[Geeky Guide] Daily Entry Categories for August

Hello Geeky Readers!

For those who have been keeping up with the times, you should already know that I've been considering better organizing my entries throughout the week so that you, the readers, will have a better idea of what to expect on certain days of the week and to help me discipline myself to post more regularly. Initially I had committed to regular entries only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but now I pretty much have posting plans for all days of the work week with the weekends left pretty much free-for-all in terms of entries.

So here's the break-down of categories:

• Movie Mondays - Mondays will be devoted to posting reviews of recent movies. For now I'm defining recent as being any film released no earlier than last year so for now it means you can expect reviews from the 2008-2009 movie seasons.
  
• Text-Toon Tuesdays - I know, the title sucks but it's the only alliteration I could come up with. For the most part, Tuesdays are now devoted to comic books and cartoons and possible book reviews, too - I'm still a little on the fence about that.
  
• Wired Wednesdays - Wednesdays will be all about computers and console gaming, so expect reviews of popular games, interesting applications and probably a lot of Google news, if ever.
  
• TV Thursdays - Thursdays are for reviewing complete TV seasons, discussing possible new shows and dispelling rumors about other developments in the TV universe. What Geeky Guide can be without TV, right?
  
• Flashback Fridays - This is admittedly me cheating in order to have a day for everything else that I wasn't able to fit into other categories throughout the week. Thus this mostly means movies prior to 2008 but could also feature any number of reviews of older content like classic books, console games, or whatever.

On the whole, these aren't permanent categories but pretty much an experiment for now. To get a better idea of what this means, you can review the entries posted during this week from July 27 -31, 2009 and you'll see that I've already sort of followed these categories for now. Weekends are totally free-for-all, and I seem to be pretty much posting a lot of my viral video entries then.

I'm still considering other possible categories and perhaps dedicating a day for LGBT-related posts in order to push the advocacy angle a bit more, but I'll see how that pans out. Beyond these categories, entries can still appear randomly throughout the week even though they don't fit the categories, especially in the case of breaking news, current events and Google. You know I always have to give Google love when it's warranted, hehe.

Entries that fit these categories typically start posted at one hour intervals starting 12:08 PM (GMT +8) so anything outside this schedule is just bonus content (like this entry).

Let me know what you think! Are these categories lame? Do you like seeing more regular content on the Geeky Guide? Is there something you wish to see more instead of what I've chosen to schedule out in terms of entries? As always, the comments are open (OpenID or Blogger / Google Account needed) or just email me directly.

Cheers!

[Movies] Equilibirum (2002)

The Matrix had a profound effect on movies and those effects will continue to be experience in the years to come. In fact, it's probably difficult to not attribute certain effects and styles to the influence of The Matrix, whether this is accurate or not. It's just how these things go.

It certainly brought us many new concepts like Bullet Time, although this technically first appeared in Blade, or perhaps got Hollywood addicted to Chinese style suits of a more modern style. Heck, think about those odd angled shades everyone decided to wear! The list goes on and on.

Thus it becomes highly interesting when a movie tries to build on those concepts and try to present new ideas and new visualizations in order to set itself apart. This can either work very well or it may leave something to be desired.

Equilibrium is a movie that I feel was built around a concept - the Gun Kata fighting style which supposedly claimed that you could learn to avoid the most "common" trajectories of bullets and fire back at the most possible locations of the assailants. Starting with this idea, a movie complete with backstory was written in order to showcase this idea. I know, it sounds a tad harsh, but when you see the film, it'll make some sense in that aspect. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty robust story when you consider it.

Here, man has achieved peace by escaping extreme emotions which were found to lead to violence and conflict. Thus people are now required to take mandatory timed doses of a drug called Prozium (obviously a play on Prozac and Valium combined), which prevented them from achieving extreme emotions whether good or bad, thus allowing them to maintain a balance or equilibrium. Thus the society is maintained by rigid police rule, ultimately presented in the form of the Grammaton Clerics, a special elite group who are trained in the art of Gun Kata and are charged with putting down any resistance to the regime. The greatest of these clerics is John Preston (Christian Bale), who is one of the "naturals" who can detect the slightest hint of emotion in other people. He soon discovers the possibility of emotion in his fellow Cleric Errol Partridge (Sean Bean) which leads to an even larger scale mission - to find the resistance group known as the Underground.

Sorry, that was a lengthier synopsis than normal, but it's a tad tricky to figure out how best to summarize all this.

At the core of this movie are the fight scenes, and that's pretty understandable given the director, Kurt Wimmer, and how strongly he felt about Gun Kata. It's a pretty interesting concept and he manage to execute it all rather well, giving the film that anime-style feel and yet distinct from the kind of fighting we saw in the Matrix. I can't think of a fight scene I didn't appreciate to some degree, so that's probably a good thing.

Acting was fairly decent and we can see Christian Bale really building up to the kind of acting he'd later implement in The Dark Knight. He did a pretty decent job of trying to convince the viewers he was fairly unemotional, something that the way his lips purse seems to really stress. At the same time, I'm always game to see him shirtless, haha. Just when exactly did he start becoming such a muscle man versus the way we saw him back in the day in movies like, oh I don't know, Newsies? See what I mean?

The supporting cast was just okay but in some cases a little weird. Taye Diggs didn't make for a very convincing Cleric since he smiled just way too much for me - whatever happened to showing no emotions? And don't get me started on Angus MacFadyen as DuPont since he was the most emotional of all. Kudos to Sean Bean though, he was pretty good despite being cast once more in the role of the tragic hero of sorts doomed to die.

The story as a whole definitely had an interesting concept to build on, although I didn't feel too strongly about how it was executed and ultimately resolved. There were some bits that just seemed a tad shallow although overall it still made sense and was a fairly decent tale. It certainly posed some rather interesting questions for the viewers about the whole peace through control kind of philosophy, but let's face it - this was a science fiction action movie at the core and it certainly embraced that.

So based on its merits as a fight movie, Equilibrium get 3.5 does of Prozium out of a possible 5.

