I made one of these things too.
http://www.formspring.me/timothyted
Saturday 30 January 2010
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Tim reviews the last film he saw
The last film I saw was Avatar. In case you've heard of it.
So this is Mr. Cameron flaunting his prowess in spending lots of money on making a fairly mediocre film that manages to gross a fairly ridiculous amount, which is then usually used to fund his next, ever-so-slightly more ambitious project. After twenty years of this practice and a lot of time off spent being underwater and getting old, Cameron has come up with Avatar: now rated by Time magazine as the most ridiculously expensive thing in the world ever (paraphrased) and the absolute highest grossing movie about giant blue aliens with pointy sticks ever (also paraphrased. Expect me to use brackets a lot in this review.)
The reason it has, so far (It's still in the cinemas isn't it? How long has it been?), way passed the $1 billion mark is probably because 3D tickets are so f*cking expensive. You'd think gimmicky technology that started in the 50s (Don't tell Cameron that, "I'm doing everything in 3D now" he tells a journalist in 2003) would ease its way a bit more in to the mainstream by now. But no, I ended up settling for the normal ticket, begrudgingly as it was the one thing about the film that excited me.
Let's quickly now dash over the ugly little patch of slushy ice that is the story. So there's this crippled marine called Jake Sully (yes that is a fairly masculine action hero name isn't it?) who is sent to a nice planet called Pandora that is made entirely out of CGI. But of course we don't expect anything disastrous to happen on a planet called Pandora do we? Of course not. Jake Sully spends a lot of the time narrating the action in a voiceover which seems somewhat unnecessary as there's also segments of the film where crippled Jake narrates the action on whatever the extraterrestrial future military version of Skype is, and this fulfills the same basic narrative function. Anyway he plays puppet with on of the aforementioned giant blue aliens that bare a striking resemblance to the martians from Futurama.
There are other scenes where the simularities are definately there but Google Images can only do so much.
Meanwhile Sigourney Weaver also plays puppet alongside Jake with an alien that looks shockingly like Sigourney Weaver. Weird. So on a mission to a, err, well he's on an undercover mission that has something to do with the blue guys even though the marine folks plan to blow them all the way to Tatooine anyway for some kind of precious natural resource hidden under a magic tree. But Jake's an idiot and he gets seperated from creepy blue Sigourney Weaver and falls straight in to the hands of the blue apache folk's tribe. They don't seem to mind that he speaks in Italian American English and they soon take him as one of their own. After the training montage.
A training montage ensues.
So as we see from the training montage, loveable idiot Jakesully is now an honorary blue wierdo. But oh noes, something disastrous happens. Who'd have thought it? Honorary blue weirdo Jakesully falls in love with the sexy blue weirdo Neytiri. Which is kind of creepy. And the marines plan to blow up the blue guys magic tree with spaceships that are only occasionally resistant to fucking bows and arrows. Anyway yaddayaddayadda, explosions, kickass exoskeletons from the third Matrix film, man with scar becomes bad guy. I won't spoil it all.
Avatar is what idiots call 'a popcorn movie' and what pretentious idiots call 'a breathtakingly intense and visceral experience'. I thought it was a bit of fun. There's plenty of great action sequences and technical magicianry to keep you entertained, or if you're a grouchy sod like me you'll start thinking about the financial crisis and find the film as incongruously mocking as the Piers Morgan programmes 'Gawping at Foreign People Who Have Way Too Much Money Than They Really Need.' -which I suppose is mildly better than most celebrities option for a limited series of 'Tutting at Foreign People Who Have Bugger All.' Back to the film, wasn't 2007's 300 just as visually pleasing a skull-crushing action movie, if lacking in characters and narrative, and for hundreds of thousands of dollars less? Maybe I'm just being cynical again. Anyway, I'll leave you there. You might find more of these pretentious rants in the future if I don't have anything else to blog about.
So rating. I'm giving Avatar a genorous three out of five Arnies for reasons you probably already guessed.
And why I'm rating with Arnies? Because I can.
So this is Mr. Cameron flaunting his prowess in spending lots of money on making a fairly mediocre film that manages to gross a fairly ridiculous amount, which is then usually used to fund his next, ever-so-slightly more ambitious project. After twenty years of this practice and a lot of time off spent being underwater and getting old, Cameron has come up with Avatar: now rated by Time magazine as the most ridiculously expensive thing in the world ever (paraphrased) and the absolute highest grossing movie about giant blue aliens with pointy sticks ever (also paraphrased. Expect me to use brackets a lot in this review.)
