Reebok to buy R&B artists [Mowgli]

In a dramatic move, footwear giant Reebok has signed a historic deal to purchase R&B performer Twista. Sources within the company say this is part of a plan to "keep it real" and "hang with the street culture yo." The artist himself refused to comment on the contract. Industry analysts laud the move, pointing out that while many have got love for their shoes K-Swiss, Reebok's urban image has fallen off in recent years.  Reuters

What is OH YES I DID Alex... [Liam]

combine with a chat bind "you suckas got served"

Misapproach maneuver [Mowgli]

is not what you want to hear on the PA before landing in heavy winds in Singapore. Despite such hazards, however, I'm now back in the U.S., and will be heading back to California on the 31st. While traveling, I had a chance to watch a bunch of movies, thanks to Singapore Airlines. <3. Here are some impressions.

Hellboy:
Vaguely entertaining, although none of the characters are developped well, and all of the villians go down anticlimactically, except Rasputin. Maybe my standards for significant villian slayings have been driven too high recently, but I expect a little more than Hellboy delivered.  

Man On Fire:
I really like Denzel Washington, and this is him doing his thing. Good action/revenge flick, with plenty of creative violence. When the revenge spree starts with cutting a guy's fingers off, shooting him in the head, and sending the body off a cliff in a car, you know you've got a good thing. Even the little girl does well. Throw in a bit part for Christopher Walken, and you've got a fun, interesting movie.

Pay it Forward:
Nice idea. Haley Joel Osmont can die now please kthx. Helen Hunt fights hard to salvage it, well supported by Kevin Spacey.

The Girl Next Door:
I don't know, I couldn't sit through more than 20 minutes of this high school drivel. The girl was kinda cute though.

Yayayay coming back the 31st!

BAMBOOZLED [Liam]

The "Explosive Extended Edition" contains nothing remotely explosive.
The following is a more accurate rendition of what the packaging should say if it is to speak the truth about the additions to the movie (which wouldn't even play on my mintek, they were so explosive):

Local Chain Restaurant Rankings. [Liam]

Blogger's "leet" posting thing kept owning my tables, so [CLICK HERE] to pull up my first ever chain restaurant rankings. I'm really hoping to start an argument  of some sort with this one. :P

WOW UPDATE [Liam]

Lately I've kinda fallen off my whole hip-hop listening thing, dunno exactly why but I've done a complete 180 to music with no words at all.  I recently picked up "The Last of the Mohicans" soundtrack, Aphex Twin: Drukqs, the soundtrack to Powaqqatsi and Orbital: The Altogether.  Kind of a random group, but I like them all for different reasons. Oh yeah, and I picked up a copy of The Streets: Original Pirate Material which is imo really well produced and features some really, really shitty vocals. He's like white Kanye West, but with better tracks and flows (which says NOTHING as his flow sucks goat pubes). My subconscious actually did me a favor and lost the cd somewhere I can't remember, so that's the end of that. If I could have gotten ahold of an instrumental version instead, I'd probably be listening to it right now.
 
I was browsing the SF Chronicle today and decided that I should make my own little visual movie rating system, so I just photoshopped a couple little roughs together, and I figure I'll try them out while I'm in rant mode:


 
I, Robot (Theatres)


owns my face.

I recommend this movie for anyone whose name is not Ben Blue :).  If you thought this movie assaulted you with shameless and omnipresent mass media cross-promotion before you watched it, get ready for the next level once you're in the theatre and ten bucks light. Possibly the most shameless shouts EVER go to Converse, Audi and I suppose USR as well, with Big Willy sporting a pair of "Vintage 2004" black leather Converse All-Star Hi-Tops that draw numerous overt complements from other speaking characters as well as himself. He calls the shoes "a thing of beauty," and at one point after a battle with robots leaves one of his shoes covered in muck, says something to the degree of "now you gone and done it." WAAOOOOW. The Audi placement is a little more tasteful, in the form of glowing logos on the cars (which look really TT). U.S. Robotics is actually incorporated into the core of the story, so I can't really complain there.
While annoying, these touches at least have the courtesy to remain on the outskirts of the story; with the exception of an occasional foot-level camera shot, we never have to break up any meaningful action to take our medicine as consumers. I joked with Brian during the movie that "I, Robot" in fact referred to us as fans, since I was half-considering a pair of flossy Converse by the end of the film (Will Smith's wardrobe seems tailored to look good with those shoes). Enough about that. BEYOND the consumer whore incidents, "I, Robot" is solid summer action fare, with a genuinely engaging story and no glaring action defects. Sunny, the talking robot, steals the best money shots from Willy though when it comes to melee combat. Funny how technology IS surpassing humans when it comes to stuff like fight choreography (see: Spider Man 2), in a very "I, Robot" sort of way. The only part that really pissed me off about the movie was [drag-select for spoiler] when the robots revolt against the humans, and the humans (led by Shia LeBouf's monkey ass) organize into a raggedy bat and molotov-cocktail wielding 'resistance' that taunts with anti-robot slurs and effectively demonstrates exactly why it is we should be ruled by robots (only beings as irrational as us do some straight up repugnant shit like that)[end spoiler] all in all, the movie offers an interesting premise, genuinely multi-dimensional protagonists, and a pretty satisfying 2 hours. It's not great or anything, but then it never really pretends to be... all in all I was pleasantly surprised.  
 
