harry potter & the temple of doom

I won’t beat around the bush here – I disliked the film adaptation of HBP. While I estimate I’ve read the corresponding novel at least three times, I honestly can’t see myself sitting through another two and a half hours of saccharine tripe that should’ve been called Harry Potter & the Half-Finished Script.

angst to the MAX

This is Saturday morning, back-of-the-cereal-box Harry Potter lite. Someone in charge made a command decision that this movie should be rated PG (almost assuredly for licensing opportunities) and, as a result, you’re left with a watered-down movie that was censored into oblivion. As you’re probably well aware, the culmination of the novel was near the end when Professor Snape lobs a death spell at Dumbledore and smotes his ruin upon the countryside. This should have been the absolute high point of the movie, with Harry frozen and impotent under his invisibility cloak while the Death Eaters rage through Hogwarts, slaying anyone who gets in their way as they escape. I can remember being unable to put the book down while reading through to the end – completely rapt in Rowling’s spell. The movie could’ve merely mirrored this section of the book line-by-line and scene-for-scene and it would’ve given a much-needed dose of excitement into the final scenes. Instead, they opted to show a brief glimpse of Dumbledore being hurled off the balcony, followed by the Death Eaters rampaging through a conspicuously empty dining hall, then setting fire to Hagrid’s empty house, and swiftly attended by a scene involving every Hogwarts student standing in the courtyard with Dumbledore’s broken body and holding their wands aloft in mournful tribute… What the fuck?!

It struck me as odd when I first read the news that HBP would be rated PG. Both Goblet of Fire [GoF] and Order of the Phoenix were PG-13. And not due to Hollywood injections of gratuitous danger and violence, either – it fit with both the tone and the scope of both books. Starting with GoF, Rowling’s series concerning a certain boy wizard takes a dark turn – but a turn that rings true with the story she built. From day one, Harry has been fated to deliver the death stroke to He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and Rowling weaves many fatalistic themes throughout her books which, up to this point, have been faithfully translated in the earlier films. But not HBP.

This movie is supremely condescending in its desire to hold your hand and beat you over the head with scenes that existed as hints and subtle nuance in the book. Do we really need to see Malfoy stoically crying on balconies and hallways in every other frame to see that he is conflicted over his secret orders from Voldemort? What about the vanishing cabinet? In the book, it was a surprise completely out of left-field to learn that Malfoy was secretly experimenting with the cabinet in order to eventually use it for smuggling Death Eaters into Hogwarts. But the movie insists on introducing the cabinet early on and employs numerous montages of Malfoy’s efforts to get it working. This is script-writing at its laziest.

i know how you feel, Ron

The novel was rife with romantic themes, which are then awkwardly wrestled on to the silver screen. Some relationships – between Tonks and Remus, for example – were abruptly dropped into the audience’s collective lap, with nary a hint of foreshadowing or, more regrettably, context as to how or why they started seeing eachother. Others – such as the impending nuptials of rebellious Bill Weasley and the seductive Fleur Delacour – were never mentioned at all in the film. This, in particular, mystified me since Fleur played a rather strong counterpoint to stiff-collared Hermione in Goblet of Fire and her engagement – to a Weasley, of all people – laid the groundwork for the romantic angst that ensues throughout the majority of the Half-Blood Prince. Too much time is spent on mundane teenage flirtations between Harry and Ginny instead of passages from the book that are actually interesting.

Let’s be honest – at a very basic level, movies must evoke interest, surprise, admiration, fear, laughter – something. HBP contains hours of build-up and backstory with no climax – evoking nothing but a yawn and the occasional thought of how full your bladder is after downing that 64oz Mountain Dew. No cinema sin is more egregious than a movie that doesn’t grip your interest and hold it from beginning to end. And in this regard, Half-Blood Prince is the veritable antichrist.

