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Post # 483 My Avatar, myself This is my avatar in Skyrim. That second one is me. 
 I find it interesting the similarities and differences we put into the characters we have control over making. In this case, you can see I gave my character the same scruff I tend to carry on my face day to day. He's also looking a bit lean and unfriendly, while I was probably leaner when I was younger, I know I tend to look unfriendly. What does this say about me and my deepest inner desires? Fuck if I know, but I plan on making more face to face comparisons as I play games that allow me to do this and try and get my friends to do the same. Too bad I didn't keep my Fallout save file, since in that I made myself look super Spanish. When I get around to Mass Effect 3 or Fallout New Vegas, I can post more. If you are willing to have your face and avatar on the site, you could add them to the comments yourself (if you can share the image) or email them to me and I'll update. add comment to post #483 permalink AmericanNinja:Didn't you play a female character in Mass Effect? Peter:When I got the game I heard the female voice acting was better, so I made an over-sexualized dark-haired femShep. I will probably get 3, so if the import works well I could post it without changing it to make myself look better. To be honest, since you spend most of the time looking at the back of her head, I didn't put more than a few minutes into it. I know people who spend a lot of time crafting the perfect character. Derek:Your jaw is almost almost identical. Post # 482 For Y'ur Height Only  I have to say it is actually hard for me to anything close to a serious review of this movie simply because I love it so much. It’s not even subtle in its total exploitation of Ernesto de la Cruz who got a Guinness World record for being the shortest leading actor ever because that exploitation is so total and complete it is almost honest.   The fact is someone sat down and wrote this movie, from beginning to end, they planned the whole show to exploit Weng Weng is pretty awesome. So they go all out and have him kicking ass throughout the whole thing, and doing a lot of sliding along floors. This is kind of his signature move. Pushing off a wall, sliding along the floor and shooting.   He goes through women, I think there are three female leads throughout, so you get one per act. The first girl is walking along and a guy tries to shoot her, so Weng Weng helps out. I think this was just supposed to demonstrate his prowess. The second, his co-worker, Irma, becomes his love interest. When she gets kidnapped he finds another girl to help him out for a bit. There is no explanation for why.   There are also the miscellaneous girls he encounters throughout the passage of the film. Pretty much any room he goes into has a strategically covered napping woman who he feels compelled to kiss. I am totally okay with that.   A lot of Weng Weng’s strategies are also pretty questionable, but it doesn’t matter, because apparently the bad guys can’t shoot down. I think the idea is that he’s a pretty small target, but it’s a little difficult when everyone is carrying automatic weapons. He sneaks into rooms and does slapstick with enemies, he uses his spy gadgets to basically garner as much attention as possible. (My point is that this is not the best strategy for a secret agent.)   Still, when they name the villain Mr Giant, you know your final showdown will be awesome. Although, it isn’t. I guess the fact the Mr Giant really is a bigger midget than Weng Weng adds to the surreal feeling of this part of the movie, it is the ultimate crowning achievement.  Somehow the fact that the dubbing actors aren’t even taking the movie seriously adds to it because it would be impossible to take this movie seriously.  To be totally honest, there isn’t going to be middle ground here. You are going to enjoy this movie thoroughly and watch it from beginning to end rapt, as I was. Or you are going to get tired of the one exploitative joke after about 5 minutes and shut it off. If that’s your feeling after the opening, you should. You aren’t going to enjoy this movie. It has no redeeming qualities later on, it just takes the one thing is has, Weng Weng, and runs with it. Then they made a second movie. add comment to post #482 permalink WengFan:You know you need this here if you are doing the review. Peter:I think I have just posted that rap too many times, but I still watched it a couple times before going to bed. Post # 481 Cable Wrestling Sunday off with no kids. Time to party, or if you are me, time to move your computer into another room and then spend the rest of the day wrapping cables in an attempt to make your environment as sterile as possible. Not finished, so there is a little bit of a logistical problem there in the right corner, and I have one more set of cables that go from the xbox to the display, but overall this war has turned in my favor.  