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Anthony
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Anthony
Netflix Queue Review
Movies, like music, can normally be recalled autobiographically. Be honest; don’t you remember that one movie you watched fourteen times with your first girlfriend? That being said, for kicks and wiggles, I’ve decided to post an index of my most recent Netflix activity with [very] short reviews of each rental (I hated most of them).:
- Inglorious Basterds – Shockingly bad. Can’t believe it came from Tarantino.
- Orphan – Crap, crap, and more crap. Topped off by a crappy ending.
- Terminator: Salvation – Good enough, even for a fan of the series.
- The Proposal – Chrissy liked it.
- Up – Funny and charming, although somewhat blah.
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra – Was what it was.
- Away We Go – Fun at times, dreadful at others.
- State of Play – Just damn good.
- Adventureland – Wasn’t sure if it was a comedy or teenage soap opera.
- Choke – Brilliant adaptation of the book.
- RocknRolla – Another Guy Ritchie masterpiece.
- I Love You, Man – Too long and too unfunny.
- Coraline – One of the best animated films I have ever seen.
- The International – Enjoyable espionage.
- My Bloody Valentine – That nude scene didn’t make up for the rest of the movie.
- He’s Just Not That Into You – Uninteresting, annoying, unwatchable.
- Yes Man – One of the worst films to ever be made.
- Quantum of Solace – One of Bond’s lower points.
- Doubt – Philip Seymour Hoffman saves it.
- Blindness – Unfair to all senses, pun intended.
- Punisher: War Zone – A sequel that should not have been made.
- Repo! The Genetic Opera – Paris Hilton is always a bad sign.
- Hamlet 2 – Flat comedy, although the music is great.
- Hot Fuzz – Simply brilliant.
- My Best Friend’s Girl – Exactly why I hate Dane Cook.
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Anthony
Inglorious Basterds is confirmation that Ritchie has officially dethroned Tarantino in my mind’s cinematic royalty realm.
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Anthony
Possession
Diva snarls and snaps when her turkey medallion is endangered.
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Faith Ann
leave that turkey piece alone!!!!
Diva’s gma
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Anthony
MW2: Nothing on the Chief
Since mid-November, most of my gaming time has been dedicated to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Fair enough, as it’s a solid title with a lot of clear replay value. But alas, my belief that Infinity Ward still doesn’t get multiplayer remains strong. If anything, playing MW2 online makes me yearn for the Halo:Reach beta more and more. While lying in bed last night, I thought about five reasons why MW2’s multiplayer sucks…compared to Halo.
Care Packages
You’re winning 7000-6000. An enemy is camping on a roof and gets a killstreak. He marks the dropzone for a care package and picks it up. It’s a Pavelow. Within seconds, a giant attack helicopter is descending on your team, destroying everyone it finds. You lose 7500-7200. Even though your team was superior in raw skill and ability, you lost because the other team got the right care package and at the perfect time. This type of scenario is one of the most obvious things so incredibly flawed with Mw2. If we dismantle you in Halo 3 on Valhalla, it’s because we controlled all the vehicles and the Sp’Laser for the most amount of time; not because the gods from above sent us a magical package that allowed us to call in a Scarab to annihilate your entire team. Care Packages take away the focus on skill, and there are no two ways about it.Game-In-Progress Matchmaking
You’re waiting in the lobby with your friends, waiting to merge with another. Suddenly, you hear that dreaded “You’ve just been thrown into a craptacular game that’s just about over” sound, and there you are. You’re thrown to a team losing 5400-1800. Essentially, you were just handed a loss from a game whose outcome you had absolutely no control over. I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me, either. I can surmise that the point of this is so that a team from which several players quit isn’t left to die a disadvantaged death. My response: half of the players of MW2 suck anyway (they just get a lot of care packages), so just let me continue playing if my team cries out. If I really don’t want to, I’ll simply quit. It’s not like the game drops my ranking for quitting a game anyway. Placing players into games in progress is never a good idea.Perks
The game begins. Step 1. Step 2. And…you’re stabbed. How so? Your killer had multiple perks that made him run faster than a cheetah and stab quicker than Zeus. Oh, and that claymore that you planted? Yeah, he just walked on right past that, too. Perks simply exist to throw off whatever balance the game previously had (which wasn’t much), and there’s a reason that Halo doesn’t bother with them. Again, raw skill is just completely ignored, and I’m not sure why.The Killcam