[TV] Torchwood: Children of Earth

When they announced that the third season of Torchwood would be done such that it's only a 5-episode mini-series, I was both excited and scared. While it's great that they're trying to play around with the storytelling involved in the rather adult science fiction show, it also didn't seem to be a strong indicator of support for the show.

Did this mean Torchwood didn't have enough ratings to justify a full season? Was this the swan song of this landmark science fiction series? Would this mean I'd no longer get my regular dose of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness? Perish the thought!

Thankfully it wasn't that bad, if still a bit short. While I'm still wishing they made a full season, this year's addition to the Torchwood library certainly merits a closer look.

Torchwood: Children of Earth is what you can consider to be a condensed version of a Torchwood season. This means that there's plenty of aliens, mysteries to solve, Scottish humor, sexual tension, John Barrowman appearing shirtless and at least one major character getting killed off. That's Torchwood for you - they've been killing characters since the first episode after all!

Image via Wikipedia

In this edition, the reduced Torchwood crew of Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) are still trying to pick up the pieces after the end of the second season when children all around the world start speaking in unison, all in English. The message is a ominous one - "We Are Coming" and it sets the stage for a battle that Torchwood might not be able to win, especially with the British government suddenly working against them.

This really came across to me as sort of a condensed essence of Torchwood, so to speak. Each episode (tagged as "days" since the entire mini-series takes place in less than a week) is jam-packed with Torchwood goodness and a pretty heavy handed thumb in the direction of the duplicity of governments in general. Torchwood was always had a lot more action given it reflected Jack Harkness' more direct style of solving things versus how the Doctor tends to favor wits and trickery at times in order to succeed.

Like I said earlier, the series includes the death of a major character and if you have managed to avoid reading any of the blogs or the buzz about the show, then I'll not spoil it for you. Let's just say that the foreshadowing for the death of this character was pretty heavy and I feel like they made it pretty obvious from the very first day.

The story is amazing and highly well-managed across the five separate episodes. Torchwood had an interesting take on humanity and that really came to fore here in terms of how they depicted all the various players, including the members of Torchwood themselves. Everyone has their motivations and what they hold dear to themselves and knowing all these facets makes it hard to hate anyone here as a stereotypical "villain" or bad guy. To some degree, everyone was fully justified in their actions and the disagreements and differences between those ideals is really what drives the story.

I'm left a little shocked still by the death and definitely hungry for more Torchwood. Five episodes just isn't enough and it's good to hear that buzz about the fourth season is already building. I guess now I just need to wait for the new season of Doctor Who to get my fix of British science fiction again.

Torchwood: Children of Earth gets 5 creepy talking children out of 5.

[Music] Storm Large - 8 Miles Wide

Storm Large via last.fm

Once upon a time, there was a reality show called Rockstar Supernova. While I wasn't too keen on the outcome of the show, I was a big fan of one of the contestants that got kicked off the show earlier, a certain feisty lady named Storm Large. She had the most amazing rendition of Pinball Wizard plus her cover of Anything, Anything just blew everyone away.

So it's nice to see that she's still alive, still rocking and of course, still kickass! Go Stormie!


Storm Large 8 MILES Wide music video

[Games] LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (PS2)

Sometimes a game concept comes along that just totally works and it becomes hard to imagine how one could possibly screw things up. And yet time and time again, game developers will do exactly that and come up with sequels that totally fail, which is probably why sequels, even for video games, rarely get rave reviews.

Then there are the exceptions to this rule of sorts that make everything so worth it - games that allow us to continue to enjoy what makes a game great with the addition of a few additional tweaks that work with the existing game instead of against it.

One can only wish that more game developers manage to achieve that with their games.

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is the sequel to LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game and it continues the brick-building fun of its predecessor while still playing around the Star Wars universe. While the first game dealt with the three prequel movies, this second game immerses the player in the fun experience of the original movies with a whole lot of fun.

Image by Official Star Wars Blog via Flickr

The game manages to maintain its quirk sense of humor in how it re-tells the Star Wars saga using LEGO bricks and minifigs with its largely wordless cut sequences and surprisingly humorous facial expressions given the limited appearance of the common minifig. It manages to cover most of the original story while glossing over the bits that don't have as much dialog or action through the creative use of cut scenes.

Still relying on the character-based skill / ability system introduced in the first game, this sequel adds to that by adding more sort of job or class related skills for Stormtroopers and Bounty Hunters and even tweaking certain aspect of the game like making sure any character can build things and not just Jedi.

There are an insane number of secrets and unlockables that will force any gamer to re-play levels over and over again if only to assemble the various bonus display items that act as "rewards" for fully completing a stage in terms of all hidden items. Plus there are all those bonus sequences that make the game more fun such as making characters dance inside Jabba the Hutt's Sail Barge. Yeah, it's all part of the LEGO Star Wars humor.

While many may find the game highly repetitive, I enjoy the nature of the game and the real diversity of it all, which lies in the puzzles. There were sequences that were a lot harder this time around, especially since both the Story and Free Play modes have bit goals that you need to achieve in order to truly clear the stage and get all bonus blocks needed.

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original trilogy is a great way to add on to an existing franchise without seeming overly tacky. It deserves a full 5 LEGO Death Stars out of 5.

[Games] LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (PS2)

Like most other geeks, I've always been a big fan of LEGO - you know, those little blocks that connect together for form anything from oil tankers to space ships. It seems a geek requirement to fully understand what exactly a minifig is, and that's just part of the role LEGO plays in our geek lives today.

On the other hand there's science fiction series like Star Wars, that many geeks are devoted to as well given the epic storytelling, the compelling characters and the role the movies played in our childhood. Let's face it, Star Wars is something that you'll never forget.

Now combining the two together could have turned out in any number of ways, some amazingly good and others horrendously wrong. I was of mixed feelings the first time they announced a game joining the two series given past toy-based games that have forever scarred us such as the Hot Wheels / Micro Machines racing games and the countless installments of Barbie-based adventure games and what have you. Thankfully, this game turned out a heck of a lot better.

LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game marks the first digital venture of the LEGO franchise paired with other properties that they've started to tie-up with. It seems fitting enough that they started with LEGO, which also marked their first tie-up of this nature for the actual LEGO play sets and model kits.

