion on my Direct TV continues on. For a whole half of a day, all my main local channel feeds (CBS, NBC, etc) went dead. Well to be more specific, the high-def feed of those channels went dead, because the standard TV feed were still active. Ofcourse all my programming are set to record the HD channels as opposed to the standard feed, so all I would get is a blank screen on the recording. Luckily this happened on a weekend and not a weekday when I would really need to record some of my favorite shows... Maybe I should have just put up with my cable service...

The couple of months before Christmas is the time that video game companies bombard the stores with all their games, since they want to take advantage of the gift giving season. While this sounds like a gamer's heaven by having all these new great games being released, it's also a bit of hell in that there's now too many games to play. In fact, this past day I spent soo many hours playing video games that I felt like I was 13 years old again.

It's no secret that I was looking forward to "Guitar Hero III : Legends of Rock" and the game for the most part lived up to expectations. The song list is the best of the bunch so far, and I was even able to unlock all the songs in a span of one day. As a player who normally plays on "Hard" with the previous Guitar Hero installments, I'm a little disappointed that a good chunk of songs in that mode feel more like they were meant for "Expert" mode. "Medium" on the other hand feels just as it should be, but damn is "Hard".... harder. eh, I guess I'm gonna have to just improve on my guitar hero skills again.

"Virtua Fighter 5" finally released on the xbox 360, after a long time on the PlayStation3 already. However there is one huge difference, on the 360 you can actually play other people online. For the longest time, gamers, critics, and even the game developers themselves have said that a game like Virtua Fighter is simply not possible to be played with online multiplayer. Well this release made a liar out of everyone because the few times I played the game in it's online mode, it played beautifully, and with no lag. It felt like I was actually playing somebody who was sitting right next to me. Kudos to Sega for finally getting this great fighting series online, because since the arcade scene is more or less dead, it's a big deal that we can now play other Virtua Fighter fans through online means.

I'm a moderate fan of the Naruto anime series, and when I heard that an action/adventure game based on the series was finally being made; instead of the typical fighter, I was actually looking forward to it. Enter "Naruto : Rise Of A Ninja" which is quite honestly a pretty fun game, albeit it's obviously targeted towards kids. The game pretty much makes people relive the first 80 episodes of the anime series, also allowing you to explore the fictitious city of Konoha in an open world type environment, and the whole experience is quite a treat. The fighting game engine for the action is also rather fun, even though it's very shallow compared to other established fighting game series. Hardcore gamers can probably ignore this title, but if you are even remotely a fan of the anime, you may want to check this game out.

Random Crystal Ball

Hollywood writers edge closer to strike (link)

Cheerleader Gets Run Over By Football Team (video)

ping pong insanity (video)

24 Season 7 trailer (video)

iPhone - Time's invention of the year (link)

mascot scuffle (video)

doing that damn soulja boy dance (video)

taste's like victory (video)

Rock Band's song list (link)

Mike Tyson's Brunch-Out (video)

Here's a morality test. So I was at Best Buy buying some DVDs and games. I didn't notice it until I got home, but looking at my receipt I saw that the total price didn't add up to what I bought. If anything else, it's lower! Sure enough, the cashier clerk forgot to include one of the games to the total price. So yippee? Should I be a good little boy, go back, and tell them that they made a mistake, or should I just consider it a freebie since it's "their fault." Honestly, I kept it, and I have maybe just a tiny bit of guilt, but not enough for me to loose sleep on. Luckily I don't believe in karma anymore, so whatever to that. I'll tell you this though, if I did notice the mistake right when he was still ringing up the items, I definitely would have gone the honest route.