Ichi the Killer is probably the most disturbing Japanese psycho slasher movie I’ve seen in years. The new guy at work recommended it knowing that I’m into indie’s, imports, and random movies that most people don’t like. I have to admit as a piece of totally fucked up work it takes the cake. A crime lord goes ‘missing’ (see dead) and his top assassin takes it on himself to go on a killing spree attempting to find him. Violent.. bloody… gory… don’t even begin to describe it. If your into a completely messed up violent movie go for it.. if not you won’t want to watch past the first scene. I should point out the dubbing was horrible in that wonderfully ridiculous over the top kind of way and you may not enjoy some of the self mutilation that went on… yea ok those parts just weren’t needed. Oh how I love a good twisted movie.

When I got home I felt that after having too much free time at work (obviously we were oh so busy) to watch such a ‘feel good’ movie like Ichi the Killer I felt it was time for a something a little rougher so put in:

Yes that’s right. Clearly the most violent movie of the year Surf’s Up was a smash hit! Seriously how can you go wrong with animated penguins though. I know it’s a kid’s movie as all cartoons ‘technically’ are… so my main complaint is probably invalid but c’mon.. way too predictable even for the 5 year olds out there. I’m sure I rant a lot about the predictability of movies so that shouldn’t come as a surprise but the ending was too easy to figure out way too early. Ok ok I know not a valid complaint considering the primary target audience. Otherwise it was a feel good movie that was visually beautiful with a good happy ending that did make me laugh a few times. If you like cartoons or don’t mind predictable movies it’s worth a rent.

Sega just came out with this wonderful little toy… Yes Remote Control Beetles! You can move them around.. they can fight if you have multiples.. what a great idea! Sadly they are an import for about $45 from this place.

… That price is spoiling my dreams.. the dreams of walking into work one Saturday… Sal passed out asleep at his desk.. and placing one of these on him and have it slowly walk up him until he wakes up and screams like a little girl (like the time he saw a spider in his cube… little girl scream.. not shitting you..) and quite possibly pissing himself in the process! (I mean any man who screams like a girl from a spider while awake could quite possibly piss themselves from waking up to a giant but walking up their stomache.) Sigh.. damn that price tag… damn it to hell

Work.. got it so I’m off early on the 25′th of Jan for ‘some’ reason… Oh happy days.

I somehow forgot to mention I finally watched “The Number 23.” Jim Carrey in a dark role. I have to admit it works for him. His slapstick comedy was old before it began but when he has a serious role it’s just fitting. Eternal Sunshine… great movie. The problem is a role itself can not make a movie as much as it can break it. While a good role for someone is important a script thats well written is a bit more needed. The plot itself was good but Carrey’s decent into ‘madness’ .. or sanity as the case may be.. just did not feel right. He should have been more paranoid or less it seemed to turn on and off and just not feel right for what the director was trying to get across. A little more work and this movie would have been a must buy. It was enjoyable but the downsides were so great they overshadowed what was good about this movie.

After work I setup my Wii. I decided it had to go in the living room as there is noo room in my bedroom (and I know family parties will make use of it because.. well it just happens.) I spent an hour and a half playing wii tennis with my dad and another 2 hours playing around with mii’s and other misc wii things. It’ll be twice as bad once I buy the internet browser and some VC games / second controller / more games / etc etc. It’s just entertaining how into the game my dad was getting. Oh just watching/hearing him play will be just as entertaining as playing itself.

The above lyrics have special meaning to me. I’m toasting something great. I’ll get to it at the end of today’s post.. All I can say is it’s news I never thought that I would hear and am SOOOO glad I have.

On Wednesday I basically slept in and chilled most of the day.. At night Bar Louie was closed for their Christmas party (and why weren’t we invited?! ) so Neil, Rose, and I met up elsewhere. A bit into it Bob and one of his friends came out and Rob ended up there as well.

