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Media

I watch alot of movies and listen to more music than is probably healthy.

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Fuck Max Payne

Holy crap, I just found something on the world wide interwebs; writings by myself from almost two years ago. As in, before I had an actual blog. If I can find any more, I’ll post them on here. For now, here is a “review” of the Max Payne movie. You know the one, the one with Mark Whalberg.

Today, I went and watched the atrocity that is Max Payne, starring Mark Whalberg.
I’m not exactly sure what it is that makes such a good actor as Wahlberg take on such shitty roles, but I wish he’d stop already.
For those unfamiliar with Max Payne, he is the "hero" in the game of the same name. The plots of the movie and game both have similar traits. Max came home to find his family dead at the hands of drug addicts. He spends the next few years constantly seeking retribution; investigating dead-end leads which eventually reveal plot points and twists, and then the end. The directors and writers try to move the plot towards different scenarios than the game, keeping the movie from being too much like its electronic counterpart. This is where the movie falls short though.
The movie seems to go on forever, leaving me more frustrated than wowed at the slow motion action sequences. During these scenes of course, the movie seems to act ALOT like a computer game. Max is amazingly blessed with unlimited ammo, and has dead-on accuracy, where-as his enemies have worse aim than the stormtroopers from Star Wars and lack almost any ammo in their weapons. Payne moves up each level of whatever building he’s moving through, until he reaches the end level "boss". Also, any injuries he MAY sustain the scene before are magically forgotten about, as if he picked up a health pack on the way.
The movie left me confused when BAM! Demons were suddenly attacking everyone. Like what the hell! There were never demons in the game. Makes no sense at all, and doesn’t contribute anything real to the movie, except for a chance to throw a heap of special effects in our faces.
So Max Payne goes all dark-side as he probes people and eventually gets to the root of it all (which I’m not going to ruin, just in case you want to expose yourself to this deplorable excuse of a movie). He almost dies but takes an experimental super-addictive drug which the bad guys coincidently gave him, and this saves him from hypothermia somehow. Also, it makes him see burning ashes instead of snow, and demons start flying overhead as if hell were suddenly taking over the city. The drug gives him the power to shoot his way through EVERYTHING, and forget about his wounds even quicker. "OH I GOT HIT BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER…NOTHING REALLY MATTERS…TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE". No matter how many shots are landed on him, he just keeps on moving, like the drug turned him into some Jason Vorhees/Michael Myers hybrid.
I refuse to talk about this any longer or reveal any more. Go see it for yourself if you want to put yourself through that misery.
Max Payne needs to lay off the motherfucking drugs.

Dumb Blonde, Dead. – We Choose To Go To The Moon

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about anything music related, and that’s because nothing has really made me want to. That’s changed, and I thank Team Fortress 2.

Why? Because of Team Fortress 2, I found Control Point. Because of Control Point, I found the Dead Workers Party. Because of the DWP…you get the point. Eventually it brought me to a forum post by a character called Ash Williams, about his band’s new EP “We Choose To Go To The Moon.” being available for streaming on their website. The album was available for download on a “pay what you want” scheme, and I downloaded the album for free, deciding if I liked it, I’d go back and pay for it then.

After a couple of weeks, it’s grown on me enormously. Not being the best writer when it comes to describing music you’ll have to bare with me. Ready? Ready.

There’s really only one word I can think of to describe a majority of the music, and that’s haunting. The band has dual vocalists, and the way they intertwine with each other, swapping back and forth and sharing lines sounds so amazing at times it makes me shudder. Music is meant to inspire a strong feeling in a person, and this works in doing that for me. In songs like Moons So Bright, the music is slow, and in a lot of ways sounds like I’ve heard it before. The vocals though, just hook me. I really wish I could go into this more, but I can’t, I need a thesaurus.

There are some songs I have trouble getting my head around of course, like ‘Spin, Spin, Spin’. The strange style the band switches to makes it difficult to get into those songs, but they by no means are terrible or unlistenable.

If you found all that terrible to read, here’s the jist; It’s a good album from a good band. Go and buy it. From their website. Or at least download it and give it a listen. Do it. You know you want to. Peeeeer pressure. Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer pressure.

I just went back and paid ten dollars for it. Which by Australian standards, is pretty cheap for music. If you’re interested in listening to new music and this post did absolutely nothing for you, try visiting http://dumbblondedead.com/, give the music a listen, and judge it for yourself.

