My 7 days of fasting of video games and anything prowrestling related completed this past Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 11:15 pm EST. I talked about it in a previous post, and I'm happy to say it finished without incident.

It was tough for the first 2 days but afterwards, was more easier. I was telling some friends the other day about it. Avoiding the temptation to game was much easier than it was to avoid the temptation of wrestling. Following wrestling is such a routine part of my day that made it all the harder to avoid. It sounds kind of crazy and maybe stupid, I know. Avoiding gaming was easy because there are steps to go through before getting to the game. But to me, avoiding wrestling industry related news would be analogous to avoiding all mainstream news for a week (ie. TV news, newspapers, news websites, radio, etc). I have the sites bookmarked on my bookmarks toolbar, and many times I was tempted to click them, although never going through.

Here's a list of some of things that I accomplished:
-studied the bible a bit more
-finished Chris Jericho's biography, A Lion's Tale
-started on a book on economics called The Accidental Theorist by Paul Krugman
-played more guitar
-searched for jobs
-caught up on a bunch of movies that I never got around to (some new ones and some revisits)

It seems like I'm missing a few things (which may be the case, it's late right now), but I think those are most of them. There were long stretches of boredom where I'd just lie down and think about life. Thinking back at the week now, I don't even know where all the time went.

The fast came to end at an appropriate time; I planned ahead before the fast to visit my friend Skylar over in Waterloo (about 1.5 hour drive west from Toronto). Our friend Ben, who was in town as well joined us and it was good times in catching up with my brothers in Christ.


We talked about all sorts of stuff, ate some burgers (Montreal steak sauce is the key apparently, [they ruled Skylar!]), and then got down to business... Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne. We own3d some with Wintermaul War maps and then got pwn3d in playing several games of DOTA. This lasted 6 hours straight, finishing at around 3 in the morning. It felt good being in the company of my brothers who I don't get to see too often, a glorious way to end a week of fasting.


Anyhow, that's it for now, I'm pretty tired from the intense epicness of last night. Until next time, later geeks!

Categories: fasting , life stuff

(Author's Note: this game was completed 2 weeks ago, pre-fasting!).

GTAIV is the shit. It took near 70 hours to do it, but I finally did it: I achieved 100% game completion. There were some tasks that were so frustrating that I wanted to pull out my hair at times (the 200 pigeons, for those in the know). That being said, the times of joy greatly outweighed the times of frustrations.

My only real complaint about the game is that the difficulty is a bit too easy. That is, all the story related missions (which doesn't include the afforementioned pigeons). The missions don't vary too much from the standard capturing & delivering something, assassinating someone or a combination of the two. Add auto-aiming into your controls and the whole process becomes cake. Even my sister was saying to me, "I don't hear much yelling or swearing from you, this game must be too easy". I should add that she takes joy in seeing me suffer through gaming (side note: in this case Dead Rising would be her favourite).

Honestly, if I were to write everything that I liked in this game, it would have to span over 10 posts or something ridiculous. So instead of boring you with so many fine details, I'm just going to list my 3 favourite things about the game.

1. The City Design - When Liberty City first loaded up, I was taken aback by how good it looked. It was so lively and atmospheric, it reminded me what it felt like to be in New York City. Basically they laid out the city in a similar fashion as NYC, albeit a truncated version. The boroughs that you explore in this game were designed almost identically as their reality counterparts, ie. Broker (Brooklyn), Bohan (Bronx), Dukes (Queens), Algonquin (Manhattan), and even Alderney (New Jersey). They even include many of the sites that you'd find in New York, ie. Middle Park (Central Park), Chinatown, the Statue of Happiness (Liberty), just to name a few. All in all, they add up to give a real feeling to the game. The city is full of life, where the streets are crowded with traffic during the day to the quieter nights, where Liberty City's skyline becomes more prominent. Simply beautiful.

2. The Story - What was great about the story was how it played out so much like a movie. Credit must be given to the direction as well. The opening sequence in the game says it all; it's something you would expect from the opening in a crime and/or action movie. Instead of being a typical GTA-rise to power story, GTAIV opts to keep Niko, our protagonist, more humble through his encounters with Liberty City's underbelly. Yes, he gets more and more money as the game progresses but he doesn't care about power or any of that; all he wants is to live a free life in America.

