Category Archives: Movies

Fun day for Labor Day

Labor Day 2014!

Homies help homies. Always.

Okay, I’ll get to that in a minute. This Labor Day I hung out with gem and Anela. We met at gem’s house and went to the Starplex Cinemas in Woodbridge for Maleficent. It was a fun movie with a different spin on Sleeping Beauty. I also really like to see the backstory of villains; it’s interesting to see how they became bad.

Because Anela forgot her swimwear and gem wanted exchange something at the Outlets at Orange, we headed that way to take care of those things. That’s where gem and I saw this sweet Adventure Time billboard and had to take a photo!

Labor Day 2014!

When we got back to gem’s, we started working on lunch. I made more of my salami roll snacks and made more salad. It was sort of like yesterday’s picnic part 2. While the main course was cooking, the three of us headed to the pool. It was busy with lots of people, but that didn’t make swimming any less fun.

Labor Day 2014!

We came home to take the ribs out of the oven. They were looking pretty delicious.

Labor Day 2014!

No, Anela! Don’t eat all the ribs!

Labor Day 2014!

So very much food. I ate about 3000 calories. Whoops.Labor Day 2014

We look good surrounded by food.

While we ate dinner, we also watched Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

Labor Day 2014!

Sumo and Angel will be in for a treat too. We had a nice pile of bones to bring home to them.

Labor Day 2014!

After dinner we watched an episode of Too Cute about adorable kittens. For dessert, we had pastries and homemade ice cream. It was really good! Anela took the rest of my salami rolls with cream cheese and cucumber, and I left a bunch of the salami rolls with cream cheese and pepperoncinis with gem. I’m happy they like them!

Labor Day was celebrated successfully! Now I just need to eat less the rest of the week.

Who ya gonna call?

The 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters

Today’s the 30th anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters, so I put on my uniform and set about watching my friends defeat Gozer.

The 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters

They needed my help defeating Slimer, too.

Growing up, I always really loved the Ghostbusters. I had a plastic proton pack with particle thrower, a trap that opened when I stepped on the pedal, and a PKE meter. Sometimes my grandparents would ask me to come to their house to bust some ghosts. My uncle would also mail me “ghost turds.” (Lint from his laundry.) Of course, I had lots of other toys too – action figures, the Ecto-1, the Highway Haunter (a car inhabited by a ghost in the form of a giant praying mantis), the firehouse, the containment unit, and more.

Harold Ramis played Egon, directed Groundhog Day, and wrote Ghostbusters (among many other credits). His death in February was probably the first time I felt true sorrow at a celebrity’s passing. In the first movie, I noted that Janine tells Egon she has a bad feeling and believes he’s going to die. About thirty years later, Egon’s actor is the first of the Ghostbusters’ actors to pass.

A lot of fan art flew around Reddit after his passing, and these two were my favorite. I try not to look at them at them too long because I don’t like being depressed. It’s also interesting that Venkman was originally written with John Belushi in mind, but he died before the screenplay was completed. Slimer was a nod to John Belushi. I guess in this picture, Belushi and Ramis finally get to see each other again.

The recent game has a good story that can be considered a sequel to the movies. As a game, it does contain parts that I’m sure wouldn’t have been part of a movie if the game had been a film (such as fighting the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man again), but it’s still very entertaining. I don’t know if the planned third movie’s going to be good or not, but hopefully it’s great even while taking the series in a new direction!

Birthdays, Restaurant Week, and more

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There were lots of things happening last week! Saturday the 22nd was gem’s birthday. I baked her a turtle cake, which I talked about previously. She and Edward came to my place for cake before we went out to celebrate. gem wasn’t sure what she wanted to do ahead of time, but she decided to go to Color Me Mine.

Horde plate and mug

I painted a Horde (from World of Warcraft) plate to go with my Horde stein. I had actually painted the stein years ago, but it broke during the firing process and I never got around to fixing it. Luckily the people at Color Me Mine this time told me that if I brought it, they’d glue it together for me, which they did!

After painting, we wen to Gen Korean BBQ. We got there just before last call, so we were trying to order a bunch of food. The waiter was nice enough to just pick stuff for us, and he placed a big order. We were all stuffed, but we managed to get through it.