Thursday… I bought myself a Christmas / Birthday present:
So I have all of these gift cards and whatnot and was looking over at Cheapassgamer.com for some ideas of the best ways to get COD4 and GH3… and low and behold I see a post that Best Buy’s have wii’s in stock… of course I call the closest couple and they all say no.. so I continue on reading the post for the hell of it feeling bad that I wasted a chance to pickup a wii at cost and not being forced into a bundle and they say in the Chicagoland area a bunch of Toys R Us’s got them on Christmas Eve and weren’t sold out.. I took a gamble and decided to call one and….. they had them in stock. Yes. I’m not the proud owner of a Wii and am about to piss away more money on new games than I expected. I’m ok with that for today is a good day.

*sighs* I let Rose talk me into a chick flick. I’m not sure why. I think she owes me a room cleaning or something for it. It’s not that I have the stereotype problem with chick flicks. Some of them are entertaining or can be.. it’s just that everyone that I’ve seen is PREDICTABLE. I’m not going to really talk about the movie past this point as it was overall entertaining and not badly done but it falls into the category and I have to rant about it since I don’t get much of a chance to. (I’m really not the typical anti-chick flick guy because it’s a chick flick… really I’m not…) My problem with the genre is more because I am a movie buff. I enjoy being entertained while watching a movie.. but half the part of being entertained is that I like to guess what’s going to happen and 99% of the movies in this genre it’s not guessing you can just tell. As the movies go along you just KNOW what is going to happen and that’s what kills them for me. I don’t understand why you can’t make a chick flick with twists or a surprise in it that you don’t see coming a mile away. Women aren’t stupid. (Ok we all know some that are but that applies to men too I suppose ) I know that most women enjoy chick flicks but how about a surprise now and again? Something unexpected. Mix it up a little… please… please do it at least so those of us in the audience who can appreciate that get a bit of a bonus. Again I’m not complaining about this movie just the genre in general since being single these days I don’t really get forced into watching them and haven’t been able to rant about them.

After that I dropped Rose off at home and picked up Rob from work and we hit up Bar Louie. Rex showed up as did Bob, his girl, and another one of his friends. Stayed until close (which was a bit early.. boo) and were told they should actually have invited us out A free round and a cheap night later I had far too much off a buzz for how little I drank. I blame the lack of food that happened during the day.

MOST IMPORTANTLY:
EVE 6 IS BACK! Yes. My favorite band… period has gotten back together. I don’t know how I wasn’t informed or heard of this sooner. They are playing in Chicago January 25′th and I will be there and above all things this is the BEST news I’ve heard all year. I’m not sure if it should be but I can’t help it. Eve 6 getting back together and I get to see them again.. nothing can compare to that… I can think of a few close calls. What a messed up year.. and what a way to end on a high note. Rose thank you for letting me know about this… if I found out after the concert or after they had sold out of tickets I’d have been massively bummed. Tickets are apparently going on sale shortly so I will be buying them the day they do. Score.

The holiday season was full of movies and a bit of gaming. Christmas Eve we closed up early but before that it was so dead Rob and I were able to watch the majority of Scarface at work. You know a nice lil 3 hour movie to kill time Yes it was thankfully that dead.

I FINALLY finished Out by Natsuo Kirino. I’ve been reading this book for a couple weeks now and not because it’s slow but because I just have not had the time. Which is a shame because it’s enjoyable with a dark side to it. I have to admit the ending got a bit far out there on the belief scale but at the same time it’s easy enough to run with if you keep in mind how messed up most people really are. It didn’t quite have the noir feeling of the last novel I read (which was on the same list of dark entertainment to pickup..) yet was still worth the read. “Four women who work the night shift in a Tokyo factory that produces boxed lunches find their lives twisted beyond repair in this grimly compelling crime novel, which won Japan’s top mystery award, the Grand Prix, for its already heralded author, now making her first appearance in English. Despite the female bonding, this dark, violent novel is more evocative of Gogol or Dostoyevsky than Thelma and Louise. When Yayoi, the youngest and prettiest of the women, strangles her philandering gambler husband with his own belt in an explosion of rage, she turns instinctively for help to her co-worker Masako, an older and wiser woman whose own family life has fallen apart in less dramatic fashion. To help her cut up and get rid of the dead body, Masako recruits Yoshie and Kuniko, two fellow factory workers caught up in other kinds of domestic traps. In Snyder’s smoothly unobtrusive translation, all of Kirino’s characters are touching and believable. And even when the action stretches to include a slick loan shark from Masako’s previous life and a pathetically lost and lonely man of mixed Japanese and Brazilian parentage, the gritty realism of everyday existence in the underbelly of Japan’s consumer society comes across with pungent force.” Apparently this has also been made into a movie… sooo… time to start looking for a subtitle’d or dubbed version.. somewhere…

