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zwolanerd

“I guess I just like liking things”

January 23, 2015 Q*bert Qlip

I have no idea where this is from, but my friend Matt pointed it out to me a while ago and I felt you needed to see it since my ultimate goal here at zwolanerd is to be all-Q*bert all the time.


I honestly can’t tell if these are people in costumes or puppets. Coily definitely looks like a marionette, but Q*bert and Wrong-Way could very well be people in costumes. It’s probably all marionettes, but it still doesn’t explain what’s going on here. Somebody went through a lot of work for this and, frankly, I’d like to talk to that person.

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January 22, 2015 Explain, Please

I like a lot of different kinds of movies, just like you do. We might not like the same kinds, and that’s fine. If you don’t like Grosse Pointe Blank it’s okay that you’re wrong, and I can still like you as a person (if I work at it). You probably think I’m weird for not liking Land of the Lost or something (and, just so you know, I threw up a little in my mouth just typing the name of that one). It’s okay! It’s fine that there are different kinds of movies for different tastes. It’s just like the song says: “It takes diff’rent strokes to move the world, yes, it does.” I think Aristotle said that, and it’s just as true today as it was in Ancient Greece and in 1978.

Here’s what I need explained, though: how do some of these movies get made?

Last night, for instance. I watched This Is Where I Leave You, a family drama/comedy (does anyone else dislike the word “dramedy” as much as I do?) about a dysfunctional family (recent research shows that 98.72% of families in movies are “dysfunctional”) spending a week together after the death of the father. Wackiness and sadness abound. This movie had a wonderful cast, including Tine Fey, Jason Bateman, Connie Britton, Rose Byrne, Jane Fonda, and Timothy Olyphant. A cast like that is going to cost some big dollars, I think. Not Will Smith dollars (accepted everywhere!), certainly, but add them all together and the payroll is not insubstantial.

But the thing is, this movie was never going to be a big, big hit. Box Office Mojo says it made a little over $32 million. Not chump change, but considering its $19.8 million production costs, not a lot. Once you start factoring in advertising and all the other little extras, a movie has to make a lot of money to be considered profitable. While I wouldn’t mind making $13 million on something, a movie studio gets all depressed and cries into its gold flake ice cream about it (I’m sure there is gold flake ice cream somewhere).

Here’s a better example of what I’m trying to say:

Now, to me, that looks like an interesting, amusing, and very, very weird movie. I will probably enjoy it some day. But if this thing ever makes more than $10 million I will be very, very surprised. So how does something like this get made? It’s got some name recognition, sure, but not any mega stars.

It’s easy to see why something like Transformers 4 gets made: the prequels made a boatload. They’re quite terrible, those Transformers movies, but they make a ton of cash (probably literally tonS, if you were put it all into one big stack and weigh it). I don’t see why/how The Voices gets made, though. I’m thankful stuff like it does get made, I just don’t understand why it does.

Anyone? Anyone?

Bueller?

January 21, 2015 Lyn Plays Sim City Classic

 

First thing, get off my lawn because I am about to sit in my rocking chair and tell you stories. When I was about 11ish (I say 9 in the video, but that would have required time travel now I’ve looked up the release date), Dad brought home a lovely 1989 sort of a lap top for work which happened to have Sim City on it. We hooked it up to the colour monitor because lap top screens in those days were two shades of pink, and my brother and I spent the weekend building and destroying cities.

Over the years I have played very many Sim games from Sim City (all of them, newest one is disappointing), SimAnt, SimEarth, SimPark, SimTown, My Sims,  SimFarm, SimTower, Streets of Sim City, SimCopter… if it said “Maxis” and “Sim” on it, I’d buy it. All the “The Sims” games up to 3 (my computer will explode in a hail of plastic shards if I try to run 4 so that will have to wait). My first MMO? The Sims Online. Oh yes.

Compared to later Sim City versions, this one is very simple. You plonk zone blocks about the place, drop in some power lines and call it good. There’s a bit of money management and some pollution issues to think about but over all, it’s a very basic game. Water, schools, fire and police zones, hospitals and so on don’t come into it, although hospitals will pop up in residential zones. Personally, while I enjoy the newer Sim City games, I think they’re getting too far away from this basis. Adding in an extra 9,000 things to consider and think about makes the game more of a chore. A good balance was struck with Sim City 3000 I think, after that it got a bit meh.

I’m going to be honest, I had a total blast playing Sim City again. I also need a new headset apparently, I’ll get around to that. If you feel nostalgic, you can play it online at the Internet Archive.