The reason it has, so far (It's still in the cinemas isn't it? How long has it been?), way passed the $1 billion mark is probably because 3D tickets are so f*cking expensive. You'd think gimmicky technology that started in the 50s (Don't tell Cameron that, "I'm doing everything in 3D now" he tells a journalist in 2003) would ease its way a bit more in to the mainstream by now. But no, I ended up settling for the normal ticket, begrudgingly as it was the one thing about the film that excited me.
Let's quickly now dash over the ugly little patch of slushy ice that is the story. So there's this crippled marine called Jake Sully (yes that is a fairly masculine action hero name isn't it?) who is sent to a nice planet called Pandora that is made entirely out of CGI. But of course we don't expect anything disastrous to happen on a planet called Pandora do we? Of course not. Jake Sully spends a lot of the time narrating the action in a voiceover which seems somewhat unnecessary as there's also segments of the film where crippled Jake narrates the action on whatever the extraterrestrial future military version of Skype is, and this fulfills the same basic narrative function. Anyway he plays puppet with on of the aforementioned giant blue aliens that bare a striking resemblance to the martians from Futurama.
There are other scenes where the simularities are definately there but Google Images can only do so much.
Meanwhile Sigourney Weaver also plays puppet alongside Jake with an alien that looks shockingly like Sigourney Weaver. Weird. So on a mission to a, err, well he's on an undercover mission that has something to do with the blue guys even though the marine folks plan to blow them all the way to Tatooine anyway for some kind of precious natural resource hidden under a magic tree. But Jake's an idiot and he gets seperated from creepy blue Sigourney Weaver and falls straight in to the hands of the blue apache folk's tribe. They don't seem to mind that he speaks in Italian American English and they soon take him as one of their own. After the training montage.
A training montage ensues.
So as we see from the training montage, loveable idiot Jakesully is now an honorary blue wierdo. But oh noes, something disastrous happens. Who'd have thought it? Honorary blue weirdo Jakesully falls in love with the sexy blue weirdo Neytiri. Which is kind of creepy. And the marines plan to blow up the blue guys magic tree with spaceships that are only occasionally resistant to fucking bows and arrows. Anyway yaddayaddayadda, explosions, kickass exoskeletons from the third Matrix film, man with scar becomes bad guy. I won't spoil it all.
Avatar is what idiots call 'a popcorn movie' and what pretentious idiots call 'a breathtakingly intense and visceral experience'. I thought it was a bit of fun. There's plenty of great action sequences and technical magicianry to keep you entertained, or if you're a grouchy sod like me you'll start thinking about the financial crisis and find the film as incongruously mocking as the Piers Morgan programmes 'Gawping at Foreign People Who Have Way Too Much Money Than They Really Need.' -which I suppose is mildly better than most celebrities option for a limited series of 'Tutting at Foreign People Who Have Bugger All.' Back to the film, wasn't 2007's 300 just as visually pleasing a skull-crushing action movie, if lacking in characters and narrative, and for hundreds of thousands of dollars less? Maybe I'm just being cynical again. Anyway, I'll leave you there. You might find more of these pretentious rants in the future if I don't have anything else to blog about.
So rating. I'm giving Avatar a genorous three out of five Arnies for reasons you probably already guessed.
And why I'm rating with Arnies? Because I can.
Saturday 16 January 2010
The Case of the Missing Carrot
Here are some surveilance photos from when I was struggling hard to attatch a carrot nose to my lovely snowman last week:
All done.
Coast is clear.
Goddamn you Wilson! Our paths have crossed for the last time!
All done.
Coast is clear.
Goddamn you Wilson! Our paths have crossed for the last time!
Thursday 7 January 2010
Mafia
It's time to talk mafia.
Not the silly men in hats playing with horses and hacksaws mafia, the discussion game mafia. It's one of those useful little things you pick up from hanging around a lot of Christians, however the game involves the fair bit of deception betrayal and murder, plus a version involving shots. It was invented by some Russian psychologist chap and is generally played in some kind of youth club environment.