3. The Characters - The looks, mannerisms and voices of the characters is what truly brings the game to life. Throughout the game you'll meet a flurry of characters all unique and distinct from each other; characters even have their own gait! My favourite characters (besides Niko) have to be Roman, Niko's fat and lovable Russian cousin, and Little Jacob, the pot smoking, pot dealing rastafarian. Both of these NPC's are a joy to have in your company and the dialogue they exchange with Niko is priceless. Aside from all the main and supporting characters, careful design was also given to all the pedestrians and civilians throughout Liberty City; all with their own attitudes and dialogues (they hate it when you steal their cars, but they turn into chicken-shit once you fire a bullet into the air... or into their arm).

Anyhow, there's a million other things I love about the game but if I talked about them, this post would become too long. Yes, probably too short of a review for a game so jampacked, so let's just say it rules!!! Later geeks!

Categories: gaming , gta 4 , xbox 360

I'd like to start off by saying that I love movies (as if you didn't know) but I've never gone to a midnight screening before. It was a pretty awesome time, but I was kind of tired when we arrived at the theater (we were painting the church walls earlier in the evening). There were more people than I was anticipating, it was near sold out when we got there. Already a line was built up, but thankfully we got pretty good seats, though we arrived an hour before the midnight show. It was quite a wild time, a theater full of rampant geeks. Yet they weren't geeky-geeks in the typical fashion, they were more rough neck geeks; the type of geeks that watch SpikeTV and follow the UFC... my kinda crowd! Anyhow, enough of that.

In regards to the movie, I don't quite understand what the critics are clamoring about. Right now on Rottentomatoes, it's sitting at 33% (37 positive reviews out of 117) while Wolverine is at 37% (83 positive out of 225). I can honestly say that I was entertained by Terminator at least tenfolds more than Wolverine. I read all the reviews on AICN before seeing the movie (most of them negative), but the one positive from Massawyrm, said that 90% of the movie was action. I had zero problems with that.

The movie takes place post-Judgement Day (from the end of T3) and joins John Connor and his Resistance as they battle the evil SkyNet. The movie equally follows a mysterious convict named Marcus, who was put to death years ago before the apocolyptic Judgement Day occured. As it turns out, they are both trying to get to Kyle Reese (Connor's would be dad) and work together to breach SkyNet.

I will agree with the critics in saying that the plot is thin, but I think it more than makes up for it in all the action. And the action here is done well! Once it starts, it doesn't let down. There are a few moments to allow you to catch your breath but during these scenes, you're just anticipating more for the next set piece.

One thing that did bug me though involved what should have been a huge twist in the story. For the first half, there's this buildup to something that would be revealed of one of the characters, but unfortunately, this piece of information is revealed clearly in the trailers, removing a lot of the suspense and shock that would have occured otherwise. I think it would have been such an awesome moment had I not known about it from the trailer. I'm not going to say what it is if you don't know, but if you don't remember, I suggest you don't watch the trailer or it'll ruin what should have been a good surprise.

For me, what helped make the action so good was with the cinematography and the design of the machines. Much credit has to go to the directors of photography, Michael Fitzgerald and Shane Hurlbut (the latter who was at the short end of Christian Bale's now infamous screaming tirade). In shooting the movie, they used a low palette of colours to make their earth look more barren. Some of the higher profile scenes seemed to employ a lower frame rate to give it more of a rugged look. Combined together, it gives quite a gritty and raw effect onscreen, which you can see from the trailers as well.

All the different machines or robots was definitely the highlite of the movie for me. In Salvation, we get to see various models in the T-line (in the past we've seen T-800, T-1000, T-X). What makes it more cooler is that you can see how each progressive model gets better and better, both aesthetically and intellectually. The older T-600 models are nothing but dumb drones and you can see by their look that they've gone rusty and obsolete. My favourite one was this gigantic, building-sized robot that harvested humans. This fucker was humongous and seemingly unstoppable. In addition to all the firepower on hand, he also had these backup motorcycle dudes attached to his legs that he would unleash on to the oncoming survivors. We also get a cameo from one of the prototype T-800s, it was a crowd favourite moment, judging by the cheers.

