Fungii.com

Doom da Movie

There's a trailer for the new movie coming out in October based on the legendary PC game Doom. Staring the Rock and directed by Andrezej "it's ok, even my mom doesn't know how to spell my name!" Bartkowiak. Looks like it might turn out ok, has an Alien vibe to it. It just better not be rated "PG". And it better have a chainsaw. And gibs. Rotsa gibs.

Hide and Seek

This horror movie [Hide and Seek] started off a little slow, but I'm cool with that as long as it follows through with something interesting in the second half. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Psycologist [psychiatrist?] David Callaway [De Niro] wakes up one night to find his wife dead in the bath, apparently a suicide. As the camera pans back, we see his daughter, Emily [Dakota Fanning] looking on in horror. Next we see her all weirded out in a children's hospital, where David tells hospital worker [nurse, doctor?] Katherine [Famke Janssen] that he is taking Emily out to the country for a change of scenery. They meet the Sherriff [Dylan Baker], the weird neighbours and Elizabeth [Shue][the post-dead-wife love interest]. And we start to hear about Emily's strange, unseen, new friend, Charlie...

That's the setup which takes up the first half of the movie and it's all rather boring, although there is an atmosphere of creepiness that almost makes it worth watching, mostly due to Emily being such a little freaking weirdo. But that's part of the problem as she doesn't ever come across as very likeable post mother-mortem, neither does her father or anybody with the exception of Elizabeth, who you know is not long for this world. And I'm not giving away anything much by saying that as Charlie makes it clear very early on that he doesn't like her. And you know if Charlie doesn't like you, you're gonna die, and die ugly. Katherine is somewhat sympathetic, but she's mostly in NYC while all the fun is happening way out in the crazee countryside.

I figured out where the movie was headed early in the second half. And I'm not being a smartass when I say that, I think most people would figure it out as easily since this movie ain't exactly subtle [or original for that matter]. So we find out what's happening, it ain't a big surprise, a few people die gruesome deaths and the movie proceeds to a very predictable wrapup, the end. Except for a general air of creepiness, this movie is quite forgettable, it's all been done before. And done better. I was glad they didn't have the "boogeyman" suddenly come back after being killed at the end, that type of thing has been done to death and I am so sick of it. And it was better than Boogeyman, which was a horrible, horrible bad bad movie. Bad. Considering the stellar cast headlining this movie, it should have been much better. There were also a few obvious continuity errors that I found rather distracting. In one scene, Emily is shown frantically locking a door with a set of keys. In a quick cut seconds later, the door is shown jammed shut with a wooden spoon. In another scene, a flashlight is shut off and knocked away into the water, where it mysteriously turns itself back on!

So yeah, I would say skip this movie. Or at least go into it knowing that it's not going to knock your socks off.

Thor rolls a joint

Photo series on flickr. LOL

NIN "Only"

David Fincher, of "Fight Club" and "Seven" fame, directed the latest Nine Inch Nails video "Only". The pin block "video" looks so cool. Not a bad song either.

Primer

The movie Primer seems to be the kind of film that people either love or hate. After watching it last night, I fall into the former camp. I found it very engrossing, similar in some ways to Pi, Memento or Donnie Darko. Pretty wicked film when you consider it was made for about $7000 by the writer/director who was also the lead actor. It's not a typical movie mostly about plot and characters. Instead it focuses on it's central theme of time travel. The movie has a lot of technical jargon that might turn people off and it does take awhile to "get going". It definitely isn't the type of movie where you "turn of your brain" to enjoy some mindless entertainment, it demands you pay attention or get lost in confusion. And after watching it, you can mull over how the hell this story fits together.
IMDb entry for Primer.
Slashdot post on Primer. Synopsis with some spoilers.
Official movie site.
Review.
Rotten tomatoes entry. [70%]
Future Shop.
Amazon.ca.

Chart trying to make sense of primer timeline. [Not my creation]

Extended entry contains spoilers....

One thing I had a little trouble figuring out was how Aaron goes back in time to before the "failsafe" box was created. They mention he was able to bring one of the other boxes in the failsafe with him, so I figured that's how he did it but I only worked out "how" [within the logic of the movie] this morning. At least I think I understand how.