The problem is you really need at least seven people to play and at least half an hour free- plus nobody has ever heard of the game. However, done right it's a lot of fun, trust me.
So in case you don't know what it is, here's the lowdown:
Like I said at least 7 people, maybe 5 with special rules but 11 to 13 would be the ideal number. Someone who knows the game well and is good at telling a story is the narrator. The group sit in a circle, the narrator usually describes them as being citizens of a small town under serious threat by mafia -how far the roleplaying goes is up to you. The narrator starts by given the players a card each- these could be pieces of paper, playing cards or specially designed cards, whatever. The card either represents a 'villager', 'mafia', 'doctor', or 'detective'. I'll explain them in a bit.
You look at your card and do not show anybody.
The rounds are split into (fake) day and night. At 'night' the narrator tells everybody to close their eyes and one at a time gives the people with special cards (non-villager cards) instructions.
The mafia (or killers, cultists or werewolves) would be asked to open their eyes together and silently decide amongst themselves who to kill, once decided they silently tell the narrator their decision and close their eyes.
The doctor (or paramedic or guardian angel)would be asked to open his/her eyes and point at somebody they believe might be a likely target for the mafia, then to close his/her eyes. If that was the person chosen by the mafia then that person survives.
The detective (or investigator or psychic)would be asked to point at somebody they suspect of being the mafia, and the narrator would silently say whether or not that person is in fact a mafia.
The narrator announces that everybody wakes, and if somebody was killed he would announce a mysterious death (often detailed in a particularly gruesome and funny way). The 'day' part of the round then consists of the players determining who were the killers. This would usually be settled with a vote. The voted suspects have a little moment to defend themselves and a decision is made on which one would be lynched/killed. In some versions the lynched player can then reveal his card but in almost every version anyone dead (either murdered or lynched) can not converse about who the killers might be throughout the rest of the game. The purpose of the killers is to blend in with the other characters and not reveal their disposition, while all the while defending each other from lynching (although a bit of back-stabbing might be necessary in desperate situations). The game can end by all mafia being killed or by the mafia succeeding in killing off everybody else (the civilians).
During the day the detective can announce that he or she is the detective and help the voting process by saying who they have found out is innocent or guilty.
Yet as cards cannot be revealed this could always just be a mafia manipulating the game to his advantage, claiming mafia are innocent and innocents are mafia. A trusted detective is usually chosen to be saved by the doctor (obviously, mafia don't like detectives).
If you're a doctor, it's best to shut up about it as you're stopping the mafia do their job and they would be likely to kill you if they know who you are. In some games though, doctor's are allowed to save themselves. Admition to being the doctor is most common when that person is being lynched, whether that person is actually the doctor, or a lying mafioso is, however, is up to the citizens.
This all becomes incredibly simple once you start actually playing the game. Trust me. Good for parties or gettogethers, or camping.
An experienced group might find themselves experimenting with new roles, I'm not sure how interested you'd be in this but here goes:
A 'Romeo' card might be given to a civilian and a 'Juliet' card to a mafioso. These two will know each others identities and try to defend each other- as whichever one dies, so does the other.
A 'Vigilante' is a civilian with the power to kill who he suspects to be the mafia during the night. He gets his own little phase.
A 'Medium' can interrogate dead characters.
There could also be a 'Traitor' -a civilian who wins with the mafia or a 'rat' -a mafioso that is secretly on the civilian's side.
The 'Godfather' is a mafioso with some special privelage- other than being the deciding voice of who to kill, he might be given an extra round to kill, appear to a detective as a civilian or be given the oportunity to recruit a civilian to become part of the mafia. Alternatively there's a psychiatrist character who can turn a mafioso good.
There's loads of these things, I've even come across 'thief', 'baker' 'lawyer', 'judge', 'village drunk', 'serial killer', 'prostitute','Rambo' and 'village bicycle'.
It's suprising how big this thing is considering nobody's heard of it.
Stay Alive
x
Not the silly men in hats playing with horses and hacksaws mafia, the discussion game mafia. It's one of those useful little things you pick up from hanging around a lot of Christians, however the game involves the fair bit of deception betrayal and murder, plus a version involving shots. It was invented by some Russian psychologist chap and is generally played in some kind of youth club environment.