The premise of the game is simple - following the storylines of the three Star Wars prequel films, you get to control a host of LEGO-style Star Wars characters as you guide them in their adventures to fully cover the movies they are based on. More than just a straight-forward story-based adventure game, it turns into more of a puzzle game where you need to perform various tasks in order to progress to the next part of the story.

At first I thought this was going to be some ridiculously childish game but when the initial reviews started to come out and videos of the gameplay were released, I immediately got curious and was anxious to try it out. I definitely didn't regret that decision and found myself hooked on the game and determined to finish it once I started.

Image by hummingcrow via Flickr

The key strength of the series is the need to employ the unique skills of each of the characters in order to solve the puzzles and get to the next stage. For example, only certain characters can use grappling hooks to get to higher ledges and only Jedis can control the light side of the force to move aside certain obstacles. Even annoying characters like Jar Jar Binks becomes highly important given his higher jump ability compared to other characters. Given this unique mix of skills and abilities, the game ends up feeling a lot like the old game The Lost Vikings, which was also dependent on the player using three characters with specialized abilities.

Next definitely has to be the diversity of the gameplay options. Most missions try to follow the movies in the usual manner using character-driven sequences and puzzles that involve multiple configurations. Beyond that, there are also special missions involving the unique Star Wars vehicles and these can be anything from pod racing to epic space battles with key mission objectives. The designers did really well in making sure that game remained fresh and viable no matter how long you play.

Plus there are all the unlockables, secrets and bonuses that give players lots of things to strive for. There's the basic goal to collect as many different character types as possible in order to gain access to their skills and abilities in Free Play mode or even just collecting enough of the special blocks to form larger-scale models of popular vehicles that remain as part of your collection to be viewed at your leisure.

This game was just incredibly fun and even better played cooperatively together with a friend. It's definitely something I'd recommend to any geek, especially if you're a fan of either the LEGO franchise or the Star Wars films.

LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game gets 5 minifigs out of a possible 5.

[Comics] The Sandman Vol. 2 - The Doll's House

I was never much of a dreamer - at least not consciously. I know that technically we all dream to one degree or another as part of REM sleep and the only difference is just that not all of us remember our dreams as well as other do. Given this, I have to admit that I've never really give dreams much thought given my lack of "first-hand" experience with.

Exploring the worlds of The Sandman Vertigo comic have certainly been interesting and just go on to remind all of us that dreams and stories can be practically synonymous - both worlds involve the imagination and are only limited by what the human mind can possible conceive, something that is constantly being redefined with the birth of every new individual. I think that's part of the appeal of The Sandman for me - the sheer expansiveness of it all and how the scale manages to tap into the writer in me and those countless worlds of possibility we all try to tap into when we write stories.

The Sandman: The Doll's House is the second compilation of the DC-Vertigo comic. This volume follows the story arc known as The Doll's House, as depicted in issues 9 - 16 of the series.

This particular volume revolves around a regular human being known as Rose Walker, who finds herself under careful scrutiny of Dream. It seems that she's bound to become a dream vortex, something that could rip apart all of the Dreaming unless Morpheus intervenes. Thus as Rose seeks out her brother Jed in the waking world, Dream searches for the vortex, and thus ultimately her. At the same time, Dream still has the task of putting his realm in order, which includes a missing nightmare known only as the Corinthian and an entire part of his realm known as Fiddler's Green.

Given that Dream finally has the vestments of his office, this volume sets the potential to really see Dream in "action" if we were following any other typical comic book series, but instead we find ourselves following humans around, primarily Rose Walker. This may seem rather unusual and strange at first but it's just all part of the Sandman style of storytelling that really helps set it apart from the rest. The stories covered in this book become very important in the long run since it establishes many key characters and plot points that are picked up in later books time and time again.

Kudos definitely has to go out to the character of the Corinthian, who truly personifies the stuff of nightmares. I mean seriously, he's a serial killer with mouths for eyes who likes to steal the eyes of his victims for his own purposes. He even gets to attend a serial killers convention, cleverly disguised as a cereal convention. You do get the pun right? Beyond that, it's in this book that we get a better look at two more of the Endless, namely Desire and his/her sibling Despair. The character of Desire is amazingly interesting, and I don't just mean that based on his/her androgynous looks. There's just so much depth and well...potential, for lack of a better term, that you know Desire will play a key role throughout the series.

I especially loved the story about Robert Gadling, a man who eventually finds himself unable to die after Dream and his elder sister Death come to an agreement. Instead of the usual way these stories go, Gadling just ends up being a fixed point in space and time (to borrow the Doctor Who / Torchwood term for it) and develops a maturing look at human society as a whole. He too becomes a character to be revisited in later books and that just goes to show that Gaiman does not carelessly introduce characters into the universe, especially in the middle of the story arc.

The art remains in the same style which is not overwhelmingly beautiful to the point that it might distract you from the story itself, which makes it very effective. I especially liked some of the more creative transitions done in order to convey the different between the waking world and the Dreaming, as best seen in issue 10 when we get to follow Rose into her dream by physically reorienting the book to the side so that things are right side up. It was such a simple idea but still quite novel and amazingly creative.

This is definitely an important part of the entire Sandman collection, one that you can't get away from reading and one that is also highly enjoyable to read. It also manages to survive on its own without too much support from the first volume, which is pretty interesting in terms of the kind of development that must have gone into it.

The Sandman: The Doll's House deserves 5 shards of glass from the lost city out of 5.

[Comics] The Sandman Vol. 1 - Preludes & Nocturnes

The Vertigo line of DC Comics has always been an interesting one, one that I had always wanted to get into right away but naturally the warning about potentially mature content ensured that my folks wouldn't let me collect any of the titles in my younger years. Fast forward to the present day and my new geekier life with my current partner and I find myself with access to a vast library of comic books, including a number of the major Vertigo titles.

I know, sounds like heaven, right?

So naturally one of the best-known Vertigo characters was at the top of my list of comics that I wanted to read and I recently finished reading the entire series run and it was something else. I held back from reviewing each of the ten compilations right away since I felt it was important to get a perspective of the entire series before really deciding how things went for me.

