Roger Ward

On a recent CNN story regarding the introduction of “Peanuts” to Northwest Airlines in-flight menu (yeah, because that’s considered news!) a reporter must have had another thing on her mind due to her use of the word “Penis”. Not once or twice, but three times!! I suppose it’s a good way to have a break and get some time off work in the form of a mandatory suspension (possibly) seeing as how uptight the yanks are over anything the slightest bit rude. Look at at boob nonsense from the super bowl a few years ago!

Oh well, it certainly makes for funny viewing and what will most likely turn into the latest youtube sensation.

Kevin Stalin????

Here in Australia we’ve had a new government for just over 12 months.  Typically for a labor government they’ve done a rubbish job. They’ve taken a 20 billion plus budget surplus and put it into the red. Rudd has also fallen for what I call the “chicken little” trick. It’s the alarmist condition that the hippies of the World use to trick us into believing that the World is coming to an end. So now they are going to propose a carbon trading scheme. (Even though as a country we don’t pollute half as much as countries like China or America). And now the do-gooder state is going to place taxes on what they would class as “unhealthy foods”. These do-gooders won’t be happy until we’re all living in plastic bubbles locked away from the world.  What a fun bunch…

Really they’ve got to be kidding. Some of these “unhealthy foods” include Vegemite, Blue Cheese and Jams because of there high salt & sugar levels. Talk about a nanny state. They want to control what we eat due to high salt and sugar contents, but things like McDonalds, KFC and Hungry Jacks are exempt. There’s something a bit wrong there isn’t it. Sounds like yet another dumb idea just like the proposed Internet filter.

Obviously Kevin Rudd loves the works of George Orwell. I remember what it was like living in a free an democratic country. Now the hippy communists and there politically correct agendas are filtering through into mainstream politics which means that for us, our lives are becoming controlled more and more. Gone are the days when Australia was a free country, where adults were allowed to make their own decisions about their lives.  First there was the Internet filter, now they’re telling us what we can and can’t eat?  Next you’ll find that Rudd will be monitoring all of  our activities, institute a blanket curfew and execute dissidents. Looks like I’m in trouble. And you thought communism was dead!

Considering it’s been six months since I started this thing, I figured that a bit of a change would be as good as a holiday. So I’ve changed the layout, hopefully you find it an improvement. I like it personally. It’s very minimalist and clean while still looking classy.

I’ve also added in my twitters to the blog as well, just in case you like punishing yourself more than once a day!

Also, I’ve found a nice online diversion. World Golf Tour. Best way I can describe it is a browser version of the classic Links series of golf games. It’s really fun for what it is. I’ve added it to the links section.

Long time no blog. Apart from a few decidedly individual movie reviews from when I was unwell, it’s been pretty quiet around here due to that culprit I like to call work. But I just wanted to take a moment out of my busy day to say. CRANBERRY JUICE IS REALLY, REALLY BAD!

In all my 31 years, I haven’t ever had the stuff and I still wish I hadn’t. What is it with Yanks and there penchant for rubbish? I’ve never knew what evil tastes like, but now I finally know!

I sometimes wonder how a movie like Indiana Jones would have been accepted if it were released just a few years after the last film. 19 years have passed since Indiana Jones last rode into the sunset. Finally after getting those three little space films out of the way, George Lucas was able to focus on a new Indiana Jones film. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is the latest entry in the now quartet of films. As we know it had a very protracted and long development time to finally get into our Blu-Ray players. As anyone who enjoys a movie or two also knows, Indiana Jones has been derided by the general internet community for various reasons including the alien subplot, cheesy jokes and even for the participation of the movie nerd’s hero George Lucas. What happened? What happened in these last ten years for people to become so vitriolic towards certain films today? I can put it down to one thing alone. The Internet!

While communications technology has increased in the 19 years since that last film, it seems that moviegoer’s intelligence hasn’t. The Internet has seemingly made film reviewers of us all. And it seems in the majority it has made bad ones at that too. It seems today that reviewers, posters, forum users, website creators and the rest think they know better than professional film reviewers because if you read a lot of the Internet posts/babble on various movie related websites, they don’t have many nice things to say about the film. Simple fact of the matter is that they honestly don’t get it! Wannabe’s always try to take the high brow approach with every film thinking that they’re a Roger Ebert or a Richard Corliss. Perfect example is 300. It’s a film loved by the general movie fanboy community which generally means they’re in the under 25 pants on head retarded demographic. 300 is an awful, awful film and is a complete bastardization of the original story with no reverence to the events it relates to. Really, whats the point of making a historical film if it’s not accurate? 300 is a movie that caters to the lowest common denominator, but those wannabe’s love it because it “looks cool” with all that CGI and violence. To them it’s a dramatic film and it doesn’t require too much effort on the old brain.