The problem is you really need at least seven people to play and at least half an hour free- plus nobody has ever heard of the game. However, done right it's a lot of fun, trust me.
So in case you don't know what it is, here's the lowdown:
Like I said at least 7 people, maybe 5 with special rules but 11 to 13 would be the ideal number. Someone who knows the game well and is good at telling a story is the narrator. The group sit in a circle, the narrator usually describes them as being citizens of a small town under serious threat by mafia -how far the roleplaying goes is up to you. The narrator starts by given the players a card each- these could be pieces of paper, playing cards or specially designed cards, whatever. The card either represents a 'villager', 'mafia', 'doctor', or 'detective'. I'll explain them in a bit.
You look at your card and do not show anybody.
The rounds are split into (fake) day and night. At 'night' the narrator tells everybody to close their eyes and one at a time gives the people with special cards (non-villager cards) instructions.
The mafia (or killers, cultists or werewolves) would be asked to open their eyes together and silently decide amongst themselves who to kill, once decided they silently tell the narrator their decision and close their eyes.
The doctor (or paramedic or guardian angel)would be asked to open his/her eyes and point at somebody they believe might be a likely target for the mafia, then to close his/her eyes. If that was the person chosen by the mafia then that person survives.
The detective (or investigator or psychic)would be asked to point at somebody they suspect of being the mafia, and the narrator would silently say whether or not that person is in fact a mafia.
The narrator announces that everybody wakes, and if somebody was killed he would announce a mysterious death (often detailed in a particularly gruesome and funny way). The 'day' part of the round then consists of the players determining who were the killers. This would usually be settled with a vote. The voted suspects have a little moment to defend themselves and a decision is made on which one would be lynched/killed. In some versions the lynched player can then reveal his card but in almost every version anyone dead (either murdered or lynched) can not converse about who the killers might be throughout the rest of the game. The purpose of the killers is to blend in with the other characters and not reveal their disposition, while all the while defending each other from lynching (although a bit of back-stabbing might be necessary in desperate situations). The game can end by all mafia being killed or by the mafia succeeding in killing off everybody else (the civilians).
During the day the detective can announce that he or she is the detective and help the voting process by saying who they have found out is innocent or guilty.
Yet as cards cannot be revealed this could always just be a mafia manipulating the game to his advantage, claiming mafia are innocent and innocents are mafia. A trusted detective is usually chosen to be saved by the doctor (obviously, mafia don't like detectives).
If you're a doctor, it's best to shut up about it as you're stopping the mafia do their job and they would be likely to kill you if they know who you are. In some games though, doctor's are allowed to save themselves. Admition to being the doctor is most common when that person is being lynched, whether that person is actually the doctor, or a lying mafioso is, however, is up to the citizens.
This all becomes incredibly simple once you start actually playing the game. Trust me. Good for parties or gettogethers, or camping.
An experienced group might find themselves experimenting with new roles, I'm not sure how interested you'd be in this but here goes:
A 'Romeo' card might be given to a civilian and a 'Juliet' card to a mafioso. These two will know each others identities and try to defend each other- as whichever one dies, so does the other.
A 'Vigilante' is a civilian with the power to kill who he suspects to be the mafia during the night. He gets his own little phase.
A 'Medium' can interrogate dead characters.
There could also be a 'Traitor' -a civilian who wins with the mafia or a 'rat' -a mafioso that is secretly on the civilian's side.
The 'Godfather' is a mafioso with some special privelage- other than being the deciding voice of who to kill, he might be given an extra round to kill, appear to a detective as a civilian or be given the oportunity to recruit a civilian to become part of the mafia. Alternatively there's a psychiatrist character who can turn a mafioso good.
There's loads of these things, I've even come across 'thief', 'baker' 'lawyer', 'judge', 'village drunk', 'serial killer', 'prostitute','Rambo' and 'village bicycle'.
It's suprising how big this thing is considering nobody's heard of it.
Stay Alive
x
Tuesday 5 January 2010
Frohes Neues Jahr!
Ja!
So I'm back from Austria, remember when I said I was going to Austria for New Year's? Yeah I'm back from that. So 2010 has just swooped down in front of my garden and taken a huge dump in my hedge, thanks a lot 2010 you big metaphorical nonce*. No, I didn't do as much work in Austria as I planned to but don't worry I won't go on about that.
