The National

Not a big post today. The other night I was wondering around CD Plus in the local mall and for the first time, was impressed with the selection of music contained within. Typically one can never really find what you're really interested in, but sometimes the store pulls through and has some non-mainstream album you would actually purchase. I kind of feel like I'm borderline here, as a lot of the "indie" stuff I listen to is carried here.

The National is one of those bands whom I can purchase any of their albums and be completely satisfied in the pick-up. I managed to snatch a two disc edition of Alligator at the same store here a number of months ago, and the other night I grabbed Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. The clerk was impressed with the album and said they should be getting even more of The National in sometime as more people request it. Good news because they're definitely my favourite music at the moment.

Going back a step, I was also impressed, standing at the front of the store and marvelling in the rows and rows of CDs, that they would have so much music there. Sure, they have a lot of DVDs, but they are somewhat crammed together and pushed to one side of the store. I was taking in the site because a recent trip to an HMV revealed that the majority of their sales is not from music anymore, but DVDs and now video games. You could even buy a Wii there! Which just does not seem right to me at all.

HMV was the go-to store for hard to find music. Although their prices were jacked up ridiculously, they would have what you wanted. Not so much anymore. So I'm now happy we have a CD Plus whose focus is still music (they even have a used section), although for the truly hard to find stuff, we'll have to depend on the online realm.

Oh yeah, if you haven't listened to The National yet, please do so!

We Love Katamari

Yes, Katamari has consumed my life again! A few years ago Katamari Damacy came out and rolled through the world; everybody was praising it and you just understood that it's a game you should be playing, but you don't, in actuality. Besides, it was for the pitiful PS2, which is a section of the gaming stores I typically just float by without showing much interest.

But there were games to be had: namely, Shadow of the Colossus. It was getting enough positive reviews and buzz on the internet that I was compelled to pick it up, and it was glorious. Then, a number of weeks later Toys 'R Us had a great deal on games: $15 even! Katamari Damacy was one of the, so I had to pick it up. And I never looked back. All of a suddent the PS2 was this great system with some great games for it.

The world of Katamari sucked me in, although not for a long time. Unfortunately it is quite short, but I did play it quite constantly for a number of days. When it was over, it was over. I was able to re-experience the game through some friends, but generally, I haven't gone back to it often. Then the sequel came out and I just couldn't justify at the time spending over forty dollars for a game that was most likely only going to give a few hours of entertainment.

My mistake at that time was only counting the hours, not the quality of the hours, because as I play the game now, I can say that the time spent playing this game is without a doubt worth more than many other games out there now. I managed to find We Love Katamari for $19 at Blockbuster, which coincidentally is the only place I've seen it in the past year and a half. It was a much higher price until now.

The game is great, with the same bizarre sense of humour, but now with a wonderful self-referential twist added. You're rolling to appease the fans of the first video game, and each fan has different needs. This introduces levels with different goals than to just roll a big of katamari as possible. While these existed in the first, they are refined here. And to me, they are still better than the 360 version (Beautiful Katamari). I found the first game relaxing and this one as well, while Beautiful is much more stressful. This is most likely because the goals are more lenient and you're allowed to pass a level without actually working too hard, or even reaching the goal (there is one level where you have to collect a thousand origami cranes; after numerous tries I've only gotten about nine hundred thirty). While this may seem silly, I think it's great: you can go back and improve your scores and skills, or just roll through the game to the parts you actually enjoy.

Now I have to go back and play the first Katamari over again, and perhaps try the 360 version as well. If I get desperate enough, I may have to buy a PSP to get the third Katamari!

Week Two through Four

First was Blade Runner, and now along comes 3:10 to Yuma. Was this movie worth the purchase? That may be debatable, but I kind of felt the pressure to purchase a movie in the second week of January and that was the best choice. When I put it that way, it practically breaks the rules, doesn't it?

The fact is I really enjoyed this movie in theatres. It's great to see Christian Bale do just about anything, and Russell Crowe was perfectly smug. Did you like the ending? Most did not. I did; and I can't really explain it. It seemed very...reasonable. Shall I spoil it for you? Yes, yes I shall. Crowe willingly takes the train to prison, when he doesn't have to. That seems to have upset a lot of people, but doesn't it just make sense that the guy wants to go for a ride? You know he's not going to stay in jail. I may be mistaken but they may have even mentioned that he's escaped from there numerous times already. In any event, there were some dastardly characters and it was fun to watch.

How does the Blu-Ray look? The fifteen minutes I've watched so far have looked great. Reviews indicate that this is a solid disc. I wouldn't doubt it at all, and I look forward to watching it in full.

