Having seen Adaptation and Being John Malkovitch, I was really anxious to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest movie written by Charlie Kaufman. I thought that both of the aforementioned movies were absolutely brilliant and completely original, so I had very high expectations for this one, and they were well-met. This is another brilliant movie, although not as offbeat as Malkovitch. Jim Carrey, who I basically disliked up until I saw him in Lemony Snicket, plays a very repressed, depressed regular guy; a large departure from his normally over-exaggerated “acting” routine. Yes, he’s tried it before in The Truman Show and in The Majestic (didn’t see it), but this time he totally nailed it. It seems like for once we are seeing the human side of Jim Carrey coming through. I can’t help but draw a similarity to Nicolas Cage’s performance in Adaptation, which I also thought was fantastic. Kate Winslet is the co-star of this movie and she does a great job of portraying a quirky, charming girl. I am so amazingly in awe of how actresses like Kate Winslet can cover up their native accents and sound like a born-and-raised American.

I would rather not give away any aspects of this movie you have not yet been exposed to, but this is anything but a typical boy-meets-girl movie. This is so artfully directed, you really appreciate the unique style of it all. I’d never heard of Michel Gondry before, but I will keep my eyes open for his next movie. This is kind of a “trippy” movie, but at the same time very real. After watching it, you will feel like you’ve experienced a new way of thinking I just want to add that I felt the advertising campaign for this movie was awful, and it didn’t capture the essence or the feel of this movie at all.

Needless to say, another must-see. 5/5 Stars!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the long-awaited announcement you’ve been waiting for… I finally beat Doom 3! Yes, I know what you’re saying: “Didn’t you start that game like 6 or 7 months ago?” The answer is yes. Why? Well, I was busy, but that’s not the only reason. Read on…

First of all, let me start of with some context. I have been a big fan of id software since the days of Wolfenstein 3D. I beat Wolfenstein, I beat Doom and Doom 2, and I beat Quake several times. One of those times was in nightmare mode (the hardest difficulty). I beat Quake 2, even though I didn’t particularly find it to be as awesome as Quake 1. I played Quake 3 and got up to the last guy, but didn’t bother spending the time to beat him. If you’ve played Q3 you know it’s nothing like the other games, it’s like playing multiplayer against the computer. I played and beat the “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” demo but never played the real game. Hey, it was only developed with help from id, it wasn’t really an id game :-). So I was super-duper psyched for Doom 3!

Anyway, when I started the game I was very very impressed. The storyline is actually very nice to have. It makes everything seem all the more real. Unlike other Doom and Quake games, there are people in the game who aren’t trying to kill you! Furthermore, everyone in the game carries a PDA, which holds their e-mail and access codes. If you find a PDA left behind by a dead person, you can read their e-mail, listen to “audio log entries” and access restricted areas. This plays a crucial role in the gameplay, in that you must get a particular PDA to get past certain areas, but also in the atmosphere. Basically, everyone is creeped out by weird things happening in the base, and in listening to their paranoid audio logs, you can’t help but be creeped out as well. I don’t want to give anything away, but basically the game begins in a safe area, where nobody is trying to kill you, and obviously at a certain point things change for the worse. I’ll just say that the moment at which this occurs is awesome!

After this turning point, the game becomes the most realistic “interactive nightmare” I have ever experienced… and I don’t mean that in a good way. This game is too scary. I think the people at id forgot about the fun factor when they made this game, because there is basically nothing fun about this game. Long gone are the dumb, slow monsters of Doom and Quake. These guys are ferocious, very fast, and very strong. One monster can tear you to pieces in a matter of seconds, even if you are fully armored. To make things fair, there are usually very few monsters in any particular area. However, as you can probably imagine, this means no more opening fire on a pack of 20 monsters! That was fun, this is terrifying! To add to the terror, monsters literally teleport right behind you from out of nowhere; there are sometimes monsters waiting for you immediately behind a door, or hiding right next to the door. If you want to survive, you must expect the worst at all times. Does that sound like fun? If so, then you’ll love this game! I guess I have to take some of the blame since I played with the lights off and surround sound on. I think Doom 3 is the most effective diuretic I’ve ever come across.

