LadyCrimson

I spent half the afternoon and the evening lying on the couch and watching my husband play Borderlands. Occasionally calling out help and directions here and there. It's almost as fun watching him get all panicked/running around as it was playing myself. Vacations & lazy days...I love them.

Tried/played several this year but I only bought three 2009 games I think... ...so, uh... Borderlands Overlord 2 Dawn of Discovery/Anno 1404

I think if I could talk to Morgan Freeman, he could tell me the secret to extended youth. I swear...he's 72 and beyond the grey hair, only recently started to seem like he's truly aging. Some folk have all the luck.

Hubby tried Borderlands on the TV, using the xbox pc-gamepad. Which made me have to try it, of course. Borderlands still = a B+ game, but using a gamepad = huge annoyance. I don't know how you console people do it.

Why oh why did they even bother to make Night at the Museum2? Am a huge Holmes fan (not the moviesl, just the books)...the ads make this new film look like Holmes=Bond or something, vs. an intellectual. Ads misleading? ...I did like that they seemed to turn Watson into something a bit closer to the stories, instead of a bumbling idiot sidekick.

It's pretty? ...I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I didn't find myself completely enraptured. I think it may be partly that every character in the movie, Cameron has already used in a much more effective/entertaining way in one of his other movies. Paul Reiser in Aliens> Giovanni Ribisi as the corporate money sleezebag, Michael Biehn > Stephen Lang as the not-necessarily-true-evil but duty-nut military, etc. Felt like he was phoning in the story/chrs. concentrate on the visuals of the world. But I did enjoy seeing Lang ham it up...luved him as Pickett in Gettysberg, had no idea he could be so "badass." lol

My mum gave us a bit o' money...a kind of early, partial inheritance I guess...which on the one hand is cool, but on the other hand is kinda melancholy because it came from one of my dad's IRA's that he'd created for us kids...one he'd made very early when he first was diagnosed with MS and worried about his young kids futures if he died early. Luckily, he didn't...so in the end, the happy and the sad...it all balanced out. Life definitely has a balance to it. And it's all so interesting. Happy Holidays, everyone.

So now I've seen Avatar and supposedly have the non-troll authority to state an opinion. I'm going to be a bit long-winded, sorry. General thoughts are 1st, a couple comments on CGI in the middle, and thoughts about the 3D are last. General thoughts (no spoilers, don't worry): I still can't drink the Avatar Kool-Aid, but it *is* a fun effects-wrapped movie. As a film, I give it 3 stars of 5. But wait...as a theater experience, I'd give it 4 stars. Those are two different things, imo -- the org. Star Wars didn't have awesome dialogue, original plot, or acting, after all...it was, at the time, all about the experience. So fun visuals & stuff abound in Avatar, which no doubt will affect upcoming movies technically for years...and I can understand why many are digging it all...but imo there's nothing beyond that to make Avatar memorable. For me it's like how a roller coaster ride can be fun while you're on it, but won't have a lasting impact. 10 years from now it won't be on any of my best ever lists, except technical merits. So if imaginative day-glo visuals of an alien world - the experience - is something you really enjoy & you're content with passable plot & (very) familiar characters, Avatar will be a winner for you. The two are merged well enough together to present an entertaining overall package - ie, it's not Transformers. But if you're wishing for something deeper or even a little off the grid, you won't find it here. Predictability/cliche etc. is fine (and nigh unavoidable, as some have mentioned) as long as you're distracted enough to not care, but that wasn't quite the case for me. I remained largely detached which made me restless occasionally. If it was going to be mostly CGI anyway, I would have liked a more truly alien culture. For example, a non-humanoid race...now that would've made certain plot dilemmas a lot more interesting. The audience I was with was absolutely silent through the whole movie, with no applause afterwards. I'm not sure if they were pleasantly stunned or somewhat bored. heh But all said and done, it was worth dragging my ass out of the house to see on the big screen, so if you're on the fence about that, I'd recommend doing the same, if only for the experience. I absolutely would not have liked it as much on DVD, where the too familiar characters and scenarios couldn't be largely superseded by the visuals. On the CGI: Scenery/foliage was pretty cool, but humanoid/animals didn't fool me for a minute..they mostly looked like a future-tech video game w/the best AA and pixel shading evah. Maybe it's my photographer's eye, but the often too-shiny, overly smooth skin tones and other stuff felt surreal and too plastic. Which isn't to say it's not all singularly impressive, nonetheless. And man, I definitely wish video games looked like this. Heh. Side note, a person on Twitter was commenting how her deaf father had an extremely hard time lip-reading CGI mouths, and Avatar was still quite problematic. I found that interesting since I thought the lips to be one of the few more realistic looking features of the faces, but I wasn't trying to read lips. About the 3D: Most of the 3D in Avatar was not about making things wildly pop out at you for 'boo' thrills, but only to environmentally enhance, and it does that fairly well. I can't really explain it better than that. One of the best (or the most annoying, depending on PoV) was how in scenes with lots of floating motes, I found myself half-tempted to raise a hand to try to brush them out of my face, because it looked like heavy dust was falling in the theater. But there were two things that bothered me a little: one, for the 1st hour, certain things made me feel a bit nauseous...mostly the text & the way they tried to 'float-motion' some things. It did go away once my eyes got used to processing the illusion, so it's temporary. Two, 3D's attempt at general depth perception was kind of a failure. I'm not talking about 'inyourface' moments, which were cool, but when they'd use it in regular scenes. Such as, main chr. in front talking w/two chrs in back observing, where the front chr. would 'float' on a slightly different plane as the background guys...making him seem like a hyper-cardboard cutout, with the back characters blurred out even more than in 2D, to try and fake depth perception. It doesn't quite work. Also, at the edges of the screen & peripheral vision, things sometimes seemed a little wonky. Maybe an angle thing. But the 3D was interesting and definitely worth trying, as long as you're not extremely prone to visual nausea. I think I still prefer 2D, but if 3D action movies become the mainstream, I'd find it acceptable, which I was relieved to know.

