In celebration of Avatar becoming the largest (unadjusted) grossing movie of all time, I thought I'd go back and review one of James Cameron's earlier works. It's time again to get into the wayback machine. Let's return to 1981; a time before CG in movies, before Aliens and Terminators... to a time when it was possible for James Cameron to make shitty movies. Unfathomable!

I watched the original Piranha about 3 years ago and I loved it. It was the exact balance of cheekiness and horror that you'd want in a low budget horror flick. A movie trying to capitalize on the fame of Jaws except with killer piranhas, how could it be bad? It was great. This sequel? It was not.

A big problem with the movie was the incoherent story. The way they cut the film made it hard to follow the main story and all the side stories of the supporting characters. On top of that, random characters are introduced, disappear and then reappear much later. As far as I can remember (yesterday), the movie takes place on a Caribbean resort with killer piranhas lurking in the seas. There are a bunch of characters and they get eaten by them. The end.

If you're a fan of B-movies and bad horror movies, then Piranha 2 would probably be passable. That said, I love bad movies and even I had a hard time liking this movie. I would not put my friends through this unless it was to prove that James Cameron at one time did make bad movies. Aside from the confusing storyline and lack of a climax (almost needed movies like this), I just hated that the piranhas could fly. You read that right. Flying fish! It was just ridiculous and probably too over-the-top. I can believe in killer fishes but not flying fishes.

The movie is gory so it has that going for it, but it is certainly not scary. The only scene I found really scary was actually a scene played for laughs at the beginning. One of the characters holds up a live fish to a woman's face while she's sleeping, only to stare at it as she wakes. This frightened me. My close friends will tell you that fish is one of my biggest fears. I think I would shit myself if someone did that to me.

So as the movie progressed, I found it harder to believe that the same man who directed this movie would 3 years later, direct The Terminator... that 5 years later he would direct Aliens... that 17 years later he would direct Titanic... that 28 years later he would direct Avatar. I wonder while he was directing this, did he have any idea how iconic he'd become years later. Unfathomable.

Anyhow, it's 2 in the morning now. I should sleep, but before I leave you, I made an animated gif of James Cameron laughing at us because he's rich and we're not. Later geeks!



Categories: horror , james cameron , piranha 2 , retro rebound

This past weekend, Matt from FreeChurch (ie. the nicest guy on the planet) invited a bunch of us for a good ol' poker night at his home in Hamilton, which I dubbed The Summit of Men. It was a good time but probably one of the strangest poker games that I've played in. First, the n00b player of our game tied probably the most pro player of our group for third place. Then there were the number of bad flops that didn't seem to help anyone that much. Thirdly, the dude who looked like he was going to be the first man out of the game ended up winning the whole shebang. And lastly, there were at least 6 split pots throughout the night. Pretty unbelievable. But we all left Toronto as men and returned as warriors, so that was good. It was a good time bonding with my brethren if anything.

It's been a while since I've done a movie review, but there are a crapload on the backburner. Really, I just need some time to flesh them out. It's why the past week has seen a few shorter postings. Strange, you'd think that an unemployed geek like me would find time but I find that every day is busy with different random things. Not a bad thing though. Simple post, simple times. Til next time, later geeks!



Categories: life stuff , summit of men

Coinciding with the launch of Army of Two: The 40th Day for the consoles was the release of the same title for the Sony PSP. Although they share the same title, the gameplay was entirely different. For the consoles, generally the game was played as a 3rd person shooter similar with Gears of War mechanics, but for the PSP, this game played more as a top down shooter, perhaps akin to something like Smash TV or the downloadable title, Zombie Apocalypse.

In this game, you play as Salem or Rios (an AI player will take control of the other) as you infiltrate terrorist operations in Shanghai.

Onscreen, the game is beautifully designed with nice detailing done on each of the stages. The game also incorporates comic book style in-game cut scenes which were welcomed. The voice work is also good. That's about all the good in the game.

This game was crap. So many technical gaffs kept this game from being any good.

