Smashy.net » grymmjack

Wet T-Shirt Worldcup

grymmjack — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:18:43 +0000

It speaks for itself

Sorry for the errors/weirdness…

grymmjack — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 07:09:39 +0000

Sorry about the issues you have all been experiencing. It is due to the fact that the host smashy.net uses silently upgraded the box it runs on to use PHP 5, and bBlog which smashy.net is based on is not compatible with PHP5 without some workarounds.

I have fixed some inconsistencies that were causing the problems. I’ve tested basic functionalities, and they all work.

If you experience any further problems, please let smash know so he can nag me to fix them.

Still Lost

grymmjack — Thu, 25 May 2006 08:02:17 +0000

Ok so my fiance got me into watching Lost. I started watching it when they had that "recap" episode (which must have surely pissed off the regulars) to catch everyone up. It’s a cool idea for a deep show I think and it helped me to get the hang of WTF was going on.

That said, I am not a Lost fanatic. However, I do know that last night’s final episode for this season was not as promised. They said that "all of our questions would be answered" and they lied. The electromagnetic thing I get. WTF did Desmonds ex answer the phone when the chess playing chumps hanging out at the north pole detected an "electro mangetic anomoly" ?

Only thing I can figure is she was looking for him by trying to find that boat that Libby gave to Desmond (how or why I don’t know). What did Libby’s husband do for a living? Was he a mad scientist? He has some affiliation with dharma Initiative? Something is in the boat? WTF?!

What a gay ending. Dumbass Michael get’s his annoying and horrible actor son Will back (if I hear that kid squeal "dad!" one more fucking time I’m going to puke, LEARN HOW TO ACT: vary the intonation in your voice based on the mood!) and they float away to some coordinate on the compass to be "rescued"… While the cool characters are bound and gagged on the dock and held at gunpoint and fatty arbuckle (hurley) waddles away to warn the remaining other people not to "come here ever" by that stupid black lady — wtf is her purpose? She’s also annoying.

So yeah, obviously another season is coming. Fine, good, but don’t lie and say "all your questions will be answered" in the freaking ads and shit! Bad!

Also I don’t know how many of you knew this but that commercial they play ONLY when lost is on for the Hanso Foundation is fake site. I went there on a hunch and made the connection that Hanso was said to be tied to the Dharma Initiative. It’s fake, and so is the designers site. This is some way to further confuse devout watchers of the show — internet goose chases? Hansocareers.com is fake, and it doesn’t query any database. There are 4 total records there. The source code is credited with and points to www.djdan.am which is also another fake site that is just as useless. The hansofoundation site I couldn’t get to even with a valid flash plugin and it doesn’t look even authentic for the flash embed — it looks like the code was written by someone who was trying to clue someone in who knew how to make websites using flash that it was fake though. There is another bunch of information on TVIV though I don’t know if that is a fake wiki all these shows share or not but it seemed to have quite a bit of nonsense on hanso and such. One cool thing it did have was a screengrab of that diagram on the wall that came down when locks leg’s got pinched…

We still dont’ know if adabasi is dead from the dynamite! Also, here is a question for the more educated; why are 2 main characters from Oz in this? And why is there a fucking hobbit shooting heroin and not smoking pipeweed (I’ve yet to hear him bitch about missing 2nd breakfast!) and who is that chick with the kid, she’s cute!

Anyone else still lost? I certainly am.

GUN

grymmjack — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:37:40 +0000

Publisher: Activision Inc.
Developer: Neversoft
ESRB: M
Category: Action
Available On: • XBOX • XBOX 360 • GameCube • PS2 • PC

Official Game Page

From the makers of the excellent Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, Neversoft has done it again with GUN.

When I downloaded this off the net, and copied it to my modded xbox (this was my first test of doing this), I was thinking "this torrent has lots of seeders, so it will be a good candidate for my testing purposes". I had absolutely no hope that it would be a good game, indeed, I thought "oh no, another Red Dead Revolver, another western shooter". But man was I pleasantly surprised after I played it (for over 9 hours no less — one of the longest marathon xbox sessions I have had since getting my xbox modded).

