Category: Entertainment

After all the nonsense with the CRA this past week, I grabbed the middle child and went to the movies on Saturday. Partially based on reviews and on the movie description, I chose to give Source Code a try. On Fandango it was rated with a reviewer score of 74. This was much higher that some of the other films that I pondered. The film description on fandango reads:

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.

The premise could be compared to a mash-up of Groundhog Day, 7 Days and Quantum Leap. As the main character keeps living the event over and over again, he begins to take unconventional approaches to solving the challenge before him. He even gets to know many of the people on the train with him.

As the movie progresses you get a glimpse of the larger world that is impacted by the terror attack on the train. The main character learns how he was chosen to be part of the Source Code project. He also comes up with some creative ways of testing the limits of his eight minute time loop. The movie ending is satisfying. I won’t give it away, but it’s worth a look even at full price.

I found Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligent Design Allowed at Fry’s Electronics today for $4.99.
If you aren’t familiar with the movie here are some things for you to learn more.

World Magazine Article. http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13903

RC Sproul interviews Ben Stein about the movie.

It took me 9 days to play thru the entire game on Normal difficulty level. Wow what an experience. The story-line of the game picks up where the previous one left-off. There is some explanation of the back-story in the enclosed booklet and some cinematic cut scenes through-out the game that fill new users in on the major details.

The game engine has been totally redesigned. The units are recognizable but much more beautifully detailed than the previous game. The texture of the game is rich and well done. I was really worried about the balance of the game but the individual missions are well designed. There are several that depend on time. The player is forced into acting even when they are not ready. These were the most challenging ones for me. I prefer to build-up defenses first and attach when my technology and units have accumulated, sometimes the game makes this very difficult.

Between missions, players can buy mercenaries and technology upgrades. The mercenaries seem much more useful than the unit upgrades; only a few seem worth the price. Mining vespian gas without SCVs, fire turrets and bunker enhancements are more useful than other upgrades in the game because they get more use. By the time you get upgrades to the high-end units, the game is about over.

You need Internet access and a Battlenet Account even to play the single player missions. The game takes 12 Gigabytes of hard disk space. In addition, a multi-core CPU and good video card are a must. See this link for details.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/blizzard-entertainment-starcraft-ii-benchmark,2611.html

My son’s computer was scored lowest in all video settings by the game even with a quad-core CPU. I bought a new motherboard and video card for him at Fry’s. I installed the new motherboard with all his old hardware and turned on the computer. With Windows 7 it was able to boot all the way up without a blue screen of death or resorting to Safe Mode. I installed the drive DVD rebooted and then installed the new video card and we went from a score of Low to Ultra high in all video settings. Microsoft definitely got it right this time.

Blizzard—the game makers—have a real winner on their hands. This was worth the almost $60 price tag. Oh, online game play is free unlike World of Warcraft.

Allegedly this new show is a modern day telling of the lives of Kings Saul and David. After watching it last night I was disappointed. The King’s son is a spoiled party animal that pretends to like girls but saves the really intimate stuff for the boys. There is no son named Jonathan even though he and David are best of friends in the biblical account. David reveals that his slaying of the Goliath tank was an accident not the result of his faith in God. I could go on but I think you get the point.

The story premise could actually work if the writers were just more attentive to the original material. It looks like NBC has chosen to give the biblical account the same treatment that they gave to Battlestar Galactica. Keep the names, flush the story line and “reboot the franchise”. Hey guys, God doesn’t need your help to rebrand the Bible.

There are a lot of reasons that Saul might want to kill David, but it was the people chanting “Saul killed his thousands, David his tens of thousands” that really pushed Saul into a homicidal quest. In the first episode David surrendered twice and blew-up a tank. With a kill ratio like that how is he ever going to get the King a few hundred foreskins for his daughter’s hand in marriage? I Samuel 18:24-29

I have my DVR set to record the show but I have little confidence that it will improve. Too bad. If the show lived up to the hype I would make my children watch every episode.

Over the weekend I snuck out of the house and went to see the movie Watchmen. I had read much of the publicity about the movie. I also was familiar with the legal disputes that almost stopped the film from being released.

