I've been out of the office for the past two days with miserable flu-like symptoms. Aches, pains, fatigue that keeps me bedridden. A cough that makes me feel like someone's pounding into my chest with a meat mallet. 800mg of Ibuprofen staggers the pain for a few hours but then it comes back.
I usually let these things ride themselves out, but my girlfriend finally convinced me to go to the express care clinic today or otherwise she wouldn't come visit this weekend. I go in, and they make me wash my hands with the antibacterial hand sanitizer (which does nothing for viral diseases, but whatever), and wear one of those surgical masks. So I tie the mask on, recalling an episode or two of House when the team has to go see a patient that is so bad off that they have to sit in a clean room with no contact to any kind of foreign particles. I sit in the corner of the waiting room feeling like a leper or some kind of undesirable while kids and elderly people come in for flu shots, perfectly healthy. Everyone stares. Little kids laugh in my direction.. but that might be because I'm sitting under the TV and there's a Clifford the Big Red Dog program playing.
I'm there for an hour waiting while people file in and out. Finally I get called in, then more waiting while the PA comes in. He's a nice looking little Jewish guy with the respectable name Joel ***man. He seems nervous somehow, like he's not exactly sure what to say. As a result I feel this weird dynamic shift in our conversation, where he's trying to be the authority but he's not sure how exactly to do it... and it takes me back to when I first started working on people's computers at the repair shop in Taylorville. I've never been the best speaker and I find myself stumbing over words more often than not... and I was still in college and I was dealing with customers that were a lot older than me. Not necessarily better spoken (this was Taylorville after all). But it took me back I kinda sympathized with the guy. He seemed nice enough.
He gives me all the standard checkup stuff.. listen to the breathing, check the nodes, look down the throat and up the nose. I get the sense that this isn't all that difficult to do, giving people a standard checkup. You just need to know what to look for and what to listen for. But I'm sure this guy makes more bank than I probably ever will, and he's just starting out. He leaves, tells me a nurse will be in to do a nasal swab. The nurse comes in, a tall blonde dude in a surgical mask, a foot long cotton swab, and a terrible sense of humor. "I'm gonna stick this up your nose! Har har har!" A rather invasive few seconds later, and the test is done, and he leaves. Another hour passes. Joel comes back and tells me the flu test is negative, and all I've got is some upper respiratory infection. A week of Z-PAK, Clarinex, and pushing fluids to get the little buggers out of my system.
As I'm writing this I'm definitely feeling better, partially because of the medication but also because I know I dodged the H1N1 insanity. But really, people.. it's just the flu. And it's been around before.
So yeah, the doctor's visit today was just about as anticlimactic as this update probably is. Sorry for stringing you along. But I thought it was kind of amusing along the way.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Borderlands.
Three friends and I started "Borderlands" tonight. I can characterize it mostly as a four-player Fallout 3 with a loot system gone mad. There is an endless amount of handguns, SMG's, rifles, sniper rifles, and shotguns, all with different attributes like firing rate, firepower, magazine size, zoom level, accuracy, and then some have special attributes like +30 incendiary damage or +100% melee damage. It's a bewildering assortment, but then you include things like healing shields versus guerilla shields, grenades, sticky bombs, ammo upgrades, and it quickly becomes overwhelming. And in typical fashion, Jason jumps in feet first and is an instant arms dealer expert on every weapon, able to differentiate the wheat from the chaff at first glance while the rest of us spend whole minutes mulling over the decision to sell the rifle we just looted or to keep it. But its the obsessing over details like this that really captivate me for some reason. The game is addicting to inventory management junkies like myself that are always looking for the next best gun to pick up or buy. Like I said, it's like Fallout 3's inventory system taken to the next level.
I wasn't sure about how I'd feel about the cell-shading aspect of the art design, but it comes across as a pretty arbitrary choice... it's no better or worse for it, but it does make it more distinctive. And the desert locales make it work well in that whymsical, Roadrunner and Coyote type way. So far I'm a little disappointed in the bestiary, there's only a handful of enemies that you run into during the first six hours or so of the game, and mainly consist of various small to medium sized animals and bandits wearing goofy Roadwarrior costumes complete with hockey masks and leather straps. The art direction as a whole isn't quite as sharply realized as Fallout 3, which I think sublimely harnessed the 50's propaganda style and contorted it into sharp satire and jarring irony. The post apocalyptic cyberpunk motif of Borderlands doesn't work quite as coherently, but it's still entertaining and kitschy in its own way.