I'm pretty sure the investment of time was more than worth it. So now over the next few weeks, I'll be releasing my reviews of the various The Sandman compilations, starting with this review.

The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes is the first compilation of the landmark Vertigo title, collecting the first 8 issues of the series in one book. It more or less covers the More Than Rubies storyline with the addition of the 8th issue, which is a standalone story.

Image via Wikipedia

The premise of the storyline is basic enough - we are introduced to Dream, one of the 7 Endless who are personifications of various philosophical or fundamental forces of the human experience. However instead of being immediately subjected to the potential power and majesty of these entities, we find Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams captured by some English magician named Roderick Burgess. The story then follows the attempts of Burgess to be granted a boon by their Endless contained in a glass prison only to have him outlive them without giving them anything.

Naturally Dream eventually escapes because of the carelessness of his captors. Being away from his realm for more than 70 years, Dream finds his Kingdom in disarray. Before he can put things right, he needs to regain key artifacts of his station taken from him during his captivity - his pouch of sand, his helm and his ruby.

I was surprised at how this story started and it certainly pressed home that this was not just another comic book title. Instead of us following the protagonist around in his adventures (so to speak), we ended up with a story where the main character is imprisoned and spend more time following his captors around than Dream himself. This sort of becomes a recurring theme over the years where many of the stories of The Sandman tend to not directly involve him, but instead he's merely a bit player of sorts in the background with other characters taking the fore.

And given its more mature focus, the title does not hold your hand and fully explain the universe that you're in or the precise nature of the lead characters. At the end of this volume, you'll only have a vague idea of who the Endless are but will not fully understand what they truly represent. You won't even know who all of them are. You also won't fully understand what are Dreams full powers and what exactly he has to "do" as Lord of Dreams in terms of his responsibilities towards the smooth functioning of all creation. The series just creates more and more questions and instead rewards ones own thinking and imagination, leaving you, the reader, to try and fill in the blanks and try to postulate how precisely this universe works. That is but one of the wonders of this series.

Plus the art style does amazingly well to capture the sense of the mutability of the dream realm and the characters involved instead of resorting to the clean-cut lines of older comics. I keeps things highly vibrant and interesting and gives a lot of credit to the reader's ability to imagine how things might truly be and put more dimension and substance into the blurry shadows and empty spaces across the panels.

Preludes & Nocturnes is a great way to start a series, something that gives you a taste of the complexity and individuality of the protagonist without giving you too much, thus urging you to wonder and ask more questions. It drives a new reader to want to read more if only to understand just what Morpheus is really supposed to be and how it all factors into the larger picture.

This volume gets 4 daydreams out of a possible 5.

[Movies] Burn After Reading (2008)

The Coen Brothers are an odd pair of filmmakers, known for their black comedies and even darker suspense dramas. It's just their style, I suppose. I first grew to appreciate their work when I got to watch Fargo at a fairly young age, certainly a film that blurred the lines between movie classifications and had its odd comedic moments set against a the tale of a kidnapping gone wrong.

I've not consistently seen their films beyond that point and as I double-check their filmography in line with the writing of this review, it's daunting to note just how many movies I've missed. It's not like I'm a die hard fan of the Brothers, but you have to admit they have a certain something going on and it's no small feat winning the Oscar for Best Picture for No Country For Old Men, yet another Coen film I need to get around to watching.

I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about this, but I have a general idea of how I want to rate this movie for now, so let's press on.

Burn After Reading is the quirky tale gym employees Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand) who stumble across a disc containing the incomplete memoir of ex-CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich). The two decide that they can try to sell the information either back to Cox or even the Russians in order to earn enough money to fulfill their dreams. As with any other Coen film, there's a lot more to this than just that summary, but I don't want to give too much away.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The cast was remarkably significant in terms of high profile stars. Beyond those already mentioned, the movie also featured George Clooney as a womanizer having an affair with Tilda Swinton, who plays Osborne's wife, Katie. The interaction between characters is something else and they definitely got some good chemistry going, although I can't help but feel Frances is stuck playing the same acting style as when she did Fargo. Maybe it's just me making associations since I knew it was a Coen film, I dunno really. And John Malkovich only knows how to act like John Malkovich, which isn't bad at all. His unique brand of neuroses was probably perfect for his role here.

The story wasn't as funny as I had hoped it to be, but then again I was initially expecting a more mainstream comedy. Instead it was very, very black and actually felt a tad dragging at some points. pacing was a significant challenge here and it's hard to keep up sometimes but not because it's too fast - more like you need to stay awake.

And Brad Pitt never took his shirt off. Bugger.

As a whole, the movie was okay and entertaining and humorous in a more subtle, intellectual way. It didn't make me want to watch it again to analyze things or anything like that and so I may just end up leaving things at that.

Burn After Reading gets 3, um, exotic exercise chairs out of 5.

[Movies] Angels & Demons (2009)

I never got into Dan Brown's books since by the time I realized he existed, he had reached that level of fame / notoriety because of the supposed "controversy" around his book The Da Vinci Code. It always annoys me when people pick up a book just because it's popular or because they think it will make them appear smarter than they really are as opposed to deliberately looking for a book of that nature since they are already interested in the subject or premise.

To some extent, that helped me appreciate the movie independently from the book, which is always my goal when I write my reviews, although the first film didn't manage to win me over to want to read the book behind it. It was entertaining, to say the least, but nothing much beyond that.

So naturally Hollywood decide to capitalize of the success of the "brand" by creating a sequel and out of curiosity I went to see it with my partner. At least we survived.

Angels & Demons as a book was a prequel to The Da Vinci Code while as film, it was tweaked to become a sequel. In the movie, the current pope has died and the Cardinals are convening to elect a successor. At the same time, terrorists manage to break into the Large Hadron Collector (LHC), steal a small yet significant amount of antimatter and threaten to kill one of the four most-likely successors to the pope every hour and then ultimately destroy Vatican City at midnight. The group behind it claim to be The Illuminati, a secret underground society that has fought for the world of science in the face of willful religious ignorance.

