I didnt watch the Oscars and proud of it

Folks, i know i am a huge movie guy and the Oscars are the biggest night in Hollywood, but i did not watch them. Did i forget? Nope. Did i want to watch them? Sure. Did i really care to drop everything and watch them? Nope, i was watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand on dvd with my girlfriend after a long day of driving to RI and back. Given the time in which we returned, we werent able to watch any of it. Plus, cant go wrong with a show on gladiator combat with blood and boobies...alright the story is great too and the action just as great, and i cant say anything bad about the cast because they are perfect for their rolls.

Ok, got a little sidetracked.

Now, i look forward to the Oscars every year, just to see what Hollywood decides is the best of the best in movies and film production. I dont always agree with the outcomes but they are usually fair. Ahem...wasnt too fond of the winner of best original song went to Three 6 Mafia, but thats my anti rap mind talking. In the sense of the award for best Animated Feature, you got what i like to call, brand recognition. Lets look at the winners of this category though the years:

2001 - Shrek*
2002 - Spirited Away
2003 - Finding Nemo*
2004 - The Incredibles*
2005 - Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit+
2006 - Happy Feet*
2007 - Ratatouille*
2008 - WALL-E*
2009 - Up*
2010 - Toy Story 3*

* designates CG
+ designates stop motion

See, the use of CG is getting out of hand, i am not much of a fan of this type of animation, but i love traditional. I guess this is the future of animation as we know it. Disney even said after the Princess and the Frog they wont be doing any traditional animation. That makes me sad. Also, Pixar has dominated this category for many years, only a small number of features did not win.

SIDENOTE: i still think How to Train your Dragon should have won this year...

Lets go further into this when we look at the winner of last years best Cinematography, Avatar. Now, i am a novice cinematographer and i can say that it takes a lot of work to set shots up and stuff. Avatar was mainly computer animation, not at all my definition of what cinematography is.

In recent years, the academy thought it was a good idea to add at least 10 nominations to the Best Picture category. I am not in favor of this as the choices should be the best of the best. I think they should have a limit of 4 best picture nominations. In the current state of movies these days, i hope to god that we dont have any run of the mill comedy that takes its jokes to who ever is in the news currently and put lame jokes into it, as best picture. That folks would be the end of American cinema as we know it. Im sure the Nostalgia Critic or youtube movie critic Vaughn Fry would have a field day with that one.

Sure i can go on and rant more, but i dont want to go any further with my ranting, ill just work myself up.

Moral of the story: Spartans never die, their only listed as MIA

As always, the Duke abides.

Re: 3D Revolutation (hardcopy)

Tenchi brought up a good point in his blogpost about 3D movies and basically...anything else that's available in 3D.  Personally I find nothing interesting about this trend, but I believe that it is coming back for a reason instead of just adding value to movies.  But honestly I don't really like 3D.  In fact it makes me balls ass dizzy whenever I watch something in 3D. 

I think the last movie I saw in 3D was somewhere in Disney.  And that's the thing; at least those theatres were made to be an attraction.  There were speakers near the seats that add to the "air pressure" effects and bubbles coming out Goofy's asshole in the ceiling somewhere.  But just going to watch a regular movie in a normal theatre in 3D doesn't appeal to me.  I think it's really a waste of money, but I can understand why some people are raving over this. 

And the idea keeps spawning over to other platforms of entertainment.  Playing video games in 3D?  Watching Tony Stark hit your face with his fist in 3D?  How could you say no?   

I'm not saying that 3D is bad for everyone.  If you want to try it out, then go for it.  But I would be more worried about how your eyesight would be after a few hours of watching it.  So a movie is about two hours on average.  Two hours seems ok, but when most gamers play video games, it takes more than just two hours.  Sometimes it takes up to a whole afternoon.  Ok so you might get a terrible headache.  That's not really what I'm getting at.  I have a weird feeling that in the future people are going to have terrible eyesight problems because of 3D or a weird pattern of maigrains during the day. 