Last Thursday, I had the first session of my last Master’s class at VT (the Northern Virginia campus). After a severe bout of misguidance via my various school advisors, I’ve been forced to take this one last class after being told I was done for good after finishing a course in Artificial Intelligence over a year ago. If that came out confusing, it’s probably because the whole graduate school situation has been fucked up for many, many months now. As it stands, I just need to defend my thesis (which is complete, but untouched for 6 months now) and get a passing grade in this summer class to finally get my MS and move the hell on.

Without getting into too many trivial details, this class is an absolute joke. The professor who teaches it is a hardcore academic and is of the mindset that all programmers eventually ‘graduate’ from coding and enter the ranks of middle management at some point in their careers. I don’t know about him, but the day I stop coding or designing is the day I start looking for a new job. At any rate, the worst part of the class is that it starts in the early evening and doesn’t get out until 10pm. So, I’m basically forced to work late, scarf down reheated left-overs at work for dinner, drive out to Falls Church, attend class, drive home to Leesburg, and then pretty much go to bed before heading out to work the next morning. Goddamn drag and a half. To top it off, last Thursday I called Krystle on the way home only to find out she had an accident while I was in class. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt at all, but she hit a deer coming home on a back-road in the dead of night. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, living way out in the boonies like we do – but it’s still a pain in the ass (and a several hundred dollar deductible) to sort through.

The weekend ended up being pretty nice, though. We slammed through all of our errands / chores on Saturday so that we could pretty much just chill out the entire weekend. Chilling out, in this context, involved watching a metric ton of the French Open and playing a bunch of games. The highlight of the tournament has definitely been the match today where the Swede, Robin Soderling, absolutely manhandled Nadal to beat him in four sets. This is the absolutely first time that Nadal has ever lost a match in the French Open and I’m insanely happy that Soderling was the man to finally do it. He’s been one of my favourite players since last Wimbledon when he pissed Rafa off by mocking him and pretending to pick his ass like OCD Nadal always does before a serve. Serves him right – fantastic match.

I mentioned that Krystle and I played a bunch of games, but that’s a straight-up lie. In reality, we’ve just been playing the hell out of one game – Sacred 2 for the 360. Generally, the only games that she’ll even consider cooping with me are the isometric, hack-and-slash RPGs which, pretty suprisingly, are in severe short supply on the 360. After scoping this out on-line, it looked right up her alley and so I ended up buying it Friday evening. Needless to say, we’re both addicted to the damn game, and we’ve racked up about 15 hours just from this weekend alone. While it can be buggy as hell and it’s interface is pretty clumsy, there’s something intangibly awesome about the game in general. For one thing, we’ve been running around completing quests and leveling up and, after all this time, we’re still in the first chapter. There’s still 85% of the game we have yet to uncover – it’s insanely massive, to put it mildly. So, it looks like we’ll have a distraction for quite a while to come.

Speaking of massive, this post has turned gargantuan. Serves me right for taking so long to update, I suppose. The tech blog at Pansopht is still in the works, I’m just tweaking the design before I turn it live. In addition, I’m working on a few other projects which should yield some interesting things in the next few weeks. As for the near future, I think Krystle and I are going to see Up tomorrow after work. I’m a huge fan of Pixar’s body of work, so I’m really jazzed about seeing it. If we do end up seeing it tomorrow, I’ll be sure to write a review and post it by the middle of the week for those who are interested.

Well, that’s all I’ve got. Night.

just use your reimagination

It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion by now that summer blockbusters are as much an American tradition as apple pie, Coca-Cola, and Chuck Norris (circa Delta Force, of course). When the weather warms up, we are more than willing to shell out a couple of ten-dollar bills to see movies starring actors who get paid more per second of screen time than the average blue-collar Joe will likely ever earn in their entire lives. But this isn’t a review of class inequality in post-modern America. No, my friends, this review involves robots.

