The film is an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name and the 3rd movie based in King’s source material that Darabont has directed. Perhaps you’ve heard of the other two: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. As in his previous two endeavors, Darabont does not disappoint here.
The basics of the plot are simple. In the wake of a particularly violent storm a mysterious mist appears and engulfs a small New England community. Certain residents find themselves trapped in a supermarket due to “something” in the mist which kills anyone who travels more than a few feet outside the store. Inside the store we are introduced to what appears to be the normal hodge-podge of stereotypical characters that frequently inhabit movies of the horror genre. However while some of these characters do indeed behave in the typical wooden and predictable manner you would expect, the ones that matter actually manage to bring a surprising degree of complexity and humanity to the roles.
Speaking of roles I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen Thomas Jane better! I think I can honestly say his performance here eclipsed those he turned in for Deep Blue Sea, The Punisher, and even 61*. His character, David Drayton, is the closest thing to a hero in the film however Jane plays it low key and subtle and through this we see that this is a just man trying to survive. In fact at times some of the choices and decisions he makes are startlingly selfish and go directly against what a “hero” in such a film would do.
As for the monsters themselves they are where the build up comes in to play. At first we see a tentacle here or hear a loud bang or rattle there. Soon we see all manner of creatures out in the fringes of the mist and there is a particular scene I would advise anyone with a fear of spiders to cover their eyes during.
If the movie has a downside it’s the blatant usage of some of the characters as nothing more than a plot device. Andre Braugher’s role as, Brent Norton, the out of town, New York, asshole lawyer is a perfect example. It’s a shame too because I normally like Braugher. Not this time around however.
Overall I found the film to be enjoyable and riveting. Without giving anything away I will warn you, however, that the ending of this movie is pretty hardcore. Not so much from a blood and guts standpoint but more from a psychological perspective. Still I encourage everyone to check it out. Definitely rent worthy and if you’re a horror movie buff it’s a buy for sure!
Arousal Scale - Redscape for “The Mist” - Stone Cold Rock Hard
In the early days of the Shouting Grounds, you may all recall JT and myself getting into a heated verbal dispute about console vs. pc gaming, specifically how I feel that PC gamers get the barb-studded shaft when it comes to sequels coming out exclusively for consoles when those games cut their teeth on the pc. Grand Theft Auto is my biggest let down…since I can vividly recall the first time I saw Dang playing GTA on his pc back in the day. Soon after GTA2 debuted on pc, it was ported to the PS2 and everything started to go pear-shaped. The third-person versions of GTA all debuted on consoles first, leaving loyal pc gamers to dangle. And now with the latest iteration of GTA, I still haven’t seen any indication that it will come to pc. But I digress…
This article is solely meant to point out the injustice that Battlefield has become. Again, I can very easily recall the first time I saw JT playing Battlefield: 1942 on his pc at a LAN at Redscape’s old apartment. We quickly became enamored by not only 1942, but the Desert Combat mod and played the holy hell out of it for many years. Battlefield: 1942 was only available for the pc, if I remember correctly. Battlefield: Vietnam was next, not as great but fun for as a break from DC for a little while…still pc only. Then in 2005, Battlefield 2 debuted across consoles and pc. Not well received by our gang…as it was built completely for online play with little LAN or single-player customization. Since then, EA’s changed the game via updates to allow it to be more like BF/DC, but at this point we’re slightly poisoned to it.
So now it’s 2008, and this summer Battlefield: Bad Company will be released. While it looks simply like an update to BF2, it does have completely deformable environments, which is sure to make battle all the more awesome. However…Bad Company is only going to be available for 360 and PS3. Once again, the PC is getting the bend-over-and-say-hail-mary. At this point, what difference does it make…right? Why the fuck should I care, since the game will probably blow in some major capacity.