Back story

Basically the story in GUN is one of revenge and mystery. The main character (and your role in the game) is a young man who finds himself in the middle of the adventure of his life. What starts out as a normal day of hunting and gathering for trade and barter, turns out to be the beginning of his trials. As he and his father are trading in their furs and meats on the steamboat, the steamboat is ransacked by wild rebels in search of some chest. While putting up a valiant fight (with decent AI) his father (or what he thought was his father) is murdered before him by this band of drunken barbarians, and he escapes from the conflict with his life intact (you play through all of this stuff). Later we find out that his father was not really his father. Much of the questing that ensues deals with learning more about the main character and trying to discover who his parents are. Slowly the real reason for the raid on the steamboat is learned as you play the game, with new villians and hierarchies of characters are introduced into the storyline. The goal is revenge in GUN. To avenge the deaths of the innocents.

Shown above: main character riding horse and firing pistol, while action ensues all around him in teh distance.

Gameplay

In GUN, you play the role of a cowboy/hunter turned gunslinger/desperado. Much of the game involves travelling across the wide expanses of gorgeously 3D rendered landscapes and doing so on foot is entirely boring — you ride horses. Initially horse riding is a little cumbersome, but the graphics and the "feel" of the horse riding is superb. After spending an hour of riding around on a horse and learning the sprinting and moves of the horse (it can slide and trample and sprint then throw on the brakes and slide and buck, etc all moves impacting the people around the horse) it really becomes almost second nature. The controls are awesome, and the tension and programming of the physics of the horse is very very good. This is necessary because what happens on horseback requires skill and dexterity — gunfights. You can dismount and mount horses freely, and there is no real consequence to stealing any old horse. Some people may feel this takes away from the realism of the game, but I don’t think so. So you ride your horse alot because the maps are enormous, taking upwards of 5 to 10 minutes at a time to reach the extreme boundaries of the levels. You can walk and run, and I must pay special note here to how the walking and running in GUN for it is also very very good. You use the left analog stick to look and the right analog stick to move, nothing fancy there, however, the feel of how you move and look is excellent. The tension from creeping at a slow john-wayne swagger (and man they did a good job with that too), to walking to a full out sprint is perfect. Sometimes I found myself just swaggering around listening to my spurs clink. You can duck and jump and hide behind objects that provide cover in firefights as well. There are also various vehicles such as trains and stagecoaches and boats that, while you cannot pilot them, provide very exciting and cool props throughout the game.

Aiming the weapons is handled very well, I have no complaints about any of that. Choosing a weapon is simple work and rifles and pistols and bows and knives and tomohawks and hatchets are all available at your disposal, with 3 to 4 upgradeable slots in inventory to give you something to look forward to. As your character becomes better at doing things and completes missions and sidequests your statistics improve, new minigame missions become available, and so on. It’s a typical action-rpg situation where you upgrade your character as you go. I felt that the pace of the upgrades was very good, and nothing was really given to me without me having to earn it by working for it spilling blood and splitting skulls. Shit I almost forgot, this has bullet-time too (only they call it ‘quick-draw’ but really it’s max payne bullet-time) where you toggle slow motion, and just blow the living shit out of everything that moves with gunslinger speed and a neat ‘targetting’ system is added bonus that shows arrows right or left and you use the + stick to cycle through them and blast them back to hell.

There are several towns throughout the game, all of which have their own unique characters and personas throughout them. It is about as immersive as GTA 3 in that there are several ’spots’ you can go to in towns to do things like buy equipment, find missions, talk to people, etc, but you cannot really go inside every building. You CAN go inside some buildings but they are always obvious. All of the things in the game that you relate with on a regular basis can be upgraded. And health can be restored by drinking from a flask of whiskey – which are found throughout the game. The one thing I must comment on as well is the lack of ammunition — or more appropriately the spread out location of the ammo makes you want to conserve and loadup before you do something. So it’s kind of nice to just waste time riding around the countryside looking for ammo and loading up in between big plot-twisting missions — side quests are clearly marked and you have a chance not to take them after finding out what they are. Side quests are pretty cool and range from several differnet themes; bounty hunting (dead or alive), horsemanship (rustling cattle, pony express (ala crazy taxi) deliveries), lawman (help local lawmen in towns kill bad guys), and hunting. The various quests are cool and really add to the entire game as a whole. You are never locked into a quest and can always restart one at any time, and you never have to linearly continue with the main storyline until you are damned good and ready. I loved that freedom.