Terminator: Salvation is yet another stark reimagining of a beloved franchise in a long line of others being released this summer season (Star Trek, I’m looking at you). But, wait – how can the rather morbid Terminator franchise grow starker and… more reimagined than it already is? How can a series built around the premise of homicidal, time-travelling, humanoid robots possibly be brought back to the big screen for a fourth time without jumping the shark a la Terminator 3? Well, Hollywood pondered this for a hot minute, stroked their forked goatees, and *BAM* they cast Christian Bale. Worked for Batman. Done.

So, as always, the question remains… Does director McG, the creative mastermind behind such gems as Charlie’s Angels and The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll manage to deliver on the massive reams of hype? Or should his contract be TERMINATED? Click to find out.

If you’re a fan of the Terminator universe, the odds are good that you’ve probably already watched the verbosely-named (and possibly now defunct) Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox. After finishing the second season, the writers had drafted some very clever story-lines involving on-the-lam teen, John Connor, and his misfit band of freedom fighters duking it out with robots from the future and a then-burgeoning SkyNet. These writers had obviously studied the canon (or literary ground-rules) established in the first trio of movies and continued to develop material that fit perfectly within the mesh of the underlying story. Having said all of this, if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering if Salvation builds upon the rich layer of groundwork from the Fox show. Well, the short answer is no and the longer answer is fuck no.

where's my money?!

Salvation takes place about ten years after Judgment Day – when the rogue AI, SkyNet, launched the world’s supply of nukes in an attempt to exterminate humanity. John Connor (Christian Bale) is now an angry, angry footsoldier in the human resistance, bent on taking the fight back to the machines. Confusingly, the opening text explains that only some of the resistance fighters believe Connor is their saviour, while others… don’t. This is strange because John really hasn’t done anything to earn this moniker yet, except for the fact that his psycho-ward-breakout mother, Sarah, believes he will someday lead the resistance. Therefore, it’s a bit of a stretch that John has managed to convince so many people that he will one day crush the machines when he really hasn’t done shit, as of yet, to prove it. Regardless, John is only one half of Salvation. A man on death row in our time, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), finds himself in a bit of a quandary when he gets the needle and awakens in a SkyNet research facility with no memory of what has happened in the past decade since he died. Add in an imperiled teenaged Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, better known as Chekhov from this year’s Star Trek), who just happens to be John’s future father, and you’ve got a colour-by-numbers Terminator script. From start to finish, Salvation feels like a half-finished product. What started off as a genuinely interesting idea, feels like a Hollywood hand-me-down after a solid story was eschewed for pretty-much mindless gunplay and explosions. Granted, Terminator movies are all about action, but it needs to be couched in an interesting story or else, in my opinion, it’s pretty much pointless.

harvester

 And while this aspect of Salvation is disappointing, there are other components that somewhat make up for the lack of story. For one thing, the CG is absolutely spot-on. Lots of thought was put into the creation of entirely new machine constructs, such as the four-story Harvester - that harries Marcus & company in one portion of the movie and sends attack bikes after them when they try to escape. It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish computer-generated images from real actors in the same scene, and Salvation definitely pushes the envelope in this regard. Furthermore, I still have nothing but massive respect for Christian Bale as an actor. He delivers a pretty powerful performance, regardless of how cliched his lines can sometimes be. Michael Ironside is a perfect pick for the stalwart leader of the resistance and, previously unknown to me, Sam Worthington was fantastic as the conflicted Marcus Wright. On the flip side, I’m not a huge fan of rappers in movies (a la Will I Am in X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and the inclusion of Common as a freedom fighter merely cemented this notion further in my mind.

Also, there are a number of plot holes and inconsistencies in this movie that baffled and pissed me off to one degree or another. For one thing, the characters in the first three Terminator movies spent the entire running time of their respective movies trying to take down ONE Terminator each. Compare this to Salvation, where apparently a mute 8-year-old can single-handedly take down a minigun-toting T-600. Furthermore, why the hell do Terminators insist on throwing humans as far as they can to kill them? They could snap their neck with one twist of their servos, and yet they insist on heaving people around. Ridiculous. Also, in the future, open-heart surgery can apparently be performed in desert field hospitals. No lie.