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January 20, 2015 Tuesday 10: Movies of 1996

It’s a lot easier to do these lists when I’ve only seen 5 or 6 of the movies that year, I’m finding. When it’s 56 movies like it is for this year, it gets a little more complicated. It’s still fun, it’s just more complicated.

Ack! Ack ack ack! Ack ack ack ack. Ack ack!

Ack! Ack ack ack! Ack ack ack ack. Ack ack!

I only saw 7 of the top 10 from this year – I still haven’t seen 101 Dalmations, Ransom, and The Nutty Professor, and the only one of those I’m even slightly interested in is Ransom.

I have, however, seen every last one of my top ten from 1996.

10. Scream – I don’t know if the sequels did it any favors, but this first deconstruction/celebration of slasher films was pretty great in its time. I also don’t know if I’d enjoy it much now if I watched it again, but that’s more a reflection on my tastes changing. I used to really like horror movies but don’t have much interest in them now.

9. Happy Gilmore – Bob Barker beating the snot out of Adam Sandler is only one of the many highlights of this movie, which is way more enjoyable than it has any right to be.

8. Star Trek: First Contact – “The line must be drawn he-ah!” You tell ’em, Captain Picard!

7. Phenomenon – When people ask me for a list of “guilty pleasure” movies (which… they really don’t, actually), this one has to make an appearance. It’s sappy and silly and sad and I love it.

6. Mars Attacks! – Tim Burton made a movie based off collectible cards from the 50s and it’s weirdly wonderful.

5. Daylight – An oft-overlooked Stallone movie about people trapped in a tunnel. More characters die than you’re expecting, until you remember it’s more a disaster movie than and action movie.

4. Eraser – Some of the worst CGI crocodiles in the history of CGI crocodiles, but the rest of the movie is pretty great.

3. That Thing You Do! – An ElseWorld version of The Beatles mixed with any number of one-hit wonders from the 60s. There are a lot of fun tunes.

2. The Frighteners – A gorier twisted version of The Sixth Sense, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Michael J. Fox. Good stuff.

1. Fargo – I watched this one again just a couple of weeks ago and it’s still fantastic. Frances McDormand deserved her Oscar for this one.

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January 19, 2015 Good Things in Bad Stuff: The Star Wars Prequels

This past Saturday I hosted my 8th annual movie marathon. I chose Star Wars because Episode VII is coming out later this year, so this was my first repeat – Star Wars was the very first movie marathon. We had a decent crowd, 10-15 throughout the day, with 7-8 of us there for the whole thing. I choose Episode order rather than release order (or Machete order) for one main reason: it puts Episode I at 7:45a, so anyone who overslept wasn’t really missing much. Anyone planning to come see the whole series already knew Darth Vader was Luke’s father, so ruining that surprise wasn’t really an issue. We also watched the theatrical releases of Episodes IV-VI, which I hadn’t seen in a long time. I knew that Han shot first, but I didn’t remember that Greedo didn’t shoot at all. That was pretty cool.

I won’t go into all the problems with the prequels, as others have done it and done it better than I ever could. Honestly, I’m not near as invested in Star Wars as I am in Star Trek, so while the lousy stuff does bother me, it doesn’t make me weep, gnash my teeth, and tear my clothes. I’m reminded every time I watch them, though, about the stuff I do like in the prequels. It’s a short list, but these are the things I really like about them:

  • The first 20 minutes (or so) of Episode I – I like seeing the Jedi being used as negotiators. It stands to reason that if they are the keepers of the peace they’d be used like this. When we saw Obi Wan, Luke, and Yoda in the originals, it was a galaxy devoid of Jedi other than those three, so we didn’t know what it would look like with more. I love this expansion. I also like that we see Qui-Gon and Obi Wan use Force Run and Force Jump, things we learned about mostly in the Star Wars videogames (aside from Luke’s force jump out of the freezing facility on Bespin in Empire Strikes Back).
  • Darth Maul – Enigmatic, determined, and dangerous. Plus, he looked really, really cool!
  • The lightsaber fights – I love how athletic and manic they are. I realize there’s a lot of useless flash in the fights, but I can accept that as attempts to confuse the opponent.
  • General Grievous – I wish we would have seen more of him. A lightsaber-collecting (and using!) cyborg? Heck, yeah!
  • Mace Windu – A great character done well, and that purple lightsaber is the coolest.
  • Palpatine’s machinations – Watching them all in a row gives a better picture of how he uses fear and manipulation to turn Anakin towards the Dark Side and create war to give himself more power. Dooku should not have been surprised in the slightest when Palpatine told Anakin to kill Dooku. That’s what Sith do, man. Should read the fine print.

And, dialogue aside, I have to admit I like the pod race.

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