Gunfights are a blast, and riding around on a horse using my rifle to blow the heads off of bad guys was a bonafide de-light! (excuse the western slang). The hit locations are awesome. As mentioned there is the head, the hands, the legs, feet, weapon hands, etc. And the game, in rockstar fashion, keeps track of these statistics for you as well as your accuracy and so on. It also helps to look at the stats to see what you have left to do and how much of the game you have completed. The weapons have different dynamics and attributes. Pistols carry less ammo per reload, but generally are better

close range guns. While rifles (several kinds, including sniper rifles called sureshots), provide much more range and accuracy when zoomed in. Shotguns provide a blast area of effect. There are also melee weapons such as knives, hatchets, and tomahawks (lots of fun!) as well as explosives (tnt, molotov cocktails, etc), and indian weapons; bow and arrow, fire arrows, etc. The different levels of weapons are well balanced and make it fun to look forward to getting a better one. I was a rifleman almost 80% of the time, and not until i was about 70% completed with the game did my rifle get upgraded. But boy when it did, shoooooo-eeee! Look at those skulls explode hoss!

Graphics

The graphics are above average for this kind of title in my opinion. I was seriously expecting much much less, but GUN really shines in the visuals. There were almost zero camera artifacts or problems with clipping etc. In fact I can only remember one time when there was a clipping mess, and I was standing inside my horse but in the games defense I had galloped directly up to a mud adobe wall and slammed on the horsebrakes and leaped off in mid air while firing my rifle (yes this is the kind of great shit you can do in the game). The variation and historical accuracy of the different settings was believable enough, for instance, towns looked like towns and churches like churches and old forts like old forts, and mines like mines, etc. The color and shaders used in the game is very pretty to look at, though there is no real weather effects besides night and day and the timeline can jump suddenly to night and back to day depending on the mission settings (which I didnt mind). The attention paid to the detail of the models and the textures was totally consistent as was the level designs. You never ran into a spot in the game where it was obvious that the developers slacked off. The special effects of fire and explosions and especially the blood are all done well, but the best part is when you are riding hard and fast across the desert and pan the camera to a low perspective following angle — the game reverts into a celshader mode almost and the dust kicked up by your steed looks real and the shadows cast from the dust look real. It all looks very very convincing. The modeling of the characters was done well, with enough differentiation between different characters to be atleast acceptible (there are duplicates of course).

Shown above: main character fighting first big boss battle against minor villian.

Sound

The sound and music is decent. The sound effects are good and totally fit the game and it’s various modes of play. The voice acting is done well and I am not sure but I think dennis hopper was the voice of dear old dad. There are times when music is played such as in saloons by pianists and such, but there really isn’t much music to be had, and that also lends to it’s authenticity a bit more IMO. The horses and animals sounds great. The micing and mastering for the various aural elements in the game was done professionally and the levels are all consistent (too often I will find a game that has one voice act completely contrary to another — be it voice actors sibelence variations or acoustic reverberations, or noise level).

Fun Factor

The game rocks in every way that a game like this can. I was never bored. My ONLY complaint was when sometimes my horse would die (yes your horse takes damage and suffers and cannot be ridden too hard or he will die/become lame/etc) during a skirmish or a bounty hunt, deep in the desert. After successfully completing the mission I would be on foot. Fuck! Because it’s like miles to walk! However, you can always hit start and go to the map (which is helpful too) and start the story-quest and abort it to get back to civilization but I chose not to. I chose to wander around trying to find a wild horse Which through the game I became a very knowledgeable scout of my territory — and that is something that I can’t say about most games. The wide-open-ness of the entire area and levels really gives a feel of freedom and simulation. Your horse can jump too, and there are parts in the game where you can jump like off a mountain top (rAH). The side quests were just as fun if not more fun than the main storyline because each sidequest adds stats to your character, opens other sidequests, and so forth. You get to earn money (which is very rare but not too rare — you are never given a ton of money) by completing these quests and then you can save to upgrade equipment and weapons and so on. The game is a blast too because there seems to always be something you missed or need to do. It really gives you a lot to accomplish and a lot to look forward to. I am at about 75% complete with the game and am having a blast. After I complete it, I will likely replay it (because the stats and because it’s just fun). Which leads me to my last complaint.

