Doom (probably with spoilers)

Yes another Karl Urban movie review. I promise to start watching other stuff, but you know, he's really hot! Which means watching him is fun, watching some of the movies he's been in, not always so fun. Doom was a fun one though. This movie makes Karl Urban look like a bad ass all the way through. He's a tough marine who has a tragic back story who rescues his sister. Everyone together now aaawwww. Also he beats the shit out of the Rock, how often does THAT happens?
If you don't know Doom is a first person shooter game that came out in the 90's, it revolutionized and changed the gaming industry so much that I'm sure it can still be felt there. I'm only guessing in the last part, cause I'm not a gamer. But I knew what Doom was and what the look was and I'm sure lots of people who have no interest in video games know about Doom too. The movie takes the look and some of the places and has a go at it. The plot is apparently different from the games, apparently the games have to do with transport technology testing on Mars that leads to a portal to Hell, yup real scientific. The movie on the other had deals with an archaeology dig on Mars that finds a civilization with an extra chromosome that makes some of them super human and others monsters. And the rest of the movie is blowing shit up, killing monsters, yelling at the scientists and the Sarge killing everyone in the facility including survivors. It's a really fun movie, but don't expect a lot from it, and possibly don't watch it in high resolution, you spot a more mistakes that you care for.

The best scene in the movie to me is the first person shooter scene, which for a layman looks like what you think the video game should look like.

Chronicles of Riddick(probably spoilers)

As I continue watching as much of Karl Urban's work as I can, and with the new Riddick movie coming out in September I rewatched the Chronicles of Riddick the other night. First off I'm a fan of Pitch Black, where Riddick is from, it's a great sci-fi/horror movie, lots of suspense and twists and Vin Diesel is just amazing in it. I did have a Vin Diesel kick for a while, but that was around XXX and it didn't last long after that. I still think Vin Diesel is a good actor when he's given good work, however he does make bad decisions when he's given control, case in point, Chronicles of Riddick. Vin Diesel had more say it what went on with this squeal and he used it to try and bring some fantasy to a world that had great sci-fi elements that could have been somewhat plausible. Some of the things that made Pitch Black great was the fact that we were just given a little taste of a universe with enough of our own elements in there to make it seem familiar. There was a Muslim 'teacher' with three young boys on their way to New Mecca. We don't know what happened to the old Mecca, but we know that every Muslim is supposed to make a trip to Mecca in their lifetime. There's no politics in Pitch Black, there's a criminal who's being returned to prison, but he has something that they need on that planet, eyes that can see in the dark. As the movie goes on though you do find that Riddick is not only someone quite scary, but also very smart with his own code. It's a really good movie. Moving on to Chronicles of Riddick however you find that maybe we should have left Riddick well enough alone.

Chronicles of Riddick starts with him on the run from Mercenaries, again. This time it's his friend from the first movie looking for him because there is an invading army of Necromancers on their way. A group of people who live somewhere between life and death, at least that's what I gather here. In this movie we learn that Riddick is a Furion, so he's not even human. Now when Riddick was a baby there was a solider in the Necromancer army who saw a fortune-teller who told him a Furion would kill him so he started killing all the Furion male babies by warping their umbilical cord around their neck, which is one of the few things we learn about Riddick in the first movie that he was left in a trash can with his impilical cord wrapped around his neck. Now that solider is in charge of the Necromongers, thinking everything's ok. He comes to Hellion Prime where the 'holy man', as Riddick calls him, is living with his family. So Riddick is on Hellion Prime when the Necromongers invade, this is where we meet Vaako, who is a commander in the Nercomonger army. He's got the worst haircut I've ever seen! Ok maybe not the worst, but it's pretty bad. I bet Karl Urban walked around wearing hats every time they called cut, it's pretty bad. I wouldn't be surprised if a stipulation of him reprising his role in the new Riddick movie was that he doesn't have to have that hair cut again. And here's where I half leave off plot and just talk about the costumes and other random stuff I don't get about this movie. Are there any humans in this universe? Cause Riddick is a Furion, Judy Dench is in this movie, which I'm still wonder how they got her to do it, as an Elemental, and the Necromongers were all 'something else' so is everyone else human? Or are they other things? For that matter what the hell is a Furion? I mean he has eyes that he can see in the dark, that he claims he paid a doctor for, and he's been killing and evading capture and escaping from places for a long time, which would explain all the skills he's developed over the years. So what makes him different from humans? Is it just where he's from? And Vaako's wife, what is up with her? Is there no way for a woman on her own to rise to power, so she has to do it through him? And clearly Vaako is a sexual submissive to her, there's no other way that relationship works. And how come she's the only one wearing gold on that ship/palace thing with four heads that they fly around in. I mean could they make it more obvious that she's power hunger? And what the hell are the quasi-dead? The movie leaves with way more questions than it ever did answer.