So besides the fact that this game is about as fun as walk naked through the South Bronx, how is the production quality? It is absolutely first-rate. This game is a masterpiece, without a doubt. It has been thoroughly planned and polished, and it shows. However, the planning seems to have been myopic in more ways than just the fun-factor. I appreciate that id made this a nice long game, but I desperately wanted more scenery changes. Basically, you play the entire game in the mars complex, which looks pretty much the same throughout. It’s especially a shame because the level design is awe-inspiring. The level of detail is astounding, and it appears that everything around has a purpose of some sort. There are offices full of cubicles, server rooms full of computers, bathrooms with all the facilities, large experimental machinery, etc. Of course you must suspend disbelief a bit when it comes to the layout of everything (a base this large would have some more efficient way of getting from one end to the other), but this is a game after all. When the dull mars base scenery finally does change… holy shit! Prepare to be stunned. There were many artists involved in the design and development of this game, and it shows.

So what’s the bottom line? If you are an id fan, you have no excuse for not buying this game. If you are looking for a fun, action-packed shooter, stay away! If you would like to live your worst nightmare, get this game! If you are looking for an awesome multiplayer game, stay away! Multiplayer mode only supports 6 people per map! Overall, this game was a very memorable experience, and I am glad I went through it. I probably will not play through it again, however. This game is clearly a different kind of game than the earlier Dooms and Quakes, it’s more like a horror movie than an action movie. Somehow Quake 1 still holds as my all-time-favorite shooter. I think the people at id need to spend a few months at Disney Land so they can lighten up a bit and get back to making great games that are also great fun.

[Note: due to excessive comment spam, I’ve disabled comments on THIS post. Most other posts allow comments.]

There should be almost no difference on the main page, but I have upgraded my site to run Wordpress 1.5, which is the latest (just released) version of that great blogging software. I was really intimidated by the upgrade (from version 1.2.1), but it turned out to be super-easy. Even porting my custom-made design into the new template system was easy! The only difficulties were a result of all my hacks to the comment page code, which I cleaned up by comparing it to the included templates.

If you look at the post comments area, you will notice the absence of that annoying anti-spam thing I put in before. I am hoping that Wordpress has implemented better spam controls, but I have a feeling that spam will be back soon. When that day comes, I will re-institute the anti-spam stuff. [update] Wow, I didn’t have to wait long! 3 hours later I got spam. The spam controls are back, sorry! Thank your local spammer.

Please e-mail me if you see any errors or problems!

Earlier this week I upgraded PHP to version 4.3.10, and MySQL to version 4.1.9. I’ve heard PHP5 is kinda “iffy” so I steered clear. Anyone have any bad experiences with PHP5?

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I wanted to let the world know… I love you, Monster Garage! You’ve always been there for me to cheer me up when I needed it, and you’ve never had a bad episode. Sure, some of the builds were cooler than others, but they were all bad to the bone!

In all seriousness, I think Monster Garage may be my favorite show on TV. It is funny, interesting, engaging, and cool. Thank you Discovery Channel! For those who have never seen it, take a look at the web site for a taste. Basically, every show covers a 5-day custom car build where they start with some kind of “ordinary” car and give it a special “feature”. The first show ever (which I unfortunately have never seen) is a perfect example: They take a 1994 Ford Explorer and turn it into a garbage truck. How is this possible? They made it so the ceiling and one side of it opens up, and put a hydraulic trash-can-grabbing arm into it, as well as a garbage receptacle and compactor! Also, every build should “appear stock” when it is finished, so the special feature is more or less hidden. Jesse James, the host, is the most likeable bad-ass you’ll see on TV; and not at all phony like the host of a certain spin-off show which completely sucks ass. I could devote a whole post to why Monster House and Monster Nation are both nowhere near as cool as Monster Garage. American Chopper is no Monster Garage, but those guys are usually fun to watch and it’s definitely worth checking out.