The length of the gameplay is not that good. I have been playing about 9 hours now and i’m 75% done with the single player. GUN is xbox live aware, but on my modded system I cant do squat with xbox live so I am stuck in single player land. Anyway, this game is one of the best I have played on the xbox in a while. It’s got enough challenge to appeal to hardcore (with difficulty settings too) gamer, and enough fun factor and instant-gratification for people like me who just like to play games that are fun and exciting for a bit at a time. It has enough A.D.D. goodness that you really cant get bored for long, and it has enough flesh and blood and guts to suit most RPG fans. Really this game is an instant classic in my book, and I would highly recommend it to any fellow geek.

Conclusion

Rating: 5 stars.

Every part of this game has been enjoyable. I may have a slightly biased opinion because of smash forcing me to read the Dark Tower series (thanks!) and pretending I am Roland Deschain while I play this game (and a young strapping Roland I would be indeed, I wot), but please don’t let that sway you from trying it for yourself. GUN wont disappoint you unless you are a complete and total jackassaurus. Speaking of the Gunslinger, how great would this game engine be for a DT1-7 game saga license! Man seriously, playing this I was thinking "this is perfect for the DT games if the movies ever come out and games are made for them, I hope to god that they use neversofts engine and maybe a bit of Rockstars awesome influence).

Star Wars: Revelations

grymmjack — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 21:28:12 +0000

In honor of smashy’s starwars fetish, I’ve located and posted about a fan film full feature.

Taken from here

Revelations: a Star Wars fan film

by Panic Struck Productions

Emperor Palpatine’s power has spread throughout the galaxy. Darth Vader is a feared figure. The Jedi are hunted fugitives. An ancient Jedi artifact could be key to destroying the Empire – if the Jedis can locate it first. It’s a race between good and evil as the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance.

Check it out

Original Site

Preview with DivX Advanced Features (60.2 MB)

(right-click and "save target as")

Full Feature (411 MB)

the island

grymmjack — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 08:43:08 +0000

"You want to watch this movie. You want to agree with grymmy."

Based on the book of the same name, written by Alduous Huxley (author of several excellent books the most notable being Brave New World), "Island" is a fantastic, adventurous rollercoaster romp through the dark psyche of mankind with just enough high-tech to keep the standard geek happy. While it is nearly impossible to review this film without giving away the plot, I can comment on the entire package as a whole.

ACTING

First, Ewan McGregors performance was convincing, but beyond that it wasn’t anything special. He plays the role of Lincoln-6-Echo one of the two main characters, the second main character being the love interest Jordan-2-Delta, played by the lucious Scarlett Johanson (*DSLs Detected*) who does a decent enough job with her role as well, but mainly I was too distracted by her beauty to really notice if she sucked at acting or not The supporting cast was pretty decent, with Steve Buscemi playing a basic tech guru guy who was a wisenheimer cracking jokes throughout, and the primary opposing force played by Sean Bean. All did basic acting jobs, nothing really special or of interest in this category unfortunately. 2 ½ stars for acting (average).

