Reviews Written By: A2KVUYPLEW4LXTprovided by Amazon.com |
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 | Mass Effect | |
 | "It's no KOTOR, but it's the next best thing" | 2009-09-14 |
| I'm sure I'm not the only one who passed up Jade Empire because he was waiting for Bioware to make another Knights of the Old Republic. I"m a huge fan of sci-fi and I love RPGs, so naturally I was excited to play Bioware's first sci-fi RPG since KOTOR. While most RPGs are pretty much a series of turn-based battles followed by long text readings and long cinemas, Mass Effect takes things into a very different direction. At its heart it's a hybrid of a squad-based third-person shooter and a branching-dialog RPG like Knights of the Old Republic, with plenty of land-vehicle driving around nonsense for good measure. Effect is a totally original story in a brand new universe. Unfortunately, the story and gameplay is not better for it.
First all, the feel of the world in this game might seem a bit tired and run-of-the-mill (especially after the Iraq War cools off and people get over their shaved-head space-marine mania). The back-story of the Mass Effect universe might have been written by Elizabeth Moon or David Weber, except their worlds offer better space-army colonial sci-fi back-story than what you'll find here. Heck, Firefly is or Outlaw Star is better too (for the TV and anime fans out there). So Star Wars it ain't. Then there's the character generation and trait-building. While it's nice to be able to totally customize your character's appearance, Bioware, like so many other game designers these days, goes about it all wrong (Guitar Hero World Tour made the same mistake). You basically can either pick from a dozen or so generic ugly space-marine faces and modify them slightly, or go all-out and change the height and size of eyebrows and ears. As far as I can tell the other game creator who ever got this right was Sega, who in Phantasy Star Online and Virtua Tennis game us around 24 UNIQUE faces, and 24 UNIQUE hair styles, and COMPLETE control of height and weight. I would much rather make my character look like like a lean Luke Skywalker or a tiny elfin chick than space marine old lady number 5, thank you very much. The branching dialog and RPG elements of KOTOR, while legendary in of themselves, for the most part have NOT been improved here. You'll still have the same conversation over and over with a character, you'll still find characters in EXACTLY the same spot in your ship for most of the game. So while admittedly a massive (pun intended) amount of work went into creating the story elements, there are still things that pull you out of the game that should not (if game characters just wandered around the ship like real people would or said nothing if you already had that conversation it would go a long way to making it feel less like a game and more like an experience). The action gameplay has likewise come under heavy criticism and for good reason. While its great to have a hybrid gameplay attempted, here the execution is clearly not up to snuff compared to other first and third-person shooters. And the special attacks (non-gun attacks), while a nifty idea, in execution are pretty much the same (they knock back, slow down, enemies, ect, and protect your squad). That said, it's a whole lot of fun! While by the end of the game it starts to get kind of tiresome, but some excellent weapon upgrades (I love the weapon mod that literally freezes enemies solid!) keep things fresh. And it keeps the RPG elements from weighing down on you too heavily but throwing you some action now and then. The vehicle segments, on the other hand, could have been cut from the game entirely. When you've got cartoony games like Jak 3 and Ratchet and Clank 3 that get vehicle control down so perfectly, this kind of loosey-goosey Halo-style control just doesn't cut it. Add in the fact that nothing you destroy with the stupid vehicle matters anyway (all you have to do is get to your next objective, not destroy anything), and you have recipe for a game element that you'll likely skip past as often as possible. Fortunately, once you get to your main game planets, you rarely need to use the awful off-road vehicle. You will however, miss out on side-quests if you do just go for the main game. The graphics in this game are pretty nice. Personally I don't care for the film-grain effect, but you can easily turn it off. The frame-rate drops pretty low during combat at times, but nothing nearly as bad as KOTOR (to me it felt more like a Ridley-Scott choppy-camera effect that just made the combat feel even cooler). You'll never see the frame-rate drop to nothing and suddenly find yourself dead not knowing what happened. The music is generic 80's style synthesizer music for the most part, pretty darn bland, maybe even a little annoying. Thankfully, for the critical points in the game (boss battles, ect) the music far better. Passable overall I would say. The cinemas in the game are likewise passable, but Square/Enix has no reason to worry about competition from Mass Effect. With all that negative stacked against it, you'd think this would be a 3, or even a 2 star game. But what saves it is the Bioware style, the way the game is played. Because like KOTOR, some of your conversations are wildly entertaining, some of the action scenes are incredibly memorable, the characters are awesome, and despite the bland gameplay world the execution nails all the elements exceptionally for the most part. And of course, with all the classes, branching dialog choices (with moral implications), gender choices, ect, you can play this game multiple times and see things work out multiple ways, which adds a huge amount of replay value. And while the story isn't exactly the most original in the world, it still manages to pack the classic Bioware plot twist (who the true villains are) and tell it in a very mature way (while there is some rough language and blood, the game is at about the level of a typical PG-13 movie, and it's maturity is in its more realistic handling of real-world issues instead of cartoonifying things. While this game isn't as long, or as good as Knights of the Old Repblic or it's sequel, it is a bold new direction for RPGs, and very exciting indicator of what they will become in the future (free-roaming action games with RPG elements like the aforementioned Jak and Ratchet series, but with far deeper storylines). If you are craving a new RPG in the style of Bioware's former triumphs, this is literally the only game in town until Mass Effect 2, the KOTOR MMORPG, or Alpha Protocol (which has me the most excited actually). If you love the new breed of western-style RPGs, and like to play them through multiple times, buy it now. You'll trip over it's design flaws, but grow to love the heart of the game, it's well-story story and great characters. If you've never played a Bioware game before give a rent first. You may find yourself becoming a fan and itching for the sequel. | ||
 | Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty | |
 | "Liberty at What Cost?" | 2009-09-09 |
| I recently played Metal Gear Solid 2 for the first time, having never played the first game. While I have bought and played it since, I took this game completely on it's own merits.
The first thing that will grab you about the game is the presentation. The opening cinema and the music that accompanies it is like something out of a really slick polished anime or Hollywood blockbuster, not a typical video game. From there you get to select your options and difficulty, and launch into the game. "This isn't like Shadow Moses." If I had played Metal Gear Solid first, I imagine my first fear going into the sequel would be that it would be too similar to the original. While there are some large similarities, rest assured that this is a whole new experience. The first level of the game is set on a tanker and involves the transportation and development of the newest Metal Gear. It starts with you, as Solid Snake boarding the the tanker in the rain to get some info (with Otacon for support). This is really just a short tutorial to get you used the controls and unleash the massive immersive world and story of the Metal Gear Solid universe upon you. The real game actually begins shortly afterwords when the story fast-forwards to the future and puts you in the shoes of an agent code-named Raiden, who single-handedly must infiltrate and rescue the President of the United States and other hostages while preventing a nuclear launch by terrorists. Plot sound familiar? It should. It's the plot from the first Metal Gear Solid Game for the original PlayStation. But it sure doesn't end that way. "Do you know what day today is?" While some people hate the main character simply because he is not Solid Snake, I actually like his character. Throughout the story we see him grow from a self-conscious and self-doubting person to a hero like the famous Solid Snake. While I do wish that there was more time for him to shine in the story (and less events that make him look absolutely pathetic), his Luke Skywalker-style origin story as told in this game leaves great opportunity for a sequel or two (and certainly left me hungry for more). The actual story of the game starts like Die Hard and turns into Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, turning from a simple straight-up hostage situation to a philosophical mind-bending conspiracy that's you'll either love or hate depending on your tastes. Personally I love the story of this game (especially in the latter half) and found myself getting more and more sucked in by the outstanding cinemas and amazing plot and presentation. Speaking of cinemas, you'll certainly be watching them in this game, that is, if you want to actually experience it rather than skipping through it. Hours and hours of cinemas are in this game, in the form of codec conversations (not just moving mouths, but actually rendered people talking with full voice acting), and real-time rendered cinematics and interactive conversation eavesdropping segments. These long and largely passive segments are arguably the meat of the game, and while superbly high in production value (easily on par with anything you'll watch in a theater), they do have a few flaws. First and most glaring, while skippable, they are COMPLETELY unpausable. That means if someone barges into the room in the middle of a cinema, you have to yell at them to shut up and leave the room or you'll miss vital bits of the story and have to reload the game and start the cinema all over again (I had to replay the last boss because I had to go to work before I got through the final cinema, and I couldn't pause the game). Secondly, they often occur right before a boss battle. And so, if you (heaven forbid) die during a boss battle you'll have to skip the cinemas one at a time, and that really kills the atmosphere. And lastly, there are some VERY long codec conversations between the main character and his girlfriend that run too dang long, are over-acted, and feature dialog and music that are just plain cheesy. They could have been cut down and it would have been an improvement. For what it's worth I love the cinemas, but wish they were a bit more balanced. Too much melodrama with Raiden's girl, not enough with Otacon and his cute sister (or that awesome ninja bit and the mysterious stranger). And what the heck is with some of the coolest characters getting killed off in cinemas rather than boss battles? That's just a plain shame. That and the fact that some of the coolest characters get killed off at all. The music, for the most part, is outstanding. The opening theme is one of the most famous pieces of video game music ever composed. Unfortunately, some of the boss music very repetitive and after a while gets really annoying. Other than that one piece of boss music that features a passage that sounds like barking seagulls, the music is amazing. "Jack? Jack!!!!!!!!!!" The controls and gameplay in this game series are legendary, both in a good way, and in a bad way. Quite frankly, while the controls are very precise, I also found them to be very awkward until I got used to them. You have to select weapons and items from menus, you have to be standing exactly at the right distance to grab, hit, or flip a guard, you can't get up quickly when you get knocked down, you can't jump, and when you play a game in this series for the first time, a lot of the game is going to be trial and error. You may, like me, find yourself on first play-through just avoiding the guards whenever possible to avoid the hassle. There's also a lot of back-tracking, and you may want a walk-through to reference just to figure out how to get past the tricky parts where you're not sure what to do. But then again...as you get better and better with the controls you find yourself enjoying the gameplay more and more proportionally. I'll never forget the feeling I got from taking out two guards in two seconds with two shots the first time I did it (hehe). The first-person perspective makes the game a lot easier than it might have been and also adds to the immersion factor, but until you get used to the third-person targeting system (use the laser-sight or you're gonna miss) you may be VERY frustrated with the controls in this game. I recommend playing the game for the first time on Easy or Very Easy (like I did [so I'm a wuss]) just so you can get used to the controls and not get too frustrated. I wish I could tell you that the boss battles are amazing, even better than the first game, but they are NOT. Quite frankly, I think they are the weakest part of the game by far. They fall into incredibly predictable patterns, and squander almost every opportunity for thinking outside of the box (except for the fight against the Harrier, which totally rocked!). Fortunately, they are made up for by excellent segments that have you doing everything from swimming with a frightened girl on your back (I haven't gotten that kind of a heroic thrill since the fourth level of Burning Rangers for the Sega Saturn) to disarming bombs, to sniping. "The guards are all out cold." I should also mention that for those who care about such things (like myself), this game not only allows you to turn off blood (it's still on walls in certain corridors but shootings are clean), but encourages you to go through the entire game knocking out and tranquilizing guards instead of killing them (you even get a tranquilizer sniper rifle!). Indeed, you could go through the entire game without killing anyone except the bosses, and when a certain iconic character makes his appearance you hear that he "knocked out cold" all the guards on the first floor. What can I say? It gives me the warm fuzzies... The graphics and voice acting are bound to be the things you remember the most about this game. They are absolutely amazing, even now. From awesome mechanical designs and people who look at least as good as anything found in an anime, to the absolutely iconic performance of David Hayter and company, this is what makes those cinemas absolutely worth watching every minute of. In regard to both of these categories I have only two wishes. One, I wish there was an Xbox 360 version of the game with high-def graphics. Two, I wish I could switch to Japanese with English subtitles (I played the original Metal Gear Solid demo that way and have dreamed of playing it in Japanese with English subs ever since). I'm not likely to get my wish any time soon but I can dream, can't I? "Turn off the console now!" In conclusion I will say this. Many people confusingly think of Metal Gear Solid as an action game with a lot of cinemas. It is not. It is an action RPG/ interactive movie. Half of the game is action, and half of the game is cinemas and segments with varying degrees of interaction. If you like that sort of interactive film experience you'll love this game for it's amazing world, presentation, and techniques which break the fourth wall (much as the first game told you to look at the cd case for a codec and required you to unplug your controller to defeat one of the bosses). This game deserves its extremely high ratings for its perfect design and the massive amount of entertainment it provides. You can beat it in a little over 10 hours, but you'll doubtless want to play it through again and again to experience its great story time after time (and hear new lines and experience new things). I haven't had this much fun in a long time. Even if you've never played a game in this series, you'll want to check this game out. It could make you a drooling fan of the amazing world Kojima has created (on par with the one created by Shirow). That is, if you can get past the complex controls, and the steep learning curve, and grow to love, love, LOVE the cinemas... | ||
 | Sony PSP 2000 Console (Piano Black) | |
| "Portable Gaming Wonder" | 2009-08-31 |
| Not long ago I had a decision to make. Did I want to buy an Apple iPod Touch, or a Sony PSP? I only had enough money to buy one, and I was really itching for a new portable entertainment gizmo. After buying the PSP I'm really glad it was what I decided on, but for very different reasons than I expected.
