Movies | Television | Video Games

Weekend Menu: Presidents, Parrots, and Possibly Portals

April 15, 2011 by Christopher

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!

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Movies

The Future Was Then: Timecop

April 15, 2011 by Christopher

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.

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Movies

Lady Business: Chick Flicks

April 15, 2011 by Kris

[Editor’s Note: Since I’m mainly concerned with movies about exploding trains and alien invasions and video games where you shoot people in the face, I’ve asked my wife, Kris, to be a contributor here at Screen Cuisine. She’ll be occasionally covering TV, movies, games, and all things pop-culture from a female perspective, though she’s been known to enjoy the occasional alien invasion and exploding train herself.  — Chris]

I’m not much for Chick Flicks. For instance, I once attempted to watch “The Notebook” and nearly lost my damn mind. Typically, if there’s a poster with people tenderly holding each other’s faces, I’m not getting in line to see that movie.

These movies are some of my favorites based on the sheer volume of times I’ve seen them:

  • Shaun of the Dead
  • Anchorman
  • Caddyshack
  • Meatballs
  • Dawn of the Dead (2004 version)
  • The Empire Strikes Back [Read more…]
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Television

Thursday Night Menu

April 14, 2011 by Christopher

I was a little disappointed in last night’s Extreme Couponing. The first segment featured twins who went around finding free stuff on their birthday, like lunch at Red Robin. That’s not extreme. Anyone can do that. Then, they found a grocery store selling ten pork chops for ten dollars. And they only bought ten! How is that extreme? They should be backing a truck up and buying enough pork to last them until the Rapture. Lame. Double lame, because they were twins.

The second segment featured the guy from the pilot, who bought a ton of stuff with the intent of donating some of it to U.S. soldiers, which is nice. Apparently, he’s donated tens of thousands of dollars worth of goods in the same manner. It’s great to see such support for our soldiers, I only wish they’d shown video of the soldiers opening their gift packages to see the looks on their faces as they received twenty pounds of women’s deodorant and Colgate toothpaste.

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 4

April 14, 2011 by Christopher

I’m starting to realize that the stuff Prophet was doing in the intro movie is a bit different than the stuff I’m doing. He was jumping off buildings and blowing up trucks and ripping giant guns off vehicles and staring down helicopters like they couldn’t even hurt him. Me, I mainly sneak around, invisible, shooting people when they’re not paying attention and then scamper off and hide.

Not that I’m not having fun, I am. But if we were both in The Fantastic Four, Prophet would be The Thing and I’d be The Invisible Woman, if the invisible woman had a machine gun.

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DVD | Television

Wednesday Night Menu

April 13, 2011 by Christopher

I watched Unstoppable on DVD. Based on a true and interesting story about a runaway freight train, it was directed by Tony Scott, who I think realized too late that he wanted to make an action film but most of the action boils down to two guys sitting in a train cab, talking.

His solution was to never, ever stop swinging the camera around and around and around. It was almost funny if not for the fact that I was almost getting motion sick. No matter how mundane the topic, the camera was always swooshing all over the place. Anyway, the movie was not enjoyable awful, nor awfully enjoyable. It was just sort of there.

To the menu!

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 3

April 13, 2011 by Christopher


I had a bunch of Cokes with dinner, so I wound up wide-awake at 11pm last night. Played some more Crysis 2, and this morning I’m a tired, half-unconscious mess. Here’s the run-down.

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Internet

There’s a huge cavern complex and his head fell off.

April 13, 2011 by Christopher

That can be my next tweet! is a site that will predict what your (or anyone’s) next twitter entry will be. Here are some of my results:

“I’ve done zero journalism, just the class not finished and other obstacles, climbed ropes…”
“Cut The Death! will be entirely new. Games thing has been playing Cut The Dwarf.”
“TWICE. Huh. I could tell me, and endless yelling, for more old copy of it for Sam Worthington, who will!”
“Okay, think Minecraft update is very slow, but slow-motion thug-kicking.”
“Anyone played it here: My FC2 buddy had set the works for geriatric kobalds.”
“Finally ran into learning something about nothing but you can shoot up your pocket is getting prettier!”
“There’s a huge cavern complex and his head fell off.”
“FNV: Sort of people’s heads to feel left out. Don’t Tell Mom The Dwarf. I’ll have 45 cents.”
“A Connecticut Yankee In A BABY’S ROOM, MASON! WHAT DID THE CANDLESTICK! AND COLONEL MUSTARD IS THE STUDY.”

Definitely sounds like my work.

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 2

April 12, 2011 by Christopher

Picking up where I left off: there’s an alien virus in Manhattan, which somehow causes aliens to invade, and there’s a bunch of enemy soldiers, and I still don’t really get the plot because I was too busy kicking things to pay attention.

Reading the Wikipedia page helps a little. The enemy soldiers are military contractors who want to kill me because they think I’m Prophet, who they were trying to kill because he was infected with the alien virus. So, it’s just a wacky case of mistaken identity that could be cleared up by me telling everyone that I’m not Prophet. Or, you know, I could just keep killing them. I think I’ll do that!

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Television | Video Games

Tuesday Night Menu

April 12, 2011 by Christopher

Video Games

Portal 2:  Nope, it’s not out yet, but it is currently available for pre-loading off Steam, which I’m excited about, which is a little weird. All it really means is that I can download some chunks of it but can’t play it for another week or so. But still, the idea of that game-y goodness slowly leaking into my computer, and just knowing it’s waiting there, is a nice warm feeling. It’s like owning a gun and knowing that you can kill someone if you want.

I’ve been on a complete Portal 2 info blackout for a couple months. Valve do great promotion work for their games, but with all the videos and ads and mysterious puzzles they’ve been releasing lately, I don’t want to have seen 95% of the game before I get to play it. I won’t even visit the link I just linked.

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