we dont date noobs, we pwn them

My new website, for those who have missed it.


ansel> if you're not bleeding you're not doing it hard enough
ansel> ^ my motto
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An interesting week this has been in terms of movie watching.

I've seen 3 films this week. Two of them for free.

I'll start with the first one, which luckily was one of the free ones.

The other night someone linked me to The Poughkeepsie Tapes. Chances are, you've seen the trailer for this horror film on youtube. It was that video that leaked online with no real info. It had a green poorly lit room with a girl strapped into a chair right in front of the camera with tape all over her face. Muffled screaming is heard as the murderer slowly lopes his way over to her and holds his hand up to her neck with his fingers covered in syringes.




See how lame that image is? The whole movie feels like this. Most disappointing film I've seen in a while. The amount of hype and alternate-reality-games surrounding this film were pretty damn big.

The trailer lead one to believe this movies was about getting to see, basically, snuff films made by a deranged serial killer. Or at least, as close to a snuff film as a movie given a theatrical release would allow.
This film went through hell until it was released.

I wont sugarcoat it. The film basically sucked. Its a sad time we live in where big budget horror movies are ending up better than indie horror like 89% of the time.
problems this movie had:

1.) there is almost no blood in this movie. Which considering all the killings are ON TAPE is pretty impressive. Hence problem #2.

2.) in true copout fashion, the moment the killer is about to kill his victim on camera, the shot changes or the camera is dropped or bumped out of the way, thus preventing them from showing any actual violence.

3.) the killer sounds like he's 16. and when your movie contains a man in black garb and a white mask (totally never done before) slowly circling a woman bound on the floor and shouting "YOUR NAME IS SLAVE. YOU HAVE NO PARENTS." in a voice that sounds like the kid from the mcdonalds drivethrough, its a sign there has been a miscast.

4.) only maybe 2 minutes of the movie are devoted to the actual Poughkeepsie tapes which the movie is named after and which were the main selling point of this film. Hence the main problem of this movie which is #5


5.) The movie, as I saw it was split into two parts, roughly 40 minutes each. Neither part had much to say. The whole movie was filmed like a pseudo-documentary with lots of interviews by relatives of the victims, relatives of the killer, and ALOT of government agents who are so obviously actors trying their very hardest to seem normal and nuanced so they seem like real people being recorded and not just reading a script. It culminates in a scene where a young man in a trench coat talks to use about saws. Where at one point he lowers his head, and mumbles about how the killer uses the same saw every time.

6.) the events in the movie apparently occurred in either 2000 or 2002 I cant recall. It was definitely in the new millenium. And its also very obvious that the killer was using a handheld digital camera. So why was everything he filmed so incredibly staticy and blurry? Why did everything he recorded look like something from a 60's film real that had been run through Final Cut multiple times until it looked like what a satellite image might look like on a projector from the 1920's?


Just....disappointing.

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luckily i saw another pseudo-documentary film this week, and unlike the Poughkeepsie Tapes, this film was masterfully done.


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A few years ago a man named Neil Blomkamp made a short film called District 9. It was about aliens who were marooned on earth who had been forced into a life of being hobos or living in the slums we built for them to live in.
It was an amazing short film. You can see it here.

And just tonight, the feature-length version was released in theaters. Proving that Blomkamp is even more amazing when working on longer film as opposed to shorts. By far one of the best movies of the year, and yet despite being full of giant cockroach aliens, people exploding, people mutating and large mechs covered in armaments, one of the most realistic films of the year.

Its shocking. All the actors in the film and various townsfolk all actually seem like REAL people stuck into a real situation with aliens. The aliens themselves were all CGI and were all animated beautifully. They really seemed alive. And one lovely thing was despite being all the same species (nicknamed the prawn), they all had defining characteristics and looked different.

Seeing loads of them scrabbling around a modern-day hooverville, where alot of them are wearing various bits of clothing and garbage and paint splattered on their lobsterlike bodies.

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The third film I got to see this week was one of those straight-to-dvd movies the Jim Henson studios puts out. This particular one was called Kermit's Swamp Years.
What I expected:

A.) a movie thats supposed to take place in the past, but is instead modern day and full of modern day technologies

B.) kermit to sound like some child voice actor they pulled off the streets

C.) a horrible rock and roll version of "The Rainbow Connection"


What I got:

A.) a lovely little film that explains how kermit developed the personality he has and the passion for movies that he has.

B.) a movie that LOOKS like it takes place in the mid-60's

C.) kermit sounds like how kermit should.

D.) a horrible rock and roll version of "The Rainbow Collection"


Its funny that even a cheap cash-in film my Jim Henson studios is easily better than most other family movies that came out that year. It felt like an episode of sesame street mixed with an episode of the muppet show.

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The other night me and mike were at the local Village Inn, filling our bellies with blackberry syrup, pancakes, and egg, we were talking about the "Uncomfortable Movie Summaries" over at the postmodernbarney blog.
And we started trying to think of our own versions of these, but applied to videogames.

pac-man: gluttonous sphere hungers. feasts.
Mario brothers: obese tradesperson encounters prehistoric beasts in sewer.
metal slug: lone team rescues hobos with military armored vehicle.
sonic the hedgehog: forest animals defeat industrialist tyrant.
kirby: gluttonous sphere hungers. feasts.
bioshock: medical professionals cause underwater chaos. ayn rand doesn't work in practice.
team fortress: laissez-faire taken to violent extremes. Men with explosives destroy private property.
Final Fantasy: metrosexuals kill god.
Starcraft: Parasites, Tripods, and Australia battle for supremacy.

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I also finished a new weebl and bob episode for my employer. It riffs on the game Rock Band.

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Tomorrow I get to work in a store deep in the ghetto. And the scary kind of ghetto where every man, woman, and child carries a glock. Why am I working there tomorrow? Because my tricky bastard of a new manager conned me into it.

"Hey can you close on Sunday?"
"sure"


20 minutes later

"Hey can Mike close Sunday at the Hanley store?"
"let me ask...........no he cannot."
"okay well you're going to have to do it."


I'm really starting to hate my job.

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Oh yeah here's my website again.

Now I'm off to work.

Luckily I got my car KINDA fixed. New battery and power steering fluid means I can drive like a normal human being again. Still no radio or A/C but that's for another day.