This community shows how silly they really are. Last time I checked, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, is much the same. It uses a lot of CGI and doesn’t require much thinking, but it’s hated. Maybe its the lack of 300’s vague homosexual undertones that makes them hate Indy More? The aggregate scores on Rotten Tomatoes for 300 was 60% while Indiana Jones had a 76% certified fresh rating. So much for Internet reviewers knowing more than professional reviewers then! Why bring this up in a review? Well, it seems today that with Internet buzz and movie spoilers, a lot of movies don’t get the chance to be enjoyed by the average moviegoer unlike the last time Indiana Jones saw the inside of the movie theatre. These days, the average moviegoer won’t let themselves enjoy a film anymore because they think they need to criticize every film that comes out so they can babble on around a latte with their other wannabe film critic mates, instead of actually going to the movies to enjoy/hate a film. These days it’s just all pure judgment before actually seeing a film. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull isn’t the best film in the Indy series that’s for sure, but it’s certainly not as bad as what people have been saying. I think the biggest thing is that people just didn’t “get” it, they took it too seriously for what it really was: an homage to the cheesy science fiction “B” movies of the 50’s, just like the original Indy trilogy was an homage to the 30’s adventure serials of the day. No, they tried too take it more seriously than what it actually was, an Indiana Jones film. And for an Indiana Jones film, it does quite well on its own and does feel like an Indiana Jones film, and isn’t that what is important?

Considering this film has grossed over 300 million dollars in the U.S. there must have been something about it that worked, but I’ll still give a synopsis for the two people who haven’t seen it? It’s 1957. With the war over and those pesky Nazi’s defeated, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his partner Mac (Ray Winstone) (who I would love to punch in the face he’s so annoying!) have been kidnapped this time by a group of Russians from the red army led by Col. Dr. Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) and taken to a secret government warehouse to retrieve something of value that Indy had recovered ten years before in Roswell, New Mexico. Obviously it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the object that they’re looking for is related to the alleged UFO crash in 1947. Forced to cooperate Indy finds what the Russians are seeking before using his skills in order to escape his captors in what is a very over the top and unrealistic sequence but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. After all this is Indiana Jones film.

Because of his escape, Indy is put under suspicion by the FBI of working for the reds. Due to this suspicion, Indy is suspended by Barnett College, so Indy decides it would be a good idea to move on and decides to go to Europe. It’s at this point another new character, the awfully named Mutt Williams (Shia Labouf) enters on his motorbike and informs Indy that one of his oldest friends Professor Harold Oxley (John Hurt) and Mutt’s mother have been kidnapped and the only clue to there whereabouts and the whereabouts of the so called “crystal skull” is in a map that only Indy can decode. Utilizing his old trusty leather jacket, fedora and whip, Indy jets of with Mutt to South America in order to find the skull and solve the mystery.

I’m not going to go too deeply into the major plot points as not to spoil it for the people who haven’t seen it yet. But I will say that there are times in the film where it does become somewhat disjointed with over the top situations and some one dimensional characters. Even with those occasional missteps, it still tries its best to remain true to the Indiana Jones idiom of having fun, just like the originals did all those years ago. On the whole though, there are worse two hour diversions you could make.

Obama NBA09 In Game Advertising

It’s a funny World we live in these days. Gone are the days of regular newspaper, radio or TV advertising. We live in a connected world and now we find real World advertising jumping into a virtual world. Players in certain American states will find billboard’s within the game Burnout Paradise & NBA09 for Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign. This I find quite ironic considering Obama blames video games amongst other things as the cause of underachievement amongst the younger generation. Personally I disagree. Lack of discipline is the issue in my books but that’s for another story.

This in game advertising gets me thinking though. Here I am sitting in Australia and I’m bombarded left and right with news about the upcoming American election between and old geriatric and a black man with the middle name of “Hussain”. The question I’ve got to ask is why? Why do we get bombarded by news of the US election when it is of no concern to someone in Australia. Or is it? Many consider the office of the President Of The United States, leader of the free world. If this is the case, does he become my leader too?

