FadedBlue_net

Title: Sunshine
Director: Danny Boyle
Year: 2007
Genre: Sci-fi
Format Reviewed: Bluray

Here comes another film from Danny Boyle, who you may know from 28 Days Later, or even earlier, Trainspotting.  Sunshine is an instant classic in both the natural apocalypse and sci-fi genre in general.  Quite simply, it’s Armageddon taken much more seriously, better acting, a thousand times more suspense, and a dose of 2001: A Space Odyssey surreality.  Not to mention awesome special effects, which are deliver very well through the visuals and full bitrate DTS from the bluray.

So what’s so great about it?  Well, first off… there hasn’t been a really, really good sci-fi like this since I-don’t-know-when.  I guess since Jurassic Park, but that wasn’t quite the “spacey” sci-fi that Sunshine is.  The story is believable enough (because it’s true… just about 5 billion years off of reality), and just by watching the film by itself, I didn’t really find the unrealistic things that fills many other critics’ review of the film.  If you know what sci-fi is… that is fiction… then you shouldn’t have a problem giving up some science holes for this all to pull together in the end.

One surprising thing, literally, was the amount of suspense in Sunshine, both surreal psychologically and fight-or-flight style, anxious horror suspense.  In fact, watching this one alone in a dark room was almost too much.  It freaked me out more than even some of the best horror films.  The characters are a little “American” in that they have some ego problems, but this is actually quite believable in context.  Astronauts that have been stuck in the same vessel for months on end.  It probably would get to the average person.

To its merit or demerit, depending on your psychological state, the movie can be quite depressing.  There are many times where the crew must choose to go on a safer path with less chance of success in their mission, or to risk lives (or definite loss of) in order to have a little more chance of success.  Someone has to draw the short straw.   And what if you are the one… who now has to come to the understanding of your death?  Who can be ready for that?  In any case, one soon learns that the mission is heading for disaster and the crew must fight on to succeed and save the world on their last chance.  This gives the viewer something to root for, and a satisfying goal to be achieved.  In this way, the film leads you on a journey of inevitable, without leaving out the very real and challenging decisions of life.  There is something to be learned about humanity in its endeavors that are both caused and saved by itself.

Rating: 5 /5

Time for a Movies & Games update.

Movies:
So I saw Funny Games last weekend, and it turned out to be a bit different than I expected.  Well, ok.. a lot different.  But it wasn’t really bad in any way.  Just that there are boring parts and I got sick of the “polite-ness” that the evil doers gave off in their characters.  But this really isn’t a standard movie in any sense.  In fact, you aren’t really supposed to be “into” the movie, and the characters are really “characters.”  It is more like a meta-film.  It had some violence, but not really.  You don’t actually see it on screen.  It’s one of those movies that is better when you look back on the movie, rather than the enjoyment you get while watching it.  Rating 3 /5.

I plan on seeing Doomsday sometime this week after it got some good reviews from my favorites sites (but not many positive reviews elsewhere on the web!).  I’ve also netflix’d Sunshine on bluray, and should watch that in the next week.  I got my 5 free blurays from the holiday rebate, but those won’t have much priority for now.

Games:
I’m continuing to play through Final Fantasy III on DS, Fire Emblem on Wii, and multi-player Rock Band.  On PC, it’s all about the Orange Box: both my favorite Team Fortress 2, and Half Life 2:Episode 2.  Man, is it nice to start up a good looking FPS (even if it’s not the #1 technically looking game), and run it at max everything with upwards of 80 to 100 frames/sec.  I’m sure I will forget what having a bad PC is like soon.  Anyways, HL2:Ep2 was pretty hard on the hard difficulty, so I moved it down to medium or normal and it’s about right there.  Fire Emblem is pretty hard, too, but I think I have that on a harder difficulty as well.

    So I finally got my replacement Silver DS lite (JP) and tried it out.  I used to use my DS lite as my second alarm clock (the one that really gets you up in the morning), and so I finally can have a regular morning schedule again.  It’s strange how much a second alarm clock gets you up once you’re used to two.  Or maybe the chirp that the DS lite gives out is ingrained to my subconscious and something just clicks to get me up.  In any case, I’m glad to have one once again.

