Now Playing: The Rock

I recently re-played Half-Life 2 to get ready for the expansion pack this June, and the Nova Prospekt sequence got me in the mood to watch this 1996 gem again. For you non-gamers, that level is a massive run-down prison complex that you must infiltrate to save a friend. Running across the cracked and faded linoleum tiles made me think about the famous washroom scene in The Rock so naturally I had to re-watch the whole thing which I haven't done in years.

Dear God I love this film. It's massive, overblown, and the simplistic script is wholely underdeserving of the fetishistic attention to detail director Michael Bay brought to it. But all the bombast in Bay's arsenal combined with this story to make for a hell of an entertaining film. And Ed Harris was robbed of an Oscar nomination for this, by the way.

The story has a Marine black ops team gone rogue capturing Alcatraz Island with 81 tourists as hostages and aiming 15 poison gas missles at San Francisco. The Feds and the Pentagon send in a Navy SEAL team along with Nicholas Cage at his highest strung and an ex-convict-SAS-all-around-badass Sean Connery to take out the missles. Of course, things don't go as planned and it builds to the washroom scene that has me on edge every single time I see it.

The SEALs under Michael Biehn's command infiltrate the prison through the showers but the Marines are tipped off by a nifty motion sensor (that later has a cameo in Bay's Bad Boys II). The Marines cover the SEALs from above the showers and Harris and Biehn have a magnificent verbal sparring match and the normal intensity of both actors rises considerably. It's obvious from the start what's about to happen but the tension of the scene just keeps escalating and escalating past the point of no return. Harris and producer Jerry Bruckheimer both point out in the commentary that Brig. Gen. Francis Hummel was one of the toughest parts Harris ever played, and knowing that the guys on both sides of the issue are good men caught in a bad situation only amplifies the sheer fury of the sequence.

Can you tell that's one of the scenes I'll watch over and over again?

I always wished the film kept some of the SEALs alive and they, along with Cage and Connery, continued to fight the Marines through Alcatraz but sadly it was not to be. What remains is watching Connery kick ass while Cage plays a funny second fiddle to a guy who has no problem throwing a knife into an enemy's throat. Bay's talent for showmanship and Americana is on full display especially at the end of the film when he beautifully shoots the Bay City in all its considerable glory. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend it.

A Perfect 10? Um, Not Quite.

I recently acquired Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal in a trade and right from the start it felt like developer Insomniac Games was off theirs. I never played the first one, loved the second one, and loved the fourth one, but this was my first exposure to part three. The odd sense of humor, deranged supporting characters, and wildly inventive weaponry is all in place but it still feels like the team was spinning their wheels a bit. They came back strong for part four, but this one gets an 80 percent from me.

Yet on the cover is a bolded quote from PSM saying it's a "Perfect 10!" The only thing missing from that is OMGWTFLOL!11!1!!! I swear these people get four levels from an early build as their sole review copy and because they want more freebies they fellate the developer. I realize I may sound like a hypocrite since my score for Space Rangers 2 was used in the marketing campaign for the US release, something I'm damn proud of by the way, but that was a review from the heart for a game that was obviously built as a labor of love.

Now compare that with what is in essence a yearly update. I admit to loving the R&C series deeply because when those games connect I could play them for a month at a time. There is a mind-boggling amount to do and collect in all of them but Up Your Arsenal feels... arbitrary. Like there was a looming deadline so they just recycled everything from the first two games, made up the plot as they went along, and called it a sequel. At least with the next one, Deadlocked, they tried something new and it worked extremely well.

At least I didn't pay for it is the best thing I have to say. Oh, and bring back the plasma whip for the fifth game, guys. That thing rules.

The Revolution Won't Be Televiised

By now you've probably heard the internet collectively groan as Nintendo announced the official name for its forthcoming console. CNN Money is probably the best source for it, but it's everywhere now. The Revolution as we know it is over.

Say hello to "Wii" and say good-bye to any respect Nintendo may ever have from the fans who grew up with it.

Bill Harris of Dubious Quality is quickly becoming the Zen master for gamers because of such accurate statements like this:

Don't even try to tell me you're surpriised. Nintendo is your slightly creepy uncle who never made it past the fourth grade and can't have a normal conversation, but he's a world-class banjo player.

