Wonky little shitbag

Prior to my watching the wholly disappointing movie that was Sublime, I was talking to some of my friends about it and how it would supposedly kill parts of me I didn't know I had. One such friend said that description reminded her of a book that had a similar effect on her. I forgot about it, because my memory sucks like that, especially after the movie sucked so much ass. But one day, she comes into the call boards (I hang out with theater people as the resident English major), and she hands me the book. Last night, I was feeling particularly bored with Nick@Nite being delayed due to the Kid's Choice Awards, so I started to read.

Crooked Litte Vein by Warren Ellis is a first-person detective story written by a British comic book artist. The story follows Michael McGill who has been hired by the White House Chief of Staff to find a secret US Constitution that has the power to erase all the perversion from the country. He meets up with a little nympho college student, Trix, who becomes his assistant/ sidekick/fuck-buddy as they travel the country diving into some seriously fucked up stuff that--I will say now--definitely had the potential to kill me a little inside.

The writing was great, as far as I'm concerned. Very big on detail, funny quips, and he has so many ways to describe a way someone smiles it's almost unnerving. His dialog between characters is great, from McGill talking with a serial killer on a plane to his chapter-long back-and-forth with Trix. I had to remind myself I wasn't reading a Chuck Palahniuk novel, the style was very similar, But Ellis had one thing that Chuck never will, and thats the ability to be tragic. I mean, Chuck Palahniuk has tragic moments and all that, but they're bookended by sardonic nihilism which is his style and that's why I love him, but the tragic moments in this were amazing. As were the touching moments, and we mustn't forget the fact that I am literally convinced that Warren Ellis was writing about me. Mike McGill is called a shit magnet--someone who has all those big awful things that everyone experiences once in their lives happen to him all the goddamn time. He is the guy who falls for the girl who likes him, wants him, and sleeps with him, but won't stop being with everyone else either. And he reacts the same way I would! I mean, seriously, I literally kept reading to find out whether or not I die at the end.

The book didn't always follow proper grammar, but it was part of the style! There was one run-on sentence that literally went for about a page, explaining Boyfriend Things, but it was brilliant. The end of the book was a bit of a let-down for me. The writing still descriptive and engaging, but the style was lost. It picked up here and there, but the ending, while very clever and kind of unexpected, lacked the wit of the rest of the story. Except the last chapter, which was all of two paragraphs and funny as hell.

So, with the help of my friend and a two-year-old novel, I finally found something that killed a tiny little piece of me inside. Fuck that piece, who needs it? Besides, you know, people with hearts, feelings, love, or dreams.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Shitt

As can be seen on the bar to the right and as I have mentioned, Metal Gear Solid 4 is my personal pick for best game of 2008. The stealth play was great and engaging, as were the first play-through where I decided guns solved the answers to all questions. A very--and I mean very--close runner up was Fallout 3. I loved The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the thought of Oblivion with guns and post-apocalyptic goodness excited me to no end. I waited countless hours at the local game store--not even my store, mind you--to get a pre-street dated copy as their shipments came sooner in the week, but later in the day. When Operation: Anchorage came out, I gobbled it up right before my 360 red-ringed. And now, the latest DLC has been released and re-released because of glitching and I couldn't wait to dive in.


The Pitt takes you out of the wastes of Washington DC and puts you in the rubble of Pittsburgh. As with Operation: Anchorage, the quest line is started with a radio signal you picked up via your PipBoy, which while it seems to repeat a few times, it is infinitely better than the Oblivion method of adding DLC quests by "A messenger brought you a deed to a place your long-lost relative left to you." But you find yourself at the very top of the map buying some slaves, taking their clothes, and then taking a train cart to Pittsburgh which is now known as The Pitt and posing as a slave so you can eventually find a cure for radiation poisoning. It all makes sense in the game, I swear.

The game is still fantastic, as always, and the new DLC shares all the good graphics, writing, humor, and style of the rest of the original Fallout 3. Length-wise, it only took me about five hours and I could have done it significantly sooner if I didn't spend so much time looking for all one hundred steel ingots. Speaking of which, I am the kind of gamer achievements were made for, but I hate collection achievements. Twenty bobbleheads was a pain enough, but one hundred steel ingots was just stupid and unfair, even though they were all in the same area. But anyway, the length of the DLC was a bit longer than Operation: Anchorage, but not by much, and it has the added benefit of being able to be returned to at any time throughout the game despite what ending you choose. And the scenery of Pittsburgh, while doesn't offer the vastness of the Capital Wasteland, does give an appreciated change. But, as with most games you've beaten the hell out of, once it's over, it's over.

The DLC is definitely worth the 800 Microsoft Points ($10), and I would suggest it to anyone who has the game and Xbox Live. Now I just wish I had some MS Points left over so I could download Don't Stop Believin' for Rock Band this coming week.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Bo Burns Ham

As previously stated, I spend a lot of time on the internet. When friends of mine also spend time here, we double our efficiency at finding and sharing ridiculous and funny things. About three years ago, I was shown a YouTube video by a friend who said he used to hang out with this kid's older brother. This kid was pretty funny, at least the first few times you listen to it. Come to find out, he's on Comedy Central now and has an EP on iTunes and a full-length album in stores. Of course, I knew this, because I follow it and I've seen the kid at the local Denny's.

Bo Burnham, the cleverly named album by Bo Burnham has four studio tracks book ending a live performance. The kid is like, eighteen and has the same agent as Drew Carey and Dave Chapelle, so he must be doing something right. All the guitar and piano is played by Bo himself and he sings and writes his own songs. On a whole, the album is amusing, but I per usual have some piss to drain out of it before I'm willing to accept that it's decent enough to listen to.

Every song (except for the untitled bonus track) has been somewhere on the internet or his EP Bo Fo' Sho. The studio tracks are pretty solid and not overly produced as All My Family was on the EP. The live tracks, while funny, have some issues that seriously need to be pointed out.

First issue was with his live performance of his Bo Fo Sho rap song with no background music. I understand how this may have to be done live if he isn't playing a keyboard with built in beats, but it was seriously lacking--especially when he paused every other line waiting for the laughs. Rap is quick-paced and something you need to pay attention to to hear all the words and all the quips. Pausing in the middle, while is tolerable in his other songs, just breaks the flow of his raps. And if he couldn't play the piano part of Bo Fo Sho, why was it there in I'm Bo Yo?

Songs like Love Is... and The Perfect Woman are too close in proximity, because they are both "love songs" but are still good songs. His comedic remarks in between songs is pretty snappy and funny if not wholly inappropriate but I think that's what he's going for. The "Dicks and vaginas are kind of like Coke and Pepsi..." one was good, as with his lead into Klan Kookout. Ending the show on A Love Ballad was kind of lame, as it's not really a great finish. Think of Stephen Lynch if he ended on Taxi Driver instead of If I Were Gay.

