Over-the-Top Body Modifications

I’ve always been a fan of self expression. I think tattoo’s and piercings are great. I currently have three tattoos and at one time even had my nipples pierced.

That said, some people can take “self expression” to a level I can’t even comprehend. What drives some people to do shit like this to themselves?

Never have I been drunk enough to tattoo my face or decide I want to be a lizard. More importantly, can these people even get laid?

1. The Enigma

2. The Reptile Man - Erik Sprague

3. The Cat Man - Dennis Abner

4. This Guy

5. Mr. Cool Ice.
Although not as extreme as his competition, Mr. Cool Ice makes the list for being an idiot. I mean, seriously.

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Indiana Jones Review

On Sunday I went and seen the latest Indiana Jones movie and I thought I would quickly let you guys know what I thought about it.

I’m a huge fan of the franchise so I was kinda looking forward to and dreading what this movie would be like. Don’t forget that George Lucas does play a big part in this franchise and look at the mess he made of his other franchise with his 3 prequels. So I was dreading and excited by the movie.

So, what did I think…

It sucks.
It is honestly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Not THE worst, but one of them.

About a third of the way through this movie I was enjoying it. It wasn’t great but it was enjoyable. There had been a good couple of action scenes, the nuclear explosion, the motorbike chase into the library…all good.

Then they got to the jungle and again it wasn’t terrible…then came the swordfight in the jeeps. That was it for me, it just became ridiclous after that. Swinging through the trees like Tarzan, the ending…oh my god, the ending.

I felt violated when I came out. Not in a good way either. Its just a totally dumb story and people will say (oh ignore the plot, it’s an action movie) but thats all there was. There was no sub-plots (actually not one I can think of), not enough comedy to focus on that (which is fine) so all you had was the plot and unfortunately it was absolute nonsense.

Couple of other things as well (if you’ve seen it, do you agree?)

What was with the scene with the FBI questioning Indy about him being a traitor? This happened in the first 10 mins but then it just vanished. Never to be mentioned again…ever. And if it’s in the first 10 mins and then removed from the movie entirely then you have to think “well, what was the point”? And the general coming in and sticking up for him, I guess this scene was just to inform us of indys war medals but then I think this could have been accomplished by Indy in his house and a shot of his medals rather than this sub-plot that lasted all of 3 minutes.

Why was Ray Winstone in the movie at all? Seriously remove his character from the movie, would you notice.

Despite the inital promises of little CGI, let me tell you that there is lots. No a little, but lots of CGI.

I loved how the KGB spies had heavy russian accents. It’s 1957 and these guys are undercover KGB spies in the states and they sound like Arnie with a cold. Gee, how did the CIA miss you guys?

I thought Cate Blanchett was wasted, her character was inept rather than the scary russian baddie she was supposed to be. Also she was billed as being psyhic, what happened with that? Did she do anything paranormal with these supposed powers, not one thing.

Did anyone else notice the similarity between the jeep scene and the chase through the mines in the temple of doom? I thought they were pretty much 90-100% exact. Even the ending with all the water.

Thanks George, another childhood franchise wrecked. Although I know it’s not all his fault, I can’t see how Spielberg wouldn’t have noticed this sucked. I hate to think someone with his kinda cash put this movie together to cash in cause that is how it feels.

I know some of my points above are nit picking (especially the accent point) but I felt like the movie makers thought I was dumb. That was the over riding message I got from the movie, “I’m dumb and I’ll enjoy anything”. I hate that. I like action movies but the best action movies are the ones with good plots. People say plots don’t count in action movies but I beg to differ, the best action movies are the ones with great action scenes, big stunts AND a good plot. For example the 1st Die Hard and all of the Bourne movies. A great action movie needs a decent plot and this just wasn’t it.

People at my cinema were laughing at the end, and not in a good way. I heard the word “shit” from my fellow cinema members several times.

Good points…Harrison Ford is great, the role he was born to play and he does play it well every time. I didn’t see Transformers so this is the first time I’ve really seen Shia Lebouef and I thought he was pretty good as well.

But I would save your money and go see Batman instead (hopefully that will live up to the hype), this might be worth seeing on DVD if you’re a fan but I now I won’t be watching it again. Shame really.

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The Departed v Infernal Affairs

A short time ago I got involved in a discussion about why the original Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs is better (miles better) than Scorceses remake The Departed.

So, why infernal affairs is better (IN MY OPINION)

WARNING: this does involve spoilers for both movies

1. The 2 characters were undercover for years in the original. Almost 16 years, not the 2 weeks of the Departed. In that time they aged. Changed. Fuck in the original they knew each other at the start, were even friends. But by the time we get to present day they’ve aged so much (mid 30’s) they don’t recognise one another anymore. 2 weeks pass in scorceses. Ok it wasn’t 2 weeks, but still I thought the fact they knew one another in the original was a nice touch.