Now I have a nasty habit as a viewer to let my mind race ahead and try to predict the ending of things. It can be as simple as trying to predict how a particular fight or scene will end or it can be solving the main case driving an entire TV series episode or movie. In this case, Angels & Demons had many highly predictable moments that had me groaning as soon as I projected the inevitable end result. It was sadly predictable to the point of being painful, and mind you this is all without having ever read the books.

On a technical side, there were painful flaws that hurt the scientist in me. This was best manifested by the gross misrepresentation of the Large Hadron Collector and just how much antimatter they could possibly create. More so, the true effects of antimatter and how it might explode was another aspect that just bothered me to no end. The list goes on and on, but that may be a flaw more of the original novel and not solely the movie, so let's forgive that.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

When one focused on the film on its own, it also felt sorely lacking. While it still had many of the familiar elements that made The Da Vinci Code pretty decent as a film, this "sequel" lost sight of a lot of that and ended up feeling very rushed, like an elaborate scavenger hunt where the players actually had all the steps and needed to follow each one deliberately. There was no true taking stock of various scenes and avenues of investigation, no creative ways of interpreting how Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) was deciphering the puzzles and ciphers in his head. It was just one scene after another, a continuing rushed series of events that made it feel more like The Amazing Race or perhaps National Treasure. It failed to maintain the same level of intelligence as the first film.

I guess part of it could be the premise itself - the fact that each puzzle followed the next in quick succession and the protagonists had less than 60 minutes to solve it, get there too late and fail, mull about the failure with the authorities then resume the hunt. Thus maybe the story is to blame and not just the director, although Ron Howard isn't completely off the hook just yet.

The whole thing just didn't grip me and by the end I think my cheeks were read from me face-palming myself all throughout the film. There were so many "reveals" that had been apparent much earlier on and even the main "villain" was obvious to me the very first time he appeared. And just don't get me started on the big finish when they have to deal with the bomb. Argh.

Angels & Demons gets 3 scientifically-impossible antimatter bombs out of 5.

[Movies] Idiocracy (2006)

Over the years, the comedy movie genre has devolved into this strange collection of seemingly random sequences built around physical comedy or gross-out ideas. I have to admit that I've never really grown to like these kinds of movies since I'm more of a fan of the older, smarter, wittier comedies produced by the like of Mel Brooks and his ilk. Sure, they were pretty wordy, but they were definitely fun.

Then again, every now and then comes a decent comedy that sort of hearkens back to that period while at the same time being a lot more serious than initially presented. More often that not we get some pretty good smart comedies from the products of Saturday Night Live, who always seem to cluster together when one of them needs help with a film project.

Comedies don't have to be stupid in order to be funny, but at times it certainly seems that's the growing trend. This particular movie taps into that idea and manages to attack our growing tendency towards more base entertainment, as best explained by the movie's opening sequence:


Idiocracy - Opening Sequence - For more of the funniest videos, click here

Idiocracy is an unusual comedy that many will probably tag to be black. It involves two individuals, namely the extremely average Col. Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) and a prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolf of SNL fame) participate in a military hibernation experiment that somehow gets forgotten. Thus instead of just one year of hibernation, the two awake to find themselves 500 years in the future in a world that clearly demonstrates just what might happen given the theory posed in the title sequence, as posted above. Thus the two try to survive the time period in their own ways while trying to figure out a way home.

Now I had never heard of this film before Tobie recommended it to me, and I'm oddly grateful that he did. The movie was never released on a large scale but it has seemed to have developed a cult following over the years as evidenced by it significant online presence, in a manner of speaking. I can see why the movie may not have been considered for large scale release - in some ways it's controversial to a limited degree, if only because a lot of what they postulate as possible seem to already be happening now.

Acting in the film was rather blah for the most part, but not bad enough to make you want to stop watching. It's not like we're expecting Oscar performances here, plus they were trying to present a dumber future, and thus all actors may not have been performing at their best intentionally. The movie featured a lot of SNL veterans here and there, which did make things pretty interesting although not to the point that any one character took over the film or anything like that.

The plot itself was painful to watch, but only because it's scary that it just might happen if certain trends are taken to the extreme. In that sense it manages to sort of scare you with the possibilities of the future but then again still reassures you that this remains to be a comedy and that we shouldn't worry too much. Or should we?

The movie does tend to drag a bit with certain sequences and as with any other comedy, it has more than its fair share of odd moments when the jokes just aren't that funny. Still, all the pieces somehow make sense towards the end and the film does manages to deliver a message while making you wince and laugh at the same time.

Idiocracy gets 3 bottles of Brawndo (it's got electrolytes!) out of 5.

[Fandom Live!] We:Make Live Action

Given the slew of remakes of classic movies, TV shows and cartoons of our childhood, the geeks of Fandom Live! decided to pick out animated TV shows and cartoons that we'd actually like to see done in live action as compared to how things like G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra seems to be turning out.


Fandom Live We:Make Live Action

For those unfamiliar, Fandom Live! is a web show put up by the geeks of the New Worlds Alliance to just talk about all things related to their fandoms. Other than more creative episodes like this, we also post reviews, discussions and other features related to the worlds of science fiction, fantasy and popular TV shows and movies.

[Movies] The Prestige (2006)

You ever notice how Hollywood studios somehow manage to come up with similar movie concepts around the same time and end up releasing them as competitors to one another? It's one of the clearest signs of the ultra-competitiveness of the industry and perhaps a healthy dose of industrial espionage, but it does keep things interesting.

Before we had our asteroid movies, namely Armageddon and Deep Impact. Later on in 2006 there were a number of films about magic and illusions and until today it becomes far to easy to confuse the titles for one another.

After putting it off for ages, I finally got around to watching one of the two films that I had been long meaning to do, and it certainly was an interesting experience. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

The Prestige is an interesting look at the competitiveness of the magician's trade, especially in older times when it was a primary form of entertainment. At the core of the story are Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), once apprentices to the Milton the Magician and now competitors in the magical illusion trade. The movie documents their escalating levels of competition until it gets too far and one manages to kill the other.

