Happy Movie-Mas!
The holidays weren't an overly productive time. I did work on Thursday and Friday of last week - and did a couple of hours of work this weekend. Before then I didn't do much - but we certainly did see a lot of movies.
During the Christmas break at my parents place we watched - The Kingdom and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
The Kingdom was surprisingly better than I expected - thought it was really an all out action movie.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 was okay - though there were a large number of plotholes. Plus the movie was a little too long - almost 3 hours for an fantasy adventure movie. It really didn't need to be close to 3 hours long.
We saw the new Ellen Page and Michael Cera movie Juno on Thursday.
This movie reminds me of Superbad - not in the offensive dialogue (not that I was perturbed but I certainly wouldn't watch it with my parents) but in the age group the movie focused on. I enjoy Ellen Page and I enjoy Michael Cera so there was little chance I would had this movie.
Last night we saw the new Coen brothers movie No Country for Old Men. Another great movie that is admittedly not for everyone. If you can watch a movie that has no finality and leaves you asking questions then this is for you. If that annoys you then don't see this movie. As always the Coen brothers create a beautifully filmed, stomach turning thriller.
Today my inner geek needed feeding so I threw on The King of Kong documentary, which portrayed the struggle between two men obsessed with being the highest scoring player in Donkey Kong. The film was a little bias in it's portrayal of the two men - since I ended up cheering for the family man and despising the cocky reigning champion (though it could have had something to do with his horrible hairstyle).
All of the movies were good and worth the time to view them (with the exception of the Pirates movie). Though I tend to think highly of the movies I choose to watch :)
Portal
If you are a gamer and want to try out an innovative (yet short) puzzle game give Portal a try. It's part of the Orange Box Collection (which also includes Half-Life 2) released by Valve for the XBox 360 and the PC.
The game is essentially a first person shooter but instead of toting a machine gun you're carrying a portal gun. This portal gun is used to solve puzzles, disable machine gun turrets and escape to the end of the levels. The most important thing to take into account during gameplay is physics. For example - if your character falls into a portal at a certain speed you will come out of the other portal going at the same speed.
The soundtrack and voice acting for the game is freakin' hillarious as well. You start the game in a box with a weird robotic voice explaining that this is the start of a series of tests - and that there is cake at the end of the series of tests. The robotic voice grows more and more warped as the game goes on - leading up to the final confrontation.
You should really play this game - if only for the end credit song "Still Alive" (which was incidentally written by Jonathan Coulton). You can watch the ending and listen to the song on YouTube but you likely won't appreciate it without playing the game.
Give it a try!