Unlike some ignorant idiots, I did know that this was an “R” rated movie and not intended for children. The violence in the film was not as disturbing to me as The Dark Knight Batman movie from last summer. Most of the rape scene in the movie ended up on the cutting room floor but has been promised in the director’s cut of the DVD. You did get the idea of what happened and at least a few other guys stopped it once they figured out what was going on. Dr. Manhattan manages to spend half the movie buck naked and the full frontal shots of his “purple pickle” at parade rest is a new addition to the “R” film genre.

The movie soundtrack has many old songs that we have heard before. Bob Dylan singing “the times they are a changin’” was the first I remember. The most irreverent moment related to the soundtrack in the film was the song used for the big love scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre. If you listen to the lyrics, the song is about King David composing a song of praise to God with the refrain of Hallelujah. So what you get in the movie is a song that keeps repeating Hallelujah while the passionate couple is going “oh yeah baby”. This song choice tells us about the director’s view of God and contributes nothing of substance to the scene.

The film features some bit parts of characters that you might remember from the 1980s.One scene includes characters doing an episode of The McLaughlin Group. It features: Eleanor Clift, Pat Buchanan and John McLaughlin. In another scene we meeting several captains of industry including Lee Iacocca right before Mr. Iacocca and several others are murdered by an attack on the group and their host. The infamous Apple computer ad from the 1984 Super Bowl makes an appearance in the film also.

The portrayal of Richard Nixon as a blood thirsty President that decides on a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union is not in character. Neither is the depiction of Nixon using of Dr. Manhattan as the weapon that ends the Vietnam War. Nixon was the one that started nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviets and Henry Kissinger was close to a settlement in Vietnam before Nixon resigned. Had Nixon remained in office, the timeline in Watchmen would never occur.

At this point stop reading unless you want to know some more details of the film including my take on the ending.

You know who the bad guy is in this film the first time you see him. He is not revealed to the characters in the movie until the end of the film. Frankly this spoiled the film for me.

Rorschach is the character that actually moves that plot along in the film as he tries to discover why someone would kill a 67 year old retired crime fighter called the Comedian. In flashbacks we get to meet the Comedian. How he got the name is never explained. The Comedian is never funny or likeable. He is a selfish, murdering S.O.B. that gets his kicks hurting others.

Rorschach reminds me of Charles Bronson in Death Wish or Eastwood in Dirty Harry. He is a vigilante that sees the world in black and white. His search for the truth is compelling. He operates outside the law and delivers the justice that “the system” is too weak to administer.

The villain in the movie reminds me of someone that you would find in a James Bond flick with one major difference. Bond always stops the bad guy at the last minute. Good eventually triumphs over evil. However, in this movie not only does the bad guy get to nuke several major cities and frame Dr. Manhattan for doing it, he gets away with it! Rorschach protests and Dr. Manhattan kills him! Then Dr. Manhattan leaves earth for greener (or redder) pastures. In the final scenes of the movie, we then see that the villain’s corporation gets the contracts to rebuild the cities that he just nuked five minutes before.

Watchmen is yet another film that does not deliver a comic book ending for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”; instead it embraces relativity, moral ambiguity and materialism. I really wanted to like this movie but it left me empty and unsatisfied. If you want to see it, save some money and wait for the rental.

Fable II has been a long time in coming. It has several improvements over the original since this one was written to run on the XBOX 360. The world of Fable looks great in HD. The interface is easy to use and combat is a cinch. Your character can be male or female. If you have a second controller, you can press the start button and get a “henchman” to fight with you. Don’t share gold or points with this character, it seems like a waste to me since he starts with all spells and skills that you already have.

Buying houses to rent out is a great idea in the game. The dog is a fun and original companion. It is the best part of the game. The dog often needs healing but it does some fighting with you and is great at finding quest items and buried treasure. Ranged weapons include bows and firearms both pistols and rifles.