That's as accurate a statement on this idea as any I've heard. Nintendo has routinely confounded gamers for 20 years now and that trend doesn't appear to be going anywhere soon. I honestly do not understand a company that is so completely in its own world that it still thinks anything it does is a license to print money. If that idea is in hand-helds they're spot-on. If it's in marketing a new console that ALREADY HAS THE PERFECT NAME then they prove themselves to be very, very retarded.

Nintendo has a "kids only" rep in a lot of people's eyes and this sure as heck won't change that. Gamers have already positioned themselves into the usual camps of haters/lovers/indifferent and those party lines won't change between now and when the console launches this fall. This remains my most anticipated console of the next generation because it does exactly what the others don't: It innovates, tremendously. But then the Nintendo marketing department (read: the slow kids in class) gets involved and names it something stupid and suddenly the luster is gone.

That's not the way you go into E3, guys.

God of War II

For sheer "sweet merciful Christ" jaw-dropping action there are few that can compete with last year's God of War, a game so epic in scale and sheer in size that only a horrific design decision monumental in nature could undo it.

Funny enough, that's exactly what you encounter 2/3 of the way through. Not to spoil anything but the second you see Kratos, the main character, fall through a portal into Hades just turn the game off. Accept that at some point Kratos finished his task and stormed Mount Olympus and you won't regret all the time you've previously invested in it. I'm convinced that reviewers stopped playing sometime during Pandora's Labyrinth because up to that point it was the Game of the Year. Ten minutes later... not so much.

I bring up my old feelings because 1Up posted this trailer earlier today for the sequel and it absolutely kicked my teeth in. Whatever else happened late in the first game, up to that point it was wonderous in the variety of ways you could inflict pain on your foes. Kratos was a tremendous bad-ass the second the game started, and he only grew stronger (and angrier) as the game progressed. There were so many awesome kill moves that left me speechless that I believe I drooled on myself more than once.

I'm man enough to say it - a game left me so slackjawed I actually drooled because I could not comprehend that someone could make a game so blindingly cool. I seemed to take their fumble late in the third quarter personally because it was literally perfect up to that point. No complaints whatsoever.

On the plus side, the sequel's design team has heard the fevered cries of the damned and supposedly won't put anything as awful as Hades back in the follow-up. I'll believe that when I see it, and I bloody well am going to play the game start to finish before I render judgement deadlines be damned.

But this trailer gets me hungry for more. Heck, that last shot alone is one of the coolest things I've ever seen and that's saying something considering how many wicked things come before it.

Now Playing: Red Eye

Wes Craven doesn't get much in the way of respect as a director. It may come from one too many "New Nightmare"'s on his resume but the man knows how to ratchet up the tension when he wants to. I like that given the success of the "Scream" franchise his first instinct was to make a film about a classical music teacher played by Meryl Streep. That's ballsy anyway you look at it so I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on what could be a cliched thriller in "Red Eye."

What kept My Fair Lady and I from seeing this in the theater last year was a combination of factors the primary one being her absolutely insane schedule in law school. Another was the fact that this is only around 86 minutes long and there's no way I'm paying $15 for that short a film. I'm convinced, however, that Netflix was created in part to give films like this a life past the box office. The short running time is a big benefit here because the film gets right to business and doesn't stop until the final frame. Why that's a good thing is it doesn't waste space despite setting up a half dozen cliched subplots that are promptly ignored in favor of terrorizing Rachel McAdams who plays Lisa Reisert.

McAdams is coming into her own as an actress lately with this, "The Notebook," and "Wedding Crasher." I've not seen the other two but My Fair Lady swears "The Notebook" is the greatest love story ever made, which means that's two hours I'll go out of my way to avoid for the rest of my days. She's a solid lead in "Red Eye" and having the great Cillian Murphy (forever known to me as Scarecrow from "Batman Begins") to bounce off of helps pound home the misery. She's catching the last flight out of Dallas to Miami to go see her dad (a stranded Brian Cox) when Murphy's Jackson Ripner takes the seat next to her. They both hit it off earlier in the film, but once the plane takes off he makes it clear that unless she makes a phone call to her hotel, he'll place a call to an assassin to kill her dad.

And people wonder why I hate sitting in coach.