Christmas day was spent with much sleep.. waking up and sleeping again.. and finally ended up at my grandparents for the actual celebration. Can’t really say much more than that since.. hey it’s a Christmas family party what else can or needs to be said

After dinner while waiting for Rob to get out of his Christmas party Rose and I hitup Gears… which ended up with
Gears of War Act 1: Insanity. COMPLETED. 1/5′th done with the game. Ok granted yes… it was the first fifth… but still just awesome. When Rob got free we went to the 10 pm showing of AVPR

AVPR is about 110% better than AVP. The ONLY thing AVP has on it was the acting was’t “that” bad and the characters in AVPR were truely flat. Thats the main complaint I’ve read in every review on the movie and I’ll agree.. the human characters are flat… heres my problem with that. THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT ALIENS FIGHTING PREDATORS. Who the hell cares about the humans. Seriously. If there aren’t space marines they don’t matter. I will admit that the director went over the top (and rightfully so..) I mean.. in the first 5 minutes of the movie a facehugger infects a 5 year old child. I won’t even go into what happens at the hospital for those who haven’t seen it but it’s just WRONG. (And oh so right considering that’s what this kind of a movie should be about.) My main confusion came at the very end and how they plan on going forward with the series with that part shown. I suppose we’ll see in a couple years when AVP3 comes out.

I’ve started watching Enemy at the Gates twice before this last time watching it. I never stopped due to being bored it was just on TV while I had plans after… so I finally was able to get through it and damn. What a good war movie. Instantly one of my top 10 war movies and it may even have broken into the top 5… I should really keep a list with how many movies that I watch Jude Law did an excellent job at his role and the whole movie came through perfectly. My only complaint was the very end which seemed a bit rushed after the final conflict was resolved. The entirety of the movie before that part though more than makes up for it. Worth a rental.. hell worth a buy if you at all like war movies. Everything and everyone in it just worked.

After work I got my game on… Gears of War on Hardcore Acts 4+5 are done. The game is finished with only the last mode remaining and to top it off I finally finished all missions with Dom. Down to cog tags and Insane to fully completing the game.

At the end of the day.. being a Sunday I was of course forced to take a trip to Bar Louie with Rob and Rose. (Yes a real ‘twist my arm’ moment like every week..) Most of the night was drinking, video games, and laughing at Tif who went to her first strip club .. and didn’t really enjoy it for some reason *snickers* (It probably didn’t help that she was in Romeoville at the time…)

So work was sooooooooo slammed that I just did not have time to watch a classic movie at work. No. Not at all. I didn’t watch High Fidelity in it’s entirety almost completely a pause…. right… so Matt hadn’t seen it which means it was going in.

Probably my favorite role of John Cusack is High Fidelity. It’s one of the typical guy take on relationships in general and how they seem to work out. Nearly everyone I know can relate to at least part if not all of the movie and the job itself is even more of a comparison to life than it used to be. Work is like hanging out and that’s exactly what this movie is about while not focusing on his relationships.. hanging out. This has always been one of my favorite movies and continues to fall into the category (it’s a shame I watched it far too many times back in the day to be able to watch it on a regular basis.)

After work I was in no mood to do anything productive so played on my 360 a bit.. and broke 6k for achievement points! Puzzle Quest is finally defeated and Gears of War Act 4 on Hardcore is almost defeated.. I’ve also mastered the active reloads in the game so that was a plus on helping kill faster. I believe the next level once Hardcore is beaten will be nearly impossible to complete but that just means it’ll finally be a huge challenge… with it having this long of a shelf life of enjoyment as is I think that finishing the game on it’s hardest level will be nothing short of satisfaction.