OTHER POSSIBLE RATINGS:

bootleg it.



i swear, there was a fire...

Techno rave party! [Mowgli]

Another thing that was fun about being up in the hills was the disco. While it played a number of normal techno/dance tracks, it also played techno remix versions of such little known dance tunes as "we will rock you" and "real slim shady".

i was in a clothing store today, seeing if there were any cool/humorous shirts, and one caught my eye. It was a more or less generic black t-shirt, and he front read:
 
I speak two language
English and slang or bad English

While I was putting it away, I noticed the tag. The brand was "Thyme Maternity Lingerie".... ......... ..............................

DoD! [Liam]

so I tried playing the new version of Day of Defeat today, just to check it out... a lot of unexpected changes, though pub players are just as gut-twistingly horrible as ever. I took a screenshot of the new title menu, I'm pretty sure this is official:

WOW. I didn't think WWII tactical games could get any better.

have a picture. [Liam]

Probably doing a longer post later, with some new art, but I wanted to at least throw up the cartoony image i was originally going to use as an entrance-type page for brOG2. If i ever find a cheap way to get a better domain than http://s88715763.onlinehome.us I'll probably use this image as a redirect button to get you here, but as that's somewhere in the indefinite future for the time being i might as well just post this:

for some reason my photoshop seems to be making really large gif files, which i haven't exactly cleared up yet... there must be some color/quality option i can ramp down much further to make it easier on mowgli's extreme kerala telegraph wire...

Travel [Mowgli]

I've been out of touch for the last few days b/c I've been up in the mountains, about six hours from where I live. I stayed with a bunch of friends at this place that's normally a subscription club med sort of thing, but that rents out its open rooms too. The place was pretty nice, but the scenery was incredible. Going to the top of the nearest mountain and back from above the hotel took about 2.5 hours, but the view up there was amazing. Hopefully I'll get some pics from a woman who was part of the group to post. Besides the amazing view, there was the usual entertainment of traveling in India. There were exciting places along the way, like Hotel Wyne 'n' Dyne, and the Highway Toddy Bar. The hotel we stayed at also had an arcade/game room, with table tennis and pool and a bunch of antique arcade games. They had a few driving games, although the only one with a working system link crashed when the right console tried to shift gears, and a side scroller that proclaimed itself to be "Act-Fancer Cybernetik Hyper Weapon". The real prize though was a battered machine. After crushing the few people who played 2d fighters that came along tho, it wasn't much fun, since many of the buttons had been slain by generations of button mashers. Speaking of button mashers, I recently came face to face with a supreme example of the noobery I learned gaming around. A friend of mine recently anounced that he was a SoulCalibur 2 god. Since we don't have a system, and I was really curious, I managed to gather the following nuggets of wisdom via conversation: "I don't bother trying to parry, it's too hard", "I don't throw, it's too risky", and, in reference to Cervantes' psycho crusher thing, "everyone falls for it". It's like there's a philosophy of trained inferiority that deliberately shuns competence and valid tactics. FARK. It made my nascent gaming soul cringe to listen to him.
I'll post more about the trip, with pics if I can get them, later. Until then...

-Mowgli

bitches. [Lester]

eBaying my vertical. any buyers?

