Somewhat Manly Nerd

You may not have noticed, but there are millions of people across the world anxiously awaiting July 27. No, I’m not talking about the dudebros who buy Madden every year awaiting a demo of its latest installment — that would only concern Americans, anyhow. But I assumed you gathered what this post is actually about from its title; yes, Starcraft II releases in two days, ending a wait of twelve long years. Warcraft III was no replacement for more Starcraft, and World of Warcraft only prolonged the wait to obscene length (I can’t fault Diablo II).

I told myself that I’d go through both the original Starcraft and its expansion, Brood War, before their sequel was released. I started once the first phase of the SCII beta was over, but I didn’t even manage to get completely through the three campaigns in the original Starcraft before the second phase started and sucked me right back in. I wanted to do it because 1) I wanted a refresher on the story, and 2) I (embarrassingly) never beat Brood War. Well, it seems like the latter still won’t happen.

Fortunately, there are people like ZealousD on NeoGAF who go through the trouble of playing an entire game — albeit with cheat codes — just to record and compile videos of the story segments. Yeah sure, Starcraft might not have the “Oscar-calibre” story of GTA4, but damn if it didn’t seem fucking cool to a 12-year-old. And I still say it’d make a decent movie; it’d be better than most of the videogames adapted for film, at the very least. Granted, the Zerg vs. Terran dynamic could be said to be an adaptation of Aliens, but it greatly expands on the universe and possibilities. It’d make an awesome made-for-TV Sci-Fi Channel movie or miniseries, I think. Oh wait, SyFy.

Bottom line: I care about the story. I’m a sucker for science-fiction shit, and nostalgia holds me pretty tight with some things, and Starcraft is one of those things. I know I’ll enjoy going through the campaigns in the three installments of SCII. In the meantime, I’ll be catching up on the original:

Since the embedder doesn’t seem to link correctly to the entire playlist, here’s a link. That’ll automatically string together 28 videos that comprise the entire story — all cutscenes, in-game conversations, and pre-mission briefings. It’s impressive work.

Is it just me, or are the late-90s, low-resolution “pre-rendered CGI” cinematics still cooler than the “in-game engine” cinematics that seem so prevalent nowadays?

Actually, this phenomenon is perfectly illustrated in this trailer for Starcraft II:

Admittedly, the CGI for the Kerrigan part is fucking incredible, so using it in conjunction with what looks to be an in-game graphics engine is totally jarring and shitty. But don’t you think the cinematics in the original Starcraft are just more aesthetically pleasing then that in-game crap, even with their somewhat exaggerated and strange depictions of human faces? Perhaps I am just greedy and want everything to look like that Kerrigan CGI. Wow.

Next Media Animation is my favorite news organization. Their first hit was the Tiger Woods scandal video, but this has to be their magnum opus. Wow.

At the All-Star Break, it looked like maybe the Mets had a chance, sitting 5 games back of Atlanta and only 1.5 games back of the wild-card with a record of 48-41. Carlos Beltran was coming back. Hopefully Jose Reyes was going to come back healthy this time. Maybe Jason Bay would pick it up. If they managed to go 5 games over .500 for the rest of the season, they would end up with 88 wins — possibly enough to win the wild-card or even the division.

Now all that has turned to fucking shit. David Wright is back to being totally fucking cold. Jason Bay is getting WORSE. Carlos Beltran is clearly not 100%, yet he’s put in CF even while he’s wearing a goddamn knee brace. There’s a guy named Angel Pagan who played CF the entire first half and was one of the best fucking CF in the National League, but because Beltran has a massive ego and expects to play CF, he can’t be moved to RF to accommodate the player who’s NOT WEARING A FUCKING KNEE BRACE. Angel Pagan has EASILY been the second-best player on the team, and probably the most consistent. At least Jeff Francoeur isn’t playing.

But maybe that’s why Jason Bay feels the need to stand in for him? To generate the lost suckage? Holy fucking shit. 0-6 with 4 Ks. Remember last year when we all wondered where David Wright’s power went? His SLG at the end of the season was .447. Jason Bay’s is currently .403. Brett Gardner’s SLG is .399. BRETT GARDNER. This is NOT a guy renowned for his power stroke. This Bay contract is turning out to be a bigger disaster than I expected. Sure, he can bounce back in the next two months, but he’s not going to get any better over the length of the contract. This is BAD.

Oh, and I got to watch Oliver Perez pitch tonight out the bullpen. I want him to pull a Carlos Zambrano and just get himself kicked off the team. Somehow he didn’t blow the game, but he came pretty close, with only the D-Backs total ineptitude saving his worthless ass. Less than worthless. Please Ollie, be gangsta and stab someone else shitty on the team, preferably Alex Cora. You’ll be suspended indefinitely, and hopefully Cora will never play baseball again.

Can I even manage to spew any bile Jerry Manuel’s way? He did double-switch Ike Davis out of the game so he could move Alex Cora to 1B and Luis Castillo to 2B. That was totally awesome. And he keeps starting Barajas, who has a OBP of .265. Sure, he hit a home run. WHOOP-DE-FREAKING-DO. Maybe if he didn’t, I would have been able to go to sleep two pointless hours ago instead of watching 14 pathetic innings of baseball.

I hate this team.