I bought the album on iTunes, so I missed out on the DVD that has his Comedy Central special along with all his YouTube videos, but the meat of the album is the music anyway. As a whole, the album is pretty decent and worth a listen as long as you're not subjecting yourself to it over and over trying to show all your friends who are just now hearing it for the first time.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

NEXT TIME (hopefully): Fallout 3: The Pitt

How to be an asshole

This review every day thing is going to end soon, with spring break coming to a close and with school starting up, as with my job and and exams and all the crap that life regularly throws at me. Plus, I've been asked to write some tech reviews for The Silver Onion. But before I go back to the life of a student working as a shift manager at a game store, I'd write one last daily review on a film I wish I had seen before because Simon Pegg is one of my favorite actors.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) is a film inspired by a memoir of the same name written by Toby Young. The memoir was about a real failure to succeed in magazine, as is the film was about a fictional failure peppered with romance, sex, drugs, and Simon Pegg being a douchebag. It also stars Kirstin Dunst as a love interest, Megan Fox as a sex interest, Jeff Bridges as the boss, Danny Huston as a prick, and Gillian Anderson as a bitch. The film was directed by an American, Robert B. Weide, which actually took me by surprise. The beginning had some really good and entirely stylistically British directing choices, with quick wipes, changing directions, blur, and other things found in other Simon Pegg films (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), and Snatch. After all the effort Weide put in to appear British, he quickly gave it up for a kind of uninspired typical directing job that can be found from turning on your every day sitcom or hospital drama--not that there's much different between them anymore.

The writing by Peter Straughan is a playwrite by trade, and it kind of shows. A lot of the lines were overwritten, too much emphasis on certain twists and they would have translated much better on stage as opposed to the screen. Other things about the writing were really good, but still a bit too over-the-top to make it really agreeable to watch. Simon Pegg is obviously a not nice person, with a title like How to Lose Friends and Alienate People--something I can obviously relate to--the cruelty and complete lack of respect for authority and personal space is still overly done. I consider myself quite the miscreant and find myself surrounded by people who would do the same, and even on our worst days when our filter is at its weakest those things would still not come out of our mouths.

I saw this movie because Simon Pegg is in it. I loved him in both the films he did with Edgar Wright, enjoyed Run Fatboy Run, even as the directorial debut from Ross of Friends, and he kicked ass as The Editor in an episode of Doctor Who. So, obviously I enjoyed his performance. Kirstin Dunst is someone else who I will typically enjoy, despite constantly being casted in the same role of "put-offish girl who wants nothing to do with guy until she realizes he's actually better in every way, etc etc." The rest of the acting was good, but what do you expect with that cast? Those are all very talented actors. Except Megan Fox. She's just good looking.

The soundtrack was maybe my favorite part of it, with The Kinks, the Scissor Sisters, Motorhead, and even a bit of La Dolce Vita. One of the funnier moments in the film involves Simon Pegg, a hermaphrodite, and Ace of Spades. Put it together.

The film to me was a rather large disappointment, as I really like Simon Pegg and it's sad to see him put something out that was so bad. The Sunday Times said How to Lose Friends & Alienate People "had more laughs than any British comedy to appear over the past decade." They're wrong. They're always going to be wrong. In Bruges had more laughs than that did and it wasn't even a comedy. Maybe they weren't around for Pegg's first two big movies, but they were way funnier than this piece of garbage. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg need to team up again, damnit.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

PS - Don't take my opening bit as saying I won't be reviewing anymore. It just won't be at such a high frequency.
EO

Guild'd

I live on the internet, mostly. I like reading internet comics (Penny Arcade being a favorite), watching YouTube videos, and posting on Facebook and LiveJournal and wherever people will listen to me. I've been recommended one particular internet sitcom by people I work with, family, and even Xbox Live Marketplace.

The Guild started as the brain child of actress Felicia Day who has been in nothing that I'm even aware of save for a few episodes of Buffy (blame my ex-girlfriend), an episode of House I haven't seen yet, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog that my little brother won't get off my ass about having not seen yet.

The show is in its second season with each episode running three to seven minutes in length. It features Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Amy Okuda, Sandeep Parikh, Vincent Caso, and Robin Thorsen as members of an unspecified MMORPG guild known as The Knights of Good run by Vork (Jeff Lewis). The show takes the main perspective of Codex as played by Felicia Day, and each episode starts with her recording her video blog. The first line of the whole series is laugh-out-loud funny, when Codex says, "I got fired from my job. My therapist...broke up with me." Of course, you find out that through the odd linguistic uses they appear to be using in the show that "broke up with" means that she was dropped as a patient, but it was still funny. All of her problems stem from her gaming addiction despite her desire for a normal life--something I'm sure a lot of us can relate to. The funny starts when her guild-mate Zaboo as played by Sandeep Parikh shows up at her doorstep and proceeds to make himself at home and moving forward in an imaginary romantic relationship he feels he has with Codex.

With each episode being less than ten minutes, there are obviously some episodes that are a little short on laughs. The jokes are hugely oriented towards MMO players or just gamers in general, so if you're not inclined to that kind of humor it will probably be a bit lost on you. The directing done by two no-name directors Jane Morgan and Greg Bensen is pretty good considering it's just an internet program. The acting of the gamers is different for everyone with the only really likable character being Codex. Vork is a loner tight-wad who runs the guild professionally, Tinkerballa as played by Amy Okuda is a huge bitch, Zaboo is a delusional socially awkward kid, Bladezz (Vincent Caso) is a horny asshole who steals the guild's gold and items, and Clara as played by Robin Thorsen is an awful inattentive mother. Then there's Codex, who is socially awkward and spends far too much time behind a computer, but longs for the real life and even tries bringing the guild together in the "material realm."

As a gamer, I appreciate the series and I even find myself eagerly awaiting the third season. However, I do hate MMORPGs and seeing the awkwardness I am so familiar in seeing in my friends on television softens the blow a bit. But the show really is a toss up whether you like it or not. My roommate plays a lot of games but thought the series was god awful and would roll his eyes when he saw me continue watching it. The humor is subjective and the story-lines are kind of silly, but the characters are very human and crazy and flawed which makes for a lot of funny. Plus, since all the episodes are on youtube, the official website, and free downloads on the Xbox Live Marketplace you owe it to yourself to check it out if even for the off chance that you might enjoy it.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Ymagine

At the top of this page, it can plainly be seen that this review blog/site/thing is meant to review all things. From movies, video games, and music to car shops other things I come across in life. Here is a critical review of a rather stupid choice made by a television network.

Again, someone has put a Y where it just doesn't belong. It didn't belong in "Kym" in Rachel Getting Married and it doesn't belong in Science Fiction either, unless you are describing something as "science fiction-y."

Sci Fi Channell announced the other day that they will be changing their brand name to "SyFy" in effort to dash away their association with "geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that," says TV historian Tim Brooks. Um. What?

As a long-time viewer and fan of the network, I feel like I should be offended by this. I mean, I'm not, because I don't get offended that easily, but what the hell? You air Star Trek: Enterprise for Christ's sake, widely considered to be the worst Star Trek series--even by real Trek fans. You air Doctor Who, which I love, and you're going to tell me you're not Sci Fi even though you air some of the longest running science fiction series ever? Mr. Brooks also said "when people who say they don't like science fiction enjoy a film like Star Wars, they don't think it's science fiction; they think it's a good movie." These people are just as wrong as you, Timothy. It doesn't matter if they don't THINK it's science fiction; it just IS science fiction. Genres are not up to subjective interpretation. Would you listen to the The Ramones and decide they're heavy metal because you don't like punk music? If so, the X is in the corner. Press it.