I think if there had been a better script and it wasn't attached to Riddick, like if it was a movie on it's own, it might have done ok. But with it being added to the universe that was established so eloquently in Pitch Black, it just does't work at all. So far the trailers for the new Riddick movie look good, back to hunting for Riddick. Vaako is back, but he hasn't been in any of the trailers I've seen so far, so I'm unsure in what capacity he's back and weather that hair will make a reappearance. The more simple the plot the better for this franchise, just have to wait and see.

Judge Dredd Movie Review(probably with spoilers)

With my Karl Urban kick in full swing and one bad movie down I finished downloading another of his movies, Judge Dredd. I knew that it was going to be bad from the beginning, being Judge Dredd and all. But this was particularly bad. It wasn't even like a real movie, it was like a long extended episode of some show. I'll admit that I haven't seen the original Judge Dredd or read the comics.

In this movie Dredd has a telepathic rookie he's taken on a homaside investigation, which turns into a drug bust, which turns into them being trapped in a building with all its residents trying to kill them. The action stuff and all the stuff between Dredd and the rookie would have been alright fun bad action movie stuff, but the 'future' drug they had in the movie was the stupidest drug that I had EVER heard of! It was called 'slow-mo' which was supposed make the brain perceive time slower, which mean super slow-mo shots for about in total half the movie! 

Don't see this movie, even if you are a Karl Urban fan, he's got the helmet on the whole time and he's frowning.

Pathfinder review

When I like an actor I try to watch everything they've been in while I wait for them to be in a new show or movie. Which means I watch a lot of good movies, movies or shows I would not normally watch or even rewatch shows or movies I've already seen in a new way, and I also sit through a lot of crap. Crap in pretty much every way.

Right now I'm on a Karl Urban kick. He's coming to FanExpo this year, I really like him as Dr McCoy in Star Trek, and he's hot! So I'm down loading movies he's been in that I haven't seen, the first one that I found and watched was Pathfinder. It's a movie about a Viking boy who was left for dead in the new world after failing to kill a child. He is then found by a Brave woman who raises him as her own. Then he meets a Brave woman and has the hits for her, but she goes back to her own village. Then the Vikings show up and kill everyone in his village, he gets a sword and starts killing the Vikings. The fight scenes include him riding a shield down a snow covered hill. He shows up at the hot girls village warns them to leave, and then he leaves to go kill the Vikings. Of course the girl goes to follow him and the guy who likes the girl goes follows her. Also for some reason there's a guy who doesn't talk and he follows Karl Urbans character. 

It's a very long, badly paced, gory for no reason, horribly historically inaccurate movie. I don't recommend this movie at all.

Despicable Me 2 Review

Last week I saw Despicable Me 2 with my friends from College. It was, of course, absolutely hilarious! It had a great plot, that fleshed out the characters even more, added to the things you already loved about each of them. The introduction of Lucy was done well too, even through you knew she was going to end up with Gru it was done in a way that made you look forward to them getting together. There was a lot more minion stuff, but just enough that they didn't end up annoying you, which could have been a problem. The girls were back in full force, Agnus had a lovely scene with Gru that was both touching and hilarious. Margo had the whole 'who look boys!' that every dad dreads. As usual though Edith was sort of left off to the side. I guess that's my only problem really Edith is always kind of just in the back ground of both of these movies. I did enjoy the villain in this movie more than Vector in the first movie, I found Vector funny, but kind of annoying. A personal favorite part of the movie was after the movie I asked my friends how they liked the movie against the first movie and they all said they hadn't seen it. Which means I have to lend them all the first movie. This is a very short movie review for two reason's, it was a week ago, so some stuff is gone & Big Bang Theory is on in the living room.