As Lisa comes unglued and slowly tries to get a grip on things Ripner stays attached to her hip. This is really a two-person play complete with a funny nod to Craven's past film efforts towards the end with the way Ripner chases Lisa up some stairs while wielding a knife. We also laughed at how Dallas was portrayed because there were cowboy hats left and right. The two things they nailed with any accuracy was a cabbie complaining about Dallas drivers and the older blonde woman who briefly flirts with Ripner. It was funny seeing how a quickie Hollywood production like this views north Texas.

Overall the movie is quick and easily digested fun. It won't go down in history as a tribute to innovative cinema but for a fast rental it's entertaining enough.

Grade: B

Now Playing: Bringing Up Baby

My Fair Lady and I checked this classic out on Saturday night and talk about a throw-back. All my life I've grown up hearing how this was the funniest movie ever made and since I'd only seen bits and pieces of it I figured it was high time I sat down and watched it.

Considered me stunned. I sat through most of it simple agog at how fast Katherine "The Great" Hepburn would spit out dialogue. Think of a verbal version of the Saving Private Ryan opening and you're not far off. Pages and pages and pages of dialogue whip past you so fast it become whiplash inducing. As if that's not enough imagery for you then know that all this is coming from a very striking woman from the Northeast. Hepburn was radiant in this film and director Howard Hawkes knew exactly how best to light her angular features for maximum effect.

The story features Cary Grant as Dr. David Huxley, an easily befuddled paleontologist who is engaged to be married in 24 hours and on the same day that he receives the final bone for his museum's full-size dinosaur. He runs into heiress Susan Vance (Hepburn) on the golf course and his life goes downhill immediately as she proceeds to ruin it. Whether or not any of it is planned is subject to debate.

My Fair Lady never watched classic films before I came into her life so I take ever chance I get to show her these. It's fun for me because she can't always get into them so she catches minor details in the background that I miss. For example, during the police station sequence late in the film there is a map of the US on the wall. My Fair Lady pointed out that neither Alaska or Hawaii were on it. It's the small things like this that I enjoy because these films feel like a snapshot of how things were 70 years ago. If you're a fan of cinema at all then this one is required viewing if for no other reason than the three-part harmony of David, Susan, and George.

Now Playing: Dead & Breakfast

CDS reader Nathan sent me a NetFlix recommendation for this 2004 horror-comedy and I finally got around to watching it today. Let me start by saying that despite the 1980's title and 1980's approach to low-budget gore this really feels just like a 1980's horror flick knock-off complete with C-listers headlining it. That's sarcasm, by the way. Overall it was a lame horror flick, but I thought it excelled as a muscial.

No, that wasn't a typo.

Dead & Breakfast has some of the funniest lyrics this side of "Weird Al" Yankovic and the musical sequences lift an average gore-fest to at least a B-range rental. Imagine a cross between the gore of Dead Alive and the Greek chorus from There's Something About Mary and you'll get an idea of what the film makers went for. The songs are mainly country-based but there is a side-splitting rap about three-quarters of the way through that had me howling. Big thumbs up to Brian Vander Ark who wrote the score.

The story as it is follows six friends en route to Portia de Rossi's wedding (a sight gag by itself) when they stop at the sleepy town of Lovelock and check into the local B&B. The small town is teeming with rednecks so every Southern cliche you can think of is paraded out. David Carradine seems asleep in his two scenes, but special mention goes out to both Diedrich Bader and de Rossi for stealing the entire movie. What's more impressive is that both are in it for a combined total of about eight minutes. Naturally, things go wrong when some Eastern mysticim, a small box, and a creepy drifter all pop-up and the town winds up turning into zombies and coming after the kids.

By no means will this tax your IQ but it's a fun way to kill an hour and a half and you're guaranteed at least four or five belly laughs. Be sure to stick it out through the final song over the credits which rehashes pretty much the entire flick via country twang. What makes this one the best-for-last is how the build-up to the chorus grows funnier with each verse. Check this one out if you have a healthy tolerance for blood and enjoy Thriller parodies.

Yogurt - Not Just For Snacking

My Fair Lady spent a month last summer studying abroad in the Greek isles as part of her law school program. During her many experiences (some good, some not so much) she realized that her naturally pale skin burns quite easily under the Mediterranean sun and was without any aloe vera gel. Someone thought quickly and applied yogurt to the burns then thoughtfully took a picture of it.

Should said picture ever surface on the interwebs, my face will soon surface on a milk carton so let the understanding be that it was a funny, funny shot.