SpikeTV airs a lot of "geeky" shows and movies. They air Star Wars once a month! They air lots of Star Trek series, as well as CSI which you can't tell me isn't geeky; it's all science. Spike has a lot of other stuff though, being "men's television" with shows about death and sex and UFC and all that jazz. Sci Fi has two regularly airing shows that don't qualify as science fiction: ECW and Ultimate Gamer--both of which are very geeky in their own rights.

What's worse is what Dave Howe, the company's president said when they polled their 18-34 demographic."When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is how you'd text it. It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise." You are not cooler because you made a mistake that happens to be what you wanted to achieve. SyFy is still a stupid spelling in texting just as it would be on television.

I'm probably the only person who gets pissed off at this type of thing, but I'm a writer. I've been writing for my whole life and I can't just turn off the part of me that flinches when I hear people speak incorrectly or can't bear to read manuscripts by people who have no grasp of grammar. I just can't do it.

What's more is this: I'm a nerd. And I'm okay with that. If I wasn't a nerd I wouldn't be throwing my opinions of pretty nerdy things on the internet. I remember when Sci Fi had a Doctor Who marathon about a month back, and when I got to school and told my friends about it, they went into a nerd-rage for having missed it. Nerds are the kinds of people you want being interested in your programming; most people won't lose any sleep about missing an episode, but nerds have so few things to get really into and those things are what keep us going. Of course, this is a huge generalization, but you get my idea.

You cannot take my language and the identity of so many away. Or you shouldn't, rather. You CAN do whatever you want, you uncool closet-geek bastards.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Faux Doctor

Back to real reviews, where I'm not spewing fire or demons or curse words to try to illustrate my anger with a given title or situation. And a first! An episode of a television show!

The show is none other than the insanely long-running Doctor Who series which I have grown a love for. The first episode I ever saw was "The Doctor Dances" and I did not care for it. About a year later, I started from the beginning and "Doctor Dances" ended up being one of my favorites. Then I got to season two and I was angry that David Tennant wasn't Christopher Eccleston, so I stopped watching again. I got back into the series from random episodes being shown on Sci-Fi Channel and started my endeavor to watch them all in order. This morning, I finished, ending with what was the first of five special episodes for 2009-2010 because David Tennant is busy doing Shakespeare.

The Next Doctor was written by writer Russell T Davies, who has written some episodes such as the revived pilot episode "Rose", the Christmas Specials (which "The Next Doctor" technically is one of), season premiers, season finales, and some other sadly unremarkable episodes. A competent writer, but he's no Steven Moffat to be sure. The episode was directed by Andy Goddard, who was sporting his name on Doctor Who for the first time, having just finished a stint directing a spin-off series, Torchwood. I have no real complaints about either the directing or writing, as it is all done very differently for television and was done in usual Doctor Who style and magnificence. The acting was, as always with the series, fantastic with David Tennant and his long coat, brainy specs, sonic screwdriver and high pitched exacerbated voice. The supporting cast too, was stylish and British and everything it needs to be to work in The Doctor's world.

For those who don't know and are still reading for some reason, a history lesson: The Doctor is a Time Lord--the last one, in fact--and in this particular story he is the tenth incarnation of the The Doctor. When a Time Lord dies, he/she regenerates into a different form, having all the same memories and abilities but having a different personality quirk each time and being played by a different actor. Having just been left by everyone he loved, The Doctor finds himself in London 1851 on Christmas Eve and finds the titular Next Doctor as played by David Morrissey. The Cybermen are back and are trying to convert the human race again. David Morrissey's Doctor is trying to figure out a murder mystery surrounding them with his own sonic screwdriver (a screwdriver that makes noise) and his own TARDIS (a hot air balloon).

Now, I had the plot figured out relatively quickly, save for the initial confusion, and that was kind of disappointing to me. I like being surprised by a twist ending, not seeing it coming from miles away. Plus, the Cybermen were really badass when they came back in the revived series, but after the Daleks ripped them apart in the season two finale they kind of lost their appeal as a big baddy. Now they're just kind of lame, and all I can think of is Dalek Sec saying "We can destroy eight million Cybermen with one Dalek." And he was right. Therefore, Cybermen=lame.

The episode as a whole wasn't bad. Had all the things that make Doctor Who so great: humor, drama, running. But as with other Christmas episodes, he didn't have a proper companion with which to directly relate to. I still think Billie Piper as Rose Tyler was a high point in the series, whether she was with Tennant or Eccleston, and Martha Jones grew on you quickly; less so for Donna Noble, but in the end she's the savior of the universe. And now, right after they're all gone, here's The Doctor alone again--which isn't to say that he's bad alone. It just makes it harder to identify with.

I am interested where the next four specials are going to go. It has been announced that Matthew Smith will be taking over the role of The Doctor in season five, and I can't help but want to see how The Doctor is going to kick off and need to regenerate. I also wonder if River Song from the "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" serial comes back in any of these specials, as she was obviously very close to The Doctor in his tenth incarnation to recognize him so readily. The next special will air in England on Easter, and in the states some time afterward. But fear not! I will find a way to review that son of a bitch as soon as I can.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Redskull Motors

Here's another one with curses, and this review on something based on an subjective experience I've had with my car I bought from a shop in my hometown.

I grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts--something I do not like admitting. I am utterly ashamed to be from this town; I have told my mother to her face that she is a bad parent for voluntarily raising children here (I'm actually writing this from my mother's house, as opposed to my apartment in Salem). You will never find a more concentrated place of stupid and just plain bad people. The school system is the worst in New England, if not the entire East coast. When most people hear I'm from Gloucester, they ask me one of two questions. The first: "Are you anyone's father?" due in large because of the teen pregnancy thing that happened at the high school back in 2008. That question makes me hit people. The second and less asked question is "Why are the Gloucester sports teams so good?" Steroids and a total lack of brain cells on the part of all the players. But this is all a moot point. This review is of a local car shop with a good reputation that has been in business for over thirty years.

Whitehead Motors is owned by the Whitehead family, obviously, and they are your typical Gloucester people. No brains, stupid mouths, and relatively worthless except to do their menial jobs that they think takes so much skill to do. Their wrong. They're always going to be wrong. People like them exist only to make me look better.

As a personal history lesson, I drove a 1997 Nissan Sentra for four years until the transmission fell out of it as I was driving home for Christmas. Before I could drive myself home, I had to get a new car, so I bought a 1998 Chevy Malibu with around 65,000 miles on it from Mr. Whitehead for less than $3000. Brilliant, I thought. I only drove the thing to work and back, about ten miles round trip, with the occasional trip to Seabrook, NH or Framingham. So I put very few miles on it. Less than three weeks after I bought it, the timing belt went, making me lose power steering and having the engine overheat. It was towed from Salem to Gloucester, fixed, and returned. Two weeks later, the check engine light turned on. Brought it in, they fixed it, and then the NEXT FUCKING DAY it was on again. So, instead of just blowing it out of the system, they fix it. Nope. A week later, same problem. They fix it, and again, a week later. They refuse to give me a receipt, which is against the lemon law--even if the work is free of charge. This happens again 3 weeks later. They "find out" what's wrong with it, order a part, I bring it back, and they fix it again. Thank Christ, I finally have a car that works. Not bloody likely. Again, less than a week later, the same problem arrises.

In total, this has happened about six or seven times.

My father calls attorney general, the office of consumer affairs to follow up on the lemon law--as all of this happened under the warrantee time--and they say we have to make them aware that this is the last time we're giving them a chance to fix it before demanding a refund. Whitehead gives us all kinds of shit, saying they could be charging us for the work they're doing, which they can't because it's under warrantee, and that there's depreciation on the car if they buy it back, which is true but they also have to pay for the inspection, registration, and everything else I paid on the car, and they refused. My dad makes an appointment to have my car fixed Thursday. Now, I wasn't there for most of this. I would have said fuck no, because I'm on spring break and want to go away. When I got there, my dad said all of this, and I was pissed. I want my money and I want a new car--preferably one that never even crossed this asshole's field of vision. I'm swearing and I'm angry and not without reason. I've been without my car 3-4 days a week for the past month. My mom has had to drive from Gloucester to Salem just to bring me to work because the car is a piece of shit. So, after my mother arrives, we go in to speak with them again they are trying to be helpful and I'm trying to be quiet so I don't threaten them or something. My mom is getting upset, and they tell her to calm down. I say "I haven't said a word, and you don't want me to start" and this is where Whitehead motherfucker says he heard me talking outside and "he wouldn't be proud of me if I were his son." Man is lucky to still be breathing, talking to me like that. People like him exist to make me look better.

In the end, I left the car there, because there is no way I'm driving it back later this week. So he refused that he has to pay for everything, which will be a surprise to him when the attorney general says he has to. That, or I rip his fucking throat out.

These people are so stupid, they have lost THOUSANDS of dollars because of flooding and they don't have insurance. You would think that after the first time, they would spring for the insurance. Nope. Happened again. And they were still surprised. What's more is they give my mother attitude and act like she is so far below them, but they treat my father with respect. Misogyny is not uncommon among the retarded Gloucester people, but they shouldn't bring it into their business practices.

So, after thirty years of good reputation, I come to bury Whitehead, not to praise him. He is a rude asshole motherfucker who thinks he's better than everyone else when he obviously isn't. His son, who also works at the shop, isn't much better and thinks he's doing me such a huge favor by doing his fucking job and fixing the car which is still under warrantee. After selling me a lemon and being so hesitant to put any real effort into fixing it, they are calling bullshit on the lemon law. Regardless of how this turns out, I cannot stress enough how awful these people are and how shoddy their business practices are. Typical Gloucester people: stupid and just plain bad. Uneducated, and look down on those who don't know anything about cars despite the fact that I am going to go places in this world that they will never see pictures of, because they don't deserve a life like that. Would you really want to do business with a place that treats people as such and takes shortcuts in repairs, just to get the upper hand for the bill after the warrantee is over and the problem comes up again? You get what you pay for. Tell them to eat shit, flood their lot, and laugh because they still don't have insurance.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Submersible citrus

There is some cursing in this review. I've been trying to avoid doing so to help me appear more journalistic and respectable than how I could if I wrote the way I spoke in every day life, but in this I felt it a bit necessary in a few places.

I like horror movies. I like movies that people can only describe as "fucked up" and things that most people run away screaming from. So when my coworker--another fan of the depraved arts of horror and gore--told me that there was a movie that killed a part of him that he is never going to get back, I became almost giddy at the prospect of being messed with to the point of suicide because of a goddamn movie. I mean, what really can it be that made not only him but the other two people I know who have seen it agree with him? This is going to be a magical experience, and I should probably do it when my roommate is out of state so he doesn't have to find me in the morning.

Sublime (2007) is a movie that I knew nothing about before being told it kills parts of souls that can never be retrieved. All I bothered to find out about it was this: it's a horror film from 2007 that takes place in a hospital and it published by Raw Feed, a film label I knew nothing about. I didn't know anything other than that. Didn't know who was in it, who directed it, who wrote it, who published it, NOTHING. I wanted no more outside information to sway my opinion of it because I was already so hyped up because this movie had the power to kill me inside, and the thought of that excited me because if a horror movie can actually do that it is achieving exactly what horror movies should do and have never been able to. And my hopes were so high. I was gleeful at the prospect of not being able to sleep for reasons other than insomnia.

To catch you up to what you soon learn in the film, George Grieves as played by Thomas Cavanagh is turning forty, celebrating with his family comprised of Kathleen York as the wife, Shannah Collins as the daughter, Kyle Gallner as the son, and David Clayton Rogers as his brother among other friends, and going to the hospital the following day with his first ever colonoscopy. He gets there, meets the cute nurse Zoe played by Katherine Cunningham-Eves and the Persian doctor played by Cas Anvar. Something obviously goes horribly wrong and George is now slipping in and out of consciousness and more and more bizarre things are happening to him.

Now, the director of the film was one Tony Krantz who has produced many films and television shows, but only directed two--Sublime being the first. To him, I have to say this: brilliant. The directing was my favorite part of this film, but that may be damning it with faint praise, you haven't read the rest of the review yet, have you? The film starts with some kind of jerky camera work, where the camera is panning in a certain direction and you assume it's going to continue and it all of a sudden stops, so you have to look at the waterfall or the curtains to see if the movie froze or if it was deliberate--and it was wonderfully deliberate. Every last bit of directing, from the fuzzy grain added to half of the screen in some of scenes, and--someone has to explain this to me--how do you get fuzzy grain in the foreground but not in the background? Cinematographer Dermott Downs, I know cinematography and that's not something I'm used to. It was brilliant, perfectly sublime--a credit to its title.

The writer, Erik Jendresen, is an aspiring horror writer, it seems as he has written several, more than one of which has been published by Raw Feed. I need to say, the first half of the film was great. The chronology of the scenes kind of reminded me of John Mighton's stageplay turned screenplay Possible Worlds directed by Robert Lepage--a great movie in its own right. It weaves in between George in the hospital, dazed, confused, and sedated and the day of his birthday from the night of the party and gifts to seeing his children that morning. What happens in each time period somehow relates to what has just happened or what is going to happen and it really is a good way to tell a story such as this. I damned Rachel Getting Married for its slow pacing, but Sublime pulls it off. It's slow and painfully matriculated. It's similar to the pacing of the video game Silent Hill 2, where it doesn't need to be actually doing anything to scare you.

The music done by Peter Golub and Anthony Marinelli was mostly ambient with only a smallest hint of sinister intentions behind it, and it worked so well. Even the sound effects--actually, I should explain something first. Most of the time, unless I am viewing with friends, I will watch a movie on my laptop with my noise-canceling headphones on. The sound is all crystal clear, and I am unfortunately unaware of how it would sound coming out of my 19" Toshiba or even my 22" LCD TV in the living room, but some of the sounds--such as the pruning shears on the Home Shopping Network that always seems to be on in the hospital--are hugely enhanced and just makes your skin crawl.

The acting was pretty good, with very few exceptions. Very slow building but oppressive horror was pretty much flowing out of them. And I didn't expect to see the hottest sex scene of any movie I've ever seen, but goddamnit in a way.

And now that I'm done screaming about all the things I loved about the film, here's where I'm going to end it:

Shittier than the shittiest shit that ever fucking shit.