Magic has always been something that has fascinated me ever since I was a kid and so it was fun to explore that secret world of sorts in this film. The role of Cutter (Michael Caine) as Alfred's "illusion engineer" was particularly striking since he had the function of creating the various trick sets and props used in the performances that would fool the audience and show us the magical extravaganza we ask for. The filmmakers wisely chose not to get too deeply into things so as not to turn this strictly into a feature-length version of Magic's Greatest Secrets Revealed.

Christian Bale via last.fm

The actors cast for the role turned out pretty good. We already knew that Bale and Caine would be comfy working together given their prior work for Batman Begins, but it was rather surprising how convincing Hugh Jackman was as an obsessed competitor to Bale and how his own desperation to "one up" his colleague drove him to significant lengths.

Scarlett Johanson did a particularly good job at portraying Olivia, Angier's assistant and love interest. She does a remarkable job of playing both sides of the conflict, as it were, and ends up being a lot more than just a pretty face.

There's definitely a dark tone to the entire film that Christopher Nolan managed well enough. We're used to magic being treated as something light and whimsical and yet here it takes on a somber and almost sinister tone, which reflects the fact that this rivalry does end up taking casualties and thus is no laughing matter. Over time you start to see patterns in how he executes films - there are definite similarities between Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. I'll leave it to you to figure out the pattern.

The overall story and execution behind The Prestige was just pretty amazing. It manages to accomplish so many things - it paints the picture of the role magicians played in a world before TV and movies, it captured the sense of intense rivalry between the two protagonists, it illustrated just how magic tricks are developed out of practical (and sometimes scientific) concepts and a whole lot more. It manages all of this without feeling too long, getting overly dragging and clearly staying focused on the message that Nolan wanted to deliver.

The Prestige more than deserves 4 Tesla Coils out of a possible 5.

[Fandom Live!] We:View Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

I'll start featuring the regular Fandom Live! videos on a more regular basis, if only to help promote the web show for what it's worth. I wonder if this means that there's a market for a Geeky Guide web show / vlog? What say you?

In this We:View (review if you're lousy at puns), the Fandom Live geeks talk about Michael Bay's latest adventure involving Megan Fox, some transforming robots and more Megan Fox.


Fandom Live We:View TRANSFORMERS: ROTF

[Movies] Tonari no Totoro / My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Studio Ghibli has been famous for it's animated films for years, including them winning an Academy Award in 2002. For one reason or another, I have yet to see any of the Ghibli works until now but I'm glad that I now have access to most of the library of their films.

It's hard to precisely define what makes it truly a Studio Ghibli work - something that I'll definitely work on defining that for myself as I watch more and more of Hayao Miyazaki's works. It's definitely rather distinct versus other types of anime that I've seen in the past but I just can't quite put my finger on it.

I guess at best what I can say for now is that these animated films tend to be a lot more than what they appear to be on the surface. I'm definitely going to enjoy the Ghibli universe, hehe.

Tonari no Totoro / My Neighbor Totoro is perhaps one of the better-known Studio Ghibli productions, the characters of which feature prominently in the studio's logo. The move follows the story of the Kusakabe family who have moved to the provinces in order to live closer to the hospital where the mother is confined. Thus it's just the father and his two daughters, Satsuki and Mei, who are going though each day in their new house, waiting for their mother to come home.

Beyond this part of the story, the girls begin to encounter strange creatures like the dust bunnies in the house and some unusual creatures in the forest. In time, Mei discovers a much larger creature that she names Totoro, who proceeds to become their friend and show them a more magical side to the world.

Image via Wikipedia

The sense of whimsy and wonder in this film is amazing and it draws immediate comparisons to Alice in Wonderland given the "white rabbit" chase at the start of the movie, the hidden magical world beyond our mundane normal one and even a large smiling cat, although not at all like the original Cheshire Cat of Lewis Carroll.

What did strike me a lot was how well Miyazaki managed to recapture the finer details of every aspect of the story. When I say every aspect, I really mean everything - it just blows the mind. The characterization of Mei was the perfect embodiment of the younger sister who idolized her older sibling. Without using words, he managed to depict the slower, more idyllic life of the countryside through imagery and subtle nature noises. There were just so many things that made me go WOW, he even remembered that! That was definitely something brilliant, especially for a hand-drawn animated feature like this.

At its core, My Neighbor Totoro had a simple yet direct and poignant story to tell. Whether it's just about the family trying to deal with the illness of the mother, the children learning to see the world in a different way with the help of Totoro or a father's constant love for his children, it can be pretty much whatever you choose to see in it. That's one of the things that makes this movie so intriguing - it gives you something different to take away with you every time you watch it. It's the kind of movie that gains new meaning depending on your experiences, the circumstances around you when you watch it or what's foremost on your thoughts. Then you can watch it again and repeat the whole cycle.

Plus, Totoro is ridiculously cute. He doesn't say a word and yet his silence speaks volumes. Plus when he's together with his two animal companions, it's just way too much cuteness at once! Hahaha!

My Neighbor Totoro gets 5 Susuwatari / soot sprites out of a possible 5.

[TV] Lie to Me - Season 1

CSI changed the TV crime genre by presenting the possibility that people are a lot smarter than you think and are able to appreciate alternative methods of solving crimes. Instead of the straightforward detective-style investigative mystery, CSI was able to help appreciate more the scientific side to police work, even if it wasn't always technically accurate.

The world after CSI certainly developed in odd ways, resulting in all these different variants on the classic TV crime genre. You have shows like Bones that tried to focus on much older evidence and weirder shows like Medium that relied on "psychic" premonitions to solve crimes. The list goes on and on.

Given all the alternative ideas that have come along, it's nice to come across a truly novel idea in terms of the investigative mystery and Fox managed to stumble upon a rather good one.

Lie to Me is the brain child of Samuel Baum and is centered around an independent firm called The Lightman Group. It's run by Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth), the world's leading deception expert who can interpret human "micro-expressions" in order to determine their true feelings about a subject and thus makes for an excellent lie detector. His group works with various government agencies and private individuals in order to ferret out one truth or another.