Well now the ‘new faithful’, namely the consolers who are supposed to eat this bowl of puke that EA’s gonna charge $50-60 for, are getting their asses buttered and stuffed as well. EA has announced that Bad Company will ‘feature’ downloadable content (nothing new for console games) in the form of weapons n such. Again, BF2 featured ‘unlockable’ weapons once your character progressed in stature. The difference now is you have to FUCKING PAY FOR WEAPONS THAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN THE EXORBITANT PRICE OF THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE! If I remember correctly, you’ll start with somewhere around 5-10 weapons, and beyond that you’ll have to fork over real-world money to get new ones. And you can be sure that there are plenty of silver-spooners that will simply buyout the weapons cache with daddy’s platinum, and proceed to annihilate the gamers that can’t afford to pay for more than just the game in a box.
What a complete ass-fuck. I can only hope that if you’ve read this far that your logic is solid enough to hate this shit as much as I do…if not then Knock-Knock-go-fuck-yourselves.
Bonus: Saw this video offa Digg this morning…inspired this article.
I thought that I’d share a little video I made today. I grabbed a frame every two minutes to make a nice 12 hour time lapse. Snowy to sunny in no time. Cheers!
I’ve finally decided to beat Mass Effect. “Decide?”, you may ask. Yes, decide. I almost didn’t want to complete the game because I wanted to see and do everything the game offered. I was truly, and am still quite addicted to this game universe. Bioware as done such an exemplary job at story telling, character development, and visual creation you really want the story to continue well after the main objectives have been met.
Story
Since the game will be coming to PC, eventually, I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone, but I will confirm that it is worth waiting and playing for. Everything you do in game, from talking to people, killing them, or helping them affects the story and the world around you. And Yes, there is some alien pussy to shoot for as well.
Control
On top of a great story and convincing universe there’s also the gameplay, which successfully merges a number of game styles very well. For the FPS (or in this case TPS) fan there’s guns, grenades, and a crosshair. For the strategy fans there’s a time-freezing abilities selection screen and group tactics. For the RPG fan, you can kill, loot, skill, and level your customizable character. As you play through the game the controls begin to make a frightening amount of sense. Your decision making skills will really get a boost after a couple of hectic fire-fights. Yes, you are controlling, at times, 3 characters, about 16 abilities, 4 weapons per character, and worrying about health as well as shields, but Bioware made the steps between actions as short as possible. It starts to be second nature, moving your team into position, switching their weapons out if they get overheated, or using their abilities to free up time so you can deliver the fatal blow. Top notch.
Sound and Music
The music and the action are enveloping. I played through the ending twice and each time the stirring themes and great acting gave me goosebumps. As stupid as it sounds you actually feel a sense of real accomplishment at the end. I don’t think I really felt that before in a game…maybe shenmue.
Visuals
Jaw dropping. Though at times there may have been a framerate hiccup, most of the experience was smooth and seamless. They added a film grain and motion blur effect to the environment that really blurs the line between game and live action movie. Of course, when you’ve landed on your 100th planet or so, you’ll start to see some repetition or at least similarities in the terrain and colorscale, but you’re usually too busy on a mission or looking for mineral deposits to survey. (yes, there’s mining!).
In an effort to further streamline the site, I’ve come up with graphics for the arousal scale, using degrees cropped from the original podcasts. Nothing is set in stone, and if any degree offends, just say something.
Another new review topic, a brainfart of our man Redscape called “Why you keep bringin’ up old shit?”. We intend to use this category to review old movies, games, music, etc. And my old I mean ‘relatively accepted as in the past’. Spoilers are mute because we’re going to assume that you’ve either seen, read, played, heard, etc…what we’re talking about.
Blade Runner - The Final Cut
So I’ve finally made it COMPLETELY through Blade Runner without falling asleep. My previous attempts numbered (3), each time just making it past the point where Edward James Almost makes his strangely asian-speaking debut. And while this is “Why you keep bringin’ up old shit?”, I am reviewing Ridley Scott’s “Final Cut” of the movie, just because if I’m gonna watch the damned thing might as well be the ulti-version.
