Forbidden Emotion

When conditions appear most dire,
When you are weak and easily tire,
Know that I desire to light your fire,
And provide you with anything you require.

Perhaps you have seen me trying,
Perhaps my efforts remain unknown,
It is for your affection that I am vying,
A fact that can never be shown.

I knew from the start where I belong,
Nowhere near where I wish to be,
Fulfilling my desire would be wrong,
Despite how much you mean to me.

I realize I should keep my distance,
Despite my heart's relentless insistence,
As long as you know bliss, so will I,
My own selfish desires I will deny.

As I continue to writhe in despair,
Hiding my agony beyond compare,
I hope to lay my heart bare,
Without breaking our bond beyond repair.

If you are aware of my intent,
Confront me right away,
Allow me to avoid the foul portent,
Of again seeing the world,
In nothing but grey.

The problem with game development today

Another piece that I wrote for work. This time, it's about something that resonates deeply within me, and thus my self-filter has failed to contain my hostile cynicism, which my editor has permitted to be published albeit with some toning down. With that, here it is.

The recent mess with Assassin's Creed Unity brings back memories of last year, and not good ones. Remember the massive launch flop that was Battlefield 4? Of course you do.

While Ubisoft is quickly gaining notoriety as the next EA – thanks to this year’s installment of Assassin’s Creed and new IP Watch Dogs – it has to be said that these two are not the only guilty ones when it comes to releasing unfinished or unpolished games and expect to not face backlash of any sort. And yet, no one seems to truly care. Sure, the players and, to some extent, the press will rage about it for a while, but when these game developers and publishers say something along the lines of "We're sorry, we'll fix them soon," everyone becomes silent and takes it like it was supposed to happen. Well, it's not, period. Games are supposed to be released playable. It defeats the purpose of selling a game for, say, Christmas, since the game is unplayable at that time and gamers have to wait for the team to come back from their holidays to – if you'd pardon the reference – play Fix It Felix. By doing that, they have just wasted their customers’ holiday, when the time they thought they would spend playing games could be used for many other activities.

Again, I must confess that I don't know every finest detail of how the process of developing games goes, but I can imagine it is much like almost every other industry; you have deadlines to be met, a budget to juggle and profits to be made. And when it comes to complex computer coding like those for video games, I’m sure that coming up with the basic structure, building it up and then completely iron out the bugs is not easy, to say the least. I am also not surprised if publishers expect developers to do the impossible that is doing all that under deadlines so tight they suffocate, knowing full well how difficult the process is.

All that said, as a paying customer, should I care about all this? Maybe I should, but if it's happening so often, I find it very hard to empathize with their plight. This is especially so when before the game was even announced we get bombarded with blinding hype and glowing impressions (though this is partly the gaming community's own doing) and that we should totally pre-order it now, shortly after a title is announced and way before the game is set to be released. Publishers want your money before they can give you something worth the amount you pay in return. At this rate, it is probably fair to say that one day they will want your money before they even make your game.

Sure, some of the big names can afford to do this – at least for the first few times – but when they start screwing up big time the way EA and Ubisoft are doing, even they won’t have the right to say “Hey, pay us now and one day, maybe you will get your money’s worth from us.” Not that they ever had the right to do so, only now we are less inclined to fall for it. Again, not that we should fall for it in the first place.

This is something only the video game industry can get away with. You don’t see artists release an album with half-tracks and then asking you to buy a second one that will patch your previous halves into full songs, nor do you get, say a water bottle without the cap, which will be delivered three weeks after you bought the bottle itself. Anything else that doesn’t work the moment you buy it will only mean an immediate refund or replacement with something that does. Video games don’t work that way. At least, not anymore.

Having lived for just shy of a quarter of a century, I can’t say I am old myself. But at least I am old enough to remember the days when games worked like everything else; when you fork out money, it is for something that works the way it should. In fact, anyone who is reading this now is probably old enough to remember those good old days where games were bug free on launch day, or if there were any, they were so obscure and difficult to reproduce that finding them actually became another objective after the actual game was completed. I’m afraid the same can’t be said for the future generations though.

With the advent of patches, every publisher has an excuse to release semi-completed games and get the full retail price’s worth for it. Don’t get me wrong, there are many games for which I am grateful to patches, most of them being Bethesda titles. Unfortunately, many others don’t make use of patches that way, which is the way it should be. This abuse of patching technology then gives rise to another problem: DLCs.

DLCs are a way for publishers to milk a title for more than it is worth. Sometimes, they release half-games in the pretense of a full game, then sell you the other half for more money than what you already paid. Or worse, they lock away content in a disc, which is only accessible after you pay to unlock said content. With that, DLCs came to be known as two things: the former form is called Downloadable Content, while the latter is known as Disk-Locked Content. Capcom is especially guilty of this – they deliberately lock characters in the game discs only to be unlocked by buying them (think Street Fighter x Tekken), or making small improvements to an existing game but selling that patch as a whole new game (Street Fighter IV, need I say more?).

Another method of milking a title for more than it's worth is microtransactions, also known as in-app purchases. This is fine in a free-to-play game, but should be illegal in retail titles. The idea behind microtransactions is simple: need more money to buy that game-changing item but also want to skip all the prerequisites for it? Pay up and you can have it, skipping parts of the game in the process. And so my problem with it is: why should a consumer be made to pay more so that they get to play less of the game?

Now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, you will notice that Assassin’s Creed Unity is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the video game industry, at least from my perspective. With it now guilty of microtransactions and not being finished and polished on release, it is only a matter of time before they release DLCs for it. Even worse is the fact that many publishers today are not aiming to make games the old fashioned and proper way; they are aiming to release games that are just like Assassin’s Creed Unity, so that they can milk as much money as they can from gullible consumers. If this kind of fiasco happened once in a blue moon, then yes, we could say this was truly an unfortunate instance. But when so many are suffering from the same problem, then you know there is a problem that needs addressing.

So who needs to be addressing these problems? The publishers, for one; they are the ones who need to convince us their product is worth our money. That said we, as consumers, need to do our part as well in showing the publishers that if they want our money, they have to earn it the same way we earned ours. Instead of supporting the unscrupulous practice that is pre-orders, try waiting for the game to actually be out in the market. If it’s playable then, it’s fine to buy it and is well worth your money. If not, then either wait until it is or move on. DLCs are a little more complicated to deal with, but you can do better than buying every single one under the sun. Just take a look at the whole picture and decide if you are paying for something that should have been part of the game in the first place or something that actually adds value to the game. As for microtransactions, it is exceedingly simple: microtransactions and retail purchases are to be mutually exclusive. If you had to pay for a game, there can be no microtransactions. Likewise, if a game has microtransactions, you must not have paid to get said game.

Once again, the root of all evil is what makes the world go round, and this time around, it threatens to derail the gaming industry. It is up to us to keep things under control so that in the coming holiday seasons, we can hopefully see blockbuster titles that blow our minds without flopping like a fish out of water.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y'all.

This originally showed up here.

Music streaming. Good? Bad? or Ugly?

So this is a piece I've written for work, and as such you will not get my usual word-fatalities, so to say, as well as the presence of images which do not belong in my fortress of text. It is also not something that I usually care for, considering there is no alternative for me to music which doesn't require constant internet connection. But it is something I guess some other people can relate to, and definitely something timely and relevant to the world today, so I thought I'd share it here as well. With that, here it is.

So Taylor Swift has decided to pull all but one of her songs off Spotify.

If you were a fan of hers, you would probably also know that she herself isn’t a fan of Spotify. In fact, she goes as far as to put Spotify in the same boat as piracy and file sharing when it comes to identifying the cause of the drastically shrinking album sales. She justifies this statement by saying:

“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.”

It should also be mentioned at this point that Taylor Swift is specifically against ad-sponsored free services, which Spotify provides. Her discography is apparently still on streaming services like Beats Music and Google Play All Access, where beyond the artists’ radio stations – you have no control over what songs you get here – nothing else is available for free.

I suppose it is understandable, since each album sold is worth considerably more than the same album streamed on Spotify. Let’s take some local numbers for the sake of a clearer picture. An album which you buy at the average records store would cost about RM50, to give it a ballpark figure. This is in contrast to each song streamed on Spotify, which will net the contributing artist 20 sen thereabouts. Of course, with such numbers, it would seem that by streaming an album, at least on Spotify, we are only giving the artists less than five percent of what the album is really worth. This all makes Ms. Swift’s point really something worth thinking about.

Spotify, on the other hand, says that the ‘per stream’ metrics is a highly flawed indication of their value to artists, and believes that their service is best for allowing music fans to enjoy more music than ever before in a legal way, which will benefit the lives of artists.

At this point, I should point out that I have no idea how the music industry works on the business side of things. However, as a fellow consumer, I would also like to present a factor not yet mentioned, and not just for the sake of throwing a wrench into the works. For a start, there are generally two types of music listeners, at least to my observation. The first listens to their favorite songs over and over until they are bored of them before moving on to a new batch of songs. The second piles up all the music they like into an infinitely long playlist, sets it to shuffle, and treats that like a radio; listening to whatever song is in the queue and generally moving along with the shuffled playlist. To keep things simple, let’s just refer to the first archetype as Arthur and the second as Belle.

So, from these archetypes, it would make sense for Arthur to buy albums so he could listen to the same songs over and over until he is ready to move on, while Belle would just subscribe to a music streaming service, set up her playlist and just listen to whatever song that happens to be playing at the time. But things are not always going to remain that way; Arthur might one day decide that buying a whole album for a single song in lossless quality is not worth it, and Belle may decide that by streaming music, she is paying more than what she actually gets, as she also only listens to a few songs from an entire album.

What I’m trying to say is, having a choice is always good for consumers. This would also mean that it would be a good idea for artists to give their fans choices. Besides, if Arthur wants to listen to a song badly enough but it’s not available for streaming on Spotify, he would probably just get a digital copy off a friend or the many Internet pirates. This might seem excessively thrifty of Arthur, but consider the fact that a 3-month subscription costs about the same as one album.