I mean, COME ON, the twist at the end was unexpected, to be sure, but it was fucking RETARDED. Controversies of the medical world being responsible for everything...are you kidding me? Thats the big horror? Playing off people's fears is one thing, but feeding them irrational fears and then preying on it--when it can be as quickly dismissed as it can be picked up--is just not how it's done. All the things I had loved about the movie--the directing, the writing, the cool sound effects--the only things that stuck around was the music and the decent acting and the rest of it went down the goddamn toilet. The last half hour to forty-five minutes of this adventure was crippling to the entire film. A twist is supposed to be shocking and end the film, not be shocking and then make you wish it never happened for the sake of entertainment. Even the "That's fucked up" notion stopped at the end, because it wasn't scary or discomforting anymore. This isn't just the gore-hound in me complaining either, because all the gore in the film took place at the very end; it was just completely unnecessary. When I am saying that grotesque torture, blood, and pain are unnecessary, you're doing something horribly wrong.

I know this just sounds horrible from a reviewer's standpoint, but I can't explain why all this negativity is so true without spoiling it, and that would be against what reviewers are meant to do. Not only that, but this movie in now way shape or form killed any part of me, unless you count the part of me that had hope that a horror movie could actually fucking do what horror movies are supposed to do.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Senko Yes Ronde

As previously stated, I work at a video game store. The people I work with are gamers, much like myself. We don't always like the same types of games, obviously. One of my coworkers is very into fighting games. When we started hanging out, I couldn't have disagreed more. I prefer games with a good story and interesting and fun gameplay. The "same crap, different shovel" approach to games is NOT what I'm going for. But in the time I've been there, fighting games have grown on me. One game in particular caught me awkwardly. When it was first presented to me I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever seen--absolutely pointless and why the hell is this even on my tv? The next morning, I couldn't get it out of my brain and I wanted to play it.

WarTech: Senko No Ronde for the Xbox 360 (2007) was originally released in 2005 as an arcade game in Japan. Less than a year and a half later, it was ported to the 360 in Japan and nearly a year later, the Ubisoft brought the game to the states. Why Ubisoft did that I will never understand. Then again, I will never understand why Ubisoft publishes games like Haze and the Imagine series when it could be doing Assassin's Creed, No More Heroes, and Rainbow Six. Publishing companies have been going up and down in ranking of completely useless to pioneering and fun--places that historically were held by EA and Activision respectively and completely flip-flopped in 2008--but Ubisoft have always pushed a few really good titles while grinding out the crap with a vengeance. Not as harshly as CodeMasters, but crap nonetheless.

Since story is so important to me, I feel like I should mention it here. Problem is, I've never been able to decipher it. So here is what Wikipedia says.

"Due to a past catastrophe on Earth, humanity was forced to live amongst the stars for several centuries, resulting in the creation of the S.D. calendar and the birth of the Aria Federation, an empire whose influence extends from Earth to Saturn. In S.D. 1478, an embassy located within the empire's capital on Earth's moon was seized by terrorists, and forces deployed by Aria's Special Space Service ended in disaster as the terrorists triggered a self-detonation device, killing themselves and several civilians in the process.

The actual game begins six years after this event, with the player assuming the role of one of eight characters who will become involved in a mastermind's scheme to take control of the Aria Federation's superweapon and use it for his own purposes."

Yeah, I'm not even sure if that's right. But there it is, I guess.

WarTech is a cross between a top-down shooter a la R-Type and a 2D fighting game. You're probably thinking what my cousins, friends, and siblings think when they see me play it: Double-you tee eff. That's what I thought too. I thought this was the most retarded collection of pixels to ever invade my television, and I couldn't wait till my friend left and took the abomination with him. But the next morning as I play Soul Calibur, I couldn't help but want to taste the graphical explosions of that Japanese epileptic seizure. I went to my local game store and bought a used copy for less than $10.

Each character has a crappy anime picture of them, but its irrelevant because they fight in these robot suits called Rounders (don't ask me why, I don't know). These Rounders shoot random patterns of lasers and bombs until someone presses the right trigger and the Rounder becomes the irritating B.O.S.S. at the end of all those levels of Aegis Wing. Problem is that this mode is harder than hell to control. Unless you have a strategy guide in front of you--or you're Japanese--you don't know what buttons do what, so it more or less becomes "Button-mashing mode" and hoping something you're hitting will be the ultra-super attack that wrecks the other player. The BOSS mode is a good way to save yourself if you're low on health and a good way to kill your opponent if you can press it before they do.

Other than the obvious Versus mode, there is a Score Attack, which is basically arcade mode, and a Story mode. I have beaten Score Attack with every character and Story with all but one and I had NO idea what the story for the game was until I started writing this review and looked it up. That, and they all speak in Japanese, with tiny English subtitles. Even in the middle of fights, when the last thing you're paying attention to in the maelstrom of blasters, missiles, and spinning melee attacks are the semi-transparent little faces with words coming out of them.

Where Soul Calibur is a fighting game which is based on the 360 degree fighting arena and your moves being particular to what angle you're attacking from, Mortal Kombat is based on the unique moves of each character, Street Fighter is based on each characters strengths and weaknesses, and Virtua Fighter is based on combos, WarTech's fighting system is based on how close or how far away you are from each other. When you're far away, you fire wildly. A little closer, and it gets a bit more concentrated. Closer to the inner circle, you spin out of control and try to hit them with a melee attack. It was hard to get at first, but after a couple of matches, the gameplay really comes together.

I tend to recommend this game to most everyone I know, but it's mostly because I think it's funny to see their confused faces. No one ever plays it. It is a crazy storm of random crap that will never make sense and is far too short to ever amount to too much fun. But for under $10, even brand new, you really can't lose. It's been compared a lot to Virtual On, which I played once on my Dreamcast, so if you've actually played and enjoyed those games, I would seriously suggest WarTech: Senko No Ronde. Otherwise, I will suggest you play it only because it amuses me.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Asphyxiate

Now that midterms are over and spring break is upon me, I will hopefully become a reviewing machine over the next week or so. I have lots of things on my list: soul-killing movies, remake movies done by the same guy who did them in the first place, Xbox 360 ports of Japanese arcade fighting games, albums made by local people that are supposed to make me laugh, and maybe even a guest review from one of my coworkers. All of this crap and more. But first, I decided I'd start with a movie that I really wanted to see in theaters but only saw today for the first time.

Choke (2008) is based on a book written by one of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahniuk. Choke was optioned to be a film after the success of his other film adaptation of Fight Club. Considering the film-rights were sold back in 2001, before the book was even published, they have had a hell of a long time to work on it and hopefully it paid off in the form of one badass dark comedy. It is atypical for me to have such high hopes as I am usually disappointed--this time especially since so many movies suck recently and Choke being one of my favorite books in high school. However, with the omnipresent exception caused by my critical outlook I have on every movie, book, album, video game, and person, the movie has lived up to a lot of what I expected from it.