The view from the back better shows my efforts in this campaign:  This is a combination of binder clips, zip ties and cable wraps to keep things in order and lined along the back edge of the desk. I also hung the power strip on the leg of the desk to keep it off the floor. I'm hoping by the end the white cord for the power strip will be the only thing really showing. Everything else just needs to be tied down, I wanted to make sure I would still be able to disengage the xbox or other elements without having to take apart the whole thing, the extra effort will serve me well sometime in the future. add comment to post #481 permalink Post # 480 Raptr.com I recently read about a new service that does something similar to what I have talked about in the past. The gamerscore doesn’t mean anything because you can’t do anything with it. This new service called raptr claims to provide you with awards for playing games and getting achievements. The idea is that you play game a, you get into a beta test for similar game b, or an in game award or something else virtual yet interesting to this segment of the population. I went to the online site and was absolutely thrilled to see that it did some statistical analysis of what you have done on your console. (If you want a testament to my love of stats, subscribe to my twitter feed. There is probably one chart a week there.) The I was disappointed that you had to sign in through facebook. This is the second time I have used my facebook account, the first being to enter a contest. The appeal of stats alone got me over that speedbump and I signed in. Once I linked my account it started showing me my stuff in comparison to the other 12 million members of the community.    As you can see, I am an above average player. I didn’t know if this should be a point of pride or shame, but I love the pew pew, so there you go. I have always wanted games to give me more detailed information, like Halo did with their services. Since they track all this information anyway, offering it to users seems like plain sense. I am a pretty shit Halo player, but I always enjoyed learning about my games (and how much I suck).   The site encourages you to download the desktop application. I figured I would to give it a fair shake. As soon as I started it up I could see it was just a skin on top of facebook. The same cluttered interface that drove me away in the first place. It also wants to integrate all your instant messaging and upload posts to your facebook / twitter account automatically. It wants to be an all in one application. Unfortunately that is one thing I don’t want. I didn’t mind it getting into my gaming stats, since that information is already residing somewhere on the xbox website. I don’t want things posted on my behalf and I don’t really want an application tracking my activity constantly. I know it probably is a lot more innocent than I am making it out to be, but I just wasn’t comfortable with the amount it wanted to be a part of. I am sure it has to do a lot of stat tracking to be able to compare information. You have to leave the desktop app running for it to track your gameplay and therefore reap rewards. They might have won me over with a couple of gimme things at the start. As someone who has sunk 600% more money into their system than the average user I’d be a good person to catch. Looking back over my game history they could have offered me a few things off the achievements I have already gotten. You don’t get anything until you start tracking. Once I finished playing for that night I got a message that said I had played a game for 2 hours. I knew I had played a game for 2 hours since I was the one who had just done it. With that message popping up at the bottom of my screen I uninstalled the app. Maybe this will evolve to something I like, it seems to have a basic idea that appeals to me, but for now I am just staying with the internet app that won’t give me more than basic functionality. add comment to post #480 permalink Post # 479 Which Avenger am I Well, it was pretty obvious after the first fucking question, if you want the truth. The only one I got stumped on was which super power would I want. It is hard to choose.  Hulk SMASH! Take this quiz add comment to post #479 permalink n8:Turns out I'm Thor. I took it twice and changed the answers I wasn't sure about the first time and still ended up as that guy. Peter:What super power did you choose? n8:Invincibility, of course. Peter:Me too, I guess it was the rage questions that set me apart. Post # 478 Found footage Okay, so it's a holiday here, so I'm spending more time with my kids than anyone else. Expect at least one more video of something like this before I get back on to making serious commentary on near porn. I used to do this with my dog. After taking the movie with my phone I realized I actually managed to keep my son pretty centered while chasing him. Way more than these found footage movies that are popular. Seriously, I did this without thinking about and running in a circle. add comment to post #478 permalink Peter:A little warning, speakers down. n8:"No, thank you." Post # 477 Attack of the Sushi You know, I can't even keep up with these movies anymore. I think the appealing point for me is mainly the announcer using English. add comment to post #477 permalink Post # 476 Spin Spare Out I keep telling myself that I can'T let this blog fall into the trap of just being my own kids videos, but I think everything my kids do is cool. Full spin for the win. add comment to post #476 permalink Post # 475 To save the world E: So if you had to fuck a mammal, what would you fuck? P: A woman. E: Woman’s not one of the options. That’s off the table. P: Why would I have to fuck an animal? E: OK. God comes down and he says, “I tired of all this bullshit. I’m gonna destroy the earth unless you fuck an animal.” P: Go ahead, destroy the earth. E: But then your son would die. You wouldn’t fuck an animal to save the life of your son. … I’d fuck an animal