Enough geek rage. When it comes down to it, Terminator: Salvation was a good idea gone awry. It had tons of potential and, with a decent story, it could have been something special. Instead, it descends into mediocrity and will go down in the annals as just another sequel that failed to live up to its predecessors.

Speaking of which, I have several things planned for the near future. I’ve written a pretty basic article involving PHP daemons for my first technology post. As I was going to publish it, I stepped back a moment and rethought things a bit. I’ve decided to keep this blog separate from my posts concerning programming and technology, in general. For one thing, the vast majority of my friends are, decidedly, non-technical and reading posts involving PHP would probably spawn a mass suicide, culling them all, inevitably leaving me friendless. To avoid this, I’m going to create a new technology-related blog on my sandbox domain (pansopht.com). I’ll make sure all posts there get fed into my Lifestream here. That should be ready by the end of Memorial Day or so.

I’m also currently writing up a review for the fantastic Halo Wars game and plan to write another for the upcoming Terminator: Salvation movie (which I plan to see tomorrow). Expect both of those in the near future.

As always, feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have an idea or want to drop me a line, feel free to DM me on Twitter or leave a comment here.

After being lazy mofos for a couple hours after that, we packed up a metric ton of presents into the Civ and drove out to the in-law’s house for Jaime’s birthday / Evan’s birthday / late Mother’s Day shin-dig. As usual, Krystle’s parents prepared some excellent food to consume: hot-off-the-grill hamburgers, hard-boiled egg filled potato salad, New England hot dogs, and about fifty desserts. Again, as usual, I ate way too much and have been regretting it since. Everyone seemed to like their gifts, however we got Sherry the Professor Layton & the Curious Village DS game and proceeded to ‘test’ it for her for about two hours. Good times.

Pretty much the best part of yesterday was when I hooked up my 360 to the big TV in our bedroom and we played Scene It: Box Office Smash for many hours. We played a bunch of random people on-line and always managed to squeak out a victory. Goddamn, I love movie trivia. As the night wore on, I showed Krystle that I was a handful of achievements away from a full 1250 gs on that game and she got really into helping me try and nail down the last ones. Yep, I think I definitely married the right woman.

Today will be like pretty much every other Sunday. We’re going to walk Connor in a few and then head out to meet the usual gang for some bowling. Might join a league this summer, but I’m still not convinced I’m good enough. When we get back, I’m going to update the review template for this site and add a rating to all my reviews, so people can just skim the gist of a review instead of slogging through the whole thing if they don’t want to. I’m also nailing down a few ideas for some technical posts – thinking of writing a Wordpress plug-in and then dissecting its inception, design, and implementation in a series of posts. Haha, EXCITING.

I like this quote particularly because I believe it epitomizes the very essence of the Star Trek series; from its inception in the mid-60s, to the numerous syndicated spin-offs, and the Hollywood productions which now number in the double digits. The Star Trek universe is all about the pursuit of (mostly) pacifistic diplomacy and the promulgation of brotherhood amongst the many, often war-faring, species scattered throughout the galaxy. At least, that’s what Roddenberry originally shaped it to be; and continued moulding until his untimely death in the early 90’s. Flash-forward to 2009 and we’re suddenly faced with a reboot of this beloved series that possesses one of the most rabid fan-bases on the planet. Tasked with crafting a ‘darker reimagining’, the question remains: does director J.J Abrams (Lost, Fringe, Cloverfield) fail to capture the lightning-in-a-bottle panache that its predecessors possessed? Or does Abrams, despite the odds, manage to set phasers to FUN?