Spotify has said that an unnamed, real-life artist was earning US$425,000 – which would translate to about RM1.4 million – per month in royalties for a ‘global hit album’. While we don’t know if this number is achieved with the help of people who listen to music the way Arthur does, I can only imagine that the number could only be bigger if Arthur and his friends could get music online legally, instead of having to resort to what the industry hates the most.

Taylor Swift mentioned that she hopes other artists “don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art”. For a thrifty and stingy person such as myself, this sounds very much like a euphemism for
“Milk your work as much as humanly possible”, and no doubt they have every right to do so. But if that was indeed the goal, wouldn’t Coldplay’s method of delaying streaming releases work better, instead of not streaming altogether? After all, albums are sold by the hype of something being new and, of course, the devotion of fans. When the cake has been cooled from being out of the oven for too long, so will album sales. This is when the revenue from music streaming, as little as it may be per stream, start to matter, as every track streamed still nets the artist 20 sen, while no album sales will simply equate to no revenue.

In the end, the choice is up to the artists on how they want to release their music to the public. As we, the consumer public, will be affected by their choice, here’s hoping they make the right decisions and keep our options open. The root of all evil is, after all, what makes the world go round, and by keeping our options open, we are – in that metaphorical sense – given a choice on how we want to keep the world spinning.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

This originally showed up here.

Truth is a bitter pill.

With the Gamergate movement being all the rage nowadays, I thought it would be a good idea – for my own sanity, if anything – that I contribute my two cents that no one wants or cares for. And with that, let me begin by saying this:

Humans are shallow.

It doesn’t matter how much you, I or anyone else tries to establish the notion that we are advanced beings in the animal kingdom, the fact remains that primal impulses still dictate our lives in one way or another. While most of them like the urge to eat, drink, breathe and sleep make sense because we’ll die without them, one doesn’t when you want to emphasize our supposed superiority over the rest of the animal kingdom, and that is the urge to procreate. That ensures the survival of the species, and as long as that instinct is part of our genes, we will always be shallow.

Take news for example. How do you draw the attention of people into motorsports, especially people with no interest in motorsports? Babes. How do you draw people’s attention to the launch of a new piece of computer hardware, when quite often people who aren’t nerd or geeks have less than absolutely no interest in them? Babes. In another field like, say, advertisements; how do you convince people to try your beer when it’s no secret that your beer tastes either like water or piss? Babes. What do you put on your advertisements or products to increase the chances of people seeing them and trying them out? You guessed it: babes.

What I’m saying is, sex sells. That’s why people are more likely to care about a lad or lass that was trotting about a street halfway across the globe in the nude than the local homicide.

Which brings me to my next point, and that is the fact that Anita Sarkeesian is a blithering idiot.

Now, I understand that there are many people rallying behind her so-called cause. I also admit that I don’t know what the hell she is up to now, nor do I bother to care. The fact remains is this: she was once – and maybe still is – against the way females are portrayed in videogames. So am I, but I realize a fact that she didn’t – or still doesn’t or refuses to accept – which is the point I was elaborating on above.

To sell videogames, people doing the sales and marketing have only one thing in mind and that is to make as much money as possible. That’s not wrong. That’s part of their job anyways. And to do that, the surefire way is to pull the primal impulse bait, and what better way to do it than sex. You can’t sell using food and drink because they could just buy the food and drink that they can actually eat and drink. You can’t sell via sleep either, since there is no alternative to actually going to sleep. And the world will end before breath is no longer free and hassle-free. So they go for sex. Sure, nothing beats the real thing (not that I have first-hand experience), but it is the only one that is not easily within reach, and where unless you have the real thing, no amount is ever enough (again, not that I actually have first-hand experience).

But I digress. So back to selling games. The men – or indeed women – in their suits tell the designers to put in muscly men and scantily dressed women to entice people to buy them. And of course, this strategy works perfectly. That’s why it’s been done over and over again. Rarely do you see developers, especially those with big names, go for some risk-taking and do something unorthodox, untested and unproven, because in the end if it doesn’t sell, it’s a complete flop no matter how well done the game is.

Take Clover Studios, for example; the small team of developers consisting of what was once Capcom’s finest. They decided since Capcom’s coffers were deeper than space, they would use some of it to just come up with the best games they can, no sales gimmicks or any of that shit. And they did; they came up with Viewtiful Joe, Okami and God Hand. The only scantily dressed woman was in God Hand, and she was in a denim miniskirt – she might as well be heavily armoured by today’s standards. All three games received critical acclaim. Success in every sense of the word, except financially. And so Clover Studios was shut down, and the three aces of Capcom scattered because they were denied their livelihood, which is to make the best games they possibly can instead of the best games that can possibly sell.

So yes, games sell because the people who want them to sell used the method that will not fail for as long as we have the primal instinct to reproduce. And instead of addressing this issue – not that it can be addressed anyway – this lady known as Anita Sarkeesian goes on beating about the bush talking about a problem that cannot be solved for as long as the root of all evil is what makes the world go round. Maybe, in the distant future where humans have evolved to be androgynous and asexual, then she may have a point. But until then, she makes about as much sense as those anti-vaccine advocates.

I suppose at this point I should mention that I have nothing against other people who have been negatively affected by this so-called Gamergate movement like Brianna Wu or Zoe Quinn or anyone else that were doxed and threatened with death, nor am I with or for the violent ‘retribution’ of Gamergate. I am also not saying that Anita Sarkeesian deserves all the death threats or anything. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if they are blithering idiots. That’s why all the anti-vaccine fools have not been – to quote Jeremy Clarkson on a different case –  shot in front of their families. Nor has Somalia been nuked for all the pirates and up to 98% of people practicing female genital mutilation there (or so says Wikipedia, which cites a 2013 UNICEF report). So yes, everyone has a right to their opinion, even if they’re wrong.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: I should mention also that these are my own views and I’m not saying any of this on behalf of anyone but myself. So if anyone’s going to get doxed or threatened with death for this it should be me and me alone. Not that it’s a likely scenario since, who the hell am I anyway?

Digging the truest grave inside

Many bits inside of me have died since 2007, but they were all things that don't change me as a person. Beaten and battered as my innards are, metaphorically – and to some extent, literally – speaking, I remain as Ian Chee. But recent events and the revelations that come with them had made me realize that circumstances will change me into someone that is only Ian Chee in name.

As a contributing member of society once again, my daily routine is: wake up, go to work, come back from work, and spend the last three hours of the day on my own activities, one of which is used for cleaning myself up after a long day and having dinner while the remaining two will almost always be on playing video games. Which is Warframe, as of recently, since I can’t be bothered to be fighting for the TV on a weekday evening.

Then at some point I met up with a few engineering student-friends to find out that they were in the multi-level marketing business. This hit a nerve in a way that, because they spent more time – and more money – on their piece of paper, they are entitled to a higher salary and, in my mind, less work for that as well. Turns out I was half wrong. Yes, they do get paid better, but they work their usual 9 to 6 and then have time for themselves. The only difference is that they will sacrifice their hobbies – assuming they had any to begin with – and invest that time into this MLM business.

Or maybe they didn’t have any hobbies to begin with, and saw this as a way to fill up their extra time in the day and make extra cash in the side. I choose to not do the same. Because I my motivation lies elsewhere, but also because I have more things that I wish to do than I have time to do them. I won’t consider them hobbies – even if they are by linguistic standards – because they are what define who I am. As a person fixated on personal identity, this is something that does not change in the same way that the fact that I must breathe, drink, eat and sleep to survive does not change.

Most of what time remains as my own in the day, I spend on playing video games, as I have mentioned. But there are other things that I wish to do that I don’t want confined to the weekends. Things like my harmonica – especially when a song that I want to play is not the C or E♭ major scales that I’m used to – and my dream of publishing a novel which I refuse to give up; both of which is currently held back because of my obsession with video games. The alternative, of course, is regressing into a ‘filthy casual’, as netizens call it; picking up games to finish and drop once that is achieved, instead of juicing its money’s worth out of it, which is expensive. Unless I resort to the obvious solution that is piracy which, isn’t cool because no multiplayer, among other things.

As I ponder upon this quandary of mine, I realize that circumstances can change one’s personality, and more often than not, for the worse. I am reminded of the words of two writers whose works I used to read, and still do when I can find the time. Jeremy Clarkson and Raja Petra Kamarudin wrote that having a different perspective from before is not hypocrisy, but growing up. As true as this is – as growing up means being less of an idiot, and being wiser does give you a different perspective of things – I am very inclined to disagree, for reasons that I am unable to explain with words. Even now that it has happened to me, I still feel like gutting myself than admit the truth in their words.

I mentioned that my motivation lies elsewhere, and that is making my dream of being a published – and best-selling, if possible – author a reality. It’s not something that gets me up in the morning, but it’s something that does keep me from going completely mad. Then I hear said friends saying this side income that they’re earning is what actually gets them motivated enough to start the day. I then wonder if I’m too short sighted to realize the bleakness of the future, or that I simply envy their optimism towards this MLM stuff, which has drawn its fair share of flak, and not without good reason.

Perhaps it would make sense if I mentioned at this point that while I do take some pride in my realist stance, I do wonder where I stand on the continuum of the two extremes. I pity those who view the world pessimistically, and while I do envy those who are optimistic about it, optimism itself disgusts me. This is probably something to do with me envying the bliss brought upon by ignorance, but being disgusted by ignorance itself. Of course it is always the success stories that we hear when we want to convince others of our cause, but perhaps what optimists often conveniently forget, is that for every success story like Robert Kiyosaki or Donald Trump, there are thousands, if not millions of untold blunders and failures.

And on that reality checking bombshell, adieu to y'all.