While I spent the afternoon taking down the Tatalgia family in The Godfather My Fair Lady played golf with her brother The Cowboy. I failed to notice her arms when she walked in for burned to a crisp they were. Naturally she waits until, oh, right now to bring into the conversation the fact that she's been spreading aloe on her arms the whole time she's been home.

Being the observant fellow that I am I completely missed any of this so I take her at her word. Then a thought/memory struck her. Yogurt! Yes! She did learn something while in Greece! Our money was well spent! Salute!

I open the fridge and my next words were "lemon or keylime"? She chose the keylime and slathered the viscous breakfast/ointment on her arms as quickly as she could. Apparently it worked wonders for her because it even took away some of the pain.

Yogurt - Not just another snack food, uh huh. Should I ever be taken away in an ambulance on account of burns I'll recommend through my morphine-induced haze to swing by the local Tom Thumb as some lemon cream pie yogurt might come in handy right about then.

Pimps at Sea

One of the long running April Fools gags in the gaming world is Bungie Studios' annual update announcement for Pimps at Sea. It somehow comtinues to stay funny, but this year El Jefe at Gaming Trend hit me with the challenge of writing up a review for it as our April 1st joke.

The results can be seen right here. Yaaar, ye best enjoy yerselves.

I'll also do my best to never channel a pirate again because it's not funny when I do and I believe in ancient voodoo curses, not necessarily in that order.

Fun with Propaganda

This is a brilliant contest over at Worth1000.com where their PhotoShop contests truly are worth a 1000 words. This particular one is "Fun With Propaganda Round 6" and it's brilliant as usual.

I can't imagine what these PhotoShop Gods would be capable of if there were as talented with a brush and paint bucket as they are with filters and shading. I'm convinced that Van Gough and Rembrant would absolutely be lords of PhotoShop had they been born in the last 20 years. Enjoy.

Lately...

So where have I been for the last several days? Drowning at work under a sea of dumbassery, that's where. My Fair Lady has wanted to work out every day this week but since it seems all I've done the last few days is run full speed in place at the office I'm borderline content to get home past the point where we can do that.

Of course, I fully expect to get back into the swing of things this coming week but we've all seen how life has a funny way of dangling what you want in front of your nose then yanking it back at the last second. Then life will smack you in the face with said carrot just for kicks.

In gaming news, I've been playing The Godfather for the last few days and I have to say that I'm having a lot of fun despite the facts that it looks pretty dang bland, has a needlessly cumbersome control scheme, and is a blatant rip-off of Grand Theft Auto III. But considering that I haven't played that game in a year it's nice to play it again with a mafia-themed skin over everything. It also helps being a die-hard fan of the original film and that the missions are typically pretty fun. We've all played the sneak-or-be-caught missions along with the drive-to-escape-enemies missions but The Godfather remains entertaining despite its overt familiarity. The full review should be up at Gaming Trend sometime in the next week.

In the meantime, check out my review of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones right here because the game is fantastic despite looking uglier than its three-year-old proginator.

For the record, I love the original PoP game Sands of Time with something akin to reverence because it gets everything right. The combat came under the most fire because it was repetitive, but the thing that the complainers didn't get was that the combat was never meant to be the focus. The challenge was always against the environment, and it was magnificent to play. Not to mention that as a romantic (shh, don't tell anyone) it was wonderful to watch the playful and devil-may-care Prince slowly come to love the willful Indian princess Farah. The ending was brilliant and even moreso if you played through the game start to finish over the course of a day or two.

Compare that to the absolute travesty that was the sequel Warrior Within and you'll understand why I treaded lightly on the new game. Fortunately, the new game went back to the original formula and was terrific in its own right and perfectly ended the trilogy. I so wish I could give away the ending because it was note perfect, but my advice is to just burn through it and enjoy falling to the spell of a wonderous fairy tale elegantly told.

I also have the latest Metal Gear Solid PS2 game on deck so I'll fire that up tomorrow and see what Snake has been up to. Hopefully that review will be up late next week but we'll see.

Sony Should Lay Off the Pipe

1Up Story on Sony at GDC.

Okay Sony, please set the crack pipe down and step away from it. The men in the white coats will then escort you to a nice clinic where your system will be cleaned out of all manner of toxins, kthxbye.