Monster's University Movie Review

Saturday night I went out with my friends from College. It's kind of become our thing to see movies then. We were originally going to see Now You See Me, which I still intend to see at some point, but earlier in the week my brother and sister-in-law had seen Monsters University and they both liked it, so I was in conflict about which one I wanted to see. When I met up with everyone I asked if anyone wanted to see Monsters U as well and there were a lot of people wanted to see it as well.

First we had a nice dinner at Jack Astors, which has reasonably sized portions these days. Then we saw a late screening of Monsters U, which meant the theatre was nice and quite. I really enjoyed this movie for many reasons. As usual the graphics by Pixar were amazing and believable for the world that they created. They made the monsters both adorable and completely scary or creepy.  Watching the relationship of Sully and Mike evolve is believable and satisfying. The new characters are interesting and brought in in a way that you hope you will see them again, and even with the ending in Monsters Inc it is possible to bring them in there as well.

Notable characters include the Dean of the Scare School, who's bug-like legs clicking across the ground kept me creeped out whenever she moved on screen, the frats were all very well done also, each member of each house, even when they were only briefly seen seemed to fit in perfectly. I hope they do make another Monsters movie it's a fun world to visit.

I love watching the credits, mostly because there are a lot if fun names in there and I get to say 'someone actually named there kid that?' And I always like to see which departments end up in the credits, like accounting and craft services. So I sat through the credits and before the adorable end credit scene, there was a section for production babies. I don't know if these were just kids born during production or kids that were conceived and then born during production. 

All I all Disney is awesome, Pixar makes amazing movies, both visually and emotionally, and I like credits. 

Go see Monsters U!

A New Way to See King Tut's Tomb.

I love history and all the things that come from it, the different ways people lived, what we can learn from those people, how they viewed the world, it's all very interesting. Living in Canada I can see and visit some very old sites, but no where near as old as the sites in Egypt. At the moment I don't have the funds to go to Egypt and no offence to Egypt, but it's not the highest on my immediate list, it's there, just not right at the top. (England and Japan are high up on the list) Just today I learned that you can visit the inside of one of the most famous finds in Egypt throughout the world, King Tut's Tomb. Now this is making it accessible to everyone around the world, who can get to a computer with an internet connection. It's a virtual replication of the murals on the walls in King Tut's Tomb. The detail is absolutely insane! You can zoom into the murals and see the cracks that are on the walls. I totally recommend anyone taking a look at the site, there's also a link on the site to the Supreme Council for Antiquities in Egypt.

King Tut's Tomb

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Review

I'm a geek, in case that wasn't obvious in my previous posts, and in the geek world there is currently a fandom called Brony's and Pegasisters. These are adult fans of the children's TV show My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. I know a couple of Brony's and I had seen one episode and I really didn't get it at all. I understand the animation is beautiful, it's very well done and the plot of the episode that I first saw seemed decent, I didn't really know what was going on, which I found out later that it was like the end of the second season and it was the second part of a two part episodes. So I watch my two year old niece a lot and she loves to watch video's with Auntie(that's me) and right now she completely obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine so we'll watch the original show on YouTube and then she'll want to see Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, or as she calls it Mickey House. One day she's sitting on my lap and we're watching Thomas the Tank Engine and she suddenly she says 'My Little Pony.' So I find an episode and we start watching, however after the theme song she says 'No My Little Pony' which means she's done with that. But after a watching the beginning part I decide I'll give it a shot so I find the first season and start watching and I'm hooked. ARG!!!!!!!!! It's such a fun show, the letters to Princess Celeste at the end take me out of it cause it's like oh yeah this is made for five years old and while pretty much every kid show has a moral in the story this one spells it out for you what the lesson is.

