Not this crude matter

"Serenity is the best space opera since ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and it’s cleverly staged action,..."

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:17:24 -0500

“Serenity is the best space opera since ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and it’s cleverly staged action, its sense of humor, its attention to detail and it’s HEART put the far more expensive Star Wars prequels to shame.”

- SciFi Squad (The Best Science Fiction Films of the Decade) (via michaelkuttler)

The Star Wars Prequels (except for EP I) were also brilliant, but I couldn’t agree more about Serenity! One of the best movies ever!!!

The Firefly Effect

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:33:56 -0500

On TVTropes, the extremely addictive website, Firefly has two tropes!

The Firefly Effect

Big Damn Heroes

Yeeeeah!

OMG, the AI in Half-Life 2 was absolutely ridiculous! One...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:07:49 -0500

OMG, the AI in Half-Life 2 was absolutely ridiculous! One YouTube comment made me crack up:

Half-Life 2, advanced combat simulator.

Oh, shooting him with his own gun and throwing the jar at him was just mean. What are the combine going to tell his family?

“I’m sorry Ms. Lewis, but Harry won’t be coming home tonight.. or any night for that matter. Yes, some nut with a crowbar lobbed a jar of mayo at him, and then shot him with his own gun. We’re all very sorry for your loss. But rest assured, we won’t be enlisting the kids for our forces”

LOL!

fyeahstarwars: nom nom nom Brilliant!

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:30:31 -0500

fyeahstarwars:

nom nom nom

Brilliant!

"In reality, there’s no “safe” place to shoot a person, not even in a seemingly..."

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:37:49 -0500

“In reality, there’s no “safe” place to shoot a person, not even in a seemingly non-vital extremity like a leg or arm. Bullet wounds to the shoulder will almost invariably either kill the victim from blood loss or cripple them for life. There are huge blood vessels in a human being’s shoulder as well as lots of very delicate nerves and a very complex ball-and-socket joint that no surgeon on Earth can put back together once it’s smashed by a bullet. There are huge blood vessels in a human being’s legs too, a shot that nicks the femoral artery will cause a fatal loss of blood in only a few minutes.”

- I found this site yesterday, and I’m convinced that it’s a goldmine. So many interesting articles!!! Really great…

Hah, brilliant! IT is one of the greatest books ever!

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:47:10 -0500

Hah, brilliant! IT is one of the greatest books ever!

"The album 5643 Song EP by Anal Cunt. Already, it’s an ambitious project as per its title, but..."

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:30:36 -0500

“The album 5643 Song EP by Anal Cunt. Already, it’s an ambitious project as per its title, but their method of fitting them all into eleven minutes must be heard to be believed. They used a sixteen track studio to create sixteen simultaneous tracks that were all just mixed together. Even with that in mind, each “song” has to average less than two seconds. Combine this with Anal Cunt’s usual style (which can best be described as “intentional ear rape”) and you basically get eleven minutes of little more than random static.”

- I wanna hear it! seriously, what else could I say about this? :-)

(Source)

"Take, for example, the case of 22-year-old Samantha Tumpach, from Chicago, who took her sister out..."

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:55:47 -0500

“Take, for example, the case of 22-year-old Samantha Tumpach, from Chicago, who took her sister out for a surprise birthday party at a movie theater recently. While there, she used her new camera to tape parts of the event, including her, along with friends and family, singing happy birthday to her sister. But, in the course of all this, she also caught two small segments of the film itself, less than four minutes, total — hardly a representative case of “pirate” or “camcording” activity. Still, the theater pressed charges, and Samantha was arrested and spent two nights in jail — and may now face three years in jail as a felon. Good thing Hollywood got those laws, so they can get young women celebrating their friends and families’ birthdays put in jail.”

- It can’t get any more ridiculous than this! I actually imagined Ricky Gervais making a funny scene about this incident. It would be hilarious!

(Source)

perfectvillain: arathon: ó anyám HALÁL Yet another evidence...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:25:16 -0500

perfectvillain:

arathon:

ó anyám

HALÁL

Yet another evidence shows that I LOVE RECURSIVITY!!! :D

I don’t always find Gervais’ comedy funny, but the...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:58:24 -0500

I don’t always find Gervais’ comedy funny, but the tale of two mice is just brilliant in this!!!

"In Denmark, it’s legal to make copies of commercial videos for backup or other private purposes...."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:08:50 -0500

“In Denmark, it’s legal to make copies of commercial videos for backup or other private purposes. It’s also illegal to break the DRM that restricts copying of DVDs. Deciding to find out which law mattered, Henrik Anderson reported himself for 100 violations of the DRM-breaking law (he ripped his DVD collection to his computer) and demanded that the Danish anti-piracy Antipiratgruppen do something about. They promised him a response, then didn’t respond. So now he’s reporting himself to the police. He wants a trial, so that the legality of the DRM-breaking law can be tested in court.”

