I've had all these posts in draft form floating around, so I decided to finally post them. These are just some quick thoughts on the recent movies we've seen.

Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
I saw a trailer for this a long time ago, and was finally able to track it down on DVD to rent. If you're too young to remember this (as I am), I'll try to put it in context. Imagine if a newly formed terrorist cell that had recently assassinated someone kidnapped Paris Hilton. Shortly thereafter, tapes of Paris Hilton preaching the message of these terrorists are released followed by a message stating that she is joining the terrorists and a picture of her holding an AK-47 dressed in combat fatigues is sent to the public. This is basically what happened when the Symbionese Liberation Army (which was really just a bunch of hippy deadbeats from Berkley) kidnapped Patty Hearst in the 70s. The movie is a documentary with lots of footage from the events and interviews with the key people involved. I found it to be really entertaining. I had heard of this story just through pop culture consciousness, but I really didn't know anything about it. It's a very interesting story, and the documentary has some laugh-out-loud moments.

X-Men: The Last Stand
Went to see X-Men opening night with a group of friends, and I walked out a little disappointed. It's a good movie, and it definitely has some things in it that are worth seeing, but I think there were a lot of missed opportunities. Basically X-Men: The Last Stand is a combination of elements from The Dark Phoenix Saga and Joss Whedon's first arc in Astonishing X-Men called Gifted. The Dark Phoenix Saga is the preeminent X-Men story, and in it the Dark Phoenix kills literally billions of people. I like what they did with the Phoenix effects in the movie, but they left out the most notable effect that always accompanies the Phoenix in the comics; that of a giant flaming bird of prey. That's the shape that is visible under the water at the end of X2 that left all the comic geeks gasping for air. When Dark Phoenix is destroying stuff in The Last Stand, it would have been nice if it was capped off with the full Phoenix effect. It would have looked great on film. I think their rushed schedule made it impossible, though. I believe that when Bryan Singer left the development of the third X-Men film to helm Superman Returns, Fox made the decision that X-Men 3 would come out before Superman Returns no matter what. It's a shame really because a big budget Dark Phoenix movie is enough. You wouldn't even need the subplot of the cure. I felt that many of the mutants were in the movie just for one scene and never really got to shine. How do you have Juggernaut and Colossus and not have them fight? And why do they need to create mutants for the story? There are literally thousands of mutant comic characters in X-Men lore. There is no reason to make some up just for the movie. X-Men: The Last Stand just frustrated me is all. I think there was a much better movie to make in there. I guess comic stories are still better told in the comics.

The Da Vinci Code
Kim and I saw The Da Vinci Code the weekend it came out. Neither of us have read the book, and we did not know any of the big reveals. I thought the story was fantastic, but I don't think that a movie is the right medium. The movie's good, but I don't think I ever need to see it again. It's like an episode of CSI; once you know the secret, the events leading up to it are not as interesting. This may be why people who read the book are so frustrated by the movie.

Now, about all this controversy. This has been personalized a bit for me because of a discussion I had at work on after the movie. I was talking about the story with a friend who has both seen the movie and read the book, and I was inquiring about the differences between the two. Another co-worker overheard and wanted to join our conversation. This is not uncommon and this co-worker is no stranger to me. What surprised me, however, was his stance on the material. He spoke of a meeting held by his church where they discussed the book and the movie, and all the historical inaccuracies of the information presented. He then spoke of how this work of fiction was, in fact, not true. I asked him if he had seen the movie or read the book, and he said, "No." Now, I am guilty of making snap judgements about things before seeing or reading them. For instance, I know that Scary Movie 4 is derivative drivel and I would not laugh once while watching it. I don't need to see it to know this. Having said that, I will not debate the content of Scary Movie 4 with people who have seen it. My policy is that if you want to intelligently debate something, you need to have already consumed it in some way. So someone who has not seen the movie or read the book telling me that the movie is wildly inaccurate was a bid odd. Not to mention that the movie and book are fiction to begin with. Anyway, all this controversy about the story is excessive. In my opinion, that story is no more believable or unbelievable than the one the church sold to me as a child.

posted by Travis at 11:42 AM

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Thursday, May 18, 2006

I wrote up my experience in the Nintendo Wii booth at E3 for twitchguru and it got posted today. You can read it here. I know the Nintendo loyal (dare I call them disciples) are legion, but I do not count myself among them. Wii is not high on my list of antipated products so far, but they still have time to convince me.

