Up

The new Pixar movie, Up wasn't exactly what I expected. It follows an elderly man, Carl, who has outlived his deceased wife. He reflects on an adventure they talked about in their childhood and never accomplished and floats his house away in an attempt to live out the dream he and his wife never could: living in and exploring the remote region Paradise Falls. The movie balances bright and childlike themes with the deep sadness the main character feels in undertaking his journey; Balloons remain a common motif as Carl uses them (as a former balloon salesmen) to float both his house and his wife's childhood dreams. Accompanying Carl is a small boy scout seeking to earn his 'assisting the elderly' badge and a host of animals they meet on their journey to set Carl's house on Paradise Falls before his balloons run out of air.

I was surprised by this movie. Pixar movies are reliably good, and this is no exception. What surprised me is the emotionally draining this movie is. Unlike Wall-e (my all time favorite) or Finding Nemo, Up is a movie that almost requires the viewer to be a particular mood, and then from that caters to it extremely well. I recommend seeing this movie when you're in a somber mood only.Up, although for the most part maintaining a mood distinctly more depressing than that of normal Pixar movies, is fantastic and especially in its beautiful, thematic metaphors. I give it 4.5 out of 5 Movie Ferrets.

Terminator Salvation

I never saw the first Terminator, nor did I see the second. I did, however, catch the third one and while I found myself confused and disappointed with the an anticlimactic ending, I followed the story and was drawn into the movie by the action. I approached Terminator Salvation with this background of expecting little more than a few big explosions, some killer robots, and at least one well done chase sequence. This movie fantastically exceeded any expectation that I had of how disappointing a movie could be. This movie is bad.

This movie fails to deliver anything but the sensation that I could have better spent my time playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Wii. The graphics are acceptable, it uses character established and fleshed out (I presume) in previous movies, and it made plenty of efforts to acknowledge and reference the past movies (so I'm told). However the execution of it all was terrible. Christain Bale plays the role of John Connor, someone I spent the entire movie not caring about. He spends most of the movie acting like a whiney little bitch. He doesn't spend time directing people or in combat, instead he just watches people do things other people higher up told them to do already! He seems completely unnecessary to the entire plot! He breaks up this string of non-action by throwing temper tantrums at his superiors. He seems more like the kind of guy who lives in his mother's basement when he's 45, yelling at her upstairs that he needs more pizza bagels. On the rare occasions he does venture out into the field, everyone around this guy dies. Why the hell do they keep sending him on missions if all they do is get everyone killed and accomplish next to nothing?!

I'm not sure if it was because of writing or the direction (although it was probably both), but John Connor is one of the most emotionally distant characters to watch on a movie screen. He never consults with any other particular character, instead he just whines and tantrums at whoever is in the proximity. He doesn't seem to have any friends and no-one ever seems to like him for any reason. He has a love interest: a medic-wife who is clearly in the late term of her pregnancy with what I can only assume is his child, but every scene they have together is so coldly formalized that I began to doubt they ever could have married in the past. I began to doubt the obvious pregnancy because no character, especially John or his wife, ever makes mention to it. Eventually I reconciled that she just had cancer, from all the nuclear explosions occurring every 20 minutes, and it had for whatever reason taken the shape of an 8th month pregnancy.

The explosions in this movie are plentiful and serve no particular purpose. It's like a five year old playing with air planes and motorcycles got to decided when collisions were appropriate. And in this movie, for every high speed collision a machine makes with another machine, there's a random robot fight sequence. During the robot fights I literally found myself cringing, it wasn't because of the tense drama or the amazing effects. No, it was because these super strength robots kept fighting mere humans, lifting boulders and crap, and the humans kept escaping without a scratch. For being human 'terminators' these robots were terrible at their job. Every time one grabbed a person I'd think 'holy crap that thing could tear off his arm and beat him to death with it' but that never happens! Instead the robots throw people into walls or try to wrestle them to the ground. I remember in Terminator 3 the antagonist robot punched her fist through the driver seat AND the driver of a truck before steering it after the main character. Swarzenagar shaped humanoids twice her size can't hold a 5 year olds arm? The only thing that makes less sense is the ending. I need to talk about the ending, enhanced with all the spoilers I can pile on. So if you plan on seeing this terrible movie with your own money and don't want it ruined STOP READING NOW (although just seeing the actual movie itself ruins the movie experience).