In the movie, they start up a box and wait a certain amount of time to pass. Then they come back, shut it off and hop in. The vortex, or what have you, cycles between two points in time: A. the time the box was first turned on [the past] and B. roughly the time when the box was turned off [the present]. They get out when the box is at point A, thereby going back in time to when the box was first turned on. Something the weeble-wobble couldn't do because it was an inanimate object, trapped in the vortex, going back and forth in time 1300 times until the machine eventually wound down, leaving the weeble in the present and much older, covered in fungus.

At this point, Aaron can only go back in time a short distance and must prepare beforehand by turning the machine on. But when he discovers the failsafe box and the fact that he can fit one of the other boxes inside it, then he can get around that limitation to a certain degree. By turning on one of the smaller boxes, turning off the failsafe and hopping in with the smaller box, and then hopping out at the failsafe's point A with the small box, he's changed the rules a bit. Now the small box's point B [the present] is in the failsafe's point A [the past when it was first turned on]. When the small box is turned off to begin the cycling process, it starts from the failsafe's point A and cycles back to an undetermined point in the past, before either box even existed! It's almost paradoxical.

Anyway, that's how I worked it out in my head, I could be wrong. :)

I like how he named the charactors' Aaron and Abe. Abe built the boxes and went back in time first, but Aaron found a way to go back in time to before the boxes were even built, therefore Aaron comes before Abe, just like in the phone book!

And at the end, when Aaron is building the "really big box" in France, I assume he's going to use it like Russian dolls, with one box inside another, inside another, inside another etc. so he can keep leapfrogging further and further back in time.

The one thing I didn't like much was the Granger storyline. He discovers the boxes and uses one. This brings up the subject of Abe's failsafe, but that's about it. Pretty much a dead end plot device created for the sole purpose of bringing up Abe's backup plan. Ick.

There were also comments on the IMDB forums about how Aaron[3?] went to France while Aaron[1?] continued on in Texas. This confused me a bit cause while there could be short periods of time where there would be more than one Aaron, eventually the first Aaron would have to hop in the box and blink out of existence to create the second Aaron, therefore there would eventually only be one Aaron. But I guess Aaron had gone back in the box many, many times, trying to fix things, therefore it might take a very long time for all the future Aaron's to blink out of existence, leaving only the one Aaron in France. And I guess that's why he went to France, partly to get away from the whole Aaron everywhere, all the time thing. And all the hot Fench chicks, of course.

[update] Mmmm, reading the forum, it looks like the consensus is that you can't go back in time past the failsafe. Damn, I thought my theory worked pretty well. Apparently, Aaron just used the failsafe to carry the little boxes back to replay the party scene over and over until he got it right. Doh!
The way the boxes are set up you could never go back any further than the first moment the box is set up.

The London Bombings

Woke up this morning to my radio coming on and the first thing I heard was how the markets were falling because of the London bombings. I was like "London bombings, what? Shit!" Hopped out of bed and watched the story unfold on the BBC. Ugh, what a senseless waste. I know these terrorists' ultimate aim is to bring about the destruction of Western liberal democracy, but this is the city that survived WWII's "The Blitz" and the IRA's bombing campaign. Today's excapades sure as hell ain't gonna bring these hard-assed motherfuckers down. Try again, dickwads.

Yeah, I have a lot of admiration for Londoners, they kick ass. I wish them nothing but the best on what must be a pretty horrible day. :(

London Mayor Ken Livingstone: "This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter. ... In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."

On this day, I hate my job

Another crappy day. It got real busy at the end of the day, now I have a shitload of crap that I'm supposed to get done "first thing in the morning". Ick. And my lip still has this lump in it, I guess it'll take awhile for that to go away. I feel like I should be chewing tobacco or something. My chest is still hurting. I might have cracked a rib or something rather than a pulled muscle. Whatever it is, it hurts. Plus I have to do laundry, fix my bike, wash dishes, yadda yadda. Major suckage.

I saw a cool movie on the weekend tho, Kontroll. Entirely set in the Budapest, Hungary subway system, it focuses on the subway kontrollers, the people who check to see if you paid for a ticket. Rather bleak, but also funny and strange.