Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

This was the complementary movie on my flight to Narita. I'm not too good on the story since I saw the first half dubbed in Japanese, fell asleep, caught the second half in English, and missed the ending due to in-flight turbulence. So, my impression of it is slightly biased by the choppy nature of what I saw. Nonetheless, I thought it was a pretty fun movie. I don't remember much about the original Indy films, so the nostalgia factor is null to me, but at least the story went somewhere. Or maybe it was the wine I had on the plane. I've never done that before. Maybe it was that.

Japanese Indy sure had a deep voice.
Rating: 55%

Bend it Like Beckham (2002)

I remember that this used to have some kind of cult following. I didn't bother to watch it because I thought it was about gymnastics or something (as the title suggests) and besides, I didn't even know that this "Beckham" was an English footballer at the time. The first thing you'll notice about this movie is that it's got lots of minorities in the story, automatically meaning that there is a copious injection of racial issues. Next, the main character is female but it is not a chick flick, meaning that the theme ties closely into abrasive feminist issues. Now then, with this touchy race thing on the right side, and this controversy/oppression issue on the left, you get a movie about a bunch of ridiculous emotional people arguing with each other. Oh yeah theres some soccer in this too yeah.

Rating: I don't know...I dunno what I saw.

Game Over

"The age of the Investment Bank has ended."
They have all either folded, failed, or been reigned in by the fed. I guess every bank in America managed to fuck up simultaneously, which is a testament to the dubious nature of money culture. Fuck them. I find it hilarious that a bunch of morons speculating on some shitty houses managed to nuke the bank, which by the way, is full of pretentious Jews and ruthless Asians. "Greed kills" they say.
Whatever the case, they're off center stage now. All those crisp douchebag brokers are back to square one, thanks to some risk-loving sub-prime property owners. Kids that are pondering "what to be when you grow up" should probably cross Investment Banker off their lists now.

The Myth (2005)

Yes, he does make that face a lot in this one. And yes, that really is 3 Chinese people and an Indian person.
In this unusual wuxia, Jackie Chan lends his kung-fu moron personality to a serious tragic/romantic/historic/action movie. It starts with a reluctant mainland Chinese archaeologist that is having recurring dreams about a Qin dynasty military general. In the dreams, he is the escort to a Korean princess that has been traded to Qin ShiHuang in exchange for peace. (at a time when early states of Korea and China were at war) Somehow this ties into real life and leads Jackie Chan into a supernatural arc with some immortal people. Man, what a twist!
By this time, the princess has turned into something resembling the Moon Goddess, and with great sorrow, realizes that Jackie Chan is not the man she has been waiting for. Destiny forces them to part ways. After returning to the real world, Jackie solemnly writes a book titled "The Myth", which tells the story of the movie that you just saw! WOW PARADOX!!

To understand this without subtitles, you need to know 4 languages: Mandarin, Korean, Cantonese, and Indian. The fuck is that? What if I'm seeing-impaired?
Rating: 40%

Spore Sucks and So Does Gamespy

Spore - the game almost a decade in the making, garnering rave reviews years before the actual release date. Does the game live up to the hype? Will certain reviews still stroke its dancing penis? To answer both questions, I look at Gamespy's review of the game, and respond with my own findings.

Lie #1:
"While the gameplay isn't always perfect, Spore is a technological coup that opens up a whole new genre of gaming."

That's funny, in all five stages of the game, I never once thought that this was a new genre of gaming. The cell stage was simply a Pacman clone. The Tribal and Civilization stages were just a shitty RTS. The Space stage? Again a bad RTS and similiar to Freelancer. Fans of Spore will say "BUT YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN CONTENT!" I'm sorry, but editing the look of your creatures and units is no more creating your own content than is creating a Jamaican race mod for Civilization 4. When you boil down this game, it really is nothing but five shitty mini-games strung together around an art editor.


Lie #2:
"The object of the game is to start with a single-celled life form and evolve it into a creature, then an intelligent being, and finally a spacefaring civilization. Is it evolution? Is it intelligent design? All we know is that alien life is out there, and it's fun to play with."

Again, a big fat lie. There's no evolution at all during the game. The first two stages are the only stages where you can modify your creature, and this can be done at any point you choose during these stages. It doesn't matter if you die a million times, you have infinite lives and are able to find a mate at whim. The "evolution" aspect would come into play because you need to eat to gain "DNA points" to add structures to your creature, such as mouths and spikes, but the overall morphology of your creature can be radically changed from one generation to the next. For example, If I'm a 4-legged herbivorous animal, I can mate then change my entire creature to a 6-legged flying carnivore in the very next generation.

Why does this piss me off so much? Because of the biggest flaw in this game: It doesn't matter what your creature looks like. That's right. I can create an armless, lifeless slug creature that has the same evolutionary success as a 10 foot winged creature with mouths for hands. My creature's morphology has very little bearing on how successful it is in the game world. Regardless if I give my creatures hands or eyes, it will become the dominant life form on the planet.


