Rock, Man.

Right now i'm taken aback, at how much creativity this little man in blue has spawned.
Back in 198X, did they have any idea when creating the character, when writing the songs?
How do they feel about it all now?

i'm talking about Mega Man inspired music.

The story starts with the Minibosses, an NES themed cover band, turning the beeps and boops we grew up with into epic rock, i had never payed much attention to how surprising good the music from Megaman (or other old videogames) was until these guys covered it.
Check out the ten minute Mega Man 2

The next natural progression would be lyrics, that's right, Mega Man rock with words.
Enter the Megas. The Megas are endlessly entertaining, their album starts out with a song by Mega Man, talking about how he wants to be the one that fights for justice. And then each of the level songs are sung by the boss, giving odd and wonderful emotions to these gimmicky bosses.

"Do you know what it feel like to have been built this way?
With only the power to push others away?"

The bots start out fairly cocky, but ultimately fall. And then there's the self aware Bubbleman, who knows how goofy he is, but is going try his damnedest to take out Mega Man. My favourite moment though, would have to be in Quickman's song the Quick and the Blue:

My circuits slow
I'm not scared anymore
I see the faces of my brothers that have fallen before

Death does wear blue. The album ends with Mega Man contemplating if what he did was right, was he only built to kill and not to do good?
The entire album is very tongue-in-cheek and tons of fun, but writing lyrics to existing music isn't going quite far enough, what about original compositions, based on the world of Mega Man.

Well, meet the Protomen.

The Will of One is a song about Mega Man leaving Dr. Light, and deciding that despite Light's warnings, he is going to fight Wiley, and finish the job that Proto Man had failed at years before.
i'm honestly unsure how to feel about a band turning the story of some old videos into a rock opera, but it is truly epic, and it really fucking rocks.

I've given everything I can, there are no heroes left in man.

Now don't get me wrong, i love the Mega Man series, by far one of the most challenging and fun series to this day, i just never would have believed it would lead to all of this.
Inspiration truly is anywhere you look.

dear ; john?

Look who's back :3
These songs just keep getting better and better.
i was afraid they had quit, and now i hope they never do.

the Living Wake

Mike O'Connell, writer and star of the Living Wake, recently came to my attention thanks to this hilarious music video, What's it Gonna Be? That video has so many things going for it, it's catchy, O'Connell is hilarious, it features Dr. Ken Jeong as his wingman, and it's not that far off from being an Electric Six song. So this lead to me googling him, and falling in love with his voice (his annunciation is fantastic!) i could listen to him talk about Cabbage Patch Kids all day. Eventually, obviously, i discovered the trailer for the film the Living Wake, and it looked amazing. Even better, it was streaming on netflix!

The movie follows K. Roth Binew on the last day of his life, and we get a brief glimpse into his genius and odd the world he inhabits, i quite like the way the description of the trailer on youtube puts it "The Living Wake is a dark comedy set in a timeless storybook universe." You really can't tell when or where this movie take place, and this suit the movie just fine.

It's a fairly simple story, as he gets closer to death, he starts doubting his life and his intentions, fearing he was only feigning being an artist and genius. By the end though, he realizes his life was worth living, he lived how he wanted to and enjoyed it, and that's all that matters. The quirkiness of this movie goes a far way, as does the general enjoyment of the brillance of K. Roth. Though i must admit the movie is a bit rough around the edges, has some pacing issues, some lines that don't quite work, but overall it's still worth watching. It's a damn funny movie, and hell it even has a couple musical numbers.
And in case the movie isn't enough, there's K. Roth's youtube account, full of deleted scenes from the movie and glimpses into the everyday life of K. Roth and Mills:

four out of five

imdb

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

imdb

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.

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.

Crank: High Voltage

Much like i put off watching the first one for fear it was stupid, i put off this one until now.
And unlike last time, i was right.

What a fucking disappointment.

It's like the directors didn't understand what it was that made the first movie good, and decided to take everything that was fun about the first movie and replace it with convoluted fart jokes.
The first movie was certainly over the top and ridiculous, but it wasn't stupid.

The premise wasn't terrible, Chev survived because he's a badass, some crazy Chinese guys steal his heart, and now instead of adrenaline he needs an electric shock. i mean, if you're looking for something to top the first film there aren't too many other options.
But they took a guy that's just trying to live long enough to get vengeance and turned him into the Hulk. Electricity gives him super powers and robs the movie of any interesting conflict, once he gets shocked you know he's going to kick some ass.
The whole static electricity made from friction is one of the most convoluted joke in the movie, the sad thing is that they almost set up a funny joke, Chev is crashing, and Eve thinks it's still the poison so she tries to get his adrenaline up, but then it goes off into the stupid friction bit. Instead have him half-heartily fighting her off trying to explain, and then finds some convenient mean of shocking himself, bam, electricity fueled sex scene.
The worst joke was the guy at the creepy psychologist, thank christ they gave us a flashback to the first movie to show who he was, otherwise i'd never have fucking remembered. It's just such a painful joke because it took so long to set up and had no pay off, i mean they went with the most obvious fucking joke. Haha, it kills this schmoe we don't care about because he was off to start his life anew. Wouldn't it have been funnier if it had shot the psychiatrist and cause him to break? Or better yet, not have had him in it at all.
Wasn't he guy Chev forced to use the defibrillator as well? Why no call back to that? i guess when he's using powerlines defibrillators are chump change, at least it could have been a joke, unlike what we were given.
i didn't even care when they got the head in the jar.
As bad as all the racist and cartoony characters were, and as pointless as every single one of them was, the worst part was the end. No one ends up getting revenge, and wasn't that the whole point?
Sure Chev gets his heart back, but did he rip it out of Asian David Carridene's heart? No, Dwight Yokham's whore got him. (And seriously Poon Dong?)
Did Venus get revenge on the Ferret for his brothers death? No, a jacked up Chev jumps in and goes overkill, robbing Venus of his redemption and revenge.
Ugh.

The first movie wasn't realistic, but it was believable in it's universe. This movie on the other hand, was like watching a horrible Genre Movie parody of action movies, or a fanfic of the first Crank written by some thirteen year olds.

The only thing in this movie that lived up the first was the soundtrack, and the score was done by Mike Patton, shame there wasn't a better movie for it.

two out of five

imdb

p.s. Who the fucked bailed Eve out?