First of all, the reason why I decided to go with the PSP was that you simply get more for your money. The screen is bigger, the memory is infinitely expandable (buy as many memory cards as you want), the battery is replaceable, it plays movie discs should you have the desire, it can play MP3s, and it's a full-blown game system to boot. I initially thought I would use it primarily as a video player, and maybe get a game or two on the cheap. Not quite how things turned out. The screen on this baby is indeed beautiful, but it scratches easier than a pair of cheap sunglasses. The digital controls are perfect, but the analog controls are frustrating (bad placement, wacky sensitivity). The system interface on the other hand is a model of great product design, allowing you to do most anything you might want to do quite easily. For instance, during video playback one button press brings up a mini menu and a second button press can adjust aspect ratio (allowing your widescreen utube videos to fill the screen with no gaps). The video playback on this device is truly impressive. MP3 playback on the other hand just isn't as intuitive as it would be a full-blown MP3 player like an iPod, so I don't recommend using the device in this way unless it's your absolute only option. The problem with video playback of course is that video takes up way too much space at high quality (I average about 150 megabytes for 20 minutes), and has to be converted to be compatible. So unless you fancy yourself swapping high-capacity memory cards and doing mass-conversions into the wee-early hours of the morning, you aren't going to enjoy trying to watch lots of complete TV shows unless they're aroun 13 episodes encoded at low-quality. On the other hand, I was quite shocked when I actually started buying games for the system. Most games for the system retail at $30.00 to $40.00 brand new, and can be found use for a ridiculous $10.00 to $15.00. That's on average $10 to $20 cheaper than a DS game used! What this meant to me, is that while I own about 5 DS games that I bought over a period of years, in a matter of a little over a month I bought around 10 games! And these are not underpowered portable games, but full-featured gorgeous console-quality rivaling (or exceeding!) masterpieces like Crisis Core, Daxter, Lumines II, Monster Hunter Freedom, and Ridge Racer! If you are craving more console games like Wipeout and other PSOne and PS2 games, you simply MUST buy this system just for the crazy values! And strangely, there are games that actually BETTER on the PSP than on their full-blown console versions. Lumines, which I had played on the Xbox 360, and Virtua Tennis 3, are both enormously MORE enjoyable on the PSP. Maybe it's just the those games feel when you hold them in your hands, and maybe it's the way the graphics scale down. Maybe it's the great feeling of booting up a game in seconds without turnign on your TV. Whatever the reason, there are indeed gaming experiences that are just plain better on the PSP. Now that I've gotten into the PSP scene, I find myself wishing I had a wireless Internet connection, just so I could download some games onto my PSP. I also wish my friends had one so I could enjoy playing some games with them. But even without Internet, the system is an absolutely tremendous value. And now I find myself getting excited for portable games that are coming out, like a portable Gran Turismo, and the next Jak game! If you love Playstation games or extreme gaming values you need to buy a PSP. Just don't buy one new. You can get a used PSP for a little over a hundred dollars. Now that's a steal! | ||
 | Nintendo DS Lite (Metallic Silver) | |
| "Like Nothing Else" | 2009-08-31 |
| We live in an interesting time in terms of personal computing. PCs have become pretty much as powerful as they can become in terms of primary processing power and still have an effect on work that ordinary people do (NASA scientists and artificial intelligence application may need 16-core processors but word processing and mp3 playback sure as heck don't, and only a faster GPU can produce better graphics these days). So naturally what everyone is focusing on is the area that's been lacking for ages, the PDA, pocket computers, cell phones, ect which do everything from take pictures to playing games, from checking stock portfolios and eBay auction to actually taking a phone call. What does all this have to do with the Nintendo DS? It may have started as a mere portable game system, but it has evolved into much, much more.
I remember back around January 2005 when the Nintendo DS was hot stuff in the news, and sales rep at a game store tried to sell me on the idea. "Tell me. Why would I want one of these?" I asked. He proceeded to tell me all about how the system had a touch-screen with stylus, wireless networking, two screens, ect, ect. And my only response to each feature was that that was one more reason why NOT to get the system. At the time I had memories of atrocious handwriting recognition, hard to read screens, and wireless connections that were wildly insecure and constantly dropping. Why the heck would I want something like that? I think at the time it was a good decision not to buy one, but right now it's a different story. The original DS had a very dim screen and was darn ugly. The current DS is light-years better. It features a brilliant screen that is highly usable and easy on the eyes, sleek styling that doesn't make you embarassed to lug the thing around, and all the features that a portable game system ought to have (you can play against other DS players wirelessly in the same room, suspend your game by closing the lid, change the brightness, and go for hours and hours before you need a recharge). With all Nintendo products these days you have to deal with what might be called the Nintendo blessing/curse, which is quite similar to the one bestowed by Apple Computer these days. In other words, on the one hand you get a trend device that's very user-friendly and trendy, but on the other hand features software that is horribly over-priced. While the DS does 3D, it simply is nowhere near the level offered by the PSP. It's the portable equivalent of the Wii. Cool features, terribly under-powered, and none too cheap for what you get. If you want to buy a PSP game these days you can pick one up for around $30.00 to $40.00 new, and about $10.00 to $15.00 used. Nintendo DS games on the other hand, despite worse graphics, and extremely limited multimedia capability (you're not really gonna cram a lot of high-quality video onto a cartridge), cost about $30.00 to $40.00 new or more, and used cost about... $25.00 to $30.00!!!!! Given the extremely low power of the system in comparison to the PSP in the realm of 3D graphics, this isn't competition. It's price fixing and profiteering at Nintendo fan's expense. Nintendo doesn't reduce the price of it's games or reclass them as "greatest hits". Instead they keep the prices the same as the day the game came out...and pretend that it just came out! Now, don't get me wrong, Mario Kart DS is probably a great game. Probably worth $30.00 new and $15.00 used. But not $30.00 used. That's just silly. Like paying $15.00 to see a movie in a non-digital theater, or $15.00 for a tuna sandwich. But like Apple, Nintendo primarily markets to the rich, so they don't care! Given that I only own a couple of games for the system, why do I still highly recommend it as a purchase? Because of the incredible Gameboy Advance games available! Unlike DS games, the price of GBA games are actually either proportional the game's actual worth, or incredible steals! And not only that, genres which are terribly under-represented on other systems can be found in high quality by the truckload for the GBA. For instance, the turn-based RPG/strategy genre: Fire Emblem (1,2), Rebel Star (X-Com game on a portable!), Tactics Ogre (for less than a quarter the price on playstation!), Final Fantasy Tactics, Age of Empires, Super Robot Wars (1,2), and about a gajillion game from Atlus. Add to that some truly excellent action titles (Gunstar Heroes, Metroid, Apprentice of the Force, TMNT), and 2D platformers and RPGs (Final Fantasy, Rayman, Spyro, Crash, Mario Brothers, Golden Sun), racing games (F-Zero, Moto-Racer, Mario Kart) and you have a system well worth buying for the absolutely HUGE amount of gameplay to be found on the cheap. And then there are the games that you might be able to pick up on the cheap for the DS proper. Yes, you have to be almost a professional game-hunter like myself to find them, but there are great deals on DS games now and then, and when you find them there are some really amazing games to be found. Quite simply, while the stylus is a really strange way to control games (and totally impractical for many kinds of games it is unfortunately used for) some developers have found ways to make games that not only use the stylus well, but would be impossible to play any other way! Trauma Center, Phoenix Wright, The World Ends With You and Sega's wacky Feel the Magic definitly show a new kind of gameplay, one which absolutely depends on the stylus and uses it perfectly. These games simply have no equivalent on any other system. If you are a fan of adventure games, or just really unusual games, you need a DS just so you can experience games like this. And you could almost write a whole book about the effect that Brain Age has had on the gaming world. You could say that it's just a series of mini-games, but in actuality Brain Age and games (if you can even call them games) like it have changed portable entertainment by proving that game systems can be awesome educational tools that require mere minutes to improve a skills (be it cooking, speaking Japanese, or improving your eyesight). Back in the days of the CD-Rom revolution (Philips CD-I, 3DO, ect) companies tried to market game systems as educational tools. Amazing that Nintendo finally did it, using a portable game system! If you want to learn a new skill in bit-sized portions on the go, there simply is no equivalent to the DS. So there you have it, the DS is a great system if you want to play Gameboy Advance games, a terrible system if you only want to play new games and are on a really tight budget (if you can't afford to pay new prices for used items). If you want or need to experience some REALLY different kinds of gameplay or learn a skill in minutes on the go, you've absolutely got to get one. Don't buy new. Buy used. You can get a DS in like-new condition for around $70.00. | ||
 | Ladyhawke | |
| "The Lady, The Knight, and the mouse" | 2009-03-16 |
| I love the 80's. Every time I think I've seen every great movie to come out of my favorite decade, there's another pleasant surprise from the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy movies. And somehow I always find that my favorite actors are so much more likable in the 80's than than they are now. Especially Matthew Broderick. This is actually my favorite movie starring Matthew Broderick, and it's because his character is so incredibly likable. The whole story is told from his perspective (a thief with such a knack for escaping tight places he's called "the mouse"), and so it is rather unique in that the main character is your typical sidekick. It takes a great performance to carry a movie like and he does it. The hero of the story is actually a knight played by the awesome Rutger Hauer, and the story centers around his efforts to undo a curse which alternately turns himself and his love (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) into a wolf and hawk every time the sun comes up and goes down. An evil bishop (played by the same guy who was Professor Falken in Wargames) cast a curse on them and he's been trying to reverse it ever since. I'm actually a big fan of Rutger Hauer, because the man can wear a trench coat like a cloak (give Crossworlds a watch sometime) and actually seems like he COULD beat the tar out of a dozen men easily (he's just got the stance and bearing of a person who seems like he could have been plucked from an ancient battlefield). I love the fight scenes he's in, and the brooding hero he plays. Unfortunately, in this movie Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't get to do much in this movie besides step lightly in cloaks and look beautiful. She hardly utters a line in the movie. Personally I wish she had more of a character to play, but...there you are. What makes this movie really great to me (and will float it or sink it depending on your tastes) is the style of good old Richard Donner (you know, the guy who made you believe a man could fly back in the day). That means there's no CGI here, just good old-fashioned smoke and mirrors for special effects (old school). There's also lots of widescreen and wide-angle shots, and the action moves at a brisk pace. There's some good battle sequences, but they're no gruesomely realistic, instead more semi-comical upbeat sections that keep you engaged. There's some beautiful cinematography to be found here with those great wide-open-vista shots. There's also a rocking 80's soundtrack. That's where you'll get hooked or hit the off switch. Personally I love it because it kind of reinforces the loose comic-book fairy-tale feel I get from the film (reminding you not to take it too seriously and loosen up and have fun). Of course the guy who plays the bishop does a good job and so does the priest who helps out in the quest (remember him from the Disney flick Candleshoe?), but again the movie is carried mostly by Broderick. He's hilarious and lovable. He's constantly talking to God, trying to figure out how he's going to get out of various predicaments, and his heart of gold makes you root for him from beginning to end. It's also very refreshing to see things from his perspective. Overall, if you love movies from the 80's with synthesizer soundtracks and lovable characters, and especially if you love fantasy and sci-fi flicks, you gotta give this one a go. Personally I like it better every time I see it. | ||
 | Ladyhawke | |
| "The Lady, The Knight, and the mouse" | 2009-03-16 |
| I love the 80's. Every time I think I've seen every great movie to come out of my favorite decade, there's another pleasant surprise from the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy movies. And somehow I always find that my favorite actors are so much more likable in the 80's than than they are now. Especially Matthew Broderick. This is actually my favorite movie starring Matthew Broderick, and it's because his character is so incredibly likable. The whole story is told from his perspective (a thief with such a knack for escaping tight places he's called "the mouse"), and so it is rather unique in that the main character is your typical sidekick. It takes a great performance to carry a movie like and he does it. The hero of the story is actually a knight played by the awesome Rutger Hauer, and the story centers around his efforts to undo a curse which alternately turns himself and his love (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) into a wolf and hawk every time the sun comes up and goes down. An evil bishop (played by the same guy who was Professor Falken in Wargames) cast a curse on them and he's been trying to reverse it ever since. I'm actually a big fan of Rutger Hauer, because the man can wear a trench coat like a cloak (give Crossworlds a watch sometime) and actually seems like he COULD beat the tar out of a dozen men easily (he's just got the stance and bearing of a person who seems like he could have been plucked from an ancient battlefield). I love the fight scenes he's in, and the brooding hero he plays. Unfortunately, in this movie Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't get to do much in this movie besides step lightly in cloaks and look beautiful. She hardly utters a line in the movie. Personally I wish she had more of a character to play, but...there you are. What makes this movie really great to me (and will float it or sink it depending on your tastes) is the style of good old Richard Donner (you know, the guy who made you believe a man could fly back in the day). That means there's no CGI here, just good old-fashioned smoke and mirrors for special effects (old school). There's also lots of widescreen and wide-angle shots, and the action moves at a brisk pace. There's some good battle sequences, but they're no gruesomely realistic, instead more semi-comical upbeat sections that keep you engaged. There's some beautiful cinematography to be found here with those great wide-open-vista shots. There's also a rocking 80's soundtrack. That's where you'll get hooked or hit the off switch. Personally I love it because it kind of reinforces the loose comic-book fairy-tale feel I get from the film (reminding you not to take it too seriously and loosen up and have fun). Of course the guy who plays the bishop does a good job and so does the priest who helps out in the quest (remember him from the Disney flick Candleshoe?), but again the movie is carried mostly by Broderick. He's hilarious and lovable. He's constantly talking to God, trying to figure out how he's going to get out of various predicaments, and his heart of gold makes you root for him from beginning to end. It's also very refreshing to see things from his perspective. Overall, if you love movies from the 80's with synthesizer soundtracks and lovable characters, and especially if you love fantasy and sci-fi flicks, you gotta give this one a go. Personally I like it better every time I see it. | ||
 | Ladyhawke | |
| "The Lady, The Knight, and the mouse" | 2009-03-16 |