Let’s be honest; this is one of the dumbest features to ever enter the realm of online multiplayer gaming. While I think it does have a slight effect on the purging of camp artists, its benefits certainly do not outweigh its stupidity. Let’s just envision that you and your teammates have the perfect area locked down. You kill a random enemy who enters your little fortress, but naturally, falls to his demise. Then he takes a long and hard look at the Killcam, and sees that Veined Fire is standing directly under that one window; he thinks, “Boy, I could easily throw a grenade in there and send that man back to the promised land!” He spawns and does just that. Thank you for taking away our vantage point. It’s not like we needed it.Ranking System
I’m still not sure what the point of a ranking system not based on raw skill actually is (or could ever be). Basically, the more you play, the higher skill level you obtain (sure, if you’re good at the game, you can get there faster, but that’s not the point). Even if you tank every single game, you’ll still be well on your way to joining “The Prestige”. In Halo 3, when you’re placed in a game against a team of legitimate Generals (level 50, the highest), you know you were about to get pummeled eight ways from Sunday (and all you can do is veto the map). If you enter a lobby in Mw2 pinned up against a bunch of seventh-level prestiges, who cares? How many prestigies you have earned is simply a measure of how little of a life you lead. And I don’t get it. My level 40 in Team Slayer means more to me than a fourth-level prestige (I’m still on my first) ever will.That being said, I do thoroughly enjoy playing the game and bashing it out online with my friends. But when the Reach beta launches this Spring, it’s back on the market.
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Nick
Well said! I have nothing to add.
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Anthony
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MNT
I can’t summon words to express how hard I’m laughing now, so all I can say is “LOL.”
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Anthony
Dashboard Confessional Live from The Troc
These videos were taken (by Chrissy) from the December 12, 2009 Dashboard Confessional solo/acoustic show at The Trocadero in Philadelphia, PA. New Found Glory opened the show in tuxedo t-shirts.
The show brought me back to my Freshman and Sophomore years of high school when both of these bands worked their way into my library. At first, I had absolute disdain for DC, as I was against anything considered “emo”, and Chris Carrabba (DC frontman) just happened to be the movement’s de facto leader. Moreover, my girlfriend at the time – and all of her friends – thought that he was “so cute” with his guitar, perfect sideburns, and tight shirts. Bastard.
When I entered college, I began to see the light and really started to dig the music DC was peddling – deep, thoughtful lyrics and some of the greatest acoustic melodies ever recorded. I am now an official fan, and my high-school-self would not be proud. But screw him; the show was awesome.
Luckily, DC will be back in Philly when they open for Bon Jovi in March; and of course, Chrissy already made me get tickets for that one. It’s not often you see a show where the opening band has more raw talent than the headliner. Oh yeah, I said it.
“Stolen”
“Until Morning”
“Belle of the Boulevard”
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Anthony
End of an Era
Friday marked the end of an era; Today is Fire, the Xbox Live gamertag I’ve used for nearly three years is no more. The evolution of the gametag continues, and the origins are possibly getting stranger.
In 2004, I began with volponi, meaning sly old fox in Italian (I stole it from a popular racehorse at the time). I transitioned to Cp7 Yesterday in late 2005 after a sort of epiphany during an episode of Futurama (“Less than Hero”), where Fry joined the New Justice Team as “Captain Yesterday”.
In 2007, when in my friend’s basement, I decided to opt for another change. This time, I’d take a hint from one of my favorite songs, What it is to Burn by Finch, and become Today is Fire. I had a corny background story for all interested parties, but that’s irrelevant now. I’ve been Today is Fire on Xbox Live and, really, everywhere else online for over two years.
On Friday, it happened again. I am Today is Fire no more; please allow the reign of BigMommaMilkman to begin. My friend Joe decided to move back (from Plaza Sesamo) to his prior gamertag, BigPoppaRedwood. A year ago or so, when he first came up with the tag, he mentioned to me that someone should be “BigMommaMilkman” to create the resemblance of some theme with our gaming “clan”. I just thought that now was the time.
So, for now, if you sign onto Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and find Big Poppa and Big Momma in your party, just turn off your Xbox. Because the only thing worse than getting fragged is getting fragged by someone called “BigMommaMilkman”.
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Anthony
Bad Experience
Twas a lazy Saturday night in November when I discovered a lonely 320 points in my Xbox Live account. It was cold outside, I was tired, and they were just begging to be used to rent a movie. And so we did. The winner was The Girlfriend Experience; I’ve heard amazing things, and I forgot all week to send State of Play back to Netflix to continue with my queue. A logical choice, I think.