This movie would definitely be a fun watch on Blu-Ray with surround sound. I can't wait to see it in high-def. Anyhow, just to end off, I thought it interesting that on it's IMDB profile, fans have voted in and given it an 8.3 out of 10 rating, from 2686 votes. I feel vindicated. But hey, what do we know? Later geeks!

Categories: action , movies , terminator

"See it with someone you ****".

What a tagline.

Amidst all the summer blockbusters opening this season, Steven Soderbergh's latest will open quietly into limited screens this weekend.

The Girlfriend Experience doesn't have a storyline in the conventional sense; instead it opts to show a certain slice of life. In this case, the life we get to witness is that of a high-end call girl (or escort) and how she struggles to keep on top of things (no pun intended) while maintaining a relationship with a steady boyfriend, which apparently is a rare thing for women in her profession. We also get to see life from his perspective as he struggles to stay on top of his game as a personal trainer.

Interestingly enough, the backdrop of the movie is set against the 2008 US presidential election. There is constant talk about the economy, the recession and Obama's likely victory. It's a clever way of symbolizing a sense of hope in the middle of all the darkness, which seems to parallel the lives of the two main characters.

Soderbergh made some interesting decisions in terms of casting in this film. He hired an adult actress (Sasha Grey) to play the lead Chelsea and a real life personal trainer (Chris Santos) to play her personal trainer boyfriend, Chris. Grey, having no mainstream acting experience holds her own in the lead role, but I think its Chris (who has had zero experience) that really stands out and shows emotion in his role.

After its premiere at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, Soderbergh did a panel discussion where he talked about how people have this desire to see celebrities in sexual situations onscreen. With Experience, he wanted to see if he could create the reverse effect by using someone who is more known for her openness in her sexual exploits and placing her in a role where she is more vulnerable and emotionally intimate.

Soderbergh continues to be an interesting director, moving back and forth between bigger budget high-acclaim films (Ocean's 11-13, Traffic, Erin Brockovich) to smaller profile films (like Girlfriend Experience and Bubble). This movie was shot on a budget of $1.7 million over a course of 17 days. He shoots this movie with finesse and with Manhattan as its principle location, appears very lush onscreen. The movie is made almost in a documentary type style making the movie seem all the more real.

If you want to take a breather from all the blockbusters going on and give your eyes a rest from all the CG, give The Girlfriend Experience a shot if it's playing in your town. Later geeks.

Categories: movies , steven soderbergh , the girlfriend experience

Last week my friend told me that she was fasting from television for a week and I thought it interesting because I was thinking about fasting the past few weeks. When I was wondering about what I should fast, food came to mind first. Usually people sacrifice food for a few days, but then I thought, sure I could do without food for a day or two but it just wouldn't have that same oomph that my other poisons would. I'd have to say that the two most time consuming activities these past few months would be gaming and prowrestling. I was weighing out which one of these should I give up for a week. Then today I thought, you know what, God deserves the best of me, I've gotta give up both. So effective at 11:15 pm, Monday May 17th, 2009, I will sacrifice gaming and wrestling for 7 calendar days.

For those of you who don't know, since I graduated university last year, I've been job searching. It hasn't been quite successful yet but I remain hopeful. I'm hoping to use this time to concentrate more on the search (although I'm doing all I can at the moment) as well as studying up on the Word for wisdom and to challenge myself for God.

When I say wrestling, it does involve all the additional activities involved too. In case you think this all sounds trivial, let me give a projection of how many hours I will save during the week. The hours are based on trends of the past few weeks:

Wrestling-related:
3x Wrestling Shows (Raw, SD!, TNA Impact) = 6 hours
TNA Sacrifice PPV (on May 24th) = 3 hours
Reading F4W + WON newsletters = 1.5 hours
F4W/WO Radio Shows (2x Bryan and Vinny + 2 bonus listens, 3 Wrestling Observer Radios, 1 Figure Four Daily) = ~7 hours
Live Audio Wrestling radio show = 2 hours
Wasting time on F4W BOARD~! = ~2.5 hours

Gaming-related:
Team Fortress 2 (approx. 1 hour per day) = 7 hours
Xbox 360 gaming (approx 1.5 hour per day) = 10.5 hours
PSP gaming (approx. 1 hour per play, but not everyday) = 4 hours
other random gaming (Defense Grid, Plants vs Zombies, WC3) = 3 hours

Total Hours from above: 46.5 hours!