The shows plots are good, the characters are very well developed for a children's show. I grew up watching the original show and I still have some of my My Little Pony's, the distinctive feature of the Pony's was there mark on their 'butt' and each mark represented what that Pony did. I have no memory at all of that ever being explained in the original series, it was just there. In this show they call it a 'cutie-mark' and it comes about when a pony figures out what they were meant to do and then it appears. This back story has opened up a few plot points which have made the show even more interesting. One of the things that his has opened up is a group of little fillies who are trying to gain their cutie-marks. These younger pony's are very entertaining and watching them try to achieve their cutie-mark is just a lot of fun as they pretty much try everything, music, design, bowling, and so much more. There is also the division of the Pony's, there are the Unicorns, who use magic, some just have little amounts of magic, like just telekinesis, while others can change objects and age Pony's. There are the Pegasus, the flying Pony's and they have dominion over the sky, even creating the weather in this world. And last is the Earth Pony's, these are the Pony's without any special powers, they work the land and just to regular things.

I'm going to do profiles of the main characters as well some of the side characters that stand out to me and that I just love!

Man of Steele Review

So Saturday night I was involved in a mini reunion of Centennial College International Business Management people and we decided to go see the new Superman movie, Man of Steele. I'm going to say this right off the bat, I am a Marvel fan, the first comic book series I read on a regular basis was X-Men, I loved the first X-Men movie, and I'm a huge fan of the current Avenger stuff going on. So I know I'm a bit bias when it comes to Marvel vs DC. However I'm a fan of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, except Dark Knight Rises, that was just terrible. So after seeing the trailer and a few other clips from the movie on YouTube to me it looked like it had promise, boy was I wrong!

I know I'm not a fan of Superman pretty much at all, but I love really good action movies, especially good comic movies. But this was just a complete disaster. The beginning of the movie takes place where it should on Krypton, but it's the weirdest looking Krypton I've ever seen. Weird future teck that seems to run on the principle of pixels, flying beasts that show up when you shout for them even if there's an air battle going on and then there's the clone babies, so weird! Instead of just having a plot about Superman coming to earth, and starting to battle crime or some other kind of origin story, but there's this added plot line that was defiantly not in the comic at all. Now I don't want to go into plot details, cause even with bad movies people get mad at spoilers, so I'll just give the general problems. The pacing was so bad! There were huge parts of the movie that was just exposition, and when the final battle scene came around it seemed like the director realized that there was no action in the movie, other than at the beginning, so there was so much action crammed into the end of the movie that it made the whole battle pointless. Also there seems to be a lack of safety concerns by anyone in the states in this movie, hey bunch of aliens getting into a bare knuckles fight that when one of them gets thrown into a building it collapses, so you know all the normal people go hide in the front stores of the buildings that are later demolished, oh yeah and the Army doesn't give a shit about their own citizens and just helps blow up the whole town. For that matter the Army isn't allowed to operate on it's own soil in the states, there was no discussion about that in the movie at all, and I'm Canadian and noticing that.

I already have a long standing beef with 'people' in movies, especially in big cities, who see a big alien aircraft, or in the case of the Avengers, giant flying alien creatures, and all the people just stand there and stare at it! I'm sorry but if I see a giant aircraft, alien or otherwise, that shouldn't be there, there's maybe a few minutes of staring and then there's 'holy crap! RUN!!' That's what your reaction is to seeing something dangerous that SHOULDN'T be there!!!!! In this movie it was even worst, it wasn't just innocent by standers, but characters that clearly were going to survive for at least this movie, are just standing in the building staring at the big thing that is destroying their city, and they don't leave the building even after watching this thing crush other buildings until the building across the street falls over! Also these same people who hang out in a building till the building across the street falls over, one of them gets stuck under some rubble and the other people have to help her out, cause of course it's the woman who gets trapped, they just barely survive the 'gravity' thing and then they decide to stick around and continue to watch the battle when they should have gotten the HELL out of there!!