Anyone recall when Sony said that the PS2 would be able to work with AIM and do all sorts of stuff online? Yeah, me neither. I love how Sony set out an insane timeline for building their equivalent of Xbox Live in a matter of months. God help them if they haven't already been working on that for, say, about a year now.

It may seem that I'm getting down on Sony. In truth, I'm just stunned by all the things they're saying the PS3 will be able to do this Novemeber. Then I look at their timelines of getting final kits to developers by this summer and realize that no AAA game can be created in that short a window. I can appreciate Sony's desire to kick Microsoft in the teeth but they need to seriously shut up and just work and get their marketing people off center stage. The more they talk the crazier they sound and if they don't live up to all the promises they're making...

Well, I doubt anything bad will really happen. I have zero desire for a 360 which actually dips into negative desire when you factor in Microsoft's pissing off previous generation owners by completely botching the backwards compatibility. I have a healthy Xbox library I'd like to play on an upgrade. What? None of them will work at all? Well then, no upgrade console for me. Wait, I can plug it into Live and download a $20 shareware game that is more fun than the entire launch library but in no way utilizes the full power of the system? Sounds good to... oh wait, I just found an emulation of it for free on the internet. Still no 360 for me then.

As for the PS3, I agree with the pundits that say Sony will release it for no less than $500. Considering the bleeding edge components in it there's no way they won't incur massive losses just cranking these suckers out. But there are a few details that absolutely make me want to love it before I even see anything concrete:

The thing that makes the games region free or not is different than what makes the hardware different. With the power voltage and things like that, the hardware will need to be specific to a region. Software, however, will be region free. It's possible for developers to put all the TV formats - PAL, NTSC, HDTV, and so on - on the disc.

As Paris "Herpes" Hilton might say, "That's hot." For a film nut like Yours Truly, that means a region free Blu-Ray DVD player could soon enter Casa de Skim which means importing films from all over the globe. The priority for me would be to track down specific "special" packaging that is only available overseas. The infamous "Alien head" case for all the "Alien" films springs immediately to mind.

I think Sony will win this round too even if they don't make good on all the promises they've been making for the last six months. I do, however, think this is the last generation for the bullcrap to pass for gospel. Both Microsoft and Sony have done nothing but talk themselves up like crazy for the last two years about how each would rule the roost, but I've seen nothing from either to substantiate those claims. With my generation now having kids and passing on our gaming knowledge and loves to the wee ones, they will soon inherent our cynicism and distrust of the industry as well. When that happens they won't be swayed as much by the new and improved same ol'-same ol'.

And when that happens Microsoft and Sony could be massively screwed, and that's where the dark horse rides in with the name Nintendo and proves that innovation sometimes wins out in the end. But that's a column for another time.

As I will be attending E3 this year I plan to have my own take on events there over at Gaming Trend during the week. That weekend will see My Fair Lady achieve her dream of graduating law school and if American "Suck it" Airlines pushes my return flight back any more then I should land just in time to drive to the ceremony. Once I de-stress though I'll opine on everything I saw, and since Half-Life 2 isn't on the cards I don't have one single game that I'm craving.

Which means everything is fair game this year on all platforms, and I'm really looking forward to being an equal opportunity gamer.

Birth of an Ocean

I haven't posted science links of any sort but today I came across one that is so monumentally fascinating that it personally demanded to be shared. Apparently, a new ocean is forming in East Africa. Check this out:

A number of recent eruptions, though, have left layers of new basalt lava on the Earth's surface. And it's the exact same kind of lava that spews out of volcanic ridges deep under the ocean -- a process which slowly pushes older lava sediments away on either side. The process has only just begun in the Afar Triangle -- and scientists for the first time can witness the birth of a new ocean floor.

The full story can be read right here and it stunning to think that scientists, with all their modern high-tech equipment, can monitor Mother Nature as she births a new ocean. Oh, and I'd have had a heart attack if I was one of the scientists who landed there in September of last year. Read the story for why.

Starting Fresh of a Sorts

After the events of this weekend I found myself today in a complete writer's mood. Moods like this strike me infrequently and usually when I fail to act on them the result is several months worth of writer's block and inferiority complexes.

Take a guess as to what happened around December?

What will happen when I get home today is sitting down and cranking on my screenplay and I damn well better have pages re-written tonight or at least five brand new ones written out. Otherwise I will be most aggravated with myself. I'm trying like hell now to finish this thing off because not only am I not interested in the story anymore, but far more colorful projects have sprouted up in my head and I'm desperate to work on those.