to save the life of your son. P: But he’d go to heaven. If there’s a God, then that’s proof there must be a heaven, so he’d be going to heaven sooner. I’d be doing him a favor. E: OK. OK. God comes down and he says, “Peter I’m going to send your son to hell unless you fuck an animal.” P: I’d fuck an animal. E: Alright, which? P [without pausing to think]: Dolphin. E: That’s a pretty good answer. P: I bet it’d be fun. [later] Just give me a wetsuit with the crotch cut out of it, and I’m good to go.  add comment to post #475 permalink Peter:For a few other ideas you can go to reddit Seb:That's a big ass dolphin man. For me, I'd do a bear. Might as well make it worthwhile. Peter:That's the second bear I've heard. Post # 474 Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl These movies have basically one job. Bring the crazy. The sooner, the more crazy you bring, the better you have managed to do within this genre. (I don’t believe these movies should be compared to other movies as their goals, overall, seem to be completely different)  Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is probably a good introduction to this specific movie style. It is a really good introduction to the cliche’s of Japanese storytelling. Being based off a manga I am willing to allow that the story is actually making fun of other standard manga love stories but in movie form it makes for some pretty dull viewing. Essentially you have an opening scene which is supposed to shock you, the trite love story about girls battling over a befuddled boy and then a final showdown.  The final battle is pretty good and if I am saying good things, the lighthearted love story made the overall feeling more comedic, which I think this genre needs to be successful.  For me the love story, while boring, was the most interesting aspect of the film since it was an excellent illustration of the modern Japanese version of a manga love story. The male lead is clueless. I don’t know if this is how Japanese men view themselves, but if they didn’t before this cliche has been shoved down their throats so many times I bet some of them are starting to think this is how men are supposed to be. He essentially does whatever any woman tells him to do at any point without question.  The first female, who eventually becomes Frankenstein Girl, tells the guy that there is no one else that meets her standards so he will, from that point on, be her boyfriend. While he doesn’t agree outright, he also doesn’t argue with her and as a viewer all you see placid acceptance.  Then the Vampire Girl shows up and gives him valentines chocolate. Traditionally (since the 60’s) women give men something to demonstrate their affection on Valentine’s day in Japan. A couple of times in the movie Vampire girl states that if a girl confesses her love and gives chocolate you should respond “appropriately” as in accept her completely without question.  From that point on bland guy is now vampire girls property, that and she put her own blood in the chocolate making him a ½ vampire, whatever the fuck that is. He has to drink more of her blood to become a full vampire.  There is a fight and the first girl is killed semi-accidentally but is then revived by her science teacher father who has been experimenting with bodies in the basement of the school the whole time. So Frankenstein girl is born of mainly her plus the best parts of some of the student body. The very very racist student body.  There is no sub-plot here, but you get the background on the victims in the first half of the movie. As someone who finds a lot of things funny, I have never really gotten the super base version of Japanese humor. It just seems outdated, but it crops up a lot in these low budget horror movies. It starts with the girl in the “wrist cutting” club. That isn’t the racist part, it just goes on for way too long.  Wrist cutting was a big thing here for a while, but it seems like the horror movie buffs won’t let it go. Then they introduce the girls in the “gangyuro” club. Essentially the real versions of these girls got tans to make their skin as dark as possible, listened to hip-hop and reggae music and promoted a lot of aspects of what could be called “black” culture, but in Japan that isn’t just Rap culture from the US, it includes a bunch of different aspects. And man, if you want people who like making broad generalizations about anything not Japanese, Japan is the place to be.  That’s fine in itself, but in this movie they actually take it to that next level and the girls have huge afro’s, one girl has a lip plate and another carries a shield and spear. I think a lot of racist things are funny and even I was a little uncomfortable with this depiction. They do the same with the Chinese teacher, but while it was less racist, it was still pretty racist and also, not funny.  I have come to accept that humor is culture based, but there is a lot of stuff on Japanese television I get and find funny. There are a lot of things that go right over my head, but I can accept that as being on me for not understanding that joke. In these cases from Vampire Girl I understand the joke, it just seems too juvenile to actually take the effort to put into a movie. I’d be interested in finding the people who do find it funny and asking them what it is about it that they see that I don’t.  