The first thing that's wrong with it is its control scheme. To move your character you use the analog stick (on the left) and to issue commands to your AI teammate, you use the direction pad (also on the left). To fire your gun is the most ridiculous thing, you use all 4 buttons of the button pad, with each button corresponding to its associated direction. So basically, you could only fire in 4 directions. However, the system tries for a smart fire mechanic, locking you on to the closest enemy in that particular direction, even if they are diagonal from you. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work, and you end up firing at the air instead of the enemy. All this would have been averted if the PSP just had a second analog stick.


The second biggest gaff is the AI partner. Sometimes he can be completely unresponsive. There are battles where working in tandem is key to winning, but the AI will just stand and refuse to do anything. Aside from combat, there are times where he just won't follow you. The game feels so dead at times because of this. I mean, it's called Army of Two, not Army of You. Oh, I need to trademark that.

I feel bad for the PSP. It's such a strong system technically, but the industry seems to give it the shaft. Games like this really don't help either. Until next time, later geeks!

Categories: army of two , gaming , psp

I started listening to Howard Stern Radio again these past few weeks. I used to listen to him everyday when he was still on terrestrial radio, but not so much when he moved to satellite, only because I didn't have access to it.

Anyhow, I was playing catch up and listening to Tuesday's show when Robin made a very thought provoking comment. I'm paraphrasing here, but she said, "Why is it that when people from ravaged countries come to America, they see nothing but opportunities? But the people who are born in America see nothing but obstacles?".

I'm mulling over this right now, it's such an interesting thought. Later geeks!

Categories: howard stern radio , life stuff

The Road was written by author Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote No Country For Old Men which was adapted into the Academy Award winning movie. This is the first book by McCarthy that I've read and the only reason I decided to pick it up is that I wanted to go on a journey. And boy, did he bring me on a journey.

The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the few survivors left live their lives as scavengers and nomads, raiding each town they come across. We don't know exactly what happened to the world, but we know it's ashen, to the point where the sun is blocked out; darkness is abundant where hope is limited. Throughout the book we follow two characters only known to us as The Man and his Son. They begin somewhere in the middle of America and journey south to the coast. It's a cold world and the Man figures that it will be warmer if they headed south, but not knowing for sure. They journey from town to town scrounging for whatever morsels of food that they can. They have no hope left in the world. The only hope they have left is in each other.

I found the book quite harrowing and bleak. It was bleak to the point where I felt sad about my own life even though it had nothing to do with what was going on in the story. As I was reading it, I found that I was digging deep to those moments of sadness in my own life. It sounds like a bad thing, but really, this is a testament to powerful writing. I think what made it really work was McCarthy's ability to paint sceneries and descriptions with his words. With every flip of the page, we can taste the crumbs that they're eating and we can feel the tears that are in their eyes. It's a gripping and sad story, but thankfully the ending gives us a glimmer of hope.

The story was adapted into a movie that was released this past fall. I haven't seen it yet, but I hear it's a faithful adaptation of the book. This was a great read though and I highly recommend it. Later geeks.

"They ate well but they were still a long way from the coast. He knew that he was placing hopes where he'd no reason to. He hoped it would be brighter where for all he knew the world grew darker daily."
-Cormac McCarthy; The Road

Categories: books , cormac mccarthy , the road

It was quite a week last week. It started off on a more heavy note last Sunday, but as the week wore on, things became better and more clear. So let's do a little recap. This is going to be kind of long, so if you find this kind of stuff boring I've inserted pictures of funny cats for your entertainment. So...

1.5 Weeks Ago

About 1.5 weeks ago, my friend Jon from Living Room gave me the contact info for his uncle. His uncle is an engineer and apparently was looking for new grads and new hands to hire. That week, I gave him a few calls but he wasn't there when I called him and when he returned my calls, I wasn't here either. We were playing phone tag that week *insert schoolgirl giggle*.