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The colors used in this movie were excellent. The palettes were high contrast in different segments, giving the entire plot a great canvas on which to unroll itself. The beginning of the film is monochrome, nice subtle low saturations with emphasis on technology having higher saturations lending to the subliminal connection that technology is the forefront and nothing else. The second primay scenes are wonderfully warm and rich tones with bright beautiful landscapes. For much of the movie, it is not certain what time or place the characters are in, which I felt was one of it’s greatest points. The third setting, inner city, was expertly put together with CG and great sweeping action camera movements and rigging that rivals star wars and the matrix. I particularly loved the dull dense palette of colors used for this because it was a dark dreary chemically treated sort of thing. The last few sets were of a great architecture and that was good as well. The directing of the ACTION was exemplary in all ways and there was enough suspense and artistry to be had in nearly every shot of the movie. Definitely a great movie to study if one were inclined to study storyboarding for action films. 4 stars for cinematography. (Excellent)

PLOT

I have read BNW(Brave New World), and loved it. That said, I have also read several other books by Huxley (though it has been a while so I can’t recall with any accuracy or trust in my memory what they were about besides BNW), so I am biased going in. I am thinking as I watch "this book wasn’t that good." I can’t remember reading alot of the stuff that happened in the movie, so I was pretty excited to watch it. Thus, I cannot fairly say "the book is better" because I don’t remember much of the book. Anyway, the plot, I felt, was very hip. It was hip in every sense of hip — it makes you think about life, and death, and it is controversial enough to really merit a questioning of ethics and morals when empathizing with the different colorful characters of the film (and after all isn’t that what movies are for? if you don’t leave the theatre feeling enlightened – like tyler and jack made us feel what the fuck is the point?). It’s a grisly truth that may come to pass in reality given the state of science and our everlasting desire as a society to prolong our miserable existences as long as we can for whatever reasons. I think it’s a very good probability that such a story could become a reality — and that is why the story is great, it is ahead of it’s time and among the greatest science fiction movies I have seen. Fans of the old school scifi will find this movie similar to Logans Run — indeed, the plot for LR is probably stolen from Huxley’s work after watching I can make several connections — but sharing those connections would give the movie away, so you will just have to watch them both and decide for yourselves. I felt that the plot moved at a decent pace. That is to say I was never going "boring!" in a homer simpson voice, and after the first 20 minutes, all in attendance with me watching (we watched on my fiance’s parents home theatre rig after opening gifts and all that crap on christmas), were fascinated and riveted to see more. Of course the movie being rented from BlockBuster, it was skipping and all that until I cleaned all of the smudges and jism from the discs surface (and was quite pissed about that given that everyone was really into the movie myself included) … Back to the plot. There was a certain part of the movie, where I was thinking "okay I get it, I can see where this is all going, and now lets wrap it up so we can watch something else" — it’s about 3/4 way through. It seems too long. But it’s a great ride through it. I loved particularly how the dreams Lincoln-6-Echo had were of his counterparts life and that science could not explain why — this is the part that I love about all movies, when they admit "okay, we don’t really know." it is the humility that I love about the sci-fi writers. They are dreamers, and admit they don’t know it all. So Plot gets a 4 star rating from me. Predictability wise, it was average. Any monkey with half a clue can see where things are heading after the clues are dropped. However, sheeple-sense would probably miss half the subtle cues. 4 stars for plot. (Excellent) I would give this 5 stars if it were not for the obnoxious message preached at the final showdown (and this is one of those things that I hate) when the black oppressed mercenary suddenly switches sides after gunning for Licoln and pals throughout 60% of the rest of the movie, with very little to persuade him. If we had some backstory on his character, I might be less inclined to roll my eyeballs, but come on. Get real, we don’t need an Oprah moment. It wasn’t even necessary for plot mechanics for his character to switch sides so drastically. That’s what blew star five out.

EFFECTS

The effects were pretty good. I loved the giant computer desk. It was this desk that was like a display and was using actual tablet inputs. It was very believable looking and was not over-the-top like alot of high-tech future bullshit found in other films. It had enough ‘now’ to be convincing. I loved the combinations of high tech and low tech and the concept of how they would interact with each other. I thought that it was tastefully done and very convincing. I felt that all of the CG was not over the top but just enough to ADD to the story, not take away from it. Several scenes in the film I was thinking "holy shit!" and the audience around me uttered similar expletives. Of course some of the stuff was a bit cheese-y but it was not cheese-y enough to warrant a groan. Diehard scifi gurus may get upset at some of the stuff, but not me. I loved every special attention to detail that was paid here. The vehicles were particularly bad ass. I was thinking "that fucking rules." so it had to be good, in hindsight. The animations and so on were nothing out of the ordinary however they all worked well together to help make the movie more immersive. It was very very well done. 5 stars for effects. (Awesome)

