(EDIT: you’ll have to click through to YouTube to see what I’m talking about apparently – it’s not included in their embedded player yet.)

Beowulf

I didn’t really consider how much Avatar was a game-changer until I watched Beowulf for the first time this past weekend. It was touted as the greatest example of digital animation, that the actors were photorealistic and lifelike and they didn’t have the dead eye problem you got in Polar Express. And I also knew that it was a stylized take on photorealism, and that aspects of the movie were meant to appear cartoonish, as this was a legend and legends take on supernatural aspects. And it was all those things. It was well told and well shot, but in the end it felt like a video game cinematic in places – people didn’t move quite right, some characters weren’t rendered as well as others. It just makes Avatar look that much better.

Beowulf was a better story by far, of course.

Rambo

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. Following Rocky Balboa from the week before, it was a bit of a shocker. It has a low budget and you can see that, but every penny is on the screen. The ridiculous gore and violence of it worked for me. I loved First Blood and have no real desire to see any of the other films, but this was great. Julie Benz was awful in it, though. Just … just awful. Man, I couldn’t wait for her to die, and it hurt that much more when she didn’t.

I see that Stallone is making a Rambo V now. Good for him. It sounds like he just had more fun making those movies than the Rocky movies.

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

AH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH

The Oscars

On a side note, I tried not to watch the Oscars, because I hate the idea of 10 best picture nominations, and acceptance speeches are always dumb. I really only cared that Christoph Waltz won for his role in Inglourious Basterds, and I hoped that District 9 would walk away with something. A little surprised to see Sandra Bullock snatch the Best Actress award, but I haven’t seen the movie (and won’t – I hate inspirational movies, they always come off saccharine and make me squirm in my seat), so more power to her. Glad that Avatar didn’t sweep the night – it’s a good movie, and it’s important, but I wouldn’t make it Best Picture. Winning for Cinematography and Visual Effects is more appropriate.

As should you all.

Write a scene about a struggle. It could be a fight, or someone trying to put on a pair of pants. I’m interested in seeing sense of surroundings, the geography that describes where everything is in a consistent manner.

Anyway, you’ll need to click through in order to read, due to length and also probably a good idea to block content from the front page.

“You motherfucker! You try to rip me off?”

I couldn’t think but I knew where my knee was and then Simon did too. He grunted and loosened his grip and I pressed my free hand against his chest and he rolled off. I scrambled across the floor and against something hard. I tried to stand up but my head connected with the underside of the table. It hurt.

“Shit!”

Simon was rolling back onto his knees and breathing heavy and a line of drool trailed from his lips to the dirty floor of the bar.

“What’s going on out there?”

The voice was from the kitchen. It was Paulie on tonight, he’d done me up a broasted chicken tit and some potato wedges and he could kill me with those hams he called fists. The pistol. I had to get the fucking pistol out. My hand was still wrapped around the grip and it was off the grid as far as my brain was concerned just pulling the damn thing like eventually it’d pop out of my pocket. I had to will it to stop. Simon’s grubby paws were under the table and onto my lapels and I was out and back under the low lights.

“Wait, Simon, I can explain.”

His right came in fast and straight and then it exploded and my neck bent back at some odd angle I wasn’t aware was possible. Somehow the whole damn thing didn’t snap and I was looking at that ugly fucker again. He pulled back for another blow. I couldn’t stand it. I pushed into him and knocked him off balance and he fell back into the bar dragging me with him. I grabbed his own shirt and ripped it to hold him steady and brought my head down as hard as I could on the bridge of his nose. There was blood. I did it again and hit his mouth. I was sure there was a tooth lodged in my forehead.

“You okay, Simon?”

Paulie didn’t like coming out of the kitchen if he couldn’t help it.

“Spluh!” said Simon.

I tried to wrench my jacket free from Simon’s grip. Some dumb retard bartender strength kept him holding on. I slipped one arm out and turned and held onto the other end like we were dancing. The pistol. Still in the pocket.

“Spluh!”

I reached for it and couldn’t find the opening of the pocket. Simon grabbed behind him and found the fountain gun and sprayed well vodka in my face. It stung like fire. I closed my eyes and felt and found the slit and reached inside. The pistol was loose and it came out like nothing had happened before and I pointed it in Simon’s face.

“Give me my keys.”

“Spluh!”

There was a motion back behind the bar and I ducked but I didn’t have to. Paulie misjudged the shot. The pot with the boiling oil hit Simon in the back. Burning fat rained down all around me. Simon was screaming and spinning, almost breaking his arms trying to get the shit off him. It smelled like broasted chicken. I almost lost it.

“Paulie, what the fuck?”

He just stood in the door staring at what he’d done. Simon was all over the place. He hit the floor and rolled but that only spread it around. He left melted bits of himself all over the sticky wood. He was back on his feet and heading for the door.

“Don’t let him get out!”

I looked at Paulie still motionless in the door to the kitchen and then back at Simon who was busy pushing on the door when it only opened in. I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t even want to go near him. I looked down at the pistol in my hand.

