Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Final Destination

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1144884/

2009- watched via comcast on demand

So here we have the 4th installment of the Final Destination series. I believe I have watched the other 3 at one point or another. I also feel like one of those was a good movie. Most likely the first in the series. That must be why I keep subjecting my wife to such mediocre crap. And I really thing mediocre best describes this series. They obviously have some budget to work with and get some decent effects out of it but as usual the acting and story are just mediocre. Here in the 4th installment the storyline pretty much reads the same as the other 3 from what I can remember. Group of folks survive catastrophe due to some kind of future vision and rest of the movie is spent trying to avoid elaborate almost Rube Goldberg'esk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine sequences that inevitability lead to doom. There are 2 notable things about this film. The first is it's run time, it's fairly short which always makes me happy. Something about investing 3 hours watching crap drives me nuts. 2 hours? No problem. Anyhow the second item of note is the first 10 minutes. This like the others in the series is when the big event that sets everything else in motion occurs. In the case of the forth it's a nascar race. I believe the prior instalments involved a plane and a roller coaster and something I can't recall. So this nascar race is what makes this movie worth a watch. The whole affair is so over the top with gore that it's really hysterical. Beyond that best to stop watching or suffer my wife's fate...

Orphen

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148204/

2009- watched via comcast on demand

Going into this one it was hard to not expect an omen remake based on the little I knew about the premise. So they made it a girl instead of a boy... I also fully expected the usual Satan type of storyline that is so very easy to explain away any open questions the viewer may have. I'm happy to report that what I received instead was a smart creepy film with no mention of Satan or any of his worshipers. The movie like all movies must these days has a twist and it's a good one for a change. Not since the 6th sense have I gone "oh that explains what the hell is going on". It was a good feeling. The cast is strong with believable performance especially from 10 year old Isabelle Fuhrman who really nails the creepy kid thing. Overall a very enjoyable movie that keeps you hooked even though you know full well things are about to go very wrong.

Zany Glof

That spelling is for my buddy.

So I ended up with red rings on my xbox this weekend which abruptly ended my re-obsession with Burnout. So in the mail it goes back to microsoft to get fixed. In any event I fired up the old xbox. I was cruising through the genesis selection to see if anything caught my eye. There it was the classic Zany Golf by Will Harvey published by EA. It had been some time since I hit the minigolf lynx but it was as fun as ever. In short the game consists of 9 holes of "zany" mini golf action. Each level has its own unique style from the classic windmill to a arkinoid take off. Each level offers a unique challenge with unique obstacles, a cheese burger bouncing over the 2nd hole for example. The view point is a 3/4 rendered afair with very amiga'esk looking graphics. Gameplay is super basic but easy to control while still challenging to master. The soundtrack is fantastic, like so fantastic, especially the pinball hole. I had a great time and was fortunate to score a "5 extra strokes" power-up on the second hole, next to the hamburger you know? The fantastic thing was it gave me the strokes to make it to the end! Now I use to play this game a fair amount back in the day but it's hard, and it gets way hard near the end so to finally finish it was a great accomplishment. Time to check that one off the "things to accomplish before I die" list. Though much to my dismay the end was nothing more then the completed score card that you can bring up anytime during the game by pressing the pause button. Lame. Trying to deal with my grief from another lame 16 bit game ending I was stuck by the fact that the best representation of the game of mini golf was made in the early 90's? WTF. Where is my "quality" Wii mini golf I ask you?