Snow really is rubbish here isn't it? Maybe it's just compared to the ten inches of fresh powder I've got used to in Austria where you drop your skis and in ten minutes find them almost completely buried.
I picked up a Guardian in the services and there was this story about a pub in the Yorkshire Dales that was snowed in for over two days over the new year, everyone just had a non-stop party and got to know everybody. A student there said it was like the 'ultimate lock-in'. How great does that sound? They were mostly Leeds University students. If I don't end up in Leeds Uni I will be extremely sad. Having talked to somebody from Leeds I've started getting extremely excited about it, it sounds like the place to be. I'm also excited about my birthday even though it's four months away. But there will be an epic club crawl around Cardiff and most people I know would already be 18 by then so they can come with me.
Also I came home to find this story and assumed you must be worrying about me especially with the amount of FIREWORKS that were going off in the valley and echoing for miles.
So on New Year's Eve, the skiing folks (must have been at least 80 of us) went on a huge trek in the mist where we couldn't see a single firework. Some Austrian kids even attacked us with fireworks. (There is apparently no health and safety in all of Austria during New Years) and we ended up crashing a tiny empty Austrian bar and letting off hundreds of party poppers and singing Old Lang Zine. We felt a bit guilty afterwards and volunteered to clean up after some awkward miming to request a brush. The owners of the bar didn't seem to mind, they were busy setting fire to whole boxes of fireworks and spraying it with deodorant, almost killing us. It was a good night and I decided to get up late to go skiing the next day.
Prior to that there was some curling with the towel trolleys you get from hotel bathrooms, with a borrowed small child as the house. As well as a pub quiz and the odd bit of Scottish dancing.
So that was my New Year for you, gluhwein bingeing, makeshift winter sports, snowstorms, frantic ballistic attacks and some very bad dancing, I hope you enjoyed wasting your time to read about it, now excuse me while I go bury my head in the snow for the rest of the year.
Stay wunderlich!
x
*I have to stop using that word having only just discovered it means child molester.
So I'm back from Austria, remember when I said I was going to Austria for New Year's? Yeah I'm back from that. So 2010 has just swooped down in front of my garden and taken a huge dump in my hedge, thanks a lot 2010 you big metaphorical nonce*. No, I didn't do as much work in Austria as I planned to but don't worry I won't go on about that.
Snow really is rubbish here isn't it? Maybe it's just compared to the ten inches of fresh powder I've got used to in Austria where you drop your skis and in ten minutes find them almost completely buried.
I picked up a Guardian in the services and there was this story about a pub in the Yorkshire Dales that was snowed in for over two days over the new year, everyone just had a non-stop party and got to know everybody. A student there said it was like the 'ultimate lock-in'. How great does that sound? They were mostly Leeds University students. If I don't end up in Leeds Uni I will be extremely sad. Having talked to somebody from Leeds I've started getting extremely excited about it, it sounds like the place to be. I'm also excited about my birthday even though it's four months away. But there will be an epic club crawl around Cardiff and most people I know would already be 18 by then so they can come with me.
Also I came home to find this story and assumed you must be worrying about me especially with the amount of FIREWORKS that were going off in the valley and echoing for miles.
So on New Year's Eve, the skiing folks (must have been at least 80 of us) went on a huge trek in the mist where we couldn't see a single firework. Some Austrian kids even attacked us with fireworks. (There is apparently no health and safety in all of Austria during New Years) and we ended up crashing a tiny empty Austrian bar and letting off hundreds of party poppers and singing Old Lang Zine. We felt a bit guilty afterwards and volunteered to clean up after some awkward miming to request a brush. The owners of the bar didn't seem to mind, they were busy setting fire to whole boxes of fireworks and spraying it with deodorant, almost killing us. It was a good night and I decided to get up late to go skiing the next day.
Prior to that there was some curling with the towel trolleys you get from hotel bathrooms, with a borrowed small child as the house. As well as a pub quiz and the odd bit of Scottish dancing.
So that was my New Year for you, gluhwein bingeing, makeshift winter sports, snowstorms, frantic ballistic attacks and some very bad dancing, I hope you enjoyed wasting your time to read about it, now excuse me while I go bury my head in the snow for the rest of the year.
Stay wunderlich!
x
*I have to stop using that word having only just discovered it means child molester.
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