Indiana Jones

Last Thursday night was going to be huge. Well, perhaps not huge but adequately large. I purchased the tickets on the night before, although truth be told, they should have been purchased days before that. That was precisely what happened with Iron Man, and perhaps because of this fumble, the Thursday night premiere of Indiana Jones was doomed.

We arrived at the theatre the pre-requisite one hour before showtime and promptly sat down. The regular movie magazine (not sure what they call it nowadays) provided little entertainment. But we kept ourselves amused, until approximately five minutes before six, the emergency lighting in the theatre flickered on and a calm fell upon the crowd. In a few moments we had normal lighting back on, and we could see the projector/computer booting (Fedora Linux, interestingly enough) and then the standard trivia track stuff running. This occured for a minute before an official arrived to tell us they were working on a power problem.

Another ten minutes go by and the same official arrives, this time with goodies, which is not a good sign. Indeed, she reported that they were experiencing brown-outs, of all things, and the movie would not go on. This is just after my friend had purchased an extraordinarily expensive bucket of popcorn that while delicious, has lost some of it's purpose and pricey justification. I feel his pain.

And it turns out to be the entire neighbourhood that was experiencing this brown as, because my house was affected too. It's such a strange thing to have happen: lights on at half power and some devices refuse to power on at all. Quite simply, not enough juice. So we went over to Cales's and watched The Last Crusade to fulfill our Indy fix. And it was glorious. It has been such along time since I've sat down to watch one of these movies that it was quite a treat, and of course it's made better as you pick up on stuff that you have long forgotten.

So it's Sunday night before we wonder over to see Indy again, this time, a last minute decision and arriving a scant ten minutes before the showing. Indeed, the experience has already been sullied.

And the movie was good; I can't go so far as saying it was great, or at the level of the other movies (at least, the first and third). It's difficult for me to draw these conclusions since it's most likely been fifteen years since I've seen the first two. The first time I saw The Last Crusade was in some giant dome in Toronto, on a screen that subtly wrapped around your entire field of vision. As a child this was heaven.

I can accept a fair bit of supernatural and unworldly elements in Indiana Jones, as it has always been present and handled properly, but the sheer amount of unbelievable moments in this movie had the effect of destroying my immersion in it. And unfortunately, I think it had quite a bit to do with the level of CGI in this movie; something we have blamed on Lucas entirely, although Spielberg has been using quite a bit of it too (although more effectively). I really don't want to see CGI monkeys and groundhogs in my movies. Especially this one. Like really.

But really, I enjoyed the characters and Harrison Ford as Indy again; with a bit more harshness in his voice than usual, and Shia, who doesn't a decent job of respecting his acting elders. The humour is good as was the length of the film, and of course, there were the action sequences. In this day of age I can appreciate just about any action scene that doesn't cut two hundred times a second, or at least to such a degree that you're imagination has to fill in for what you should be able to see but alas, cannot.

So that's that; I really enjoyed the movie and was entertained. It was not everything I had hoped it was, but really, what is? If I were to score the film, it would receive a 7.5 out of 10.

Subway Points

It came to my attention today that Subway has introduced Subway points. More than likely I'm very far behind the curve of this but it's news to me today as I treated myself to an overpriced sub.

She handed me a card and I didn't have to sign anything, which is a big plus. This means you can steal it from me and it won't have my information on it. It also means you cannot say no to accepting another piece of plastic into your already overwhelmed wallet. So now it's in there and I have eight points.

You get one point for every dollar you spend at Subway. This is pure devastation, as I like the system but not the rewards. It costs ten points for one cookie. That's a ten dollar cookie you are eating. A full length sub will set you back seventy-five dollars.

It probably wouldn't be so bad except the conversion from your dollar to a Subway point is blisteringly obvious and very easily calculated. With the stamps before, you could never be certain how much that six-inch cost you. It may have been a combination of expensive subs, cheap subs or what have you. But you certainly couldn't buy one meal and say "I just netted a free cookie. Just one though."

A quick trip to the Hock Shop proved quite fruitful. As I don't usually frequent these establishments I was pleased to find Forza Motorsport 2 there, for a very low price of five dollars. I thought it was a mistake. Fifteen perhaps, but five? They had three copies in, all of which had perfect cases and intact manuals free from harm. So I looked at the other games there, and none hit the single digit dollar mark. Even those Burger King games started at ten dollars a piece (didn't we just pay seven for those new?).

So I had to pick it up. I had wanted to play the original FM for the XBox a long time ago but just could never bring myself to it. And we probably have Project Gotham to blame for that. And Gran Turismo. A man can only handle so much racing, especially racing simulation. So I was also tempted to get FM2 when it came out a while back but wisely settled not to, and spend the money on more useful things (but probably not).