That is kind of scary come to think of it. Although in actuality the number is probably lower, closer to high-20's or low 30's, as usually I'm doing a number of them simultaneously. Regardless of, post-fast I'll have to work on cutting things down. I think it's funny that I'm going to be missing the TNA PPV next weekend, aptly titled Sacrifice. Yes, I'm sacrificing Sacrifice.

I'll have to write a follow-up post upon completion. It'll be interesting to see how this goes. Anyhow, take care for now. Later geeks!

Categories: fasting , life stuff

Why, oh, why?

All I can say is, Bryan Singer left the franchise at the right time. He really opened the door for Marvel movies with the first X-Men, and expanded upon that with the epic X2: X-Men United. Then it went downhill with The Rat's marginal X-Men 3: Last Stand and now Gavin Hood's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I don't know where he went wrong... Hood's last 2 movies were fantastic (Rendition and Tsotsi).

This movie is an origin story to the Wolverine character from the X-Men movies. It follows Wolverine and his brother Victor (Sabretooth) as they grow up and fight together to the eventual fallout and rivalry between the two. Major Strkyer (from X2) plays a pivotal role as the man who forms a secret operative team for the government, and in doing so hires the brothers. Wolverine has disagreements with the team and leaves to start a life of his own in Canada. However, trouble soon finds him.

During the opening credits, they do this montage of scenes of where Sabretooth and Wolverine fight together in a bunch of wars within the last century. I was thinking to myself, THIS is the movie I want to see, forget the "origin" stuff. How cool would it be to watch Wolverine fight a bunch of Nazi's, and plus, they can tie-in with the comic book story of how he fights back to back with Captain America... easily introducing him for the upcoming Avengers movie!

I'm going into spoiler territory in the next few sections, be warned.

**** Spoilers ahead. ****

There were too many loopholes in the story. The first stupid thing is with the faked death of Kayla. How could Wolverine, with his superhuman sense of smell, not detect that it wasn't her blood that she was drenched in. And moreover, she wasn't wounded by Sabretooth but drugged, so how foolish was Wolverine then to not check to see if she had any wounds. Surely that would have provided a huge scent.

Another misstep was regarding Stryker's plan to take Wolverine's powers. If it was his plan all along to make a Weapon XI, then why all the fuss with fusing Wolverine's bones with adamantium? He just created an indestructible beast. I told this to my friend Matt after the movie finished. He suggested that perhaps Stryker was testing Wolverine's limits too see how much pain he could withstand. It's plausible, but if this is the case, then shame on the writers for not making it more clear. And if that were true, how stupid was Stryker for completely depleting themselves of adamantium.

One last plot hole, what exactly was Sabretooth's motive? When he went on the killing spree, did he "kill" Kayla in revenge for Logan dropping out of the military group? But no it can't be, because it was a ruse to trick him in letting Stryker take his power. So why after this is all revealed does Sabretooth want to attack Wolverine? It's pretty flimsy and again I blame the script and the writers.

The last thing that annoyed me was some of the shoddy CG work in the movie. There are scenes where the effects look half-assed and its doubly baffling because in the previous three movies, the effects were fine. Two scenes in particular stood out. The first is when Wolverine is in the bathroom looking at his new metal claws... tell me that's not amatuerish work. That had it right before, what happened? The other one would be the youthful appearance of a clearly CG'd Professor X. It was laughable. I'm sure there are more that you could point out, but those stood out for me.

**** End spoilers. ****

If you skipped the above section, all I said was that there plot holes that bothered me and CG effects that were horrible. It didn't help me like the movie at all.

But, I'm not too full of hate. There were performances in the movie that I liked. In particular Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth and surprisingly, Will.I.Am who played John Wraith (a black cowboy dude who was like Nightcrawler). I thought Schreiber really brought out the gritty attitude of Sabretooth despite the poor script he had to work with. Will.I.Am really surprised me only because he's known more for his singing than his acting (to which he's done basically none). He seemed like a really likeable character so it's too bad that he had to bite the dust.

