Movies – Krunk4Ever!

September 5, 2010

Kick-Ass is Kick-Ass

Hit-Girl Poster My favorite movie of the year (or maybe decade) is still Inception, but Kick-Ass comes pretty close. I had mean to watch Kick-Ass in the theaters, but never got the chance to before it went off the screen. Then I had to wait a couple months for it to show up in Netflix and even though it’s been #1 on my queue for some time, I finally got it this past week. As the title of this blog post suggests, Kick-Ass is awesome!

The story is pretty straight forward and there aren’t really any surprises. However, they were able to make the movie funny yet serious at the same time. Most movies that try to do that usually fail horribly, however they got it just right for Kick-Ass. The story is based off a graphic novel and the characters are very well developed. My favorite character like many others is Hit-Girl. There’s just something awesome about having a small girl kick ass. Add an awesome soundtrack (composed by John Murphy) and you have a formula for one of the best movies of the year.

There really isn’t much to review about the movie itself. The storyline is pretty straight forward. I did want to talk about a few other things related to the movie. I will try not to spoil (though one of song titles on the score does contain a spoiler).

After watching the movie, I knew I needed to acquire the soundtrack. I found the soundtrack on Amazon and Zune and it really just contains the songs they used in the movie and not the musical pieces that were used to build up tension and so on. Though the soundtrack does contain a couple pieces I really enjoyed:

After a bit more searching, I found out there’s a different album called Kick-Ass: The Score. I found it strange that neither Amazon, iTunes, or Zune carried it. I did find it on Amazon UK and they had the option for MP3 downloads. There are so many pieces that I enjoy off this score!

After a bit battle between Big Daddy Kills, Marshmallows, The Corridor, and Flying Home, I’ve decided Marshmallows is my favorite out of the set. Don’t be deceived by its fluffy and sweet name, Marshmallows really just refers to the scene when they used it. The song is made of pure awesome.

For awhile, the guitar riffs from The Corridor kept reminding me of another song. I finally figured out that it reminded me of 3 Doors Down – Kryptonite, which is why I probably really dig that song too.

One of my favorite lines from the movie is:

Gangster: The fuck is wrong with you, man? You’d rather die for some piece of shit that you don’t even fucking know?
Kick-Ass: The three assholes, laying into one guy while everybody else watches? And you wanna know what’s wrong with me? Yeah, I’d rather die… so bring it on!

Not sure if this is at all related to the movie, but I would like to think the movie has had some impact on me. Just 2 nights ago as I was driving home, there was a car parked in the middle of the street with its hazard lights on. I didn’t see anyone waving for help, so I wasn’t planning to stop. But as I drove past the car, I saw a young boy sitting on the curb with his face buried in his hands. Normally given how late it was (~2am) and the fact he didn’t seem to require immediate assistance, I would’ve just left him alone. But something in me kept telling me I should check on him and make sure he’s alright. I busted a U-turn, lowered my window, and asked if he needed help. He looked up and told me everything was alright and thanked me for asking. We said our farewells and I continued driving home. About a few blocks later, I saw a tow truck and I guess that was what the boy was waiting for.

If you have not seen this movie, I would highly recommend it and I can promise you that you won’t be disappointed.

August 17, 2010August 17, 2010

Back to the Bay

First I’d like to thank Chris for being such a great host. Next I’d like to thank Dave and Lexie for showing us around Monterey Bay.

It looks like I was able to escape part of the Seattle heat wave this weekend. I flew down to the bay area to visit Chris and Dave. I’ve been meaning to visit Chris and the bay area for some time. When I went back to LA in May, Dave had mentioned he had a hapkido tournament in Berkeley sometime in August and I thought it’d be great to meet up then. After some coordination, the trip was set.

I flew into SJC. The airport was really nice and apparently I was in the new terminal because Chris didn’t even know the terminal I was at existed. On my way back, there was also a lady standing in front of my gate telling people getting off the plane that this was the new terminal and they should definitely check out the bathroom. A bit weird, but okay… It was also awesome that SJC had free wi-fi.

Ryowa

The only thing I wanted to check out in Berkeley was Ryowa, a really good ramen place. When Chris mentioned that there was a Ryowa in Mountain View, we knew we had to go there for lunch on Friday. The ramen was awesome as expected, but I was sad that the special fried chicken was only offered during dinner on weekdays. Mmmmm, special fried chicken. Next time!