When Shredder looks more like the Silver Samurai than the Silver Samurai

So I’ve watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles twice now, the second time unplanned with a bunch of friends. I must say, while it’s not great, it doesn’t quite deserve the flak it gets just because Michael Bay is one of the producers. In fact, compared to all the Transformers movies beyond the first, TMNT is acceptably good. And Shredder actually looks good. Not as good as in the comics and the old TV series cartoons, but at least you get the impression that the people who made the movie knew what they were doing. Unlike the idiots who pissed, spat and shat on the Silver Samurai in the most recent Wolverine movie. And to a lesser extent, Deadpool in X-men Origins: Wolverine.

All that said, TMNT was mediocre, not great, and here’s why. First off, this movie slightly gives the impression of being April O’Neil feat. TMNT rather than TMNT, but it’s not as badly done as Godzilla. Second, Megan Fox who plays April is like Kirsten Stewart Mk. II; you can see more emotion in Shredder’s face than in hers, and that’s saying something, considering you can’t actually see Shredder’s face since his face is always either shrouded in shadow or behind his mengu (mask / face armour).

And since I mentioned Shredder, Shredder’s Japanese is pretty poor, especially considering the fact that he was played by a Japanese Canadian dude. While I’m in no position to criticise grammar or anything of the like, his speech sounds so blocky and awkward, much like Bryan Cranston’s Joseph Brody in Godzilla. In fact, Ken Watanabe speaks more fluent English than Tohoru Masamune – who plays Shredder – speaks Japanese. Not sure if this is true in real life, but as far as the movie is concerned, this is fact. In fact, I would go as far as to say that he speaks English far more fluently than he speaks Japanese, at least in the movie.

And now for spoilers. Early in the movie, April sees a group of vigilantes stopping a Foot Clan robbery. She is later caught and, along with other hostages, were used to threaten the vigilantes to give themselves up. Instead, they show up and save the hostages, but vanish right after. April trails them and manages to snap a photo of the vigilantes, who – surprise, surprise – turn out to be the ninja turtles. They catch her and wipe her phone, but just as they leave she snaps another photo. Then for whatever reason, she fails to produce this photo to convince her boss that this is worthy news material, instead showing her a lot of other nonsense which will obviously seem irrelevant to the person she is trying to convince. She gets fired for being the idiot that she is, but when she goes to talk to Eric Sacks about them, she shows the very photo that could have not only prevented her from losing her job, but also get promoted and freed her from covering fluff that she despises so much. Again I iterate that a movie will never be great if dishonesty and/or stupidity is/are essential to a movie’s plot, and this is one such example. If she wasn’t being deliberately stupid, the plot of the movie will be severely compromised.

Next in the spoilers’ segment we have the blatant disregard of logic, even in a fictitious universe. Three of the turtles are captured by Shredder and Raphael attempts so save them. April injects enough adrenaline to the three captive turtles to the verge of overdose. They then break out, and the four of them proceed to hunt down Shredder. Nothing wrong so far. Soon after they break out, they were shot at by some Foot clan henchmen. Some bullets gets lodged in the shell of the turtles. Then Raphael, the only turtle to not get a near-overdose of adrenaline, goes into a fit of rage, shooting the bullets lodged in his shell out like the shell was some soft tissue. So yes, the question now is why is it so difficult to not let shells behave like an inflatable, or if it absolutely has to be in the movie, at least let that stunt be pulled off by one of the three turtles that actually got the adrenaline overdose? Never mind that Raphael’s shades never fall off his head, even when he is used as catapult projectile.

So that’s TMNT for you. Not as bad as people make it out to be, but it sure as hell won’t blow you away. So it’s quite surprising why it seems to be doing better than Guardians of the Galaxy. I say this simply because, Guardians of the Galaxy is awesome. Like, almost The Lego Movie level of awesome. As far as I’m concerned, there are only two problems with the movie, one of which is Groot. If you can just replant him after he dies, why bother making his self-sacrifice such an emotional experience? I mean yes, that was a very noble act and especially so considering he is the supposed last of his kind, which we all feel for, but when I see a mini Groot in a pot, I feel cheated of my emotions. It’s like feeling pity for a rich person instead of a homeless person when the rich person’s car broke down or something. The second problem is the lack of Richard Rider of the Nova Corps. I mean, you have the Nova Corps, you have Nova Prime, but no Nova? Come on, now.

That said, seeing as Disney does a better job at respecting Marvel than 20th Century Fox (Disney does own Marvel, after all), hopefully the X-men franchise will one day land in Disney’s hands so that we can see a proper Silver Samurai and/or Deadpool in the future. Then again, if stopping 10th Century Fox from shitting on X-men means no more Hugh Jackman as Wolverine or Sir Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, then I’m not so sure I actually want that anymore.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

Gundam Warrior Reborn

Is the reason you see a two-month gap. And I refuse to call it Dynasty Warrior Gundam Reborn because that’s how you wrongly translate the name. Granted, Reborn is also translated wrongly, but since 無双 means warrior, and there is no ‘Dynasty’ in 真・ガンダム無双, I would just call it the way I do, regretting that Tecmo Koei failed on the magnificent wordplay on ‘Shin’, which could also mean ‘new’, hence Reborn.

And the fact that I’ve forgotten some of the movies I’ve watched over the months. A few memorable ones remain in my memory banks, but I have nothing much to say about them anyway.

We start with How to Train Your Dragon 2. It’s good, with an acceptable story, relatively strong finale, but I can’t bring myself to like it for two reasons: first, which is a reason shared with the first movie, is that because I was introduced to Monster Hunter before this, I can’t help but think that the dragons, including the giant in the first and the alphas in the second, were weaker than the weakest Wyverns of the MonHun universe. I especially can’t help but see Toothless as a tamer version of the Nargacuga. The second reason is because Toothless blatantly rips off Godzilla. How? By glowing spines that start from the tail, which leads to more powerful fire breaths.

Then there’s Maleficent. Which is nice, but much less than what I expected. The famed most powerful villain of the Disney world was so…soft, to say the least. In fact, her one act of cruelty was the curse on Aurora. The rest of the movie was showing how she is completely doubtful of the whole thing, her kindness to the one she cursed, and, in my mind, her not killing her crow sidekick for talking back to her the way he did. Then there’s the sentient pair of wings. The last thing that I found to be so disturbing was PlatinumSukamon, so that’s saying something.

For comedy we have A Million Ways to Die in the West. Screw all the naysayers because this is one of the best comedies of the decade for now. One that spits in the face of political correctness and historical accuracy to bring a movie that will make you laugh out loud in the cinema like a mental case, while making you cringe with its comedic cheesiness. Mind you, cheesy stuff are always cringe-worthy, and cringe-worthy things are rarely good, but when it is this funny, it makes it into the list of exceptions. A lot of modern day gag references, a lot of historical gags, and quite appropriately, a cheesy happy ending to make sure you stay laughing like a maniac when you leave.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was good if you watched Rise. If you didn’t, it’s still good, though viewers might be confused with the intelligent apes, the society and why Caesar was leader and why Koba was such a piece of shit. Though as someone who was watched Rise, I would have imagined that they could speak coherently by now instead of still using sign language primarily, and grunting a word or two of English. And that grim ending. I understand why people are saying this is going to be a trilogy with the last movie being a Planet of the Apes reboot.

Of course, there’s the new Transformers movie. And I must say, for the first time ever, I nearly fell asleep while watching a movie in a cinema. During an action sequence no less. That, I think, is enough said about how bad this one was.

There’s the new Hercules movie starring Dwayne Johnson, which is great, especially when compared to last year’s gutter fillings with the same name. Although, like most Hercules movies, this is another missed opportunity. I maintain that no Hercules movie will ever be better than one which tells the story of the 12 Labours. That said, this interpretation of the legend is a very good one. Not the first with this approach, but does not disappoint. This Hercules is a mortal. He isn’t the son of Zeus, and his 12 Labours were not as impossible as legend had described them. And I believe this movie has the best message cum moral ever: Legends are interpretations of fact with insufficient information. Take the hydra. For every head cut off, two takes its place. But this is because the hydra is in fact tribesmen/assassins who operate in the lake of an extremely foggy forest. People report seeing multi-headed serpents because all they saw in the fog was the monster mask/helmet they wore, and without seeing the body, people imagined them to be whatever their imagination sees fit. And with that, spreads legends. And lies. Centaurs were merely the silhouettes of people on horseback but no one saw the head of the horse because of the angle of which they were seen; they were up hills, in between the glaring sun and the poor blinded witness. As such, this movie tells us to verify to the best of our extents whatever rumours we hear before believing them. Also, with the appropriate legend a.k.a. lie, it can boost ally morale while breaking enemy morale. And lastly, tell a lie often enough and you may actually believe it yourself. As mentioned, this Hercules is a mortal. Extremely strong, but still a mortal. During the final act of the story, in a situation dire enough, an ally convinces him that he is, in fact a hero and the son of Zeus, which boosts his morale to the extent of amplifying this already impressive strength to superhuman levels. TL;DR, lies are powerful tools, which can be used and misused like any other.

Since I’ve mentioned Maleficent, I’m inclined to admit something this movie and Oculus has made me realize. I realize that I found the young Aurora, as well as young Kaylie Russell, to be more attractive than their adult counterparts. These two movies have since then left me casting doubt about myself and I end up suspecting that I might in fact be a pedophile.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

The God, the Zilla, and the MUTOs.

Okay, the title is a lie, because neither God nor Zilla showed up. I say that because, while Godzilla was awesome in this movie, he seemed to be very toned down, at least compared to his original glory. That said he still is a god compared to Zilla, but the fact that he wasn’t as godlike as his original incarnation might get a few hard core fans fired up for the wrong reasons and thus setting others on metaphorical fire. MASSIVE, HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! I usually don’t care too much about spoilers, but this is Godzilla we’re talking about; he deserves the preferential treatment. SO GO NO FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!