SOUND

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The sound in the movie was incredible. We were listening through a 5.1 koss system that my fiances step dad gave to her mom (which I had to set up). The music was almost non existant (and this was right, somehow) except for in the obvious scenes where one would expect to hear some music. It was perfect, when it was there though. I know the soundtrack was good because I couldn’t hear it, and that is quite a compliment — I of course heard something but I wasn’t distracted. The mood built in me was perfectly suited to the music and it carried me along. The actual action effects shots with the excellent crazy rigging and adventurous angles really created an excellent stage on which to showcase some good sounds. There was plenty of originality in it, but it’s not starwars so you can’t get really excited about it. It was good enough, but nothing special. 3 Stars (Above average).

ENTERTAINMENT

I was thoroughly enjoying almost 90% of the movie. The 10% I didn’t was about 3/4 through — that delicate spot in a film where the plot is wrapping up and loose ends are being tied to solid pieces of plot furniture even if they still hang out there in space. Speaking of hanging, how about that final showdown between Licoln and Merrick? Ouch. I was very immersed into the world and the story was good enough to make me think. The effects were pretty awesome, and the casting was okay. It really helped to have that lucious DSL toting chiclet sharing the scenes too. 4 stars for entertainment.

CONCLUSION

Acting: 2 ½ Stars, Cinematography: 4 stars, Plot: 4 stars, Effects: 5 stars, Sound: 3 stars, Entertainment: 4 stars

Final Verdict: 3 ¾ Stars (ROUNDING UP BECAUSE I AM LAZY TO IMPLEMENT FRACTIONAL STARS) = 4 Stars

Ideas/Suggestions

grymmjack — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 09:41:42 +0000

To the readers of smashy.net — if you have been noticing more spam
we’re taking care of it. And since I am going to be doing some work for
the site, I figured I would write a post asking for input on features
you’d like to see added or changed or removed to the site.

Please, if you have any suggestions, reply to this post with them.

Planned features so far are:

* Add "Show me items rated: [# Stars]" filter (per review category)

* Add touring test for post submittal to stop spam (smash I need a
wordlist from you and a selection of favorite typefaces (TTF format
please) for creating random words, using random typefaces — I use my
own handwriting font on evolv3 (yes I am that elite), which you are
welcome to — it’s been 100% effective thus far as no spam engines have
the source typeface thus they cannot add it to their image recognition
systems.

Ok. So let’s hear them.

Sin City

grymmjack — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 06:03:02 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to rent and watch a movie with my friend
Max who was temporary and gainfully employed by smashmonster. I don’t
watch a lot of movies but mainly it’s not because I don’t like them (in
fact, I love most movies — even the ones smashmonster does not (and
sometimes smash and I exchange heated expletives in regards to this
very fact)). I used to collect comic books when I was younger (this is
not to imply that older people collecting them is immature or whatever)
and I’ve watched almost all of (sans DareDevil — I fucking hate ben
afleck (name intentionally not properly capitalized — fuck you ben
afleck you aren’t worthy of my shift key)) so I figured that because
Sin City was based on a comic book it would be one of those basic comic
movies right?

Let me go back a bit. I didn’t know of Sin City except through a
trailer I saw when we were at another movie a very long time ago (what
it was I don’t recall). Additionally I live in a cave and rarely have
contact or communication with the outside universe aside from what my
fiance and bulldog tell me, I’m generally out of touch with reality
intentionally (work related). That means I have an unbiased opinion
going in. Right, now that that is cleaned up let’s continue the review.

So we rented the movie and I was expecting a basic generic comic flick
– with effects somewhere around the calibre of spidey movies. Man was
I wrong.

The movie starts slow, and is confusing initially. I actually didn’t
even see the credits (i have a tendency to not pay attention to much as
my mind is elsewhere — any smashmonster fan club maner can vouch for
this) so I didn’t see that Quentin Tarrentino (sp?) was behind the
scenes of anything and Max finally pointed it out to me after it was
all said and done.

