The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

I mentioned in my review of Crank: High Voltage that the movie was a product of our video game saturated generation. It was just as spastic, flashy and loud as any of the latest games. Neveldine/Taylor (who directed the Crank movies) take it to the next step in Gamer , a movie about playing video games. The only other movie I can think of that involves video games without actually being about a particular game is 1989's The Wizard (awesome side note: the main girl in that movie was Jenny Lewis, as in the indie musician Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, friggin' awesome), although I guess it was more of a promotional tool to promote Nintendo and Super Mario Bros. 3 . Anyhow, this is one of those movies that's more style over substance; dialogues are excuses to get to action scenes. The movie takes place in a distant future where in the most popular video games you get to control real life human beings... like Avatar ! The most popular game is one called Slayers , where convi...

" The Marine 2... PREMIERING on DVD and Blu-Ray... " PREMIERING?!?!?! You know, as a wrestling fan, it behooves me to watch shit like this. And by "shit like this" I mean movies produced by WWE Films. Yes, movies by a wrestling company! And last week it was announced in Variety that they were leaving their partners Lionsgate and Fox Home Video in favour of Samuel Goldwyn Films, who specialize in distributing lower budget movies. So everyone get ready for more rinky-dink WWE movies! Now, if the decision to make a sequel to The Marine wasn't baffling enough, they decided to make a sequel to The Marine starring Ted Dibiase! Ahhh! Brain explosion! Just to bring you up to speed, the only wrestlers that the WWE put into movies are those who are already big stars in the company or those who they want to cultivate into big stars. It's usually done to groom someone who they could market around in the future as a potential champion. So why Ted Dibiase? I ...

And so 50 hours later, I have finished my first playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins . What a game. It seems the number of traditional role playing games are decreasing these days. All the biggest and hottest games of the current generation are first person shooters. And so the RPG genre has adapted accordingly; rather than the tried and true style of RPGs from yesteryear, nowadays, more hybrid RPGs are being released. These games are primarily action shooters, but also combine elements found in RPGs (eg. Borderlands , Mass Effect , Fallout , etc.). I think that's why I was so excited for Dragon Age: Origins to come out. Though I love all sorts of games, RPGs are still where my heart's at. I miss this genre. I miss the dungeons, the dragons, the elves and the dwarves. Couple that with Bioware production, for me, solidifying it as a surefire hit. And you know what? They delivered. Sure there were some technical hiccups, but it never was to the point that it hurt my in ga...

World War Boo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Released in the summer of 2007, World War Hulk is the big follow-up to 2006's Civil War by Marvel Comics . I should start off by saying that I thought Civil War was awesome. It took existing Marvel characters and did something new with them. I know the fanboy community didn't take to the story too well ("it was too emo" was a common argument), but I just liked that it was trying something new. It just so happened that when the series started that summer, I was living at residence at my school. A number of us started reading the series and it was great for conversation; it really made us think about what we would do in that situation. But I digress. So even before talking about the story of World War Hulk , it's important to give some details in how we got there. Years ago, the Hulk was involved in a rampage in Las Vegas that left 28 innocent people dead. An elite assemblage of heroes called The Illuminati (comprised of higher i...

Oh Peter Jackson. Lord of the Rings Trilogy . Score. King Kong remake. Score. The Lovely Bones . BORE! What a shame. I guess I can be naive sometimes. I was pretty much under the assumption that Peter Jackson could do no wrong. When you look at his repertoire of works, it basically speaks for itself (and that includes his old school horror classics like Braindead and Bad Taste ). The Lovely Bones is an adaptation of the book by the same name from author Alice Sebold. I've never read the book myself, but I have several friends who have and they all pretty much love it. Well, I hope they didn't watch this movie. The story tells of a teenaged girl named Susie Salmon who is one day murdered by a child predator in her neighbourhood. She becomes stuck in a place between earth and Heaven, where she has limited communication with the real world and tries her best to help her family track down her murderer. From there, we follow her as she watches her family cope with her be...

When the teaser trailer first came out last year, I was quite excited: a world populated by vampires and where humans are an endangered species. The concept intrigued me. There just seemed to be so many cool possibilities. Well, in the end, it was a bit ho-hum. In Daybreakers , we follow a vampire named Edward (and not of the Cullen's) as he seeks out a cure for the vampirism that has consumed the world. He works for an evil big wig vampire named Bromley who I guess is the CEO of the world's largest human blood manufacturer. But conflicts arise because of their different philosophies for the world; one is seeking a cure for the world while the other is seeking for a way to prolong their longevity. Throw in some humans, some action and some blood and guts. Voila. The movie falls into the action/horror genre and when it sticks to the action, it's pretty damn good. With a few exceptions of this random bat that (annoyingly) flies at the screen, there are no scares; it...