Edit: Scratch that thought. I guess it's still technically illegal for the most part, even if rarely legally disputed, so...never mind, don't want encourage it here.

Oh I will...not doing so wouldn't be funny, that'd just be mean. He mentioned the Makita...guess I can look at them. To me they're all just...y'know...tools. I'm as far removed from a romance/gift expert as you can get, but to me that seems a bit much for the situation. Especially if it comes in a Tiffany box. Design wise, it's fine...but price wise it seems a bit high. Not that you'd tell her the price, I assume, but if she knows the store it came from she could find out. I dunno...it'd probably make me a little uncomfy because of that. Then again, like I said, I'm not a gift expert. Maybe that's normal these days.

I already downloaded the free Tex Murphy package...haven't tried them yet. Yeah, they're slow to get new stuff. But for me that's ok, since I'm often slow to play, heh. I only get ones I either never bought myself, or where I assume/think my discs are so old they probably wouldn't work well on Win7 or possibly even XP w/out some work (I don't have/use DosBox). Which means I'd love Tombraider 1 & 2...

Tropico 1. Quite fun for a while, even if the ratio of constant immigration outpaces the games speed of constructing new housing, so the little nits build slum shack areas faster than you can keep up. Wish you could turn immigration off for a while, if you want. I also tried to play Myst, but on my Win7 rig it moves so fast (even tho it's a click-for-new-scene game) it's disorienting. Hopefully putting it on the old Pentium4-XP rig will work better, but haven't gotten around to it yet... Hubby finished Underworld and decided to try playing the one with the dinosaur again...which he never did get past.

Heh yeah the popups for everything under the sun annoyed me at first too. I have them off now and get nary a one. The little white flag in the r-corner of taskbar is still there, but it knows better than to bother me with any disruptive messages, now. Things like non-appearing icons and unintuitive changes are why I almost immediately altered Win7 interface & taskbar to behave a lot more like XP. It was a bit of work, but worth it.

I'd never heard of her or seen any of those movies...except for Happy Feet...but yeah, always sad when so young, whatever the cause. Eating disorder could definitely do it...and could include/be a reason for certain types of drug abuse, prescribed or otherwise.

Haha! Glad he doesn't have a green pony-tail. I hope Mickey is good in the role...I'd love to see him continue his 'comeback' after years of being..well, less than stellar.

Holidays, families, spouses.....I'm a mean one, Mrs. Grinch. Unrelated: hubby was helping to put up a curtain rod when he said "I deserve a cordless drill." I, of course, said "So go buy one." To which he replied that I should know he's too cheap to make himself buy a really good one, and since I'm not as adverse to spending a little more, that I should go shopping and get him one for Xmas. Since it all comes from the same bank account+I know nothing about tools myself, I found this really amusing. Then an acquaintance suggested I should buy hubby a Fisher Price drill, which was even more amusing. So much so, that I just might do it.

None taken. I was only trying to explain where my mentality for movies (any movies, not just Avatar) tends to come from...grains of salt. Unfortunately between popular opening weekend sellouts + too much real life stuff, I can't go until Thurs afternoon. Man I'm tired, and the week isn't over yet. I'm a Grinch...

BRRRRRRRR.....that's all I have to say to that picture.

Some of us are also "old" and jaded. I haven't felt that awed about any film since I was 25 or so. There came a point where that type of cinema wonder/awe/'epic, man!' just wasn't possible anymore, no matter how good I think a film was. It's like crush vs. love...I can't crush on movies these days. Thus, I *will* be thinking about how they did the CGI/motion capture, even tho I'm not a animation student. Sad for me, I guess. I personally am not trying to pan the movie sight unseen...but I know myself fairly well and what I like these days and I just have doubts whether *I'll* think Avatar is a "masterpiece." If it wasn't Cameron I wouldn't even think about going. After all, I seriously thought I wouldn't like Titanic, but turned out I thought it pretty watchable even w/all the mushy stuff. heh Cameron's never been good with dialogue, but he does know how to make a spectacle. Wish he didn't have to spend 400million to do it tho.

The ads on the 50" TV don't make them seem that way...they're still clearly very CGI. Could easily be a lot better on a huge screen tho, I know that. But might mean not so great for buying the disc later. PS - I didn't think Gollum looked "real" either...even on big screen...but he was very very good.

Hubby still playing TR:Underworld. I think he's got 28 hours on it already. Yes, he's very slow. He also still bobs his head all over the place when he's looking around the screen. Silly man. About to dive back into Divine Divinity.

Sunny Florida or Flooded Florida, that is always the question? Hope you dry out soon.

Twitter-hype has me thinking I may go see this anyway....I've yet to see any modern 3D movies w/the clear sunglasses-looking polarized lenses or whatever, and I'd like to know what the fuss is about. (last 3D I saw was a Vegas IMAX several years ago, with this very heavy 3d face rig, which was very cool) Avatar seems as good a movie to check that aspect out as any. Wish we had an IMAX closer than San Fran, guess a non-IMAX 3D theater will have to do. I am prepared to be wowed by graphics and bored by the Dances With Pandora plot. Hopefully between the two extremes I'll be entertained enough.

Now that's a true serving of mashed neat-o covered in awesome-sauce.

Sorry, but I must: