Jonah Hex

While I share my blog-mate's aversion to all things Megan Fox, I still have to say there looks like some cool shit going on here:

Keep in mind that Megan Fox will ruin a lot of what should have been good here, and I'm not much of a John Malkovich fan, but I mean crossbows shooting sticks of dynamite? That's pretty freakin' awesome.

Update: On-Line Gaming

A few months back I wrote a little bit about my commitment to start participating in more online gaming events, thereby expanding my horizons as not only a gamer but as a human being. 3 months later I think it's safe to say I'm happy with the size of human being I am.

First of, lets talk about Warcraft. I had planned to level a priest doing nothing but PvP, however, I neglected to notice how boring most PvP is and how much it takes to get XP in it, and that doesn't even take into consideration the the other players on your team. Seriously, they'll sell a keyboard and mouse to any idiot who can ask for one won't they? The final straw was the Warsong Gulch where a Night Elf Druid actually stopped and asked "How do I shapeshift?" in the middle of a battle.

I have had some success using the dungeon finder in Warcraft, but it's quite often too much to deal with on it's own as well. A run through Mauradon comes to mind; after spending 10 minutes waiting for a Tank to enter the group we finally get one who proceeds to agro no less than 15 elites and wipe the group in under 25 seconds. He then proceeded to announce that he had "played to much Warcraft for one night" so he was going to bed. The sheer douchebaggery of the whole thing left me more than a little speechless, seriously, this is someones idea of a good time? This was the capper on the infantile bickering, sheer class incompetence, and just plain rudeness I've come to expect from the dungeon finder.

Let's talk other games shall we? Well, to be fair the only other games I've played on line are Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 (I have yet to bring myself to go online with Borderlands), but i have to say, what problem do people playing Left 4 Dead have with microphones? I've gotten more shit from having a mike turned on (accidentally I might add) in that game than doing anything else in any other game ever. And do you think it would kill them to identify the person who they are complaining about their mike being on? Maybe, just maybe, that player didn't know it was turned on.

Left 4 Dead 2? Let me tell you the story about the dude who decided it would be fun to shoot me until my character died, steal my healthkit and run. The only thing I can figure is he wanted my character (Nick) and decided to make me rage quite; I don't rage quit, so he ended up quitting at the end of the level. Asshole (I said I don't rage quit, I never said I don't rage)!

Now true, these are the bad moments, but I only briefly touched on the not so bad moments that make up the majority of the rest of my game time. I don't need that crap, I can cause enough heartache and hassle in real life for myself without asking for it from digital jerkasses.

I'll continue playing online somewhat, you need a change from time to time, and it's impossible to solo WoW instances at the right level, but it's not going to be a defining influence on me anymore. Even PvP in WoW is going to take a major backseat, it doesn't really further me in the game and I just end up dealing with people anyway.

Seriously, I game to get away from people, not be forced to deal with them. What the hell is the big deal with on-line gaming anyway?

Comic Book Movies and Lou Ferrigno

This weekend I broke my blue ray ownership virginity and bought Iron Man. I totally forgot how awesome that movie was but sadly the same can't be said for all comic books turned movies. As a comic book nerd you would think I would love any movie based on a comic but you know I found that I don't like most of them. I'm to lazy to get into why I didn't like them as there's a lot of reasons some of them due to the fact I simply don't like the comic series. However, the following are some movies based of comics that I did like:

Iron Man - Downey is the perfect Tony Stark

Kick Ass - Different then the comic but concept of Hit Girl still broke new ground

Sin City - I just liked Marv

The Incredible Hulk (2008) - Not great but compared to the earlier attempt this was gold

The Punisher: War Zone - Captured the essence of the Punisher perfectly

The Punisher (1989) - Dolph actually worked as the Punisher

Batman (1989) - Keaton was the best batman and still is

The Crow - I might not like this movie as much today but at the time wow

V for Vendetta - I like most things with Natalie Portman in them

There might be one or two more but in a nut shell those are the only reasons I'm remotely excited about Iron Man 2, Thor, Green Lantern, and Captain America. Well I'm also excited about Thor due to the fact Natalie Portman is listed as Jane Foster.

When I think of Thor I think of The Incredible Hulk Returns which makes me think of Lou Ferrigno which lead me to the following golden you tube finds.

So Who's Actually Trying to Take Over the World?

Is it Google or Facebook? According to this article I would have to say it's Facebook to be honest. I mean sure, Google is becoming a pervasive all encompassing entity in the cyber-world, but at the end of the day they actually serve a purpose and are giving me tools to enhance my work/leisure life.