The quests feel a little on the generic side but they're sufficiently varied to keep you interested. The vehicular combat is fun but a little clunky because you use the mouse cursor to steer. The buying and selling system works but weapons seem to lose a startling amount of value after you buy them.. sometimes losing as much as 75 to 90% of their value, but maybe that's realistic given the game's setting.
Which brings me to another point, the story mostly seems arbitrary and nonessential, it's all about going out and clearing areas of enemies, looting, and upgrading your equipment. I don't get the sense, at least 6 hours into the game, that many of the quests are connected or continue any kind of narrative, which Fallout 3 did so well. Also the character building and skill trees fall short of the dizzying array of attributes, perks, and skills that flesh out your character in Fallout 3.
They are obviously two very different games but it's the closest thing to Borderlands that I've ever played, so I keep falling back on comparing the two experiences I've had with them. After all, when a masterpiece like Fallout 3 is released, what else can you do but use it as a standard for games that come after? To that end, I think Borderlands is a satisfying scavenger hunt of a game that you can spend a lot of fun time with, especially if you enjoy multiplayer with friends and if you're looking for a change of pace and less heady storytelling after coming off a Fallout 3 runthrough like I have.
I wasn't sure about how I'd feel about the cell-shading aspect of the art design, but it comes across as a pretty arbitrary choice... it's no better or worse for it, but it does make it more distinctive. And the desert locales make it work well in that whymsical, Roadrunner and Coyote type way. So far I'm a little disappointed in the bestiary, there's only a handful of enemies that you run into during the first six hours or so of the game, and mainly consist of various small to medium sized animals and bandits wearing goofy Roadwarrior costumes complete with hockey masks and leather straps. The art direction as a whole isn't quite as sharply realized as Fallout 3, which I think sublimely harnessed the 50's propaganda style and contorted it into sharp satire and jarring irony. The post apocalyptic cyberpunk motif of Borderlands doesn't work quite as coherently, but it's still entertaining and kitschy in its own way.
The quests feel a little on the generic side but they're sufficiently varied to keep you interested. The vehicular combat is fun but a little clunky because you use the mouse cursor to steer. The buying and selling system works but weapons seem to lose a startling amount of value after you buy them.. sometimes losing as much as 75 to 90% of their value, but maybe that's realistic given the game's setting.
Which brings me to another point, the story mostly seems arbitrary and nonessential, it's all about going out and clearing areas of enemies, looting, and upgrading your equipment. I don't get the sense, at least 6 hours into the game, that many of the quests are connected or continue any kind of narrative, which Fallout 3 did so well. Also the character building and skill trees fall short of the dizzying array of attributes, perks, and skills that flesh out your character in Fallout 3.
They are obviously two very different games but it's the closest thing to Borderlands that I've ever played, so I keep falling back on comparing the two experiences I've had with them. After all, when a masterpiece like Fallout 3 is released, what else can you do but use it as a standard for games that come after? To that end, I think Borderlands is a satisfying scavenger hunt of a game that you can spend a lot of fun time with, especially if you enjoy multiplayer with friends and if you're looking for a change of pace and less heady storytelling after coming off a Fallout 3 runthrough like I have.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Changeling.
I sat down and watched Changeling (incidentally, one of the more strangely-named movies I've ever seen) yesterday.. usually not the type of film I jump at, but there was some buzz about it last year during the Oscars and Ebert liked it, and I agree with him more often than I don't. And since Clint Eastwood directs, it's a little more interesting to watch than the average thriller. Unfortunately it ended up being a mixed bag for me.. a strong story with some good acting muddled with some strange choices and poor execution that makes the overall experience very middling.