The only remotely interesting character is half human-half robot cyborg who has to choose between the two sides. He dies in the end for no adequately explained reason. His character undergoes a decent amount of development, he actually gets a love interest that he shows affection for, and the story makes an attempt to explore the strengths, weaknesses, and social ramifications of being part human and part machine in this war. However just before managing to destroy the main complex John Connor gets stabbed clear through the chest with a rusty piece of metal and is later carried to safety. He's laid out in the medical area by his wife (who doesn't seem to particularly care) who tells everyone that John is going to die 'because his heart can't take it'. The cyborg offers to donate his human heart to John in order to save his life. How the hell is John even alive?! What exactly can't his heart take? It was ahnintliated by a jagged piece of metal! What the hell did that hit going through the dead center of his chest to cause only his heart in particular barely mortal stress. A quick or irregular heart beat causes stress. A leaky heart valve or a clogged artery causes stress. Hell high blood pressure causes stress! He had a huge damn piece of metal shoved clean through his rib cage! How the hell is he alive?! And how is this the perfect time to do an organ transplant?! Apparently in the future, organ transplants can be done of the fly, with no need to consult blood or tissue types, and are always completely successful... with no chance of failure as that would be something someone would consider before killing a perfectly healthy (much more interesting) individual to possibly save some douche bag.

The ending of the movie gets even more stupid and pointless. In addition to fighting machines another sub plot revolves around finding John Connors father to send him back in time to impregnate his mother (how romantic is that?). However they never actually send him back, he just rides off into the sunset with the gang... off on another whirlwind adventure no doubt (why the hell not). After all of this drawn out time and effort enduring this movie, John narrates that the war isn't over and that Skynet is still a fully functional global presence sending its machines to kill off humanity. Well then what the hell was the point of this movie. Why did I sit though all this crap if it didn't even matter to these Fictional people?

As I said before this was a terrible movie. It will probably squeak by on ticket sales just riding on the back of it's predecessors, but make no mistake, no one under their own free will should have to endure this terrible mess of plot bunnies and misplaced CGI effects.

I give this movie 1 out of 5 Movie Ferrets.

Art Schooled

My pitiful failure of a comic needed some reviving. That's why I thought of maybe paying someone to color it in for me. If I didn't have to worry about coloring it, then I could already start drawing and tracing the next one. Man that would be exciting.

The only website I knew of that had commission hire postings, but was still a little informal was DeviantArt.com So I posted the job. Color my 20 small pictures for a stupid comic and I pay you $30 (in more detail than that). I thought it seemed simple enough, but boy was I wrong! Apparently a lot of people don't actually read what jobs are being offered and just 'copy-paste' reply "I'm interested. Here's my gallery [link]." So when I started contacting these people who responded to my post, I managed to offend all of them. Was I really only paying $30? How insulting! What! You answered my ad! Despite all my best efforts to be as polite as possible, in flows the hate mail. If you didn't like the offer, then don't respond or at least make a recommendation! Artists are weird!

I woke up feeling a distinctly strange mixture of being refreshed from full night's sleep, and being sick. It wasn't an illness, as far as I could tell, something in the weather of Las Vegas didn't agree with my sinuses. My head felt like it had doubled in weight and the pressure difference moving from the top floor of the hotel to the ground left me deaf my left ear. Not one of be discouraged, Giggles and I ventured out on our own, to pick up tickets and explore more of Vegas. We a cab to the strip. Outside of Paris we got ice cream smoothies to energize our day mission. It was a long trip, but getting inside and exploring the Venetian was worth it. Exploring is exactly what we did too, because of bad directions to the Phantom ticket booth. When we finally did get there we both wished that Blackmail or Moonshine were there. Neither one of us knew which seats were best to pick. We picked some out that seemed decent and hoped for the best. After that we wondered the upper levels of the mall area. The main attraction of the Venetian is of course the illusion of Venice Italy, complete with gondola boats moving around the indoor waterways. Considering the original Venice water canal doubles as a sewer system, the pristine clear blue waters of this mock up made me very aware that what I was experiencing was a romanticized fraud, but it was still a beautiful place.