So that's two weeks taken care of. I also went ahead and bought weeks three and four: Lord of War and Layer Cake. Of all the places in the world, I never thought I would be buying movies at HMV. It was a two for fifty dollar deal, which isn't all that great to begin with, but decent enough to warrant a purchase. I really dug the vibe of Lord of War, and Layer Cake is just a good movie all round. Of course, it's been a few years since I've seen it, so a re-watch is in order.

So what's coming up for week five? It's difficult to say; there don't seem to be too many great discs coming out, so I may have to dig into the shelves to find something decent. For some reason, I'm leaning towards TMNT, most likely for two reasons. One, it is a CG and would look really great. Second, there's a phenomenal fight scene between Raph and Leo that was just awesome.

Cloverfield

Absolutely. Amazing.

That could be it; that could be all I need to say, and you would go see it, right? But then the post wouldn't be that interesting. Alright; it all began last summer when the teaser was released before Transformers, right? That's right. The shaky hand-camera party, the explosion and the Statue of Liberty's head rolling down the street. You had no idea what was happening. Then they insult us by not even giving a name of the movie.

Insulting? Hardly. You know it's from J. J. Abrams and you know the release date. Perfect teaser. And then the questions came; you know the standard ones. I was more concerned about the camerawork: was the whole movie going to be hand-held camera? I was really hoping so. Was it Godzilla? God, I hope not! J. J. wouldn't stoop to that level. But it was definitely a monster movie, and that got me excited enough as it was.

But not enough to really hold my excitement, because there wasn't a plethora of goods revealed about the movie. You knew when it was coming out, the style of movie, and that was it. I avoided everything else, which was basically just speculation.

Then lo and behold, the movie comes out; we go see it. I'm blown away; I can't stop thinking of it afterwards and I can feel my body fidgeting with excitement, even after the credits roll. That doesn't normally happen. The last time I was really excited about a movie was before and during Spider-Man. Not so much during and afterwards, a la Cloverfield. This was a first. So the movie gets a 10/10. We don't need to wait till the end of this post to find that out.

We can, however, talk about the movie itself. Before entering the theatre there were many pink letter-sized papers floating about warning that you may get sick while watching this movie! Utterly fantastic, really! The thought didn't even occur to me before and the idea of having people being sick during the movie, in the theatre, made me giddy. If you were going to endure somebody throwing up in your theatre, this was the movie to do it at. Not at Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Ugh. That was a terrible experience.

But alas, nobody was sick during the screening; I guess that was ok. Because the movie had me in it's grip from the get-go. The entire party scene, with it's introductions to the characters felt genuine, was pretty funny and mildly interesting. Then the craziness begins and doesn't really let up. The movie is short and sweet. The way the movie is shot, it's impossible not to feel as though you're there. You are in the movie: you see what you're being shown. You look in awe, you run, and you fall and you get back up again. I can't even get upset about the last part of the movie - although predictable - it kept it real.

The monster is terrifying, as are the little monsters that come off the big monster (how genius). But what really gets me is how hopeless the situation is. I can go on and on about this and it's the feeling I get while watching zombie movies: this could happen and just might happen.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score

It was extremely sad and perhaps even more so, upsetting, that Futurama was cancelled. It had been on for a few seasons and was some of the best television on at the time. While I was surprised that it was cancelled, I am partially to blame, as I never watched it every week. Perhaps that was the fault of its scheduling, as it would be on randomly and at slightly different times as it was pushed back if football ran late.

But now it's coming back, and has started with this new movie that came out last year (that sounds weird, as it was just 2007). Straight to "video" is fine for something like this as Futurama has always belonged on the small screen, just like the Simpsons. But what took the Simpsons fifteen plus years to accomplish took Futurama only a couple, and Futurama did it right. This movie didn't feel like an extended episode, but still had the feel of a regular episode.

The plot is typical for Futurama and doesn't get too complicated. Of course, with time travel that may be difficult to do but they manage to pull it off well here. What's really great about this movie is how it integrates and explains into the regular season episodes. What you get is some behind the scenes of your favourite episodes, and some loose ends tied up. Now, I've been told the movie makes much more sense and really wraps things up from the regular series, but truth be told, I have yet to watch every episode, especially the later ones.

The humour is good, the characters are all there and the classic Futurama sentimental moments are there too. The show could be quite touching and I'm glad to see that translated into this movie, without going overboard and still keeping the quality humour.

So in the end, I would rate the movie 8.5 out of 10. Yes, I must start supplying numerical ratings to the movies; after a while I should post a simple listing of everything for easy lookup and for...documentation.

