Movies, TV, Internet, Video Games, and E-Books
I decided to take a look — just a look — at Portal 2 co-op over the weekend, and wound up playing through the entire thing, staying up until almost 4am Saturday night. And then I did it again the last night, staying up until midnight. It’s just a hard game to stop playing before you’ve finished it: the satisfaction from solving puzzles, and the desire to see what sort of puzzle will come next, is impossible to resist.
Some more of my favorite picks for your Netflix Instant viewing pleasure.
Easy A: The really nice thing about Netflix Instant is that it makes it easy to check out movies you’d probably never see otherwise, like this teen comedy based on The Scarlet Letter. I’d heard some good things about it but it’s probably something I’d never rent or see in a theater. We watched it this weekend, and it’s a fun film: Emma Stone is great as a high school girl who rides rumors of her promiscuity to new highs and then lows, and Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson steal every scene they’re in as her goofball hippie parents.
I’m in the middle of an office move and it’s no fun. I think I’ll have a little plaque made for the front my urn that says: “She solved 2,218,437 meaningless problems for other people and now she’s dead.” In order to remain sane, I’ve been loading up on the entertainment. Here are the things that have kept me from throwing a chair through the window or drinking heavily.
Anthony Jeselnik, Shakespeare
I like my stand up comedy to be smart, dry, absurd and borderline cruel. I’ve seen him a few times on various specials, and his bit about the marshmallow dream had me in tears. If you are a sensitive sort, you’ll most likely hate this guy. However, if your idea of comedy involves allowing yourself to laugh at nearly everything that normally makes humans uncomfortable, then you’ll be just fine.
I haven’t watched much TV this week due to all the gaming I’ve been doing, and I’ve been remiss in posting my daily menu for the two of you who read it. The menu tonight:
Justified: There’s only a few episodes left, and there’s a whole lot of story threads out there. I find myself hoping they don’t wrap everything up by the end of the season. With Boyd re-entering the criminal underworld, Mags as the marijuana kingpin, and Dickie as the loose cannon, I’d be thrilled if this all spilled into season three, because having multiple crime bosses struggling for control is more interesting than just one bad guy on the top of the heap. I suspect most of it will be resolved, though. Mags will probably take a fall and Dickie seems too stupid to survive much longer. I’m sure Boyd will make it to season three, though.
As far as the hitmen from last week, I suspect they were sent by Winona’s ex (or the mob goons he’s associated with) to rub her out — Mags wouldn’t employ anyone who drove a Mercedes. So, that’s all gonna be in play, too, along with the stolen money storyline… man, it’s gearing up to be a busy conclusion this season. (FX)
Well, I finished Portal 2 last night. To avoid spoilers of any kind, this installment of Bullet Points is going to be pretty short. Even the spoiler-free reviews I read after finishing the game gave away stuff I’m much happier to have found out myself while playing, so don’t read any of them! Don’t even read this one! (Actually, this one is fine to read.)
I played great gobs of Crysis 2 over the weekend. Enjoying it still, for the most part. I’m seven hours in, according to my Steam stats.
I think I’ve been a little too sloppy with posting spoilers, blatantly listing out the storyline and such, so sorry about that. I’ll try to be a little more general with my descriptions from here on out, for those of you who haven’t played but are interested.
There will be no spoilers below, I’m just going to be talking in very general terms about the game (which I haven’t even finished). There’s too much fun stuff to discover on your own, which is why I avoided as much of the pre-release media blitz as I could. (And I feel like I’ve probably had too many spoilers in the Crysis 2 stuff I’ve been posting). I’m not even going to post screenshots. About the only thing I mention specifically below is about an actor who does some voice-work in the game.
Anyway. Portal 2! It’s finally here, and out a few hours early to boot. It unlocked for me around 10pm last night, and after about ten minutes of waiting for the files to decrypt, I was able to start playing. I played about two hours last night, and followed it up with a little more this morning (I called in late). I haven’t tried multiplayer yet; I want to finish the single-player stuff first.
How is it? It’s great and you should buy it and play it. Some general deets and thoughts below. If you leave a comment, please keep them spoiler-free as well.
I watched TRON: Legacy on DVD this weekend. I don’t think there are any serious spoilers below. This isn’t really a review, just some notes I made while watching it. [Read more…]
Busy week, what with trying to get this blog off the ground. Thanks to anyone who’s been reading!
My own personal menu for the weekend includes a watching of Tron: Legacy, which just arrived on DVD from Netflix. I’ve seen the first ten minutes of the film already, and I don’t have a lot of hope that I’ll enjoy the rest, because the preview featured a digitally-created young version of Jeff Bridges that was creepy and unconvincing. He looked like a character from a video game cut-scene. From two years ago. Also, there was a guy base-jumping off a skyscraper that served no purpose except to make the character doing it seem X-TREME.
Here’s the weekend menu; see you on Monday!
A lot can happen in ten years, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. Filmmakers in the 80’s and 90’s predicted grand changes to society and technology as we prepared to enter the 21st century, but now that we’re here, how accurate were their visions?
Today, The Future Was Then looks at Timecop, the 1994 time-travel action flick starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Interestingly, this week the Chinese government banned time-travel movies because they “disrespect history”, and after watching Timecop it’s kind of hard to argue with them.