The Mature rating for the game is not from violence but the potential sexual content of the game. In theory, you can have sexual relations with most other characters in the game. Some stores sell condoms so you also get your choice of “protected” or “unprotected” sex. Both children and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can result from these relationships. For those unfamiliar with the game, they don’t actually show anything, the screen goes completely black, plays a few sound effects and then you’re done. Those interested in you will develop hearts over their heads. Some characters, especially later in the game, will outright proposition you. Ladies of ill repute are dressed accordingly and easy to find in one town especially. Having multiple families is possible but not encouraged.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The story is very similar to the original but set 500 years after the original Fable game. First you start in childhood. Then you jump to being an adult. After several hours of adventures you end up in captivity for ten years! Then you are released and adventure some more. The confrontation with the bad guy is anticlimactic. You end-up being shot by him again and wake-up in the Perfect World with your sister. As you go to bed, you hear music, if you don’t go looking for the music box you stay in “groundhog day” to do it again. Once you find the music box you come face-to-face with the bad guy one last time. Simply play the music box and he is defeated. It’s a far cry from fighting Jack of Blades in the first game.

There are two odd quests in the game. The first quest is required to complete the main story. At one point you must sacrifice either a girl or yourself to these evil shadow guys. If you sacrifice yourself, you end-up with evil looking red eyes and age significantly. Self sacrifice however is an act of good, so why red eyes? The second quest is optional and very weird (twisted). You are asked to dig up the body parts of Lady Grey 500 years after she was purposely dismembered. The grave keeper wants to reanimate her because he is in love with her. Just like Frankenstein, lightning brings Lady Grey back to life along with an added love spell. You now get to decide to let her fall in love with you (the first person she sees after her resurrection) or you need to run like hell to escape her amorous intentions. You have 45 seconds to decide. I found the whole thing creepy and unsettling.

Fable II is an entertaining and fun game to play but it is definitely inappropriate for younger gamers.

There are a lot of creative ways that people have come up with to simultaneously market to young children and separate their parents from money. A pioneer in this field was Walt Disney. Walt entertained children and made a fortune doing it.

Much of the stuff geared to children finds its way into our homes via television. Some of this programming is entertaining to children but like constant fingernails scraping on chalkboards to their parents. Teletubbies and Barney come to mind in this category. Other programs are more like Pixar animation, geared for kids but with something there that adults can enjoy also. For me The Wiggles is in this more creative group.

Last night, my wife and I took our three-year-old son to see the 2008 version of their road show. The show entitled Pop Goes The Wiggles Live! was ninety minutes long and featured The Wiggles and all their friends: Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus and Captain Feathersword. In addition there were many extras on the stage as well.

It was my first time to see Sam. He is the new Wiggle that replaced the ailing Greg. Sam was good. He knew his part and seemed comfortable with the other members of the group. His vocal range was close to Greg’s and he was able to sing and dance his way through the show.

What amazed me most was physical nature of the whole act. There was lots of running and jumping. In addition, The Wiggles exhibited limberness that would be expected more from Jackie Chan that a group of guys that sing silly children’s songs. Lets face it, the Wiggles are getting into middle age and yet they can do the splits and limbo! I would expect some of their moves from someone trained in ballet but not from some guys that majored in child development.

Some of the music they did was prerecorded but much of it was actually done live. Again, it was impressive. They did many of my favorite songs during the show. Can You Point Your Finger and Do the Twist, Fruit Salad and Rock-a-bye Your Bear. They also did an instrumental version of The Knack’s My Sharona. Big Red Car was the last number in the show.

Our seats were about forty feet from the stage. There was lots of audience singing and clapping. Many children brought roses for Dorothy (according to Wiggles lore, Dorothy eats roses) and there were a few bones for Wags the Dog. Some children brought handmade signs that they held-up during the show.

My wife and I enjoyed the show. However, it was a bit overwhelming for our three year old. He experienced sensory overload. He spent much of the show in my lap just playing with the Wiggles stickers that were in our seats when we arrived.

I would like to see The Wiggles again in about two years. By then I think my son will enjoy it more. If you have a chance go see them please borrow a kid and go. I think even my high school aged daughter would have enjoyed the show.