And here's what we got:
I am not a fan of Rockstar Games, generally. Not to say that they don’t do good work, but their usual fare just isn’t something that I can enjoy for more than about 10 minutes. Grand Theft Auto 3 and onwards always felt tedious (regardless of how much you can personally achieve in it), and Red Dead Redemption just seemed like the same thing, but with cowboys.
The whole ‘open world, do what you want, oh by the way there’s some actual story here if you wanna play it’ model never really did much for me. It’s neat and all, I get the appeal, but I never really got into it.
So then they start talking about L.A. Noire, and my first thought was “oh good, GTA in the 1940′s but this time you’re a cop and will get shot at by bad guys instead of the other way around. Yawwwwn” and promptly ignored it. But then they started releasing the trailers for L.A. Noire, and I watched them. And then I watched some more. And then I started reading about what L.A. Noire was really going to be. A detective game, but with chases, shakedowns, shooting, and moral implications.
Then I got excited.
I’ve never really been let down by Pixar. There is a reason why their movies do so well: Quality. Every Pixar movie I’ve seen I have enjoyed. Last year I watched Wall-E, though I didn’t have time to write about it. Had I, I would have given it a solid 10/10 because there was nothing Wall-E did less than amazing.
UP sits right under Wall-E on the awesome scale. It’s not as epically beautiful, nor is it quite as artistically stunning, but it’s pretty damned close.
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve played any real arcade-style games. Last time I picked up a controller to play any sort of side-scrolling, button-bashing, streets-of-fury style game I was a much younger person. With SNES controller in hand, my friend and I playing the likes of TNMT: Turtles in Time, Contra III or Battletoads & Double Dragon.
See the problems with my playing these sorts of games are:
Well I now have a console, so I have no excuse as to whether I could try to play them or not. Turns out I still suck at them, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. The forearm muscle is a slow process, and I’ve already given myself muscle strain resulting in a fantastic carpel tunnel attack. You just don’t feel like a man until you’ve got to ice your forearm because of extreme button mashing.
Or is it “You just can’t feel like a man when you have to ice your forearm because of extreme button mashing”?
Either way, it hasn’t stopped me from playing Castle Crashers with extreme vigor.
I have been waiting for a long, long time for a new album to come rolling out from this man. The album was supposed to come out a while ago, but when your house burns down due to some forest fires that are ruining the local forestry… well I can understand a delay.
Thankfully after my faithful wait, I have been rewarded with his new release: Sycamore Meadows. After giving this album a couple of listens, it has quickly become one of my favorites for all time. It’s both amazingly happy and startlingly deep, many times simultaneously.
Who knew that reading about a gay man who dresses in drag and his call-boy lover would be all that interesting? I sure didn’t! To be honest had someone suggested it to me, I probably would have sprained my eyebrow from the speed in which it would’ve raised. All that aside, I Am Not Myself These Days is a great first book to the year. Starting off with your good foot and all that.
Over the Christmas holidays, Theresa and I went to our local independent movie theater, and watched Juno. I have to say that it’s easily one of the best films I watched in 2007. It was sweet, funny, and potent in all the right spots.
The movie Juno is about one Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) and Paulie Bleeker (the ever master of awkward pauses, Michael Cera) and their joint child-making. The movie takes place during the nine months of Juno’s wonderful adventure through pregnancy, and her interaction with the adoptive couple Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman).
If you’ve ever watched Clone High, you’ve heard Abandoned Pools. I’m fairly certain that all of their songs from their first album are used throughout the show, including the intro video which is not actually on any of their Albums. In any case, Humanistic is one of the longest running albums existent in my library and easily on my top ten, if not my top five. Flat out I’m going to say that it’s simply a wonderful album and worth listening to. It has a subtle darkness to it, and manages to convey a stunning amount of emotion considering how “happy” some of the songs happen to be.