Now onto the the sexism. Like I mentioned there were characters that ran out of the building, two guys and a girl and the only one who gets stuck is the girl, that was not the only thing. First when Superman is born his father holds him up and looks at him like he's the most magnificent thing ever, which I understand that part, however we never see him hand the kid to the woman who started off the movie screaming in pain as she pushed the little one out of her body! Plus there's a moment of doubt from Superman's movie about sending him away, which is understandable, but it's totally a 'I'm a woman who's lost reason' kind of scene with the man being completely rational about the situation. On top of that there's a whole 'father's are the only ones who raise the kids' mentality through out the entire movie. There's one moment where Superman defends his mom, but he leaves her there and doesn't get her to safety or anything or make sure she's alright until after he has a big moment with some soldiers first. And one of the last scenes of course is a girl who's in the army smiling cause 'she think he's kind of hot'. I'm not even going touch on the relationship between Superman and Lois Lane cause they start off with Lois Lane being an amazing Pulitzer prize winning tough reporter who goes after the story no matter what and within a few minutes of meeting him, and him rescuing her she's reduced to an obsessed fan.

One more little note, apparently Metropolis is made out of glass, like the entire city is JUST glass.

My Hawkeye Action Figures

I love Avengers, really really LOVE Avengers. And I love Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. Because Hawkeye is not a real big Hero even in the Marvel-verse, so it's not a surprise that finding a Hawkeye action figure was a challenge. The first one I got was a bobble head Hawkeye that my best friend Sam got me. Then I found an action figure at FanExpo Canada last year & recently I found a regular little action figure at WalMart a little while ago. So I now have Angry Hawkeye, Little Angry Hawkeye and Fat Hawkeye.

My Writing Area

This is the stuff around my desk

 This is where Kermit hangs out when he's not seeing the world

My Name Around Town

Here in Toronto there is a street called Orufus Road. On Orufus Rd are a lot of outlets, it's a great place to shop for deals. I went there with my cousin's fiancée  we were looking specifically looking for possible wedding shops for my cousin's wedding. When in the area we found a couple of places that were named after me, & here they are:

How I spent my Valentines

 I am currently single. I do want to be in a relationship, but I'm picky & not taking just anybody. I'm not going to spend this post whining about that cause that didn't bother me this year. Valentine's day sometimes bothers me, I mean when you're only getting a valentine present from your Mom it makes you feel pretty pathetic. This year I've been having fun on FB sharing geeky inspired valentine cards, like this Deadpool one, I love Deadpool. Today I had school, I'm in college right now, but we were done early & I dont' really have much to do for tomorrow, so I decided to go see a movie, cause I love seeing movies in the theatres. 
Today I took myself out on a date to see Hansel & Gretel 3D. This is the second time I've seen it, which means I get to find new stuff in it! It's silly & kinda dumb, but I love it. Why do I love it? Jeremy Renner's topless, & a bit of a dork in this one. I love Jeremy Renner &  I promise to dedicate an entire post to that obsession. Hansel & Gretel is a lot of fun, there's an old timey fan-boy, who even has a sketch he did of Gretel on the wall. & Femke Janssen is a great dark witch. It makes me wish that X-Men could have gotten the whole Phoenix saga right, she would have made an excellent Dark Phoenix! 
Anyways, the move was fun, I got to see Jeremy Renner topless, I got to see lots of blood & gore, & I got my imagination to open up a lot. That's one of the things for me why I love this movie right now, not just the idea of the old fairy tales or fables getting a new spin, that's fun, but also seeing the witches differently, much more brutal & disgusting! I know that the inspiration for some of the witchcraft stuff came from an old European  book on how to identify a witch from like the Inquisition. I hope they make another one, cause there's a lot they could do. Also can't wait for the DVD cause I'm sure there's a lot that didn't make it into the final edit. Also bloopers, I love bloopers!

Mental Illness Awareness

Today is supposed to be a day of mental illness awareness in Canada. Since I am very very familiar with mental illness I thought I would talk about it.