Update: Forgot to mention that while eating ramen, I get an unexpected call from Derek C. Apparently he’ll be in town the same weekend Darryl and Heang are coming up. Sweet!

Santana Row

Dave and I hung out at the Valley Fair mall and Santana Row while we waited for Chris to get off work. Santana Row looked very familiar and when I saw the Maggiano’s, memories of eating there came back. It wasn’t until I saw the Ramada Inn next to Mercado that I began to piece things together. The memory is still a bit fuzzy, but Carol, Dave, and I apparently took a trip to visit the Monterey Bay aquarium a few years ago. Along the way, we thought it’d be nice to visit Chris, but it turned out he was out of town. Apparently the hotel we stayed at is literally just ~5 mins from Chris’ current apartment.

Getting Chris Drunk

The highlight of this trip was getting Chris drunk.

We had dinner at this really good Indian place in Santana Row called Amber India. After dinner, we tried looking for a quiet bar where we could sit and chat, but was unsuccessful in locating one. We opted to pick up some stuff at the supermarket and chill at Chris’ place. We picked up some rum and coke and went back to watch Role Models on Dave’s laptop. It was like back in our old college days.

Halfway through the movie, we got the munchies. Since none of us were in the condition to drive, we decided to walk to Safeway. We all took another shot before leaving. The stuff was pretty gross. I believe it was Southern Comfort. Turns out Chris is also a happy drunk and the walk to Safeway and back was filled with very fun stories. After getting back, we decided to do another round of shots. Apparently I suck at measuring shots, which turned out more like 2 shots each. I guess it didn’t help that we took shots out of mugs. ;p

I don’t think we ever finished the movie, as chatting and catching up was so much more fun. Dave passed out on the couch and after a bit more chatting, we all hit the sack.

Monterey Bay

There were originally plans to drive up to San Francisco, but being unable to decide what we wanted to do in the city, we opted instead to go down to Monterey Bay and check out Point Lobos and the Purple Beach. We met up with Lexie and she was an awesome guide! We learnt really interesting tidbits about the area, why there were currently so many seals and sea lions around the area, how to spot whales from land, what the difference between a seal and sea lion was, and so on.

Did you know that seal’s pectoral fins (flippers) are less developed compared to a sea lion? As Dave would say, seals are like sausages in the sea, flopping around. Also apparently seals don’t make much noise if any, and if you hear barking, it’s most likely from a sea lion.

Lexie’s also about to begin training sea lions and dolphins to tag sea mines which sounds so cool!

I didn’t take any pictures on this trip so I’ve decided to steal a couple from Dave. Plus he has the nicer camera. ;p

I was sad I wasn’t able to try out Lexie’s Banana Chocolate Chip Walnut bread that Chris and Dave praised so highly about.

Before leaving Monterey, Lexie and Dave recommended Turtle Bay Taqueria for dinner. They had some really good Mexican seafood dishes. Their salsa was awesome too. They had this really hot salsa called X’nipec (meaning dog’s nose or something like that) and you just can’t stop eating that salsa, because it’ll burn like crazy.

Inception

We didn’t get back to San Jose till later in the evening. Since neither Chris nor I could ever decide on anything, I suggested watching Inception. Chris hasn’t seen it yet and I had wanted to rewatch it for some time. I also got Chris to invite his friend who had also wanted to see Inception and she joined us on the adventure.

It was just as awesome as the first time and this time I picked up on the several new parts which I had missed. I still couldn’t make out what Mal said during the train scene. I swear to god I still hear her shout, “You’re the devil.” Guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD/Blu-ray.

Things definitely close way too early in San Jose. We were trying to find a coffee shop or boba place after the movie, since how can you not have discussions about the movie after something this epic. Both Yelp and Urbanspoon failed us. Everything close by appears to be closed by 10, even on a Saturday night. Unfortunately, we had to part ways after the movie.

Half-Moon Bay

On my last day down in the bay area, I requested we go to In-n-Out for lunch. Mmmmm. It’s been years since I had In-n-Out and the burger was awesome. Zagat just released that Five Guys beat In-n-Out, taking the crown for the best fast food burger. There’s actually a couple Five Guys here in Seattle. Should definitely check them out sometime.

After lunch, we drove to Half-Moon Bay and hung out at the beach for some time. In retrospect, it would’ve been awesome to have brought a football with us or anything to throw around.