All that is required for my creature to succeed is to eat food, which is a joke in terms of gameplay, requiring nothing but pointing and ..... I don't even need to click. Why should I even add arms? Why should I even care if my animal has 3 legs or 15? The reason this matters is because it reduces the gameplay to absolutely nothing.

Spore is nothing but an art editor. For Gamespy to suggest that taking your creature to the Space Stage is some sort of epic journey is like saying that graduation ceremonies for the 5th grade matter. The reason Spore fails in this respect as well is because each of the distinct stages of the game is simply a mini arcade game. The cell stage all you do is eat food. In the Tribal stage, you have a set of 5 predetermined opponents you must conquer, the difficulty of which is laughable. Some reviews will say some bullshit about "leading your tribe" or "shaping your species" in these stages, but that's bullshit as well. You are allowed only one tribe, the buildings and upgrades of which are non-customizable and all look the same. To upgrade your tribe, you simply need enough food to buy the structure and choose which predetermined site to place it.



The divisions between each of the stages are distinct enough that you never feel any continuity with any of them. After the tribal stage, you don't even get to use your creature model any more. You have to create a new model, the "Land Unit" which is like creating another creature. But if the whole point of the game is to lead your unique creature to the Space Stage, then why abandon the creature all together in the Civilization stage? The reason is for more art-time. You get to create another unit that again, the morphology of which has no meaning at all. I spent an hour building my land unit, putting tons of laser guns called "War Crime" all over it's hull. So what happens when the unit actually shoots at something? A pathetic blue graphic appears over the head of the unit and slowly arcs towards the target. What shit.


Lie #3:

" In many ways the real genius of Spore is that the immense complexity of the technology is hidden beneath very simple editors, such that you forget the technology is even there. Spore allows players to create fully articulated and textured 3D models of vehicles, buildings, and creatures. The creatures are the most impressive: they're instantly capable of walking, chirping, fighting, singing, running, even flying."

Again, all that fancy computer coding and algorithms mean shit if the look of your creature is meaningless in terms of gameplay. All it allows you to do is make something pretty with your art editor.

Lie #4:

"The fact that anyone, including non-gamers, can create and share these models in their first game session without any training or practice is remarkable.... The technology behind Spore is unquestionably fantastic"

HOLY SHIT GUESS WHAT. I'M CURRENTLY INSCRIBING PIXELS ONTO A COMPUTER SCREEN AND SHARING IT WITH OTHER PEOPLE. THIS IS THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY.

Gamespy Rating: 4.5/5

My Rating:

I could go on and on, but it's pretty clear that this game failed the hype. Why it took 7 years to develop this piece of shit is beyond me. They had 7 years to create a game, but all they did was create a 3D model editor with predetermined parts. This is not a game.

Graphics: 5/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 3/10

Overall rating: 4/10

Your Face: Rui Chenggang

I saw this guy getting heckled by Rob Riggle on the Daily Show. Apparently he is the idyllic face of China's economics scene and host of all things financial on Chinese CCTV. Okay that's great...but I couldn't really understand what I was seeing. Who is this guy? A Google search on his name returned only 7,460 results. That's tiny. (my own name returns around 479,000)
How old is he, maybe 25? He looks around my age, like a kid. In fact, he faintly resembles one of the chumps sitting next to me in econ class taking notes with a ThinkPad. (They're just too good for paper) I found his personal webpage on CCTV.com particularly curious, containing a list of his "Unforgettable Moments", which include little blurbs on everything from a personal dislike of calculus to his struggle to be a good Karaoke singer. And he's the Bob Brinker of China? Does Bob Brinker have a webpage with a poetic list of his hopes/dreams/aspirations? I hope not. Man, who is this guy?

Constantine (2005)

I watched this in 2 viewing sessions at 2 different times. I saw the first half while watching TV in a public lounge but had to leave midway through the movie. By chance, I caught the ending 8 months later while eating lunch in a Hawaiian BBQ joint, which had a gratuitous flatscreen TV.

For the most part, Constantine was pretty boring. For a cheap copy of The Matrix, it was lacking in visual appeal and the story/dialog/set was stupid. Keanu Reeves looked like a chump, nothing like his hit persona as Neo. The only reason you would ever like this movie is (1) if you just couldn't get enough of Matrix and had to find a substitute, or (2) you're a Keanu Reeves fanboy/girl, both of which mean that you're an idiot.

Too much theological bullshit in this.
Rating: 30%

Never Back Down (2008)

Viral video. That's how I ended up watching this. The plot is based on a viral video as well, of a high school football player brawling up the field on youtube. This online video catches the attention of a fight clubber that challenges him and promptly crushes him with mixed martial arts. The kid gets pissed and wants revenge so he takes up MMA in a pride match sort of thing.

Personally, I hate this kind of stuff. This movie is for people that jerk off to UFC and talk and talk about how much they can kick your ass. I find that really annoying and gay. The rest of the movie was glorified MMA worship as well, so I skipped through it and watched the Ong Bak style fights, which were very dynamic and worth going through.

Rating: 55%