Directed by actor Clark Gregg, this was another directorial debut from an actor. I have literally seen him in nothing, despite having over fifty films to his credit, except for Choke in which he plays a minor character. The main character is played by Sam Rockwell, who you probably remember best from being the crazy pedophile from The Green Mile whose throat you justed wanted to slit Solid Snake style. In Choke, Rockwell plays the part of Victor Mancini, still a sex addict, but this time does it with consenting adults, except for in the "poodle" scene, but that was one of my favorite scenes in the book so its okay. He is a historical interpreter (read: tour guide) at one of those colonial places you find all over New England and Virginia and the like. He takes care of his institutionalized mother as played by Anjelica Huston with money he makes from forcing himself to choke in restaurants and be saved by rich people who then, after saving his life, take an interest in his life and problems and send him money to make sure the life they saved is still being saved through their actions. Genius plan, if you think about it. He attends sex addict meetings with his best friend Denny and constantly gets laid after sneaking off to the bathroom with the girl he is supposed to be sponsoring through her own sexual addiction. Not a bad way to get laid, either.

If you couldn't tell, there is a lot of sex in this movie. A lot is describing it conservatively. Pretty much every female character with the exception of Vincent's mother is shown topless at some point--a wonderful job of the otherwise bland directing on Clark Gregg's part in which nearly every woman that Vincent sees is shown in a flash of what he imagines they look like naked or a shot of him actually eating them out or taking them from behind--even the ones you wish you didn't.

The rest of the directing was all very samey and the flashes of white to the flashbacks get the point across but still lack something in the creative mind that should be present in such a film. Gregg's adaptation of the script was not bad, with my one glaring exception of the nursing home women all standing around clapping and laughing as Vincent's telling them off, and the directing was adequate but didn't quite capture all the film should have presented of the film. The narration at the beginning was dead-on, but was used to infrequently afterwards. The choices the writers and editors made to make this film rated R as opposed to anything else--as I'm sure the MPAA was damn close to not letting it be released at all--were good ones. It had all the dark humor it should have had, even with the add of the drama, and pulled it off nicely, I feel.

The acting was pretty top-knotch. Despite having always envisioned Vincent as a more of a Taylor Nichols looking-character and I still uphold he would have played the role well, Rockwell's Vincent was about as close to the picture as I could have imagined. Huston's Ida Mancini was quite good as well, and she was goddamn brilliant in the flashback scenes opposite Jonah Bobo as her pre-teen son. Brad William Henke who played Vince's best friend Denny played the part of a reformed sex addict pretty well, and even played off the uncaring I-just-got-fired/wtf kind of moments in style.

Being the Special Jury winner at Sundance is nothing to cough at. Or jerk off at, depending on which movie-relevant metaphor I want to use. If In Bruges hadn't come out last year, this would have been in contention for my personal best film of 2008. It's a shame Rockwell isn't more popular as an actor, appearing mostly in cult-favorites and sleeper hits, but I'm sure that will change after he's in Iron Man II as Justin Hammer.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Way of the Cyst

Now that the pesky first review is over, I can work on things I actually want to talk about. So here's one about an album I was recently exposed to while hanging out with some friends. We were hanging out, playing pool in the basement, and this came on my buddy's computer and I thought it sounded a lot like Motograter. Let's get one thing straight: I love Motograter. I saw them live at OzzFest back in 2003 and really liked the music, and the vocals were probably the best part. The writing for the songs also came as a surprise from most metal acts, and the songs ranged from brutal fight songs, introspective letters, to pointing out all thats wrong with the world--and it pulled them all off wonderfully. Come to find that Ivan "Ghost" Moody is the singer of both bands. It ended up being a band I had heard of more times than I could imagine but never actually heard.

The Way of the Fist by Five Finger Death Punch (2007) at first listen is a great album. Ivan Moody is a great vocalist, hitting all the right notes from his deep growl to his haunting melodies. The guitar work by Darrell Roberts added an almost classic metal feel with squealing solos. Some of the best songs on the album are the bonus tracks from the 2008 re-release like Never Enough, Stranger Than Fiction, and Hate Me. The best song on the original release of album by far was their single The Bleeding with one of the most intense music videos I've ever seen from a metal band.

It's when you listen to the album from start to finish you start to notice something. The themes in the songs are used and reused ad naseum with very few exceptions. The album opens with Ashes with the anti-Midas image of "Everything I touch turns to ashes." Nice opener for the album even if the song for some reason appears a little lackluster due to the brutal verses followed by a kind of lacking in brutality and melodie chorus. The album title track, The Way of the Fist is a fight song that reminds me of some really good UFC fights, especially since the video for the song is a typical metal video with montages of cage fights mixed with the band performing in a cage of their own.

Salvation is where the repeating theme starts. The song is more or less about how he is looked down on for not believing in the their God or whatever--a message I can appreciate at its base by being a lapsed Catholic myself. The songwriting is dead on, with a really good chorus "I won't bow to something that I've never seen/I can't believe in something that doesn't believe in me/I'm not blood of your blood, I'm no son of your god/I've no faith in your fate/Still I find salvation." The melody melding into painful screaming counters the heavy-handed pre-chorus that screams how the followers of said belief are just "puppets on strings," which is technically not how you make friends. Other songs that echo this I'm-not-good-enough/ You're-just-a-follower/Why-doesn't-daddy-love-me motif are...almost all of them! Seriously, A Place to Die, The Devil's Own, Death Before Dishonor, Meet the Monster, Never Enough, and Hate Me. I mean, these are all great songs with good writing and good vocals and guitar in each of them, but we don't need an entire metal album about the same damn thing. The only other songs are the already mentioned amazing The Bleeding, White Knuckles which could be misheard as a fight song but really has some amazing writing behind it, and Can't Heal You which could almost fit in the other theme.

Each of the songs on the album is worth a listen and they're all very well done, but to listen to the whole album in one sitting you start to hear the repeating and unoriginal ideals the music is throwing at you. The songs are just too frequent and in too close of proximity to another on the album. The re-release also included an acoustic version of The Bleeding if you're into that kind of thing. I like it a lot, as do some of my friends, but there are arguments that "metal bands shouldn't do that." I think those arguments are full of crap, because I like when people do things differently than they're used to or if they make something their own. Five Finger Death Punch does exactly that in their album, if only they did a little bit more variety in their themes.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Ynne Hathaway Getting Sober or something

So I was wondering to myself, what the hell do I do for my first legitimate review? Actually, I was wondering to a lot of people, as I was open to suggestion. I didn't want to do another video game because I didn't want to pigeon-hole myself as a video game reviewer, nor did I want to review something old that would make me seem like jumping late on the band wagon. There's a movie coming out next week I want to see and subsequently review, but I didn't want to wait that long. Here enters my good lady friend who has far too much influence over me who suggests that I watch this movie that she had just finished bad-mouthing to me. So of course, I did. Because (her words, not mine) "watching indie films is oh so collegiate."

Rachel Getting Married (2008) was directed by Jonathan Demme, who also directed Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Manchurian Candidate, as well as many many others. To be fair, I only saw the first two movies I just mentioned, but I enjoyed them immensely and would even go so far as to say that Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorite movies and the directing in it is part of my saying that. The directing in Rachel Getting Married is different, but it kept me watching. I would go so far as to say that it was very well directed, thanks to Mr. Demme.