Bruce Willis plays a great role as usual. I love Bruce Willis, and I
always will, he is forever and ever amen "Butch" from Pulp to me. Bruce
plays a hardcore straight and narrow cop in a city of corruption. It is
this contrast that is present throughout the entire movie — one
against many, us against them, the duality of the universe black and
white, etc. Anyway you see Bruce for about 5 to 10 minutes, and then
that’s that. You think WTF? A big star like him having such a small
role is kind of nutty (but the cast is literally chock full of stars
and starlets and it even introduced (to me) several cool actors that I
would like to learn more about) after all. Had I seen the QT credit in
the intro I’d have guessed as much that he’d be back later but I didn’t
and so I was stunned. But to be honest that sub-story isn’t my favorite
of the movie.

It’s the next one, the one that follows (there are several interwoven
stories that twist together in plot and purpose) that I really loved. I
won’t go into great detail but Mickey Rourke played the character I
liked most. This review isn’t very good is it? Sorry it’s my first
movie review here, so please be kind.

The big scary crazy ex-con guy is my favorite because he’s the most
outrageous. This is the part of the movie I fell in love with because
it was so egregiously violent and over-the-top. At one point my
favorite character dismembers a villian, and feeds him alive to the
villians pet wolf — how macabre and grisly. Actually I was somewhat
shocked to see that Elijah Wood would stoop to a level like this
considering it was so fast on the heels of his LoTR windfall — his
character says nothing throughout the entire movie.

Now the visuals and cinematography…

This is truly a testament to the imagination of Frank M something,
whatever his name is I forgot and I’m too lazy to look it up. Like I
said this review isn’t that great. But this Frank M guy is a genious
and the way this film was interpreted on screen was nothing short of
complete and total art. The entire movie uses basically a really dark
palette with very high contrasting light sources cast upon objects –
think old movie noir and you’ve got a basic idea. But it wasn’t pure
black and pure white, it was a subtle non-white, a dirty white which
really made it even that much more symbolic in that even the good guys
struggled against temptation and so on. There are colors used in the
movie — but the colors are accents and visual exclamation points of
the statements the film makes in it’s greatest moments — the hair of
the ex-cons angel, the color of the main villians skin, etc, for this
reason alone Sin City deserves 3 stars in my book.

But in this case, this is only one component of several that make it a great and instantly classic film.

The story and the plot and so forth are also awesome. The world of Sin
City is that of total corruption and chaos. Without any backstory on
the Sin City world from the comics I felt a bit lost at times but that
did not take away from the movie in the slightest. Characters we didn’t
know were introduced with a purpose and the comical element of this
dark dramatic super-heroic comedy really was a shining light — without
the humor it would be too completely gross to stomach.

I wont go into alot of detail because I have to split for work but I
wanted to start a thread on this movie. I am interested to learn what
smashy.netters think of the film and why. I give it 4 stars because it
was that good. Please watch it for yourself though and allocate your
own stars to this films dark and mysterious and hillarious belly.
Thanks for reading this crappy review.

Google movies

grymmjack — Sat, 14 May 2005 08:51:32 +0000

Discovered this post on Slashdot this morning. Since this relates quite naturally to the content here, I figured I would post about it.

Apparently, Google.com is now (among many of their other services) offering reviews and theatre locators
and so forth. What are your thoughts on this? Google seems to have
quite a bit of diversity going on behind the scenes (and some of which
is not even documented), like this feature (atleast to my own
knowledge).

So next time you want information on a movie on the net, and you type
the explicit name of the film into google hoping to pull up the
homepage for the film, and perhaps some IMDB links,
think again. Googles stuff is right at the top and offers reviews and
utilities in a clean and easy fashion. Is google aiming to be the next
IMDB? Where will the Googlution end? Will it ever end?

Personally, I like the feature, I feel it is additive to their existing
services and falls well within the circle of what I use google for (to
hunt for information). Google is just a tool to me. However, to some
sites that offer reviews and have made their nest on the web doing so,
this has got to really really hurt them I would think.