We also went a head and bought tickets to the wax musiem. Here wax statues of famous people stood for people to pose and mock for their own enjoyment. Giggles got to poke Oprah Winfrey's nose and shook the hand of porn star Jenna Jameson (well a porn star handshake). I realized how short Mathew MacConnaughey really is, refused George Clooney's wedding proposal (they had him set up in a chapel for some reason), and scolded Lucy for beaking my babaloo drums. Hilarity ensued all around. I was surprised how much fun it can be making fun of well known people to their own prop faces. Before we left, Giggles offered to go see Blue Man Group with me the next day, so we bought our tickets.

Leaving the Venetian, we were surprised to run into the girls. What were the odds of that happening?! The two of us decided to head back however, hit up the M&M store on the way back, buy a day pass on the Monorail, and take the shuttle back to the hotel to get ready for Phantom of the Opera. M&M World was a massive store four floors tall. They sold the actual candy, various dispensers, plushy toys, jewelery (?), and other shenanigans. I went a little crazy when I saw the 'fill your own bag' wall of colored candy and spent beyond my reason (Oops). I happily left with a massive bag of mostly orange and gray M&Ms (for whatever reason they were out of red and blue). The monorail turned out to be surprisingly helpful getting us back to the shuttle site. We ended up using the hell out of that one day pass. Unfortunately the shuttle service for our hotel was pitiful. We waiting for close to an hour (it was advertised as making 15 minute trips) and ended up being so late that we had to pay for a cab to drive us back to the Venetian to make it on time.

Phantom of the Opera was definitely one of the major highlights of the trip. I'll write up a formal review for it, as just mentioning it here wouldn't do it justice (and I have no corresponding DSi photos). Afterward, we wondered the nearby Cesar's Palace to rummage for food. We were all dressed up so this outing became our 'fancy dinner'. Hotel staff pointed us in the right direction, to a ritzy upstairs establishment. I don't remember the name of it, but it was so fancy they poured our free tap water from chilled glass decanters. It had been another long day, Benny and I retired and left the girls to go on another night out.

"And I Guess I'll See You Monday Like Before"

Amie and V arrived way too early for my interest. After that long first day I wanted nothing more than to be a bum. Fortunately, I wasn't alone in my opinion. The group decided that it was time to venture down to the pool. Our hotel was Cancun themed, with a big Mayan square pyramid in the center between it's two pools. Everyone else jumped in, but me a Blackmail took the agonizing slow route to getting in: step by step. Giggles splashed me because he's an asshole and that's exactly what assholes do to people getting into swimming pools: they splash. There was a hot tub under the pyramid and water slides coming off the back. Those were fun. The dry weather was starting to play a number on me so I went looking for a decongestant.

The girls (which will now denote everyone in our party aside from Giggles and me) wanted to go back to New York New York so they might buy large boot shaped alcoholic beverages in the shape of boots from the Coyote Ugly bar (It's a real place, but it still doesn't ask for a sequel). Giggles and me got something equally delicious down the shop line: ice cream smoothies. From there we set off to buy tickets for shows! Blackmail wanted to see Phantom of the Opera; I had heard nothing but awesome things about Blue Man Group. The place for both of those was the Venetian, a hotel/casino place much further down the strip. We went walking, passing famous places such as Paris and the famous Vegas CVS-Pharmacy/Walgreens-across-the-street combination. Wow some of these casinos are really into their themes!

From there we went to What was probably my favorite hotel: The Bellagio. I cannot say enough about how awesome the Bellagio was. It looked clean, was tied into the mall, and the lobby had more than cheesy theme props. The Bellagio had a small gallery room set up with a garden theme. The entire floor of it was covered in flowers, with hanging watering cans and water fountains. It was pretty surreal, which for Vegas is the norm... so surreal in Vegas is something like all out crazy in real life. I may have liked the Bellagio so much because they had a whole room with neat stuff and nobody in it tried to make my buy crap or gamble, but I digress. We left through the mall. Giggles and I out paced the girls pretty quickly, who were slogging along pretty slow, and he stopped because he wanted to buy a Gucci wallet (with a Gucci logo and it was in Gucci packaging and he could carry it in a Gucci bag). Apparently it doesn't matter what city or who I go with, the mall is f*@%ing boring.