2. Leo’s character in the original was tormented because he’d joined the cops to be a cop, to protect and serve and do the right thing…not what he’d been doing. The bad guy (jacks character) in the original was a charasmatic guy, you could see why the cop (matts character) was drawn to him, helped him, felt he owed him but you also felt why he was torn. He was a cop but he was a traitor as well. He sold out the cops to help this guy to who he owed everything and that ate at him. So you see 2 tormented characters…

Now in the departed Leo’s character was torn but Matts wasn’t . They changed it so that he was just a guy trying to climb the ranks of the police. You didn’t feel any sympathy for Matts character not like the original where you felt sorry for both of them.

3. In the original the 2 main characters act their socks off. In the remake Leo is fantastic, actually maybe one of his best performances. Matt is given nothing to do. Why is character the way he is, why is he trying to climb the ranks of the police and sell out the cops as well…no idea, they never tell you and thats why Matts performance isn’t as good as it should be, cause he’s lost.

4. What the fuck is Jack Nicholson doing? This is the Joker, that’s what he did, he potrayed the Joker again in a different movie. Jacks one of my all time favourites but that was painful. Way way over the top, it’s a shame even Scorscese couldn’t reel him in.

5. Total waste of Ray Winstone. Watch Sexy Beast and see what he can do and then watch what they ask him to do in this.

6. The psychogist isn’t in the original and I wonder if she was jus added to this so we could see the usual sex scene in hollywood movies. Oh look, it’s Leos ass now it’ll make money.

7. At the first meeting in Martin Sheens office he says to Leo “Do it for me”. Who the fuck are you, they just met 5 minutes ago.

8. What the hell happened with the whole transmitter chips storyline…it was just ditched. Gone, forgotten. One minute the whole plot of the movie, the next…gone.

9. The ending in the original is far better. The tension builds and when what happens, happens you are shocked. Suprised. You are really gutted. Instead in the Departed the people in the cinema I was in laughed. Laughed. There were 2 characters in that scene that wasn’t in the original and their only purpose in the movie seemed to be that they had to die in that scene. The script must have said

Person enter stage left, says a few lines and BANG, shot in the head.
Then Person enter stage left, says a few lines and BANG, shot in the head.
Then Person enter stage left, says a few lines and BANG, shot in the head.

10. The last few lines in the original are among the best I’ve ever seen in a movie.

In the original when leo’s character is kicked out of cop school (or so we think), Matts character see’s him leave and says “I wish it was me”. Then at the end when Leo’s character is getting the hero’s funeral, he looks at the grave and says “I wish it was me”. He means it as well, the actor delivers it with feeling, so much so that we agree with him. It should have been him and not the other guy. He was the rat, he was the traitor, not the other guy. The fact the good guy dies and the bad guy gets away with it is just something hollywood can’t do.

In the departed we get a rat…with fuzzy lines around him cause he’s been super imposed against a blue screen and not very well I may add. Fucking cliche or what “look theres a dead guy and oh look, a rat. Can you spot the symbolism” well yeah Martin when you hit me over the fucking head with it I can’t fail to. And again the good guy dies (like in the original fair enough), the girl who wasn’t in the original is pregnant with the good guys baby so even though he died he kinda lives and then does the bad guy get away with it…well no, we can’t have that. People have to leave the cinema thinking everything was wrapped up neatly.

11. And the final thought, the one that really sticks in my throat…is this the movie that should have won  Scorsese his oscar…I think not and you know what, I’m sure the academy knows it as well.

[/rant]

Things I did like about the Departed was Leo’s performance, Alec Baldwins character and performance, although she wasn’t in the original I thought the psychologist was good but I still didn’t see the point of having her in the movie. I thought mark walhberg was good but again, his was a new character and his only purpose in the movie was the final scene which kinda didn’t make sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I would say see Departed but don’t get your hopes up. If you want to see a great thriller then watch Infernal Affairs.

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Movie + Time Travel = Bad

This may get a little confusing, but bear with me.

First, ground rules. We must understand that time only exists in a line. It is a sequence of events that happen in succession. We can only travel or see directly parallel to the line (we’ll say the x-axis). Anything else is dimension travel (traveling on the y or z axis’s, or otherwise anything not exactly on the x-axis).

1) The word “future” is what WILL happen. What will happen cannot be changed. If it can be changed, it wasn’t the future but a tangible representation of the POSSIBILITY of the future. This means that it is IMPOSSIBLE (yes, impossible) to change the future. The future includes you discovering time travel and changing it.

This tosses out movies like Back to the Future pt 2. When Marty went into the future and saw his future self, his future self should have known exactly (to the minute) of where past (or present) self would pop up and what he would do. Simply because he already did it. This also tosses out worthless piles of crap like Next, when Nick Cage can see a little bit of the future and change it. That’s called womanly intuition and I’m sure Nick has a lot of it.