I screwed up. Royally.
The plot (if you could call it that, which you can’t!) revolves around a high-class hooker and her muscle man boyfriend in Manhattan going about their lives and such. Yeah, that’s it. It plays out over a series of boring, uninteresting conversations in an almost nonlinear fashion, or something in closer resemblance to a jigsaw puzzle (you know, the one you really never wanted to put together in the first place).
I’m a trooper when it comes to movies. Even if I can’t get into it, I will continue my quest for closure, respecting any attempts of it to pull me back in. I really couldn’t hold my patience, however, through these 77 minutes of pure and unrelenting crap. Could it get any more dull and dumb?
Now, I suppose this is mere evidence of my brain’s inability to understand some particular art form in action here. Maybe it’s about Existentialism or human nature or the meaning of life or something beyond my level of understanding. But I don’t care, regardless of its intent or meaning. It was a horrible, horrible film experience that I hope I never have again.
And if I did miss “the point”, I’m glad. I have far too much common sense to even begin to want to understand this movie.
And here’s the point.
A movie’s purpose, no matter how wonderful or enlightening, is not an excuse for putting Chrissy to sleep in a short 15 minutes. It’s not an excuse for making me sit through a series of uninteresting conversations between people I don’t care about. It’s not an excuse for leaving me with an inexplicable final scene where a man comes to an orgasm while simply holding a hooker in his arms (after talking about the stock market, of course). It’s not an excuse for excluding a plot, rising action, or conclusion. It’s not an excuse for failing to make a better movie that I can actually watch without wanting to punch my own face.
Although, in my mind, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is still the worst movie ever made, The Girlfriend Experience now holds the number 2 spot. With a bullet.
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Anthony
Goodnight, Farewell
“This is it.”
Eddie’s poignant first words when Pearl Jam took the stage for the very last time at the Spectrum on Saturday. The event marked the final celebration in the venue’s wonderful 42-year history. With the building’s staggering memories and moments, it’s all a bit sad; as Eddie said, during the show, “The Greeks and the Romans kept their coliseums, why can’t we keep ours?” I couldn’t agree more.
But the night wasn’t about modern society’s negligence of its historical buildings. It was about Pearl Jam sending the Spectrum off in epic fashion. And they did just that.
The band played a whopping 40 songs over three-and-a-half hours of pure rock bliss. While most of the crowd seemed a bit depressed and preoccupied by the fact that the Phillies were getting rocked by the Yankees across the street, I couldn’t care less (and if you are a real Pearl Jam fan, you wouldn’t either). The crowd’s energy felt even weaker than the June 20, 2008 show in Camden. But alas, it was one of the greatest nights of my entire life and, for the most part, everything I hoped for.
The highlights were plentiful – from the funny Whip It cover with the boys dressed up as Devo (that’s just how Pearl Jam does Halloween) to the unbelievable rendition of Jeremy with a string quartet and the extremely emotional double finale of Rockin’ in the Free World and Yellow Ledbetter with all of the arena’s lights on while confetti and balloons rained over the crowd.
It was an emotional night for me (and I hope for the 16,999 other attendees). My first musical memory of the Spectrum was Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness performed by the Smashing Pumpkins over thirteen years ago, no lights – a sad, soft piano piece that opened my eyes to the greatness of live music. My very last memory of that same venue is of Yellow Ledbetter performed by Pearl Jam, all lights – one of the greatest rock tunes of all time that makes me still appreciate the greatness of live music. A great thanks to Pearl Jam for providing me with perfect closure.
And that was it.
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Faith Ann
Anthony, so eloquently stated. I think you should, in addition, to your other talents, write for the New York Post or New York Times or for that matter the Phil. Inquirer. A very nice tribute to an edifice that will forever hold alot of memories for myself as well……
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Jim Patterson
Every time I hear Yellow Ledbetter it just hits me in the gut. The guitar riff grabs me at the outset, and Eddie’s vocals just kill me.
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Faith Ann is discussing. 
Faith Ann are discussing. 
Hanni 10:43 pm on January 18, 2010 Permalink |
By some bizarre coincidence I seem to have watched this film at the same time as you. Equally nonplussed. Waste of 2 1/2 hours of my life. I’d have been OK with him trampling on history had it been a film of any merit. But no. Just odd.
Anthony 7:05 am on January 19, 2010 Permalink |
You and I both must have missed something, as the rest of the world seems to think this is a cinematic classic. I don’t get it.