●○● Wha? ○●○
Long time since last posting. I've been filing out applications for grad school for a PhD, which has been taking up all of my free time.
I'm posting because of the frenzy over
Avatar. Initially, I thought this movie was going to flop with the emphasis on the visuals and everything else being dropped. Then it was released and it was doing fairly well. So I went to see it. Now, it is a very pretty movie to watch and I can see how video games helped influence the story and the visual aspects. But that's all the movie had to offer. The story was predictable, anti-climatic, and passive.
Even my brother, who likes every movie he watched, said the same thing. "It was nice to look at. That's about it." My sentiments exactly. But seeing how much praise this movie is receiving from a story that has been redundant for the last 100 years of cinema, it annoys me. Movies that have a unique and aggressive flare of the written word are being scuttled to the side by flashy images. Now I do agree that James Cameron is doing a remarkable thing with
3D technology and we can only hope that it'll become more affordable soon. And I can understand why a simplistic story was needed. When you have a sci-fi monster, it can be difficult to attract the average audience. However, if you provide a simple story, it can off-set that difficulty. Yet the story was too simple; too plain. I was able to predict everything in the movie within the first 5 minutes.
What happened Mr. Cameron? I realize that you are not the best at creating unique stories and your endings are quite obvious, but even this was a huge slide down for you. Where was the originality? I'm not asking for an epic story, but something new could have been integrated into the script. It
IS possible to combine a standard (and dry) story with a unique idea and still bring in the average audience.
What prompted my posting is a link my friend sent me about people being depressed after seeing Avatar.
Avatar Blues. Initially I thought people were going to rag on the story. Boy I was wrong. People are actually crying in this movie...why? What? Where? When? Who? Mostly Why? People are getting depressed that they can't visit Pandora? Really? It's a
MOVIE. It's. Not. Real. It's. A. Fictional. Story. At least
Trekkies know the difference. >.>
My only hope is that SOMEONE in the film community is not being swept in by this madness and will take originality to the cinema once again. I'd hate for the expectation of future films to mimic the story of Avatar. We've been going down the rabbit hole for quite some time. And Avatar just made it a faster ride.
Labels: avatar, cameron, depressed, depression, film, james, james cameron, na'vi, pandora, story, trekkie
○●○ Free Time ●○●
My initial thought was "will anyone under the age of 16 know who that is?"
Long post coming soon!
Labels: donkey kong, donky, kong, mosaic, soda
●○● Round 2 ○●○
Clearly
this man stole the idea from the inmate in Germany. >.> Let's be original people. Though it does say a lot about the prison system when someone can escape in a box undetected. We're moving into the world of video games people! Rejoice! XD
○●○ Snake Be Proud ●○●
While the
inmate probably had no influence from the
Metal Gear Solid franchise, it's still an amusing story. I guess that's one way to break out of prison. >.> Not exactly the most covert, when you think about it. Of course the media was going to grab attention at it. Old story, but a goodie.
Labels: covert, escape, metal gear solid, prison, prison break, snake
●○● Avatar Identity Crisis ○●○
There was an interesting article posted on
Kotaku yesterday that, I don't know how to really describe. It's one of the few things I have read on Kotaku in a while that has made me think.
It reminded me a bit of my post
Butterfly, my Master Thesis project. The article was attempting to humanize the avatars that the writer created. Gaming today is centralized on the avatar figure that it is quite difficult to remove one's self away from that image. We are our avatars, so to speak.
And is that really a bad thing? In many ways I would argue that our avatars allow us to be more of our real selves. We can get away with more on the internet or through our gaming persona then we could in the real world. There are days when I would love to tell certain people to stop acting in a lude or discourteous manner, but then there would be serious reprocutions (whether it be work, home, friends, etc.). Whereas with a gaming environment, the most I can expect is that one person to add me to a blocked list, therefore saving us both any hassle or worry.
On that spectrum we generally tend to turn into more abrasive, outlandish beings. Because there are no worries, we yell, we should, we scream, and we swear a lot more then our human selves would. It can be quite difficult to find your personal boundaries when you are given the freedom to say whatever you want.
What I enjoyed about the article is how the writer, while lamenting on the fact that her avatars were in joint custody, that she found some comfort in being able to create a new persona for herself. I'd recommend the read if you all have a few moments.
Labels: avatar, avatar creation, consoles, kotaku, myself, on, pieces of you, ps3, rebuilding, wii, xbox 360
○●○ Gamer? ●○●
I've been seeing a lot of commercials for an upcoming movie entitle
Gamer. The concept is a future where video games have evolved into real world adaptations, where in you live inside the game. It's being plugged as a psychological mind bash with intense action. It reminds me a lot of Tron, while trying to be War Games.
As much as Hollywood is attempting to bring video games into their world, we seem to keep hitting a barrier. And it's a pretty obvious barrier. Gamers can't play with the movie. They don't have control over the action.
It's hard to say if this movie will do well. A portion of me believes that it'll end up in the gutter just like every video game-esque, that's not Tomb Raider, movie. Unfortunately audiences are not adapting to the concepts as quickly as we would like. It takes one movie to break the ground. Gamer will not be it.
●○● 2 Weeks ○●○
Haven't been feeling well as of late, so I'm trying to take it easy this week and stay in bed.
In
Sims 3 News I still can't play the game. I'm on my 6th run with EA asking me to update my drivers. >.> Because I apparently did not make it extremely clear in the first e-mail that I had the most recent drivers on my computer. At the rate I'm going, I may as well wait until they release the first patch and hope that it will fix my problem.
I still find it amusing that all of my searches for the issue pull up Spore. Coincidence!? Always a great feeling to have wasted money and obtain nothing from it but more headaches.
So my connection of the week. Roughly a year old but still an amusing concept. Taking a real world image and implementing game characters into it:
Superimposed.
I enjoy the Donkey Kong one the most, but it brings back a lot of great memories from my childhood.
Labels: collage, donkey kong, EA, game, mario, spore, superimposed, the sims 3, world
○●○ Sleep? ●○●
A wonderful storm system rolled in around 6:15 p.m and has been ongoing since then. Very loud thunder claps. I was hoping to get at least 3 hours of sleep. :/ And another storm system is expected to come through within the next 30 minutes.
Of course it was a chance to take out my camera.
Here are a few from last night:
And this morning's cloud activity:
Labels: cloud, lightning, picture nature frame outside hybiscus flowers sky sun trees lights whishy wooshy color air marigolds texture, rolling, sky, storm, storming, storms, thunderstorm
●○● Outside the Frame ○●○
To keep my brain active, I've been taking out my digital camera more. Lots of nature pictures. >.> But this is the first time in years the garden in the backyard has been so full of life.
My favorites this year are the hybiscus:
They have been flowering on a daily basis for the past month.
Also have these intersting bell shapped flowers. I don't know their exact name, but they really shout out Spring:
And the
marigolds, the
palm tree that we have had for the past 8 years, and the
sky.
Ok that's enough of that. XD
So that I haven't completely lost my mind, here's the video game tie in to the post:
This image was taken back at the Halo 3 release in 2007. Unintentional. Someone was dressed as Master Chief and happened to be standing in front of the Mountain Dew bus with lights flashing. I was hoping to get a clear shot of just the lights, but got knocked into and that happened. Think it turned out better that way.
Aside: Still unable to get The Sims 3 working. :/ Lost all hope with EA's troubleshooting.
Labels: picture nature frame outside hybiscus flowers sky sun trees lights whishy wooshy color air marigolds texture
○●○ Hardware Headaches ●○●
For those who know me, I have a nice computer. A really nice computer. It can run
Spore and
Unreal Tournament 3 at the same time without crashing. Why would I want to do that? Just to see if I could. XD
For those who don't know The Sims 3 was released earlier this week and hasn't been getting good reviews. Mostly due to the faulty software provided by the oh-so-wonderful EA Games. And then there's the reduction of content that was available at original Sim releases (1 and 2) with the game. But this time you have to purchase them separately from the
Sims 3 Store. Not an issue at all. *rolls eyes*
I'm now sitting at 48 hours of no response from EA for my question. Here I have a $69.99 game (not including tax) that I can't play on my computer. It's got the requirements. All the drivers are updated. Have DirectX 10. I've gone so far as to turn off every program running in the background, including anti-virus software. Same issue that I've been predominately seeing all over forums that has no resolution.
Though I do find it amusing that the same issue was occurring 2 weeks ago when the hacked version was released (didn't test it because I'm a purist and I believe in having a physical disc). You'd think that would have been a red flag to EA that something was wrong with the game. They might want to look into the SE method of productivity. If something is wrong, delay the date. You'll make a few people mad but, you'll get a better product at the time of release.
This is basically just to say this all reaffirms my dislike for EA and why I stay away from their products. If I wasn't a Simmer and a Will Wright fan, I would have never purchased this game. And I have already canceled my reserve for the Spore Space expansion pack. If this is the kind of headache they're giving their customers, I don't want to associate with them any longer.
Oh and I'm working on getting my butt back to a weekly posting of videos and photos to add to my portfolio. Just needed a moment to rant. XD