Really the only question is should you see this movie? I would say that if you’ve never seen a Japanese gore film this would be a good introduction, it has the best and worst of this genre. If you’ve never seen a Japanese high school drama, this will prepare you for all the cliche’s, but even then the story is a bit weak. Certainly the male lead is like a walking empty space. If you are looking for real entertainment there isn’t enough over the top blood and action to satisfy fans nor enough high school drama to satisfy someone looking for a good story. Overall, I’d give it a pass.  add comment to post #474 permalink Juan:The title looked familiar and that's because it's on my queue on Netflix. I'm gonna have to definitely check it out now. Peter:I'd be interested in thoughts from another person who has seen it. I have my own criteria for a "good" movie. Like Machinegirl was shit, but it was a great movie to watch, because it was fun. My idea is that you have to figure out what the movies goal is, then decide if it has achieved it. This way even a low budget movie could attain greatness because it did the thing it set out to do. It also means I could acknowledge a film as being good even if I didn't enjoy it. Twilight is a good example. I didn't really enjoy it, obviously I am not the target audience. I watched it to get some sense of what all the excitement was about. Looking at what the movie wanted to do, I think it achieved it's goal and therefore could be called a good movie even though I didn't really enjoy it. Post # 473 Making Decisions My friends didn't get a game they saw their students playing, so I explain it. The audio goes off just at the end so you don't get to hear me say Antonette's name, but you have learned how to do the thing and gotten my lame joke. Therefore, not worth fixing in my opinion. add comment to post #473 permalink Peter:This is the picture that set the whole thing off:  You can see they are doing it properly by keeping the bottom covered until they make their choices / additions. Post # 472 Mental medicine I focus on a lot of negative things on this site. It's because I see that things could be better than they are. Still, that's a lot of downers, so next time you feel bad you can watch this video of my son laughing. Just remember post 472 in the jump to bar. He's watching Tom & Jerry. I don't remember actually laughing at these as a kid, to be honest, it's more fun watching him than watching the show. add comment to post #472 permalink Post # 471 Seat Bastards This isn't going to become a regular thing, but now that my phone is working again I am willing to take more slightly illegal pictures. Here we have 3 men occupying 6 seats by all sitting on the outside instead of the inside.  As you may remember from my earlier post this really bothers me for some reason. Like special circle of hell angry. add comment to post #471 permalink Post # 470 The most important map of Japan All I really want to know is who is it that funded the research for this project, and where can I get some of that money.  add comment to post #470 permalink Peter :I guess it isn't clear unless you can read a little Japanese. Let me teach you that カップ=cup Seb:So where's Nagoya? Peter:It's in Aichi 愛知. That's where I work, c-cup area. I live in Gifu 岐阜 which is E-cup territory. There be boobies everywhere. Post # 469 Ah damn So here's something that happened. I must have messed up my RSS feed link at some point when messing with it. Just now tried to link it to a twitter account mainly for sharing link purposes. N8 suggested we use twitter to share links an so I wouldn't have to actually manage it much I set it up to upload posts automatically, that's how I found out the link was broken. This is a shaft because last month I had a spike in traffic so I lost all those people. Sorry people. Seems to work now, at least twitter accepted it, so use the RSS feed or twitter (above) to follow since I don't have a schedule of updates and can be pretty damn irregular. Not like pooping, with posting articles. I am pretty regular with pooping. add comment to post #469 permalink Peter:Right now the twitter feed is links to the most recent articles, which seems like I am a little into myself, but what N8 and I were talking about was using twitter to share links, so while my database still exists below, I am going to test this out for a while. I don't even really like myself that much, I'm not really a fan of the site. Peter:I do like that the twitter feed updates in real time, so I could type something shitty and you could then see it as it happens so it's like I'm shitting right on you. Post # 468 Placenta So... I drank this. This is the sort of thing that happens when you get sick and feel so shit you will literally try anything to get better.  The guy at the pharmacy claimed it would fix me up in a day. I think I took it at the end of my cold cycle, so I can't say if it actually worked. I doubt it did. We would need to do some other trials to actually find out. I won't be conducting those trials, it didn't taste good. It tasted like...placenta. add comment to post #468 permalink Post # 467 Yukie Kawamura This is relevant because a) she's wearing a bikini and b) she's in the next film I am going to review. add comment to post #467 permalink Post # 466 Zombie Hunter Rika I think this may have been one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I mean, most movies I watch might be cheap, but they have some redeeming qualities. Maybe they don’t take themselves seriously, maybe the love of making something comes through or the obvious desire to make something more ambitious. 