Finally it was time for me to go home. I wasn’t looking forward to returning to 90F+ weather after being in the bay area which was 78F and sunny. Look what happened to the soda can I left in my car! When I got back to my house, my thermostat registered 89F (this was at 9PM). After opening all my windows and waiting half an hour, it dropped back down to ~80F.

Final Thoughts

Listening to the Inception soundtrack and falling asleep on the plane is awesome, especially when there’s a screaming kid sitting across the aisle. According to my Zune, I’ve listened to the entire album 50+ times already.

After switching to my messenger bag, I had opt to leave out a bunch of things since there was less space compared to my backpack. However, during this trip, I realized I needed to add the following back:

Zune charger
Ethernet cable
USB Jump Drive

I got a bit sunburnt again, but not too bad, just a reddish hint.

It looks like I found some new travel buddies. One of the many conversations we had that night was about traveling. There’s a lot of places I would like to visit, but I hate traveling alone. Traveling with companion(s) is so much more fun as you get to share the experience. So Chris, Dave and I were talking over places we’d like to visit. (Side note: For some reason I thought Dubai was in Africa, but it’s really in the Middle East.) Anyway, we decided to start small, with places in the US (New York, D.C., Chicago, Boston, etc.) and then move onto far away lands (Australia, Asia, Europe, etc.). On a similar but unrelated note, we’re trying to plan a snowboarding trip up to Whistler in December or January.

August 11, 2010August 11, 2010

Alice in Wonderland – Review

Alice in Wonderland Poster So I finally got to watch Alice in Wonderland this past weekend. It’s been in my Netflix queue for who knows how long (at least a couple months). I guess the Blu-ray version was much more popular than the DVD version since Chad got to watch his pretty much immediately after adding to his queue. Anyway, I’ve been hearing bad reviews about this movie, but it’s a Tim Burton film and I’m a big Tim Burton fan, so I had to watch it.

I LOVED IT! The movie was really fun. My memory of the original film is a bit fuzzy, but it looks like a retelling of the story with Alice grown up as a teenager now. Some of the names were familiar, but I did not recall that the caterpillar’s name was Absolutem nor that there was a dragon named Jabberwocky. Was there even a dragon in the original? I just remember the Red Queen’s soldiers were like playing cards and they fell down like dominoes. And you’ve gotta love the Futterwacken dancing, despite the fact I learnt that it wasn’t Johnny Depp who actually did it.

Anyway, there’s no real surprises in the movie, but just a retelling of a very similar story in a very beautiful and imaginative world.

What I wanted to talk about now is the Red Queen vs White Queen. In this movie, they made the White Queen seem a bit evil. She seems nice and pretty on the outside, but you could tell she has an evil heart. In an interview, Anne Hathaway says she portrayed the White Queen as if there were desires to be repressed, but when I was watching the movie, I took it in a different way. They were desires that she did not reveal in public. I wonder if anyone’s ever retold this story from the Red Queen’s point of view. It would definitely make for a very interesting story in my opinion.

Since the original story puts the White Queen in the good light, I’m going to assume that certain details could’ve been added/removed to put her in a better light.

Early on, you find out that the Red Queen is the eldest of the 2 siblings and that she had killed her parents and stolen the crown which they were planning on passing to the White Queen (her younger sister). However, what if the White Queen had tricked the parents into passing her the crown by acting all nice and proper? The default rule was that the eldest would become the next ruler, but the White Queen was able to use deception and trick her parents into passing the kingdom to her. The Red Queen couldn’t bear the fact that her parents were deceived by her younger sister and got into a big argument with them. In moment of passion and anger, she killed them. It could also be the fact that the parents were actually killed by the White Queen and the blame was put on the Red Queen, but that’s a much more twisted scenario.

One thing about the Red Queen is even though she is evil, she’s honest about it. Everyone knows she’s evil. She doesn’t try to hide it or wrap it up in pure white goodness. What you see is what you get. On the other hand, the White Queen may seem nice and good on the outside, but she definitely has some dark secrets repressed. The fact that she can come up with such a evil plan to chain both the Red Queen and the Red Queen’s servant (that had just tried to kill the Red Queen) and ban them for life shows you that she’s not that simple.

