How to Train Your Dragon

It got good reviews and has Craig Ferguson in it. I had to watch it.

I gathered from said reviews that it was a bit better than most kid movies of today, and it is, kinda. It has dragons in it for one thing. Sometimes they even look cool. The humor isn’t always watered-down for the little ones. I’m sure it’s quite awesome in 3D (I watched it in 2D. I don’t like wearing those glasses or paying the extra bucks).

The story is of a young Viking who doesn’t seem to be shaping up to be a good Viking. He’s special. Just like all you wonderful kids. His widower dad is blind to his specialness and is shamed to have such a weakling son, who of course becomes a hero by the end because of his wonderful specialness, saving the stupid adults from their always stupid ways. Great message.

Anyway, you’ve got the usual group of stereotypical kids providing a foil to the protagonist kid, belching the usual lines. They might’ve been the most annoying part of the movie for me. Them and the protagonist’s extreme ease in “training” the dragons as the story progresses. Instant domestication! Yay! There’s got to be a better way to do that. I guess it’s just my cynical self no longer able to embrace the simplified child-view that’s always been present in entertainment for young folk. It’s all just gotten so cliché.

There were funny bits that made it watchable, but really, I don’t think I’m a kid anymore.

Kick-Ass

One of the biggest news-items for this movie so far has been that Roger Ebert thinks we’re all horrible people for liking it. I guess I’m a horrible person.

It’s an adaptation of a short comic series that satirically examines what a real super-hero/vigilante story would be like as opposed to how it’s displayed in most popular comics. The movie maintains this satire extremely well, and keeps it hilarious while keeping the brutality high and often somewhat unbearable, which is the point that Roger seems to be ignoring somewhat. His gripe focuses on the portrayal of a young girl killing people and getting pretty badly beaten. At times it seems this performance is supposed to be a glorification of violence, but throughout it all there is also a sense of wrongness to her situation. I don’t think there are going to be any copycats. I just hope there is a minimum of stupid parents bringing their five-year olds to see this.

Although it does get very intensely violent, a lot of the time it’s done in such a way that it’s hilarious. I won’t describe any because it would spoil them, but it suffices to say that microwaves can be awesome. Aside from the violence, there’s plenty of great teen comedy, with tons of relatable situations and awkward moments. Oddly enough though, the famous McLovin doesn’t have much of a role in this capacity; his performance is still pretty great.

As an adaptation, it’s excellent. It doesn’t follow the plot exactly, and you can’t really do a frame-by-frame comparison like with Watchmen, but the majority is spot on and the atmosphere is perfect. I had a big ol’ grin through all of the comedy bits and most of the action scenes. Like I said though, it does get pretty crazy-brutal at some points. Definitely a hard R.

Chloe Moretz, the girl in Ebert’s question, is going to play Eli (or whatever her name is now) in Let Me In, the American adaptation of the same book on which Let the Right One In is based. Before I saw Kick-Ass I didn’t think she’d really fit the role. Now I think she might. Maybe.

Oh yeah, Craig Ferguson, my new favorite late-show host, had a pretty awesome cameo as himself. Great fun.

God of War II

The second game in the series (I think it’s just a trilogy, but you never know), this game picks up with Kratos as a sulky God of War after defeating Ares in the first one. He’s a bad boy so the gods decide he’s not worth keeping around anymore. After playing with part of his godly powers removed for the intro, the rest are drained and we’re back to square one. Once again there’s an escape from Hades (much shorter this time though) and then Kratos decides to kill Zeus, and the fun commences.

It’s a pretty cool story with a bit of a Star Wars twist near the end and something of a cliffhanger ending setting up the third installment. Getting to the end is a fun journey of game-play very reminiscent of the first game while fixing a lot of the big problems and being a little less frustrating. The worst part of the first game was a few brutally difficult puzzles and obstacles. There are one or two in this one, but they were much less frustrating, and took about a third as many tries to get through them. The combat seemed a little easier too on normal difficulty. The bosses are more plentiful and interesting, and there are several new game mechanics such as flying/gliding, blocking/returning ranged attacks, and multiple sub-weapons instead of just one. It was prettier most of the time as well.

I had a few gripes. Sometimes lining up to flip a switch in a puzzle can be a little difficult, which makes timed puzzles all that much more trying. I still hate quick-time events, and there were a lot of those. A few times a failed quick-time button makes you go through a somewhat lengthy series of events before you can attempt it again. Bleh.

Altogether though it was more fun. I enjoyed playing it. Now I’m pretty pumped to play part III with its sexy PS3 graphics and purportedly massive blood-baths. It might be a while though as I’m on a bit of a spending freeze at the moment. Sucks.

God of War

I recently bought a nice big TV to go with my PS3, so it’s about time to start getting some kickass games. The God of War series is one of the biggest titles around for the system, and there’s a new one that just came out a little while ago, although it shall be a while until I get to that one. Instead, I decided to start from the beginning with the new GoW Collection, which is the first two games ported from the PS2 to the PS3.

There haven’t been a lot of improvements from the PS2 versions, at least not that I’m aware of. I heard mention of higher resolution textures and stuff in one of the included docs for the first game, but of course all the 3D models still have the same polygon count. The biggest improvement is the move from standard definition to 720p. My system is 1080p capable though, so I can see a lot of jaggies in 720. It’s okay though.

Anyway on to the game itself. It’s a lot of fun interwoven with a few hair-pullingly frustrating puzzle/timed bits that almost had me walk away from the game a few times. Oddly though, it’s fun enough to bring me back after a couple hours, unlike some other games from which I often take weeks-long vacations. The fun is derived from a lot of button-mashing, bloody combat and pretty cool environments. The aspect of character improvement is always attractive to me, and that's present in the form of health/magic bar increases and unlockable weapons and skills with upgrade capabilities. Kratos is pretty badass at the start of the game, but by the end he’s a freakin’ blood factory. It’s so very satisfying to slam two massive blades on chains onto a cyclops from 20 feet in the air and see him turn into a swirling mass of glowing red sphere thingies.