I have been clinically depressed since, as far as I can tell, I was about eight or nine. When recently asked how long I've been depressed it felt more like forever, but that might have more to do with family situation than actual chemical imbalance in the brain. I currently take two different kinds of anti-depressants, which has allowed me to be stable enough to work, go to school and deal with most normal stresses. That doesn't mean that I don't have incidents at certain times, but it keeps most of them in check. I am not the only one in my family that has been on anti-depressants at one time or another. I'm one of the most comfortable ones to talk openly about it. One of the reason's that I talk openly about the fact that I'm depressed with most people in my life is because I want people to understand me & what can happen at times. Also I need support & being around people who are unaware of my problems & then having them make fun of mental illnesses in general around me is never comfortable.

I won't get too much into the full bout of my depression, there isn't enough room here for that. I will say that most of my depression is not from horrible things happening to me in general, trust me I know that there are A LOT of people worst off than me, but that's one of those things that people don't understand depression. Even though my life has been pretty decent & I know it could have turned out a lot different, that doesn't mean I look around my life and don't feel absolutely hallow, pointless, sad, or that I don't occasionally look around my apartment thinking that the pills in my medicine cabinet would be an easy out. Those thoughts swirl around my head a lot, even with the drugs, & I wish the drugs were the complete solution, but they're not, they only take care of the brain chemistry part, there's still behaviour and emotions to deal with. On top of that there's all the people who you wish you could talk to about what kind of problems you have, but the line that I hate to the point of actually wishing violence on anyone who uses it is  'Just get over it' Anyone with any dealing with depression knows that there is no getting over it.

More things need to be done about mental illness, talking about it will help. Also on a personal note, if anyone out there has the power to get rid of one of the worst commercials about depression I have ever seen, the one with the line's 'Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does depression hurt? Everyone.' Trust me everyone with depression already knows this! I hate this commercial to no end, I'm not even sure if it's supposed to be an awareness ad or if it's trying to sell medication. Also a lot more studies into mental illness need to happen, & not just studies into newer & newer medication. Medication helps bring people back to a state or normalcy, however then you're stuck in a lifetime of taking the damn medication, & if you don't have any medical to pay for the medication your ability to take the pills depend on your pay check  which is never good. Also for women especially whenever we get pregnant we have to go off our anti-depressants. This scars me to no end. I want children & whenever I get pregnant I have to go off my medication, & going off anti-depressants should be gradual & usually takes years to get off & a lot of therapy, if you find yourself suddenly pregnant you have to pretty much go cold turkey from your anti-depressants & on top of that you get to deal with a whole new set of hormones doing a number on your brain. To me it's not a surprise that there are more cases of post-par tame depression that leads to women killing their own children.

This is just a tiny bit of my opinion on depression. I hope it helps people understand more of what it's like or helps people to talk more about it.

2nd Semester Blues

I am in my early 30's and I have been working for over ten years, mostly in retail, & pretty much the rest in call centres. I went to college in 2003 and took Hospitality and Tourism, however I was unable to get a job in that field & I still needed money so I returned to retail. Since then I have been unemployed twice, & the last time I was unemployed I applied for and received government funding to go back to school, which is what I have been doing since September. I'm in a post graduate class, except I only have a college diploma, which doesn't seem to matter for this course, but it doesn't exactly help with the job prospects since most of them require the University degree. Anyway in September I was very excited to go back to school, I had a great time in Hospitality and Tourism, however this time I'm not having such a great time. The course I'm in is one year with an intern-ship. To qualify for the intern-ship I have to maintain a 2.0 grade average, which isn't really that hard for me since I'm good at getting school work done. However this semester I've already had a few days off from sickness & once from pulling a muscle in my shoulder blade by trying to put my hair up in the morning. I'm also very uninterested in a lot of my classes this semester. There are a couple that I find interesting, so I'll probably do well in them, but the rest I could really care less about. Plus I'm having problems with the coordinator of our program & I'm still unsure what exactly to do about that. & I'll be starting to work tomorrow, which means less time on projects. But the projects so far this semester don't seem that hard, which means I'm not working on them as hard as I should be. All in all I'm very bored & avoiding doing a project right at this moment.