The film was the first written work (or at least the first listed on IMDB) by Jenny Lumet, and it kind of shows. The writing at the beginning perks my interest. Why can't that obviously strung out person not have his Zippo? I feel his pain, as my Zippo was stolen from me a number of years ago and I never got another one. So what the hell? Give the dude his Zippo. Then Anne Hathaway--who I will say now that I have been a fan of every since she broke free of the stigma of having her breakout role be the lead in The Princess Diaries--mentions that he's burned down a self-help library multiple times. Oh. Maybe you shouldn't give him his Zippo back.

So I assume, since I knew absolutely nothing of this movie before viewing, that Anne Hathaway was Rachel and that she was hence getting married. I was wrong. Anne played a girl named Kym, and why is there a Y in that name now? But anyway, she is getting out of rehab and for some reason she's not allowed to drive, but it may have something to do with what the Zippo dude said about her killing someone. Her father and assumed mother pick her up and pack her things and they leave. The drive home is also well directed, thanks to Jonathan Demme. The whole film looks as if it were shot with a really good hand-held digital camera and is shot in a way that almost makes it look like a 3rd person documentary, but the camera-holder is invisible and can leap across set pieces as easy as thinking. But now Anne is asking about her mom, which easily sets up that the woman in the car is now obviously her step-mother. Thats great. I've written scripts too, Jenny; it was a good job of introducing this fact.

For about the first--ooohhh--27 and a half minutes, I was really intrigued in the film. The directing was doing something so different that I was enjoying watching it and the writing was, well, not great but tolerable in most respects. Anne Hathaway was doing tremendously well, and Paul Irwin who played her father was also entertaining and doing a fine job acting. Introducing Rachel and Emma (who was a particular bitch) came and went and how the wedding is in two days and Kym wants to be the maid of honor, but NO she's a crazy bitch who does drugs, but Emma gives it up because she's a crazy bitch who wants the sisters to fight and blah blah blah. This is where it got to me.

This was the part of the film where things started getting a little emotional, and I'm not going to lie: I'm an emotional kind of guy. I get upset when I see people in pain. It's not a happy thing for me. But the directing of the film was doing something to me. It was making something I would normally find to be upsetting and a little overwhelming (because it is shot in such an oddly personal level) appear so removed that I couldn't be bothered to feel bad for anything I was seeing. The poor to mediocre writing was only amplifying how little I felt for the characters on screen.

About halfway through the film, there are several scenes where Anne Hathaway is nowhere to be found for around ten minutes. In most movies, this is fine and even expected. But the way it has been shot and the way that it been written were making her very personal with the camera. Almost every line was about her. What wasn't about her and was instead about the wedding, she is in the backround of the shot, looking all pouty. But now, she is beyond ear-shot, which hadn't happened, and she had little to no relevance to the conversation being had. This bothered me because I cared so little for Rachel getting married (the plot point, not the film itself) that I just wanted to see more of Kym and her recovering neurosis.

More of the writing that I did not like was the fact that Lumet actually stole a line from the old Winny The Pooh books and used it as a toast to the wedded couple from a thickly accented Jamaican guy. And she didn't credit it, which kind of makes me want to scream.

This is where my roommate interrupted and I was almost pleased that I could pause the movie for a second. It was getting kind of hard to take.

Kym needed to be the center of attention, which made her come off as a bitch. But pretty much the only thoroughly likable people in the film were the father, played wonderfully by Bill Irwin, and the groom, played by Tunde Adebimpe and right now I am really glad I'm not doing review videos because I would have no idea how to pronounce that. I mean, sure, Kym is a great character, but she is so unlikeable in some of the scenes that its hard to misunderstand why people might not want her around all the time.

And then something else strange happened. During the crazy climax where things come all out in the open, the odd disinterested feeling I had in all the characters and their feelings went away as if pushed off by a sexually frustrated secretary trying to seduce her boss. I got all emotional and I felt bad for not feeling for them earlier, but then I dismissed that because it was obviously the film's fault for not making me care any sooner. It moves at a damn glacier's pacing and the writing is so bland that I couldn't have been expected to feel anything earlier.

The soundtrack of the film was very natural, as all the music we hear in the audience they hear in the film, which again makes it seem very observer-ish. The music was interesting, at least, and fit well with the film and even the directing.

As a whole, Rachel Getting Married is probably not something I would have watched if I had not been suggested it as an idea for something to review. As a whole, it probably isn't something I will watch again, except on the off chance that someone I know reads this review and finds it interesting enough to ask me to watch it with them. Or if it will get me sex. It was a fair way to spend two hours, but I expected little to nothing from the actual film. The film has won over a dozen awards (over half of which went to Anne Hathaway for best actress), and was nominated for many many more so it apparently did something right. How Jenny Lumet won best screenplay and Jonathan Demme got NOTHING for directing, I will never know.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Biases and Preferences

I realize that part of the reason my Killzone 2 first impression "review" was so long was I kept interjecting with reasons why I felt certain ways, comparing to other games--especially when it came to online multiplayer. So I figured to avoid that in the future I'd make a short list of things that will be present in my reviews and why I may say some of the things I will usually say.

Video games - I am a gamer. Most of my reviews will probably be for things of this type. I own an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, a Nintendo Wii, a Sega Dreamcast, and a PC. With very few exceptions, any game that is multiplatform I will play for the Xbox 360. I enjoy all kinds of games, from first-person shooters to in depth role-playing games to fighting games. I like a lot of artistic games as well as the exploration of game as an actual art form. Graphics are important, but do not make or break gameplay, except in the case of overly chibi-anime graphics that I cannot stand and won't play past the first few hours. Persona 4 is a good example for this. The gameplay was fantastic and I was really into it, but the graphics couldn't let me enjoy the game properly. As previously mentioned in my Killzone 2 impression, I don't spend a lot of time with online multiplayer. My reviews of games will not always be positive, as I work at a gaming retailer and have access to all kinds of games. My reviews of games will not always be new titles; a lot of them will be retrospective titles that I have a lot to say about, especially if I find the game hasn't garnered the attention it should have.

Movies - I do not watch as many films as I used to, with school and work eating my life. I like a lot of gore, but I also enjoy comedy, drama, and pretty much anything that will entertain me. From seeing movies with friends, I find I do not watch films the way most people do. I named In Bruges my best film of 2008 not to be contrary from most people swooning over The Dark Knight as many have accused me of, but because the entire movie was fantastic. The acting, the soundtrack, and--most of all--the directing was out-of-this-world good. The directing of a film can break a film that has a lot going for it (ie The Da Vinci Code) but it cannot--or at least very rarely--save a bad film (a la Silent Hill). When the art direction of a game is also good, such as Sin City, a lot of other things can be forgiven. The characters of a film also must draw attention and be relatable in order to feel some form of sympathy for them. The first three Saw movies did this well, making you feel that the victims didn't necessarily deserve to die for their "crimes"--something Saw IV threw out the window when it was rapists and wife-beaters being killed as they rightly deserved, taking away from the sympathy and therefore the unpleasantness that should be expected from watching a torture-porn film. Classic movies are also a favorite of mine, and I hope to review some of them as well. With the current spewing out of half-assed films, a lot of reviews on newer movies may not be very positive.