Here's a picture of a 3D TV advertisement.  It looks cool.  But could I just ask what's wrong with just getting a normal TV?  Sometimes I think that two high def TVs in one floor of a house is a little extreme let alone having one of these.  And what's with this shit of people putting their TV sets on top of mantle pieces?  Who in their right mind would want to crane their necks upward all the time just to watch TV?  This is absolutely stupid.

Ok I got off track, but I just wanted to bring that up for a minute.  I will agree with Tenchi that people do complain about the 3D glasses.  Well how the hell else would you watch something in 3D?  There is this technology about 3D without glasses that might come around the corner sooner than I think; the Nintendo 3DS being the top attention whore right now.  Apparently there is a shutter that is glossed over the screen so it projects the images in 3D without use of glasses.

Now that's more I like it.  I can say that I would never want to play a system like this all the time, but it really is interesting.  Now people can stop complaining about the glasses in the near future.  Soon America can make fake land out of laser projections. 

Next Nintendo is going to make 4D; you can feel things, too.  And the last thing I need is going to a convention with some nerd grabbing a school girl's tits in front of me.  I don't know about you but I like eating and don't feel like losing my appetite over this.

In any case I really think that 3D is going to be a hot topic for a while and not just a fad that many of us thought when Avatar had its first 3D feature.  But as for me, I'm just getting over how awesome it is to have an HD cable.  GUYS IT'S JUST ONE CABLE THAT HOOKS INTO ONE PORT!  HOW COOL IS THAT?!  No more yellow wire, blue wire, and red wires! 

21st Century Blues: hardcopy's Lappy

Hi guys, it's hardcopy again, and I have some crappy news from the crypt.  Unfortunately my blog posts have been cut down this week because of my laptop, but I figured that I could at least just find a way to make this short post into a funny story with a very clear moral: DO NOT BUY HP LAPTOPS.

Mine is about three years old, and this particular model the Pavillion dv6000 has the dumbest factory defect.  I'm really angry about how this is the second time it took a shit on me, but at least I know not to buy these products ever again unless I have full proof that a new product line has no defects. 

Whenever I turn on my laptop, there's nothing.  No start up prompt, just a little dash that sits there blinking forever.  And don't ask me if there are any USB cables connected or CDs inserted into the drive on start up because yes I have checked thousands of times.  And this is just the way it is.  I tried doing the static trick by unplugging any power sources and holding down the power button for a few minutes, but no.  Still nothing. 

So end of story I need to get a new harddrive.  Hopefully it won't cost more than $150.  But hey guys, remember, Anime Boston is coming up so there are good news.  Some convention scheduling will come up by the middle of March, and Duke and I will be attending.  So keep up with the news, and I'll see you there.

Juicing or not: An analysis of Chris Redfield in Resident Evil 5

Ill say this right now, Resident Evil 5 is not my favorite in the series, but its a solid 3rd place. The fact of the matter is that the character of Chris Redfield went though a massive transformation between some unknown point to the events in the 5th game. If youve been living under a rock for the past year, you know that Chris was a twig, skinny, not at all the massive boulder punching son of a bitch he is in 5.
You look at him then, you just see cop, but...

Bam, he's huge, i mean, he could take on anyone who he comes into contact with. I will say that his RE5 model is my favorite of the series. Its simple and practical. The real reason why i believe that so many thought he took the juice is the size of him, while i believe its something else. While at a book store, i was looking though the art book of RE5, and i came across the section on Redfield. It went into good detail about his attire in this game. Its a skin tight shirt, like a bike shirt or compression shirt. Its made to form fit to your body giving as little restriction as possible. Prior to this, he wore police to military uniforms. So if the shirt was flappy, wouldnt you not see his massive arms? Even so, in the book it said he was preparing for his inevitable fight with game antagonist, Albert Wesker.

SO WOULDNT YOU THINK HE WOULD SPEND HOURS AT THE GYM JUST TO GET THAT KIND OF DEFINITION?

But i dont know. Either he was working out many times or he had some help. Maybe he went to some monk who helped him get into amazing shape like that. when i think about that scenario, i think of this or this hell even this.