new breed

Let me start off by saying that this is not a movie that was crafted for Trekkers. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman did not pen a script meant to fit snugly into the precedent canon laid in the previous syndicated TV series and movies. Abrams has given the proverbial reboot to a series still entrenched in the Roddenberry Cold War mentality and, in the process, has breathed new life into it. And while hardcore nerds may find plenty of minor tidbits to quibble over, the new Star Trek manages to remain accessible on a much wider scale than its predecessors and, above all, it is damn good.

let's blow some shit up

The movie begins in the year 2233 with the starship USS Kelvin investigating a strange lightning storm that occurs on the fringes of charted space. Upon arriving, the crew of the Kelvin is waylaid by a large craft that emerges from the depths of the storm. After a brief encounter, Nero (Eric Bana), master of the strange craft, launches a full-blown assault on the Kelvin and it’s only the heroics of the ship’s first officer that allows the rest of crew to shuttle off to safety. This officer just happens to be George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth), whose wife and newborn son, James, get to watch him flame up in a ball of super-heated plasma. Fast forward several years and a rebellious, angsty James Kirk (Chris Pine) finds himself living on the wrong side of the tracks in a dead-end town in Iowa and is eventually convinced to enlist in Starfleet to follow in the foot-steps of his martyred father. From here, Abrams introduces the entire crew of the USS Enterprise from the original series, in one form or another: Spock, Uhura, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, Scottie, Chekhov, and Sulu – all (with the exception of Scottie and grizzled McCoy) are fresh-faced Starfleet recruits, eager to test themselves on their first flight. This opportunity conveniently arrives when a distress signal is received from the planet Vulcan and a flotilla of starships are sent to investigate. From here, Kirk must lock horns with Nero and eventually figure out how to stop him from destroying Earth with a black hole spawned from a substance known as red matter.

I believe casting is where Star Trek truly shines. Chris Pine is superb as the brash, often head-strong Kirk and Zachary Quinto equally so as the stoic logician, Spock. Similarly, Karl Urban has perfected the distinct drawl and twang to McCoy’s speech pattern and it wasn’t until well after the movie finished that I recognized him as the Russian assassin from the Bourne Supremacy. Personally, my biased favourite of the bunch is Simon Pegg as the affable Scottie. If you enjoyed him in Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, then you’ll love him here.

where no man has gone before

In my opinion, Abrams‘ reimagining of Star Trek is an unadulterated success. Instead of rehashing the same old issues in the same old trappings with a new cast, Abrams took something ingrained into our very culture and managed to put his mark on it. Star Trek is a flat-out excellent summer movie with enough action, drama, and futuristic technology to keep just about everyone interested and involved from start to end. I can’t recommend it enough.

Long story short, everything should work properly now.

In other news, I’m writing a review for the latest Star Trek movie, which should be out by tomorrow, at the latest. Cheers!

The rest of the day was much more relaxing. After doing some obligatory chores, we drove out to Alexandria to eat at a restaurant called Rustico to celebrate a friend’s birthday party. Although it was kind of a bitch to find the place, I ordered a smooth oatmeal stout and thoroughly enjoyed some fancy-pants macaroni & cheese dish they served up. Kind of pricey, but the food was definitely top-notch.

The following day, we got up early and drove out to Ashburn for a spur-of-the-moment sonogram we had registered on the previous Friday. We’re still a full month out from our official, level-two sonogram (where we potentially find out the gender), so we said fuck it and dropped a little money on a sono that’s specifically geared towards determining the gender. They ushered us into a room that housed a patient bed in one corner and a veritable movie theater in the other. The sono output is streamed to monitors embedded in the walls every few feet in addition to a giant projector in the ceiling which throws the picture onto an entire wall in the corner. Pretty swank. At any rate, the doctor spent all of five minutes looking at the picture until the baby finally flashed some wang. That’s right, it’s official – we’re having a boy! I really can’t explain the emotions I was feeling when I saw that picture, but I was was damn proud that I was going to have a son. At any rate, it was a perfect Mother’s Day present for all mothers / grandmothers involved and was definitely worth the coin we dropped on it.

dear christ, why did i agree to a prequel?