We start with Bryan Cranston. His part as Joseph Brody in the trailers gave the impression that he’s be a very important character in the trailers. He is, except that he died less than quarter way into the movie. Not much false advertising here ladies and gentlemen; the trailer just left that impression but most of what you see in the trailers actually shows up in the film. Except for four bits. Four exact bits. Others had more, non-memorable bits, but many obvious ones, but this had only four, memorable or not. But since it’s still not in the movie, let’s identify them. Number one, form the trailer where the soldiers HALO jump from the plane. That did happen, but the commander’s speech in the background didn’t. Then, as we go into one of the soldier’s point of view, we see a dark figure in the midst of a dark, burning city. In the actual movie Godzilla was clearly visible, facing off with one of the MUTOs, but since this is the first trailer meant to check anticipation levels of the film, I’ll let it slide. So second again. The bit where a silhouette is barely visible behind the smoke and is finally revealed to be Godzilla. That didn’t happen in the movie. Moving on to the second trailer, one scene where Ford Brody ask someone “can you kill it?” That didn’t’ happen at any point in the movie. And lastly the bit where Elle and Sam Brody are looking at Godzilla, roaring in their direction as doors between them close. Sam wasn’t there and Godzilla was already fighting when the doors start to close.

Now that we’ve gotten the trailer inaccuracies out of the way, let’s move on to the kaiju designs. Of course, we start with the main character himself. HE LOOKS GREAT! Many say he looks to be on the fat side this time around, and they’re quite right. But that only applies to when you look at him from the side, though it has something to do with the fact that he is leaning forward instead of standing straight up like an obvious man in a suit. There’s a big gap between both legs like a proper reptile, instead of having them close together, again, like an obvious man in a suit, so from the back it gives the impression that his legs are all fat and no muscle. Look at him from the front and you will see a very square chest, kind of like a human bodybuilder’s, except less disproportionate. He has his proper, stegosaurus-esque, maple leaf shaped spines going on the back, albeit slightly smaller than the original. And, probably less apparent, he has gills, probably to explain how he stays underwater forever, never surfacing until needed. And the Atomic Breath is back. As for his character role in the show, he’s the anti-hero-ish good guy. Which is good and bad at the same time for the movie, for reasons I will explain later.

Moving on to the MUTOs, they are called that as an acronym to Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms (M.U.T.O). Now if you notice in the title referencing the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the MUTOs are actually very beautiful, contrary to where I place them in the title. They were co-created by Legendary Pictures and Toho, and it shows. Well, they are beautiful to me at least. I find this to be worth mentioning because I have some very peculiar tastes, such as preferring the look of Predators without their masks on unlike others, among others. Design aside, as actual animals they are very well made too. They communicate with each other with clicks, grunts and roars, in a pattern of behaviour very similar to birds. The ways the male and female MUTOs interact with each other makes them feel so real and with emotion, like how they look into each other’s eyes and rub their noses together upon meeting. You could almost feel the love between them. Since I’ve mentioned the male and female, the former is much smaller, at less than half the size of the female, but can fly. The latter, while almost as large as Godzilla, has no wings.

There’s also a backstory explaining how these creatures lived during times when the Earth was very highly radioactive. Some, like Godzilla and MUTO, have evolved in a way that allowed them to feed on radiation, instead of/in addition to conventional food. And now in modern times, the survivors live much further underground to feed on radiation off the Earth’s core. I think it’s a nice reference to the Godzillasaurus origin story. Godzillasaurus, while not named directly, was identified as the apex predator of the time, hunting all but hunted by none. “A god in all respects,” as Vivienne Graham, Dr. Serizawa’s assistant, described.

With all that covered, here are my thoughts about the movie, starting with what I like. And first on the list is the design, which I’ve mentioned. Second is the role of Godzilla in the whole movie. Like I said, he’s the silent observer, guardian angel type anti-hero protagonist. This is good because from the get go – at least when that role is made clear to the audience – we are all rooting for Godzilla. The emotional investment is very rewarding, especially at the end, when Godzilla walks away from the whole affair, with the news headlines reading “King of Monsters, Saviour of our city?” It was a very happy feeling. The downside is it downplays the uncertainty of whether he is a reliable saviour or if he will go on a rampage once he’s done killing the MUTOs. And also, knowing that he’s a good guy makes the very rational decisions of the military seem very stupid. I mean, who would trust a giant radioactive lizard with taking down other monsters that eat nuclear warheads for breakfast? Do you blame the soldiers for firing their cannons at Godzilla at the first sign of provocation? In most situations, it is understandable, maybe even praiseworthy and encouraged. But when you know that they are shooting at their saviour, it’s hard to empathise with their decisions.

We also get an Ichiro Serizawa played by Ken Watanabe, as homage of sorts to the original Daisuke Serizawa. He is in the film to remind everyone that “the arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way around.” My favourite line from the movie, however, while coming from the same character, is spoken much earlier, when the military is deciding on how to deal with the MUTOs and whether Godzilla is a threat to be dealt with in a similar fashion: “Nature has an order... A power to restore balance. I believe he (Godzilla) is it.” I know this deviates from the original Daisuke Serizawa, but it was at this point that the movie makes quite clear that Godzilla is not a baddie. He also serves as the movie’s anti-nuke messenger, always carrying a pocket watch belonging to his father, which has stopped at precisely 8.15 am, 6th of August 1945. And, of course, like a true Japanese, he calls Godzilla ‘Go Jira’ (ゴジラ), and is the only one in the entire movie to do so.

Things I don’t like: I have the fact that the military decided that the best way to kill 3 creatures that feed on radiation is a nuclear blast. Which leads to a plethora of other problems. In the trailers and earlier in the film they mentioned the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll were in fact attempts to kill Godzilla that obviously didn’t work. The military’s response? This new nuke had explosive power measured in megatons, not kilotons, and will make the nuke at Bikini Atoll look like a firecracker. Also, since both MUTOs were capable of using EMP, they decided to use an analogue countdown timer on the nuke, send it to the middle of the ocean and detonate it there once all three monsters were lured there. At this point it seems that only Dr. Serizawa was concerned that even in the middle of the ocean, there are other life forms that will be affected by the radiation and that it’s impossible for there to be no wind to carry the fallout landwards, never mind that the three that they were trying to kill with the nuke eat nukes, and might do so before the timer ran out and proceed to head towards land. What happened was worse: the nuke was stolen by the MUTOs to feed the babies the female was carrying, and was left in the MUTO nest along with the spawn. So a team of soldiers had to go steal it back and either disable the timer on the nuke, or if there is enough time, continue with the plan to send it to the middle of the ocean. And they decided to go with the latter because when they got to the bomb there was 26 minutes left, and they needed more time to open the cracked glass panel that was covering the timer.

Another thing I don’t quite like: Godzilla being quite far from godlike. While the usual rockets and cannons do cause him pain, he seems to take no damage from any of them. This looked like a good sign, but was a bit misleading. He was outmatched by both MUTOs in their initial encounter, which I guess was natural, being a 2-on-1 situation, but quite easily kills them when facing them individually. That’s great, but he seems to be really tired after every encounter despite the seemingly easy kills. First was the male MUTO. A very surprisingly quick tail slam knocked the male MUTO into a skyscraper. Unfortunately, the same skyscraper, over three times taller than Godzilla, crashes onto him. It is shown that while he managed to survive and crawl out of that rubble, he did so with great difficulty. And after killing the female MUTO, he was shown to collapse, awaking what looked like hours later before heading back into the sea. Long story short, this fat Godzilla gets tired too easily, and even collapsed out of fatigue, waking up after hours of sleep before heading home, although after taking a massive beating while being ganged up on might justify that. That said if there were to be a Pacific Rim x Godzilla crossover, I hate to say this but Godzilla will not be a clear winner without contest.

So, the final verdict for this movie. A great 60th anniversary reboot in the year 2014. Fans of the movie will have reason to not give this movie a perfect score while on the other hand, the rest who are just looking for a great kaiju flick might. My personal score is a solid 8/10. Definitely watch it on the big screen. Go IMAX big if you can. Only don’t watch it in 3D, as the 3D version looks very 2D still.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

Tying Up Loose Ends

Before I get to Godzilla – which was awesome – I’d like to review the other two great movies I mentioned before, which are Oculus and The Machine, as well as The Amazing Spiderman 2: Rise of Electro which I completely forgot I had watched. How could I forget that I have watched a movie, and said movie being Spiderman 2 of all things? That’s simply because while it was great, it was pretty unspectacular and thus forgettable, and here’s why. Spoilers alert. Duh.

First off, and this is not exactly the fault of the movie, but if you’ve seen the trailer, you can consider that trailer as a trailer for a different movie. This is because, as far as I can recall, there are only three notable scenes in the trailer that’s actually in the movie, which are the Electro releasing charges in the middle of Times Square scene, the clock-tower Goblin fight scene and the final Rhino fight scene, which, incidentally happen in chronological order in both the trailer and the movie. Other notable scenes like the dialogue between Peter and Harry – “My father has spent more time watching you than me.” “Why?” “Is not the question of the day.” – or the one between Peter and his Aunt May – “There’s something you’re not telling me, Aunt May.” “I once told you that secrets have a cost. The truth has, too.” – are missing. So yes, problem number one is false advertising. This movie is by far the guiltiest one in that respect.

The movie itself starts off good. Showing how Electro became Electro. And I really like this Electro. This is one of the few characters that I prefer the movie version over the original. But after that, it’s mostly about Peter Parker finding the truth about this father and dealing with his relationship with Gwen Stacy while Harry Osborne tries to prevent his imminent death. In fact, you wouldn’t be lying if you told your friends that you came out of the cinema having just watched The Amazing Peter: Rise of Harry Osborne.

Then there are the fight scenes, which are extremely short. I liked the clock-tower Goblin fight because it shows Spidey fighting by jumping around while spinning his web, trying to limit the space in which the Goblin can fly around, although there isn’t much impact to that tactic. Or at least, the movie doesn’t show it. Then there’s the Rhino. The damn fucking Rhino. When the movie finally shows the Rhino, I was thinking to myself, is there really enough time for there to be a third villain showdown? Sure enough, there wasn’t. The movie ended with the stupid scene you see in the trailers where Spidey swings the manhole cover at the Rhino. And speaking of the Rhino, why must the Rhino be a robotic suit that has machine guns and missiles? Why? Why ruin it the way The Wolverine ruined the Silver Samurai?