I gotta say, it’s great to see a young and healthy Harrison Ford in a movie. One of the reasons that I’m holding my enthusiasm for Indy IV is because of his age. It was also good to see a good old classic 80’s representation of the future, just gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. This movie starts out like it’s going to go 2001 style, extremely slow shots with Space-Mountain music that lull you to sleep…and then some asshole shoots a repub through a wall in one of the better over-the-top handgun-blasts I can remember. The rest of the movie ebbs and flows from slow 80’s-scifi pace to action movie pace, never quite slowing enough to lose you but never going over the top.
This vision of the future has been played before, although when it was new it might have been original. LA’s a huge city with enormous skyscrapers and monolithic structures built over the husk of the old city. There are tons of asian influences, no doubt when we were sure Japan would buy up the country. It’s dreary, dirty looking and full of smog and rain. Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) apartment looks like a cabin on a spaceship and is on the 97th floor of somekind of superbuilding. Everyone seems grimy, sweaty and tired of life. A great outlook.
In any event, I’m not gonna run down the whole jist of the story. Suffice it to say there’s some ‘Replicants’ (very-human looking androids) running around looking for someone to tell them how to live longer than four years, and Deckard’s job is to race after them and shoot them with his burpgun all the while giving that trademark Harrison Ford what’s-going-on look. I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning here, but I just watched the movie and haven’t had decades to argue it with my buds. The rest of the cast is pretty good, nobody was too shitty. Meh.
All in all, not a bad movie. I’m glad to have finally seen it, but I don’t think I’ll watch it again, at least not for a long time.
Arousal Scale - Magic John Stone for Blade Runner - A Magic John Bone
Not sure if this is true, but was sent to me by my program director pal over at WJOB — Field Trip time???
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton will be in Hammond, IN on Friday March 28th to hold a town hall meeting.
WJOB is efforting to carry the event live on AM 1230 WJOB in Hammond and on heyregion. com
Doors Open: 10:00 a.m. CDT
Event Begins: 12:00 p.m. CDT
Hillary Clinton Attends “Solutions for the American Economy” Town Hall
Hammond Civic Center
5825 Sohl Avenue
Hammond, IN
Additional Details TBA
So my co-worker and I went out to the site of the Johnny Depp movie in Crown Point last night to see if we could get a glimpse of Edward Wonka Depp Sparrow Dillinger. We weren’t able to see Johnny last night (filming was running late and they wanted to get the hell out of NWI — can you blame them???) But while we were there, my co-worker was telling me about how some guy dressed up like Jack Sparrow and climbed the courthouse — and was up there by the clock with a sign. I laughed and said “I would have peed my pants if I had seen that.”
Well, this morning, we find the video of the incident on Northwest Indiana Times website. And after looking at it… I realize that the guy dressed like Captain Jack is my fucking electrician. Yes, this is the guy who fixed the outlets in Brian and I’s kitchen and laundry room. Should I be frightened???
Hello there ladies and gentlemen. I’m posting this to everyone in general because I feel that I need some input on how to arrange the categories on the site.
Categories are organizational names for grouping like posts, and as these categories can be nested we should decide on a hierarchy to follow moving forward.
I would like to start using the Tags feature of these posts to display a tag cloud on the front page. Now, WordPress allows a one-way conversion from Category to Tag for those categories we currently use that don’t fit a broad subset of posts, but more an exact description of the posts content (such as School Shooting, or NIU).
Another task would be to standardize categorization and tagging. We have two categories right now that basically mean the same thing (correction: 3). We have Movie, Movies, and Film Review. I think we should decide which category with remain, or perhaps should we have a broad category Movies, with a Sub Category for Film Reviews (or just Reviews).
If you have some free time, and I’m not suggesting that you do, I recommend checking out this awesome retelling of the events leading up to the War in Iraq.
It’s a two part series and seriously puts everything in its place regarding the shit that we’ve gotten ourselves into up until the present time. Too bad it’s from PBS. They need to get more exposure on this one. I think this clears up a lot when thinking about what the administration was thinking (or not thinking) when these terrible decisions were made.