Once again, i must say, this guy is larger than anyone, and it was a fitting set up for him to face the Hulk in the MvC3 trailer.

To me, i dont like hearing everyone say he was taking steroids, to me, i like to just say he did some major working out. I mean for the love of god, dont you think in a short time even you can have arms that can punch though boulders? I like to think so.

Yes i know hes a video game character, dont you care about video game characters too?! I rest my case.

Lets look at something else here, EXAMPLE: Jack Lalanne (figure 3.1). The Dude has been doing what he does best right up to the day he died, he kept fit and healthy and lived to the ripe old age of 96. How did he do this? HE EXERCISED! HE ATE RIGHT! Dont you think Redfield did the same to get those guns? I think so.

So folks, its unfair to say that Chris Redfield is on the juice, he trained for a good while before he had the body he had in RE5. Moral of the story here: Never feed a Mogwai after midnight.

As always:

Vlog of Awesome #36: 2k11 Oscar Predictions

Here we go again, Oscar time!

The 3D Revolution

Greetings Programs. Unless you’ve been living under a rock these last few years you know that both movies and video games seem to be jumping on the 3D bandwagon. It seems li
ke every movie released is in 3D and there is even a new 3D handle held coming out The Nintendo 3DS. So what do I think of all this you ask? Well……

Personally I don’t mind 3D. It’s been around longer then what Hollywood might make you think. Remember the old red and blue glasses? Believe it or not this “new” 3D is at heart the same thing and as for the video game world my Sega Master System from the 80’s had 3D standard and it was polarized like how movies are today. Just to give you a little 3D lesson; when you watch a 3D movie at your local movie theatre you get these cheap plastic 3D glasses that are almost like sun glasses. On the screen if you look at it without the glasses it almost looks like there are squiggly lines around the people. When you put the glasses on it polarizes the image and bam 3D. Up in the projection booth there is a screen in front of the projector. If that screen was not there then what would you see, red and blue lines. So as you can see the idea is not very new. It still uses the same principle but in a new way.

A lot of people aren’t fans of 3D because they don’t like to wear the glasses. My response to that is stop your bitching. Waaaaaaahhhh. That’s all I hear. Luckily for these people no glass required tech is in development and the first or at least I think the first commercial product is the 3DS. I preordered the thing and I hope that it’s worth it. Personally I think that 3D has worked better with Video Games then it has with movies. Generally with movies all its doing is adding depth which is great and all but damn it I want things popping out at me. I have 3D on my computer and the cool thing about that is you can customize it the way that you want so I make sure that things are coming out of the screen. Dead Space in 3D is even more frightening let me tell you that.

So what are some problems with 3D? Yes fine the glasses but what else? Well eye sight has something to do with it. Everyone perceives 3D differently. Some people it gives headaches to. Now this has never happened to me but I believe that it can happen since in a way 3D is done by messing with your brain. The other problem is in Hollywood itself. Everyone wanted to jump on this bandwagon so they’ve been using a 3D aftereffect and as you can imagine it makes the 3D horrible. This happened with Clash of the Titans which I didn’t see in 3D but seeing how horrible it was in 2D I can only imagine how terrible it would have been in 3D. The problem with this aftereffect is also the fact that I bet it’s cheaper to use so I can see lazy cheap Hollywood movie makers using the aftereffect more often than the 2 cameras.

Ultimately I’ve been pretty impressed with the 3D so far and it looks like it is getting better. The drawback is the fact that everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Did you notice that Vampires were cooler when they were only in the media every few years but now that they are the subject of pretty much everything they seem to have lost some edge? Well that’s what I think is happening with 3D. Yes I like it but I also like chocolate and you don’t see me stuffing that in my face with every meal. Not every movie needs to be in 3D and shouldn’t be. Star Wars in 3D is a yes but something like The Smurfs (Don’t get me started on that movie) doesn’t need to be in 3D. So like it or not I think 3D is here to stay at least for a few more years until Holograms become popular. Then we will see all our movies like that but when you boil it down Holograms is just fancy 3D.

