09 May 2010

Movie Review: Iron Man 2

Alright, it's been a long time since I've posted, so I'm gonna start off with the movie that I just finished seeing about... oooh... 20 minutes ago. xD
Iron Man 2: called "the biggest sequel of the year", and I agree, although I think some of that may have come from inflation of people with high expectations. Now, don't get me wrong, the movie was great, but, like Revenge of the Fallen, it was... missing something. I actually texted someone as I left the movie, and was given a term to describe it: "Initial awesomeness that can't exactly be followed up by a sequel.". So, although the movie was good, it was too... bleh.
Honestly, the villain (Whiplash, as most of you may know him) appears way too early in the movie. Actually, he's the second guy on-screen, minus Tony Stark being shown on the television. He appears as the villain Whiplash withing the first 20 minutes of the movie. And I must say... he's brutal. Like, you take a guy with XYY Syndrome and force-feed him a hella lotta Chicken McNuggets pumped up with testosterone, and then have someone stand in front of him and insult his mama... that's about what Whiplash looked like.
Now, since I don't want to give away too many spoilers for those who don't want to read them, here's my disclaimer:
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! GO READ SOMETHING ELSE!!
Okay, now that that's done, we can go on to what happens, basically. A Russian dude gets pissed because his father worked with Tony's father ont he original Arc Reactor but was forced out of the country for suspected espionage. In order to get revenge (saying Tony's family was comprised of "thieves and murderers") he creates his own miniature Arc Reactor and utilizes the Repulsor technology to create two long whips (hence the name "Whiplash"). Tony is dying because he is using a piece of metal in his Arc Reactor that is affecting his body negatively. He goes to a press conference to tell how awesome he is, then attends a hearing in D.C., because the Senators, speaking for the government, want the suit. Tony points out that there are numerous people that try and re-create the suit, only to have their plans fail all over the world (even pointing out that the man who is working for the government, was in one of the videos with a malfunctioning suit). Tony goes to Manaco for something relating to the Stark Expo and decides to take place in the Formula 1 race. He gets in a fight with Whiplash, barely able to fight back because he can't get his portable armor. He finally gets it and almost loses, managing to overload Whiplash's whips. Whiplash is arrested and fakes his own death at the jail while going to work for the man who Tony pointed out in the video as being a "probably terrorist". This is Hammer. Hammer intends on making several suits. Whiplash turns the suits into drones, while Cl. Rhodes, USAF, takes the Mark II Iron Man armor for the government. It is outfitted with several weapons systems and linked to a central place, like the drones. Tony finds out about a new thing his father invented that was secretly placed on a map. Tony constructs a new element based on the blueprints (after told by Nick Fury that he hasn't tried everything to save himself), and uses it to power his new armor. He flies over, hoping to stop the drones. The drones begin firing at Tony who uses his awesomeness to destroy them. Rhodey's suit is powered down by a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was undercover at Stark Industries. The two of them fight off the remaining drones, kill Whiplash and are awarded medals.
END SPOILERS.
Now, obviously I left stuff out, but that's for you to see. The action scenes, way more intense. But you can go see it yourselves.
Rating: 7.3/10

21 August 2009

Movie Review: District 9

WARNING: PLOT ENDING AND/OR DETAILS FOLLOW. DON'T WANT TO KNOW? THEN DON'T READ!

District 9. Probably one of the most well-kept secretive movies of all time (that I know of). By this, I mean, the trailers don't tell you crap. The trailers show you some scenes and a little bit of information, but everything in the film is shrouded in mystery. I'd like to point out that this is not one of those "ALIENS HAVE LANDED IN DC/NEW YORK/CHICAGO AND LET'S SEND IN OR ENTIRE MILITARY TO DESTROY THEM!" movies. In fact... it doesn't take place in the United States at all... or North America. No, it takes place in Johannesberg, South Africa. Hence the accents everyone has. The movie is filmed documentary-style for the most part. This means interviews, news reels, security camera footage and all sorts of things of that nature. But no, it is not another Cloverfield, so you don't have to worry.
In the movie, 20 years ago a ship appeared above the South African city of Johannesburg and just sat there for several months. The military managed to cut their way into the ship and found several malnourished aliens inside. After taking them down, they gave them food and a place to live. The aliens began to strike and raise hell, rioting and trying to survive lthrough hostile means, thus District 9 was born. Distric 9 and the "Humans Only!" signs are plays on District 6 and "Whites Only!" which was a real problem in South Africa several years ago.
In order to keep the aliens in order, the Multinational United (MNU) was created. The movie stars a young man who works for the MNU and goes into District 9 to evict the aliens and send them to a new place. During this, 2 alien men and a child (the aliens are referred to as "Prawns", by the way...) find something and use it to create some guel inside a canister. They hide the canister but the MNU agent finds it. It sprays him with a black liquid and he progressively gets sicker througholut the day. He is taken to a hospital with a bandaged arm and they remove the bandages to reveal an alien arm. The humans are incapable of operating the alien weapons due to the weapons needing alien DNA to work (they are part biological). This alien arm is capable of firing the weapon, so MNU plans to harvest his organs in order to allow humans to operate the weapons. The man gets away and re-enters District 9, one of the aliens, named Christopher, tells the man he can fix him. They go to retrieve the fuel that will take them up to the mothership on a "suicide mission" into the MNU facility. They retrieve it and bring it back, but Christopher tells the Hybrid man that her will come back in 3 years to fix him, since the aliens must come first in order to survive.