WOW @ AOL DSL [Liam]

1 mb/sec... holy shit dude, AOL dsl can do that?

nyah nyah mowgli
(btw updating colors soon if not already)

*RANT* OVERRATED: KILL BILL 2 [Liam]

First off, my problem isn't that I was expecting a repeat of Kill Bill 1 except in sequel form. I didn't like that movie that much anyway. Also, I'm not gonna launch into a tirade about what a pilfering fanboy Tarantino is, because that would take us towards Asia and rampant borrowing, and in entirely the wrong direction for what I wanna say.
While I'm at it, I'd like to add that my brother slapped the hell out of me within my first 24 hours outside of the womb, and that if it wasn't for that maybe I'd be the smarter Boylan kid.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ok. Got all that out of the way.

Kill Bill 1 & 2 are supposed to be action-type movies, specifically of the "revenge quest" model. It's a common approach for old-school martial arts movies and the like, lone hero versus an identifiable hit list of villains. It presupposes two things that make it work; (1) we empathize with the plight of the hero and the wrong that is being avenged (2) we know a certain number of asses are going to be kicked before it's all over.

I'm actually gonna tackle the latter first, because it's a pretty easy one to throw out there; the hit list represents a pact between the storyteller and the audience, that we're gonna get a certain number of "mini-boss" battles on the road to revenge, or at least a well-put together montage with a couple notable showdowns. While this is a formulaic way to do action, I like it. You know you're not gonna just have one car chase and one shootout. The action will be well developed, segmented over the story and hopefully diverse enough to fill out an entire movie. It will help drive the story, rather than simply dress it.
In Kill Bill 2 the Mamba in the suitcase gets more action than the Bride. There's THREE (count 'em... Bill, Budd, Blinky) major showdowns left, which eventually amount to one relatively tepid fight and a FUCK TON of frustratingly self-indulgent dialogue. !!Surprise!! We're gonna watch Carradine talk about his favorite fucking superhero for like 8 hours in the most contrived and long-winded showdown in the history of modern cinema... truth serum was handled better in "True Lies" than KB2.

As for the other requirement, that we empathize with the hero's quest and that therefore we the audience are into the whole revenge quest and rooting for the good guy... if there could possibly have been a more smug and less sympathetic protagonist I would have liked to have seen it, out of pure morbid curiousity. Revenge was hard enough to swallow when it was Uma taking away Vivica's motherhood and married life in the name of her own (yeah wow hardcore, I know) or killing like 8 million yakuza and Lucy Liu, but when she's not even fighting and just talking to motherfuckers it's straight-up lame. Hotblooded revenge is the only kind people get on board with in movies, getting up and kicking some asses the same night. When it's like 5 years later and everybody else has gotten on with their lives, it just seems silly.
If she's fighting it's at least somewhat compelling.
I she's talking shit and plotting it's worth waiting through.
If she's having a civil chat about god knows what retarded nonsense, it's NAP TIME.
Spinning your wheels and doing nothing is what BLOGS are for, Quentin you wack motherfucker!
Thanks for reading :)

Yo yo yo! [Mowgli]

So... my first blog post. So many people to thank. I'd like to thank my agent, my lawyer, my agent's lawyer, my lawyer's agent...
I had forgotten how bad Indian daytime tv is. While in the states I'd gotten the mistaken impression that daytime tv there is bad. Well it is, to a certain extent, but it positively pales in comparison to what we get over here. For example, today I was bored and watched a movie called "Wishcraft" (Get it, get it?!1) It centered around a high school kid who received a magical dehydrated vintage bull wang that granted three wishes, which he used in typical high school movie fashion to get the girl. At the same time, and I'm not quite sure why, the history professor was killing students while wearing a zombie mask. Wow. It was a masterful piece of transgenre moviemaking, to say the least. I guess Asian cable stations are where bad american movies go to die.
I'm writing this on my hot new cable internet connection, which connects me to the digital world at a blazing 2-5 Kbps. At least it's pretty fast for lan games of cs 1.5, with pings usually around 35. However, it's unstable enough that it usually spikes to over 1000 every other round or so. Still, it's pretty fun.
The other setback is my computer here. I very recently and very rapidly developped a lot more sympathy for when we played DoD, playing with framerates rarely above 25, and the occasional cs remix reel (the bomb has- the bomb has- the bomb has been planted.)
Yar! Blog am h0t. k imma sign off now kthxbai.
-Mowgli