So there you have it. While it’s a good movie, there are enough problems that pull the total score down to a mere average, comparable with other titles in the cinema. The Machine and Oculus, on the other hand…

Oh and since I mentioned The Wolverine, I’d also like to mention the fact that there are quite a fair number of people who think that name is based on a wolf, without realizing that there is a standalone creature in the animal kingdom called a wolverine – which isn’t an expansion or sequel, to use modern gaming and movie terms, to the wolf. I thought I should get that thought out of my head.

So yes. We continue with Oculus first. While it isn’t particularly very scary, especially for a horror movie, and the plot details are fairly simple, thus leaving me with nothing much to talk about, the concept of the story is very radical. Very Original. Very Unorthodox. Very Daring. Very New. Very… You get the idea.

Picture this: An older sister and a younger brother, both still children, had their family wrecked by a ghost/demon/fiend/whatever inhabiting an antique mirror in their house; mom was possessed and dad was driven insane, causing them both unspeakable trauma. The whole affair ended with both parents dead, the father putting a gun in the boy’s hand with what’s left of his sanity, asking the poor kid to shoot him. Kid complied. Cops arrive and take the boy away, diagnosed with mental disorder for shooting dad and blaming it on a mirror and lived till adulthood in a mental institution, while girl lived in a foster home. Both kids make a promise to exact revenge on the evil entity when they grow up. That’s right. How often do you come across a horror story where the victims SEEK VENGEANCE instead of just simply getting brutally murdered right away, run in fear and forever burying this dark chapter of their lives in the deepest depths of their memories, or have an exorcist come over to read a few lines off a holy book, and proceed to live happily ever after?

Actually, other than the exorcist, (spoiler alert) the other two did happen; one did get brutally murdered in the end while the other initially tried to forget everything, thinking that everything was made up by the imagination of children. But the fact that they actually tried getting back at a supernatural entity against all odds, despite failing, was enough to sell the movie to me.

The story too has an interesting way of progressing. Being trapped in the mirror, naturally (wait, what?) the supernatural force of evil will have to resort to indirect means of causing harm and protecting itself, and it does so by consciousness and memory manipulation. It makes you remember things that didn’t happen or forgets things that did, and makes you do things you naturally won’t by diving into your consciousness and actually making you want to do it of your own free will, without you realizing of course. At least, not until it’s too late. This leads to a very confusing mix of hallucinations and flashback sequences. That said, as confusing as it is, it’s a very rewarding feeling when you concentrate, and as a result get the story and are able to tell which is the present and which is the past. Well, for me anyway; some others would just say that movies are not meant to make you think too much during the movie and state this method of storytelling as complete crap.

All in all, good stuff. Poor value as a horror movie, but amazing in terms of fresh idea, content and concept. I say go watch it, if it’s still showing in cinemas. If not, watch it anyway through any other means.

Next in line is The Machine. THIS IS A DAMN GOOD MOVIE! If you think you have even one cell in your brain that you use when you think, then you owe it to your own intelligence to watch this movie.

Premise is this: instead of the usual AI being programmed to respond to a wide array of questions and situations appropriately, someone actually manages to replicate the brain; empty at birth but learns through imitation and analysis, is conscious and aware of its own existence and attempts to learn the moral code of other humans around it. Needless to say, it passed the Turing Test with flying colours. Unfortunately, its creator was killed, so it was left in the hands of an AI expert, who entered the field to create a digital version of his daughter who is dying of Tourette syndrome. Scientist continues to ‘raise’ the AI, simply called ‘The Machine’ or just Machine which is also given a militarized humanoid female body resembling its murdered ‘mother’. As the learning progresses, said scientist is conflicted whether to treat is as a super advanced AI that can be weaponized or to actually acknowledge its humanity.

While the core of the story is too complex for me to spoil, I will say that the ending is the complete opposite of that in 3 Days to Kill. While the latter ends with an unrealistic but happy ending, this goes out with an anticlimactic but very real and thought provoking epilogue. The movie itself was halfway tearing my insides with conflicting feelings, and the ending just dealt the finishing move *Que Fatality from Mortal Kombat*. What else can I say? WATCH IT! I DON’T CARE HOW! PIRATE IT IF YOU MUST!

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: The promised Godzilla review is up next. Stay tuned. And keep your flamethrowers ready.

The Eve of Godzilla

It’s one day before the most anticipated movie of the year. Well, my most anticipated anyway. So what I’m going to do today is review all the movies I’ve watched since the last time, saving two gems for what will come with Godzilla. And just to get them out of the way, they are The Machine and Oculus. They are awesome in their own unique way, so I do recommend that you go watch them somehow, or wait for my review of them along with Godzilla to know what they’re about and why I think you should watch them. Without spoiling too much, Oculus brings a fresh concept out of the old boring recipe of horror films, while The Machine, well, you owe it to your functioning brain to watch it because the movie brings the phrase ‘food for thought’ to a whole new level.

And what about the rest that are not as good, as fresh and/or as thought-provoking as the other two? We start with Need for Speed. The movie, not game. That’s right folks. The most played arcade racer franchise which is widely criticized for trying to have a story with a point in a game that, in the minds of many, shouldn’t bother with. Well, for the most part that’s true, because how deep of a story can you have when you’re trying to have it revolve around illegal street racing? While it is my favourite arcade racer franchise, I have to agree with most critics that if all the main character does is race, there isn’t much story development possibilities, especially when the main character is just a camera giving you the point-of-view of the main character.

So what happens when you turn that into a movie? The same stuff you get from the Fast and Furious series, minus the guns and explosion. Well, most of them anyway. So as you might expect, the depth of the story starring Aaron Paul is just as deep, or shallow, as the one starring Vin Diesel. So how does it go exactly? A racer is set up and incarcerated for illegal street racing, but the guy who set him up and was racing him manages to get away scot-free. After serving his sentence, he comes out hell-bent on revenge, even if it means going to jail again. As you might expect from a movie like this, the final race involves a few of the fastest, rarest and most expensive cars in a sprint race, with the winner taking all of the cars. As mentioned, the story is not bad considering what it’s based on, but there are a few factual inaccuracies, such as the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento being able to match the Bugatti Veyron SuperSport in straight-line speed, and the movie stating that there are only 2 in the world, when in fact there are 20.

It’s a little late for this, but if you are wondering if this is worth watching on the big screens, the answer depends on how much of a Need for Speed fan are you. Suffice to say, if you’re the average movie goer, then probably not.

Next in line is a superhero flick, one which I was rather looking forward to because of the appearance of the titular villain. That’s right, it’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Not much needs to be said about this; the story is based on the comics, with the extra ingredients that make a great movie. Good action, good story progression pacing, good character portrayals. That said, some parts of the plot seem overly convenient (as always), which makes you question the actual plausibility of the characters having the foresight that they do. Is it worth paying for a one-time-viewing-only ticket? Yes. It has its flaws, but they are otherwise negligible.

Another good movie worth watching in the cinemas is Transcendence. Starring Johnny Depp, the movie is more of a social commentary, if anything, but it does ask a serious question through the plot. Very heavily flavoured, but not necessarily delicious, food for thought. A scientist aims to build the perfect computer system which is not only perfect in every single way, but which also possesses a consciousness. A bunch of people (whom you would be forgiven if you consider them cultists) who think technology will be the end of humanity, tries to kill the scientist before that happens, and the scientist’s wife then tries to upload his consciousness into the internet, turning him into the perfect computer system he attempted to create. The plot touches on some things Terminator started, namely the man versus machine theme in a very command-and-control/conquer kind of way. My favourite scene in the movie is when the scientist is giving his talk about this system, which he calls Transcendence, and one of the audience asks “so, you’re trying to create a god?” to which he answers “Isn't that what mankind has always done?”

Of course, the irony is the anti-technology cultists use technology to undermine technology, which makes them fight-fire-with-fire hypocrites who shouldn’t be taken seriously, in my mind. Then there’s the social commentary directly referencing our need to be connected, where people are given cybernetic enhancements and are connected to the internet, which is now the super-system scientist. So they turn into mindless pawns whenever he needs them to. Which, in my opinion, is stupid because that’s what led other, still unaffected people to think that this AI is a threat to humanity’s freedom. Obviously you don’t force people to be connected that way. Sure, most people today rely on connectivity to the internet, emails and social media to live their lives, but we don’t die if we don’t have it the way we die if we don’t get oxygen now, do we? In other words, the AI is a blithering idiot, and serves him right for finally getting destroyed in the end. That aside, it’s a great movie, asking us to seriously reconsider the way we perceive our ability as a species to handle the rapidly improving technology that we come up with.

Lastly, we have Divergent, a movie based on the novel of the same name. The story takes place in a dystopian post-apocalyptic version of Chicago where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. The main character is warned that she is Divergent and thus will never fit into any one of the factions and soon learns that there are others like her, and that it is an open secret that such people are being hunted down and killed to 'preserve the peace' by eliminating people that do not conform. The basis is good, the action bits are good, the story is also not too shabby. My only complaint with is is that the lovey dovey bits in it, as you would imagine, is a bit too cheesy for my liking. Something about the development of the relationship that irks me, which if I were to identify exactly what, might be the fact that it's the same formula that always works in fiction, but never in reality. That said, it is a good movie that, while I don't recommend, you still won't regret watching on the big screen.

