Been ages since I posted here, but I thought I’d get back into it. Went to see Adventureland today. Wasn’t very impressed.
It stars Jesse Eisenberg (Doing a Michael Cera Impression) and Kristen Stewart (Scowling all the way through and, as always, looking in dire need of a good night’s sleep), as two unlikeable lead characters who work together in an amusements park full of unlikeable background characters. They do asshole things, like cheat on each other and drive around drunk and then somehow end up shagging each other in a dull chemistry-less way. And that’s pretty much it. The entire plot of the movie. To be honest I’m baffled that it’s gotten such good reviews elsewhere.
I’ll admit, though, the whole thing was very well filmed. The 1980s setting was very immersive and the soundtrack was nothing short of amazing. Also, there were a couple of good laughs in it (though not nearly enough).
Overall, it was a bit like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, except without the lovable characters, brilliant humour and well written plot.
But to balance out this post, and talk about something more positive, I’d like to talk about another movie I saw recently: District 9.
Going from the trailers and promotional material, I went into District 9 expecting some emotional, slightly boring docu-drama about apartheid but with aliens instead of black people. What I got instead was one of the best sci-fi films of the year, mixing real emotional drama with comedy and giant robot exo-suit battles across Johannesburg. Seriously, there’s something there for everyone and I recommend you all to go see it.
As a follow-up to my last post, I just watched The Butterfly Effect 3 and it was actually pretty awesome. Much darker than the other two, with a bit of a horror twist. Really wasn’t expecting it to be good, but it was almost as great as the first one. Now I’m kinda hoping for a fourth.
I’ve been meaning to update this for weeks, but things keep getting in the way. And by “things keep getting in the way,” I mean I’ve been playing The Sims 3 to an unhealthy degree and spending my remaining free hours watching episodes of House. But now I’ve gotten to the end of House, so that’s freed up my schedule a little. So now, catch up time:
My final exams went very well. I’m sure I passed them all anyway. And I gave the greatest presentation of my life for my Final Year Project. Provided I don’t lose too much on a certain “not-very-well-done” continuous assessment, I should have no problem getting a good degree and, as a result, a place in the Master’s course I applied for.
Getting back to The Sims 3, though, it’s one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. I’ve been playing for two weeks and my family is already seven generations in. The whole open town thing really adds to it and I love the little collection-objects and things. I kinda wish there were more hair choices and a little more control over shaping faces (Mine is actually impossible to make. There’s no slider for general head-roundedness unfortunately so I end up looking very squashed.) The traits system is brilliant. I think my favourite one has to be the Evil trait, which gives them the ability to declare someone their arch-nemesis in a dramatic supervillain style.
Also, watched The Butterfly Effect 2 yesterday. I loved the first one, but the sequel is awful. He only time-travels THREE TIMES! And then, it just ends out of nowhere. It’s the middle of a dramatic scene, you’re waiting for him to go fuck up history again somehow and BAM, the film is over. It’s like someone lost the second half of the script and, rather than rewrite it, they just tacked on a random ending halfway through. I hear there’s a third one too. Can’t imagine what that could be like…
It’s that time of year when I should be studying for my exams, so naturally I’ve been playing flash games on Facebook instead. A couple of weeks ago I got a little hooked on a game called Warzone Tower Defence. After sinking a good few days into it and getting nowhere I decided to give up and didn’t touch the game again… until this week. Just two days ago, I decided to log in to kill some time and managed to score over 89,000 points and get on the top scores of the week for all of Facebook. If that doesn’t look good on a CV, I don’t know what does!
Not all good news this week though. Unfortunately The Sims 3 was leaked online the other day, two weeks ahead of its release. “Why is this bad news?” you ask, “Is Conor taking a moral stance against video-game piracy? Shall he become the public face of intellectual copyright?” No, unfortunately not. The sad fact is, that the game was originally meant to be released just after the end of my exams, when I’d have loads of time to play it. If I was to download it now, I’d probably let it take up all my time and fail my degree, and I really don’t want that to happen. It just sickens me though that people are playing it right now before I can!
Been finishing up my Final Year Project and preparing for exams these past few weeks so I haven’t had much time for updates. Three more weeks and I should no longer be a Computer Applications student. Hopefully going on to do a Masters in Bioinformatics, but I haven’t heard anything back on it yet (doubt I will until after exams).
Anyway, recently I’ve been listening to The Magnetic Fields a lot, so I thought I’d post one of my favourite songs here:
Just stumbled across the box art for the videogame Boulder Dash today. I used to own it myself, but it came in different packaging. Had to laugh at how epic this looks:
Yes, there’s nothing like good old procrastination to get me updating the old blog. It’s easter weekend, and I’ve actually got a few things to talk about. I guess I’ll proceed chronologically.
First of all, Saturday’s Doctor Who episode. wow. Not “Wow!” with a capital W and an exclamation mark mind, but still, wow. Honestly, going by the trailer, I wasn’t expecting much, and the fact that the episode was co-written by Russell T Davies (Quite possibly the worst writer in Doctor Who history. Thankfully retiring at the end of the year) did nothing to build my confidence, but somehow it worked. The story was a bit filler-ish, but had enough going on to keep me interested and Davies for once managed to keep his blatant gay agenda to a minimum (We get it Russell, you like men. Nobody has any problem with that. Now stop making EVERY DAMN CHARACTER a homosexual.) Michelle Ryan made an excellent companion, and I was a little sorry that she won’t be staying on. Also, it was hinted at (with the subtlety of a hammer) that the Master will be making a return, which should be an interesting plot twist.
So, after watching Doctor Who I planned to go to a party at my friend Susan’s house. I called her for directions (having not been to her house before), got a train out to the nearest station and proceeded to get horribly lost. My first mistake was to take a wrong turn out of the train station. From that point on, my directions made little or no sense so I ad-libbed a little: “By cafe, she must have meant that pub”, “By church, she must have meant that bank”, “By turn left, she must have meant go straight ahead for 2 miles”, etc. Anyway, following my now fictional set of directions I eventually found myself in a cemetery at half ten at night. It was then I decided to give Susan a call and ask for the directions again. Fortunately, I was able to figure out where I went wrong and eventually find my way back to the house (which was VERY far away from where I had ended up). Seems everyone else got lost too though, because I was first at the party. People showed up eventually though and good times were had by all.
Finally, today I went to see The Boat that Rocked with some friends. It’s quite a good film, if a bit long. Bill Nighy was hilarious as always and pretty much everyone gave a solid performance. The girl playing Marianne was really good looking, though her character was a bit of a ho bag. Still, I’d give her one. Also, the soundtrack was excellent, a real example of good music used well.
Now I guess I’ve procrastinated long enough. Time to get down to some project work… maybe.
Yes, I’m still alive! Haven’t had time to update in a couple of weeks, with assignments and things being a bit crazy lately. Anyway, in the time since my last update I’ve been to Italy, got a new bed, recast the lead role in a play and suffered the most horrendously freakish incident of bad luck.
But forget all that boring stuff and enjoy some Wang Chung:
I came across this cartoon online today. Thought it would be fitting to post it here seeing as I’m directing Twelfth Night at the moment:
The show is on in DCU this April, so everybody come along.
Also, in keeping with the Shakespeare theme, here’s the video for Stay by Shakespear’s Sister. That woman from Bananarama who comes in about half-way through used to scare the shit out of me as a kid. As an adult she leaves me quite aroused.