Cesar's Palace was next on our list of milestones to cross. The inside was, as one would expect, filled with Greek/Roman themed stuff (I'm not really sure which, and honestly who cares). The thing I remember most about it was the number of overpriced restaurants that were abundantly open. We got tangled up inside the hotel and then had chase after Moonshine who wondered off towards a huge naked man.

Needless to say, this was the limit of our excursion. Our group was pooped out and we gave up on making it to the Venetian. The wear and tear of drunken walking hit its limit and we turned back. Apparently there was a ticket booth that we could reserve at outside of Paris (that was always fun to say). We made for that instead. Before leaving Cesar's Palace though we did pass by this really cool looking restaurant, it had massive amounts of goldfish tanked up for walls. I wish we could have afforded to eat there. In any event, we ended up buying Phantom of the Opera tickets for the next day. I gave up on Blue Man Group because they were expensive and no one really wanted to see them with me. Once we got back the everyone started getting ready for the night life. I was out of energy so I sat down the bed with the intentions of planning out the rest of our stay but instantly fell asleep.

"Shake the Glitter Off Your Clothes"

I spent the late/early morning hours packing and generally ransacking my apartment as the roommates watched. Some time around 4:00 our group circled up and departed CS-town. I don't really remember much. Blackmail drove me and Giggles (who was demoted from another name) to go pick up Moonshine, someone who is worse at packing than me! We made it to Houston around 5:00 or so and then Blackmail's mama drove us all to the airport (6:00). The sun started peaking out around our departure time (7:00) and I flew off to Vegas too tired to recall much from what my dead-people class showed me in respect to airline crashes.

We spent a large part of the day wondering around the strip waiting for our hotel room to be ready. We all sat down at MGM's slots, mostly for the sake of sitting down, and simultaneously learned one thing: never play the F*@%ing slots. Across the street from the lion themed casino was New York... or something like it. Moonshine and Giggles left me and Blackmail in a massive arcade to ride a roller coater (I assume named New York Stock Exchange). I tried to play two different Jurassic Park shooter games, but found them both to be broken money eaters. Those two were not the exception in that arcade, but the rule; like the slots in the casino lobby, those games were out of calibration... broken, rundown, and probably covered in some new strain of hepatitis. New York New York provides a casino and arcade experience surprisingly similar to the actual New York city!

We bought groceries and finally retired to our hotel room for some much needed sleep before preparing for nightlife activities. Moonshine, the only one capable of accessing the internet, tracked our night to go through a string of gay clubs the internets referred to affectionally as the 'fruit loop'. Unfortunately, Moonshine didn't look at the walking distance to said locations, leading Blackmail to walk 2 miles in shoes unbefitting, further impairing group movement for the rest of the trip. Gypsy featured a more small town feel and a drag show featuring several talented girls (note to editor: add question marks at the end of every verb and noun in the last sentence). Ultimately I was assaulted by a plus sized drag queen, something Giggles was all too happy about. Across the street was another gay club featuring a room blasting tejano music and in another, go-go boys wearing awkward attire that made me vicariously embarrassed.

Finally we hobbled down to the Hard Rock casino and ate dinner at a restaurant showing a Steven Segual movie. It was a long day. All of us were ready to pass out in the cab ride home, wondering how we were going to get up the next day. I guess that's what you get, for waking up in Vegas.

"Days Go By"

I haven't updated for a while. I blame a certain someone enabling me to buy a certain DSi. I've spent so much time playing the damn addicting thing that I've decided to do a review of it. In fact lately I think I want to do more review of other things. However, the next string of days will be chronicling my summer vacation IN VEGAS! I'm set to leave in about 8 hours. Typically I'm better at packing light and efficient for trips, but this time I'm not sure what to include. I keep hearing about dress codes for clubs, shows, and restaurants. Of all the things I excel at, being semi-formal isn't one of them. Now how am I going to cram all of my clothes and crap into a single carry on.