It sort of makes you feel bad for Colin Powell, being as that they had him sized up and marginalized from the start, only to pin the whole argument for war on his shoulders. The speech he made to the U.N. for forever be known as an impossibly bold collection of lies and exaggerations that signaled our intentions to enter into a conflict with Iraq.
I was pretty mad at him, and I guess I still am, because he let himself be used by the administration in a way that HE KNEW was dishonest and would lead to war. As a general he KNOWS that war isn’t to be entered into lightly. Despite that speech, the real fuckers Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfield are the real criminals, with the rest of the bureaucracy as accomplices.
First look at Snake-Eyes from next years live action G.I. Joe movie. Looks pretty f’in good to me. He’s being played by Ray Park, the same guy who was Darth Maul. I can’t wait to see him in action. Stephen Sommers, the director, has already indicated he’s going for the feel of the original Snake-Eyes so the character will be mute and a lone wolf type. He’ll use both his sword and guns when fighting! I’m hoping for something similar to the Gun Kata from Equilibrium but with some sick swordsmanship thrown in!
Also for all you Cobra fans Storm Shadow will also be in the film. I’m sure we’ll get to see at least 1 or 2 epic confrontations between the two!
So we’re less than a week past our five year anniversary of the current Iraq war and the death toll of U.S. troops and personnel has officially hit 4,000. At least those are the numbers the government is fronting us. Yeah I say fronting because at this point does anyone seriously trust anything that our countries representatives tell us anymore?
In any event, the article I linked above also cites the number the Iraqi deaths as anywhere between 80,000 to hundreds of thousands. Okay WTF!!?? We invaded the country right? I assume that means we have people in most major cities and outlying areas. Even in the areas of conflict we obviously have a presence actively hunting insurgents. Now my question is when an Iraqi dies, does it not count? It seems so because I find it hard to believe that after 5 years over there we can’t come up with a more concrete number than “80,000 to hundreds of thousands”.
Our government likes to bombard us with information right? Everyday we hear about how they infiltrated this insurgency or took out that terrorist cell or how things are getting better in Iraq, yet we don’t yet have the capability to count dead people? Was there some sort of system in place that accounted for dead people before we arrived? Possibly not since I’m sure Saddam didn’t want his actions in that arena cataloged in too much detail. Yet and still I can’t help but think how re-goddamn-diculous it is that we can’t track how many Iraqi’s have died over there.
Also I’d like draw your attention to the following statement from the article:
“This is global terrorism hitting everywhere, and they have chosen Iraq to be a battlefield. And we have to take them on,” Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer.”
Now this is coming from an Iraqi politician yet I find myself wondering exactly who he means by “they”. See, I think of “they” as these two guys. The two gay lords who got us into this whole fucking mess. They’re the ones who “chose” Iraq to be a battlefield. Anyway, as usual, I find myself digressing.
Let’s just figure out a way to get a better count on these bodies guys. I suppose, of course, that would require the will to want to do so.
Jesus tapdancing christ…fuck my brain! Half of me wonders if David Lynch made this movie so ridiculously insane on purpose simply to make people try and figure out what it all means, and part of me thinks that maybe he had a method to the madness…though I hope not. If he did then he’s a crazy ass bastard, to be sure. In keeping with the theme of Shotgun Theater, I’m not going to reveal any spoilers…even though I doubt most people will be able to make it through this movie. I would warn you, however, that this movie is straight-up disturbing as hell. I’d try not to watch it around anyone else for fear that they’d think you’re a goddamn lunatic freakshow for suggesting they watch it. And while keeping any spoiler material close to the vest, I’m going to also say that this movie is completely worthless. Nothing makes any sense and if you’re seeing some kind of imagery or can draw any parallels to ANYTHING then you’re either high as Chong or you’re some goth goof-off that wants this movie to mean something so you can tell people about it like it’s a badge of honor. All you’ll do is prove your mental retardation.
Arousal Scale - Magic John Stone for Eraserhead: Imploded like Michael Biehn