There are two ideas of traveling BACK in time. One is correct.

2a) The first and incorrect (also most widely used) Says that the second you enter in the past, you enter an “alternate dimension.” That term is used loosely so I’ll clarify… An alternate dimension is a reality that you are living now with a few (or exponential amounts) of variables that have changed. The one main variable that has changed is that you are now there–possibly twice. This is how movies like the Back to the Future pt 1 and Deja Vu are made logical. The past isn’t actually the past but a presently happening version of the past with different variables.

This isn’t time travel at all, but dimension travel.

2b) The timeline already exists in it’s entirety from beginning to end. If someone travels on that line, it is already APART of the line itself. When someone from the future travels backwards on the line and puts them self in the timeline, it was already in the timeline that it would happen. For instance, if I had assassinated Lincoln because I found out something terrible he was going to do from letters he wrote that were discovered in 2008 (or something like that). That means that the past included me from the future and all events that I would perform.

This would toss out movies like Deja Vu because he changed the past. If this were correct then the boat blowing up would include Denzel on the boat and blowing up every single time. Let me show this in a graph.

We can see that at one point there are two Denzels, between the boat explosion and his death. We can also see that when he travels back in time, he no longer exists in the present timeline (he disappears from the time machine). If he stops the boat from exploding, then he hasn’t traveled back in time at all because in this timeline the boat explodes every time.

They almost had it right in Deja Vu, right until the very end. They even threw in something that let me think that it was going to be right but never explained it. I don’t know if you guys remember this but when Denzel is walking by the body bags after the explosion and a cell phone rings, he thinks it is his. He looks at his cell phone and sees that it isn’t ringing. Possibly showing that his future self was one of the bodies (when they try to call him after the explosion to see if he succeeded).

This would also toss out the ENTIRE Terminator series. SOOOO many flaws I get the shakes every time I see it on TBS. We’ll overlook the obvious problems (why not send the Terminators back to the same point in time, or maybe while she was 9 months pregnant, etc) and we will notice that it would be impossible for the terminators to even exist as the inventor and all pieces of the current project were destroyed before they were even invented in the second movie. If they went back in time to save him or the pieces, they wouldn’t have been destroyed, they would have been saved.

To this day I haven’t seen a correctly done Time Travel movie so I would love any suggestions (don’t say Minority Report or you will get another post like this ). I guess it doesn’t make for a very exciting movie as you know exactly what will happen and nothing can change for the hero.

Anywho, if someone disagrees please let me know.

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Black & White

Last week I was having a conversation I seem to have with a lot of people about movies. They turn and say “Yeah I can’t watch black and white movies”. I ask why not and they can’t answer me. They usually just shrug.

This is quickly becoming my pet peeve. How can you not be able to watch a movie just because it’s in black and white. Some people in the world are unlucky enough not to be able to see anything yet they still enjoy movies.

It just amazes me that people can rule out all of Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy, movie classics like Casablanca, The Apartment, Psycho, White Heat, all just because it’s in black and white. It’s not just one genre of movies they’re cutting out, but different varied movies that I know they would enjoy. People who I would describe as smart and even open to trying new things, just won’t entertain the idea of black and white movies.

People say they like romantic movies I always say “Well you need to see the ultimate love story Casablanca”, again they’ll say it’s black and white. I like comedies, you should check out Some Like It Hot then, nah it’s in black and white.

If you’re one of these people I’m asking, no I’m begging you to do one thing. Think of your favourite movie genre…whether it’s horror, romance, gangster, western, whatever and head over to IMDB Top 250. Look for a highly rated black and white movie in that genre and give it a chance.

I promise you, that you won’t regret it. After 20 minutes if the movies no good fine, turn it off but at least give it a chance. If it is a good movie the story will suck you in, you’ll become interested, you know the way a good movie can suck you in and the rest of the world melts away. I gurantee if you find the right movie for you, it won’t matter if it’s in black and white.

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An Interface Evaluation of Safari Version 3.1

An Interface Evaluation of Safari Version 3.1

So I downloaded the new update for iTunes and now packaged along with it is Safari. I saw the update was of pretty substantial size so I decided to put away my disdain for Apple for two seconds and try it out. No biases, no presuppositions. This is a pretty dang cool browser. This is available on PC now too. I, however, am using it on my iMac at work. Once I grow a little more accustomed to it, I may start using it at home on my PC.

Before I start, lets get one thing straight, this absolutely does not replace FireFox.

First, all the good stuff!

OK, so I open up Safari and the first thing I notice is, of course, it looks like everything else Apple makes. Gray, gradients, same buttons that are in Finder, etc. This is expected. I notice 5 buttons. 3 of them I can figure out what they mean but the other two took some testing. Here is what they look like.

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