 I think cheap movies often suffer from the same problem, that they can’t really decide what they want to be. One thing I am adamant about is that movies with monsters have to decide on what set of rules they are going to use and make it work. Vampires are a good example. All vampire stories have to decide which of the basic rules they will follow and introduce / show how those rules work within the framework of their story. 
 Zombie Hunter Rika starts out like a pretty traditional zombie movie, then you find out there is a head zombie, who holds meetings. Seriously, take that in as best you can, there is a leader of the zombies, I assume not democratically elected, who is totally different from all the other zombies, who holds meetings. 
 I cannot fathom what they were thinking when they wrote that. Then I realize they probably didn’t actually write much of anything. There are magic swords, secret organizations, heros and a whole heap of other things the filmmakers couldn’t afford to put in their film.  This leads me to the second things that needs to be considered before you head out and start making your own low budget horror film, what can you afford. If you aren’t going to be able to adequately present it on screen, you need to work around your limitations. Rika doesn’t even try to do this. Half the zombies are filmed walking around outside in the afternoon with what looks like kool-aid spilled down their fronts. 
 In cheap films darkness and shadows are your best friends. You can hide the poor make-up and imply a lot more than you can film in the middle of the day at the local train station. A lot of the movies I have looked at in the past suffer from being too dark, so the right balance is hard to find, but this is where effort can supplement cost. 
 There are two reasons I can’t recommend even watching this movie as a joke, drunk. One: it has one of the dumbest fight scenes I have ever witnessed. One guy is trying to beat back multiple zombies and he jumpkicks every time. First, the jump kick he does is not impressive, then, he falls on his ass every time and doesn’t seem to know how to scramble to his feet. Second: it has one of the least satisfying endings in a film ever. There are a couple of random nonsensical statements made over the course of the plot each predicting the endpoint of the film. Essentially they all come true despite none of them making any sense at all. 