Not to dim the lights over Monster Garage, but if you are into the idea of watching a really cool educational show about science/engineering/technology, check out The History Channel’s Modern Marvels. Modern Marvels can be hit or miss, but the hits are fascinating. Too bad their web site is sorely lacking a complete archive of episodes, or else I’d link to some of the cooler episodes.

Make sure to tune in Mondays at 9:00 PM. As Big Swag likes to say: the next Monster Garage challenge is just… around… the bend!

So what were everyone’s favorites? I liked the Diet Pepsi truck ad the best, and then either the FedEx or GoDaddy.com after that. Also enjoyed: Amber Bock’s “Rich/Smooth”, Bud Light’s “Cockatoo”, CareerBuilder.com’s “Chimps”, and Ameriquest’s “Guilty”. You can see them all here.

I was really let down by Emerald Nuts’ new ad. I loved the old 15-second “E.N.” ads that made no sense but were hilarious. You can see both the superbowl and older (better) ads at their web site. Also, the Pepsi iTunes promos were not as cool as I was hoping, but they were still okay. Don’t forget the trick!

Also, interesting to note that GoDaddy.com was supposed to have two ads, but Fox and the NFL decided (after the first one had already aired) that they were going to pull the second ad. See info here.

You can see an extended version of the GoDaddy.com ad here (You must fill out a form on the left).

I had heard about how several Akira Kurosawa movies have been remade in a more modern setting, so it was nice to finally see one of them. The Magnificent Seven is a western movie that is closely based on The Seven Samurai. It was made in 1960 and stars Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson, and Horst Buchholz.

It’s hard not to compare this movie very closely to The Seven Samurai because the plot is nearly the same. This movie starts off with a long scene that serves to introduce two of the seven cowboys that are the movie’s namesake, and then the plot continues much along the lines of Samurai except that instead of in Feudal Japan, this takes place in a Mexican town. Instead of Samurai, there are “gunmen”. As in Samurai, the character (played by Yul Brynner) who is the leader of the group is the star, but the character originally played by Toshiro Mifune (now played by Horst Buchholz) is less focal than in Samurai. However, in Magnificent Seven, his character absorbs some of the plot of the young Samurai who falls in love with a peasant girl (sorry, forgot his name). Not to say that he did a bad job, I was actually very impressed with his spin on the character. Mifune always seemed to me like kind of a bizarre neanderthal, so Buchholz was right not to stick too closely to Mifune’s portrayal, which would have seemed grossly out of place in a western. There is a big plot diversion towards the end of the movie, and I won’t give it away, but in a way I was happy with the differences in the two movies. Most of all, it was nice to see the characters more fleshed out in Maganificent Seven than they were in Seven Samurai.

I don’t have many criticisms of this movie except that I think Yul Brynner is the wrong guy for his part. He plays it excellently, but he is completely bald and does not look American :-). Ironically, Horst Buchholz is German and he looks and acts perfectly fine for his role. I wanted to see more of Robert Vaughn’s character and less of Bred Dexter’s character (Harry Luck). I enjoyed this movie a lot, considering I don’t really go much for Westerns. 4/5 stars.

I decided to take a break from reading amazingly good classic literature and read something more contemporary. This book somehow caught my eye on Amazon.com and it came highly recommended by users and won a “breakout fiction award”, so I decided what the hell. It is set in the early 90s in the East Village in NYC and tells the story of a down-on-his-luck guy who is lovesick and lonely and tries meeting some girls using the a phone dating service.

Aside from various “oh wow, no internet and no cell phones” moments where I felt the nostalgia, I didn’t enjoy this book much at all. There were some humorous moments, and it was a fast read, but I found it very uncompelling. Maybe people who didn’t actually live in New York and have never been to a rave would find this book fascinating, but I am not one of those people. I really don’t know how this won such praise from the Amazon users, not to mention winning an award. After going through the whole book waiting for some payoff, the ending was extremely unrewarding.

Oh well, it was worth a shot. I will try in the future not to read trendy-looking books by young authors after reading Dickens. 1/5