| I love the 80's. Every time I think I've seen every great movie to come out of my favorite decade, there's another pleasant surprise from the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy movies. And somehow I always find that my favorite actors are so much more likable in the 80's than than they are now. Especially Matthew Broderick. This is actually my favorite movie starring Matthew Broderick, and it's because his character is so incredibly likable. The whole story is told from his perspective (a thief with such a knack for escaping tight places he's called "the mouse"), and so it is rather unique in that the main character is your typical sidekick. It takes a great performance to carry a movie like and he does it. The hero of the story is actually a knight played by the awesome Rutger Hauer, and the story centers around his efforts to undo a curse which alternately turns himself and his love (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) into a wolf and hawk every time the sun comes up and goes down. An evil bishop (played by the same guy who was Professor Falken in Wargames) cast a curse on them and he's been trying to reverse it ever since. I'm actually a big fan of Rutger Hauer, because the man can wear a trench coat like a cloak (give Crossworlds a watch sometime) and actually seems like he COULD beat the tar out of a dozen men easily (he's just got the stance and bearing of a person who seems like he could have been plucked from an ancient battlefield). I love the fight scenes he's in, and the brooding hero he plays. Unfortunately, in this movie Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't get to do much in this movie besides step lightly in cloaks and look beautiful. She hardly utters a line in the movie. Personally I wish she had more of a character to play, but...there you are. What makes this movie really great to me (and will float it or sink it depending on your tastes) is the style of good old Richard Donner (you know, the guy who made you believe a man could fly back in the day). That means there's no CGI here, just good old-fashioned smoke and mirrors for special effects (old school). There's also lots of widescreen and wide-angle shots, and the action moves at a brisk pace. There's some good battle sequences, but they're no gruesomely realistic, instead more semi-comical upbeat sections that keep you engaged. There's some beautiful cinematography to be found here with those great wide-open-vista shots. There's also a rocking 80's soundtrack. That's where you'll get hooked or hit the off switch. Personally I love it because it kind of reinforces the loose comic-book fairy-tale feel I get from the film (reminding you not to take it too seriously and loosen up and have fun). Of course the guy who plays the bishop does a good job and so does the priest who helps out in the quest (remember him from the Disney flick Candleshoe?), but again the movie is carried mostly by Broderick. He's hilarious and lovable. He's constantly talking to God, trying to figure out how he's going to get out of various predicaments, and his heart of gold makes you root for him from beginning to end. It's also very refreshing to see things from his perspective. Overall, if you love movies from the 80's with synthesizer soundtracks and lovable characters, and especially if you love fantasy and sci-fi flicks, you gotta give this one a go. Personally I like it better every time I see it. | ||
 | XB360 Project Gotham Racing 3 | |
| "The Return of Arcade Racing Greatness" | 2009-02-20 |
| I've been in love with Arcade Racing games since I could reach the gas and break pedals with my feet. Sega and NAMCO were my everything as far as racing games went, the grand masters of addictive gameplay on the wild ride across fast tracks with impossible phyisics. Then I got older and discovered Gran Turismo and Grand Prix Legends, and realized that if the physics engine was highly tuned, the controls were tight, and the graphics were amazing, racing SIMULATIONS could indeed be fun too. But I never forgot that love for the golden Arcade, and dreamed year after year of a return to the greatness of Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, and Ridge Racer when the genre was young. Don't get me wrong. There have been some worthy additions to the genre over the years, like Ridge Racer 4 and Moto Racer for the Playstation, and home versions of Hydro Thunder, ect. But while Outrun 2, Sega GT, and Ridge Racer 7 are okay, they lack... the kind of innovative magic that I've been yearning for. Enter the Dark Knight of Gotham. Okay, let's get something straight right now. I hated Project Gotham 1 and 2 for the Xbox. Heck I didn't even like Metropolis Street Racer for the Dreamcast. Yep, that's right. I owned the first three games in the series and did't like one of them. Why did I decide to buy Project Gotham 3, then? Because every series deserves a second chance... or in this case a fourth chance. Greased Lightning Wow. Just...wow. Project Gotham 3 was one of the first games to be a big hit for the 360 that I could remember. Not quite sure why I waited so long to buy it (could be that old games, even for the 360, don't get very prominent shelf-space, could be I just forgot to give a try), but I'm sure glad I plunked down my eight dollars (!) for a copy the other day. The first games in the series did the same thing that this game does, just not anywhere near as well. Pretty as a Picture First of all, the graphics. Yes, they are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Much has been said about the new in-car views, and they ARE truly spectacular, and actually functional as well. But more than that, the outside car models, the trees and even the Brooklyn Bridge (Guiness World record for most complex environment as it's over 1 million polygons) seems to be rendered with LOVING care. The cars are beautiful. The tracks are beautiful, right down to the glowing neon signs and rain-slicked pavement. The lighting in day and night (complete with shifting clouds and an colored hue from night lights) isn't exactly realistic, more like surrealistic. New goregous. More than that, your cars are in a garage you can walk around in 3D (no point to that, but it's NEAT). Power without control is nothing. Then there is the control. It's different from what you're used to in Arcade games and Sims alike. It's almost like it's halfway between the two. When you're driving a RUF or a Ford GT or a Ferrari, it's far more forgiving than reality, yet it still feels like you are driving that car, not some Aracade make-believe vehicle. RUFs have insane acceleration, Fords have amazing top speed, Mustangs claw through the track like a bengal tiger at a meat buffet. They just feel RIGHT. Not like the cars really are (fish-tailing when you go from 200 to 0 in three seconds while pulling the e-brake). More like how you wish or dream they SHOULD be (smooth, quick, stopping on a dime, and very, very controllable). Easy as Pie And speaking of the cars, the developers really got one dynamic right. Try playing Gran Turismo 4 from scratch and let me know when you've got enough money to buy a car you wouldn't be embarassed to drive (took me like a year of off-and-on-again playing, no joke). In about two hours of playing this game, I had a Nissan Skyline, a Lambrogini Diablo, a Ford Mustang, a Ford GT, and a RUF (I was playing on one of the easier difficulties mostly). What this means is that you don't have to play for hundreds of hours to get a decent car and then hundreds of hours more to afford upgrades. Play for a couple of hours and you're got some awesome cars to drive that are amazingly fun to use! Yes! And if you're the sort who gets frustrated easily or craves a challenge, you have FIVE difficulty levels which can be switched at any time. On the easiest level anyone can win. On the hardest level...yeah. You also get five viewpoints (the awesome in-car included), with two first person unobstructed in addition to the two outside. Strangely, the outside views might be tougher for most, as you will likely find yourself over-compensating on the turns. The high first-person will probably be the view of choice for most. Pesonally, I like to switch back and forth depending on my mood, the event, and the car. I like the in-car view with steering wheel ect for the Mustang, first-person high for races, and the outside view far for goofing around. It's all in the game Ultimately, though, everything I've mentioned wouldn't be worth anything if the surrounding gameplay weren't any good. Thankfully, the gameplay has been steadily polished until now, it actually is really fun to play. And there are a LOT of options. None of the events are in a series non-stop. Instead you enter individual events. You can skip ones you don't like to come back later and challenge old ones to get better scores. Your scores are dependent on placement (rank or time) and the oh-so-unforgetable Kudos dynamic that gives you points for driving style. Some of the events are little boring (cone challenges? CONE CHALLENGES!?), by and large I just started to think of them as mini-games after a while (power-slide and speed challenges, ect). Most of the mini-game types seem that way because they are extremely short, rather than extended events like in, say, Burnout Dominator. The Time Trials, and Races, though, are pure magic. The enemy AI is really good (interesting, if not smart), giving you really interesting races. You can also setup custom race course routes, custom races for multiplayer, and single-player matches of your choosing. If you've got online capability, of course, the game takes on a whole other side as your best races and times are uploaded and you can watch other people's race events online (how cool is that for the jerks who can afford high-speed Internet and Xbox Live?). Even if you ain't got no Internet at home (like me) you can save your replays and watch them later. The replays are outstanding, the best I've seen since I last popped in my copy of Racer Driver: GRID. Overall, I love this game. The incredible ease with which you earn credits for unlocking (buying) new cars keeps you racing, and the huge amount of options for how to play, the absolutely painless ease with which you can do just about eveything (except perhaps just a quick race where you don't want to setup a ton of options), keeps this fun and gives it depth. The extraordinarily well-balanced cars and breath-taking courses with a huge variety in configuration make it an absolute classic whether or not you've got Xbox Live. As far as I can see it's only got one downside: the load times suck. And they are EVERYWHERE. Oh well. See you as the track! | ||
 | Xenosaga | |
| "The best RPG on the Playstation 2" | 2009-01-30 |
| There's a whole lot of RPGs for the PS2, and I doubt many have played them all, or even come close. I sure haven't. But I have played a lot. From Kingdom Hearts to Rogue Galaxy, from Dragon Quest VIII to Final Fantasy XII. And I am here to tell that Xenosaga is the best one I've ever played. Not perfect, but definitely the best. First of all, there is the story, the cornerstone of any RPG. The story is awesome. Not in that classic fairy-tale RPG way, but in an almost totally incomprehensible way that only anime can be. Seriously. Start a game and watch a cinema, play for five minutes and watch another, play ten minutes and watch another. I'm not clocking it but buy hour three I must have watched at least and hour and half of cinemas. Heck, in this game there are cinemas so long that the game asks you if you want to save before it shows you ANOTHER cinema. Yeah, EAT YOUR HEART OUT METAL GEAR SOLID! At any rate, all of the cinemas are rendered in-game, with full voice acting by REAL voice actors who've been in quality anime. Quite frankly, those in-game cinemas are the best I had ever seen in a game until Final Fantasy XII. There is one terrible flaw with them. The lip synching. Is WAY off. To the point of distraction. Get used to it. Sometimes you'll feel like you're watching a really long cool anime rather than playing a game with this one. Once again, the story is quite good, but quite incomprehensible. While games likeXenosaga attempted to tell you an incredibly long and complex story with massively long explanations, with this game it's like they gave up on that idea and just threw you into the story with no explanation of anything. What exactly are the Gnosis? What is the signifigance of the artifact? Why is there a serial number on one of the character's hands? What happened to Ziggy's family? Will Shion ever love again? Darned if I know. But the story that is there is incredilby absorbing and rich, and that's thanks to the fantastic characters. You'll start the game and be a little bored with the spartan sci-fi trappings, right until the alien Gnosis-killer android KOS-MOS wakes up. Then, as the aliens blow away a battle fleet and eat all the people, you'll witness one of the coolest entrances in video game history as the android cuts through the aliens like a hot knife through warm butter. Later on you'll meet a cyborg who wants to discard his humanity, and feel your cold heart touched like his when he decides to care about a cute (but artificial) little girl. You'll love to hate the psycho freak Albedo, try to figure out whether the southern belle Mary or the goth Shelly is more your type, and smile smile when junior attacks with action-movie-esque quotes. And of course you'll see some weird wacked-out stuff that you have absolutely no idea what it's getting at, but that's anime for ya. There's also some really great music to be found, fully orchestral stuff reminiscent of the very best scores in movie history. Unfortunately in the musical department also lies another bad flaw. For most of the game there is only one battle music theme. It's really good so that won't bother you much, but there's also pretty much one frantic dungeon/battle theme that plays in battle areas. And it's really stressful, high-strung music that gets old after about 2 minutes. If you are stuck in a dungeon for hours, you'll have to turn the sound OFF, and play some other music, or risk losing your sanity. And then there's long sections that have no music at all making it kind of creepy and lonely. Considering the awsome music that plays during the cinematics and some of the boss battles, this was just a bad design choice. It's a good thing that the general gameplay is so darn good. Like most JRPGs, there are a ton of battles, which take you to a seperate battle area for the duration. Fortunately they are not random, you walk into the enemies to start them (or they walk into you). The fight systems is a modified version of the Xegogears system, which is a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because Xenogears had the best battle system in any RPG save perhaps Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VII, and it's a bad thing because some of the changes were not so good. I like have high and low frequency attacks, which allow you to wait and power up devestating attacks or unleash combos. I LOVE hitting the square, circle, and triangle buttons to unleash combos. But I hate the boost system to switch characters, as I've never really gotten the hang of it and it's just kind of awkward. Fortunately, the speed and graphical flare of the fights (cinematic camera angles go a long, long way), and KOS-MOS' AWESOME attacks make battles incredibly fun for the most part. People hearing about the AGWS robots may have hoped for a Xenogears-type giant robot series of battles. Unforunately most of the time these battles are boring and few and far between. Without the fuel management and devestatingly awesome attacks from Xenogears, they are more a curiosity than anything else. The card game built into Xenosaga however, is not. I think the first time I played this game I must have spent 10 hours playing the card game that's built in. Basically it's a CCG like Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel Vs, Pokemon, ect. But all the irritating management has been totally automated. I've played electronic version of other card games, but strangely, even on the ones which were stand-alone games, I never played one as addictive as this. Weird huh? And speaking of weird, there are some other game design choices to be found in this game which are questionable to say the least. Besides the incredibly enigmatic cutscenes, there are also crazy weird borderline psychotic ones, which again, are never explained. And while the dungeon-crawling in this game is about as good as it gets (no random battles!) for a game of this type, part way into the game you lose the best, most interesting, most POWERFUL character while you quest INSIDE OF HER MIND (spoiler alert, level everyone up, not just KOS-MOS, or you'll be in for a world of hurt when you can no longer play as her for a long stretch), just takes things to a new level of weirdness, and not in a good way. Then there are a few puzzles later on that you probably will NEVER figure out without a walk-through (I think I would have gotten permanently stuck on the crate elevator puzzle if it weren't for that). For all of its flaws, Xenosaga still comes out on top. The level of story-telling in this game, the supreme quality of the voice-acting (we're talking voice talents for Ghost in the Shell and The Big O here!), the fantasticly huge cinemas, the addictive battle system (only the very very long time spent leveling up could possibly make it get old), the great characters and fascinating backstory (Ziggy in particular is a character you will never forget, KOS-MOS is so cool she could freeze Africa, and Albedo could give the Joker lessons on psycho evil), excellent graphics, and sweeping orchestral score make this (here it comes...) the best RPG on the Playstation 2. Sure, Final Fantasy has the name, but Xenosaga delivers the goods. The only Final Fantasy game that compares is VII. If you only play one RPG for the system, don't play FF XII, play this game. You'll thank me later. | ||
 | Sly 2 Band of Theives PS2 | |
| "Thief's Creed" | 2008-11-28 |
| Yeah, you could play Grand Theft Auto, or you could play Jak and Daxter. And you could play Assassin's Creed, or you could play Sly Cooper. Basically the ideas are the same, just one is drenched in blood and the other's drenched in cartoon fun. The choice is up to you. When Sucker Punch created Sly Cooper and the Thievious Racoonus, as when Naughty Dog created Jak and Daxter, it was a great platformer, but then, like Jak II, Sly Cooper and the Band of Thieves became something more. You can argue about which game came first or which did it better, but one thing I know for sure: there are no other games like these that combine stealth action, sandbox overworlds, and fun cartoon gameplay that won't offend the parentals (although if you want a cleaner cartoon crazy action shooter without the violence of one of those "adult action titles" you can go with Ratchet and Clank 3). The plot this time around is quite similar to the first: retrieve the pieces and take on the bosses who have them one at a time. Only instead of somewhat frustrating platformer gameplay we have the aforementioned sandbox gameplay, and like Jak and Daxter, way more mini-games the second time around. For the stealth action you have Sly, for some techno-demolition work you have Bentley, and for smashing things to smithereens you have Murray. The switch-ups and mini-games go a long way to increase the variety of the gameplay, and after the extremes of Sly's two companions make you exercise crazy caution and bust loose when played through any of the overworlds (each one a fortress swarming with guards). The cartoon graphics are pretty much perfect, with no draw-in or other noticeable glitches. The cut-scenes are largely in-game engine (and you might wonder why there are any pre-recorded ones at all). The music is typical caper-film type stuff and perfectly appropriate. The controls are about as good as you can get with the Dual Shock controller. If this game has a flaw, it's probably the at-times ridiculous difficulty. If it has a shining star, it's the way that you can often get around that extremely high difficulty by learning all the shortcuts. You will find as you play that very often the key to solving a puzzle is to scope ahead and "case the joint" rather than running straight into a situation (unless you're playing as "The Murray"). And of course the environments at times make those "leap from a great height to your seeming death" moments possible. It may be a cartoon, but it's still fun. My favorite moments include Bentley's quest to save his captured friends (the cinematic made me laugh out loud), and the leap from the top of the second world with Rajaan (Assassin's What?). That and chasing Neela and running from and dancing with Carmelita (why does she remind me of Catherine Zeta Jones?). If you liked the first game you need to give this one a try. If you love cartoon-type games like the Jak series and don't mind some forgiving stealth action (and a generous dose of humor), you need to buy this one pronto. | ||
 | Sly 2: Band of Thieves | |
| "Thief's Creed" | 2008-11-28 |
| Yeah, you could play Grand Theft Auto, or you could play Jak and Daxter. And you could play Assassin's Creed, or you could play Sly Cooper. Basically the ideas are the same, just one is drenched in blood and the other's drenched in cartoon fun. The choice is up to you. When Sucker Punch created Sly Cooper and the Thievious Racoonus, as when Naughty Dog created Jak and Daxter, it was a great platformer, but then, like Jak II, Sly Cooper and the Band of Thieves became something more. You can argue about which game came first or which did it better, but one thing I know for sure: there are no other games like these that combine stealth action, sandbox overworlds, and fun cartoon gameplay that won't offend the parentals (although if you want a cleaner cartoon crazy action shooter without the violence of one of those "adult action titles" you can go with Ratchet and Clank 3). The plot this time around is quite similar to the first: retrieve the pieces and take on the bosses who have them one at a time. Only instead of somewhat frustrating platformer gameplay we have the aforementioned sandbox gameplay, and like Jak and Daxter, way more mini-games the second time around. For the stealth action you have Sly, for some techno-demolition work you have Bentley, and for smashing things to smithereens you have Murray. The switch-ups and mini-games go a long way to increase the variety of the gameplay, and after the extremes of Sly's two companions make you exercise crazy caution and bust loose when played through any of the overworlds (each one a fortress swarming with guards). The cartoon graphics are pretty much perfect, with no draw-in or other noticeable glitches. The cut-scenes are largely in-game engine (and you might wonder why there are any pre-recorded ones at all). The music is typical caper-film type stuff and perfectly appropriate. The controls are about as good as you can get with the Dual Shock controller. If this game has a flaw, it's probably the at-times ridiculous difficulty. If it has a shining star, it's the way that you can often get around that extremely high difficulty by learning all the shortcuts. You will find as you play that very often the key to solving a puzzle is to scope ahead and "case the joint" rather than running straight into a situation (unless you're playing as "The Murray"). And of course the environments at times make those "leap from a great height to your seeming death" moments possible. It may be a cartoon, but it's still fun. My favorite moments include Bentley's quest to save his captured friends (the cinematic made me laugh out loud), and the leap from the top of the second world with Rajaan (Assassin's What?). That and chasing Neela and running from and dancing with Carmelita (why does she remind me of Catherine Zeta Jones?). If you liked the first game you need to give this one a try. If you love cartoon-type games like the Jak series and don't mind some forgiving stealth action (and a generous dose of humor), you need to buy this one pronto. | ||
 | Magic Knight Rayearth - Memorial Collection 1 | |
| ""This feels like a video game!"" | 2008-11-28 |
| Indeed, Magic Knight Rayearth was designed on purpose to reflect the world of a typical J-RPG. There's a world in need of saving, a princess in need of rescuing, lots of leveling up, and a series of monsters and bosses to fight before the characters are ready to take on the bad guy and fight through the epic showdown. The interesting thing is the execution of the idea. You might expect a story based on such common ideas to be very by-the-numbers and predictable, as just about every other series based on an RPG is, but excellent character development, fantastic art, great action sequences and beautiful music make this show much more than it could have been. It's not perfect, but it is a classic. The first time I saw this series I didn't like it. Everything seemed to just take too long and to be too predictable. Zagato sends out a minion to kill the young heroes, they defeat him/her, the minion begs for another chance, fails again, another minion gets sent out, rinse, repeat. It was actually only upon seeing the second season of the show that I realized I loved it (for me it just doesn't really have a happy ending or wrap up emotional loose ends until the very end of the second season, to say nothing of some much needed character development for some of the minor characters from the first season). The three protagonists of Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are the three extremes of Japanese school-girls, and a huge about of the time of the series is spent with their arguments and tantrums, emotional rants or pinings. Fuu is incredibly shy and formal, addressing everyone (in the Japanese dub) as "san" or "sama" (Sir, Ma'am, Lord, Lady), and her quiet and mild demeanor makes the danger she faces and the self-confidence she has resonate that much more. Umi is your typical rich-girl spoiled brat, albeit with a good heart. She almost always insists on doing things her own way and constantly complains, but her childish ranting conceals a person who actually cares about others a great deal. The reason why I love this show, and perhaps what will make it or break it for you, is the emotional center of the series, Hikaru. This girl is about 15 years old like the other two, but looks like she's 12. She addresses the other two constantly as "chan" (again in the Japanese dub), a term only used by or to describe children. She is excessively cute (not to the point of nausea thank goodness), and thinks of everything in a childish way to a large degree. She also is the most emotionally open, and by far the most skilled fighter of the three. I might go so far as to say she is the dragon personality of this anime (you know, the character who's a little over-honest and brash and given to anger, but has more sincerity and fire inside than anyone else). Throughout the series, she is always the first to volunteer to try to save someone, the first to be willing to sacrifice herself, the first to blame herself when anything goes wrong, and absolutely the most emotionally invested in the outcome. Again, Hikaru is the emotional center of the show. When I realized that (her rune god is the one called "Rayearth", talk about obvious!) the show seemed to take on a much deeper meaning for me. Her story of sacrifice and heroism is the real driving force behind this show, and when she has to reach deep inside of herself to save her friends later in the show, no matter how many times she's done it before, the sincerity just comes across beautifully. At its heart this is a "magical girl" anime, like Sailor Moon and the like. So there isn't much logic to a lot of it, but rather, a lot of believing in yourself and protecting your friends and never giving up no matter how bad things look. And like those shows, the "monster of the week" phenomenon is in full swing with the heroes slicing and dicing through just about every kind of bad guy you could imagine. But like Sailor Moon, you aren't watching for plot, you're watching for characters. The characterization in this show really is very very strong. Each of the villains have a back-story, and every side character too (no matter how briefly they appear in the main story. If the over-blown emotional rants of Sailor Moon and company make you roll your eyes you'll hate the same here, but if you just love that kind of stuff, you're really going to dig this show. Beyond the simple story (with a nice plot twist at the end that you'll probably see coming from miles away), and the fantastic characters who make the show a classic instead of a snore, there's all the other elements. The artwork is absolutely fantastic, but sadly not consistently excellent. If the artwork quality had been as high as the OVA, everyone would want to own this show. As it is, it's far from sub-par, and at times quite beautiful, but the opening animation makes you long for that quality throughout. The animation is consistently well done, and the action sequences flow with suitable manga flare (light flashes and motion-freezes on finishing blows and fast attacks, showing quite a bit of style to keep things from getting boring). The fights are consistently contests of magic hurling (flame-arrow!, water-dragon!, Winds of Admonishment!) and sword slashing, but manage to also have emotional gravity (and increase the sense of danger) through their severity (Hikaru in particular gets slashed, torn-up, and is bleeding by the end of some of them). The music is hard to describe. Is is quite good, but strangely seems to alternate between synthesizer music which is re-used to the point where it might be over-used, and fantastic orchestral sweeping fanfare that is incredibly inspiring and heart-string-pulling. For what it's worth I'm getting the soundtracks, and absolutely love the opening song (to the point where I almost always listen to it before each episode). The English dub is pretty cheesy, but the Japanese dub is a gold standard for excellence. Perfect. The audio and video quality, on the other hand, are a terrible disappointment. Really, if you enjoy this series as much as I do you may find yourself like me hoping that AnimEigo or another concerned party buys the rights and produces a proper transfer. It's not that the video and audio are BAD, they are just so far from pristine that it hurts. There is pixelation all over the place, the colors are all muddy, there is no vibrancy or sharpness, and yes, you can see SCANLINES. It looks like someone took their VHS copy and transferred it directly to DVD. Yuck. And the sound, while again not bad, could sure be better. It has no clarity or vibrancy, and if you crank up the sound, plenty of static. Again, it's like someone made a transfer from their old VHS copies of this show. After witnessing the incredible potential of anime on dvd through the likes of Zegapain and 5CM Per Second, and after seeing the INCREDIBLE difference in Arcadia of My Youth and Ah My Goddess! after restoration, this show is at the very top of my list for a needed remaster (next to Venus Wars and Escaflowne, which also suffer terribly from a poor master). I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a remaster. If you love the Magical Girl genre of anime you should buy this show right now and prepare to love it (just make sure you watch BOTH seasons, as the end of the 1st Season is NOT where you will find a happy ending, and the character development and growth in the first season sets the stage for the even better second season. If you hate shows like Sailor Moon and roll your eyes every time someone learns a new attack fighting a new foe or says stuff about believing in yourself and your friends, stay far away from this one. | ||
![The Last Starfighter [HD DVD]](product_images/4932000/4932403_thumb.jpg) | The Last Starfighter [HD DVD] | |
| "Greetings, Star Fighter!" | 2008-07-17 |
| It's funny how people will love one thing, and then turn on something which is almost exactly the same on a fundamental level. In a small community a boy grows up dreaming of a life of adventure. A mysterious old man and some new friends help him to save the galaxy from an evil Empire. It could be a description of the plot from Star Wars but it's also the plot from the Last Starfighter (with the addition of one cool-looking arcade game that serves a sword-in-the-stone for the protagonist and a trailer park on plain-old-Earth instead of a desert world on the outer rim). So why is it that Star Wars is universally loved while people put down this classic just because its a little old (and not Star Wars)? Personally, I think it just gets better with age. To Defend the Frontier... Part tale of a small trailer park, part sci-fi intergalactic struggle, the Last Starfighter just might be the best bridge between the fantastic and the ordinary, a triumphant homage to the spirit of sci-fi fans everywhere who dream of becoming something more. For everyone who has ever wished that video game skills were actually useful in the real world, this movie has got to absolutely be the end-all-be-all of wish fulfillment. As a long time gamer, geek, and guy who never seems to attain anything tangible in this world, I must admit I absolutely love this movie. What makes this movie different from Star Wars is the strong hometown America feel, as everyone in the trailer park has a lot of personality, and seems like they could be from just about any small trailer-park town. So when you toss the craziness of the robot clone, alien assassins, and a Gunstar (man I love that word for the battleships) landing right in the parking lot, it just gives everything a great epic feel and drives home just how huge it is that Alex is suddenly the last hope for freedom for countless star systems. Gotta love it. Young Alex Rogan dreams of escaping from his boring small-town trailer park life and building a life of importance for himself somewhere. Early on in the film his hopes get dashed to pieces when he's rejected for a college scholarship, but when he breaks the record on the only arcade game at a local diner, it turns out to be much more important than he could ever have imagined. The arcade game is a galactic sword-in-the-stone, and soon a galactic recruiter for the Star League's Starfighters grabs Alex and takes him to the base on Rylos to help save the universe! Lance Guest's performance in the dual role of the main character and the robot sent to replace him while he's away fighting save the universe is really endearing, as is the actress who plays his small town sweetheart. Actually most of the characters in the movie are charming in this roles, including a one-time music man in his last film role. My personal favorite is of course the alien who pilots the ship Alex is the gunner for, and he says a lot of really great gung-ho lines "I always wanted to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds!". Great stuff. "He could be the greatest Starfighter ever!" The Last Starfighter has everything you could want in a movie. There's comedy, romance, dreams of heroism, space battles, and an absolutely fantastic musical score. It still amazes me after all these years of listening to musical scores how much they can improve a film. The score to this movie enhances it quite a bit, giving it a huge dramatic and idealistic boost (kind of like how the score to Star Wars changed it from a cheesy indy flick to a triumph of cinematic genius in the world's opinion). When this film came out the special effects were revolutionary (it was the first film to ever use computer-generated graphics depending on who you ask), and if you love old-school blue screen special effects it's definitely on par with Star Wars and the Neverending Story. The space battles are small-scale compared to Star Wars, but it's still a whole lot of fun because of the namesake battle of one pilot and gunner (Starfighter) against an entire Armada and the Capital ship. The icing on the cake for me when I watch this film is that when the kid finally does decide to take up the fight against the bad guys (he's quite reluctant for a large part of the movie and tries to run away home instead of fighting in the war), it's exactly like the Arcade game he played back home, from the target drones for training to the last boss. If you love video games like I do, you can't help but love the moments when all the time wasted playing a video game makes a kid into an intergalactic hero. I hear they are making a Last Starfighter sequel and I can't wait. As a big fan of sci-fi and movies from the 80's (and especially space-fantasy movies from the 80's) I'm always looking for more great movies from that endless treasure trove. But in my mind there are some movies that trascend even my love for the genre and are just classics in every way. This is one of those movies. A must-own for any fan of space-fantasy movies or 80's sci-fi. | ||
 | Acer AL2216Wbd 22" LCD Monitor | |
| "The 250 dollar 22 inch" | 2008-07-17 |
| There was a time when monitors were square and CRTs were the end-all-be-all. Despite many limitations LCDs are teh defacto standard these days because of their appearance and thinness. And then of course high-definition display formats had to come along and make everything even more complicated with widescreen displays becoming the new standard. Thus when making a decision to buy a new display I found myself leaning towards a large widescreen LCD... I just love Acer products. They might not make the ultra-high-end crazy gizmos that people brag about (can't stand people who go on and on and on about their ultra-high-def-plasma-10,000 inch-blah-blah-blah), but they work great, and they are cheap, cheap cheap. You could go to just about any electronics store and pay about $400.00 for a 24 inch, or pay about $300.00 for a 22 inch. Or you could pay $200.00 and get this bargain (and laugh at everyone who paid more). As always, there are sacrifices and tradeoffs when you go after the best bargain. For starters, picture quality. While the resolution and clarity are quite good, some other areas are rather sub-par. There's light leakage around the border as times (especially the top of the screen), and the contrast is not very good at all. You CAN get the screen to look rather good, but it will take considerable tweaking. Personally I have it configured to the Animation setting which maximizes contrast and brightness and color fidelity. It works great for me because I'm using the screen as the center of my home theater (with an Xbox 360, a computer, a VCR, and every other game system hooked into it with multiple switchboxes). Of course that brings up another point. Unlike high-end screens, there are no inputs on this screen besides standard VGA. That means that if like me, you would like to plug in a lot of external devices besides a PC, you can either buy a bunch of converters, cables, and switchboxes, or you can just buy a more expensive screen that has all kinds of crazy inputs like one of those high-end dell screens. I have absolutely zero worries about product reliability and usabillity, because I'm typing this on an Acer laptop and buy quite a few Acer products, and they've never let me down yet. If you're looking for a decent screen at a ridiculously low price, this is the one to get. If you're looking for something high-end, look elsewhere. | ||
 | Area 88, Act 1: Blue Skies of Betrayal | |
| "How Far to Paradise?" | 2008-07-17 |
| The 80's sure was a great decade for anime. Indeed, all things considered, it might have been the best decade for OVA (direct-to-video anime) ever. You had romance like Ah My Goddess, comedy like All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, and then of course you've got this classic. Anime is largely by nature very anti-war, even when it's an action title, and this is perhaps best personified by this classic. The story is an unusual one. A promising young airline pilot is set to marry daughter of Japan's biggest airline and start a magnificent career in the airline industry, when on the night of his graduation, his best friend gets him drunk and makes him sign a contract to become a mercenary jet fighter pilot in deep in the savage desert in Area 88. A pacifist and gentle soul, our hero finds this is a terrible nightmare come true, as he is forced again and again to kill people he doesn't know for a cause he cares nothing about, just to stay alive. The story segments are solid, if a little slow moving. His "friend" tries to take over both the airline and the love that Shin should have had, and his girlfriend desperately tries to find him and bring him back. Meanwhile, on the base, and in the air, is where the real drama lies. The opening moments of the OVA have Shin's plane shooting up tanks in the desert, and you can actually see the shells from his bullets fall through the air as he fires. Planes in this show are destroyed in seconds from bullets and missiles, and if they manage to survive a few hits, they are likely so crippled as to make survival almost impossible. This ain't no video game, the planes actually run out of bullets. There is a constant sense of danger throughout the entire series, because you have absolutely no idea who is going to survive from one mission to the next. A character may be introduced and then get killed the first time they go up in a plane in this show. In the first half of the series there's a this double-edge sword of desperation to escape combined with resistance against what a life like this does to a person. Shin is trying desperately to hold onto his humanity, not to become a cold-blooded killer who feels nothing when someone dies. And he is desperately trying to get away. So as he closes in on his goal of paying off his contract and getting out, you can feel his incredible frustration when things don't go as he plans. The opening song "How far to Paradise" is the theme of the first episode in this AVI, and it's a fitting description of Shin's mindset. He's trying to escape from hell on Earth to go back to a peaceful life, a beautiful woman, and wonderful career that's waiting for him. The second half of the show is partly just closing things up resolving plotlines, as Shin's nemesis finds his evil plot unraveling, Shin's girlfriend gets closer to setting him free, and the the war draws to a close as the loyalist forces Shin works for are outgunned, outmanned, and (eventually) forced to surrender. The real story though, is the subtle change that has happened to Shin. He talks like a wimpy pacifist, but somewhere along the line he stopped being afraid and stopped caring about the people he killed. The ultimate example of this is when he shoots down one of his comrades who has gone blind and is shooting everwhere in a random pattern in violent desperation. And yet Shin still refuses to accept what he has become, or rather, to embrace it. When a wingman shoots down the parachute of an ememy, he is appalled. Some time is spent on describing the why of what has happened to the men of Area 88 to make them want to do what they do, and what it amounts to is that once these people live in an environment where their lives are in constant danger, they just can't be at home anywhere where their death is close at hand. And in the end Shin himself has succumb to it as well. Finally free and able to return to the life is longed for so desperately, the dramatic end of the show has him instead getting back into his aircraft to join his comrades in one last heroic and foolish battle where survival is almost impossible. But when a life of danger and death is all you have known, would it really be a mercy to let you live through it and return to the world shattered. Heavy stuff indeed. Throughout the entire series there is some wonderful high-quality animation, music, and voice-acting. The sheer quality of the entire series is what makes it a must have for me, because I have never seen a better animation about a fighter pilot's life. The air battles are incredibly exciting, and friend and foe alike are always just a hair-breath away from destruction (no invincible heroes here!). Everything moves are high speed with style, and the large variety of aircraft are all meticulously detailed, not just exploding, but breaking up, falling apart, smoking, catching on fire, ect ect. Pilots are killed by bullets going through their cockpits, entire instrument panels are recreated in loving detail, and airplane parts move and adjust in realistic manner. Very impressive indeed. It's this level of detail that sets this show apart. And the two best (and craziest) action scenes, one in each episode, are better for the fact that the danger feels all-too-real. One involves an airbase attack where a giant steel wall lifts up right in front of the planes (and they have to fly through the holes in it), and the second navigating an incredibly narrow canyon wall at high speed in the middle of the night. But the all the flight scenes are great, the other standouts being the time Shin and his wingman have to shoot bombs off a jumbo jet without damaging it, and the final battle against the rebel Air Force. If you love classic anime (and particularly classic OVA), or just want to watch a great show about a stoic fighter pilot's struggle to survive on the far side of the desert wasteland, this show is a must own. | ||
 | Forza Motorsport 2 | |
 | "The ultimate car simulator?" | 2008-07-17 |
| A good simulator is a beautiful thing. I remember way back when the first Gran Turismo had come out in Japan and a friend of mine showed it to me (like 6 months before it came out in America) and I first glanced at the hidden high-resolution mode. I remember thinking that it didn't look like a playstation game and didn't play like one either. It played like something from the future, like something brought back in a time-machine. Every since Gran Turismo people have been trying to steal its thunder with their own driving simulator for the masses. The first one that made a dent was Forza for the Xbox. And naturally when the long-awaited 360 version came out people were excited (and especially since Gran Turismo 5 has been ages in development the full-priced tech demo called Prologue is a disappointment to some as it lacks full-version...depth). It ain't perfect. But it really is quite a beast. If you're looking for the perfect driving simulator you can look somewhere else (Gran Prix Legends maybe...now why don't they make a console version of that?). While there are good tracks, there's no Monza, no Longbeach, ect.,ect. (crazy to say it, but the best track selection is still in Ferrari F355 Challenge for Dreamcast and Grand Prix Legends for the PC). The controls are great, but they can frustrate as well. The graphics are beautiful, but not definitive from my viewpoint (even in high-definition). And then there's the irritation of the letterboxing in standard aspect ratio which FORCES you to run the darn thing in widescreen ratio if you don't want a huge chunk of your screen empty (and makes me have to keep switching the aspect ratio back and forth... Urgh!). And if you don't want to fly off the road into the dirt over and over and over.... you're going to have to concentrate on your driving and tweak your setups like never before (when oh WHEN are they going to start putting in some kind of auto-tuning wizard?). But the upside...ah the upside. I've been playing racing games since Rad Racer on the NES. I've played every kind of racer you could imagine over the years, and very near and dear to my heart are good racing simulators (provided they don't get to PC levels of complexity that drive men insane). This game may not be Gran Turismo, but it definitely is its Nemesis. The soundtrack turns itself off during an actual race, but if it bugs you during menus you can turn it off. The controls are precise and smooth. The level of car data available is almost too much to fathom. The graphics on a high-definition display are incredibly crisp and clear. And the car A.I., all so often the weak point of a racer, is pretty darn awesome. So many times I was racing, and one of the other cars tapped me just right to spin me out and send me into the wall. Call it what you like, but I swear it was on purpose. The meat of the game, strangely enough, is not the racing. It's the car collecting and (RPG/racing fans rejoice!) Leveling Up. That's right. You Level Up your cars in this game through winning races with them, simultaneously leveling up yourself. As your car gains levels you get discounts. As you gain levels races are unlocked. You also get to add a custom paint job and decals to your car, turning it into your own work of art. And that's where all the depth hits you. You see, you can't just buy the most expensive upgrades for any car and go to town with it. Some races have weight requirements, some races have horsepower restrictions. You'll find yourself undoing upgrades so you can enter the race. And then you'll find that certain upgrades will make your sweet ride totally unusable simply because the car-type isn't suitable for that oh-so-pretty turbo tune you saved up for. I found that out the hard way. But on the upside, when you finally figure out how to maximize your car (I took a Porsche 911 Turbo into Unlimited Class through a powertrain swap, every engine upgrade, and every handling upgrade possible), you'll really love driving. The key in my case was discovering the tire and rim upgrades combined with the downforce upgrades. Trust me, the difference in handling with wide, super-slick tires with extra-large, extra-light rims and three downforce upgrades (spoiler, front and rear flaps to decrease lift) is HUGE when you've got an S or U class monster. While there aren't ALL that many races to compete in and you'll find yourself doing some over and over and over on the same glorified oval tracks, the tracks are fairly well designed (not Gran Turismo 1 or 4 well-designed but passable for fun driving), and can be very very pretty on a good display. Personally I find more gratification in finally getting that tuning setup on a car just right (or getting just the right upgrades), painting a car with a neat custom pain job, and seeing my skills as a driver increase as my car increases it's drivability through upgrades and tuning tweaks. That's where the real fun in this game is, that's where the gameplay is at. I've restarted races countless times because I got tapped and hit the wall, getting more frustrated each time, only to find that those two or three upgrades or tweaks made my car unstoppable. Thankfully, you can also make a LOT of adjustments to the difficulty of the game (including the now-famous driving lines to guide you), so if you keep spinning out and cars keep racing ahead of you, you can turn the difficulty down a notch at the expense of extra credits you would earn for a difficulty bonus. The actual damage simulation is pretty neat on a cosmetic level, with mirrors and bumpers ripping off, pain jobs getting scratched to steel-wool proportions, and windshields shattering. It's still not perfect of course (only Grand Prix Legends lets you blow out your transmission on the starting line by red-lining in neutral as far as I know), but the effect of hitting walls with simulation damage on can make your car undrivable if you hit a wall head-on at 200MPH. The replays at kind of neat (worth watching but still not Gran Turismo level), and the car views are great For the inevitable Forza 3 I have the following recommendations: More real-world, world-class tracks such as Monza, Silverspring, Monaco, and Long Beach. They would add tremendous depth. Also, race series in which you must complete every race in order, larger numbers of cars to race against, an auto-tune wizard, and maybe some dynamic weather and time-of-day changes to make the tracks less boring. I say if you're going to go for realism, go all the way. Make those changes and a few more (I loved how Gran Prix Legends had the car's handling change based on how much fuel was in the tank and how your car would break apart differently every time when you had a crash). If you dig the whole car collecting aspect of racing games and really dig simulators this game will be right up your alley. If you just want to race and feel the racing atmosphere you might want to look elsewhere (I thinking GRID). I don't enjoy this game more than any other simulator (the most fun one I've played yet is Gran Turismo 4), but it IS a very different kind of game and an enjoyable experience all-around. I just have a LOOOOONG way to go before I unlock everything (just like every other simulator I own). See you on the track race fans! | ||
 | The Last Starfighter | |
| "Greetings, Star Fighter!" | 2008-07-17 |