My Most Played Songs (October-November 09)

I may of forgotten to do this for October, so this particular post encompasses the top songs I listened to for the past two months. I’m of course not sure if anyone actually looks at these, but hey, I enjoy keeping track of this stuff.

Previous months song lists:

• September 09
• August 09
• July 09
• June 09
• May 09
• April 09

No title can express how funny I find this.

My brother has a video camera, an early present for Christmas. He has dreams of becoming an actor or a director, so for him this is a stepping stone to greatness. He’s started posting re-enactments of movie scenes Brandon Hardesty style on his YouTube account, the first being a scene from Ed Wood.

Now, I don’t find that funny, I find it a good idea for getting criticism to get better. However, what I find funny is a certain pause in the video I made by accident.

To me, this is possibly the most epic screenshot of my brother I could ever get. I almost wet myself laughing so hard. To bring the point home:

And because I can:

Back on topic now, my brother has done this re-enactment, and will do future ones, with the idea of getting criticism and to improve. If you have a few spare minutes, please go to his video and give it a watch, and maybe leave a comment on what you thought about it.

I’ve Got Nothing

ChartJackers is a project being run by four popular YouTubers, in which their goal is to get a song written, recorded and on the UK Charts using nothing but “the goodwill” of people on the internet. Everything in the song and connected to it is done by members of the YouTube and internet communities, and all money made by the project goes to Children In Need. It’s been worked on for a while, and now the song is finished, has a music video on YouTube, and is available for download on iTunes. Listening to it, it’s a good song, and though fairly poppy, the money goes to charity anyway, so it’s a win win by any means.

The music video was posted on CharlieIsSoCoolLike’s channel for our viewing pleasure:

Some more information about the project, from the sidebar of said video:

The lyrics of the song are made up of YouTube comments, compiled into a song by another YouTuber. The lyrics were released and then YouTubers wrote a melody for the lyrics, and we picked our favourite. We held YouTube auditions via video response to pick the band, found the producer of the song through YouTube, and the music video is made up of literal interpretations of the lyrics, clapping and singing along, by YouTubers! It’s a bit YouTubey.
All of the money from the song goes directly to Children In Need, so I hope you’ll consider helping us by buying the song, and telling all your friends and family to buy it too! Thanks :)

It’s a good song, and it’s great to see what people can create when joined by the power of the internet.

My Most Played Songs (September 09)

Yes that time has come again; to track my changing taste in music I post the 25 songs I’ve listened to most for that month. It’s hardly accurate since I use my iPod just as much as the computer, and my portable media player doesn’t actually take play counts, but still, this is a near accurate Top 25 list for this month.

Previous months song lists:

• August 09
• July 09
• June 09
• May 09
• April 09

Blink

I’ve gotten into Chameleon Circuit, a band which sings Doctor Who themed songs. They released their album a few months ago, but it took me a while to finally buy some of their songs off iTunes. And since listening to them, they’ve become a small obsession for me musically. In my boredom today I’ve been youtubing the band members old videos (I forgot to mention, all the band members are popular YouTubers) looking for old videos about it, because they performed demos of the songs and the like.

For absolutely no reason other than I can (which is reason enough right?), here’s one I just watched for the first time by charlieissocoollike, where he performs the song Blink. Blink is based on an episode in the third series of the recent Doctor Who (the second series to feature David Tennant). It’s one of my favourites, both the song and the episode.
Oh, you have to watch the video all the way to the end for a cheap laugh.

 

Does this mean I film maker again? No.

Decided to finally make a video to satiate my urge. It’s just a pointless video of me putting up my photos on the wall behind the computer. Boring but fun to make.

 

Also found this video in my collections, from when I had to help my sister make a video of dialogue for her Indonesian project. Was fun to make, but came out terrible.

Funtimes amirite?

I dread the slash fiction ideas that come from this.

Oh, no, of course. You went all hands-free didn’t you? Like, "Hey, I’m the Doctor. I can save the universe with a kettle and some string. And look at me, I’m wearing a vegetable!”

Bestest quote ever.

My Most Played Songs (August 09)

Another month, another one of these posts. I’ve added nearly my entire music collection to iTunes since purchasing a 120GB iPod. As such, this’ll hopefully  mean a more drastic change in songs, as I have access to more on the computer.
It also occurred to me that I use my iPod more than I use iTunes to listen to music, choosing to watch DVDs rather than listen to music when I’m on my computer, so these will always not be perfect judges on my music taste for the month. Be that as it may, this is the song list for the month.

Previous months song lists:

• July 09
• June 09
• May 09

• April 09

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