I walked into X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber) with the best of intentions and the very highest of aspirations. Relishing the dawn of what promises to be a blockbuster summer movie season, I bought into the Wolverine hype and was thoroughly convinced that it would usher in the season with a bang. The blizzard of trailers and teasers which preceded its release spoke of finally unveiling the mysterious origins of everyone’s favourite X-Man, whose initial appearance in the first X-Men movie kick-started Hugh Jackman’s American film career. They displayed scenes of utter adrenaline-inducing awesomeness including Wolverine using his adamantium claws as a hand-brake to make a u-turn on a vintage chopper just before he rides the bike off a ramp and into the flashing blades of a military attack helicopter. Therefore, with all the hype and fan-faire surrounding this release, the question remains: does Wolverine earn its place in the well-regarded ranks of its X-Men predecessors or is it just another hollow superhero movie riding off their acclaim?

anger problems

Despite the convoluted story, where the movie really hit rock-bottom for me was its consistent inattention to detail. One thing I loved about the X-Men movies is that they took a premise as outlandish as humans imbued with mutant powers and tried its damnedest to make it realistic. Also, they took pains to even the playing field when it came to superpowers, no mutant possessed powers which rendered them invulnerable to everything. Everyone had a weakness, no matter how small. Now, I understand that Wolverine has an elite set of powers, even among mutants. His accelerated healing process renders him nearly invulnerable. But, and here’s the kicker, he’s still inherently human. Even before his skeletomuscular system is infused with adamantium, there are scenes where Logan is crushed by massive tree trunks, hit by tractor trailers, and shot many, many times – but manages to shrug everything off and keep trucking. Imagine having a tree trunk weighing several hundred pounds fall on you, fracture your rib cage, crack your spine, and completely liquefy your internal organs. Accelerated healing or not, it would still take time for bones to knit, blood to coagulate, and internal organs to… reform. Wolverine is, for all intents and purposes, immune to anything and everything that tries to stand in his way. And, truthfully, this removes any potential suspense whatsoever from the action scenes. Honestly, who gives a shit if a bad guy shoots Logan in the face with a Desert Eagle or impales him with a samurai sword? If you make your protagonist immortal, then you render any conflict pointless and, ultimately, any action is muted. And speaking of action, it’s pretty hit-or-miss throughout the film. At times, the effects and computer-generated graphics are phenomenal (the aforementioned helicopter scene, in particular). At others, they seem cheesy and out of place. One example that sticks out is when Logan is in a bathroom, investigating his newly-attached adamantium claws. I swear to god, in this scene, the claws looked like they were straight out of Toon-Town a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The animation was that over the top.

gambit, the ass bandit

For the most part, the casting was pretty solid. Liev Schreiber reprises his role from CSI: Las Vegas as the passive-aggressive mutant Sabretooth, Hugh Jackman is peerless as the titular Wolverine, and Ryan Reynolds is a nice touch for the wise-cracking Deadpool. However, I was excited to see one character in particular: Gambit. Hearing that he would finally be making an appearance in an X-Men movie brought back memories from my wasted youth – frittering away untold hours playing the original X-Men game on the Sega Genesis. My all-time favourite character to play in this game was none other than Gambit - the smooth-talking, trenchcoat-sporting, raging Cajun who wields a Bo staff and goddamn psychically-charged playing cards. So, I was definitely interested to see how they would approach his character. Okay, look at the picture on the left. That baby-faced, purple-shirt wearing motherfucker is NOT Gambit. This casting choice, the convoluted story, and the numerous non-sequitur scenes has lead me to derive the following analogy: X-Men Origins: Wolverine is to super-hero movies as Twilight is to horror movies. I could go on, but I think that pretty much sums it up.

All in all, I would recommend this movie only for die-hard X-Men / Twilight fans. Otherwise, I think it would make a pretty decent Bluray rental.

...

Ok, I’m done.