But the goal of 2006 was focus and as such I intend to stay the course for better or worse. While the weather in Dallas was perfect to sit around and write I actually did very little because of being completely worn out from the last few weeks. The plus side was that after Noah left town the storm went with him and right now the skies are gorgeous.

This may wind up as a last will and testament because once My Fair Lady reads this then you better believe that she'll beat me over the head with it if I so much as think about straying from my original intent. Which is a very good thing, don't get me wrong, as it shows that she genuinely cares and wants me to succeed.

This actually was a topic of conversation on Friday night as we drove to our softball game (cancelled after 15 minutes of play, naturally). We talked about how some marriages are competitive in nature when they should actually be more of a partnership and we agreed that the competition was much more likely to spring up in a household of two doctors/lawyers/anything. As she will soon be an attorney and I'm in television/video production, there really is no way to accurately compare the two. Another benefit is that where I'm weak she's strong and vice versa so when we work together we compliment each other very well.

This is a roundabout way of saying I'm bloody well going to write this week if it kills me, writer's block be damned. At some point I may even finish my review of Dragon Quest VIII that I've been trying to finish for the last two weeks. But one step at a time.

Star Wars: The Series Official

We all heard the rumors. We all figured it may or may not come to pass. But apparently the Lord High Jedi Lucas hath spoken and lo and behold a Star Wars TV series was recently announced.

I'm filled with mixed optimism about this. On the one hand, I can think of only a handful of canon that have actually covered the gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope so it might be cool to watch the Empire consolidate its power, evil slowly take over the galaxy, and the remaining defenders fight an increasingly deadly battle.

On the other, if Lucas himself is writing this then I think it could start bad and get worse. For all the flack the fanboys give him, I still think Revenge of the Sith was a hell of a great addition/conclusion to the saga, stiltled dialogue included. There were more moments of sheer fury, emotionally painful heartbreaks, and jaw-dropping images than most other movies combined. Yet there were several moments (I'm looking at you Sam Jackson) where the film came to a screeching halt, and for that I have to thank Master Lucas for not directing actors worth a damn. I'd also like to thank all those actors for failing utterly to remember that older actors, like Ian McDiarmid himself, came from the school of thought where imagination was key. The trick was to stand alone on a barren stage and make the audience believe that what the actor "saw" was what the audience would see.

Take a comparison between Christopher Lee and McDiarmid's performances in episodes II and III and compare them with, oh, anyone else on screen at any given moment and the difference in abilities become immediately apparent. So what does all that have to do with the series?

If Lucas is truly as involved as I worry he may be, then we stand to have 100 episodes of the prequels and even a Star Wars nut like myself would find that tough to take. The original films felt lived in and worn down in a way that gave audiences the belief that no matter how outlandish the sequences on screen were, they could still reach out and touch everything they saw. The prequels were pretty much all digital so everything felt hyper-real, which made the films feel like they existed in memory only. Everything then was too clean and too pristine, and the non-stop special effects and digital imagery was a key part of that. Personally, I think it actually worked in the films' favor to go that route considering the story they were telling.

I fear the new series may rely on ILM's wizardy versus actually building some sets to give the actors and audience an association with what's on screen. But then again it's early yet. Nothing has been announced other than they're doing the show so as details trickle out we'll all go into hyperdrive analyzing them.

Because that's what we Star Wars nerds do.

Wherefore Art Thou... Gary?

So I'm in the back part of the production offices today doing various duplication things and I walk back to my cube and find a stickie note.

My computer is still broke. - Gary

Well, first of all that must suck for you, Gary, but second of all I have no idea who you are and third of all I wasn't aware your computer done broke itself in the first place. There is a noticable lack of contact information so I go on about my day.

I come back about half an hour later and find a second note that reads as follows:

Mitch, please call me ASAP. - Gary

Please take a moment to re-read that and tell me where the number is.

I walk over to the HR woman (who's sharp as a tack but has only been here for about a week) and she has no idea who this is. Neither do other people on the floor. So Gary, if you're reading this, let me know how I can help but remember that not giving me any bloody way to contact you is going to result in me putting a stickie note on my on monitor that reads as follows:

Not doing IT work today. Maybe not tomorrow either. - Mitch

I am not a Bendy Straw

I am not a Bendy Straw. Sure My Fair Lady can drag me to Yoga class and complain that I can do the Down Dog position while she struggles at it, ignoring the fact that I make her laugh by quietly barking whenever the instructor says, "... and then move into Down Dog."