In an interview with Hood, he's hinted that there may be a sequel in the works and that it will take Wolverine to Japan, which is a storyline from the comics. Hopefully that will please the die-hard fanboys after this atrocity.

Anyhow, what the critics wrote about this movie was correct: save your money and go see Star Trek. Thankfully, me and my friends went on a Tuesday and only had to pay $4.99. It was worth exactly that.

Later geeks!

Categories: action , movies , superheroes , wolverine , x-men

Dragonball Evolution

There are just some properties that shouldn't be made into movies. Case in point, Dragonball Evolution.

You need only look at the source material to know that it's gonna be a bad idea to convert it into a movie. The Dragonball canon is so rich and full of depth, that an oversimplified and watered down version would just not work. And not to mention we have a bunch of caucasian actors playing what seemingly are asian-ish (I think at least) characters... way to go Fox!

The action was horrible, the dialogue was heinous, and the acting was a joke. A disaster. Everyone's acting was over-the-top and cartoony... for their sake, I hope it was purposely done that way.

The only credit I can give this movie is that I didn't fall asleep through it... sometimes I surprise myself.

And why was it called Evolution anyways? The only thing that evolved was my boredom.


Fast & Furious

"New Model, Original Parts."

That was the tagline used to promote the latest installment in the Fast & Furious series. This time around, they've gathered up and dusted off the cast from the original movie (seriously, what good have either 4 done in the past few years?).

I enjoyed this movie more than I had any right to. I wanted a high action, low-thinking, adrenaline filled cinematic, and I received it. No, I did not go in with any real expectations. Knowing that the movie only scored 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew I could not expect much. Yet after watching the movie, I can't help but disagree with at least those 22% of reviews... it deserved 50% I think.

I mean, this is a F&F movie; you can't go in expecting an intricate plot or Oscar-worthy performances. It's lowbrow entertainment, and it succeeds at that level. For an hour and a half, I turned my brain off, and was thoroughly entertained.


Push

When Push originally came out this past winter, I dismissed it as this year's Jumper (a huge dud from last year's winter).

In a way, this movie is features the X-Men's mutants, except that they don't call themselves mutants. Depending on what type of power they had, they each had their own gimmicky sort of class names, ie. sniffers, watchers, movers, and so forth (someone actually compiled a list on Wikipedia).

In short, this movie is about a bunch of "mutants" chasing after a briefcase. The briefcase contains some sort of serum that's supposed to enhance the mutants, but could be lethal as well. Well, whatever the case, it's not really that important, it's all just a MacGuffin.

The film was helmed by Paul McGuigan who did Lucky Number Slevin and Wicker Park, both of which I enjoyed, so it wasn't much of a surprise that I enjoyed this (even if marginally). HOWEVER, of these three, this one would be the least liked. If I had to give it a number, it'd be 6 out 10.

I couldn't really care for the plot and the acting was passable, but what I enjoyed was the gritty visual style and shaky-cam filming. It's almost like watching a Bourne-movie about people with powers. Combined with filming in Hong Kong, with its bright lights and neon backgrounds, the style works great and helps to really give it a visceral edge.

Plotwise, the final act of the movie suffers due to the convoluted plot that our heroes scheme together.

Oh yah and I don't like Dakota Fanning.

Categories: action , dragonball , fast and furious , movies , push

This past Sunday at church service, the pastor started off his sermon showing a few works from this street artist named Banksy.

Banksy is a mysterious artist, almost like a ninja. His works consist of drawing, stenciling and graffiti'ing in public places, mostly on the street, yet no one has seen his or her face, or caught him or her in the act of putting up his art. So his/her true identity to this day is still a mystery. Supposedly, Banksy is from Bristol, England, but that is yet to be confirmed. He/she does travel around the world placing his art around several countries.

His works are often satirical making statements on society, culture and politics in general. Browsing through his displayed works, you can see that he/she really likes using rats as a symbolic device.

Anyhow, I've browsed through his website and posted here some of my favourites of his works.