What about Alice? Why would she help the White Queen if she isn’t good? That comes down to the fact that Alice came into the story neutral, but were persuaded/tricked by the Mad Hatter and the White Queen herself into helping them. If you recall correctly, the Red Queen actually showed some really good hospitality to Alice, and it wasn’t until Alice tried stealing from her that she got angry and sent the dogs after her. Also the White Queen keeps telling her she doesn’t have to fight, but that’s just her trying to use reverse psychology. The Red Queen would never used such underhanded methods.

Do note, despite the fact that the Red Queen was ruler and in power for so long, she let her sister live in peace in her White Palace. Once the White Queen came into power, she banned her sister from the kingdom. Who’s the evil one here?

July 18, 2010July 20, 2010

Protected: Inception Spoilers (YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!)

July 17, 2010July 17, 2010

Bite of Seattle + Inception

The password for the following post is: inception

Felt a bit weird to just have a post telling you the password of the following post, so I’ll talk a bit about Bite of Seattle.

Bite of Seattle was fun as usual, though also very crowded as usual. The worst part was getting off the freeway on Mercer. Finding parking wasn’t too bad once you got past the Seattle Center.

All of us got the sampling plate from The Alley which consists of a samples from 7 different restaurants in Seattle for $10:

This samples were surprisingly delicious, though I wasn’t too fond of the chilled soup.

When I first saw the Dungeness crab and Berkshire pork sausage, I thought they were cinnamon buns. The sausage was really good!

We walked around a bit more and checked out some more stands. We then went to the Pacific Science Center IMAX where our movie was going to start at 8. Surprisingly the line wasn’t as long as when they were airing The Dark Knight, though it was sold out several days ago. Guess word of Inception hasn’t gotten around yet, but this movie was definitely amazingly awesome!!! It was not only really fun, but very thought provoking. Don’t want to spoil anything here, but you can check out the trailers. I’ll be making a follow-up post for discussion, and the password for the following post is: inception

April 18, 2010April 19, 2010

2 Very Cute 3D Animation Movies

The quote “你好嗎,警察?” has been stuck in my head for over a week, but didn’t feel like it deserved it’s own post. Wonder if anyone else can immediately pick up which movie it’s from.

How to Train Your Dragon Poster I mentioned VonLobster and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon last weekend. We were originally planning to catch the 3D showing, but shopping ran a bit late and it was a good thing the 2D showing started 20 minutes later than the 3D showing. I’ve been hearing very good things about this movie and was excited to see it. And it did not disappoint!

How to Train Your Dragon is about a young Viking boy named Hiccup trying to prove himself to be a real Viking. The step into Viking manhood is to capture and kill your first dragon. However being weak and scrawny has put him at a disadvantage against the rest of the kids his age, always requiring others to save his butt. But Hiccup is an inventor and he builds a contraption that helps him captured a Night Fury, a dragon that flies so fast, no one has ever seen one or lived to tell so. The story continues on with the journey of how Hiccup develops a bond with Toothless (name he gave to the dragon). This is very much a coming of age story, yet also a story about how misunderstandings between 2 groups has led to conflict.

When I first saw the trailer, I wasn’t too impressed with Toothless as he looked nothing like a dragon that I’d imagine. However, after watching the movie, and how he moves and acts, I fell in love. He’s just so adorable and cute! When he regurgitated the fish to share with Hiccup, the first thing that popped into my head was sushi!

The story was very well told, much better than I had expected from Dreamworks. Usually good storytelling like this is what I expect from Pixar. The overall soundtrack also fitted really well with the movie. The animation was just spectacular. When Hiccup and Astrid flew on Toothless through the mountains and over the ocean, it was just breathtaking. I rated this 5/5 on Netflix.

<SPOILERS>
You’ve been warned… Reading anything between the spoilers tag may spoil the movie for you.

I thought the little romantic side story was a bit rushed, but I also felt it added a nice touch to the story. One of the reasons Hiccup wanted to capture/kill his own dragon was for the ladies, and who can blame him. I also love the fact that Toothless played a big part of getting Astrid to fall for him. It just reinforces the bond that Hiccup and Toothless share.