Apart from the clock, I got back into Final Fantasy III on the DS.  The game is a lot of fun, and is very “old school Final Fantasy.”  I haven’t played any FF’s between FF1 and FF7, but this one is great and reminds me of the first.  I’m still not sure whether I want to put screen protectors on the DS though.  I got some light scratches on my last DS lite from Elite Beat Agents, but I figured out that it was caused by the holding the stylus too diagonally, as opposed to point it perpendicular to the screen (straight down).

Lastly, today I figured out how to set up the Rock Band controller from PS3 to the PC in order to play Guitar Hero III.  Add the HDMI/optical out to my TV and stereo, and you pretty much have GH3 better than any console version out there.  I do like the Rock Band style controller much better than any of the Guitar Hero ones.  I think the graphics on PC are a little better as well.

Joe’s release calendar:
- None of interest this week

First ever audio blog! I dunno if you call this a podcast or not, but whatever.

FadedBlue AudioBlog #1

Topics covered:

1. Intro
2. Games
   1. New DS lite
   2. DS, PC, games
   3. GT5 Prologue
3. Movies
   1. CIFF
   2. New DVDs
   3. New at theaters
4. Music
   1. New Local H album & tour
   2. MusicMaker 12 & techno

Music Credits:
1. “Doomsday” by Atreyu
2. “Suffocate” by Finger Eleven
3. “Gonna Leave You” by Queens of the Stone Age
4. “All the Kids Are Right” by Local H
5. “Everyone Alive” by Local H (live)

Title: Dead Time (aka Kala)
Director: Joko Anwar
Year: 2007
Genre: Mystery, Horror
Format Reviewed: Film (CIFF ‘08)

Even among westerners who like asian film, they generally don’t see many films outside of the three “superpowers” of Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. The cinemas of other countries don’t quite have the prestige, and often times quality, of them.  In turn, what they lack in fluidity and polish, they must make up for in other places. Usually this means what most indie films add: creativity. Dead Time does this by blending the lines of genre, as well as injecting a dose of traditional storytelling.

At first, Dead Time seems like a mediocre horror film, because it’s never really scary or engaging. The effects are quite poor for today’s standards. Even looking past them, it is almost impossible to be scared if you are a fan of horror. We’ve already seen all of these things in horror: a ghost in the corner of the screen, a shock during silence. It’s been worked much better before. But don’t be fooled so quickly. Dead Time is not really a horror in this sense. It is a horror similar to the way that The Host is a monster movie. The story revolves around a set of events that lend itself to the given genre, but it isn’t meant to catch your full attention.

Move forward a half hour with no scares, and seemingly no plot development, and you will start to see the hidden beauty of the film. As the story starts to unfold, questions about the plot reveal themselves and turn it into a mystery with some dark & dirty action. And very awesome action at that. The characters are classic, even though they are too individualistic. This turns the entire movie from boring to fun and exciting. Add a satisfying ending tops it all off, and overall it is a great theater experience. Hopefully we will see more original movies like this to come.

Good: Action sequences, Story, Characters, Use of camera, Soundtrack, Awesome weapons, Cool deaths, Original Story
Bad: Boring middle, Horror aspects, Confusing at times

Overall: Definitely worth seeing, just don’t be too quick to judge this one. Like most asian film, the ending will make up for any poor qualities of the rest. Recommended for those who like supernatural mystery and original stories.

Rating: 3 /5

Tonight, I’ve returned from two days in Cleveland for the Cleveland International Film Festival. All together, it was a pretty good trip, and good use of a PTO day from work. I plan to post reviews of the three movies I saw there in the upcoming couple days, as well as general impressions on my first film festival.

In other news, I have signed up for monthly carbon offsets, and am now carbon neutral. Well actually, I’m buying more than I consume, so I guess that makes me carbon negative. If you wish to do the same, here is the site. It’s pretty cheap.

Alright, so I took the big step (after purchasing a domain and hosting service) to starting my own blog. I’ve had a number of blogs and websites in the past, but now it’s all kind of “professional” looking. How special is that?..

Anyways, I plan on writing about anything from video games to film reviews to posting my own pictures and music. I hope you enjoy it!