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Haute Tension

I just finished watching this little gem and all I can say is "wow"! It's a French horror/thriller film from 2003 and the literal translation of its title is "High Tension". I really don't want to give away any of the plot as I think the best way to view this film would be to go in without any prior knowledge, other than it's very good. The version I saw was dubbed in English, very badly, and that's really the only complaint I have about it. I think there's another version that's censored, but I'm pretty sure the version I saw was uncut. Had to be, had some pretty gruesome scenes in it. It lives up to its title, very intense and well done, go see it!

CSI: New York

I just tried to watch CSI: NY and gave up after only 10 minutes or so. Why, bad acting? Bad script? No, bad camerawork! Holy fuck, I think their cameraman has Parkinson's or something, brutal. Constantly shaking and moving around, unwatchable. I don't mind a little hand-held camerawork during special sequences, say when an officer is chasing a criminal or such. But the scene was just a static shot of two character's talking, absolutely no need for the jumpy cam. You think with all the money this series is making they could afford a fucking tripod. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the editing is equally as brutal. They don't hold a shot for more than one or two seconds at a time. I am not kidding, that static shot of two people talking must of had twenty fucking cuts. Long shot, closeup, two shot, back to long shot etc... Just for two people goddamn talking fer chrissake! Eeek! And it kept up like that in the following scenes, just cut, cut, cut. There must be a couple thousand cuts for each show. What the fuck were they thinking?

Speaking of CSI, I've been catching some of the repeats on Spike TV, they show two episodes back to back everyday, right after I get off work, very nice. After not watching this show for awhile, I forgot how good it is. I mean it's not Shakespeare or anything, but it's pretty good entertainment. Much better than this ridiculous CSI:NY abomination, and better than CSI:Miami, which I really disliked at first, but lately has been somewhat watchable. The thing I like about the original is that Grissom urges his underlings to not get emotionally involved, let the evidence speak for itself. [not that they always succeed in remaining emotionally detached, but at least he acknowledges that it would be best if they did] Whereas Horatio on CSI:Miami has a big chip on his shoulder and is out to nail any perp that crosses his path, the evidence is secondary. Which undermines the whole premise behind the CSI franchise, forensics¹. Otherwise, it's just another cop show.

King Arthur

Watched King Arthur tonight. I liked it quite a bit, a lot of battle scenes with people getting stabbed and shot with flaming arrows. You know, all the good stuff. It was supposed to be more "historical" than most King Arthur films, but it seemed as over the top as any, just without any magic.

Dawn of War

Finished Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War yesterday. Pretty cool game, but rather shallow strategy-wise. Almost every mission was your basic build up your army, and then head out and destroy the enemy. Not much variation on that theme, and most missions were very, very easy. [playing on normal] The game was also quite short, only eleven missions. Having said all that, I still had a blast playing the thing. The graphics were very well done, it played without a hitch [no major bugs], good cutscenes with great voiceovers, lots of cool units and upgrades. The stuff your units say when you click on them gets rather annoying after awhile though. Instead of a simple "yes", they'd say something like "yes, by the leave of the magnificent Emporer I will now go to that spot and crush mine enemies with great vengence." [not really, I just made that up] But it is really long and repetetive. This game was much more fun than Warcraft III, which I thought was rather tedious. Anyway, now I'm moving on to Rome: Total War, a much deeper game, but has some crucial bugs that really drag the game down a few notches. Oh there was a bit of a bug in DOW, sometimes the pathfinding was a little flakey and you would have to babysit a unit across the map, but that was rare.