Category Archives: movies

Various Media Endeavors

Lately I’ve been doing so much consuming of various forms of media, I thought I’d just list some of it and hopefully delve into my thoughts on a couple of them. I’ll post a more cohesive blog update later this week,  which will most likely be my review of the English otome game X-Note (I’m going to review that game by the end of the week, I swear).

Film

So, Shaun and I went to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes on Saturday. Besides having an unnecessarily long title, it was actually pretty good! Even if you could care less about Planet of the Apes (which is pretty much me), the film is a fun Sci-Fi flick with a strong emphasis on characters, and it’s probably the first of the “summer blockbusters” that I’d say is worth going to see.

Besides having a pretty uninspiring female girlfriend character, that is. When all the characters are actually rather thoughtfully rendered, including an ape doctor who almost instantaneously becomes the “grounding girlfriend” is a little disappointing. I suppose you can’t have everyone be the star, but I suppose you’re also going to have to have me pick on a film when it can’t have any well-developed female characters (what can I say, it’s my nature). Either way, it’s still heaps better than that awful Tim Burton rendition of a few years back… Plus, the animation is gorgeous, and any film that can make you care for a character that is 100% animated deserves some respect.

Also, Shaun and I both agree that we like James Franco, so having him in the film was a plus (I’m not sure why we do… are we the only ones?)… I liked him as the son of the Green Goblin, anyway.

We’re also going to watch Dinner for Schmucks on DVD, which comes very highly recommended from my parents! I hope it’s good.

Manga


I don’t talk about manga very often here, but I finally picked up a few volumes of Loveless at the library the other day because the art is, in my opinion, pretty gorgeous.

The story is a little weird, though, which has kept me away from it until now, and though I’m enjoying it well enough, I think the only reason I’ve really stuck with it for 4 volumes is the art and the way it plays with gender norms, but even then I’m not sure where it’s going with that. I probably won’t seek out the rest of the volumes now that Tokyopop, the English distributor, has gone under, unless my library happens to have them already.

Games


I always have a weird relationship with games: I seem to write more about them than I actually play them!

I did start Patapon the other day, because Shaun was playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the PS3, and it’s been sitting expectantly on the shelf for a couple of weeks now

The gameplay is fun, but I’m finding that it’s getting a little repetitive to tell my troops to move forward over and over again, especially when you were fighting an enemy who just ran away. But I’ve still only played a couple of missions so far, so I hope things change up a bit after I play a couple more. I’m not that rhythmically inclined, though, so I have to focus all my energy in playing the game and not getting distracted by whatever Shaun’s doing beside me. Hah!

So, what are you all playing/reading/watching these days? I’m all ears!

Slow Monday

Today literally was slow! I made my first stew, an Irish lamb stew from Frankie magazine, which was quite simple, took 3+ hours to cook, and tastes pretty good! Not that I have many stews in my repertoire to compare it to, but it’s a start. Ok, now that I’ve got that bad pun out of the way…

In gaming news, I finally updated the eShop and downloaded my free copy of Excitebike as well as the 3D Pokedex. I’ll admit, I wasn’t that excited for Pokedex 3D (I’d rather play an actual Pokemon game then just look at 3D models of them), but I’m all for free things, so I couldn’t pass it up without checking it out. Excitebike, on the other hand, was exciting and new for me (ok, I couldn’t help it), as I’ve never played the original before. And after fooling around with it for a few minutes, I’ve gotta say, it’s quite difficult! I don’t really understand the mechanics yet, so I either go horribly slow and get bored or try to go too fast and just end up crashing and then cursing at myself for having to wait to go again.

Have you heard about the lack of a save file delete/reset option in Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D? This is another shameless plug, but just today I wrote a pretty in-depth post at VGW if you’d like to read more about it. Basically, though, as a way to combat used-game sales, Capcom decided to give players only one save file, which cannot be erased or reset, so you can only play through the game from scratch once. I personally think this is a horrible decision and will definitely deter me from buying the game in the future (though I admit I wasn’t particularly leaning towards a purchase in the first place), but what do you all think? I know used game sales can hurt the developers and publishers, but you shouldn’t punish consumers, and rather reward them to provide incentives to buy new games, such as exclusive DLC, etc.

In other news, Shaun and I saw Kung Fu Panda 2 over the weekend. I enjoyed the original well enough, but wasn’t going to see the sequel except I kept hearing rave reviews right and left that assured me it was actually better than the original. Story-wise, I’m not so sure I’m convinced it was better, but the animation was so beautiful I didn’t really care. Give me fuzzy computer animals and a peacock villain voiced by Gary Oldman and I will go home a happy woman. The fight scenes with Lord Shen, the aforementioned main villain, were mesmerizing. If you want to see some gorgeous animation, then definitely consider seeing this on the big screen (I didn’t see it in 3D so I can’t comment on that), but otherwise you may want to wait for a rental or skip it altogether.

Can the new Ace Attorney film compete with the Takarazuka musicals?

So, big news if you haven’t yet heard–rumors that the famed Japanese director Takashi Miike is working on an Ace Attorney film adaptation have now been official confirmed by Capcom! Exciting, eh? I have to say the thought of Takashi Miike of Ichi the Killer fame doing a rendition of Nintendo DS game about goofy fictional court dramas is a little perplexing, but he did recently do a film adaptation of the anime Yatterman, so there is proof that he is capable of directing a film that isn’t all blood and gore.

The role of Phoenix Wright will be played by Japanese heartthrob Hiroki Narimiya, while Takumi Saito will be playing his rival Miles Edgeworth.

Hiroki Narimiya will play Ace Attorney… Can’t say I’m complaining! (source)

Takumi Saito will play Miles Edgeworth

Did you know that Ace Attorney has already been adapted, not for film, but for the stage? In 2009 the all-female Takarazuka revue did their own version of the popular video game series, which had a month-long run on stage and was popular enough to merit a sequel.

Poster for the original Takarazuka production
Poster for the 2nd production

 I have yet to see either of theses shows, but I absolutely adore Takarazuka, and I’m sure these productions wouldn’t disappoint. Of course Takashi Miike’s film will probably get a lot of positive mainstream reception, but really, there’s not much better than this (seriously, you need to watch this):

Recipe for a Very Nerdy Weekend: StreetPassing at the Mana Bar and More!

I don’t often do weekend recaps, but this time I think it was sufficiently nerdy enough to merit this post. That, and I wanted to do write-ups on both the Mana Bar StreetPass event I attended as well as the CG animated film Resident Evil: Degeneration, so I figured why not do one big weekend review?

On Saturday, Shaun and I headed into the city for some major window shopping and general bumming around; I, of course, had my 3DS in tow so I could collect some StreetPass hits. For lunch we swung by our favorite Japanese restaurant, Kadoya, where I had their delicious mackerel bento set. We made sure to play a few rounds of Animal Kaiser while we were in the area and had high hopes of scoring a rare card for our efforts, too. Sadly, we did not (and are beginning to think we need to take a break from the whole thing, it’s quite the money sink and we haven’t gotten any good cards in a while), but Shaun did get a funny picture of me in action:

I think I was captured mid-exclamation

 We spent Saturday evening at home with a family-sized chicken (2 kilos! What can I say, it was on special) and Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008). Both Shaun and I were pleasantly surprised that the CG movie, which takes place between Resident Evil 4 and 5, was actually quite a bit better than we had anticipated. I’d say that if you’re a fan of the video game series, you should definitely check this movie out, if you haven’t already! Neither of us are huge RE fans, as we’ve only actually played Resident Evil 5, but the movie was fun and I think it’s at least worth a rental.

Expect to see the sequel, Resident Evil: Damnation, sometime in 2012!

 The graphics didn’t strike me as particularly impressive, like they did when I first saw FFVII: Advent Children back in 2005, but a couple times during the movie I did notice some pretty well-done effects, especially in the water. The plot was intriguing and pretty well-paced, though I had a hard time understanding what was going on at a couple of points during the movie (I think that’s because I’m slow on the uptake sometimes; Shaun didn’t have any problems). It definitely is a good fix for anyone waiting for the next Resident Evil game to come along.

There are plenty of shots of Leon being super-cool

Next, we have the StreetPass event at the Mana Bar, an awesome video game-themed bar located right here in Brisbane! Though the event was planned for the slightly-unfortunate time of Sunday evening, Shaun and I decided it was worth checking out, so we hopped on the train to Fortitude Valley and arrived sometime around 4:30 pm. I thought this would be a nice opportunity to spread the word about StreetPass Brisbane and check out this funky venue!

Loved their decor! The Mana Potion was a novel drink, but I’ll probably give it a skip next time

Unfortunately, I only got 5 StreetPass hits altogether during the hour and a half we were there, but that may have been due to the fact that we arrived so early. 2 of those were from members of StreetPass Brisbane that attended our event last Saturday, so it was great to see their Mii’s level up! Mana Bar also has their own 3DS for StreetPassing, so if you attend the bar regularly, that would be a great way to get a higher level Mii for StreetPass Quest.

The bar itself was smaller than I had expected, but it was pretty cool to see all the TVs with games set up and ready to go (I believe there were 5 in total). Shaun and I played some Mario Kart Wii, watched a bit of Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, and Shaun did a couple of songs on Guitar Hero. Later on we picked up this intriguing XBox 360 game called Raskulls and did a 3 player race with Natasha, who we know from StreetPass Brisbane. That game was fun for multiplayer, and I would definitely check it out again if it’s on the next time I’m at the Mana Bar. Little Big Planet was also available to play, but I’m not a huge fan of that so we didn’t bother giving it a go.

All in all, it was a great weekend! Albeit a little more eventful than usual, so things might be a little more low-key next weekend to make up for it. Though I’m chafing at the bit to see the new Pirates movie, so hopefully we’ll be able to fit that in! 

What about you all? Do anything fun over the weekend?