End of line.

Cool Television in the 21st Century: Firefly

I finally finished the series!  I'm glad I took my time watching it, but it's so disappointing that the show got cancelled.  Keep in mind that I didn't watch Serenity yet (and I hope never because I heard from reliable sources that it sucks).

Here's the background for those who don't know much about Firefly.  It was aired originally in 2002, and some of the big name actors are Nathan Fillion, currently in a lead role in Castle, and Jewel Staite, who starting off acting at a young age and was in Space Cases.  It is a western science fiction that is set in the future after a war between the Alliance (combined of the two biggest powers from "Earth that was"-China and the United States) and the Independents.  Was once a sergeant for the Independents, Malcolm Reynolds runs a ship he named "Serenity", which is a class Firefly space vessel-yeah, it looks sorta like a firefly, with his screw and passengers.

While Captain Mal is a strong leader with a loony sense of humor, his first mate Zoe, an equally strong willed "warrior woman" fought in Mal's troop in the war, keeps him in check.  She is married to Wash, the ship's pilot/navigator and handles Serenity like it's second nature.  They have a mechanic, a bubbly girl Kaylee who is a machine nut and knows parts like the back of her hand.  Then there's Jayne, a hired muscle who isn't really that bright but knows how to get out of a sticky situation.  These are the original crew members.

The remaining members first start off just getting a ride on Serenity for their own reasons, but as the story progresses, they get more involved in the crew's business.  Originally Book, the Shepard/paster, went on Serenity in the pilot episode for travel but ends up playing a bigger role than it seems.  Inara, a Campanion-registered prostitute, rents a shuttle on Serenity and handles business wherever the ship goes.  Finally there's a doctor, Simon, and his sister, River.  River has been experimented on by Alliance doctors because of her genius and isn't all "there", but as the plot unfolds you start to understand how she thinks and what she is capable of doing.  Her brother is in search of her in the pilot, and the crew decides to keep them on board for hiding as long as he provides medical services for the crew.  Sometimes these characters are part of the missions/jobs given to Mal, who free lances and mostly smuggles goods below Alliance radar.

This is an action, comedy, romance, and drama.  The reasons why I like it so much is that it is treated more as a western than a science fiction.  There are no alien races despite how many planets there are.  The weapons range interestingly.  Usually you will find more Smith and Wesson like revolvers used by the crew although Jayne mostly has modern weapons.  The only people who have the wealth to buy "futuristic weapons" as in other science fiction are rare to encounter in the series.  The speech and costuming follow suit.  Words such as "ain't" are tossed around commonly and and depending on which character, you will see a variety of style.

 Ok the humor is really what I wanted to get at.  It follows a formula that screws with you.  Whenever you expect something to happen, it really preps you in order to disappoint/make you laugh.  For example this scene with Jayne is absolutely hilarious.

When you watch through the episodes and really enjoy them, it's a huge let down when you can't watch any more.  As for the movie-that's debatable.  Some of my friends liked it, most didn't.  But what I hate the most is how incomplete Book's story was.  He is the biggest mystery out of all the characters, and it really show during the last four or five episodes.  There is, thankfully, a graphic novel with his back story, which I will be reading soon.

All in all great series, many will love this even if they aren't big on sci fi and I deeply encourage those to give this a try even if the pilot episode sucks.

What Sucks in the 21st Century: Demos and Downloads

I'm really into the Monkey Island game series, and the first two Monkey Island games have been rebooted and available for download on Playstation Network and that XBox equivalent, which I don't care about because I think XBox sucks.

I downloaded a demo a while ago, and I was very impressed when I played it.  I was happy that the trademark Guybrush voice actor was there, and the switch from the original to the newer graphics brings back faded black and white memories. I felt like I had to buy this game.


I redeemed some codes for my wallet online, and the payment for the game was $9.99.  That's another thing I can't understand; why can't they just round it to ten dollars?  I think it would be easier. Anyway I bought it and a download prompts me to either download the game or the demo.