Check out all the other works by Banksy on his/her website found (here). Some really cool stuff within! Later geeks.

Categories: art , banksy

This past weekend, the Steam network offered an amazing deal to its members. For $10 you could purchase The Orange Box (which includes Half Life 2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, HL2: Lost Coast, Team Fortress 2 and Portal). What a deal! Six games for $10. I couldn't pass on it.

Admittedly, when Orange Box first came out, I was pretty indifferent to it. I never heard people talk about the other games included, it was always Team Fortress 2. The visual style was definitely interesting, but it didn't really speak to me. Two of my roommates at the time, bought it on launch day and they played the shit out of that game, all day and all night.

Anyhow, I own it now and I'm hooked. On the first night I played TF2 til 3 in the morning. I should tell you also that I don't like playing games late into the night; I usually like reading, watching TV, blogging and/or Sudoku'ing. That said, TF2 grabbed me by the balls and didn't let me go. I started off as a below average player (on the bottom of my team's list) and ended the night by becoming average (near the middle and sometimes near the top).

As I mentioned, the visual style is unique, almost like something out of a Pixar movie (think The Incredibles). It's a slapstick cartoon style with harmless cartoon violence.

Of the maps I've played so far, the mission objectives range from capturing all the points of interest, retrieving enemy intelligence briefcases and pushing a cart to its end path. This game is much more n00b friendly than other Valve games. With Counterstrike, there can be imbalance in the team if there were even one pro-skilled player running amok. In Day of Defeat though there's more of a sense of teamwork than CS, the gameplay does rely more on precision since it's almost a one-hit kill affair. In TF2, the gameplay is leaned more towards having a well-balanced team with cohesiveness. Skill level doesn't seem to matter as much as working together to complete objectives. Of the many classes in the game, there isn't one that rises above all the others. Instead, all are pretty much needed in order to become a successful team.

There are 9 playable classes, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. I'll list them here in order of my favourites:

1. Heavy - The Heavy is this big fat Russian dude who carries around this massive chain machine gun, aptly named Natasha (you can get Sascha, her companion too). He's my favourite simply because you hold Mouse 1 and point at stuff. He has the most health of all the classes. The main drawbacks are that he can go through ammo really quick and his movement is the slowest.

2. Medic - The medic is a support character and plays an important role for the team as its sole healer class. What's even cooler is that in one life, if you heal for a long enough time, your "uber charge" meter will rise. Once it's at full charge, you can unleash it on a teammate, which allows the both of you to be invulnerable for about 10 seconds. Quite deadly.

3. Pyro - A shorter range offensive class. The pyro runs around with a flamethrower, scorching opponents and dealing damage over time. The pyro is also important in that his flamethrower is the main spy detector.

4. Demo Man - Basically, the explosions expert. His first gun drops pipe bombs that explode upon impact and his second gun shoots sticky bombs that you can trigger when you want to explode.

5. Sniper - Yes.

6. Engineer - Another useful class. He gathers scrap metal to build support devices: dispenser (gives allies ammo and health), teleporters and sentry machine guns.

7. Soldier - An offensive class who uses an RPG as his main weapon.

8. Scout - The fast moving scout! His movement is fastest out of all the classes plus he can double jump. He's useful for mission objectives as he completes them at I think twice the rate of other classes.

9. Spy - The Spy is an interesting class. He has the ability to cloak and disguise himself as a member of the opposite team. This is the most annoying class for me to fight against. I can't ever tell when someone's a spy and then they backstab me when it's too late. I haven't played as the Spy yet, so I can't rank it any higher.



Anyhow, after a week, I'm still enjoying the game. I've improved a lot since I started. I'm playing mostly on the Stompfest servers, so if you see a dude named "Super Rabbi" make sure to say "Shalom!" to me. Later geeks!





Categories: gaming , shooters , team fortress

The trailer to the Peter Jackson produced District 9 was released this weekend, attached to the Wolverine movie. I'm not sure how the movie will play out, but the trailer is in a mockumentary style. The scenes of South Africa are really visceral, I can't wait to see how this plays out. It definitely tricked me when I was watching it.

Check it out in glorious Quicktime here: District 9.

Categories: district 9 , movies , trailers