The story is the strongest aspect, so I'll start there. The crux is the 1920's LAPD, which is corrupt and underhandedly self-serving in some ways as various quick montages and a John Malkovich voiceover testify, and shockingly inept and arrogant in others. This is more strongly demonstrated in their mishandling of a missing child case that victimizes Angelina Jolie's character, a young single mother who works as a supervisor at the local telephone switchboard and lives alone with her young son. Unfortunately the movie doesn't give us much backstory into their lives beyond a few quick scenes of her at work rollerskating around the telephone operator room coolly and efficiently, and disappointing her son by breaking her promise of an afternoon at the movies to fill in for a busy day the office. She arrives home after work to find her son is gone. She desperately files a missing child report, and the police or or less brush her off, saying that the little runaway will probably eventually come back home. Flash forward five months, and the police call with heartlifting news that her son has been found. She meets them at the train station, to discover that, while the boy shares the same name as her missing child, he doesn't even remotely resemble him.
What follows is a series of unbelievable aggravations by the LAPD as they try to convince her that this is really indeed her son, that she doesn't remember him correctly or that he's changed somehow while he was missing. Bizarre explanations by "medical experts" for height discrepancies and other physical differences are flung at the wall, and a few stick but they're all dubious explanations at best. Turns out the LAPD doesn't like to make mistakes, and are willing to do anything to prevent their reputation from being tarnished. Even if it involves sending the mother to the mental institution because she obviously doesn't remember her son correctly. Meanwhile they're wasting time by not looking for the real boy and instead trying to find more reasons why the mother might be delusional.
The story is compelling, but it's not handled very well. The whole affair seems rushed, and it's complicated by a side-story involving one good detective in a sea of corrupt ones, and a disturbing ranch outside of town where abducted boys are taken to be murdered by a deranged serial killer. We don't get hardly any exploration of the killer's character other than he's crazy and evil and likes to keep boys cooped up on his ranch before he kills them. Back in LA, Angelina Jolie's character is befriended by the local Presbyterian priest played by John Malkovich (who seems to be mostly wasting his time with this material and clearly shows it in an uninspiring performance that's mostly read, not acted) who is trying to shine the light of day on the dark underbelly of the LAPD through various dramatic speeches throughout the movie. Before we know it, the mother is condemned as being a lunatic who can't keep her story straight and is thrown in the mental hospital.
Like I said, the story is engaging and inspires a lot of anger and frustration in the viewer as they sympathize with this poor woman, whom society has apparently little respect for. It's an interesting social statement on the kind of adversity women, especially single women, experienced in those days, and the fact that the story is based on true events makes it even more surreal. But the execution is weak. The pacing is bad, dialog is unmoving and uninspired, and backstory is almost nonexistent.
Aside from a waste of John Malkovich's talent, we've got some good, strong performances. Angelina Jolie is strong-willed yet cowering in the face of masculine intimidation, with lots of very strong scenes (notably near the end when she confronts the serial killer in jail, she is particularly startling to watch). Jeffrey Donovan is heartless and cold as the police captain that values his reputation and pride above all else. Jason Butler Harner is sufficiently crazy and deranged as the serial killer. The rest of the supporting cast is solid and believable.
But then we have the music. Clint Eastwood likes to score his own movies for some reason, unfortunately he just doesn't have the chops to do it well. His scores often sound like he spent all of five minutes plunking away on a piano, finding a serene little 5 or 6 note phrase, and building the entire soundtrack around it by having various instruments play a version of it. The music is completely inappropriate in almost every scene, it's repetitive and amateurish. Good music can make a great movie even better (see "The Dark Knight"), and in cases like this it can make a mess of a mediocre movie. If you want to see Clint Eastwood's musical stylings at their worst, watch "Gran Torino" and try sitting through the closing credits as he hoarses his way through the laughably shallow lyrics of the movie's theme song, which he wrote himself.
So overall, a strong, yet mishandled story, above average performances, and a half-hearted soundtrack that stumbles from one scene to the next drags this movie out until it collapses twenty minutes past the two hour mark. Oscar material it ain't.. if you want to see a 20's period noir there are plenty others that are way better.
The story is the strongest aspect, so I'll start there. The crux is the 1920's LAPD, which is corrupt and underhandedly self-serving in some ways as various quick montages and a John Malkovich voiceover testify, and shockingly inept and arrogant in others. This is more strongly demonstrated in their mishandling of a missing child case that victimizes Angelina Jolie's character, a young single mother who works as a supervisor at the local telephone switchboard and lives alone with her young son. Unfortunately the movie doesn't give us much backstory into their lives beyond a few quick scenes of her at work rollerskating around the telephone operator room coolly and efficiently, and disappointing her son by breaking her promise of an afternoon at the movies to fill in for a busy day the office. She arrives home after work to find her son is gone. She desperately files a missing child report, and the police or or less brush her off, saying that the little runaway will probably eventually come back home. Flash forward five months, and the police call with heartlifting news that her son has been found. She meets them at the train station, to discover that, while the boy shares the same name as her missing child, he doesn't even remotely resemble him.