| It's funny how people will love one thing, and then turn on something which is almost exactly the same on a fundamental level. In a small community a boy grows up dreaming of a life of adventure. A mysterious old man and some new friends help him to save the galaxy from an evil Empire. It could be a description of the plot from Star Wars but it's also the plot from the Last Starfighter (with the addition of one cool-looking arcade game that serves a sword-in-the-stone for the protagonist and a trailer park on plain-old-Earth instead of a desert world on the outer rim). So why is it that Star Wars is universally loved while people put down this classic just because its a little old (and not Star Wars)? Personally, I think it just gets better with age. To Defend the Frontier... Part tale of a small trailer park, part sci-fi intergalactic struggle, the Last Starfighter just might be the best bridge between the fantastic and the ordinary, a triumphant homage to the spirit of sci-fi fans everywhere who dream of becoming something more. For everyone who has ever wished that video game skills were actually useful in the real world, this movie has got to absolutely be the end-all-be-all of wish fulfillment. As a long time gamer, geek, and guy who never seems to attain anything tangible in this world, I must admit I absolutely love this movie. What makes this movie different from Star Wars is the strong hometown America feel, as everyone in the trailer park has a lot of personality, and seems like they could be from just about any small trailer-park town. So when you toss the craziness of the robot clone, alien assassins, and a Gunstar (man I love that word for the battleships) landing right in the parking lot, it just gives everything a great epic feel and drives home just how huge it is that Alex is suddenly the last hope for freedom for countless star systems. Gotta love it. Young Alex Rogan dreams of escaping from his boring small-town trailer park life and building a life of importance for himself somewhere. Early on in the film his hopes get dashed to pieces when he's rejected for a college scholarship, but when he breaks the record on the only arcade game at a local diner, it turns out to be much more important than he could ever have imagined. The arcade game is a galactic sword-in-the-stone, and soon a galactic recruiter for the Star League's Starfighters grabs Alex and takes him to the base on Rylos to help save the universe! Lance Guest's performance in the dual role of the main character and the robot sent to replace him while he's away fighting save the universe is really endearing, as is the actress who plays his small town sweetheart. Actually most of the characters in the movie are charming in this roles, including a one-time music man in his last film role. My personal favorite is of course the alien who pilots the ship Alex is the gunner for, and he says a lot of really great gung-ho lines "I always wanted to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds!". Great stuff. "He could be the greatest Starfighter ever!" The Last Starfighter has everything you could want in a movie. There's comedy, romance, dreams of heroism, space battles, and an absolutely fantastic musical score. It still amazes me after all these years of listening to musical scores how much they can improve a film. The score to this movie enhances it quite a bit, giving it a huge dramatic and idealistic boost (kind of like how the score to Star Wars changed it from a cheesy indy flick to a triumph of cinematic genius in the world's opinion). When this film came out the special effects were revolutionary (it was the first film to ever use computer-generated graphics depending on who you ask), and if you love old-school blue screen special effects it's definitely on par with Star Wars and the Neverending Story. The space battles are small-scale compared to Star Wars, but it's still a whole lot of fun because of the namesake battle of one pilot and gunner (Starfighter) against an entire Armada and the Capital ship. The icing on the cake for me when I watch this film is that when the kid finally does decide to take up the fight against the bad guys (he's quite reluctant for a large part of the movie and tries to run away home instead of fighting in the war), it's exactly like the Arcade game he played back home, from the target drones for training to the last boss. If you love video games like I do, you can't help but love the moments when all the time wasted playing a video game makes a kid into an intergalactic hero. I hear they are making a Last Starfighter sequel and I can't wait. As a big fan of sci-fi and movies from the 80's (and especially space-fantasy movies from the 80's) I'm always looking for more great movies from that endless treasure trove. But in my mind there are some movies that trascend even my love for the genre and are just classics in every way. This is one of those movies. A must-own for any fan of space-fantasy movies or 80's sci-fi. | ||
 | Sid Meier's Pirates! | |
| "Hardy Har Har" | 2008-07-17 |
| So a little time has passed and now not only can you run the X-box version of this game on the 360, but you can download it from X-box Live! Is it still worth playing today? Oh yes! First of all, I like the console version better than the PC version. It just feels more pick-up-and-play on the Xbox, the controls work beautifully (I vastly prefer pressing buttons to hitting number keys on a keyboard), and with the high-resolution rendering on the 360 the game looks wonderful. In fact, I only have one complaint. You can't skip the intro movie on the 360 for some reason. If you like the PC version you may want to change over to this version for sheer ease-of-use. If you've never played the game before you ought to give it a try just to find out how a series of minigames can make for a full-blown game, and why Sid Meyer's games are as popular as they are. I don't play it every day. When I do play it I stop when I beat it and leave it alone for a while. But when I do start playing, I get hooked deep until I beat the game again and hopefully best my high score once again (the real replay value comes from trying to end the game with a super-high score). Give it a try and hopefully the game will do the same for you. Have fun! | ||
 | Area 88, Act 1: Blue Skies of Betrayal | |
| "How Far to Paradise?" | 2008-07-17 |
| The 80's sure was a great decade for anime. Indeed, all things considered, it might have been the best decade for OVA (direct-to-video anime) ever. You had romance like Ah My Goddess, comedy like All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, and then of course you've got this classic. Anime is largely by nature very anti-war, even when it's an action title, and this is perhaps best personified by this classic. The story is an unusual one. A promising young airline pilot is set to marry daughter of Japan's biggest airline and start a magnificent career in the airline industry, when on the night of his graduation, his best friend gets him drunk and makes him sign a contract to become a mercenary jet fighter pilot in deep in the savage desert in Area 88. A pacifist and gentle soul, our hero finds this is a terrible nightmare come true, as he is forced again and again to kill people he doesn't know for a cause he cares nothing about, just to stay alive. The story segments are solid, if a little slow moving. His "friend" tries to take over both the airline and the love that Shin should have had, and his girlfriend desperately tries to find him and bring him back. Meanwhile, on the base, and in the air, is where the real drama lies. The opening moments of the OVA have Shin's plane shooting up tanks in the desert, and you can actually see the shells from his bullets fall through the air as he fires. Planes in this show are destroyed in seconds from bullets and missiles, and if they manage to survive a few hits, they are likely so crippled as to make survival almost impossible. This ain't no video game, the planes actually run out of bullets. There is a constant sense of danger throughout the entire series, because you have absolutely no idea who is going to survive from one mission to the next. A character may be introduced and then get killed the first time they go up in a plane in this show. In the first half of the series there's a this double-edge sword of desperation to escape combined with resistance against what a life like this does to a person. Shin is trying desperately to hold onto his humanity, not to become a cold-blooded killer who feels nothing when someone dies. And he is desperately trying to get away. So as he closes in on his goal of paying off his contract and getting out, you can feel his incredible frustration when things don't go as he plans. The opening song "How far to Paradise" is the theme of the first episode in this AVI, and it's a fitting description of Shin's mindset. He's trying to escape from hell on Earth to go back to a peaceful life, a beautiful woman, and wonderful career that's waiting for him. The second half of the show is partly just closing things up resolving plotlines, as Shin's nemesis finds his evil plot unraveling, Shin's girlfriend gets closer to setting him free, and the the war draws to a close as the loyalist forces Shin works for are outgunned, outmanned, and (eventually) forced to surrender. The real story though, is the subtle change that has happened to Shin. He talks like a wimpy pacifist, but somewhere along the line he stopped being afraid and stopped caring about the people he killed. The ultimate example of this is when he shoots down one of his comrades who has gone blind and is shooting everwhere in a random pattern in violent desperation. And yet Shin still refuses to accept what he has become, or rather, to embrace it. When a wingman shoots down the parachute of an ememy, he is appalled. Some time is spent on describing the why of what has happened to the men of Area 88 to make them want to do what they do, and what it amounts to is that once these people live in an environment where their lives are in constant danger, they just can't be at home anywhere where their death is close at hand. And in the end Shin himself has succumb to it as well. Finally free and able to return to the life is longed for so desperately, the dramatic end of the show has him instead getting back into his aircraft to join his comrades in one last heroic and foolish battle where survival is almost impossible. But when a life of danger and death is all you have known, would it really be a mercy to let you live through it and return to the world shattered. Heavy stuff indeed. Throughout the entire series there is some wonderful high-quality animation, music, and voice-acting. The sheer quality of the entire series is what makes it a must have for me, because I have never seen a better animation about a fighter pilot's life. The air battles are incredibly exciting, and friend and foe alike are always just a hair-breath away from destruction (no invincible heroes here!). Everything moves are high speed with style, and the large variety of aircraft are all meticulously detailed, not just exploding, but breaking up, falling apart, smoking, catching on fire, ect ect. Pilots are killed by bullets going through their cockpits, entire instrument panels are recreated in loving detail, and airplane parts move and adjust in realistic manner. Very impressive indeed. It's this level of detail that sets this show apart. And the two best (and craziest) action scenes, one in each episode, are better for the fact that the danger feels all-too-real. One involves an airbase attack where a giant steel wall lifts up right in front of the planes (and they have to fly through the holes in it), and the second navigating an incredibly narrow canyon wall at high speed in the middle of the night. But the all the flight scenes are great, the other standouts being the time Shin and his wingman have to shoot bombs off a jumbo jet without damaging it, and the final battle against the rebel Air Force. If you love classic anime (and particularly classic OVA), or just want to watch a great show about a stoic fighter pilot's struggle to survive on the far side of the desert wasteland, this show is a must own. | ||
 | Mobile Suit Gundam Wing - Operation 4 | |
| "The real story begins" | 2008-07-17 |
| It's almost like the whole story up until now has just been a prologue. This volume starts with Zechs and Heero fighting a duel in Antarctica and takes off from there. After the intense duel Zechs allows himself to be captured and the Gundam pilots launch themselves back into space in an attempt to stop OZ, which is systematically taking over the colonies to use them as weapons factories the Gundams are insufficient to fight the new unmanned Mobile Doll mobile suits (which are faster than any human pilot could possibly be because they are computer-controlled). From here things get complicated. The breach between the power behind OZ (Roamafeller) and Treize Kushrenada, starts to make itself clear, and to please Treize, Zechs fights a huge army of enemy mobile suits rather than face a court-marshall. When he wins the battle, Zechs decides to break with OZ and his friend Treize and go into outer space to try to pursue peace there. In one of the craziest plot twists in anime history, Lady Une develops a split personality, one which desires peace in outer space and the other the same as we have seen from the beginning, a war-crazed psychopath. In outer space Duo gets captured, and Heero breaks him out. Then the engineers who built the Gundam also get captured, and heero moves to destroy both them and the mobile suits they have built for OZ. When he does, he is captured by none other than Trowa Barton, who has joined OZ (and destroyed the Gundam Deathsythe). There's lots more (Wu Fei's Gundam destroyed in his own assault, Heero's great speech to his new class on the first day of school in the Colony, Zechs meeting up with Howard, Relena's finding out that Zechs is her brother), but I guess crazy-dense plot is the biggest trademark of this series. Indeed, things are really starting to pick up. Up until now the direction, music, animation, characerization, and plot have been good. But now they strangely all go up in quality all-at-once. Great use of musical cues, fluid, detailed, high-budget animation, great character moments (Zechs' cry of "Glory to all the colonies!" as he prepares to face OZ alone and let the Gundams escape), introduction of interesting new characters (Nicol who constantly is suspicious of Trowa and keeps trying to keep the crazed psycho Lady Une from disappearing because he loves her commanding presence and military agenda, and the slightly unhinged engineers who designed the Gundams), and fantastic new plot developments (the colonies siding with OZ and building weapons for them even as the Gundams have the colonies turn their backs on them) make this a true must-watch for any Mecha fan (and especially any Gundam fan). I absolutely love this show, but the more I watch it the more I appreciate just how much this show improves as it continues, bringing up very interesting issues (the ethical dilemmas of unmanned weapons that kill without thought, building weapons to help your economy when they will be used to destroy other nations, how true peace can be achieved), the battles becoming more complex, and the characterization and plot growing more and more complex as the show progresses. Gundam Wing is a true classic, and it's hard not to see it if you watch the show through this point | ||
 | Star Wars Trilogy (Widescreen Edition) | |
| "Stand Up and Cheer" | 2008-07-17 |
| Star Wars ranked number 15 on the AFI's top 100 list of Amberican films. It's been the inspiration of countless film-makers, writers, video game programmers, and peopel who dream of becoming the "next George Lucas". It's a simple story of good vs. evil and Imperialism vs. Rebellion, a boy's coming of age, and the power of the spiritual in a universe that makes a big show of techneological force. But somehow it has come to mean much more than that. The making of Star Wars was part genius and part luck, and I've read the making of books to prove it. Part of you wants to say that George Lucas would have made a masterpiece no matter what and another part of you looks a the rough cut of the film and knows it could have been just another space fantasy film, but all rights should have been. No matter how it got made, Star Wars is a perfect example of what can go right in a film to make it transcend its genre. The cinematography is wonderful. The editing is long where it needs to be, short where it needs to be. The acting is endearing (if silly and cheesy at times). The characters are archtypes, not stereotypes. The special effects are the best of what stop-motion can accomplish, legendary. The music is my pick for the greatest movie soundtrack of all time (and I've listened to it plenty). The script may not be shakespeare, but it's still great stuff. Everyone can relate to these characters, and many feel almost as if they knew them themselves. A lot of people love Han Solo. As for me, Luke Skywalker was always my hero. I think inside of most people there is a hero who longs to make a difference in the world, to fight against evil and triumph with their friends to thunderous applause. Everyone wants to be that hero of a thousand faces. George Lucas gave us the ability to see that hero on the big screen, as never before. You could write whole books about the influence that Star Wars has had on the space fantasy genre, blockbuster movies, and people around the world. Countless debate has gone back and forth on continuity, expanded storylines, what characters, books, and films influenced the film's making, and of course, whether the widescreen, unaltered, or special editions are the best way to watch. People will even argue whether or not the three prequels should be considered part of the official story and Star Wars Universe. But for all that, the original Star Wars stands on its own, as a cinematic achievement and a cultural one, and as a doorway that opened countless imaginations. The story is universal. It has been told many times before. A young boy dreams of becoming a hero and fighting against evil, with the help of a mentor he rescues a princess and saves the day. I think deep down just about everyone loves this story. This movie isn't perfect. No movie is.Someday this story will be told better. But for now, Star Wars is the definitive space fantasy for the entire planet. | ||
 | Star Wars Trilogy | |
| "Stand Up and Cheer" | 2008-07-17 |