Facebook on the other hand seems to exist for the sole purpose of making sure as many people as possible are in my business. Seriously, I actually consider what they are proposing to be a move towards infringing on my privacy; the only thing actually stopping it is right to choose to be a member of their networks. Now riddle me this: how far down the road will we be looking before it becomes a requisite to have Facebook account before you can use certain services online? I can definitely see you needing to use a Facebook ID to log into XBox live, or vice-versa, and that's only the first thing to come to mind.

I have always considered social networking to be largely a waste of time, but one that doesn't really hurt anyone as it's your choice to waste the time. Remember back when email first became big and spam first started? Wasn't long before it became an industry and now it's a business in itself creating the means to keep that crap from destroying our daily productivity. I can see the day when we spend more time refusing Facebook prompts than sorting through spam, and that is moving closer all the time. And that's just the e-side of things, never mind the real world implications of an even more increased stigma towards people who don't "Facebook" (You know when South Park gets something right, they get it 100% right).

At least Google is giving us tools while they take over the world, Facebook would have us playing Farmville as we trudge down the road to social gulags. I've considered it in the past, but I've just moved one helluva lot closer toward killing my Facebook account.

By the by, in my books, Twitter is now officially a notch above Facebook on the usefulness board! Maybe even two or three.

The Expendables: I felt my Testosterone Spike During the Trailer

If you grew in the late 80s and think action movie a few names jump forward right away, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, ... . If you think of early 90s action movies you might think of Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Will Smith ... . If you think of who represents "action men" in the entertainment world today you could think of Jason Statham, Randy Couture and with the new Ironman movie coming out even Micky Rourke. Well my friend don't go in for any drug testing as your testosterone is looking to spike. The Expendables has all those names in it with the exception of Will Smith (Will if only you got the call or got on board). Seriously look at the Cast and Other Cast list and Director.

• Sylvester Stallone
• Jason Statham
• Jet Li
• Dolph Lundgren (still the 2nd best Punisher)
• Eric Roberts (I've always loved this guy in movies)
• Randy Couture
• Steve Austin
• Mickey Rourke
• Bruce Willis
• Arnold Schwarzenegger

.... Holy Shit and don't forget to note two of the women

• Charisma Carpenter (the best thing to come out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• Brittany Murphy (whose death actually depressed me so much potential)

If you had told me a movie like this could happen I would have called bullshit but fuck no it's coming. Is it going to be a deep moving character developing story? Fuck no it's going to pure 100% fun and listen people that's why movies are called entertainment their suppose to be fun. A fact that always gets overlooked by douche bag movie reviewers.

Capcom: Dead Rising "Felt Too Japanese"

If the title is a little too ambiguous, which I can totally understand, here's the full article.

I gotta say I loved Dead Rising and been looking forward to the sequel, however the more I read about it the more I wonder how much of the original game is going to make it's way into this one. I'm not saying I want to simply replay the first one, but there were a lot of things going on that I enjoyed that I can see getting stripped out in an effort to 'Westernize' it; I'm afraid we're just going to end up with an attention-deficit-pseudo-action third person piece of junk with no personality when all is said and done.

Dead Rising had the ability to make people say "I hate this part" but still make them come back and play it. Personally I liked the save system and the survivor rescues because of the "realism" it put into the game, real decisions with real outcomes that effect the rest of the game; if you end up making a bad choice and have to start all over again, well that's how life is too sometimes. Having said that though I can understand the frustration people experienced over the survivors and single save, but the point is people kept coming back and playing it even if they did hate those parts.

I'm still not 100% sure what 'Westernizing" means, but I see it as removing all the RPG aspects that made the game frustrating AND addictive at the same time. I'm still looking forward to playing it, but not as much as I was before reading this article.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, I'd still like to know what happened to Frank West, that dude had some serious zombie killing skills when I was done with him, now I got start all over with some freakin' noob? What is it with development companies scrapping their established heroes? I still haven't gotten over Valve's choices in Left 4 Dead 2!

Kick Ass

With the movie coming out this week I recently had to make the choice on whether or not to read the comic or watch it first; I of course opted to read it first. In a word, decent.

In more than 'a' word, I thought it was a really decent read. I won't spoil anything, either read the book or watch the movie on the 16th, but if you've read the comic already you might be wondering if you should bother seeing the movie and, in another word, I would say yes.

I don't think there will be many major deviations from the comic, but that is exactly why I'm going to go see the movie, I want to know if they take the pivotal moment of the story and ruin the entire theme, AKA "Hollywood it", or if the leave the plot intact and deliver the intended message. Obviously I'm hoping they leave it intact, but I won't be holding my breath.

Also, being that the comic was a bit light on dialog I'm hoping to see some clever writing, some funny lines, a little quirkiness to round it out. Comics can make a very good movie platform and I could see this being very good or very bad, I don't see much room for middle ground on it.