And an update for the "one hi-def a week" campaign: I purchased Blade Runner for Blu-Ray. Really solid film and an awesome five disc set. Unfortunately the five disc is just a reprint of the first disc; if you Google it, the issue is fairly rampant. I was hoping I would get lucky, but I have since returned the movie and exchanged it, only to experience the same problem. Not a great start but Future Shop was very good with the exchange; I just hope they are willing to do a few times if this issue keeps coming up.

One Hi-Def Movie a Week

A few years ago I fooled around with the idea of buying one DVD a week for an entire year. This failed for a couple of reasons, one of which is money. Without really working, it is difficult to afford such luxeries. Second, is releases. It's not every week that a good movie comes out, right? Third, you end up buying movies that you just don't really want to own, quite simply enough, and we shouldnt' be forced to do those things.

I'm glad I didn't follow through with that plan because with DVD on its way out, I ended up selling over one hundred of them at reasonable prices and was quite happy. After that, I didn't buy a DVD for a couple of years as high definition was just around the corner. I did the same for VHS when DVD was coming out.

So on Christmas 2006, I received an HD-DVD player add-on for the 360, and started purchasing HD-DVD titles. I had the silly idea that I would get one per week for the year, but it very quickly fell apart after three weeks when there was just not enough titles coming out and not enough of a catalog to choose from. It was for the best.

Now, I have the capability of purchasing both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies, and there are tons of titles out there now. Many worth owning? Probably not. But I'm going to try again: purchase one hi-def movie per week for the entire year. There are some ground rules though that I will follow:

1. Don't buy crap you don't want.
2. If you buy two in one week, that covers two weeks; i.e. the movies do not have to be purchased in the actual week. One movie counts as one week, regardless of when it was purchased (as long as it's in the same year).
3. Don't buy crap.

It's important to have rules one and three because I bought a lot of crap on DVD that I somewhat regretted, as they were either cheap or just something to purchase to keep me busy. They tie directly into rule two, which gives me the freedom of not purchasing a movie for four weeks, then making up those four weeks later, or purchasing weeks in advance. That takes the pressure off.

I fully expect movie prices to be crazy for quite a while but there are some quality budget titles being released, such as American Psycho and Total Recall (both of which I purchased boxing day 2007).

I will post about the hi-def discs I purchase and give you a running tally of the money I've spent on them and when they were purchased; I do in fact keep a spreadsheet (yeah yeah, I know, crazy). Based on previous purchases I can expect to spend a little over $1,400 on this project. Wow, that may be enough to get me to abandon the project altogether right now!

A Week of Movies

Alright, it's been about a week since I've posted and I have in fact been watching movies. There are weeks where no movies are being watched, as they are cast aside for the delight of other mediums, such as reading, video games and dare I say, life.

First up on the block is Alien vs Predator: Requiem, which I guess is a sequel to the crap that was released a couple of years ago. Does it tie into it at all? Apparently it does, but I didn't pick up on it and it really doesn't matter. If you're into trailers you will have seen the nice R-rated trailer released a few months back that promised much more of this movie than what was really delivered. In the trailer you saw heads being blown up, people being impaled, aliens popping out of chests and generally, lots of gore. And because of this, you've basically seen the movie.

I would have expected more: I really wanted a clean, concise and gory look at some aliens fighting some Predators. Instead we only get one Predator and a number of Aliens, with humans stuck in the middle. Although, they really didn't try hard with the plot and I will give kudos for that. So what went wrong? Not a whole lot I guess. I was pretty satisfied with the movie on the whole, but could definitely have used some more...something. It's impossible to say what. But really, just watch the first film and then this one, and you will be quite happy with Requiem.

Next up is Sweeney Todd, which was a very solid movie all round. Again it pairs Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, but into something that we have never seen before: a musical. How do you get people to go see a musical like this? First, don't tell them it's a musical, and two, add one Johnny Depp. While he may still be channeling Jack Sparrow, I certainly didn't mind and noticed enough of a difference to call him a separate character. Helena was great and so were the other cast members. A simple revenge driven story and a small cast of characters ensured that everybody stayed on track and got business done. There is a good amount of gore and gross things, which is perfect for a film like this, as well as overflowing corsets that are just ready to break open.

As for the singing? I can't tell who sings badly generally unless they are the initial rejects of American Idle, so I thought everything sounded pretty good here. While it's most likely fact that they recorded their singing separately, I could only really tell that was the case with some of Helena's performances. Not a big complaint at all.

The third movie is barely worth mentioning at all as it was just complete and utter trash: Epic Movie. There are so very few words I can invest in this movie that it deserves, positive or negative. It was just terrible. Trash. It was so offensively bad that I feel guilty for having watched at least an hour of it. But, on the other hand, it puts the bar so low it places over really terrible movies in a positive spotlight. If you watch this and then the original AVP, you might be mistaken that the latter was a decent flick.