One thing I never did quite get was why there was only 1 Night Fury. How do they create more Night Furys? I want to see some baby Night Furys!
</SPOILERS>

I saw ホッタラケの島　〜遥と魔法の鏡〜 (Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror) while eating dinner last night. I first saw the trailer on Apple’s Japanese trailer site and thought it looked rather fun. This is a Japanese 3D animation if you haven’t guessed from the poster and the title of the movie. I’m generally not a big fan of Japanese 3D animation. I tend to like 2D Japanese anime more since I find 3D animation limits the style of art. However, this movie mixes both 2D drawings with 3D animation. The beautiful background and sceneries were mostly drawn in 2D, while the characters and the world were done in 3D. The 3D animation itself wasn’t shabby either. Whoever created the world did an amazing job as it was just so imaginative and fun! I understand that not everyone here understands Japanese, so here’s the trailer with English subtitles.

This is very much a kids movie. It’s about a girl named Haruka who lost her mom when she was really young. One of the things that Haruka said she’d always treasure was a mirror given to her by her mom. However like most things we treasure, we eventually forget about them. Story has it that when you forget about something, these foxes come and take it away. And that’s how we meet Teo, a fox that accidentally leads Haruka into his world, built with things that humans have forgotten about. The journey begins where Haruka decides to find the mirror her mom had given her.

So what makes this movie cute? COTTON! Cotton is a stuff animal (lamb I think) that Haruka had forgotten and abandoned awhile back. Most of my childhood stuff animals were donated by my mom, and it was so sad to see them leave. Did you ever wished your stuff animal was alive and can move and do everything your imagination said it could? Well, Cotton can!

I definitely shed some tears at different parts of the movie. The story was very well told and I enjoyed the movie a lot. Unfortunately Netflix doesn’t have this movie in their listing yet, but if they did, I would’ve given it 4/5 stars.

August 18, 2009August 18, 2009

Netflix Customer Support

Yet another blog post?! My god…

When I first learnt that the only way to contact Netflix customer support was through phone support, I felt a bit annoyed. There’s plenty of things I would like to report/suggest via a short email or contact form, rather than wait on the phone and having to explain it in person.

So initially, I had tried to contact them through Twitter via @netflix and @Netflixhelps. Sometimes I’d get a reply within 24-48 hours. Other times my tweet would disappear into the oblivion. It wasn’t the most reliable way of contacting their support, but I wasn’t going to call just to make a suggestion.

Anyway, I made my first call to Netflix yesterday. I’m not sure what their peak hours are like, but when I called around 2-3am, the wait time was pretty much non-existent. As I mentioned yesterday, they had sent me the wrong DVD and I had reported it via their website. I also selected to have a replacement sent immediately. Unfortunately, I forgot Dexter season 3 was going to be released on Tuesday and personally would rather get Dexter first before Death Note part 1. I saw that the replacement wasn’t planned to be shipped out until Tuesday. I called in and got someone on the other end within 15 seconds. I asked him if he could cancel the replacement order as I’d like something else on my queue before it.

He said unfortunately the order’s been locked and is shipping directly from a different service center. I felt a bit disappointed, but that’s when he said, he’d give me a courtesy bonus DVD for my troubles. I said, “Awesome!” +1 for Netflix.

Tonight, after I found out that the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex feature films were just shortened versions of the TV series, I decided to watch Ghost In the Shell: Sold State Society. Unfortunately the audio/video was so out of sync, at least a few seconds. There’s been several reviews mentioning the audio/video sync issue already. Once again, the only way to report this issue was by calling in.

I called in again, once again in the middle of the night around 2am, so no waiting time involved. I mentioned the audio sync issue and the title of the film I was trying to watch and she mentions that it had been reported earlier and the technicians are already working on it. Unfortunately she couldn’t give me an ETA on when it would be fixed, but thanked me for reporting the issue.

All in all, I’m unexpectedly satisfied with Netflix customer service through the phone. The phone operators are well trained and there’s no automated phone system to navigate through. You call, enter your 6 digit code, and you get an operator. I’m a happy camper.

August 17, 2009August 17, 2009

Dexter vs Death Note

Wow! Another blog post! I’m on a roll!

For those following my tweets, you may have realized I’ve become a big fan of Dexter lately.

I’ve read the Death Note manga during college, watched the anime series shortly after (it’s now streaming from Hulu), and recently rented the 1st part of the Live Action movie from Netflix. When it mentioned the god-complex, it triggered a memory from a Dexter episode I recently saw and then I started noticing similarities.