How long before reviews.google.com kills it’s competition entirely?
Google is relentless, and it’s good that they have such noble
ambitions, but I have to think they are making money off of this
somehow or intend to. One of my biggest fears is google becoming the
next Microsoft (in terms of deciding for the entire world exactly what
is best for it and since it has so much marketshare, the world has no
choice). I wonder, isn’t there some law or something that could protect
that from happening?

Certainly I think readers of Smashy.net would agree that Google is
fairly innocuous when compared with other companies, and their great
service has really really helped us all at some point. But when is it
too much? Where is the line that should not be crossed because crossing
said line would become monopolization? As a search engine (atleast
that’s what it was at one point, now it’s kind of a (gay cliche alert)
life-engine (coined by yahoo but true)), are they not required to keep
an unbiased and fair approach. They are supposed to just point to
results that the googlebots snag enmasse are they not? Hence, isn’t
putting google reviews and utilities at the top of their lists (granted
it’s their list they can do what they want) anti-competitive, and thus
bias to their internal service as opposed to just leading the way to
external ones?

I love google, as most of the world does. But I am very paranoid about
google becoming iniquitous over time. For now, I will dig the new stuff
like Google Maps and Google Movie Reviews, since I don’t really have a
choice,… since the world doesn’t really have a choice.

What’s next google? Google Recipes? Google Porn? Google Pets Online?
Google Grocery? heh. We certainly dig you, and are dying to find out.

How about Google Jerky (google online beef jerky would be neat), or
perhaps Google Abortions (find the clinic closest to you and google map
it)? …

Google is already a verb, but the future seems to promise us Google will be similar to the "Smurf" craze. Where everything was Smurftastic or Smurfarific. Googletastic Googlerific.. Hrmmm…

Born Magazine

grymmjack — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 11:47:46 +0000

It is a great idea to merge lit (literary work) with other artistic
mediums. Some good lit is a great addition to any visual work. In fact,
Smashy and myself were in an underground "lit group" called TiLT (Toxic
Images of Literary Testament) together long ago. I think that Smash may
have been one of the founders. Anyway, how the group worked was this:
all members wrote poetry/lit in ASCII text format, and
colored/decorated the work using ANSI colors and any ASCII
characters/formatting desired. Back when we were doing this, there was
a huge ANSI movement which involved drawing textmode artwork (this is
to say, art consisting of only basic textual characters). Indeed, there
was a "lit" scene, and a few differerent groups existed but only a few
were very popular. TiLT was somewhat popular but not nearly as popular
as Mistigris (the scenes premiere lit group run by the venerable Cthulu
– long dead now). Lit has roots in zines, which were also ASCII text
format.

What does this have to do with anything right? Well, I stumbled upon a
site that takes the original ‘lit merged with art’ concept much much
deeper in a most cool way. It’s called Born Magazine and here is the synopsis snipped directly from the site:

Born Magazine is an experimental venue marrying literary arts and
interactive media. Original projects are brought to life every three
months through creative collaboration between writers and artists.

Indeed, this site is very interesting. The use of flash to present lit
is a novel and interesting one. I think this is perhaps the coolest way
to really enhance a message. Maybe one day I will do something like
Born Magazine for (my own personal pride and joy poem best work ever) poem; X.

Definitely a very creative approach to design, and communication. Some of my favorite entries there are:

Some advice when you use the site and view the entries/works:

Play around – lots of things are going to be counter-intuitive
(sometimes that is the point), move your mouse all over, click things
that dont look clickable. Have fun
Turn your volume up a bit, some of the work has music/sound effects.
Browse the hundreds of entries when you have time to enjoy them,
not just in passing. It’s pretty great stuff they have there lots of
them.
Sometimes it helps to read from different perspectives. Here is a link with some pointers.

Definitely one of the most original sites I’ve stumbled upon in a very
long time. It’s too bad no one has done one using Ginsberg’s Howl (my favorite poem of all time).

Rating (3 stars)
Interface: Cumbersome (3 lines with arrow buttons dont help me much).
Presentation: Basic.
Content: Excellent

Check it out!