Sunday Morning

So last Sunday morning, his uncle gave me a call at 9 am (The morning! My weakness! HISS!) and we talked about stuff. I was telling him a bit about school as well as elaborating my work/coop experience as he didn't have my resume yet. So he goes on to tell me about his friend's company who just spoke to him about hiring someone. He tells me about the company, what they do, their purpose and elaborates on the science behind the whole process. I should note that as he was explaining all this jargon, that it was going over my head; the company is more related to electrical engineering whereas I'm chemical. Anyhow, he tells me some terms and companies to look up and suggested tweaking my resume towards them. And I guess that's when things started to get heavy.

Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the job or company at all, but I guess it really put my job search and what I've been doing the past year into perspective. I was trying to weigh out two different things; on one hand I could settle for a job in a field that I'm not familiar with or on the other hand, keep searching and chase my dream. Even though I've been applying to all sorts of jobs, ideally, I would have liked to have been in either the clean air, clean water, energy, or environmental conservation/assesment field. That's the dream at least. At the moment it all felt so real.

So the whole day I was weighing all this out in my head. I guess my biggest fear is to trap myself in a field that I can't get out of. That afternoon one of my friend's had on his Facebook status this message: "2 questions! Do you have big dreams? Are you doing things to make it happen?". It felt so relevant at that moment. So the weight piled on. What am I doing about those dreams?

Chapter 3: Sunday Evening... church brings clarity

At church that evening, the pastoral intern Matt (ie. the nicest guy on the planet) gave an awesome message about Love (if you're interested, you can download it [here] or check out the website [here]). While not directly related to the battle waging on in my head that day, the message he spoke was with such reverence and grace that it helped clear my mind of the war inside. After service, I told one of my friend's the story of the battle and how it felt like there were two choices. I concluded that of course I would apply to this job, but to keep my eyes open still. I asked him to pray for me and that was that.

That night I skyped with my friend Ally from school and also elaborated on the whole situation. We went through our school transcript to see what courses and experiences I could tack on to my resume to appeal to the employer. It was too tough and too much of a stretch so I decided, I'm pretty much going to send the resume as is and we'll see what happens.

Act IV: The Morning Light

I woke up Monday morning feeling renewed. I don't know what it was, probably the prayer I received, but I felt less burdened than 8 hours prior. I just felt like it all made sense and I felt sort of dumb for even having battled myself with such a simple situation. For the past few weeks I've been asking people to pray for discernment and to help me listen to God. It felt like He was trying to tell me something that day, probably along the lines of, "hey, you've been praying for a job. I've been trying to throw you a bone here, wake up!". So wake up I did. I changed around a few of the words on the resume and fired it off to Jon's uncle. I felt better because I realized it wasn't the end of the line, it's just the beginning. There's so much to do and so much to look forward to. The days are still young.

On Tuesday morning, Jon's uncle gave me a call at 8 in the morning (8!) to ask me a few things. Here is an account of the conversation:

Jon's Uncle: Hi Jeff, I wanted to ask you about your salary expectations.
Me: uhhh... (it was 8 in the morning!)
Jon's Uncle: Did you have any thoughts or ideas on how much you're expecting?
Me: I was going to keep my options open to anything.
Jon's Uncle: Oh... well, don't settle for anything less than between $X or $Y (where X and Y are pretty big numbers).
Me: Oh okay. Goodbye. Zzzzz.

WHAT?! HOLY CRAP! That's way more money than I've ever seen! It was just funny because I already felt better about the opportunity anyways, but this made the pill easier to swallow. Money isn't my motivator, so I would have been happy either way.

Conclusion - Hope is where the heart is

So basically as it stands now, it's in the hands of the employer. Jon's uncle is vouching for me and sent the employer kind words about me so hopefully it'll pay off. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn't, well it doesn't. This isn't where my hopes lie. The story continues.

