The Gamers: Dorkness Rising: Nice.
Religulous: Fewer facts than The God Who Wasn't There, but way more sarcasm, high end interviews.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury: Supposed to bridge the gap between the movies, but conveys no actual information. Also, very short.
My-Zhime: My-Otome: Zwei: Still prefer Hime, and don't get this.
Generation Kill: The massive budgets of war movies make this look cheap in places, but more realistic in terms of what a soldier actually does all day. See also A Bridge Too Far. Modern soldiers know they are deep behind enemy line with no support, but still can't do anything about it.
Spaced: The Complete Series: Disc 1: It's got moments, but the space in-between is meh. I also liked that it has an actual ending.
Manufactured Landscapes: Nice. In terms of the pictures, I liked the earlier nature pictures. Project Binchoustan would be great to reclaim a played out industrial site.
Ashes of Time Redux: Certainly pretty looking.
Population 436: Beginning filled with horror movie cliche Hand Behind You scenes, but the end was nice.
How I Met Your Mother: Season 3: Come for the Alyson Hannigan, stay for the Neil Patrick Harris. The source of most of my popular culture references. Shame about the laugh track, and some of the episodes are out of order. Bonus points for WoW reference, while I was wow-fishing.
Barton Fink: moments, but boring.
Terry Jones' Barbarians: Fact filled!
Does anyone else think it is ironic that the Honda Insight ad is about things emerging from behind things, when it looks exactly like a Prius, but without the details?
Robot Chicken: Season 3: Occasionally drags on too long, but an awe inspiring cast.
New Fist of Fury: Best part: the English dub doing Japanese. And the fight at the end. Rest drags a lot.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: First Spaceship on Venus: There's an error in the chess game. King to H8 and king to G7! Preposterous!
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Laserblast: A very poorly edited movie. On par with Gold Boots.
Chinatown: Great performances, story.
The God Who Wasn't There: Possibly too personal.
30 Rock's fight club produced an actual spit take. Fortunately, back into the cup.
Half a Loaf of Kung Fu: Jackie Chan does the 3 Stooges.
Appaloosa: A waste of Irons, slow, but not bad.
My Name Is Bruce: Warning: contains Ted Raimi. As usual, the unfiltered Bruce on the extras is better than the actual movie.
Ninja Checkmate: Contains no ninjas. Poor editing really brings it down.
Spring 2009
Winner: No clear victor. Fewer groups are doing smaller files, which is annoying. I'm not downloading a 500MB file for even a show I like.
Election: The Triad one. Not bad exactly.
Fists of Fury / Chinese Connection: Picture quality is bad/worse. Was the dubbing on Chinese Connection a joke?
Earthquake: laughable scene of destruction. Have they learned nothing from Godzilla? Not sure what if any significance the choice at the end had. Also, not as good as Meteor.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army: Oddly like a prequel: everything seems to set up another movie, and the resolutions to the various problems are obvious to anybody with 3 brain cells.
Jyu-Oh-Sei: Planet of the Beast King: The Complete Series: Disc 2: the number of irritating characters is balanced neatly by the number that die. Nice SF.
Jyu-Oh-Sei: Planet of the Beast King: The Complete Series: Disc 1: Seemed lame at first, but got better. I liked the Sci Fi stuff.
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion: Part 1: Disc 2They should make a bigger deal out of the picture dramas so they can be watched in order. They have a lot of plot in them, and are even referenced in the coming attraction! Escaflowne, another Sunrise production, had scenes animated and cut for time but were used in the promos.
FLAG: I liked the concept and the gimmick, even if it does take more mental energy to assemble it into linear narrative. I even like the Nextstep-like GUI. Easter egg: the last few seconds of the final closing credits.
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion: Part 1: Disc 1: I think I avoided this the first time around due to the excessive amount of Engrish in the title alone, but it has a sustained fan base, so I gave it a try. It is pretty good.
Sword Masters: Two Champions of Shaolin: 90% of the movie is boring and excessively convoluted, but the epic battle at the end makes up for it. Also, almost no sword fighting.
Transporter 3: decent, but only until the woman ruined it. Also, a lack of respect for physics.
Popotan: Vol. 2: Enigma: Wistful stories about loneliness. And nudity. 3: Stories about overcoming loneliness. And nudity. Not that I'd complain, and it is not like "lonely perverts" is a small target demographic.
WALL-E: Inadvertent contrast to Alphaville. Technology will not dehumanize us. It will allow us to dehumanize ourselves.
Alphaville: Da da Daaa. Too French, too old. Da da Daaa!
The Conversation: Slow decent into madness. Emphasis on slow, though the ending was good. Surprise part by Harrison Ford. The more I see movies from the 1970's, the more I know the Singularity will happen.