“Oh fuck.”

Rocky Balboa

I’d heard this was good, and it was. I think Stallone is one of those guys who makes a really, really good movie once every ten years, and then spends the years following just producing garbage. Now that he’s really too old to be an action hero, it’s interesting to see the choices and chances he’s taking. I think he’s an intelligent man with the ability to be a good actor. Watch the first Rocky, First Blood, Copland, Judge Dredd (okay, that last one was a joke), and you should agree. I think he’s a good writer, too. But still, he’s written a few good movies and a lot of really shitty ones. Anyway, it was a fun movie to watch, and brought the 80s training montage back a little and the fight at the end was well shot. They didn’t go cheeseball with it, and the ‘love interest’ was well done.

The Queen

I expected a British biopic. What I got was a week in the life of the Queen of England and PM Tony Blair, centered around the death and fallout of Princess Diana. A great bit of storytelling. Only thing weird for me is that I have a huge, huge crush on Excalibur- and Long Good Friday-era Helen Mirren. She’s a wonderful looking woman at her age now, but man, her Morgana drove me crazy.

Dead and Buried

This is another movie that took me a while to figure out what it was doing on my queue. A little research showed it was written by Dan O’Bannon, who co-wrote the original Alien. Alien it was not, but it was a pretty cool Lovecraftian zombie story. Small east coast town where people who visit end up dead, killed by the townspeople, and then suddenly reappear as new citizens who’ve ‘been there all along’. Cheesy and dated, but fun.

This weekend I’ll be watching the new Rambo, Beowulf, and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Wish me luck.

I should also be coming up with details on how my resolutions are going. I’ll keep this simple, too:

Not eating meat has been a bit of a bust. I’ve reduced my intake, but I’m nowhere near where I was even a month ago. I’m not reading comments on sites, except for on the weekends. That feels weird, but even then I don’t spend much time online, so no real worries. I’m still social networking site-clean, two months in. I’m trying to figure out what good those sites will do me when I eventually start using them again. I can see a benefit to them, but everything in moderation. I finished a short story last night. I haven’t touched the novel in a while. Definitely not since last I talked about it. No open source work. I keep writing more music, but none of it’s getting recorded. That’s a bitch. No new languages (although I was afraid for a moment I might get thrust back into the frightening world that is PHP), and Europe is still on the other side of the Atlantic – no closer am I.

I’m going to be dumping a few more posts here tonight, rather than work on a secret work project. Which I should be working on, because I can’t work on it at work. Intrigued? It involves potatoes. I’m not even kidding.

Outside of SoulFood

Devin Townsend played a coffee house last night. If you’re not familiar with HevyDevy then this might not mean much to you. Devin started his professional career as the lead singer on two Steve Vai albums, and soon after formed his own band Strapping Young Lad. SYL has been a major influence on me over the past nine years. So a free show in a coffee house in Redmond as he takes a break from an international tour in support of his latest album. As it turned out, I wish Dena and I had gotten there sooner. The above image should give some indication, but the shop was at maximum capacity and there were maybe a hundred people standing outside.

At one point a manager at SoulFood got on stage and asked for people to ’share the experience’ and let others have a turn because ‘what comes around goes around [sic]‘, which became a great lesson in the effectiveness of feel-good hippie rhetoric. No one budged.

I used the opportunity to try out the voice recorder on the iPhone. If we’d been in there it might not have turned out so well. You’ll have to ignore some various douchebags in the background – two young dorks in front of us kept talking during the entire show. Yes, we know it’s from Ziltoid. Yes, that’s a great reverb system. No, we don’t care what you think about Addicted.

Here’s a snippet from the track ‘Coast’ off the album ‘Ki‘:

And a good chunk of ‘Solar Winds’ off of ‘Devin Townsend Presents: Ziltoid the Omniscient‘:

Finally, an unreleased track he called ‘Radial Highway’ that was as he described it ‘a lot like Trainfire [also from Ki] but creepier’:

That last one annoyed me most. There was a woman who showed up right before this song who started bugging everyone there about who this was and why her favorite store was clogged with people. She just wouldn’t shut up. She hung around after it was clear she wasn’t interested in the music and kept initiating conversations with random people. Very frustrating. I don’t go to live shows to socialize with people, I go to watch musicians perform.

Anyway, here’s about the only shot I could manage of the stage. I’m not even going to try to point it out. This is really all I could manage:

Can't quite make out the stage...

The opening cards for Shinobi: Heart Under Blade tell me all I need to know:

• A land of darkness
• Hundreds of years ago
• People with mystical powers
• Constantly fighting

Sounds good to me. So far it’s silly fun, all the more silly because it seems to be taking itself seriously.

If it’s at all possible to put the following words together without losing my mind: I have now seen a magical ninja with a teased mullet in a fantasy period piece.

They’ve referenced Hattori Hanzo. Cool beans.

Yeah, it was a silly movie. Not too bad, and some cool ninja action.