What follows is a series of unbelievable aggravations by the LAPD as they try to convince her that this is really indeed her son, that she doesn't remember him correctly or that he's changed somehow while he was missing. Bizarre explanations by "medical experts" for height discrepancies and other physical differences are flung at the wall, and a few stick but they're all dubious explanations at best. Turns out the LAPD doesn't like to make mistakes, and are willing to do anything to prevent their reputation from being tarnished. Even if it involves sending the mother to the mental institution because she obviously doesn't remember her son correctly. Meanwhile they're wasting time by not looking for the real boy and instead trying to find more reasons why the mother might be delusional.
The story is compelling, but it's not handled very well. The whole affair seems rushed, and it's complicated by a side-story involving one good detective in a sea of corrupt ones, and a disturbing ranch outside of town where abducted boys are taken to be murdered by a deranged serial killer. We don't get hardly any exploration of the killer's character other than he's crazy and evil and likes to keep boys cooped up on his ranch before he kills them. Back in LA, Angelina Jolie's character is befriended by the local Presbyterian priest played by John Malkovich (who seems to be mostly wasting his time with this material and clearly shows it in an uninspiring performance that's mostly read, not acted) who is trying to shine the light of day on the dark underbelly of the LAPD through various dramatic speeches throughout the movie. Before we know it, the mother is condemned as being a lunatic who can't keep her story straight and is thrown in the mental hospital.
Like I said, the story is engaging and inspires a lot of anger and frustration in the viewer as they sympathize with this poor woman, whom society has apparently little respect for. It's an interesting social statement on the kind of adversity women, especially single women, experienced in those days, and the fact that the story is based on true events makes it even more surreal. But the execution is weak. The pacing is bad, dialog is unmoving and uninspired, and backstory is almost nonexistent.
Aside from a waste of John Malkovich's talent, we've got some good, strong performances. Angelina Jolie is strong-willed yet cowering in the face of masculine intimidation, with lots of very strong scenes (notably near the end when she confronts the serial killer in jail, she is particularly startling to watch). Jeffrey Donovan is heartless and cold as the police captain that values his reputation and pride above all else. Jason Butler Harner is sufficiently crazy and deranged as the serial killer. The rest of the supporting cast is solid and believable.
But then we have the music. Clint Eastwood likes to score his own movies for some reason, unfortunately he just doesn't have the chops to do it well. His scores often sound like he spent all of five minutes plunking away on a piano, finding a serene little 5 or 6 note phrase, and building the entire soundtrack around it by having various instruments play a version of it. The music is completely inappropriate in almost every scene, it's repetitive and amateurish. Good music can make a great movie even better (see "The Dark Knight"), and in cases like this it can make a mess of a mediocre movie. If you want to see Clint Eastwood's musical stylings at their worst, watch "Gran Torino" and try sitting through the closing credits as he hoarses his way through the laughably shallow lyrics of the movie's theme song, which he wrote himself.
So overall, a strong, yet mishandled story, above average performances, and a half-hearted soundtrack that stumbles from one scene to the next drags this movie out until it collapses twenty minutes past the two hour mark. Oscar material it ain't.. if you want to see a 20's period noir there are plenty others that are way better.
I'm moving, pardon my dust.
I've decided to move my blog out of Wordpress. Why? What's the sense in building and administering something if it's already been done, honestly. Path of least resistance. Instead of endlessly applying patches to Wordpress as more and more vulnerabilities are found, more ways are found for spammers to ruin your blog, why not just let someone else worry about it. And my domain still works, you just have to redirect it.
Now I have to deal with backporting all my old posts though. Again. So you see, as they said in all my computer science classes, we're starting with zero. Again.
Now I have to deal with backporting all my old posts though. Again. So you see, as they said in all my computer science classes, we're starting with zero. Again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