For the past year or so, my Bible reading regimen was to read from the start of the New Testament and move forward from there. I know it's a tactic that some follow while others jump around doing their readings all around the book. I guess it's just a way that works for me as I just need that sense of order in my head. I freely admit that I am behind in my readings, but I continually try to stay on top of things. What is interesting is how on some days I'll do my readings and later on during the week, something I read about will come up again. Earlier last week I was reading Acts 6-8, but in particular, Acts 6:2 stood out and I read it over and over again because it made me laugh. From the NIV it says: "So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, 'It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables...' ". In my head I was picturing these ancient wise and learned men taking orders at a table...

It's that time again! It was a strange year for movies. I saw a lot of good movies, but I saw very few great movies. Making the list this year was sort of tricky because I saw lots of movies in that level of 'good', so a bunch of movies got shafted which maybe shouldn't of in the end (titles in that category include Star Trek , The Watchmen , Paranormal Activity ... well those 3 come to mind first). But after shuffling the bottom 4 or 5 and swapping some in and out, I think I'm content with this list. Horror made an impact on my list this year as you can see. So it wasn't great for movies, but hot damn, it was great for horror. Here is the list in reverse order: 10. Dead Snow ( review ) - The only foreign movie to make it on the list. What a fun movie this was. Nazi zombies fighting in snowy mountains... awesome. 9. Anvil! The Story of Anvil ( review ) - The only documentary to make it on the list. This movie was the real version of The Wrestler. It...

Side story. Back in the Fall of 2004, I was in my second year of university living at a college residence. I remember one night during dinner, me and a group of friends were talking about Disney cartoons that we used to watch. I brought up that I used to love Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers . I also brought up that I used to have a crush on Gadget, the female mouse. Keep in mind that I was 6 years old at the time. My friends had a good laugh at my expense. And I'm not going to lie, I did have a crush on her. I thought she was cute. Not only that, she had brains and wits, not to mention she was an engineer. What's not to love? So she was a rodent... BIG DEAL! Hey there sunshine! Anyhow. I freaking loved this game when I was a kid and having played through it again recently, I think I still do. I never owned it though; I would borrow it from my childhood friend's that did own it. Based on the Disney cartoon from the early 90's, you play as Chip and/or Dale as the...

So this is the last in the three movies that I was looking forward to at the end of 2009 (the other two being Bad Lieutenant and Avatar). It's hard to say which movies I enjoyed more because they're all so different, but I can confidently say that I enjoyed all three. Also of the three, this movie is the most realistic when it's all said and done. Up In The Air tells a story about Ryan Bingham, who flies all over America firing people. Laying people off is such a tough thing to do that companies that need to do so hire people like Ryan. It becomes reflective as Ryan sees his own life of isolation at odds compared to the lives of those around him. It's apt that he has such a hollow and thankless job which parallels his own life. Because he's on the road for 250+ days of the year, his own life is quite hollow; with no stable relationships, weakened family ties and no friendships in sight. In fact the first time we see his apartment, I was kind of shocked. Up u...

I don't know about you, but for me, 2009 felt very blah (See last posting). And not only because of my state of unemployment but it stretched to other facets in life; for example, there was not much much to look forward to in movies (save for Avatar ). If I could create a device to fold time so that the end of 2008 would mean the beginning of 2010, I would press the button to do it. In fact, I drew a diagram below of said time folding. 2009 is in his own sad loop. With that said, there looks to be tons of stuff to look forward to in 2010 and I am excited in many ways. Here are some of those things. THINGS I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO... ...IN MOVIES If you've been reading my blog this past year then you would've known that I wasn't enamored with movies this year. There were a few good ones, but on the whole, I felt completely underwhelmed. I was just looking at my short list for my favourite 10 movies of the year and though I greatly enjoyed all of them, none of the...

See the guy on the left? I feel exactly the same way! First of all... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Welcome to 2010! I want to wish you guys all the best for the new year! So yes, 2009 has come and gone. It seems like yesterday that the year just started. How time flies. It was a strange year this past year for me. Life just felt like it was in stasis. I've been doing a lot of reflecting these past 2 weeks and during this time, a lot of things have been revealed to me, be they realizations of new ideas or reminders of old. Two weeks ago, I was at FreeChurch on a Monday night to help a group called Light Patrol (who work with street youths) who organized a free meal for the community. I along with a few friends were there to lend a hand with anything they needed done. Thankfully, there were tons of volunteers on hand from their side, so it gave us a lot of downtime before the closing/cleanup which we would help with. During this time, me and my friends Justin and Jon talked about a bun...