Well I just played the demo so I don't think I'll be getting that.  I'm just going to get the game.  I'd like to point out here that the wireless at my house is absolutely terrible.  To buffer a 5 minute YouTube video it takes about as much time to watch the faded red line get longer.  Not my favorite pre-loader.  It took about a day to get the demo so I'm scared as hell about how long the game would pick its ass up to get on my hard drive.  I just want to play this game.

I select to download the game and other useless information then it goes into a one second download and tells me the install is complete.  It was so fast the loading green bar didn't move; it warped to 100% within a second.  No...that can't be right.

I looked everywhere in the system for this thing, but not even an upload manager showed up.  There was a save utility icon for some reason, but I couldn't find this game.  Naturally I tried a dozen times but the same thing keeps happening.  I was starting to question my connection, but because I can update without any problems, I then started to worry about my system itself.

After a week of ignoring my problem, I got on the phone with someone at PSN.  I have no idea if any of you have called the help desk there, but navigating through the categories given on the phone when you have a very specific problem like mine can be confusing.  I had to repeat many of the menus over and over again just to find out if I had a connection problem or a hardware problem.

I was looking in the wrong direction, again, and I was connected to a guy, who I was very happy with because he was so patient with me, to help me out through this.  I go through a process where every step made me feel more and more that my hunch on my hardware was correct.  I was repeating what I was doing before and so forth, but I was also going through the system inside and out.  The suspense killed me until he decided to look into it himself.

He gets offline for a while and comes back telling me that I have to download the demo and finish it.  When it tells me if I want to buy the full version, then I can download the game.

Why do I have to do that?  I don't understand.  Now I have to wait longer just to play this game.  I really hate complaining about minor problems like this but, really, it doesn't make any sense.  How come the network has the option to buy the game in their store, but you can't do that until you download and play through the demo?  Why is it programmed like that?

And this isn't apparently the only game that does this.  Maybe the company wants more popularity in the demo downloads but it's really annoying.  Especially since I downloaded it in the first place and deleted it to save space.  Yeah I know I actually do that.

I love how the store is set up.  It's easy to get through and not confusing at all.  But what I don't like is when games I want to download flips me off like a pissed off highway tail gating hack and I have to back track.  I have no idea if I can just choose the download game option through the screen title or if I have to play through it.  Because the freakin demo didn't download yet from my shitty wireless!  If I have to go through the demo again, I'm going to waste more time by playing up to a point, downloading the game which will take a lot longer, and having to play the same thing again until I get to see something new for once.

 This reminds me of tons of weird programmed games like the Port 2 trick in Metal Gear Solid (ha ha now you know!).  But I'm really bothered why a download program works like this.  I'm not into XBox but I'm really curious to see if any downloads work like this in the Markplace as well.

I could bitch longer, but I'm going to just play around with Little Big Planet first.  At least it's a happy and sunny place.

"There is an update available."


Son of a bitch...

Ucon at Uconn '11 report

Duke here, and i just went to a nerd gathering, i mean convention.

Ucon at Uconn '10 was a small one, the big headliner guest being That Guy with the Glasses, and it was free, so it made up for it being small. But it was the thought of meeting an icon of mine, which was its big selling point for me.

Fast forward to this year, Ucon returns to the University of Connecticut, still with That Guy with the Glasses as the main guest. What did he have in store this year, will he bring back Reverend Nutjob? What will he have in store for us this year!?

I braved the wet roads with my girlfriend to see what he had in store.

I woke up early, showered, and got dressed in typical Nostalgia Critic garb, didnt go crazy with cosplay for this one, as i also had to get to a dinner gathering of a friend of my girlfriend's father later that night.