With the recent trend of renting games at the relatively inexpensive price point of ten dollars, I thought I would just rent this game sometime down the road when there was nothing else. But when you cut that price in half and tell me I can keep it forever, well, sign me up.

So yes, I did start playing, which means the Orange Box will have to be put on hold. And I'm pleased to say I'm very happy so far. The game is much easier to get into than Gran Turismo, and it doesn't look like it's going to suffer from the same issue where you just get stuck at a certain point as you have to re-race the same track hundreds of times just to afford a decent ride. The difficulty is adjustable all over the place, and the only penalization for taking on easier settings is a percentage hit on your income. If you ramp up the difficulty, you get more cash. Simple as that.

But what really gets me is the whole start-up process of "new" games, and by new, I mean games you have never put into your system before. Every game I have ever put in requires an update of some kind. For a while it seemed like every HD-DVD I put in required that too, which just blows my mind into the back of the couch. We are forced to wait for the download as it installs, doing who-knows-what to your game, and then reboots the system. Today it took me about seven minutes just to get to the title screen.

Call of Duty 4

In the past eighteen months I have played through both Call of Duty 2 and 3 and walked away feeling as though I had a great video gaming experience. What really got me with these games is the sense of awe, and the excitement of playing out certain scenes throughout the game. I would swivel my character's head around with my mouth wide open in wonderment at the insanity; the detail in the world, the characters, explosions and sound. It constantly made me appreciate what our veterans went through, as I know what happened in the game cannot be any real close approximation of what the true events were like, but if this was even a fraction? Well, that's just insane.

So number four didn't really have the same effect on me. There were some great scenes, but nothing mind-blowing like the previous ones. The weapons? I don't keep up on this stuff so they all look futuristic and crazy to me. The weapons from the previous games are so well established and iconic and that is somewhat lacking here.

The interesting thing to note about this game is that it is actually the third title from Infinity Ward, as Call of Duty 3 was developed by somebody else. And it shows. Call of Duty 3 suffered from a major amount of inivisible walls, bad clipping and generally annoying AI. Number two and four have a much more polished feel to them, with spot-on gameplay (I never played the first one). As well, the achievements seem to make a lot of sense, and after playing Modern Warfare, I was left with just 290 points.

It was time to jump into veteran difficulty. I tried this one Call of Duty 2 and only got through a couple of levels before I had to call it quits. With this one, I managed to get through a few more levels, bolstering my score a bit, and I didn't feel like I was going to throw the controller through the window. But, I know my limits, as I reached one level in particular, and cannot last until the first checkpoint. So now the game goes back to the store and I get ready for another first-person adventure: The Orange Box.

I Am Iron Man

It's been a long time in the making (or has it?) and it's finally upon us: Iron Man, the movie. Now this could all be fabrication, but I swear this movie was announced back in 2002 and has switched hands so many times in terms of direction and star power, that we all blew it off as something that's just not going to happen, and really, why would we want it to happen?

I recall because I traded this movies stocks on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a fun little site that allowed you to trade fictitious shares of movie stars and movies. When a movie was announced, you could grab the IPO and sell it a few days later. I was eager to pick up as many super hero movies as was available, which were quite plentiful in those days.

The big news and the motivation to get excited about this movie was that it's Marvel's first true film, in that they are the sole studio behind it's development. They've partnered with Paramount for distribution, but as Nathan puts it: this is Marvel without any outside interference. And they did not go wrong.

I could spend some time talking about the movie and how good it was, but the bottom line is you just need to go out and see it. I very much appreciate how they've catered to both comic book fans and everybody else. Indeed, I kind of felt like I was in the latter grouping as I know practically nothing about Iron Man, as he and his kind (re: The Avengers) were part of that other corner of the Marvel universe I never bothered with. So you're not going to feel lost, and I'm sure they threw in enough to satisfy the craving of the average comic book geek. The only negative of this movie that could have made me much angrier if the movie itself was no good, was the showing. Galaxy just can't handle it: the movie was out of focus and noticeably so throughout. It became distracting in numerous scenes but was bearable, considering the content. I'm excited to either see it again (and hope it's in focus) or view it at home in high definition later this year, in sharp glory.

So why could I not get excited about this movie before it's release? X-Men, Spider-Man, Daredevil. These were all movies, among others, that I felt a genuine excitement for from the time of ticket purchase to leaving the theatre after viewing. Not so much with Iron Man. And really, there's no reason for it because it stands among the best comic book movies out there.

Perhaps it's because we've been burned so many times with these movies you can't trust the pre-release hype. Perhaps I'm just getting older, or there are more exciting things going on in life now. In any event, it was a good feeling (not an excited feeling) of purchasing the tickets days in advance for a preview screening (just a night before release, really) and then showing up entirely way too early to stand in line with nobody else there. And that's what it's all about: the movie experience.