Sadly, not all the movies are great. In fact, there are two which are rubbish, and for the same reason. They are Sabotage and Tokarev. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nicolas Cage respectively, these two movies waste their star actors on plot which will not exist if honesty did. In Sabotage, members of an elite DEA task force find themselves being taken down one by one and their money gone after they rob a drug cartel safe house, leading to a wild goose chase of who is responsible for taking the money and killing the members, with a totally anticlimactic reveal and finale. Tokarev, on the other hand, tells the story of how an ex-mobster’s daughter was killed, and him going on a wild goose chase of finding the supposedly mob-related culprit and killing many otherwise innocent mobsters, before finding out that no such person exists before killing himself for starting a major gang war. Both movies had their share of action and gore, with Sabotage having more of those, but they are far from what you’d call impressive. Both are dark, gritty, but otherwise hollow. Not something I’d recommend going to the cinemas for, to say the least.

Which brings me to a point I’d like to make. I find it very revolting if a movie’s plot can be completely taken apart, ripped to pieces and torn to shreds with a single ingredient, especially if every other aspect of the movie wasn’t completely utter shit. That single ingredient is usually either honesty, or simply not being stupid. That’s right. Some stories completely fall apart if the characters are honest, or just not being so calamitously idiotic beyond possibility. This is the problem with Sabotage, Tokarev and, to a lesser extent, Non-Stop. They are otherwise plots with some massive potential, but either completely ruined beyond salvation in the case of the former two, or not reaching its maximum potential in the case of the latter. All thanks to a single factor: dishonesty. Even the most clichéd plot of evil super villain trying to take over the world holds more water if it does not contain any of these plot destroyers.

All that said, these two things do not always wreck a plot. Sometimes they actually add some spice and substance to the whole thing. Unfortunately, such occurrences are few and far in between.

And on that defused bombshell, adieu to y’all.

For Argument’s Sake: a personal reiteration.

I have, just earlier today, watched a TED talk by Daniel H. Cohen about arguing. You might ask, “What is it about arguing that is so profound that it deserved a TED talk?” To which I ask in return, “what is the definition of arguing or being engaged in an argument?” To out-reason our opponents, prove them wrong, and, most of all, to win, some will say. But is that really the point? Arguments are not a zero-sum game where one must win and the other must lose, after all, since the loser learns something new, that there is more convincing evidence contrary to what he or she initially knows.

So essentially, arguments should always end in a win-win situation, where the winner gets their egos stroked and the loser learns something new. Keyword being ‘should’, since, as we all know, that this is rarely the case. People get involved in arguments not only to state their opinion and reasons behind it, or to exchange information and come to a conclusion based on statements and evidence presented by both sides, but to be crowned grand champion of having the most right opinion in the first place even if the opposition presented agreeable points in the process.

This sad scenario happens because of the innate competitive drive in our nature. Or indeed in the nature of everything alive. You want to pummel your competition to submission, willing or otherwise, even when doing so is counterproductive. In the wild, it gives a sense of security (it ensures one’s survival, after all), but in civilization, it just gives you a sense of pride, sometimes unjustified. Another reason might be the fact that people are mostly educated into being phobic about making or having made a mistake, but that just leads to the right thinking that they are superior and the wrong are inferior, which was illustrated by the initial point.

The reason I mention this is because I just had an argument barely an hour ago. With the worst possible  opponent – a grumpy old man who is incapable of moving with the times (and the changes that come with it) as well as being pathologically afraid of being wrong. Textbook "short man syndrome” is how one would describe this man, though I honestly hesitate to use the word. The subject of our argument? A Guinness World Record for the highest kick among women. The record, last I checked anyway, was 2.15 meters by the way.

How it started? Well, two people were to kick a small platform with a pin sticking out of the top, which would poke and burst a balloon being held slightly above it when said platform was pushed upwards. Seemed pretty straightforward, didn’t it? Except for the fact that one of them managed to kick the platform without popping the balloon. Said person’s foot only grazed the platform’s surface, as it were. The judges still counted it as a hit, despite the balloon being intact.

So I asked a question – which, to me, was simple and completely justified – “what was the point of the balloon, then?” The record attempt was in front of a live audience so I thought aloud that the effect was meant to for the spectators; probably to excite them or something, the way some spectator sports work I guess – people watching NASCAR for the crashes or rugby or American Football for the clashes and injuries sustained from them. Short grumpy old-fashioned old man then went on to say that the pin and balloon was for an affirmation that the platform below had indeed been kicked. To which I replied by pointing out the fact that the previous attempt was still counted even when the balloon remained intact after the platform was kicked, rendering the pin and balloon redundant. To which he then insisted on his previous point, just adding to the fact that if the balloon popped, it would not require a close-up slow-motion video playback for the judges to consider. I then said it was still redundant because the live audiences were not the judges, and the official judges had access to the video recording which would be working either way, and would still be referred to should the pin and balloon fail to serve their purpose, which they have. In other words, why waste resources, no matter how cheap they may be, in setting up a fallible secondary method of validation when the primary, fool-proof method was already there to begin with? It’s not like watching a video playback would take more than a few seconds anyway.

Instead, of saying “I don’t know,” which was precisely the reason behind my asking the question, or “that was just the decision of Guinness or the organizer,” he uttered his trademark line of “I don’t want to argue with you. You argue for the sake of arguing.” Which I took quite seriously and a bit personally as he says that every single time I succeed in countering an argument of his no matter how valid my rebuttal was. Not being able to take anymore of such bullshit, I confronted him and said that if he had any point to counter my point or defend his, he should just say them until I was convinced, since I was able and willing to do the same. Then came an attack which I can only consider personal: “Before you talk so much, go get a job first.”

Well, what gives? Not only has he failed in in doing his part in the active disagreement, he resorted to personal attacks just to have the last word. Yes, I am currently between jobs, but do I need to have the fact rubbed in my face as retaliation to my argument? By my own father, no less.

This is why if he was to end up in any life-threatening situation, I will do many things – committing suicide included – before I save him. Any anyone trying to convince me that he is a good man with good intentions will be about as successful as anyone trying to convince me that a benevolent monotheistic God exists.

People used to ask me if I had a single most influential role model and my answer was usually ‘no’. In fact, I did and I still do, but for the complete opposite reason. While people try to emulate their role models, I do the complete opposite for the one that has the most influential impact on my moral identity. Which is why anything my father is, I do or try to be as exact an opposite as humanly possible, with the only exception so far is my unfortunate employment status.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

When spring is hotter than summer

It’s another slow month, for a number of reasons, chiefly being Sony Malaysia’s unwillingness to release the Xperia Z1 Compact before people completely lose interest. So, to kill time, I have decided to review four more movies that I have watched recently. I know it’s still very early in the month, considering Need for Speed isn’t even out yet, but worry not for I shall work on that when it does go on air. Again, spoiler alert, because some really deserve mention.

First off is American Hustle. A show which starts with the most amazing intro ever: ‘Some of this actually happened’ instead of the usual ‘based on a true story’. A story about how a pair of con artists get pulled into an FBI op to nab as many ‘criminals’ as possible, or that’s how it started anyway. It slowly turned into an operation to arrest as many people as possible, even if it means baiting honest politicians (two words you don’t normally feature in the same sentence, let alone next to each other) into taking bribes. The film ends with politicians being arrested and real criminal masterminds
remaining free to terrorize whoever they thought was born with a wrong face.

This is a good movie, which I like for a number of reasons. The first is that despite the happy-ish ending, it ends with a bitter taste, much like reality, though this may be because of it being based on a true stor… *ahem* because some of it actually happened. Actually, most of which still hold true today; rich criminals kill every man than isn’t a subordinate and rape every woman that isn’t a wife or mistress and still get away scot free while the one politician that actually serves the people among the infinite that lord over the people get lumped together and are treated like scum anyway.

Second is that it touches on the very grey nature of the world, with insights into the life of the nearly non-existent good guy politician and maybe the FBI as well. Now, I’m not sure how the FBI actually works, but in this movie, which I’m going to trust because apparently some of it actually happened, they’re much like salesmen; like how the sales of the salesmen matter while the quality of a product and the honesty of their marketing doesn’t, the FBI seems to work with a similar principle where it’s the number of arrests that count and not who they arrest and the legitimacy of the arrests. And so there’s a very convenient plot: the FBI needs to meet their arrests quota for the year or something, so they go at first aiming to arrest members of the criminal underworld. When they realize that that’s not possible due to insufficient evidence and time to gather them, they turn to arresting politicians, most of which are not clean anyway. When even then they fall short, they resort to baiting the rarest thing in existence – a clean politician that actually serves the people of his constituency – into taking bribes and hence putting some dirt on him to justify his arrest. So yes, this world is very far from black and white, where the supposed good guys do very far from good things to falsely maintain their good image, and the brilliance of one good guy politician getting overshadowed by and lumped together with the rest of the scumbag politicians. And this movie portrays it quite nicely. Almost perfectly, in fact, but that may be due to the fact that some of it actually happened (yes, I absolutely love that phrase).

So yes, good movie all in all, but I will not recommend watching on any of Malaysia’s big screens. This is simply because there are far too many cuts, most of which I would attribute to Amy Adam’s character, who is very scantily dressed at her most dressed moments, to say the least. While this is very much understandable as she has to play a stripper in the late 1970s, what is not understandable is the movie, being rated 18, still has cuts. So what is the bloody point of the bloody age restriction? They might as well give it a 13PG or U rating since they cut all the bits deemed inappropriate for kids anyway despite the 18 rating. Either that, or I overestimated the standards of the horny old geezers at the censorship department; they can probably fap to a female tennis match, when the players’ clothes start to get soaked in sweat and their nipples start poking out of their clothes (this is not meant to be an insult to athletic women, but it is meant as an insult to the horny old geezers at the censorship department and their mind-bogglingly low standards of pornography).  So to rectify this problem, there should be two classifications for this movie; 18 for the uncut version and a 13PG or U version where they can cut the whole movie as far as I'm concerned.

With that done, we move on to Non-Stop. If you’ve seen the trailers, then there’s not much more to say, since that’s pretty much the gist of it. Also, if you have seen the trailer, you’ll be able to see the plot twist coming way before it happens. Or at least won’t be surprised when it does. There isn’t much action, but there is a lot of tension. Which is to be expected from that sort of scenario, but a lot of it seemed very unnecessary; nothing good old honesty can’t solve. Because of this, the movie can feel quite draggy. Then you have the clichéd good guy wins ending.