You may have noticed I didn’t mention the music at all in my big Inception review post. By the end of it, I realized I had mentioned and applauded every aspect of the movie except one. But instead of saying how great Hans Zimmer’s score was, I figured I’d just let you listen and leave the YouTube embedding for another post — this one.

Dream Is Collapsing

Click if you want to listen to a couple of more tracks. read more…

Christopher Nolan did it. He took a concept that’s been rolling around in his head for a decade, convinced a studio to give him $160 million to film it, and created the most original and spectacular blockbuster in, well, a decade. It really happened.

Think about the BIGGEST movies of the past 10 years. They are comic book adaptations, or television cartoon adaptations, or novel adaptations, or sequels to comic book adaptations, or rebooted franchises — you get the picture. The one obvious exception would be Avatar — the highest grossing movie ever. Unfortunately, while “original”, it was also one of the most derivative, predictable, and hollow movies you’ll ever see. But it sure was a 3D spectacle, I’ll give James Cameron that.

But I don’t want to even get into this argument. I really don’t. I just felt the need to address it before anyone challenges the claim in that first paragraph. Sorry, but Inception is THE most audacious blockbuster in years in ways other than just special effects and filming technology. But it’s not exactly a slouch with regards to the former, either.

I will keep this post as spoiler-free as possible, and probably make ANOTHER post about it later on, where I totally go off about everything within the film. And there’s certainly a lot to interpret here — including an ending that seems to have pissed off some and totally impressed others. I personally think it fits perfectly thematically. read more…

Holy shit, Mel Gibson makes Christian Bale look really easy to work with. I like how calm his girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, is the entire time — most likely because she knew it was all being recorded, so Mel was totally fucked. Between the insane screaming, the heavy breathing, and the death threats, this has to be the most pure eight minutes of rage I’ve heard. And then at the end, it’s basically confirmed that Mel punched her in the face while she held their kid. So now he’s down to wife beaters for the only people not offended by his actions over the past few years.

And now the internet awaits an awesome remix of this tape.

My anticipation has passed that small valley. Maybe because a few regular people I know on the internet have seen it and subsequently made a mess in their pants. Maybe because it’s been another 24 hours, and now it’s only 3 days away. Maybe because I found out that the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City is showing it. Maybe because I actually got some things done today and I’m not worrying about them.

In case, you don’t know what the Ziegfeld Theater looks like (I’m going to guess you don’t):

Click here if you want to see more pics.

I saw Blade Runner: The Final Cut there a few years ago and I always meant to make a post about it. Of course, I never actually did, but now I finally have another excuse to post a picture. Look how fucking sweet that is. Why watch Inception anywhere else?

I almost feel like I would need to wear a suit.

I don’t even know who to credit for the above pic. I saw it on GAF, but I’m 99.9% sure it didn’t originate there. And if you want the explanation: a “psychic” octopus predicted that Spain would win (among 7 other correct predictions).

So yeah, there was a lot of sex in Spain last night — especially in the soccer players’ hotel rooms and houses. Some of it even spilled out on camera. It must be nice to be the king of the sport the entire world plays, admittedly.

That final pretty much sucked, though. I guess I was rooting for Spain, but it’s not like I felt anything when they finally scored in extra time. The Dutch were playing ugly, rough football and the Spaniards were flopping all over the place. Who was I supposed to root for? Wait, did I say football? That probably happened because I’m regurgitating things I’ve read elsewhere. I was just glad it didn’t come to penalty kicks.

But I’m happy it’s done so we can get to the baseball equivalent of penalties: the Home Run Derby. Not like there’s anything else on.

I posted a Toy Story 3 mashup trailer that used the Inception trailer music. Now here’s The Dark Knight version.

I guess it’s time for me to speak a bit more about Inception, since this is the week. There are some people even seeing advance screenings tonight. Perhaps surprisingly, I think my hype is at its low ebb right now. There are tons of gushing reviews and posts on Twitter and endless TV spots, but I’m just nonplussed. Perhaps that would be the wrong word — let’s just say they haven’t augmented my hype. I knew months ago that I would want to see the movie, and I knew that the movie would be awesome. Only a flood of scathing reviews could have affected my anticipation.

So right now I’m kinda exhausted from looking forward to this movie for half a year. There has been nothing else for me to latch on to for any excitement. I thought about checking out Predators, but it’s still hard for me to imagine ADRIEN BRODY filling Arnold’s shoes, no matter how good of an actor he might be (although, I guess that’s part of the problem). But he did get pretty ripped for it, and from all reports, they went in a different direction since they knew no one could fill in the shoes of guys like Arnold, Jesse Ventura, and Carl Weathers. Nonetheless, I can’t be bothered to gather any friends for a trip to the theater to see it.

Oh, I could have checked out Toy Story 3, but there was no way I was doing that without female company. That actually almost happened, but when it fell apart, I wasn’t about to push it. It’s not like I was anxiously anticipating it, anyhow. At nine years old, I already felt too old for the original Toy Story when it was released. I was all about Mortal Kombat. So I am left with Inception. Left to make a half-dozen posts about it. Left to post retarded shit on Twitter about it. Left to ask my friends if they want to go a midnight showing.

Somehow I feel like I’ll keep my record of ZERO midnight showings intact. I guess that’s why I’m only somewhat nerdy. Oh wait, no, I’m only somewhat manly. Full nerd. Damn it.