I liked this movie. A lot. It involves a lot of realistic aspects, not just military vs. aliens. There are some people in District 9 who eat the aliens in beliefs that they will become like them. They also trade food for aliens weapons, despite not being able to use them. I liked the aliens, particularly, because they have primitive needs but are extremly advanced, capable of creating biological weapons the size of a handgun with the effects of a bazooka. They scavenge for food, looking for everything they can to eat. They create makeshifts huts out of whatever materials they can find and wear scraps of clothes. This movie is much like a modern-day Holocaust, because the aliens are not allowed to leave, they are kept in these camps an dmust do as ordered. The movie is incredible and has a lot of good aspects. The aliens had great designs, as did the robot suit that was used later in the movie. The weapons used were not those annoying shiny, perfect, glowy weapons you see in most movies, but were in fact, a dulled, faded, battered old look. I give this movie an 8/10 and suggest watching it.

30 June 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Movie Review

WARNING! SPOILERS FOLLOW!! DON'T LIKE? DON'T READ!
Okay, first thing's first, I apologize for not posting blogs about the other 2 days of AE, I didn't have the time. However, if you would like to see my VLog, go to youtube.com/user/n00bCosplay and you can see my videos about it there.
Anyways, yesterday, my friends and I went to see T:RotF. These are my thoughts, a bit of a synopsis, and yaddah-yaddah-yaddah...
Okay, well here we go. Comparing the movie to it's predecesor, you can see huge changes. First, as they said, there is way more robot activity. And by that, I mean there are way more robots and robot screen time. So this a good thing for all the people who complained about the lack of such in the first movie. The interaction between the robots and the humans is greater, and the military meets up with Sam much earlier in the movie, lessening the amount of transitions between areas (Middle East to U.S. and back again). It's hard to say which movie was better. I liked the first one for it's military usage, but I liked this one because of the robots.
My first thought, after seeing the movie, is that the face destruction thing was way too overused. To explain: most characters that died either had their face sliced/diced/ripped/blasted or destroyed in some way as their murder, or it was at least destroyed before they died (Optimus was shot and punched multiple times in the face before being pierced through the Spark). I was also sort of disappointed in the fact that the Decepticon Sideways (the Audi R8) was killed and you never saw his face. He was in car form and his long-time rival, Sideways (the Corvette Stingray) shoved a blade through his hood and dragged it through, effectively slicing him in half and thus, killing him.
I was confused about some things in Cairo/Egypt. First of all: After Jetfire opened up a portal and transported himself, Sam, Ace, Simmons, Mikaela and Wheelie to Egypt, Sam's hand is in a cast. This is strange because, only moments before, it had been fine. Now yes, I iknow the real life reason for this (when he flipped his car) but this seemed a little out of place and I was hoping for a better explanation of it. Another thing is this: While Simmons, Ace, Mudflap and Skids are engaging Devastator (who is made up of all 7 Constructicons), yet at the same time, Sam, Mikaela, and the rest of the Autobots, as well as the military, are engaging the same Constructicons. Also, at the beginning of the movie, the Constructicon named Hightower (a large Tuss Crane) was killed, yet, he is later seen in vehicle mode, combining to form Devastator (his parts were taken, by the way, to fix Megatron, making it seem to me like he would be incompletely built...). And about the Constructicon named Rampage (the crab-shaped front-load shovel Decepticon), his color is constantly changing througout the movie. When he's in vehicle mode: yellow (the color it should be), yet when he's bringing Megatorn back to life, orange. He's later seen forming Devastator's leg: yellow, and during the time that Devastator is attacking and Rampage is attacking Bumblebee, he is, again, reddish-orange.
To those who saw the movie and were probably wondering what I was: Why is Blackout (the MH-53 Pavelow helicopter) in this movie?? Well, I have the answer. He wasn't. That Pavelow that appeared was in fact a Decepticon named "Grindor". Grindor was in fact, Blackout's body, reanimated with a different Spark by Skorponok somehow. The reason he's green: Well, if you were made of metal and were laying at the bottom of the ocean for 2 years, how do you think you'd look?
Throughout the movie, Alex was asking me about those Primes if they were Decepticons or if they the Fallen. Well, if you listen to Jetfire, he says that the Fallen used to be a Prime, and thus was the same species as the others, however, the defected. That's why they look so similar, they were the original 7 Transformers.
And more confusion! Jetfire announces t hat his father was the first wheel, but he didn't transform into anything, yet he did so with "honor, diginity!... *gas explosion*". Yeah, figure that one out.
The movie, in itself, was brutal, massive and very good. It had good CGI effects, we get to see the Nemesis, and several Transformers many wanted to see in the past. Soundwave appeared, and although he was missing his voice changer (the thing that made him sound all robot-y), he was still pretty kickass, despite not having any action (only thing he did was hack a military satelite and stay in a very awkward position on that satelite for the rest of the movie, and release Ravage in the form of a missile.
I give this movie a 9.8 out of 10. I only give it a little off because of it's... well, it's hard to explain, it just seemed to be missing something...
Anyways, thanks for reading!