Despite all this, I would still say that this is worth your money. Yes, it is stereotypical without much innovation, but the characters are played so perfectly that the realism alone makes it worth your money. Well, realism of the characters staying in character at least. The major fly in the ointment is that the plot would be dramatically shorter and there would be less tension in the air if the main character was honest from the start, but I still say that this movie deserves a chance to be judged by yourself.

Then we have 3 Days to Kill. This is, to me, a gem in more ways than one. The first being the main character who isn’t the most overpowered character in the story. This is a rare break from the cliché that we are otherwise too familiar with; the main character always has the better technique, reflex, instincts, thinking etc. This time, the main character is strangely overshadowed. Sure he is skilled, but it is strangely pleasant to find that there is someone out there half his age with twice his skill. And while not the first, it is quite refreshing to see a movie that mixes seriousness with comedy, and in this particular film, you see the main character juggling his job with his family as well.

The fly in the ointment, however, can be found at the ending. It’s quite fairy tale-ish when it could have ended in a darker, more realistic tone. That aside, this is a movie that I would really recommend watching.

And finally we come to Philomena. I was initially put off by the title because it sounded like a Malay movie, which meant complete utter rubbish with very, very, VERY few exceptions. As it turns out, that was just my ignorance in action, because it was actually a British-French-American comedy-drama based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. So yes, a based-on-a-true-story movie. Which I loved, because it does touch on some fairly emotional themes.

What I did find strange, however, was that there was a cut or two in this film. With hindsight, this wasn’t strange at all because the film was distributed by The Weinstein Company, which was famous (or infamous) for the production of many anti-Catholic films. This meant that the cut scenes had something to do with the presence of religion-bashing dialogue. What this shows is, the feeble-minded horny old geezers at the censorship department not only have low standards of fappable material, they also have dangerously low faith in the faith of their fellow believers. The bleeding irony right there, ladies and gentlemen.

And so, because of that, this is the perfect movie – with no flies in the ointment – that I will not encourage you to watch on the big screen. Sure the cut dialogue may seem insignificant, but I can’t help but feel cheated. In fact, I don’t even know if it was actually insignificant or not. It might actually turn out to be a big chunk of key plot explanations, for all I know.

Right. Now that we are done with my reviews, I would like to talk about movie reviews. Yes, irony number two incoming. It would seem that the current trend, based on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, at least, is that if there is action, the movie isn’t good. Which is rubbish. Take 3 Days to Kill for example. It has one fly in the ointment. One. But there was a lot of shooting and killing and driving fast sideways. And what rating did it get? 31% based on 64 reviews. American Hustle, with close to no action and no fly in the ointment? 93% based on 240 reviews. So one fly in the ointment, muzzle flash, death and tyre smoke deserves a 62% drop? Really? Seriously? The consensus at Rotten Tomatoes says that American Hustle is “Riotously funny and impeccably cast, American Hustle compensates for its flaws with unbridled energy and some of David O. Russell's most irrepressibly vibrant direction.” Which is fair, except for the first bit, because if American Hustle was ‘riotously funny’, then 3 Days to Kill would give you asthma. American Hustle was funny, sure, but only just, while 3 Days to Kill, on the other hand, was properly funny. You could have a full house watching American Hustle and you would still not get louder laughs than an empty 3 Days to Kill screening, let alone more of it. The only exception to this ‘action is bad’ trend is The Lego Movie, for reasons that will forever remain unknown to the thinking man.

Then we have RoboCop which got a 49% based on 180 reviews. Rotten Tomatoes consensus writes "While it's far better than it could have been, José Padilha's RoboCop remake fails to offer a significant improvement over the original," which is to say “it’s as good as the original, therefore it’s rubbish.” I mean, seriously? So filmmakers take a 10/10 film and turn it up to eleven and you call it rubbish. Do they have to make it eleventy one zillion times better before you give it the good rating it deserves?

In conclusion, reviews – including this one – are useless. This is because sometimes you get a reviewer having completely wrong expectations about a movie, getting disappointed when watching and ends up raging about the movie not meeting the initial unrealistic expectations. These are probably idiots who go watching 3 Days to Kill expecting it to be literally 72 hours long, among other things. Although, admittedly, it would be better if they named it 3 Months to Kill instead.That said, some movies really do deserve their low as hell rating, like I, Frankenstein and The Legend of Hercules which got 4% based on 71 reviews and 3% based on 63 reviews, respectively.

So what you should do instead is read on a movie’s synopsis, not review, and then decide if it would be worth your money. Because reviews – which tell you if a movie is worth watching – are unreliable, you will, as I did, just have to make the gamble yourself and see if a movie is really worth your money.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

My Valentine this year? Snow Queen Elsa of Arendelle.

So it was Valentine’s Day a few hours back, which coincided with the Chinese equivalent according to the lunar calendar. Big deal for some, not so for others.  As for me, today itself was not really special; some of the days before were. And a few days of last week as well.

As most people would, I enjoy going to the cinema with friends. I also enjoy going to the cinema alone, more so than I enjoy going with friends, in fact. This is because I get to watch what I want, (almost) when I want without needing to worry if someone has already watched something. And, if I feel like it, I can watch it again, without guilt-tripping my friends who wouldn’t want to watch something that someone has already watched, even if said someone does not mind – or even actually wants to be – watching it again. So, in light of this, I, Ian Chee, will, for the first time, be doing a brief movie review on a few movies I’ve watched recently. So here they are, in no particular order other than the bad ones first before the good ones (except for the last one, which was kept last for a few reasons). Oh, and spoiler alert. Most can’t be helped because when the shitty bit is the story, it’s difficult to complain about it without mentioning it.

First is ‘I, Frankenstein’. This was one which I looked forward to watching, but left me with mixed feelings as I left the cinema. The movie starts off pretty much where the original novel ended, with some changes. Victor Frankenstein tried to kill his monster, Adam. Adam was not happy, came back, killed Victor’s wife. Victor was not happy, proceeded to hunt Adam. Adam escapes to the cold north; Victor pursues but dies due to the extreme cold. Then it starts to get a little crazy. Demons show up wanting to capture Adam but were stopped by gargoyles. Gargoyles, of all things.

To see why this is a problem, we first need to know what gargoyles are. Gargoyles are originally ornamental drains used to let water flow out of buildings. Because of their beastly design, they are said to either protect whatever they happen to be guarding (or whatever they happen to be on, essentially) and scare off evil spirits, or are evil spirits themselves. So the guys making the movie must have gone with the first idea and then decided to take it up to eleven by making them the soldiers of the archangel St. Michael.

Then there is a major inconsistency in the plot. Gargoyles can only be killed by soulless beings, like demons and living corpses or zombies like Adam. So at some point Adam manages to kill the gargoyle captain. Then further down the plot it is revealed that demons can only possess soulless beings, such as living corpses or zombies like Adam. But somehow Adam survives a possession unscathed. The transition was never revealed; it just sort of happened.

Then there’s the character himself. Adam starts of like any other abomination; self-aware of his unnatural state of being, socially awkward. Then he suddenly becomes a chatterbox.

Other than that, the plot progression was alright, the fight scenes were not too bad and the CG was actually good. Though for those who have not watched it, I wouldn’t recommend doing so; you’re better off spending your money watching something better, like some others in this list of mine. But before we get to that, let’s get another rubbish show out of the way.

And that rubbish is ‘The Legend of Hercules’. Cheap CG, poor characters (especially the main character), and a very draggy story towards the end. In fact the CG is so poor it looks worse than the worst from Hong Kong, and that’s saying something considering the best of the CG bits in Hong Kong movies look like they’ve been done in under three minutes. Then there’s the cheap soft-core porn scene which was not cut, a rare thing in Malaysian cinema. Maybe this was because the movie was so dreary that the old creeps of the censorship department got sick of watching the whole movie that they missed it, hence why it was not cut out and kept for their own pleasure. Bottom line is, don’t watch. If you get a free ticket then watch if you must (personally, if I got one I would burn it), but don’t ever give it to a friend; the only thing crueller you can do to said friend is give them AIDS.

The next one also left me a bit ambivalent. ‘The Monkey King’. Obviously meant for kids, this is another movie with cheap CG (not surprising this time as it is movie from Hong Kong), slow pace and puppy love. Keeping that in mind, this isn’t all that bad. The only problem is the cast. Donnie Yen as the Monkey King (you wouldn’t be able to tell with all that fur makeup anyway), Chow Yuen Fat as the Jade Emperor and Aaron Kwok as the big baddie. Yes, let that sink in: the stereotypical good-guy character as the big baddie. That said, it wouldn’t be a waste of your money if you do decide to watch it on the big screen, although I do maintain that you can do much better.

Then there’s ‘From Vegas to Macau’, your typical Hong Kong gambling flick. It was entertaining, but saying that it’s good is a bit of a stretch. The story, while respectable, is getting too clichéd and overused, and the plot twists, while you may or may not see them coming, you won’t be surprised they happened either. Then there’s the slightly confusing ending, because while Chow Yuen Fat plays the main character in this, another of his character from the ‘God of Gamblers’ series of movies makes an appearance, namely the God of Gamblers himself. All in all, worth your money, but won’t really blow your mind.

Now we come to the gems of the season. The first is one that I didn’t expect to be this great, considering it’s a Malaysian movie. It’s called ‘The Journey’, and it will probably drive you to tears. The story is about a girl who was sent away to the UK by her father when she was eight, and returns with plans of getting married to her Caucasian boyfriend. Along the way the story presents very relatable dilemmas of the modern day population of young adults, with the main ones being the generation gap between the X and Y generations, their different takes on tradition as well as the cultural differences between East and West and difficulties that arise when they come together. Speaking of the generation gap between X and Y, this movie also highlights the problem of how some old folks, in this day and age, insist on staying inside caves and getting water from a river or well instead of a tap, and how some of their peers have managed to move with the times into a modern world.