Of course, they’re far from being the same story, but here’s a very few similar points:

Both kill evil criminals and believes the world would become a better place.
Both are part of the task force who are investigating the serial killer.
Both Dexter’s and Light’s father were good policemen, though they played very different roles.

Of course there’s a lot of differences. Since I haven’t seen Season 3 yet and the series hasn’t officially ended, I can’t really say where it’s going. But Season 2 of Dexter moved away from the formulaic of 1 new kill per episode and more onto the focus of the investigation and capturing of the serial killer, which is what Death Note was all about.

Searching online, I found this article (from April 2007): ‘Dexter’ and ‘Death Note’: Pop-culture cousins? which basically mentions the same thing I have above. And the author says and I quote:

However, I’d like to point out the obvious: If you’ve been digging Dex as much as I have this season, there’s a good chance you’ll devour all volumes of Death Note, and vice versa. The series is available in most major bookstores.

Argggh, after watching the movie, I realized Netflix sent me part 2 inside a sleeve of part 1. I was wondering why the movie skipped a whole bunch at the beginning and what they were planning to do with part 2 after this ending. Then I looked at the DVD and it showed Death Note II: The Last Name

A lot of things have changed between the manga/anime and the live action movie. I guess it was inevitable since they’re compacting such a long series into 2 separate 2-hour movies.

<SPOILERS>

It’s a battle between L and Light all the way to the end. Near and Mello were never introduced.
They merged 2 plot-lines together: the syndicate that was imitating Kira and the newscaster that idolized Kira
Swapping with a fake Death Note was switched to a different character
+ a lot more

</SPOILERS>

All in all, the movie was still very fun to watch. Like those who have read Harry Potter books and then watched the Harry Potter movies, seeing how the movie was altered from the original works was a bit disappointing. But if I had never read the manga, I probably would’ve enjoyed it greatly.

March 23, 2009

Quotes from The Kite Runner

So RayAlome and I were chatting yesterday. It started with Christian Bale and what he did to transform from his role in The Machinist (130lbs) to his role in Batman Begins (230lbs) in just 6 months. Anyway, the topic went onto Terminator Salvation and if we could program a simple rule into robots (i.e. to never kill), what would it be to avoid what happens in Terminator? The topic continued on to discuss good vs evil; right vs wrong; what are ethics and morals. I pointed out that ethics/morals are nothing more than a set of social contracts that society has deemed to be correct. Even something as simple as the 10 commandments could be easily interpreted differently and that’s just a problem inherent to any human language. And even with those rules, there’s always exceptions (i.e. are you allowed to kill the baby, in order to save the mother?).

This reminded me of a set of quotes from The Kite Runner I had wanted to blog about in a review, but just never got around to it. I have a lot of respect for the father character in this movie.

When Amir (his son) questions his father that drinking [alcohol] is a sin, the following reply was superb:

There is only one sin. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to her husband, his children’s right to a father.

When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth.

There is no act more wretched than stealing.

RayAlome quickly pointed out that does this mean you are not allowed to steal to save your starving family, or to steal to save someone’s life? I responded by saying, it’s never been about to never sin. It has more to do with the degree of the sin. And the following quote gives a good example of when committing one sin is excusable to prevent a bigger sin from occurring:

When a Russian soldier demands to have sex from a woman (who also happens to be a wife and mother) for safe passage through the border, Amir’s father stands up and says (do note there is a translator here):

Father: I want you to ask this man something. Ask him where his shame is.

Russian Soldier: He says, there is no shame in war.

Father: Tell him he is wrong. War doesn’t neglect decency.

Russian Soldier: He says he’d enjoy putting a bullet in you, almost as much as he’d enjoy her.

Father: I’ll take a thousand of his bullets before I let his indecency take place.

Son: Baba, please, he’ll shoot you.

Father: Have I taught you nothing? (back to translator) Tell him he’d better kill me good with the first shot. Because if I don’t go down, I’m tearing him to pieces, goddamn his father!

November 30, 2008November 30, 2008

Thanksgiving Weekend

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I assume some of you are still recovering from being overstuffed.

Thanks to Carolynn for planning out this year’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun helping prepare the food. Of course it was also fun eating it. There was a pretty good show up this year: Carolynn, Joe, Perry, Sathana, Felix, Tom, Jim, Saran, and Pita (sorry if I misspelled your name). Valerie also showed up later to join in the festivities. We had turkey, stuffing, green beans with onions and bacon bits, mashed potato, yam and marshmallows, pumpkin pie. The stuff was delicious. Now I’m hungry just thinking of it.