 I’ve seen endings where I didn’t really get it, or it was complicated, but this one is just dumb and it is clear that the creators didn’t have a clue as to how to structure a story. So, Zombie Hunter Rika, not even dumb enough to be a good joke. add comment to post #466 permalink n8:Did you not reveal the ending to avoid spoilers or just because you didn't get it and felt it didn't matter anyway? Wait..let me guess. John Leguizombie and Dennis Hopper took over the organized zombies that could chop through fortress doors with meat cleavers and started running Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Peter: spoilers:I think I was mainly focused on the mechanics of the movie, which was faulty all the way through. The ending, as terrible as it was, was still just cumulative since they had to end the movie and, like the rest of the script, hadn't really thought it through. Here is a break down of the end (and a bit of a summary) so if you don't want spoilers, stop reading: Throughout the film the nerdy character says that the US is going to drop a bomb on this area if the head zombie isn't killed by a certain time. that almost makes sense, except they wouldn't really know when the main zombie is killed. Since they have their own Zombie Hunter task force, you think they might just send them out instead of waiting for a random high school girl to do the job for them. Another character has stated that if the main zombie is killed then everyone will be turned back to normal. This is actually a really old rule from vampire stories where the vampire didn't infect or turn people, but just hypnotized them so when he died his servants were released. It doesn't make any sense in the context of a zombie movie. There is no information to indicate to the viewer which of these proposed endings is correct. You are going to assume one of them is, because there isn't really any reason to tell us about them otherwise. We get to the final battle and Rika kills the zombie and all her friends, all completely normal, (even the ones who had been torn apart) come running down a sunlit lane towards her. They get together in a circle and start dancing. I am not making a joke. They actually make a circle and start dancing. Then the nerd guy looks at his watch, has the realization and stock footage of a bomb going off happens. There is no explanation as to why either of these events actually took place, so as a viewer I was wondering what the point was. The movie isn’t quite done. The comatose grandfather has been mutated (embiggenned) so he looks like a he-man doll. He looks at a picture Rika, screams, I think angrily, then throws the picture down and walks somewhere with purpose. Again, we don’t know what that purpose is, we don’t know if he is the new zombie leader who is going to streamline zombie meetings or if he is going after the US Zombie Hunter guys. Then the credits roll. I honestly think this movie could be used in a film class to teach students what not to do. Peter :Also, this was the first experiment of using my phone as the capture device for the screenshots. I think these are a little small and it may be the same for the next one, but once I work it out it means my train time will be used for more and more shitty movie updates. n8:Does that mean updates about shittier movies or shittier updates about movies? Or do you mean that there will be an increased number of updates about movies in which either the updates, the movies or both could be shittier than before? Peter:I actually think there will be very few movies that can plumb depths below that of Rika, so while the movies remain shitty, I am betting they are "funny" shitty. As for my reviews, I can't fairly speak to their quality. Post # 465 I write like Which is essentially the same as saying no one understands a fucking word I write. Except fuck, they probably got that bit. add comment to post #465 permalink n8:I pasted the instructions for that website into the analyzing box and it said the writer of the instructions writes like H. P. Lovecraft. n8:So then I went and pasted the first paragraph of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Battle that Ended the Century" into the analyze screen and it said that Lovecraft writes like James Joyce. Who do you think it said James Joyce writes like? Peter:This is all very meta. Using the term "meta", that is writing like a douchebag. Peter:So after talking to N8 I figured the only thing I have in common with Shakespeare, beside awesome facial hair, is that I use really long run on sentences. That dead mofo did that a lot too. Post # 464 Why? In the company where I work I meet a lot of people who are overseas for an extended period for the first time. In this way I meet a lot of people who are willing to expose themselves to new ideas and cultures, but are still steeped in the ideologies they grew up with in their home countries. As a Canadian and a pretty liberal leaning person (in the US I would be labelled socialist or communist in a heartbeat) I find national identity a topic of interest. Several times people from the US have told me that their country is the best in the world. I have found that one of the more difficult questions to answer is “Why is the US the best country in the world?” More often than not I get told about the US’s military might and maybe some other things, but the defacto argument is the military. I, being a pinko commie, don’t actually think that makes a country great. I counter with “So if I walk into a room, and I can beat up everyone in the room, I am therefore the greatest person in that room?” The answer is pretty self-evident. Recently I decided to give the internet at large a chance to answer to I posted this very question to reddit to see what kind of responses I got. None of them were surprising and certainly none of them convinced me that the US is really any better than any other fairly rich country on the planet. In fact, most of the posts mirror the answers I got from our new inductees. So there is a very interesting group psychology experiment there somewhere if you are so inclined. I think what was most interesting that with the upvote / downvote system on reddit it became very clear that most people who looked over the post didn’t really want this discussed at all. add comment to post #464 permalink Post # 463 Zombie Toilet / Ass, I don't know What I wonder about most is how they get girls to even be in these movies. I mean, if I went up to a relatively pretty girl and said "Hey, I'm making a movie with a zombie that lives in a toilet and will grab your ass while you take a shit and I think you are really the kind of high caliber actor I think could really make this concept work, would you consider..." at that point I assume she has either hit me or walked away. And yet, it looks like it could be funny. add comment to post #463 permalink previous posts |
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