posted by Travis at 10:00 AM

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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I wanted to post about Mission: Impossible III, but I wanted to talk about the story a bit and allow time for people to go out and see it. This will contain minor spoilers, but only if you haven't been paying attention to the series as a whole. I liked a lot about M:I III, but what they did with the story bothered me a bit. The story involves *another* rogue IMF agent, just like the previous two movies. Is it me, or does IMF need to run some better background checks on people before hiring them. Seems like they could do us all a big favor and close down. Then maybe there wouldn't be so many well-trained villains running around. Also, as much as I heard that Phillip Seymour Hoffman was fantastic as a villain, I thought he was pretty weak. There are some great action scenes, but some of the storytelling suffers.

Another thing, and I'm talking to you here as well, cast of Poseidon, stop telling me that a movie is a "rollercoaster ride". If what you mean is that it's two hours of waiting and boredom punctuated by 2-3 minutes of fun and excitement followed by possible nausea, I'll pass.

posted by Travis at 10:14 AM

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Saturday, May 13, 2006

Sometimes I get asked what games I have installed on my PC. I think this is common blog fodder and I don't usually stoop so low, but since I just cleaned up the drive a bit I thought I'd post this.

Most of you probably just let the games install to whatever directory they want, allowing them to run hither and yon across your hard disk. I like to keep them all in C:\Games. Furthermore, I have a folder on the quick launch bar where I put shortcuts to every game's executable. That picture is a screenshot of that folder's contents.

posted by Travis at 4:20 PM

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I updated the Writing section with links to my E3 stuff that is posted so far. There are a few more articles that aren't up yet. I also changed the way articles were listed on that page a bit added some more pictures to the E3 2006 set on flickr.

posted by Travis at 12:57 AM

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Friday, May 12, 2006

I'm working E3 this week. Normally when I go to E3, I'm free to just wander and gape. I walk around thinking, "Man, that looks cool," and "Wow, I've never seen that before," and "She's pretty hot with that machinegun," but it's very freeform. This year, I actually have things I need to do while I'm there, things I need to see, stories I need to uncover. I still find myself floundering a bit overwhelmed by input and staggering from new game to new game, but then I'll remember that I'm being paid to be there this year and there are priorities. Luckily, all those priorities involve things I enjoy, and I'm not forced to play cell phone games or "edutainment". I'm covering the show for twitchguru and tgdaily, so my stories will be showing up there (one already has). Is it sad that one of the most exciting things I've seen at E3 is a poster? Long-since cancelled and feared never to be heard from again, Fallout 3 lives on at Bethesda. The PR guy at Bethesda came pretty close to having me arrested when I pressed my Media badge against his forehead and demanded to see it, but I left quietly when he told me there was nothing to see until next year. Actually there are many impressive things at E3 this year. Playstation 3 has serious power, Nintendo's Wii is all wiierd, and Crysis is hands down the best looking anything I've ever seen ever. I'll be doing a full write-up on Crysis for the site that pays, so look for it there, but in short it is absolutely unbelievable. Here are some pictures I've taken so far.

posted by Travis at 12:04 AM

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Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Kim and I finally got married over the weekend. The ceremony was held on Saturday April 29th at The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. Family and friend were in attendance, and the ceremony went perfectly. If you are not into the whole spend-a-year-planning-a-wedding thing, I highly recommend the Vegas wedding. Decide on a hotel and call their wedding planner. Pick this, pick that, rent clothes, show up, and...done. It was exactly what we wanted. Well...maybe not "exactly". We were told it would be a private ceremony. I suppose Vegas private is different than Meacham private because riding in a boat through the middle of the mall during peak hours with a guy standing in the boat shouting at everyone as we float by is NOT my idea of private. Thinking back on it though, it did feel very small and intimate with just Kim and I and the minister in the boat. All in all the experience was great. Kim's step-dad really took care of us (including tickets to see The Blue Man Group) and the whole weekend was awesome. I got to see some family I haven't seen in a long time, got to spend several nights in Vegas with family, Kim got to meet a representative sample of the extended Meacham clan, I got to see Kim's mom and Mollie, and I even won a little money at blackjack.

If you attended and you took pictures, I need them. There is a small grouping of pictures here (mostly Kim and I in a boat), but there were a lot of pictures being taken, and I'd like to have every one of them.

posted by Travis at 4:54 PM

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