Anyhoo, to wrap things up, I recommend reading the comic at the very least and I hope I can recommend the movie a week from now.

Overrated - Gerard Butler

I want to start this off that stating that I'm not just writing this because my wife has a Gerard Butler fixation .... hang on maybe I am because due to that fixation I find myself watching 3 times as many movies with Gerard Butler than I'd like.

To date I've had the misfortune of viewing:

• Law Abiding Citizen
• The Ugly Truth
• P.S. I Love You
• 300
• Beowulf & Grendel
• Timeline
• Lara Croft: The Cradle of Life
• Reign of Fire

Of which the only one I thought was worth my time was Reign of Fire ... yes Reign of Fire. Any movie that features Matthew McConaughey, getting swallowed whole during his heroic attack can't be all bad. All right, upon further consideration Beowulf & Grendel was pretty good if you can over look the complete lack of budget they must have had for makeup when putting together the trolls.

I don't Gerard Butler is horrible I just think he''s overrated and I am tired of seeing shit movie after shit movie get theater time because his name is tagged to it. Gerard has one role he's meant to play and that's an ass kicker, not a funny quirky romantic lead. Yes 300 blew chunks but it wasn't his fault that blame can only be placed on building a movie off a weak and I do mean weak Frank Miller graphic novel. I loved Sin City but 300 was boring in novel and movie form.

The worst of the movies listed had to be P.S. I love you. How is someones plan to torment their grieving wife with mysterious letters and notes for months or was it years after their death freaking romantic. My god let the woman move on. The Ugly Truth had to be a close 2nd, really it almost makes All About Steve look good.

Point is I propose we all boycott any romantic comedy Gerard makes and force the man to look to his strengths which is kick ass tough guy not miss understood male who seems like pig but is really a good guy.

Robs Guide on IMDb

So what the hell is the story with this site anyway? I mean on one hand I couldn't imagine living in a world without it, but, on the other hand, it has got to be the biggest pooling of outright douchebaggery bullshit that human civilization has ever perpetrated upon itself.

Let me tell you the uses of IMDB:

1. You see a movie name and are curious about it, you can look it up and see who's in it, get a plot synopsis and maybe find some interesting trivia about it.

2. You see chick in a movie or TV show you can look up said TV show/movie, find her name, plug it into Google Image search and see if she's ever done anything that involves nudity.

3. Look at the rating of a movie; if it's between 5-7 it's probably worth watching, anything above or below that point will generally be crap.

That's about it, really there's no other good use for the site. You wanna know why? I'm glad you asked.

First off, it's basically an open forum for any idiot who thinks they are a film critic to proselytize about why a movie sucks or shines because of artistic merit. 95% of people could care less about the artistic merit of a movie, and the 5% that do are usually involved in making them and don't care about what regular people think. Thus, the reviews are generally worth shit.

Second, the Message Boards should not be read by anyone who is not studying Anthropology and needs data on just how much modern man is like his ancient cave-dwelling ancestors. Seriously, go look at some of them, it amazes me some of these people can use keyboards, not to mention power on their computers (but then most of them are probably Mac users). You want an example? Check out this brilliant dialog on Reign of Fire. Seriously people, it's a MOVIE, a made up story that has or never will happen.

Finally, let me hit the rating system one last time. The numbers are generally badly skewed because on any given movie people only weigh in if they really love it or really hate it; if a movie is worth seeing other people will vote and shift the number forward or backward. This anything just over the 5 mark usually has strong detractors and strong supporters with a lot of people who kind of liked it. You can't count on the really high numbers to judge because people will vote high on some movies just because they think they should. Basically, there is so much conjecture involved that the rating system is more work than it's worth.

There are many other reasons, but really these are the important ones. Just remember to use the site as a reference tool and not an opinion former and try not to poke sticks at the monkeys on the message boards, although that can be fun from time to time too.

This Blogs God Like Power

I was composing a blog entry about how Gerard Butler movies are tormenting my existence but I'm afraid that needs to take a back seat because I just noticed the god like power I wield with this blog.

I while back I had a little literary fit over the fact that I couldn't get a Nexus One in Canada. Then less than two weeks later Google announces the Nexus One availability in Canada. I also ranted about the Kindle which then later became available in Canada. Yesterday I witnessed my blogging power once more.

A long time ago I vented on Coca Cola for having sexy glass bottles in their advertising and I couldn't get my coke in that bottle. Yesterday, I went to this newer lunch place downtown, The Great Panini, and looked in the freezer to see ... yes Coca Cola and Diet Coke in glass bottles! Not those stupid mini bottles coke sells as a gimmick but glass bottles like the ones you got your beverage in during the 80s. I've attached a picture as proof.

I probably should use this power of mine to rant for World Peace but Rob convinced me I should focus on boobies instead.