I love when things like this come along. When such a great man can come forward to lead the masses into a new salvation.

“I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? ‘No!’ says the man in Washington, ‘It belongs to the poor.’ ‘No!’ says the man in the Vatican, ‘It belongs to God.’ ‘No!’ says the man in Moscow, ‘It belongs to everyone.’ I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.”

“Why worship a flag or a God, when we can worship that which is best in us: our will to be great.”

“I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck.”

“A man chooses, a slave obeys.”

Truely a great man and an inspiration for us all.

….. If you don’t know who Andrew Ryan is you need to play a little title that slipped out called Bioshock. You may have heard of it… Voted game of the year by quite a few places? *laughs* Seriously great game… at any rate… Go go Something Awful’s artists for coming up with such a great concept.

Back to work and another day would have been very welcome. Even though it did pretty much drag until it was done. However when it was done Rob, Rose, and I went out for dinner, some drinks, and a movie… and it’s the movie you should be most interested in:

Seems an awful waste… I mean, with the price of meat… What it is,… When you get it,… If you get it…” If you’ve seen it you know why that line is great.. since you probably haven’t unless you are Rob or Rose and were out with me last night. I can fully understand why the early reviewers claimed that this is Tim Burton’s best work and one of the movies of the year. Sadly I know that it won’t be well received by some audiences (see: lacking any culture or ability to enjoy things that don’t explode constantly… or a play/musical.) Visually as every Burton movie it’s just strange. Fully strange in colors, perspective, and special effects. It makes you feel dirty in that good way and I loved every second of it. The entire plot is a man wronged who wants revenge and what unfolds because of it. I can’t give out details because if you are going to watch it you need to see it for what it is. It’s dark. It’s a play. It’s a musical. It’s a comedy. It’s horror. It’s a drama. You can take the movie in so many ways and you SHOULD. Depp shows once again that he plays the role of insanity to a T and I can’t wait to see it again the day it comes out on DVD.

It was brought to my attention that Nicole Kidman’s accent in The Interpretor was perfect. That may be true. I didn’t mean to make it sound like Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond bad… My complaint wasn’t with her ability to do an accent it was that she talking in an accent just sounds wrong.. because SHE isn’t supposed to sound like that

So much gaming, drinking, and movies this last week (throw in some work and Christmas shopping) that I just have not had any time to do an update. I’m sure I’ll include some of it in the next few updates. Maybe? We’ll see! Hopefully things will slow down enough at the very least for me to get regular daily updates going again For now though I will leave you with some funfilled Battlestar Galactica Propoganda!

(If your not a BSG fan.. your wrong!) These will all be available on the 31′st for your fanboy enthusiasm!
colors and support the cause by displaying these posters in the common areas of your ship. Officially sanctioned by Fleet Operations, each poster contains critical messages from the Colonial Ministry of Information that will help recruit, inspire and inform your fellow Colonial citizens.

This officially licensed set contains five full-color, 17″ x 22″ prints on 100-pound, satin-finish paper. These original works of art were all created by Adam Levermore-Rich, well-known designer of the recently issued How To Spot a Cylon special-edition poster, also available from QMx.

The five posters in this set include:

★Mechanics: Your skills are needed! (Being a Viper pilot might be glamorous, but if wasn’t for the proud men and women keeping those birds running, our aces could never get off the flight deck!)

★Never forget who the enemy is! Remember, anyone could be a Cylon! (Companion piece to Cylon Safety Information Sheet #8 – How To Spot a Cylon)

★Do you have what it takes to stand up to the Cylons? (Our pilots may clear the path, but when it comes time to take the Cylons down, it’s the Colonial Marines who are first in and last out!)

★We will defeat the Cylons – so say we all! (Only through unity can we preserve humanity!)

★Only the best wear this uniform – is that you? (Join the men and women of the Colonial Fleet!)

Remember, by displaying these posters, you’re doing more than spreading the word. You may just be giving us the edge we need to save humanity!

In just 10 days you can pick all of these up over here!