Your one stop site for slightly confused rants and half-assed reviews.
Updates whenever I have both the desire to write and a good idea.
Also, we have always been at war with Oceania.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Remember when I had a blog?

Well all my tests are done for the year so now I'm out of excuses for not updating this blog. Since there's no single topic sitting on the top of my mind like some horrifying spider I'll do another one of those weekly updates I did last post (you know, at the start of October).

First and foremost, the game I could talk about for several hours and my friends can listen to for several seconds: Minecraft. One of the main reasons this game appeals to me so much is there are just so many potential anecdotes. For example between the last post and now I've:

-Carved a valley through a mountain (because I could). I then roofed the entire thing in glass and started to send lava over the top.

-Discovered my first underground cavern. I had been expecting it to be the size of a house or two like the ones that are topside, only to find it was the size of the shopping centre, full of monsters and ores.

-Started multiple forest fires.

-Opened a portal to hell, a world full of a stone that burns eternally and monsters that manage to be worse than Creepers. What's worse than a silent creature that spawns in the darkness and suicide bombs you? How about a something that flies, spawns everywhere, shoots fireballs and screams constantly.

-Used the hellstone to create walls of fire for defence, lighting and just sheer fun. Fortunately there were no trees left nearby to burn down.

-Lost the entire save file......

.....moving on.

I finally got around to watching Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Going in I didn't have strong feelings either way; I liked the comic but I wasn't convinced they could be adequately adapted. Here's an abridged summary:

Pros

-Good implementation of title cards, narration, scene transition etc, as both a throwback to the comic and as just creative film editing.

-The final fight. While I preferred the comic's version, how the 'extra life' part was handled was a unique twist that caught me completely off guard.

Cons

-Michael Cera. I know it's mean-spirited and heaps of other people have already complained but he didn't have the manic energy I associate with the character.

-The various comments by onlookers during fights just don't translate well. In comics talking is a free action, but in any other medium you can't have dialogue without affecting the scene to some degree.

-Uninteresting action scenes. Despite (or maybe because of) the flashy visuals I felt no rush, no excitement while Scott was fighting. I've heard plenty of people over the years talk about special effects-centric scenes being incredibly dull but until now I'd just written them off as stuffy critics and nerds nostalgic about older films.

Neutrals

-I didn't care about Ramona in the slightest, but I can't hold that against the film as I felt the same about her in the comic.

-Negascott lost all of the emotion depth (it was one of my favourite of the actual serious scenes) that he had in the comic. However what they did do with him was both funny and unexpected so the two points cancel out.

In the end I'm apathetic about the movie. Shocking, me displaying that emotion, but what more can I say? There's nothing substantial that either excites or aggravates me to any significant degree.

There was going to be a third thing but I'm tired now, so just imagine me saying whatever you want to hear.