On the flip side, Lightman and his associates also have to live with the challenge of being able to sort out the difference between truths and lies even in their everyday lives and thus presents an entirely different layer to their daily activities.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

At first I have to admit the premise seemed a bit cheesy (to say the least) - I mean come on, a series that is centered around a group of people who somehow detect lies whenever you jerk a shoulder or look in a certain direction when talking does seem rather far-fetched. However it does manage to remain on the right side of plausibility and thus will keep you pretty hooked once you settle into things. More so, the series also likes to feature sample images of celebrities and other major public figures when discussing various micro-expressions, thus somehow implying certain things about these people without dwelling too much on that notion. It probably explains the strong reminder at the start of every episode that this is still a fictional series, I guess to avoid waves upon waves of libel cases that may come in.

Also, just being able to detect liars may not seem like much of a plot device, but the writers did a pretty good job at exploiting this to the fullest by carefully rationing out "lessons" on various interpretations of certain micro-expressions in the beginning of the series and then eventually branching out in more and more alternative stories still focused on the detection of lies. From basic kidnapping cases, they try more creative approaches like how does one read the dead facial muscles of a woman who's had Botox or perhaps how does one detect lies in someone who doesn't speak the same language? The progression is gradual enough to help the viewer keep up while at the same time fast enough not to make you lose interest right away.

Character development was a significant area of opportunity here. The pilot episode had them featuring some great potential quirks, character traits and behavioral nuances but then didn't really capitalize on them in the succeeding episodes. They don't really start trying to develop the back stories of these characters in a more significant manner until you're well past the half-way mark in the series, which did make it a little harder to associate with the characters on a more personal level in the beginning.

Despite being "just" a mid-season replacement series, Lie to Me has a lot of potential to go pretty far. Plus with the ever disturbing acting skills of Tim Roth to drive things along, I continue to have high hopes for the series.

Lie to Me's first season gets 4 chocolate pudding cups out of a possible 5.

[Games] We ♥ Katamari (PS2)

The Katamari Damacy series of games is wonderfully simple, amazingly addictive and quit the mind trip when you really get down to it. I mean come on, it's a game where your goal is to "roll up" various objects, animals and even people to create as large a Katamari ("clump" like a dung beetle ball) as possible in the time allotted. I doubt the makers of the game could have predicted what an international success the game would eventually become but definitely acted quickly to capitalize on that fame.

Personally, I fell in love with the game as soon as I got my hands on a copy. It may not sound like much but it's definitely the kind of game that you can only fully appreciate once you've tried it for yourself to see just how fun it can be.

We ♥ Katamari continues its odd habit of sort of breaking the fourth wall by talking to the player in the form of the Prince. In this game, the wild success of the first Katamari Damacy game has created fans of the series around the world and in this game the King of All Cosmos takes petitions from the fans as your missions. In essence the game remainsly largely the same except for a few key updates.

More game modes has certainly enhanced the overall gameplay. Apart from the classic challenge of making the largest Katamari possible within a limited time, there are now alternate challenges like meeting a certain Katamari size goal in a limited time, collecting items based on their potential weight or cash value in order to meet other objectives or even making the head of a snowman by rolling a snowball Katamari. Classic missions from the original game like catching the largest cow / bear only or making a Katamari of a particular size return and are challenged with odder missions like maintaining a fire Katamari until it's large enough to light the camp fire. The list goes on and on.

Plus the game has an improved 2-player engine, the option to play as the many, many royal cousins that can be found amidst the various stages and the ability for the player to equip two presents instead of just one.

Image via Wikipedia

Like the first game, the music remains a vibrant part of the whole experience and the makers tried to diversify their offerings beyond the range defined in Katamari Damacy. There were still a lot of great tracks, run remixes of the main theme song but a number of other songs that I probably don't need all that much. I still feel the soundtrack of the first game was a lot more coherent, for lack of a better term, and felt more like a unified collection than this one.

The story aspect could be seen to be good or bad depending on how you look at it. The first game had us following the somewhat random story of some family living amidst the rolling Katamari but was done in a bizarre and eccentric manner. This time around the story aspect follows the life of the King of All Cosmos and how the original game to be which was nice to know but wasn't delivered in a manner that was as funny or irrational as the first game.

Overall, the game is still a fun addition to the franchise although definitely not quite the same as the original experience. In many ways the original title remains the much better game while this was nice but at times felt like it was trying too hard.

We ♥ Katamari gets 4 giant cowbears out of 5.

[Geeky Guide] Considering Regular Feature Categories

Hello Again Geeky Readers!

In an effort to re-organize the Geeky Guide and make it more meaningful to you, the readers, I was considering coming up with categories for the various articles and a more or less regular posting schedule that should make getting into the Geeky Guide a lot easier.

By now you probably realize that the bulk of my content centers around reviews of movies, books, games, comic books, TV shows and other items of geeky interest. I also post a lot of upcoming movie and game trailers, viral videos and quirky how-to videos as well. Beyond that, I do a number of political commentaries, observations of life here in the Philippines or in the call center industry and whatever else that comes to mind. I'm a major Google fan, but I also write a number of features about cloud computing, online solutions and various tech-savvy things that make gadget boys go oooh. Yes, the Geeky Guide is all this and more, depending on the day and how much time I have.

So now I want to better segment things so readers like you can visit the Guide on the days of the week that you expect your preferred content to appear. Perhaps I should have Movie Mondays when all movie reviews are posted. I could have Wired Wednesdays dedicated to the latest in web applications, social networking innovations and other online stuff. I might start hosting Fandom Fridays when I do more of my tribute entries to classics of yesteryear like cartoons from the 80's, great science fiction movies and franchises like Star Wars and the Terminator series. What about TV Thursdays just dedicated to on-going TV shows and speculations about new ones? Superhero Saturdays solely for the world of comic books and graphic novels? Or how about Transformer Tuesdays, where I can try to come up with new factoids or rants about Transformer news, developments and rumors?

There are so many possibilities, so many ways to share the geekier side of things with readers like you and I'd love to hear your thoughts on what direction you think the Geeky Guide should take. Do you want more reviews? Less viral videos? More LGBT features? Additional discussions about life in the Philippine call center industry? Leave a comment with your ideas or perhaps email me directly!

I'm looking forward to your opinions so don't hesitate to provide feedback!