- Dane who ripped his DVDs demands to be arrested under DRM law - Boing Boing

Digital martyr.

(via david-noel)

Oh, my god, this is… riiight, you guessed it: ridiculous! :-)

I've just made my ticket reservation...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:28:00 -0500

… for AVATAR!

19th December, digital 3D. Yeaaaaaaaaaah!!! Movie of the year, here I come!!!

Don’t let me down, Jim, I need a classic here…

kittenskittenskittens: via content.foto.mail.ru “So,...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:23:01 -0500

kittenskittenskittens:

via content.foto.mail.ru

“So, what now…?”

I was just up on the PES6J server where I play PES6, but in...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:42:49 -0500

I was just up on the PES6J server where I play PES6, but in order to play on the server, you have to log on to the forum. And the forum has a shoutbox. I was just browsing through my opened tabs in Firefox before I go to sleep and here’s what I found in the shoutbox. Wow, this is great! Just how do you exactly “click on the keyboard”? LOL

No one answered him.

This book review is awesome, and pretty much elaborates on my...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:54:43 -0500

This book review is awesome, and pretty much elaborates on my statement in my book review: why it isn’t a fun read.

I would like to react to one of the sentences in this. The guy says:

Christ, at one point he shoots one poor woman’s hands full of nails (…) and another point he kills women and grinds them up into sausage! Why??? What possible reason could you have for including all this violence?

My answer is that no, no one can have a reason for including violence at all in movies, books, whatever, but if it helps to tell a story, then it’s essential. And the main problem with this book is that it doesn’t really have a story and because of this, the murders and torture is just there to… well, no reason. But it adds to the atmosphere. Of nothingness. The essence of the book is hard to gasp, and at times I think it really doesn’t even exist. I mean, I think it’s not a good book, because it doesn’t explore the main character well enough…

On a funny note about this video, one of the YouTube comments go like this:

Christ Allmighty!!! He kills women and grinds them up into sausage??? I am buying this fucking book TODAY!!!!!!

Ahahhaha, I sincerely hope that humanity is not doomed… :D

American Psycho - A book review

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:30:00 -0500

SPOILERS!!!

First and foremost: it’s not by any means a fun read - and not just because of the graphic description of murder and torture. Aside from the torture scenes, everything happens so slow in this book, it’s simply ridiculous. The majority of the book takes place during some dining in a bar or a restaurant, where the main character, Patrick Bateman spends his time with his “friends”, eating and drinking. The author describes everyone’s clothing, so I mainly fast-forwarded those paragraphs, because it was just as boring as a fashion catalog. I wanna read a novel, a story, goddamnit!

As I said it’s not a fun read, but it’s not a bad book. In the book, we are in the head of Patrick, and we can hear what he’s thinking about. All the time. So if he’s thinking about what other people are wearing around him, we read that. If he’s thinking about food, drinks or porn movies, we read those thoughts. Simple as that. From this POV, I can safely say that the fashion catalog is just a gimmick, which proves to us that Patrick’s life is shallow. He doesn’t find excitement anywhere. And later, in the book, this thought escalates to a ridiculous level: even during the scenes in which Patrick is brutally and horrifyingly maiming his victims left and right, he stays calm and just describes what he’s doing at the moment. And he doesn’t really get any excitement out of say cutting a woman in half with a chainsaw…

My main problem with this book is that it carries a statement about the society, but not about its main character. And this is a crucial issue, because we are in Patrick’s head, and we’d like to see the layers and depths of his personality. OK, maybe Ellis is trying to say that Patrick doesn’t have depths and layers. But this - from a psychological point of view - is ridiculous. It doesn’t add up, however you’re trying to interpret it. It’s just disturbing, how he can just return to his “normal” life after he’s done something horrible.

The trick of this book is that any flaw I find, I can explain. For example, we doesn’t get a personality in Patrick, because Ellis uses Patrick as a tool to show us, what yuppie life really was at the beginning of the 90s. It was insanely boring (as the book itself at parts…), it was shallow, it didn’t have any depth at all. And if you consider that none of the yuppies were yuppies all the time, they had to have some personal life, you get why they didn’t do things like Patrick. Patrick has a life too, but he’s not in any way touched by it…

And this is where this book misses a great opportunity to dive into the REAL madness Patrick has in his mind. I want to know more! However, I think Ellis captured the manneurisms of madness really well in those incoherent inner monologues, which are really fun to read. But they are so few and far between, and half of the scenes in which you can find them are so BRUTAL, that overall the book - as I said before - is not a fun read.