On Monday evening, I met with my friend Denise who was also from my program at school. She's a frequenter of this website, so she was up to date on some of my life things. She pointed out specifically my dream of working in the water industry to provide water to countries without good access to this resource (from this [entry] near the bottom). She pointed out that a friend of hers did exactly that with a Christian organization called Living Water Canada. She explained what she knew of their projects and my ears perked up. It was EXACTLY what I wanted to get into. That night, I checked out the website and found that they had changed their name to Water Ambassadors Canada (website [here]). I liked everything that I read and saw on the website. I sent them an email just to ask about the projects they have going on during the year and what the dates are. The next day, I received four emails from four different people, clearly they were enthusiastic about any interest in help. So right now, I'm conversing back and forth with them just trying to get more information. What they do is they'll send teams of a dozen people or so to countries like Guatemala or Nicaragua, and have the team drill wells, repair wells, or install water purifiers. What's great is that all this is done within 1 or 2 weeks.

This is what I want to do as my mission for God. It would only be 1 or 2 weeks of a year, which would be totally manageable. I could take on any job here, and yet still take time to go away and do this for a week. It seems like such a good and worthwhile cause. So right now my goal is after finding a job, hopefully within 1 year to go out and do this.

I've been praying for clarity, wisdom and vision, so I guess this is it. It's all pretty much still out of my hands, but if anything, I feel even more hopeful and more focused.

The other night I was flipping through my sermon notebook and came across a line that sank with me:

"The worries aren't worthy of someone who's trying to seek God."
-Pastor Cyril Guerette/iLL seeR

Amen.

Categories: dreaming and achieving , life stuff

I mentioned in my review of Crank: High Voltage that the movie was a product of our video game saturated generation. It was just as spastic, flashy and loud as any of the latest games. Neveldine/Taylor (who directed the Crank movies) take it to the next step in Gamer, a movie about playing video games.

The only other movie I can think of that involves video games without actually being about a particular game is 1989's The Wizard (awesome side note: the main girl in that movie was Jenny Lewis, as in the indie musician Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, friggin' awesome), although I guess it was more of a promotional tool to promote Nintendo and Super Mario Bros. 3.

Anyhow, this is one of those movies that's more style over substance; dialogues are excuses to get to action scenes. The movie takes place in a distant future where in the most popular video games you get to control real life human beings... like Avatar! The most popular game is one called Slayers, where convicts are pitted against each other in a 3rd person shooter game. It's a bloody affair, but if you survive a certain number of rounds, you can earn your release. Kable (Gerard Butler) who happens to be the world's best avatar/convict/killer escapes the game and is on a mission to save his wife and take down Ken Castle, the mastermind behind Slayers. That's most of the story that I could remember and to be honest, I don't even know why they were doing half the shit they were doing as I was watching the movie... I was waiting for the next big explosion and I think that's the type of people these movies are geared towards... us knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers.

The style they take in this movie is almost exactly the same as Crank: High Voltage. It's hyper stylized, brightly coloured, with top to bottom explosions all filmed with the ever polarizing shaky cam. It's really love hate with this kind of style and I can certainly understand the hate. Basically, it's too hard to follow what's going on when action is filmed this way. But for me, I can forgive it as I like this visceral style of action; it makes me feel like I'm right there behind the action. But at the same time, the action is very generic. There's nothing memorable about any of the fight scenes (unlike the days of old when you could remember every scene in T2: Judgement Day). But the way they film the scenes in Slayers is interesting in that it captures the feel of a 3rd person shooter game like Gears of War or the upcoming Spec Ops.

The cast that they assembled for this movie is pretty amazing. You have Gerard Butler as the main lead, Michael C. Hall as the main baddie, and rounding out the cast are LUDACRIS (move bitch!), Alison Lohman (who ruled in my fav' movie of 2009), Kyra Sedgwick (who's married to the Woodsman), Keith Jardine, Milo Ventimiglia, John Leguizamo and the man with the best voice in the universe... Keith David (playing Agent KEITH)! I nearly pissed my pants when he walked onscreen, but it was too bad that he was only in one or two scenes.

I more or less enjoyed this as much as Crank 2. It's certainly dumb and certainly senseless, but on some afternoons, I just need something like this to turn my brain off to. It's out on DVD now and if you want plain old silly action, then a rent wouldn't hurt. Til next time, later geeks!



Categories: action , gamer , movies