13 June 2009

AE (Anime Evolution) 2009 Day 1

While waiting for my cousin and her boyfriend to get their cosplay armor on for Day 2, I am here at my Aunt's house telling you about day 1.
Yesterday, I went to the convention centre (my first con EVER) and I was dressed as a (really crappy) Edward Elric from FullMetal Alchemist. Being Ed, I got some comments that all started in the word `Shorty`. It was funny, actually. First time was by 2 Organization XIII members, whom I glared at (we met them again, to where they cowered and said `You`re not that short!`) then I encounted an L and someone else, while I was waiting in line to see a voice actor. I was bored, so I threw my bag (which contained my iPod, headphones, multiple booklets and phamplets, camera and a water bottle) at him. He then pushed me down with his foot, I did a bit of an anime fall (not practiced, but effective) then jumped up and treatened him with my gheto automail arm. He freaked and hid behind the fairy chick he was with. We saw him again outside of the centre on the way to get dinner, he called me shorty and I ran after him and he hid behind the same chick, screaming. Silly L. I also encountered 2 sort of fat chicks, who were the only ones who glomped me. First glomps ever! It was pretty cool, actually and if the glompling game is going on on day 3, I might actually join. Nontheless, it was fun, and they say today is going to be even better. Hooray!
Today, I am dressed as Light Yagami. I got my cousin`s boyfriend (or should I say fiance) to straighten my hair. It looks more like Light from the movie then it does with the anime, but whatever. I also have my ghetto Death Note with me. My suit, made up of a brown dress shirt (dark with light vertical stripes) and brown dress pants (light) bought at two different thrift shops. Oh well, I`ll be Ed again tomorrow and hopefully more people will know me.
That`s it for now, so I`ll blog about day 2 later. C`ya guys!

19 May 2009

Weird Day/\Awesomeness

Okay, so I'm blogging from Alex's house right now, because we had early release at school today, so I managed to convince my mom to let me stay after school to hang around downtown. So far, I've got to ride in the back of Alex's bike trailer (which is totally pwnsome), Went to Mohammad's house and got to pet CHICKENS! (I filmed it so I can put it on YouTube) and also, we were riding ont he sidewalk, and this happened:
*rides by with Alex singing On the Road Again*
There's a bike lane!
*ignores* What'd he say?
That there's a bike lane.
Oh. *rides through muddy water*
*comes up* Did you hear me? I said there's a FUCKING bike lane!
What?
I said there's a fucking bike lane!
Who the fuck cares?
I DO! *approaches*
OH SHIT! *rides away*
So that's about it, I'll post more later. ;D

17 May 2009

Sad Face :'(

Hello everyone...
It's been a while...
Anyways, things have not been doing so good lately... especially since last night... that came back today to haunt me...
Here's what happened:
Basically, I told Taylor I was going to give Paige a second chance... well, Taylor doesn't like Paige all that much (online relationships, Paige left me twice for guys she actually knew and Taylor didn't like that). So in any case, Taylor got mad when I told her about it, and kinda went off and left. That was last night. Today she came in and we talked for a bit and she apologized, but last night, she was going to tell me something, and I kept bugging her, asking her "What?" and finally she told me that she loved me... like, not like the whole "brother-sister, father-daughter" thing we have going on, but like, she LOVED me...
Well, she just came back and told me that she was sorry and that she was going through trouble and I worked with her... it's what I do... *sighed* Oi vey, life, you know? Better, the life of a TEENAGER.

17 April 2009

List Poems- "Things to Do At a Metal Concert", "Things to Do While Trying to Come Up With a Poem", "I wonder..."

List poems are sort of as they are, lists of things stemming from one topic. I wrote 3, here htey are:

"Things to Do At a Metcal Concert"
Listen to music (obviously)
Buy food
Get drunk
Start a moshpit
Get in a fight
Headbang to metal
Wave a lighter
Dance randomly
Get a chick's phone number
Throw bottles at the stage
Have a panic attack
Get an autograph
Purchase a CD
Get a picture with the lead singer

"Things to Do While Trying to Come Up With a Poem"
Think for a while
Concentrate hard
Take a break
Find an inspiring idea
Discover words to relate to the topic
Stop for no reason
Pick up where you left off
Attempt to make it better
Writt some phrases that are pointless
Laugh at your stupidity
Smile and pant at your paper
Announce loudly that you have finished

"I wonder..."
Why life is so hard
How teachers got so far
The reason music is a musician's life
Why some writers are better than others
How come I'm even writing this
When gas prices will be happy
Who invented scented markers
How bread was discovered
Why people like writing on themselves so much
Who came up with the idea of lined paper
The reason it's fun to draw, even if you SUCK!
Why it's such a bad thing to be different
How the language system works

Well, that's all I got for now, so until next week, I'll see ya!