Eavesdropper: Patient 14: I got it for the cast. Plodding, but not as bad as a Sy FY channel movie.
Trancers: Massively stupid, yet awe inspiring, its own way. Back from the time when people still thought digital watches were a really neat idea. Also not the movie I thought it was.
Save the Green Planet!: Odd mix of genres. That site would be great for Project Binchoustan. I'd love to dismantle an abandoned industrial site, as long it wasn't full of chemicals.
BSG: I liked it a lot. There was a sudden disappearance that I felt jarring at the time as too supernatural, but later (much later ha ha) it all came together. I still like my idea that human race had died out millennia before and that the Cylons were replaying the final days, over and over, until the One God, the Cylon core program, could work out a happy ending for the many gods, human individuality. The humans who didn't get the secret could live out their lives without knowing. That would have answered a number of still dangling questions, like how they can breed together, how some people see things, and fail to die in the explosion in the opening credits.
Terminator and Dollhouse are getting better, but on Fox, they'll be randomly canceled. T:TSC is a lot better than the previous season. Any Dollhouse episode with the fox woman is OK by me.
Popotan: Vol. 1: Vanishing House: Touching emotional stories, a ferret named Unagi, and nudity. Lots of nudity. So much nudity that one wonders why they bothered with the quality of stories.
Binchou Canclehoof hits 80! Depending on how much money Bin can make in the remaining quests, I might go for the fast flyer (5,000 g!) and few more achievements or start a gnome ("Gnibblet" or "Taiga Aisaka"), or a dk ("Krauser II"). I'm not sure if I'd get into raids. It is stressful, and I play at odd times, making it hard to get a group.
Urusei Yatsura Movie 5: The Final Chapter: Equally old school, but less entertaining that SMJ.
Karin: Vol. 6: Ceremony of Blood: not in the mood.
Flow: For Love of Water: something else to worry about. Too few actual facts.
The Bank Job: not the greatest bank heist movie ever, in that the real event is marked mostly by its mistakes
Traitor: Taut acting
Lady Snowblood: More pinky violence, though much better film-making than the other one.
Battle Royale 2: Not nearly as good.
Hana: Nice. Incredible amount of filth.
The Bad Sleep Well: slow, but nice ending.
Death Race: the 1970's version had better social commentary. Unless this entire movie is social commentary.
I heard a synopsis of "Atlas Shrugged" from Olbermann, and I realized that is very similar to Project Binchoustan, but for exactly the opposite political reason: free-market Republican capitalism will not reward my effort as it has rewarded the well-connected and the ownership class, so I'm not going to play that game. I work only to attach a sucker into the ownership class, so that I might live like a leech on market returns. (Assuming there are any in the future) I would be willing to work cheap for a government that worked, because I'd be doing something useful. As I do useless things, I must be paid to do them.
High Spirits: O'Bleargh. Did not finish. Curse you, Stonecutters!!!
Cube 2: Hypercube: less gore, less sense.
Black Lagoon: Season 2: Second Barrage: Vol. 3: Good stuff. I'd still consider becoming a pirate, if it meant I could quit my job.
Hulu will use a 3 minute ad before a 24 minute show, and a 90 sec before a 44 minute show. The 3 minutes came as an unwelcome surprise.
Black Lagoon: Season 2: Second Barrage: Vol. 2:
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus: Loveably goofy. Go G-Grasper!
Saber Marionette J: Vol. 3: Disc 1: Dated, silly, but I like Lime.
Wake of Death: JCVD emotes the hell out of stuff. Thrill at the magical 2 floor building numbered in the European fashion that has 4 flights of stairs.
XXX: State of the Union: Big action, no brains. Also, snakes on a train!
Vanishing Point: Oddly engrossing, given that it has no plot or point.
Repeatedly forgot to mention: another January cavity, only this time it wasn't even a cavity. The dentist just wanted to put a filling in anyway.
The Man Who Fell to Earth: watching the technology of the ancient epoch of 1976 makes one wonder that perhaps there is an alien giving us technology in exchange for reality TV and internet porn.
Death Note: The same problem I have with 24: he's pretty insane to begin with. It is not like absolute power drove him mad when he offs the first person to call him names.
Evolution: All star cast, lacking funny.
Black Lagoon: Season 2: Second Barrage: Vol. 1: Way more intense than the first season.
Ashura: Although simple silence would be a more damning and sincere indication of disinterest, meh.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: A number of Jim Carrey's movies have been off-putting, but this is a great performance.
Gurren Lagann: Vol. 2 Better than the first bit, and the sci-fi twist is the sort of things I love.
Blood +: Part 1: Disc 5: Nicely wrapped up part 1 while setting up part 2. Usually that sort of thing irritates.