After eating, we played some Xbox 360: PES 2009, Rock Band 2, Lips, Gears of Wars 2, and even some 8 person Halo 3.

I took some photos which you can view in the photo album:

Thanksgiving 2008

I even recorded a few Rock Band Sessions (posted with permission):

Unfortunately I ran out of disk space during Perry’s and Pita’s performance.

I picked up Lips earlier in the week at the company store, here’s my semi-review. Since I’ve been an semi-avid Rock Band player, I’ll probably be making many comparisons to it.

The game comes with a good selection of songs. All 40 songs are unlocked at the beginning, so you don’t have to go through some tour mode to unlock them. Given that, we’ve found that even though there were 40 songs, not every song was something people wanted to sing. Unlike Rock Band where singing is optional (where you can choose to play guitar or drums), Lips requires someone to actually sing, and people always have a fear of singing songs they’re not too familiar with, especially when you only know the chorus.

You can’t actually fail in this game, but since you’re the center of attention, people become self conscious. It helps if 2 people are actually singing or if the whole crowd joins in like at a real karaoke.

Additional songs can be purchased at 160 points (about $2) each, but the selection is pretty weak right now, but more are supposed to be coming.

It comes with 2 wireless microphones, which is really neat. However, it’s sad that the microphones do NOT work with Rock Band, which apparently requires a patch from Harmonix. It’d be sweet if I were able to use the wireless mics with Rock Band sometime in the near future. The wireless microphone includes motion sensors similar to the Wiimote and you can use it to swing and make noises and so on. It also required to enable star power or overdrive or whatever Lips calls it.

The singing part uses the the center area for lyrics in big text and jumpy balls like at karaoke, and on the top and bottom are the pitch lines for 1st and 2nd player, which includes another set of lyrics, similar to Rock Band. However, different than Rock Band is that the lyrics move along with the pitch lines vertically, making it hard to read ahead. I can look at the lyrics in the center screen, but then my eyes have to jump back and forth between the lyrics in the center and the pitch lines above. Another pet peeve I have is pitch marker. In Rock Band, there’s this triangle that tells you exactly where your current pitch is. In Lips, they have a ball which is very hard to see, making it difficult to judge if I should increase or decrease my pitch in an instant.

There’s also a mode where you can connect a music player (i.e. iPod or Zune) where you can play your music and sing along to it. I haven’t tried this mode yet, but apparently it also does the pitch lines, but without the lyrics, it becomes hard since most people don’t really know the words outside of the chorus for most songs.

Issues with Lips
I’ve hit into a lot of issues with Lips and I haven’t been able to find anyway to troubleshoot the issue. If anyone’s experience the following issues, I would like to know if you have a way to get around it. I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the game itself, since I haven’t hit into any of these issues with the other games I play, but it could be that my Xbox 360 is finally dying.

When playing 2 players, one of the mic’s lights do not blink according to the music. I’ve tried changing the batteries, resyncing the mics, but the lights will not come on. If I hold the power button, the lights will blink, but supposedly they’re suppose to blink according to the music’s rhythm during game play.
Once in awhile, the music becomes out of sync with the game. Other times, there’s a lot of static in the music. And both of these are precursors to the game freezing, which I would then have to reboot. I verified it’s not actually the song or using custom videos as replaying the same song in the same mode has no problems after a reboot.
There’s probably a way to get around this, but I haven’t figured a way yet. Once in awhile, I add a song in Sing mode and decide not to sing it, and I can’t seem to get rid of it. Every time I finish singing a song, instead of returning to the main list, it shows this song. Does anyone know how to remove that song so after singing, it returns me to the main list?

On Saturday, I caught dinner with Andrew and watched Milk. The movie was decent. Interesting information about gay history which I never knew about, but it was quite clear who their targeted audience were. I do have to say Josh Brolin once again outdid himself and gave an amazing performance. I didn’t realize it was him until halfway through the movie. After seeing him in No Country for Old Men and W. and now Milk, not only can he act like the person he’s portraying well, but he can LOOK like the person he’s portraying well. Andrew also mentioned, it would’ve been interesting to hear Dan White’s side of the story on this whole affair. Apparently Dan White was the first one to use the Twinkie Defense.