Apparently, yes! While the President doesn’t have any effect on us Australians in a governance sense, the decisions made by the President and his administration do have an effect on us indirectly. After all, look at the problems the World is having economically and militarily today! The world is effectively stuffed! So, seeing that this “leader of the free world” does indeed have an effect on my way of life, why don’t we get a vote too? Why do we leave the job to a bunch of loud, obnoxius, arrogant, gun toting, gum chewing yanks who’s IQ levels have to be questioned considering the choices they have made the last eight years. If they best they’ve been able to come up with is a C grade student with awful verbal skills, were in trouble!

Want to know find out the status of the Hadron Collider in a humourous way? Well then just pop on over to:

www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com 

and have a look to see if the World is destroyed. Although technically, if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this!

Today is International talk like a pirate day. Yar! So to help out all you wannabe pirates, I present to you the Pirate Dictionary.

The Easy To Learn Pirate Encylopedia!

Let it never be said that nerds can’t be funny. Okay sure, they’re not funny much, but when they are it’s pure gold! In this case it’s the games blog Joystiq and this post.  All you need to know to be familiar with the joke is that in the video game half life, video game character Gordon Freeman is the man present when the World effectively ends as we know it!

CGI Lameness

I had the chance to watch Beowulf tonight. It’s not the type of film that I would rush out and see even though it’s a Robert Zemekis film. I received the movie in the post yesterday for free as part of my Empire magazine subscription. So free is free isn’t it. So I sat down to watch it.

Robert Zemeckis is to me one of the better Writer/Director’s that has been working in Hollywood these last 30 years or so. Whether it be Science fiction, Comedy or Drama he has always seems to get the best out of the source material he has to work with. But it’s just not the case with Beowulf. But, on the flip side, the under 25 demographic is going to Love it, because they’re idiots!

Zemeckis has had a couple of misses, but primarily his work has been a solid affair. Never has this been more true than with films like Cast Away, which featured a brilliant turn by Tom Hanks in a heart breaking, yet poignant story of a man who loses everything in an accident which strands him on a desert island for four years, only to lose everything dear to him again when he finally gets home. Contact too was a brilliant film adaptation of the Carl Sagan book of the same name that certainly does what a movie is supposed to do, and that is entertain!Lately though, like some other Directors, Zemeckis has getting on the technological band wagon of 3D cinema and motion capture.

He first used the motion capture technology on his previous film, The Last Express. While technically the film looked wonderful, there was something missing for me. As such I didn’t feel as connected to the characters as I feel I should have been. Plus the story was a bit “cold”. Maybe it’s an American thing to enjoy this film more, I understand the book is very popular over there. Using the same motion capture technology from The Last Express, Zemeckis has gone to the Old English poem of the same name, and in proper American film making tradition, taken some bits from it that seemed interesting and then basically made the rest up because it’ll be more impressive to look at for the under 25, Ritalin fueled car thief demographic..

So anyway, onto the plot. During celebrations congratulating the construction of a new Hall, Grendel (The freaky Crispin Glover) comes out of his cave because apparently he doesn’t like loud neighbours. So instead of doing the polite and civilized thing of knocking on the door and asking them if they could turn down the music a bit. Grendel does the typical American thing and goes inside the Hall and kills nearly everyone until they’re DEAD! Grendel seems a bit like a weirdo, but he does have a hot mother in the form of Angelina Jolie!

Anyway, to cut a long story short the ubiquitous hero Beowulf (Ray Winstone) rolls into town with the intention to take out the monster and make the land happy again so he can be a hero. (Because it’s apparently easier to lay all the virgins if you’re a hero!) Really that’s it, the film doesn’t require much thinking as it’s made for the iPod generation. It meanders around for a while, uses quite a few average plot devices and the limps home to a pretty average ending.

On the whole I am probably disappointed the most by this amongst all of Robert Zemeckis’ films. It has the depth of a 2 year old’s paddling pool that’s filled with wee. Ray Winstone’s acting was wooden at best and when you add his annoying voice to the mix, you just don’t really care about the character. And this IS the title character we are talking about!

I’m quite concerned now that some Directors maybe putting technology above story. Much like technology and flashy graphics has destroyed originality in the gaming industry. The same thing is becoming true for the film industry. I don’t want a movie that’s rubbish being covered up by good graphics to become commonplace. Probably too late isn’t it. I didn’t like it, but because it is all flash and substance it definitely would appeal to your pants on head retarded, under 25, Ritalin fueled car thief for 2 hours while he takes a hit of crystal meth!