I no longer scorn the people who are Yoga fanatics because an hour of stretching your body is surprisingly stressful. You don't realize just how out of shape you are until you're told to go through four Yoga positions in a row and you realize by the second one that you can't feel your leg. I'm skinny by nature but that doesn't mean I'm in perfect shape.

As I started looking that first great hurdle of 30 in the eye, I realized that I better whip the body into shape or else my heart would pull an Alien on me by 35. Thus, My Fair Lady picked up a great deal for 24-Hour Fitness (Massacre) through her company and she's making sure the two of us are using it. Try going on little to no exercise for a few years then sit down and ride a stationary bike for a 30 minute cardio workout and you'll know pain. Try a 15-minute ab workout after years of abusing your stomach with Jack in the Box and you'll know embarrassment.

I will soon attain a sleeker and more muscular look though if only through sheer determination. So many people around me seem to be out of shape and content to suck back sodas (while a Dr. Pepper is firmly in my grip) without finding a balance. But if I stay at it then someday, hopefully by this summer, I'll have something to show for it. I am not a Bendy Straw.

Yet.

What Will Sony Do?

In case you haven't noticed, the PS3 has been conspicuously absent from anything and everything lately except one thing: A growing sea of doubt.

1Up posted this column about Sony and how their smoke and mirrors act has produced little more than industry-wide skepticism that they still have the golden touch. Sony has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow but no one has any idea of what they will say. Here's the most telling paragraph from the story I just linked to:

Sony would be wise to study history; the console industry experiences a sea of change every decade. Atari more or less created the industry in the mid-70s, only to see its marketshare erode and give way to Nintendo in the mid-80s, who in turn fell behind Sony in the mid-90s. It's been a decade since then, and Microsoft seems a lot hungrier for victory than Sony these days. The 360 is proving to do just about everything right while Sony has offered nothing but cryptic promises.

That sums up Sony's situation in a nutshell. Either they get in the game right frickin' now or they will be left in the dust by Microsoft despite them screwing up repeatedly with the 360 launch. I have yet to see any title for the 360 that I would play repeatedly, let alone my standard five "system sellers" before I buy a console.

It's served me well over the years and will continue to do so because I see absolutely nothing for the 360 that I'm even close to interested in. With that sort of apathy still existant out there, Sony would be wise to kick something in the backside and get things in gear. Sadly, I think hubris and ego might tank this once invulnerable company unless the PS3 is revealed tomorrow as being able to play everything under the sun while making you breakfast and paying your bills.

In which case I say "go Sony go."

Now Playing: The Fifth Element

The year 1997 was an interesting one for me at the movies. Normally I don't go out to the theater to see one movie several times mainly due to rising costs. As much as I love film, it can be a damn expensive hobby if all you do is sit in the theater which is one reason among many why I and film lovers the world over treat DVD like pure heroin. But 1997 was a little different for me. The year started off with the re-release of the Star Wars trilogy re-mastered and altered by head Jedi George Lucas. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd seen those in the theater so you better believe I watched those a lot. Then in the spring Gross Point Blank came out which I absolutely fell in love with.

But in May, that insane French director Luc Besson let his imagination run completely wild with The Fifth Element and I've watched it religiously ever since. I've been meaning to pick it up on DVD for years but when someone releases enough different versions that I lose track then no matter how much I like the flick I'll say "screw it." Such was the case with this gem, but after finally getting some software installed that lets me watch DVDs on my computer I figured it was high time to pick up the Ultimate Edition.

Which is what I'm watching right now, and it remains gloriously fun. Watching this is like Besson opened a portal straight into his imagination and said, "Come on in." But in French.

Good lord is this movie fun, from the the wild costume designs by Jean-Paul Gaultier to the extremely French soundtrack by frequent Besson collaborator Eric Serra, to Bruce Willis obviously having the time of his life as cab driver/ex-military man Korbin Dallas. He's fortunately backed up by a cast that's having as much fun as he is most notably the great Ian Holm. Holm is flat-out hilarious as extremely nervous priest Vito Cornelius who's known his destiny was coming for 300 years but is terrified of what it means he'll have to do.