Karas: The Prophecy: I had thought (correctly as it turns out) that Revelation was a sequel, but this one is equally in media res. I liked it more than the other one, and now that I know neither suffers from anime's tendency to back-story things to death, I like the other one more, too. Though they implied but never explained the back-story with the snail girl (equal parts cute and disgusting). Another prequel?
Blood +: Part 1: Disc 4: better.
Blood +: Part 1: Disc 3: Nice, mostly. The brothers are starting to really annoy.
Blood +: Part 1: Disc 2: much slower. (Netflix didn't get this back.)
Karas: The Revelation: Seems to a highly excerpted cross of Hellraiser and The Matrix. Possibly combining the worst parts of each.
Blood +: Part 1: Disc 1: Goretastic.
Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People: Yet another reason to not eat fungus. Good, until the end, which crapped on the entire movie. The original story, read out in the extras, was the complete opposite, made sense, and was a real twist ending.
Rozen Maiden: Träumend: Vol. 3: The Alice Game: Now that's the stuff.
Rozen Maiden: Träumend: Vol. 1: Puppet Show, Rozen Maiden: Träumend: Vol. 2: Revival: Weak when being silly, but appears to be getting serious. Or as serious as it is able to get, given the concept.
Yellowbeard: nice enough
Erik the Viking: Very violent for a children's story, very childish for an adult story. Speaking of Terry Jones, I enjoyed Medieval Lives.
Space Amoeba: far more serious than The Blob, with sexism, racism and corporate espionage, but not the Andromeda Strain, what with the giant squid monster and all. Has a Japanese commentary track, probably more interesting than the movie as it discusses Toho of the 50's. "We destroyed it, though we can't be sure we destroyed it completely." Speaking of which, I had a real grilled squid. Not the tentacles, though. I also had a curry rice, but did not resembled the anime version. It was almost entirely onion. Perhaps I should have requested the Little Prince Goes to New York brand.
The Dagger of Kamui: Very old school, but I got into it.
Winter 2009:
Winner: nobody. These are all pretty weak. The goods ones are already licensed, so perhaps in 2012, winter 2009 won't suck.
45 minutes later, and I'm out another $40. A fine example of sunk cost investing. You better be happy, Binchou Canclehoof.
9 and half hours later, the install completes and starts patching. Oddly enough the patch downloads at full speed. Even the peers are giving me real uploads.
7 and a half hours later, the installer completes, and deletes the game, including the installer. Totally gone. I'm installing WotLK, and if it is still there tomorrow morning, I'll upgrade again, though I don't know why. Also, shouldn't make financial decisions at 10:30 PM, either. This whole thing is a day long disaster, and if it weren't the nerd equivalent of crack, I would have given up on it long ago.
6 hours later, the installer is still not done, is down to 160 KBps, did 1% in the last 45 minutes so it must be averaging a lot less, or that percentage is guesstimate.
Superbad: writing lacked snap most of the time.
Highlander: The Search for Vengeance: I thought this was going to be yet another movie trying to cash in on the Highlander, and that it may be, but I loved it. The unexpectedly deep story and my general love of post-apocalypses put this above all but the first 3/4ths of the series. Makes a few mistakes with NYC geography.
8 hours later, with the download stalled completely, I find a support item saying you can't upgrade, and you should re-install. Thank you very much for putting that on the page where you upgrade. Now it it is downloading what appears to be the same 4 GB all over again, into the same directory, but it is doing it at 250 KBps. 300 would have been nicer, but what is 50 KBps between friends. If I upgrade again, and see note below, I'd have to download these 4.6 GB again plus the remaining for the 5 something total that the downloader offers to download for me, but won't. Had I been less annoyed, I would have double-upgraded to WotLK instead of installing this, which seems a bit of waste now that I think about it.
I needed WOW-narcotics because at work, the boss person, because he doesn't want to make assumptions about anybody, assumes because my heads up source code change notice didn't include a detailed test plan (after none of the others did, and given that I wrote all but one of them, I should know. Everyone else's code changes, library additions, massive new code style changes are left as a surprise), I meant to deploy it without any testing at all, and in fact refused to test it or let anyone else test it, even when I started a followup with "I have already tested it, so what testing do you want to see?". Because of that, I have to create a test area equal to the entire production system, and wait while the QA does its thing. (Namely, produce an unrelated wishlist of random things that bother them while missing any actual issues not placed directly in front of them, no matter how large.) Better, when I pointed out that a column rename and related search and replace was a pretty simple change, and that the proposed testing would double the work needed to maintain two copies of the source during the weeks QA looked at it, and that there were already several hundred schema changes, I was told that I could not tell him that the other changes were equivalent, because this changes both the source and the schema, not something safe like adding a column and changing the code. A simple grep would reveal the other rename (I thought there were more, but unlike some people, I actually look stuff up before making unfounded arguments), and numerous default and data type changes (which leave the code untouched but have massive effects on what it actually does), but two days earlier (but still several weeks after this started, so the new found caution is not in response, and this is still not a general policy) and which I had also just mentioned for a different reason, a column add schema change failed, was never tested, and the code change broke part of the billing, leading to irate customers. The reason I brought that up was that the programmer wanted to change the deployment script so that if there were three statements, one of which had an error in it, it could still commit the other 2. The downloader is down to lower than 100KB A MINUTE, it no longer even hazards a guess as to how long it will take, and just thinking about work is irritating me again.