[Viral Video Chart] United Breaks Guitars

Oh yes, this video is so worth sharing since the best way to vent your issues with the airline industry is to write a song about it and post a video on YouTube.

Go social internet complaints!


#20 - United Breaks Guitars

[Videos] Season 2 of The Guild on YouTube

I got into the web series The Guild pretty late in the game, but thoroughly enjoyed the the quirky, funny and brilliant series about a group of MMORPG players as they face their greatest adventure - real life. The heart (or perhaps more accurately the brain) of the series is Felicia Day, whom you may remember as the girl, Penny, in Joss Whedon internet musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

The entire first season can be found on YouTube and finally they're releasing Season 2 on YouTube as well (although it's already available in full on DVD). To whet your appetite for this highly original web series, check out the first episode of Season 2 below:


The Guild - S2 Ep 1: Link the Loot

[Movies] Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

The Harry Potter franchise has become one of those massive media juggernauts that will forever live in our social memory as a species. Given the wild success of the books and the popularity of the movie adaptations, Harry Potter and his world of magic beyond our mundane muggle one will live on forever.

I always feel that writers must have a remarkably difficult time keeping their original vision independent of the whims of the movie studios or the demands of the fan base at large. Given how J.K Rowling changed from a struggling mother living out of her car to the multi-million dollar success story that she is now, I bet it must have been insane trying to finish all seven books the series given one part or another pushing their own ideas, agendas and whims upon her. Some characters were definitely influenced to one degree or another by how they were depicted in the films and that may or may not have affected the series as a whole in a significant manner.

Whenever I think about the books beyond the 4th one, which was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, that's pretty much how I feel about a lot of the development and growth.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the adaptation of the 6th book in the Harry Potter series and is the second-to-the-last book. Given this, it really was meant as a transition story that had to prepare all the characters for the dangers of the final book beyond and such storylines tend to feel underdeveloped in one way or another since you don't get full resolution at the end. This was sort of the case with another major movie franchise in terms of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, although that was a transition tale that was given a lot of meat and thus it was a rather successful attempt. I'm still trying to fully understand how I feel about this movie serving the same purpose.

This movie follows our usual triumvirate of Harry, Ron and Hermione as they return to a very different Hogwarts. With Voldemort and his Death Eaters on the loose in both the muggle and magical parts of the world, there's definitely a sense of fear and dread abound. People are being killed, others have gone missing and tales of Death Eater attacks and sightings are everywhere. Despite all this, Hogwarts remains open and the students return, but of course they too have grown in many ways (and hormones are going nuts to boot!) Dumbledore is frequently missing from the school, undertaking some secret quests that are causing him significant harm in the process. Draco Malfoy has been tasked with some dark deed by Voldemort himself and Harry and his friends are trying to deal with their own teenage relationship issues amidst the larger mysteries around them.

Image via Wikipedia

HP6 is a drastic change in tone from the previous 5 books. Before, there was always that sense of magical whimsy that you could get in the earlier parts of the story before the eventual confrontation with whatever dark and dangerous foe waited for them. That balancing of diverse elements has always been one of the reasons the books have been so widely accepted by readers of all ages and to some extent kept them as children's stories more or less. While the increasingly mature tone had been building over the recent books / films, it's really in this movie that things take a sharp turn into a darker world - one of Death Eaters and teenage romances. In many ways, one could critique Rowling for how this was handled - it was as if she realized that a lot of the development should have happened earlier but not it was too late to turn back. Instead we end up with this amazing evolutionary leap forward in terms of many of the storylines that left more than a few fans wondering what the heck happened.

The actors have definitely grown in their lives portraying the roles of Rowling's characters although there's still room for improvement here and there. Daniel Radcliffe was a lot funnier at times as Harry while Rupert Grint has become a very...stocky Ron Weasley (did you see those arms?). Emma Watson was darling as ever as the love sick Hermione although she still hasn't learned to consistently portray genuine emotions, hehe. Bonnie Wright did rather well in terms of capturing the suddenly-developed role of Ginny Weasley in this film while Tom Felton appears to be growing up really ugly in a bad way. Kudos to Evanna Lynch for a great performance as Luna Lovegood and now showing us that she'd play a pretty believable Delirium should ever Neil Gaiman's Sandman be made into a film or something.

The other older actors were as consistent as ever, especially given their years of acting experience. I'm talking about the likes of Michael Gambon, who has really grown into the role of Albus Dumbledore, Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall, Alan Rickman as a not so effeminate Severus Snape and Jim Broadbent as a humorous Horace Slughorn.

Helena Bonham Carter seemed poised to steal any scene with Belatrix Lestrange in it but I can't help but feel that David Yates made sure to severely limit her screen time in order to prevent just that, which is a shame. You have to admit, she's just amazing as Belatrix well beyond belief!

Oh, and I ♥ Freddie Stroma, even though he was quickly set aside in terms of the overall story. It's weird that this hormone-enhanced edition of Harry Potter had no toplessness like in previous films - this would have been a GREAT time to see the likes of Stroma without a shirt, haha. Sorry, pardon my raging homosexuality at this moment.

The overall movie was pretty tight and Yates definitely did a great job at trying to edit what was kept for the film and what was left to the book save for a few points here and there. Most folks complain about the truncated ending, and to a large part I have to agree that this was ended on an odd note. The whole Half-Blood Prince angle ended with a very insignificant squeak, but then I can't remember it being all that amazing in the original book either. I still sort of wish for more fight scenes but I guess they're saving the bulk of that kind of storytelling for the last two films that will cover the seventh book.

Did I like the movie? I suppose you could say that, but it did drag here and there. I won't go as far as saying I loved it but one can't fault it all that much - this was an accelerated transition device that needed to mature many characters at once in order to catch up with lack of development in the prior books. One could blame the original material for why Harry was suddenly so infatuated with Ginny or how much Ron and Hermione still can't get it on and what not and Yates only did the best he could with that.

Things will all pay off more when the last two movies get underway. For now I can only post an initial rating that may need to be revised once we view this piece in the context of the completion of the whole series.

Thus, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince gets 3.5 Horcruxes out of 5.