And what other movie would have the cojones to cast Tiny Lister as the President of basically everything and Gary Oldman as an art dealer/weapons dealer who based his performance on Ross Perot. Bright colors are everywhere as is eclectic performances, both of which come together in the character of Ruby Rod who proved to be the make-or-break character. Personally I found him hilarious, but he can grate on the nerves if you don't think Chris Tucker is funny.

I do wish the tons of great ideas were followed up on. The ZF-1, for instance, is introduced as the end all-be all of weapons but it shows up only twice. The uber-villain also falls by the wayside because even though it's described as evil incarnate it comes across as a giant fireball with a deep voice.

I do love the site gags like the cigarettes that are 70 percent filter, the mugger, the obvious Star Wars gag(s), and the wickedly cool Diva. There is just too much fun overall to pass this movie up if you haven't seen it. As such, it's going to wind up on loop in my PC everytime I need some creative inspiration.

Now Playing: Elizabethtown

My favorite movie of Cameron Crowe's is Almost Famous. Period, bar none, end of discussion. I guess the reason behind that, other than the note-perfect soundtrack which was a character of its own, was because it felt real, honest, and spoke from the heart about remembering days long passed. Oddly enough, I think he went for the same thing with Elizabethtown and completely missed the mark.

Before I get into what I thought went wrong, let me start by saying the first 20 minutes are so hilariously spot on perfect that there was no way I could keep quiet. Drew Baylor (grimly played by Orlando Bloom) is an engineer at a shoe company who's first solo project has just gone up in flames. Actually, that's putting it kindly. Imagine a nuke going off and that would be more accurate.

Drew walks in knowing full well that his shoe (called the Spasmodica) tanked the company, but he puts his game face on even when taken to see the boss, Phil. Phil is described prior to Baylor actually seeing him and the visuals combined with Bloom's narration had me in hysterics. That was amplified when Phil actually speaks because Alec Baldwin absolutely kills in his five minute role. The way he takes Drew through their facilities talking to him about cutting this program or that program truly nails what it feels like to fail absolutely at anything and Baldwin is brilliant. He's making a career out of appearing briefly only to walk away with the entire show.

Once Drew gets home he plots to kill himself. Being an engineer he can't just take a knife to his wrists though and the contraction he comes up with, that also fails, is truly funny. It's at that point he gets the call that changes the rest of the movie: His dad Mitch died while visiting family in Elizabethtown and his mom and sister want him to go there and retrieve the body. Up to this point, Crowe has me completely interested in Drew's issues but once he hops on that plane we're introduced to the make-or-break character of the entire film: Claire.

As played by Kirsten Dunst, Claire is just as transitory in nature as her job as a flight attendant is. But every time she speaks it feels like Crowe was going for another Penny Lane-type free spirit and here he goes overboard. Personally, I like the heck out of Dunst as an actor but here it feels like she's really trying way, way too hard. I couldn't figure out whether Claire is desperate to connect to someone or desperate to keep everyone at arm's length, and its this contradictory nature that wound up pissing me off about her character.

Once Drew reaches Elizabethtown, Crowe knocks another homerun by absolutely nailing the South and how the large families interact. I have well over 100 cousins and relatives the majority of whom I've met only once or twice in my life. But when those people get together then everyone no matter how remote is treated like immediate family and it was a hoot watching Drew navigate through a sea of people he barely remembers from his childhood.

But then the film periodically crashes and burns by jumping back to Drew's homestead where his mother (Susan Sarandon) is channeling her grief into learning new skills. Every single time we go back there the film comes to a dead stop. But then Drew and Claire talk on the phone all night and the movie gets back on track, right down to introducing a random couple called Chuck & Cindy who are staying in the same hotel as Drew and are getting married in a few days. Guffaws aplenty follow Chuck & Cindy whenever they show up, so the film adds another charm to it.

By the end though, Elizabethtown just kind of wanders around looking to find its way which would be a better metaphor for what Drew feels if it actually, you know, found something. The final road trip sequence is wonderful by itself but feels like it belongs in another movie. Elizabethtown I had high hopes for, and to be fair I enjoyed watching it while sitting with My Fair Lady primarily because she was emotionally freaking out whenever someone on screen talked about Mitch dying and I'd laugh, or give voice to Mitch.

But I'm warped that way.