It is now attempting to download at the wire melting speed of 40 KBps. It may take 21 hours, though I know it won't bother download all that. I did this early in the morning to avoid exactly this kind of crap. I turned the DMZ host back on, but the P2P "feature" has garnered the grand total of 1.2 MB out of 28 MB, in the same amount of time real p2p software would have downloaded 2 24 minute tv shows. If I hadn't paid up until 4/1, I'd consider taking the upgrade as a loss and finding something more productive to do. Though I did want some final pictures. I collected a set of nice clothing and ceremonial weapons for just such an occasion. Note to self: cancel before 4/1, do not get any more upgrades.
I upgraded WOW to Burning Crusade, though now it won't let me play until that is downloaded, and it have taken an hour to check half the existing data, and won't let me play until it finishes the download, and won't even start downloading until it finishes checking. So much for the background downloader. I tried renicing it, but it still creeps along with 8% of one CPU while it is just, I'm assuming, hash code checking, a CPU-bound activity. Instead it seems limited by design to exactly 1024 KBps, leaving me with nothing to do but rant about it. Basically all of my negative WOW experiences revolve around the downloader and the trial client upgrade. The site presents it as an equal of the disc install, or Steam, but it isn't. It could at least use a real torrent. It doesn't tell you how much it is needs to download, and the estimate of how long it will take is a complete fiction. I knew I should have purchased a disc, or not upgraded and started an Alliance character once Binchou Canclehoof hit 60. Plus, $60 bucks for both upgrades, each sold separately? There's another $30 that won't buy me food. Really outrageous prices: 480 g for fast mount training? The most I've had at one time is 80, and I'd been saving up for that. It makes sense in that before the expansions, it was the epic mount of the day. I was going to get that, finish all the available quests, explore everywhere, then quit as master of the classic game. Instead, this. I really should not make financial decisions at 5 AM. I could have at least spent the early morning hours walking godlike among the Burning Blade cultists, watching them fry on my lightening shield, and become exalted among all Classic races.
Phase IV: I for one welcome our insect overlords. Occasionally unintentionally hilarious, but good old-school SF.
The ABC player seems to have gotten substantially worse since the last Lost season in video quality, audio sync, number of ads, plus the whole video section appears to be flash, making bookmarking just the Lost episode list impossible, and getting there involves 2 flash pages and a popunder. If you are not going to be better than Hulu, you could at least not get worse than your old self.
Labyrinth: Never saw this the first time around. Didn't miss much: the end is weak.
War of the Gargantuas: The model work was nice, but the plot was odd, to say the least.
Futurama: Bender's Game: Not one of the better ones. I think the problem is they wanted to do something they loved, that they could then not make fun of.
Naruto the Movie 3: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom: Good by Naruto standards, yet another novel use of the shadow clone technique.
The Onion Movie: Uneven.
Karin: Vol. 5: Ascendance: I liked the Christmas episode.
Iron Man: Not massively exciting with so much creation myth telling, but block-buster-y. If I wanted to watch somebody work, I'd get a mirror.
The Legend of the Shadowless Sword: some of the fights were laughable, but not bad overall.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Not nearly as bad as I was expecting, and given how bad it is, that must have been pretty bad. Karen Allen got better looking, though.
Project Binchoustan has suffered a setback, but still could be completed in 2012, though now at the very end of the year, at best. It depends on the value of housing more than the stock market (which I assume might return only an average 3% a year as a worst case. Even this year still had a 2% dividend return). Of course if the market never recovers, like Japan, Project Binchoustan would require additional 5 years, though it might not ever be safe to stop working completely. I could at the least quit this job, which would be enough.
Juno: close, but not as funny as the opening bit and cast might suggest.
The Magic Blade: Shaw Bros.: Fine old school fu.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence: Music Video Anthology: not my favorite GitS music, but the 5.1 is nice.
The Name of the Rose: I got this just to supply visuals for Anathem, but enjoyed it.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe: a good enough episode, but really, why make the movie after all this time and completely ignore the arc? Liked Connolly.
Hancock: not great. Neither bad enough in the beginning, or good enough at the end.
-- Patrick Phelan, now more than ever. w____\\W//___w Te Hupenui So Much For Subtlety http://mysite.verizon.net/fantod/