I definitely recommend it, because you have to read it, if you want to understand and feel how alienating and boring consumerist society really is. It depicts the hopelesness brilliantly. It made me feel hate even the word “restaurant”, LOL… And it made me feel somewhat thankful that I’m not a millionaire. Really :-)

On a final note about the torture scenes: yes, they are bad. And I mean BAD, and not really the torture methods themselves are what make them really frightening (although I’ve gotta admire Ellis’ creativity - I’m convinced that this man is SICK), but the way Ellis writes them: so casually. The atmosphere of these scenes comes from the fact that there is NO atmosphere at all. The torture just happens to happen. And this blandness and casualness makes it an unique experience. I must warn you: if you have a weak stomach or a weak set of nerves, you’ve gotta
stay away from this book, because if you skip these scenes, you’ll miss the impact of the book.

Pros and cons section:

PROS:

- It has an unique atmosphere

- At times it’s fun to read, and extremely entertaining

- It raises many questions about human nature, society, etc.

CONS:

- It doesn’t have a coherent story

- The world it depicts at times isn’t plausible (a large number of murders go unnoticed by the police, and other inconsistencies in the storyline), and at times it tries so hard to be a satire of our real world, that it becomes ridiculous.

- The chapters are repetitive - dining scene, wardrobe scene, horrible mutilation/murder/rape/all of the above scene, repeat ad infinitum, and to the point where you can literally guess what kind of chapter is coming next.

- Almost zero character development.

Questions raised by the book:

1. Does Ellis try to make a point with the repetitiveness and boredom of the book?

2. Why doesn’t Patrick’s character show any kind of progression? Is it intentional?

3. What’s more important in this story: Patrick or the society he is in?

4. What’s the point of the implausible things in the book? The police must be the stupidest police ever if they can’t make any connection between the horrible murders and Patrick…

5. Why is that, that only Patrick goes mad? Is yuppie life maddening for the human soul in general, or is Patrick insane by nature? Will his other friends go mad and murder people left and right in this world?

6. What’s the point of the line in which Patrick says that he just wants to feel loved? Is he completely deprived of human connections? Oh, but he isn’t, it’s the world around him, what’s so naive and shallow. Is this a flaw in the book, or does Ellis do this intentionally?

7. Why is Ellis reluctant to give us a real story, which takes place in the real world? Is he unable to write on a different level or is this intentional?

All in all I would rate this book a 6/10, it was nothing special, and you definitely don’t have to read it more than once. I sure as hell never will read it again! :-) I recommend it, because after you read it, you can think about the questions and come to your own conclusions!

"All that being said, this concept might have been salvagable if it was presented in, say, the short..."

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:55:29 -0500

“All that being said, this concept might have been salvagable if it was presented in, say, the short story format. Besides the tired writing, the main problem with this book is its unbelievable monotony. The formula — talk about clothes, talk about exercise, do something violent, talk about a band — repeats itself to the point of high comedy. (What’s that? Maybe Ellis is trying to say that yuppie life in the 80’s was nothing but tedium and repetition? So, in this complex literary metaphor that Ellis has constructed, being tedious and repetitive shows how things were tedious and repetitive? Brilliant! I’d have never thought of that.) After a while, I promise, you can predict what kind of chapter is coming next. It’s lazy writing that boldly challenges the reader to hold onto the least bit of interest in what’s happening.”

- An excerpt from a review of the book American Psycho on Amazon.

It was a really disturbing read, and yes, it was repetitive, incoherent and just sick at points. And I also don’t know what exactly was the point of all that. No solution, no reasons, no nothing. The character doesn’t show any progression or development… So yes, I must agree with the quote: the book overall is shallow.

Darth Vader deflects Han's laser blast with his bare hands...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:33:13 -0500

GreatWhiteApeofBarsoom: In the novelization--take it for what it's worth--Vader deflects the blaster fire because of a specialized glove. How canonical that is, I don't know, but that's what the novel says
the_bamboo_spear: It was the Force. Luke's lightsaber went through that glove like it was a Tauntaun's belly.
GreatWhiteApeofBarsoom: Are you sure it was the same glove?
Mr-Fusion: What's Vader do, carry around a special glove for those rare occasions when people shoot at him?

Star Wars on Blu-Ray

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:56:15 -0500

xenodrone: Do you think Lucas could change the Greedo shoots first scene back to Han shooting first for the Blu-ray release, maybe he's relised his mistake.
sati_84: Now, that would be a good move, but Lucas has reached the point, where any change he makes will be ridiculous. Besides, Greedo didn't shoot at all.

"The simplest form of virtual reality is lying."

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:48:00 -0500

“The simplest form of virtual reality is lying.”

- Another wisdom by me.

Or if you’ve seen this (or something similar) somewhere already, let me know, as always!