At 11:30, we got to UConn. I got into the small line for registration, while my girlfriend went to use the rest room. After we registered we stood in line waiting to be let in for the TGWTG panel and q&a. while waiting, i met up with some people i met last year, one even knew me as my youtube name. Rob Walker, brother of Doug Walker walked by and then after a few moments let us into the auditorium. Me and Jen (my gf) sat down, and i noticed my friend Mike sitting on the other side, i got up and went over to him to see if he wanted to sit next to us. We enjoyed the two hour panel and went to the caf for lunch. This very loud kid who knows my friend Mike joined us (apparently we are fb friends, yet i never met him prior to this, i think i was just being nice and adding who ever ads me as a friend on fb, but i still keep a 95% known friend rate), much to my dismay as he was very much being loud and rude during the panel. We quickly ate and got up to the ballroom where Doug and Rob were signing autographs. This is where i have the most problem with this con, the line for autographs was bad. People were cutting the line left and right and showing no respect to those who were waiting longer. People place holded for those who were not in line, making the line 10x longer. But whatever, i got my copy of Bebe's Kids signed and i got a copy of the channel awesome 2 year anniversary video, Kickassia (signed by both Doug and Rob).

Overall this con is nice, its small, not a big one, so you meet a lot of people and see a lot of familiar faces. Cant wait to watch the video Doug and Rob shot while there. Its gonna be amazing!

As always...

I'm Hooked in the 21st Century!

Hi, I'm hardcopy, and I have an unfortunate confession to make.

Normally I think reality shows are the absolute worst thing to watch on TV, but just the other day one of my roommates flipped to a channel just for the sake of watching something.  She started watching one reality show at 8 and ended at midnight.  It was four one hour episodes together to prep for the new one coming up next week.  I walked in and she was leaning on every word.  Then my other roommate started watching it, too.  And as you guess it, so did I.

At first I didn't understand what was going on.  I came in at a part where eight girls were working at a fast food restaurant, and for a while they were doing well.  No one was complaining or being ridiculous until a few minutes after.  Then I realized that this wasn't a reality show about normal people.  Turns out all of them are rich one way or another (old money, new money) and have spoiled attitudes on spending that are far beyond what you see the average Joe have.  A few of these girls spend about half a million dollars on clothes per year, and that's just clothes.  They got cars, rents paid for, tanning, plastic surgery, and other luxuries I have to hit the lotto just to have a shot at having.  Because they spend so much money, their families cut them off for the duration of the program and they have to learn how to be like normal people.

But I was impressed about how well they were doing at the fast food place until I saw the dumbest thing happen.  One girl was promoted manager (the same damn workday they all started on) and she asked two girls to dress in mascot costumes and stand outside near the main road advertising.  One got hot in one mascot suit she had on so she asked her partner if they can switch.

When they came back inside to switch, the manager basically was pissed off because they didn't tell her/ask permission to switch costumes.  There was a fight.  For a while. My question is who the hell cares if they switched costumes?  As long as they do the damn job, I wouldn't give a horse's shit.

Then it gets so much worse when the manager girl gets drunk and starts crying over "people work that hard for 30 dollars a day.  We're not better than them."  And then she starts pointing fingers at the same person she got into a fight with and said that she's not better than them.  So they fight once again.

The train kept crashing and then I found myself watching 3 episodes.  It's called "You're Cut Off" in case you haven't noticed, and so far it's in its second season and broad casted on VH1 with new episodes on Monday.  Yeah that channel that was supposed to play just music videos yeas ago.  So great now not only do I have to watch Monday Night RAW, I have to tape Castle and this show.  Beautiful.

But let me make this clear that I just want to see Hana get what's coming to her. And see them fail at doing normal people stuff.  But that's because I don't like the spoiled.

Give it a shot if you are into reality shows, and if you are not, you might be surprised about what you find here.

For the record did anyone else see that Booker T is back?  And he appeared in the Royal Rumble with Kevin Nash?  I was very pleasantly surprised by this.  In case if you are wondering, Booker T is going to be announcing for Smackdown, and Nash is going to retire as Diesel.  He did sign a Legend contract with WWE.  So ha...take that TNA.  You get Scott Steiner...which is, I have to admit, pretty bad ass.  But we get Diesel and Booker T.  Not to mention that Tough Enough is premiering the night after Wrestlemania with host Steve Austin!  I'm definitely not going to miss it!