| Star Wars ranked number 15 on the AFI's top 100 list of Amberican films. It's been the inspiration of countless film-makers, writers, video game programmers, and peopel who dream of becoming the "next George Lucas". It's a simple story of good vs. evil and Imperialism vs. Rebellion, a boy's coming of age, and the power of the spiritual in a universe that makes a big show of techneological force. But somehow it has come to mean much more than that. The making of Star Wars was part genius and part luck, and I've read the making of books to prove it. Part of you wants to say that George Lucas would have made a masterpiece no matter what and another part of you looks a the rough cut of the film and knows it could have been just another space fantasy film, but all rights should have been. No matter how it got made, Star Wars is a perfect example of what can go right in a film to make it transcend its genre. The cinematography is wonderful. The editing is long where it needs to be, short where it needs to be. The acting is endearing (if silly and cheesy at times). The characters are archtypes, not stereotypes. The special effects are the best of what stop-motion can accomplish, legendary. The music is my pick for the greatest movie soundtrack of all time (and I've listened to it plenty). The script may not be shakespeare, but it's still great stuff. Everyone can relate to these characters, and many feel almost as if they knew them themselves. A lot of people love Han Solo. As for me, Luke Skywalker was always my hero. I think inside of most people there is a hero who longs to make a difference in the world, to fight against evil and triumph with their friends to thunderous applause. Everyone wants to be that hero of a thousand faces. George Lucas gave us the ability to see that hero on the big screen, as never before. You could write whole books about the influence that Star Wars has had on the space fantasy genre, blockbuster movies, and people around the world. Countless debate has gone back and forth on continuity, expanded storylines, what characters, books, and films influenced the film's making, and of course, whether the widescreen, unaltered, or special editions are the best way to watch. People will even argue whether or not the three prequels should be considered part of the official story and Star Wars Universe. But for all that, the original Star Wars stands on its own, as a cinematic achievement and a cultural one, and as a doorway that opened countless imaginations. The story is universal. It has been told many times before. A young boy dreams of becoming a hero and fighting against evil, with the help of a mentor he rescues a princess and saves the day. I think deep down just about everyone loves this story. This movie isn't perfect. No movie is.Someday this story will be told better. But for now, Star Wars is the definitive space fantasy for the entire planet. | ||
 | The Stars of Star Wars - Interviews from the Cast | |
| "Stand Up and Cheer" | 2008-07-17 |
| Star Wars ranked number 15 on the AFI's top 100 list of Amberican films. It's been the inspiration of countless film-makers, writers, video game programmers, and peopel who dream of becoming the "next George Lucas". It's a simple story of good vs. evil and Imperialism vs. Rebellion, a boy's coming of age, and the power of the spiritual in a universe that makes a big show of techneological force. But somehow it has come to mean much more than that. The making of Star Wars was part genius and part luck, and I've read the making of books to prove it. Part of you wants to say that George Lucas would have made a masterpiece no matter what and another part of you looks a the rough cut of the film and knows it could have been just another space fantasy film, but all rights should have been. No matter how it got made, Star Wars is a perfect example of what can go right in a film to make it transcend its genre. The cinematography is wonderful. The editing is long where it needs to be, short where it needs to be. The acting is endearing (if silly and cheesy at times). The characters are archtypes, not stereotypes. The special effects are the best of what stop-motion can accomplish, legendary. The music is my pick for the greatest movie soundtrack of all time (and I've listened to it plenty). The script may not be shakespeare, but it's still great stuff. Everyone can relate to these characters, and many feel almost as if they knew them themselves. A lot of people love Han Solo. As for me, Luke Skywalker was always my hero. I think inside of most people there is a hero who longs to make a difference in the world, to fight against evil and triumph with their friends to thunderous applause. Everyone wants to be that hero of a thousand faces. George Lucas gave us the ability to see that hero on the big screen, as never before. You could write whole books about the influence that Star Wars has had on the space fantasy genre, blockbuster movies, and people around the world. Countless debate has gone back and forth on continuity, expanded storylines, what characters, books, and films influenced the film's making, and of course, whether the widescreen, unaltered, or special editions are the best way to watch. People will even argue whether or not the three prequels should be considered part of the official story and Star Wars Universe. But for all that, the original Star Wars stands on its own, as a cinematic achievement and a cultural one, and as a doorway that opened countless imaginations. The story is universal. It has been told many times before. A young boy dreams of becoming a hero and fighting against evil, with the help of a mentor he rescues a princess and saves the day. I think deep down just about everyone loves this story. This movie isn't perfect. No movie is.Someday this story will be told better. But for now, Star Wars is the definitive space fantasy for the entire planet. | ||
 | The Last Starfighter | |
| "Greetings, Star Fighter!" | 2008-07-17 |
| It's funny how people will love one thing, and then turn on something which is almost exactly the same on a fundamental level. In a small community a boy grows up dreaming of a life of adventure. A mysterious old man and some new friends help him to save the galaxy from an evil Empire. It could be a description of the plot from Star Wars but it's also the plot from the Last Starfighter (with the addition of one cool-looking arcade game that serves a sword-in-the-stone for the protagonist and a trailer park on plain-old-Earth instead of a desert world on the outer rim). So why is it that Star Wars is universally loved while people put down this classic just because its a little old (and not Star Wars)? Personally, I think it just gets better with age. To Defend the Frontier... Part tale of a small trailer park, part sci-fi intergalactic struggle, the Last Starfighter just might be the best bridge between the fantastic and the ordinary, a triumphant homage to the spirit of sci-fi fans everywhere who dream of becoming something more. For everyone who has ever wished that video game skills were actually useful in the real world, this movie has got to absolutely be the end-all-be-all of wish fulfillment. As a long time gamer, geek, and guy who never seems to attain anything tangible in this world, I must admit I absolutely love this movie. What makes this movie different from Star Wars is the strong hometown America feel, as everyone in the trailer park has a lot of personality, and seems like they could be from just about any small trailer-park town. So when you toss the craziness of the robot clone, alien assassins, and a Gunstar (man I love that word for the battleships) landing right in the parking lot, it just gives everything a great epic feel and drives home just how huge it is that Alex is suddenly the last hope for freedom for countless star systems. Gotta love it. Young Alex Rogan dreams of escaping from his boring small-town trailer park life and building a life of importance for himself somewhere. Early on in the film his hopes get dashed to pieces when he's rejected for a college scholarship, but when he breaks the record on the only arcade game at a local diner, it turns out to be much more important than he could ever have imagined. The arcade game is a galactic sword-in-the-stone, and soon a galactic recruiter for the Star League's Starfighters grabs Alex and takes him to the base on Rylos to help save the universe! Lance Guest's performance in the dual role of the main character and the robot sent to replace him while he's away fighting save the universe is really endearing, as is the actress who plays his small town sweetheart. Actually most of the characters in the movie are charming in this roles, including a one-time music man in his last film role. My personal favorite is of course the alien who pilots the ship Alex is the gunner for, and he says a lot of really great gung-ho lines "I always wanted to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds!". Great stuff. "He could be the greatest Starfighter ever!" The Last Starfighter has everything you could want in a movie. There's comedy, romance, dreams of heroism, space battles, and an absolutely fantastic musical score. It still amazes me after all these years of listening to musical scores how much they can improve a film. The score to this movie enhances it quite a bit, giving it a huge dramatic and idealistic boost (kind of like how the score to Star Wars changed it from a cheesy indy flick to a triumph of cinematic genius in the world's opinion). When this film came out the special effects were revolutionary (it was the first film to ever use computer-generated graphics depending on who you ask), and if you love old-school blue screen special effects it's definitely on par with Star Wars and the Neverending Story. The space battles are small-scale compared to Star Wars, but it's still a whole lot of fun because of the namesake battle of one pilot and gunner (Starfighter) against an entire Armada and the Capital ship. The icing on the cake for me when I watch this film is that when the kid finally does decide to take up the fight against the bad guys (he's quite reluctant for a large part of the movie and tries to run away home instead of fighting in the war), it's exactly like the Arcade game he played back home, from the target drones for training to the last boss. If you love video games like I do, you can't help but love the moments when all the time wasted playing a video game makes a kid into an intergalactic hero. I hear they are making a Last Starfighter sequel and I can't wait. As a big fan of sci-fi and movies from the 80's (and especially space-fantasy movies from the 80's) I'm always looking for more great movies from that endless treasure trove. But in my mind there are some movies that trascend even my love for the genre and are just classics in every way. This is one of those movies. A must-own for any fan of space-fantasy movies or 80's sci-fi. | ||
 | Area 88 - Blue Skies of Betrayal (Vol. 1) | |
| "How Far to Paradise?" | 2008-07-17 |
| The 80's sure was a great decade for anime. Indeed, all things considered, it might have been the best decade for OVA (direct-to-video anime) ever. You had romance like Ah My Goddess, comedy like All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, and then of course you've got this classic. Anime is largely by nature very anti-war, even when it's an action title, and this is perhaps best personified by this classic. The story is an unusual one. A promising young airline pilot is set to marry daughter of Japan's biggest airline and start a magnificent career in the airline industry, when on the night of his graduation, his best friend gets him drunk and makes him sign a contract to become a mercenary jet fighter pilot in deep in the savage desert in Area 88. A pacifist and gentle soul, our hero finds this is a terrible nightmare come true, as he is forced again and again to kill people he doesn't know for a cause he cares nothing about, just to stay alive. The story segments are solid, if a little slow moving. His "friend" tries to take over both the airline and the love that Shin should have had, and his girlfriend desperately tries to find him and bring him back. Meanwhile, on the base, and in the air, is where the real drama lies. The opening moments of the OVA have Shin's plane shooting up tanks in the desert, and you can actually see the shells from his bullets fall through the air as he fires. Planes in this show are destroyed in seconds from bullets and missiles, and if they manage to survive a few hits, they are likely so crippled as to make survival almost impossible. This ain't no video game, the planes actually run out of bullets. There is a constant sense of danger throughout the entire series, because you have absolutely no idea who is going to survive from one mission to the next. A character may be introduced and then get killed the first time they go up in a plane in this show. In the first half of the series there's a this double-edge sword of desperation to escape combined with resistance against what a life like this does to a person. Shin is trying desperately to hold onto his humanity, not to become a cold-blooded killer who feels nothing when someone dies. And he is desperately trying to get away. So as he closes in on his goal of paying off his contract and getting out, you can feel his incredible frustration when things don't go as he plans. The opening song "How far to Paradise" is the theme of the first episode in this AVI, and it's a fitting description of Shin's mindset. He's trying to escape from hell on Earth to go back to a peaceful life, a beautiful woman, and wonderful career that's waiting for him. The second half of the show is partly just closing things up resolving plotlines, as Shin's nemesis finds his evil plot unraveling, Shin's girlfriend gets closer to setting him free, and the the war draws to a close as the loyalist forces Shin works for are outgunned, outmanned, and (eventually) forced to surrender. The real story though, is the subtle change that has happened to Shin. He talks like a wimpy pacifist, but somewhere along the line he stopped being afraid and stopped caring about the people he killed. The ultimate example of this is when he shoots down one of his comrades who has gone blind and is shooting everwhere in a random pattern in violent desperation. And yet Shin still refuses to accept what he has become, or rather, to embrace it. When a wingman shoots down the parachute of an ememy, he is appalled. Some time is spent on describing the why of what has happened to the men of Area 88 to make them want to do what they do, and what it amounts to is that once these people live in an environment where their lives are in constant danger, they just can't be at home anywhere where their death is close at hand. And in the end Shin himself has succumb to it as well. Finally free and able to return to the life is longed for so desperately, the dramatic end of the show has him instead getting back into his aircraft to join his comrades in one last heroic and foolish battle where survival is almost impossible. But when a life of danger and death is all you have known, would it really be a mercy to let you live through it and return to the world shattered. Heavy stuff indeed. Throughout the entire series there is some wonderful high-quality animation, music, and voice-acting. The sheer quality of the entire series is what makes it a must have for me, because I have never seen a better animation about a fighter pilot's life. The air battles are incredibly exciting, and friend and foe alike are always just a hair-breath away from destruction (no invincible heroes here!). Everything moves are high speed with style, and the large variety of aircraft are all meticulously detailed, not just exploding, but breaking up, falling apart, smoking, catching on fire, ect ect. Pilots are killed by bullets going through their cockpits, entire instrument panels are recreated in loving detail, and airplane parts move and adjust in realistic manner. Very impressive indeed. It's this level of detail that sets this show apart. And the two best (and craziest) action scenes, one in each episode, are better for the fact that the danger feels all-too-real. One involves an airbase attack where a giant steel wall lifts up right in front of the planes (and they have to fly through the holes in it), and the second navigating an incredibly narrow canyon wall at high speed in the middle of the night. But the all the flight scenes are great, the other standouts being the time Shin and his wingman have to shoot bombs off a jumbo jet without damaging it, and the final battle against the rebel Air Force. If you love classic anime (and particularly classic OVA), or just want to watch a great show about a stoic fighter pilot's struggle to survive on the far side of the desert wasteland, this show is a must own. | ||
 | Seven Samurai - Criterion Collection | |
| "Kurosawa's Defining Triumph" | 2008-03-17 |
| If you're one of those people who loves classic movies, foreign or otherwise, or even if you are just a lover of great movies or a student of the arts, you owe it to yourself to see this film at least once. Why? That's more a book than a review... but here goes. In this world there are talents, and there are geniuses. Countless films are produced by talents, but great works of art are produced by geniuses. The films of people like John Ford and Frank Capra are extraordinary not just because of their genius though. They are extraordinary because of their humanity, the way that they tell the story of human beings and the world that they live in, the tragedies and triumphs of normal people in extraordinary circumstances, the epic stories that make up real history and the soul of every human being. Kurosawa's movies are like that. They reflect the same genius of people like Ford and Capra. They are very human stories. I have seen many Kurosawa films over the years, but in my mind this is undoubtedly his greatest film. It is an epic story about a much loved period of Japanese history, a brief period equivalent to the Wild West, when Samurai roamed the streets with no master like so many wandering gunfighters. In fact, this story is the basis of the well-known western The Magnificent Seven. But the story is not about the Samurai so much as it is about how they relate and must cooperate with the villagers they are hired to protect. Across three and a half hours you are introduced to the villagers in a truly desperate situation, and watch as they lament their plight, seek the help of the samurai, and then repeated mistrust them by hiding their possessions and women from them. The samurai who expect to be heroes after a fashion find themselves seemingly unwelcomed and feared by the peasants who not only feared them, but have killed their kind in the past as they came through the town. And when the actual conflicts begin it's not enough just to fight samurai vs. bandits, the samurai actually have to build fortifications and arm the villagers for a long series of engagments. And as the bandits are killed one by one it becomes not a battle, but a war of attrition to see who will last longer. There are many losses along the way, and the ultimate victory leaves you with not a feeling of triumph, but of the real sense of loss that battle can give. There are extraordinary performances all around, from the stereotypical charicatures that are the villagers to the extraordinary personalities of the samurai which range from a wize old man to a crazed eccentric buffoon (played brilliantly by Toshiro Mifune), from a perfectionist swordsman to a young nobleman determined to become a hero somehow. There are numerous scenes which could be a film unto themselves, from the old man rescuing a kidnapped child to the young nobleman's first romantic encounter among the cherry blossoms. And the battle scenes are better than anything Ridley Scott or Wolfgang Peterson (with all due respect) ever put to film, with every sword slash meaning instant death and a final epic showdown in the muddy rain that hs to be some of the most amazing footage ever filmed. If you like historical samurai films, you can't go wrong with Kurosawa. And if you like Kurosawa, it doesn't get an better than this film. You simply have to have the patience to get through the arduous experience that it is, and give the film time to get going (I'd say at least an hour). Of course you can always watch it in pieces, and it holds up remarkably well watched that way (thanks to the way so many segments hold up on their own like seperate short films. Gorgeous black and white cinematography, splendid acting, fantastic plot and dialog (even translated from Japanese). The film may be somewhat poor quality just because of it's age, and recording equipment when the film was made isn't what it is today obviously, but if you ask me, you'd have to be just plain crazy to let age or subtitles keep you from seeing this classic. Everyone should see this film at least once. Film lovers of all ages should buy it and cherish it forever. | ||