There are a lot of quick-time events of which I’m not too fond. Also the camera is a total dick. I could very rarely see where I was going in difficult terrain because it would be pointing sideways or something. Some of the puzzles had me dying so many times that the game would offer me easy mode, but of course that has no effect on puzzle difficulty. I did succumb to it eventually though near the end during a fight with alternate-directional moving floors, big-ass grinder things, fire spouts, and about 100,000 harpies throwing fire bombs at me. Combat was quite a bit easier after that.

I’m not really a history/mythology nerd, so I wasn’t all that drawn in by the background, but it was still kinda neat. Kratos’ story is good’n tragic which makes for an intense plot, which is shown in a few quite nice cut scenes of good length and neat art style. I enjoyed it.

Now I have a bunch more extra video things to watch and another game to play.

Triptykon – Eparistera Daimones

It’s time for a music review! YAAAAY!

This album is the first of a trilogy (ergo Triptykon) headed by Tom Gabriel “Warrior” Fischer of the now permanently defunct Celtic Frost. CF died after their wondrous return in the form of Monotheist, which I might write about someday. There were some major interpersonal problems that led to the complete dissolution of the name. Still, this band has the same exact sound as CF did on their last album, as Tom has stated is the point. You could say Tom is Celtic Frost.

Tom also says that the lyrics in this metal masterwork largely deal with his anger over the problems leading up to the breakup, although that’s really hard to tell; it’s a lot of metaphorical religion hating stuff that I can’t really be bothered to analyze a lot. I did take a glance at the liner notes, and Tom has added commentary for each track explaining what it’s about. I’ll probably read that stuff later.

Anyway, if you haven’t heard Tom’s music before, it’s a very heavy sludgy metal with black, death, doom, and thrash metal influences. Tom’s voice is very distinctive, with few other vocalists that sound like him. The guy in Secrets of the Moon kinda does, which is one of the reasons I like them a lot. There’s also a pretty distinctive guitar sound that I can’t really think of the words to describe. I love it though. I think H. R. Giger’s original album cover art might be a good visual descriptor of the sound. Mostly it’s just really angry.

This is what you get when a guy with a clear vision holds to that vision throughout his career. Good music.

Alice in Wonderland

 

So Tim Burton made an Alice in Wonderland movie. Great. I got pretty excited when the first screen grabs came out; it looked like what I imagined a Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie would look; dark, gritty, and unsettling. I think at one point during the making of this film, it was just that. Then somebody decided that would be a bad idea and started emptying the crap bucket into holes created by the removal of the good parts.

So yeah, I didn’t like it. I didn’t see it in 3D which could be part of why it sucked, as the visuals seemed very soft and blurry, and the compositing of real-world elements was almost universally horrible. Very often the animations of some characters seemed awkward, which was probably what they were going for, but it didn’t work for me. For a movie that is primarily meant to be a visual work it really failed I think.

Aside from that, the plot was very simple and yet managed to feel disjointed. I guess that’s okay though since Lewis Carrol’s story wasn’t exactly the most easy-to-follow thing ever created. I think it would have been a better idea to stick to the original story instead of going the Hook route and making it a revisit. Sure, you get rid of the possibly dangerous element of kid actress whose clothes don’t always stay the same size as her body, but it’s just not as whimsical or interesting.

As I stated in the first paragraph, my impression from the first released images was a very dark film. It’s not really. Some of it’s kind of edgy, but it’s a very safe, PG movie. Of course since it is PG you have to learn something (shudder), which lead to a cringe-inducing final scene of Alice deciding things for herself and being oh so very empowered in the faces of a bunch of nitwits. Gah.

I didn’t really like any of the characters. Johnny Depp didn’t fit his role, Helena Bonham Carter had too much heart for the Red Queen, and Steven Fry’s Cheshire Cat wasn’t nearly as creepy as the animated version. Burton really should have left his comfort zone and hired some different actors for this movie. The girl who played Alice who’s name I forget was very bland and uninteresting, but at least she was pretty. I think the only character that I thought was done pretty well was the March Hare; he had the right randomly violent antics for it.

Altogether, a disappointment.

Shutter Island

The trailers for this movie have been showing for quite a while it seems, and every time I’ve seen them I’ve gotten the impression that it’s a pretty run-of-the-mill horror/thriller thing. I didn’t find out until relatively recently that it’s a Scorcese movie, which got me very confused. Then the reviews started coming in quite favorably. Thus, I decided I must see it. So I did, and it definitely blew the trailers out of the park.

It’s most definitely a psychological thriller. It does however make some attempts to seem like a horror movie at times, with massive crescendos of music in odd places, and slightly disfigured and unsettling minor characters; it’s definitely not what the trailers make it out to be though. There is far more going on in the story than your average thriller. It might be a little predictable for some people but it will keep you second-guessing yourself, I assure you.

Beyond the story it’s really quite a beautiful film, at least at points. There are several excellent dream sequences that just flow with imagination and foreshadowing. The imagery isn’t there just to be pretty like Avatar; it’s definitely there for a good reason. There are a few noticeable flaws in some of the shots though, usually blurry edges that I assume are the product of blue-screen processes. Not a big deal.

The acting is great and the characters are well written, playing just the parts that they need to play. Leonardo DiCaprio did a nice job in the lead role and Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) did a great job as the biggest supporting character.

It’s good stuff.