Sunday, March 27, 2011

Enter the Void



This movie is literally a trip. Really, it's about a small time drug dealer in Japan's experience with DMT. And it's entirely shot from his point of view. Not long after the movie starts, he smokes up and we have a scene that puts 2001 to shame. Then he supposedly comes out of it, goes to sell some pills, and gets shot by the police. That's maybe the first twenty minutes, the next two hours are spent zipping around in his out of body experience, life memories, and nightmares.
The last visit to the carwreck that killed his parents is likely going to haunt me the rest of my life.
Now, once our drug dealer gets shot, we don't know what's going on, is he still tripping from the DMT, is this just his dying dream (it is mentioned in the film that it's a theory that human brains release DMT upon death), is it an actual out of body experience?
The only certain thing is that he gets shot, and we get treated amazing feats of visual stimulation.
This is cinema porn.
i'm not sure how they filmed this movie, it's stunning and brilliant in so many ways.
i honestly think this is the film of the times, it's something that could have only been made here, in the now. This is us.
And while i don't think this movie is going to inspire a rash of first person films (at least i would hope not) i do think it's going to be hugely influential.
It's hard to think of any other film that's captured the voyeurism of movies so aptly.
i'll leave you with the opening credits and the audio and visual treats they entail:



five out of five

Spiral Knights



Got in on the beta or "Preview Event" for this and played a bit, it's cute enough.
i'm terrible at MMORPGs and dungeon crawlers, but this game tries to keep it all simple.
Few minor issues of not knowing how new weapons will handle until you buy them, i quite dislike when items get bound to my character.
It has a lot of variety, but some colour customization would be nice. (Maybe it's there, and i just missed it)
It's quite charming going through dungeons and killing quirky enemies with your fellow bots though.
And it's made by some pretty cool dudes. Nice to finally see the context of the greatest videogame character.

The game launches on April 4th, and it's free to play, be sure to check it out.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Fareed Zakaria, a Voice of Reason.



Much respect to Fareed for making this clear and calm presentation in the wake of media madness surrounding the reactors in Japan.

From my understanding, the reactors survived one of the largest earthquakes on record, it was only the huge tsunami that raged across Japan knocking out the generators of the cooling system that caused the problem. That's pretty impressive to me, i mean at the same time, oil refineries in Japan were exploding into mushroom clouds and burning for days, no cries to end our dependence on petroleum, hell there was hardly any of that after the BP fuck up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Nuclear is a buzzword, one more powerful than terrorism it would seem, that the media wrung for every bit it could. i mean, people here on the west coast of America were panicking and buying Iodine tablets. Bottles were going for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Now, profiting from idiots will likely never be a crime, but spreading misinformation and lies through major media outlets should be.
Proof that we're living in an age of information however, is that i got news, straight from Japan, translated by a nerdy man named Katz.
http://yokosonews.com/live/
Katz broadcasted nearly nonstop for days after the incident, and seems to still be going strong, he deserves so much respect and honour for keeping cool and being so dedicated. Hell he even managed to make fun of America's panic in a few interviews with reporters state side, it was unbelievable.
In the meantime, all the major news outlets had interviews with experts, such as a gynecologist, and a theoretical physicist (Michio, i love you, but stop being a media whore) talking about how this was going to be doomsday.
Don't get me wrong, things were looking bad, and i was worried for a few days there, but at least i stayed informed enough to know things would never reach these doomsday wetdreams of the news.
The real tragedy here is all the focus was quickly moved to the reactors, the earthquake and wave were soon a nonissue with the news, despite so many Japanese people being homeless. Or "displaced" as the news would have it.



It's amazing living in a world of technology where events like this can be easily capture, because every video i've seen has been awesome, and awful. In the true sense of the words.