 | Clear and Present Danger (Special Edition) | |
| "The world needs more heroes" | 2008-03-17 |
| Whether or not you're a fan of Tom Clancy novels, the plots can sure make for some great entertainment. While some of the Jack Ryan stories have had very mixed results as movies (I really did not like Alex Baldwin or Ben Affleck as the protagonist), Harrison Ford has been uniformly awesome in the role. It's just someone he was born to play if you ask me. In fact, I wish he was in every film in the series (that would have been fantastic). At any rate, Harrison Ford is fantastic in this movie, and he's surrounded by a great cast, in what has got to be my absolutely favorite modern political film (wouldn't quite call it a thriller). The story (as I have been told, because I've never read a Clancy novel) was greatly truncated from the book, yet still manages to tell a great story. And the story is simple. The President of the United States faces a possible scandal involving someone he knew turning up dead after crossing some dirty business partners, and as this person was a friend of his, decides to carry out his own little secret war against the drug cartel in Columbia since they've become such a thorn in his side. Harrison Ford as Ryan is a honest and straight-shooting yet lovable guy who finds himself advising the President and investigating the cartels. The whole story is really shown from four different perspectives. The hero protagonist is of course Ryan, and we follow him as he carries out his investigation. There is also the other government agents who are involved in the secret war and advise the president and conspire against Ryan.Then we have one of the drug lords who finds himself being attacked by the US government, and largely just gets angry and tries to figure out why everyone seems to be getting more and more ticked at him. Lastly we have the mysterious invisible man who manipulates everyone behind the scenes and spies on everyone, the REAL villain of the story in many ways. The drama is fantastic as several stories unfold at once, Ryan's boss (played by James Earl Jones) slowly dies of cancer, a mercenary (Willem Dafoe) commands the secret operations team including one particularly sharp shooter, and Ryan gets closer and closer to finding out the truth about everything. If action is your thing this movie has enough of that, with one sequence in particular being a standout. The invisible man sends assassins to take out Ryan and the people with him, and it's a supremely thrilling few minutes while rocket launchers take one one vehicle after another and Ryan tries to escape with his life and protect his friend. If you have a good sound system that sequence is a showcase. A very nice sound mix throughout this film, and the musical score by James Horner is also beautiful. The visuals are quite good also and the entire movie is very well shot, much like The Fugitive (none of that shaky hand-held garbage here!) The dialog in this movie is great, and the end of the film has a very satisfying climax as Ryan finds out the truth, faces down the beaurocrats who lied to him, and leads a mission to save the troops who have been abandoned by the leaders of the country. This film can be taken different ways, but to me it is a bold statement about integrity and nobility. In the entire movie Ryan never uses a gun even once, and he's the hero. His crusade is all about doing the right thing and believing in that, even when he discovers that he's the own one left who clings to such ideals. I'm not sure many actors could pull off such a performance and have such conviction, but Ford does a wonderful job portraying Ryan as the last good man in a country gone corrupt. It's really great stuff, and when you combine it with all the political intrigue and detective work of figuring out who is who and what is what in the investigation Ryan conducts, and the action between the troops and the Cartels, this is one great piece of entertainment with a strong message about doing what you know is right and honoring those who make sacrifices to do the same. Very highly recommended. | ||
 | Clear and Present Danger | |
| "The world needs more heroes" | 2008-03-17 |
| Whether or not you're a fan of Tom Clancy novels, the plots can sure make for some great entertainment. While some of the Jack Ryan stories have had very mixed results as movies (I really did not like Alex Baldwin or Ben Affleck as the protagonist), Harrison Ford has been uniformly awesome in the role. It's just someone he was born to play if you ask me. In fact, I wish he was in every film in the series (that would have been fantastic). At any rate, Harrison Ford is fantastic in this movie, and he's surrounded by a great cast, in what has got to be my absolutely favorite modern political film (wouldn't quite call it a thriller). The story (as I have been told, because I've never read a Clancy novel) was greatly truncated from the book, yet still manages to tell a great story. And the story is simple. The President of the United States faces a possible scandal involving someone he knew turning up dead after crossing some dirty business partners, and as this person was a friend of his, decides to carry out his own little secret war against the drug cartel in Columbia since they've become such a thorn in his side. Harrison Ford as Ryan is a honest and straight-shooting yet lovable guy who finds himself advising the President and investigating the cartels. The whole story is really shown from four different perspectives. The hero protagonist is of course Ryan, and we follow him as he carries out his investigation. There is also the other government agents who are involved in the secret war and advise the president and conspire against Ryan.Then we have one of the drug lords who finds himself being attacked by the US government, and largely just gets angry and tries to figure out why everyone seems to be getting more and more ticked at him. Lastly we have the mysterious invisible man who manipulates everyone behind the scenes and spies on everyone, the REAL villain of the story in many ways. The drama is fantastic as several stories unfold at once, Ryan's boss (played by James Earl Jones) slowly dies of cancer, a mercenary (Willem Dafoe) commands the secret operations team including one particularly sharp shooter, and Ryan gets closer and closer to finding out the truth about everything. If action is your thing this movie has enough of that, with one sequence in particular being a standout. The invisible man sends assassins to take out Ryan and the people with him, and it's a supremely thrilling few minutes while rocket launchers take one one vehicle after another and Ryan tries to escape with his life and protect his friend. If you have a good sound system that sequence is a showcase. A very nice sound mix throughout this film, and the musical score by James Horner is also beautiful. The visuals are quite good also and the entire movie is very well shot, much like The Fugitive (none of that shaky hand-held garbage here!) The dialog in this movie is great, and the end of the film has a very satisfying climax as Ryan finds out the truth, faces down the beaurocrats who lied to him, and leads a mission to save the troops who have been abandoned by the leaders of the country. This film can be taken different ways, but to me it is a bold statement about integrity and nobility. In the entire movie Ryan never uses a gun even once, and he's the hero. His crusade is all about doing the right thing and believing in that, even when he discovers that he's the own one left who clings to such ideals. I'm not sure many actors could pull off such a performance and have such conviction, but Ford does a wonderful job portraying Ryan as the last good man in a country gone corrupt. It's really great stuff, and when you combine it with all the political intrigue and detective work of figuring out who is who and what is what in the investigation Ryan conducts, and the action between the troops and the Cartels, this is one great piece of entertainment with a strong message about doing what you know is right and honoring those who make sacrifices to do the same. Very highly recommended. | ||
 | Seven Samurai - Criterion Collection | |
| "Kurosawa's Defining Triumph" | 2008-03-17 |
| If you're one of those people who loves classic movies, foreign or otherwise, or even if you are just a lover of great movies or a student of the arts, you owe it to yourself to see this film at least once. Why? That's more a book than a review... but here goes. In this world there are talents, and there are geniuses. Countless films are produced by talents, but great works of art are produced by geniuses. The films of people like John Ford and Frank Capra are extraordinary not just because of their genius though. They are extraordinary because of their humanity, the way that they tell the story of human beings and the world that they live in, the tragedies and triumphs of normal people in extraordinary circumstances, the epic stories that make up real history and the soul of every human being. Kurosawa's movies are like that. They reflect the same genius of people like Ford and Capra. They are very human stories. I have seen many Kurosawa films over the years, but in my mind this is undoubtedly his greatest film. It is an epic story about a much loved period of Japanese history, a brief period equivalent to the Wild West, when Samurai roamed the streets with no master like so many wandering gunfighters. In fact, this story is the basis of the well-known western The Magnificent Seven. But the story is not about the Samurai so much as it is about how they relate and must cooperate with the villagers they are hired to protect. Across three and a half hours you are introduced to the villagers in a truly desperate situation, and watch as they lament their plight, seek the help of the samurai, and then repeated mistrust them by hiding their possessions and women from them. The samurai who expect to be heroes after a fashion find themselves seemingly unwelcomed and feared by the peasants who not only feared them, but have killed their kind in the past as they came through the town. And when the actual conflicts begin it's not enough just to fight samurai vs. bandits, the samurai actually have to build fortifications and arm the villagers for a long series of engagments. And as the bandits are killed one by one it becomes not a battle, but a war of attrition to see who will last longer. There are many losses along the way, and the ultimate victory leaves you with not a feeling of triumph, but of the real sense of loss that battle can give. There are extraordinary performances all around, from the stereotypical charicatures that are the villagers to the extraordinary personalities of the samurai which range from a wize old man to a crazed eccentric buffoon (played brilliantly by Toshiro Mifune), from a perfectionist swordsman to a young nobleman determined to become a hero somehow. There are numerous scenes which could be a film unto themselves, from the old man rescuing a kidnapped child to the young nobleman's first romantic encounter among the cherry blossoms. And the battle scenes are better than anything Ridley Scott or Wolfgang Peterson (with all due respect) ever put to film, with every sword slash meaning instant death and a final epic showdown in the muddy rain that hs to be some of the most amazing footage ever filmed. If you like historical samurai films, you can't go wrong with Kurosawa. And if you like Kurosawa, it doesn't get an better than this film. You simply have to have the patience to get through the arduous experience that it is, and give the film time to get going (I'd say at least an hour). Of course you can always watch it in pieces, and it holds up remarkably well watched that way (thanks to the way so many segments hold up on their own like seperate short films. Gorgeous black and white cinematography, splendid acting, fantastic plot and dialog (even translated from Japanese). The film may be somewhat poor quality just because of it's age, and recording equipment when the film was made isn't what it is today obviously, but if you ask me, you'd have to be just plain crazy to let age or subtitles keep you from seeing this classic. Everyone should see this film at least once. Film lovers of all ages should buy it and cherish it forever. | ||
 | Um Jammer Lammy | |
| "Quirky and Catchy and Really Really Different" | 2008-03-17 |
| Music games aren't just another genre, they're another universe. Inside that category you have everything from hit-the-button-at-exactly-the-right-moment of Space Channel 5 to the ensemble jamming of Rock Band. But once upon a time before music games were all that popular there was a cute funny Japanese title called Parappa the Rapper for the Playstation that redefined what could make a good game. It featured cute animals in a wacky story that required you to push the buttons in time to the music, but also let you freestyle and improvise to a degree to get the highest scores. The songs were strange but extremely catchy, and the characters were so lovable that people who were looking for something different couldn't help but love it. Fast forward to the sequel. Instead of the puppy Parappa, you control the guitar player Lammy who's trying to hit the big time with her band. Every button press corresponds to guitar licks instead of words spoken, but that's not the only change. First of all, you can use the whammy bar to add that effect, as you play numerous other effects are unlocked that you can also use, and those effects really do change the sound of the guitar. Secondly, once you beat the game you start to unlock other unique options, such as multiple modes of two-player (cooperative or competitive), and the ability to play the whole game as Parappa (rapping instead of jamming). Personally, I think the guitar works way better than voice did in Parappa. It just feels more like making music. And although the game can at times be frustratingly difficult, the whole experience is much more accessible (again, just my opinion) than games that use controllers that resemble musical instruments. There's no music technique involved on the basic level other than a sense of timing and the ability to hit the button you're supposed to in sequence. But again, it CAN be really difficult. I'll admit it. I've never been that good as rhythm and music games, despite my love for them. I could never beat Space Channel 5 1 or 2 despite countless hours of practice. And I don't think I ever achieved "COOL" ranking in Parappa. I did however, achieve that ranking in this game a couple of times, and once you do it is one of the coolest things in any video game, kind of like obtaining invincibility for a minute. Basically, as the game song progresses your accuracy either makes you gain or lose rank, and if you DO obtain the top ranking of "COOL", you can freestyle however you want in a solo. It is just so incredibly cool playing a music instrument with just a regular controller. The next closest thing I can think of is the percussion jamming you can do while shooting down enemies in Rez. There's just something really wonderful about creating your own improvisations to music (and if you're never gonna make it playing a real instrument or in a band for that matter, it may be the only solo time you get in life). True, it's no rock band, but the two games are apples and oranges, and this game is decidedly Japanese. Truly, a game this strange could only come out of Japan. As with the first game Parappa, everything is paper cut-outs, the songs are all about performing a task (making a guitar with a chainsaw, landing a plane, putting out a fire, ect), but they are all great in their wacky way. There is also tremendous variety in the types of songs, which range from the now classic Master Onion Chop to the split-personality thrash rock of the plane song. Of course it's all feel good stuff culminating in a super-feel-good climax of the band playing their big gig. With all the unlockables this game is a great value. If you loved Parappa you should definitely buy a copy. And even if you didn't, you may want to give it a try. I have yet to find a person who enjoyed playing the two-player with me, but the five minutes my older sister Codemaster Talon did play with me were pure magic :) | ||
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