Television - My favorite television show of all time is M*A*S*H. I own all eleven seasons on DVD and watch them regularly. Some of favorite currently airing shows are House, M.D. and Doctor Who. I enjoy a lot of comedy in my television watching, but a taste of drama is necessary to keep me coming back. When I review a show, I may review an entire season, a single episode, or perhaps even the series to date, depending on the life of the show. A lot of my TV watching is spent either on DVD or Nick at Night, when I'm doing homework in the background, so it is safe to assume a lot of my reviews of television shows will be from the past, but the new season of Doctor Who will lend to a few interesting reviews regarding that show and the history of it's 45-year life. A lot of what I said for films is also true for television, so expect different opinions on shows than your used to.

Books - I also don't get to read as often as I would like, outside of books for literature classes. My favorite authors are Chuck Palahniuk, Mike McCormack, TA Barron, and Christopher Rice. I tend to not read books I don't like, so a lot of my reviews on books will be positive. There probably won't be as many classic reviews as with other mediums as I don't particularly enjoy the classics, but I do appreciate some of them. Some of my book reviews may be closely related to poetry or an art form of some kind. Some reviews may be based off books I read in my youth, and if I feel particularly venomous, I may give my scathing opinion on JK Rowling, the stupid bitch.

Music - I am a metalhead, but I also listen to a lot of different music. The only thing you will not hear me listening to on a regular basis is rap music. I listen to avante garde stuff, some straight rock, some soft acoustic music, thrashing metal, folk, punk, alternative, and really anything that catches my ear in a good way. My pick for best album of 2008 was Amanda Palmer's debut solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer after her departure from one of my favorite groups, The Dresden Dolls. The choice for best album for me to the wire between Ms Palmer and Weezer's Red Album. I am the host of a radio show, which you can listen to 9PM to midnight EST on Mondays on http://www.wmwmonline.com.

Other reviews I post, such as for concerts or sporting events will probably be limited to UFC events as I am a big mixed martial arts fan. I do not base my reviews on any outside sources, only on my own experiences. Being articulate and having an opinion is something I enjoy, so there will hopefully be all kinds of reviews coming here in the future. With more reviews will hopefully come a readership, so I hope this will turn into a regular happening.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

First Impressions

Starting a review blog is something I initially intended to make videos for, but since making videos means I need to make myself presentable it takes a bit more work than I can muster with college and a lead position at a retailer draining me.

For my first post (hopefully the first of many) I am going to give my first impressions on a couple of video games I find myself playing lately.

Killzone 2 (PlayStation 3) - The sequel to the hailed "Halo-killer" for the PS2 that disappointed many who looked for something to kick Master Chief in the teeth. It should be noted that I never played the first game despite being a PS2 owner and never owned an original Xbox. I believe the Killzone 2 is going to pull off its Halo-killer status, even if it is technically only going up against Halo Wars and/or Halo 3: ODST . Granted, I am only a couple levels into the story, but it has kept me going back even after I get tagged by the Helghast and decide to give it a break. The first-person cover system works incredibly well, and gives a nice change of pace from Gears of War style third-person pop and shoot or even the mostly-first-person Rainbow Six: Vegas series. It is obvious how it competes with the Halo series with its vehicle sections, and the fact that your character is constantly thrown into cut-scenes from a theatrical point of view. The problem with Sergeant Tomas "Sev" Sevchenko, the protagonist of Killzone 2 (notably not the protagonist from the first game) is that he isn't a hugely armored super soldier--he looks just like every other grunt marine you're fighting alongside. I wasn't sure which person I was until nearly the second level. The Sixaxis controls are interesting, but they could easily be better used with good-old button pressing. The control controversies I've heard about are somewhat truthful. The controls do lag a bit, but I didn't sense it hugely impeding my skill at the game except when it came to doing melee attacks when I press the button after sprinting up for the kill and discovering I'm swinging at air and the Helghast has now run behind me and is certainly making feel very bad for what I tried to do to him. Knowing my skill at first-person shooters (which I like to believe is considerable) I humored the idea that I was unwittingly compensating for the controls running about 100ms slower than most games. To test this, I jumped into a multiplayer game as I have heard the lag hurts especially when playing against real people as opposed to AI. Here is where I should probably say this: I am not a huge fan of multiplayer. I will play it, but it is not the driving source behind my buying of games. I played Halo 3 because I wanted to finish the story, not because I wanted to shoot people in customizable Spartan armor with a shotgun after I spawn-camped and I never rose above the rank of Sergeant because I just didn't care enough. I played Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 because...well, that's a bad example. I played that because everyone I worked with said it kicked ass and I wanted to give it a shot. The point is, I actually really liked the story, and I even enjoyed the Terrorist Hunts a whole hell of a lot but never got into the other multiplayer modes. Gears of War multiplayer always bothered me and I never got into it, except for Gears of War 2 had Horde which seemed like reverse T-Hunts, and that was awesome. Metal Gear Solid 4, my pick for best game of 2008, I never played multiplayer. The point is I do not buy games for multiplayer capabilities. The single-player is what sells it, the multiplayer is a bonus, and that's if I even care to try it. The multiplayer for Killzone 2 is so fun I had to stop playing it after three games because I knew that if I didn't, I wouldn't go to class in the morning. Maybe it's because I scored an average of 30 points a game, something I could never do in Halo but I loved playing as the ISA going up against the Helghast being controlled by actual people and playing mini-objectives in each map to be added to the quintessential "shoot dudes"--which was sometimes the mini-objective too. The cover system was taken out of multiplayer, which added the need for creative thinking and more tactics from you and your squad of other PS3 owners, most of whom did not spring for the bluetooth headset. The ones who did, though, were very good about giving useful information about enemy location, objective status, and where the hell those grenades are coming from--a nice change from whiny-voiced kids telling me not to kill them in Halo 3 because their mom is calling them on the phone. And not one person corpse-humped me, which I appreciated. Overall, I think Killzone 2 is going to keep me occupied for a while, both with its story and online multiplayer. I may even play through it a second time if it continues impressing me this first playthrough.

Flower (PlayStation 3) - Only available on the PlayStation Network, Flower is made by thatgamecompany, who also created flOw, another title I never played but still led to a game I have found myself playing as of late. Flower works similarly to Everyday Shooter in that what you are doing directly creates music for the game. It runs completely using the Sixaxis control to speed the wind through the grass picking up flower petals and making flowers bloom. It is currently the number 2 download on the PSN, right behind Noby Noby Boy, so one has to think that it may actually be something special. And it is! Not in the way that Earthbound is special because if you find it at a collector's store, it still costs $150 without the original box or any form of dust-jacket, but in the way that Braid for the Xbox Live Arcade is special. It is unlike anything I've played before, but that may be because I never played flOw. The Sixaxis control is interesting, if not fun but that's because I dislike what the Sixaxis does to most PS3 games. It doesn't hurt Flower, but it would be nice to have the option of using the analog stick. The game is all about introspection and creativity and relaxing--something most games don't endure to, but thatgamecompany is out for something different. I am very much a fan of the games-as-art movement we find ourselves in if you look hard enough, and I believe this game does a good job without being too pretentious. Again, I've only played the first level or so, but how much different can each flower's dream be from the other?

That's it for my first post. I'm not sure how long reviews are generally going to read, but the Killzone 2 does seem a bit long. I guess that's to be expected as I try to explain my biases and preferences on the first go of it. Thanks for reading. Hopefully more will be up in time.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor
PSN: Dark_P0rtal
Xbox Live: DarkP0rtal