This is a story too good to spoil, and is pretty much faultless anyway. The only problem is the female lead. Seeing as the character is one that has been in the UK since she was eight, is it really too much to ask to get an actress that can actually speak English? You don’t need someone with an accent; just someone who speaks English! Someone who doesn’t say ‘troubow’ or ‘respek’ or ‘considellate’ or ‘deaw’ or ‘wif’. I could go on forever.

The point is, the perfect Malaysian production movie is potentially spoiled by their inability to find someone who can speak English instead of Engrish to play the female lead. This gargantuan fly in the ointment aside, this movie is not only perfect for a Malaysian production, it is perfect. Period. Full stop. I would recommend you to watch. I would also recommend you recommend it to others. Especially older folks; they can really learn to deal with modernisation from this movie.

This next one is good and not surprisingly so. It is ‘RoboCop’. Slightly different from the classic RoboCop, which might irk older fans (myself included, even when I’m not that old myself), but otherwise, a good modern take. Not much spoiling here since the plot is largely the same as the classic, albeit with a few twists. Characters were good, iconic lines were said (though sadly, only once), story progresses at a very comfortable pace. Massive man versus machine theme, and on a very personal level. What more can I say? Other than ‘go watch it if you haven’t’ that is. Oh wait, there is something else I can say. There is a making out scene between the main guy and his wife, and the part where he takes her clothes off were cut, eventhough she was in her bra and garters. I speculate that there are two reasons why this was so, first is because it was one of the scenes in the trailer, which was strangely left uncut. The other is that the old creeps from the censorship department saw this and decided that it wasn't an appropriate scene for the adult (18 years and older) viewing public, eventhough stark nudity in 'The Legend of Hercules' was. So they cut it out so that they have some fap material when they get home.

Then we have ‘The Lego Movie’, one of the most hyped movies since last year. I went to watch this half expecting to be terribly disappointed, and was pleasantly surprised. The story started off slow, but as soon as it reached the first main plot device, progression became fast in a comfortable and not-too-rushed way. There are some pop culture references as well as multiple cheesy clichés but they all add to the comedic atmosphere of the movie, which is pretty much the opposite of what most clichés do. I won’t mention the main theme as it is a very big part of the story, but I will say this: it is similar to that of ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’. This is one I highly recommend to watch, but I must warn you that if you choose to bring friends or any other company with you, please make sure you don’t bring someone that has been living under a rock. While you don’t need to be living in the internet to get the pop culture jokes and references, not getting them really kills the vibe, even if they are few and far in between.

And finally we have ‘Frozen’, the bombshell of bombshells.

Before I continue I need to elaborate on a fact. As far as I can recall, there have only been two movies before ‘Frozen’ which I have actually watched twice on the big screen, even though many, many others were also worthy of another big screen viewing. One was ‘Pacific Rim’, which the second time I watched with a friend because he hadn’t watched it and I offered to go with him because it’s that good (and he wasn’t aware of the fact that I’ve seen the movie). The other was ‘Rurouni Kenshin’, which, incidentally, was aired in cinemas beginning Valentine’s Day 2013. I watched both times alone, mostly out of nostalgia, but also because it was just such a damn good movie. The only problems were the utter destruction of Han’nya and my favourite character, Saito Hajime being quite untrue to the original. ‘Frozen’ is the first movie that I watched twice in the cinema alone for different reasons; the first time for the story and the second for the sake of seeing a single character.

As is the way of Disney, ‘Frozen’ was based on ‘The Snow Queen’, with the typical Disney adaptations which results in the very dark original story turning into a very cheesy and clichéd happy lovey-dovey ending; the same thing happened when Disney decided they wanted to retell the story of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’, among others.

Also as is the way of Disney, they make their movies with some of the most extreme polarities, which makes me hesitant to watch some and generally leaves that ambivalent aftertaste. Some of their movies, like the first ‘The Lion King’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Mulan’ are great, while some others like (in my opinion) their version of ‘The Princess and the Frog’ and subsequent ‘The Lion King’s are so bad it’s an insult to the properly bad things like the Black Death and the Holocaust. ‘Frozen’ sits comfortably with the former bunch, but for different reasons.

Allow me to elaborate. The first ‘The Lion King’ was good because it is basically an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, so there is very little where they can go wrong. ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was good (to me) because I liked the concept; the Beast as the good guy. Pretty much the same reason why I loved the ‘Devil May Cry’ series of games, excluding that ‘Dipshit may Crap’ by Ninja Theory. ‘Mulan’ was good because, for the first time, we have a Disney Princess who didn’t sit on her arse for the entirety of the movie. Quite the contrary, in fact; she fought throughout pretending to be a guy (feminism right there, ladies and gentlemen). ‘Frozen’, on the other hand, is good because it somewhat breaks Disney’s tradition of cheesy lovey-dovey clichés while still ending on a happy note. How it breaks the tradition, you ask? Go find out yourself. There are two to look out for, the first of which was viral on the internet at some point. The only problem with it was their choice of main character. Watch the movie and it will be instantly obvious what I mean, and I’m not alone with this opinion.

So there you are. A movie which I watched a second time on the big screen (forking out money unnecessarily) just because one of the characters was so perfect. Perfect looks, perfect character growth (but unfortunately not explored in enough depth because she’s not the main character), perfect voice. And yes, it’s a she.

And on that bombshell of bombshells, adieu to y’all.

The Dilemma of an Introverted Gamer

So I’ve spent my first month as a jobless bum (again), with me not being as productive as I originally planned; instead of continuing what would be my novel (or one of, at least) I got distracted by some other life events which inspired another short story. Which is also left hanging because I am (again) facing difficulty organizing the stuff I draw from the pool of infinite ideas that is my own wild imagination, and (I never thought I’d say this) my poor vocabulary makes this harder than it needs to be. While I wait for a response to my next job application (damn you, slow government departments), I have, as you’d expect, spent more than a fair amount of time gaming, the latest heavy investment being Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Online. As a result of this and me poking my nose into somewhere I swore to myself not to, I realize that I face a dilemma which is probably not unique to myself, but few others share.

If you’re one of the few who read this, then you probably have been for a very long time, which means you should know that I consider myself an introvert. If you just happen to stumble upon this page not knowing of its existence until now, well, now you do. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, introverts are generally people who are not socially anxious (needs mentioning, this) but prefer to be alone most of the time, don’t like social situations and are usually awkward or quiet or both when they find themselves in such situations. The only exception to this is when they are hanging out with truly close friends, and even then may seem quiet by others’ usual standards. The reason I’m stating this is because it is one of the two important points that make up the dilemma I speak of.

The next thing you’d know about me (relevant to this dilemma) is that I consider myself a hard-core gamer. While there is no standard criteria to adhere to when deciding what category of gamer that one falls into or indeed an official categorization, I would consider casual gamers not gamers at all; those who play simple games, usually web-based JAVA games such as those you find of Facebook, or other simple, mindless mobile games like Angry Birds and the like for the sake of killing time instead of for the sake of the game itself. Then there are the semi-hard-core who might pick up an RPG or other time consuming game, but put it down the moment they clear the story without replaying for other side quests, Easter eggs or other hidden, unlockable content. Hard-core gamers such as myself pick up a game and don’t let it down for weeks, sometimes months on end, exhausting every bit of feature and content available, especially if I have to pay for it. Now, I’m not making this distinction in a condescending way, just like, say, I wouldn’t be treating sports car owners condescendingly if I had a supercar – neither of which I can afford – or like how I wouldn’t treat those without a degree condescendingly just because I have one nor do I expect to be treated that way by those with masters or doctorate degrees. I’m making this distinction because it affects hard-core gamers more than semis while having no impact on casuals at all, because casual gamers tend to have other things on their mind and only play such games only to kill time while semis play for the sake of story – not unlike why you would read a book or watch a movie – or to kill time in between their other activities, while hard-cores have their games as their activities, and probably do some reading or something in between.

Seems like a perfect match of characteristics to have, right? Being an introvert and a hard-core gamer, one can avoid unwanted company by choosing to indulge and drown in their games. This might be the case before. But surely not anymore. With the new age of multiplayer gaming, many games (or rather, their developers) skimp on single player content and pump out loads on the multiplayer end. Take GTA V for example. 100% completion needs less things to be done than previous GTAs and its online component is treated as a standalone game with its own patches, content updates and all that.

This is my problem. How does an introvert play multiplayer games? Of course, it’s not that hard, and there are two methods – obvious ones, at least – to deal with this. One is just to play said multiplayer game like a single player, and whenever the compulsory multiplayer bits show up, just play with random strangers awkwardly like one would when interacting in real life. This, of course, gets boring after a while and defeats the purpose of playing a multiplayer game. Then there is the second method of playing with friends, the no-brainer solution with no compromises other than the fact that you need to be playing the same game at the same time, which is also easily arranged if you have time to be playing games in the first place.

However, I do have a problem with this solution. Of the handful of friends that I have, only slightly more than 10% of them I can consider gamers, and less than 5% I consider hard-core gamers. And with such small numbers, the chances of so few people having the same tastes in games is even smaller. Thus, I face problems like we don’t like the same kinds of game, we can’t afford to buy games that the other fellas have or not having or being able to afford the console to play the same games on; some of which, like the first, shouldn’t be a problem in the first place.

This is my problem. While I do enjoy playing what games we do manage to play together, I wish we could all be able to play all the games that everyone has together. I also wish more of my friends were gamers. Then these problems of mismatching interests, platforms etc. would be better than they are now, at least.

And I only realized I face such a problem thanks to my sticking my nose in matters not concerning myself, and that I have, with great difficulty and to great lengths, convinced myself that I want to know nothing about anymore. So I guess curiosity can really kill the cat and that the burden of knowledge is indeed a heavy one. No wonder ignorance is bliss.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.