Sunday morning Collin and I went to Newport to eat at Zimzala. It was fairly empty, but that just meant that we got to hear some rocking tunes from Danny Maika and make a lot of requests.

Later that night, I went to Zenko Sushi with Anela and gem for the weekend’s second all-you-can-eat meal. We had a nice time!

By Monday I had gained 4.70 lbs since Friday. That was expected. Unfortunately, I felt a little sick, but I didn’t think much of it. Monday night Duncan treated Collin and me to Chipotle. It was fun eating with them. We brought it back to the house and watched… uh… Twitch Plays Pokemon on the living room TV.

I guess Chipotle was the last straw for my stomach. Something made me pretty sick, and I was up most of the night. I ended up calling out sick Tuesday and Wednesday. On the plus side, I lost all that weight I gained and much more! Tuesday morning I still tried to eat normally, but my stomach rejected everything. Even my mouth rejected normal foods! I chipped a tooth eating a protein bar. I should note that the protein bar isn’t crunchy in any way.

Get well soup

gem recommended I make soup, so I did just that. My stomach didn’t seem to hate it, so I ate it Tuesday night, all day Wednesday, and early on Thursday.

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I was still incredibly bummed about Harold Ramis dying as well, so I decided to spend some of my limited waking time watching Ghostbusters. Let’s not dwell on this, because I’ll get depressed.

I was feeling a lot better although not perfect by Thursday. I finished the soup for my lunch that day. Late that night, gem came over because it was my birthday and she had a gift for me. She bought a cast iron skillet! I had been wanting one for a while, so that was pretty cool. We also decided to order pizza. It was a terrible idea since I was getting over food poisoning, but it was also my birthday and I love pizza. Luckily my stomach accepted it without complaint.

Friday I celebrated OC Restaurant Week by going to Marrakesh for Moroccan food with Collin, Duncan, and Mimi. The food was delicious, just like I remembered it. I had a tasty salad, lamb, baklava, and tea. I also had a Lebanese beer and some mixed drink called a Belly Dancer. It was tasty, but I can’t remember what was in it.

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After dinner, we all headed back to our place to hang out, watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and have some wine. There might have been an extraordinary amount of Snapchatting as well.

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On Saturday I went to The Melting Pot with gem and Edward to celebrate my birthday. I’d been there a couple years earlier for my birthday and really liked it. It didn’t let me down! First there was a tasty salad. Next there was a Wisconsin cheese trio with bread, veggies, and apples. For the main course there was a nice broth with chicken, steak, mushroom ravioli, shrimp, and lobster tail. There might have been a glass of wine and dirty martini in there too!

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For dessert we had dark chocolate fondue with marshmallow cream and crumbled Oreos. We dipped Rice Krispy treats, brownies, pound cake, bananas, strawberries, cherries, and cheesecake. The cheesecake dipped in the chocolate was so amazing! Because it was my birthday, they also brought me a chocolate covered strawberry with a candle. The waiter told Edward to sing for me because he wasn’t going to do it. He mentioned something about how it’s too bad nobody had a ukulele. Unfortunately, we didn’t have gem’s ukulele with us.

So that was my week! Being sick was pretty miserable, but I had a nice birthday and enjoyed celebrating gem’s as well.

Valentine’s Day comics

Happy Valentine’s Day! My Valentine was Alakazam Comics! Okay, it actually had nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, but I went to check if I had anything to pick up. The clerk usually asks for my name, and I just give “A-N-A-R.” One in particular always asks in a way that implies he’s trying to remember even though I never expect them to know my name. However, today he said, “it starts with an ‘A’, right?”

I said, “yeah, and it’s a long one.”

He replied, “right, it’s… A-N-A-R… G-I-R-O-U?”

I was pretty surprised honestly.

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And then I was more surprised because I didn’t realize that Serenity: Leaves on the Wind had released! It’s the first Serenity comic (or any media) to depict the events after the film. Sweet.

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In unrelated news, I also reorganized my bookshelves. They fit a lot more books when the books aren’t placed all haphazardly.

Besides that, I also played some games, watched some TV, and watched Smokin’ Aces. Fun day.

Scalzi’s Redshirts will be an FX limited series

FX Adapting ‘Redshirts’ Scf-Fi Novel As Limited Series, Nellie Andreeva, Deadline, 2/7/14 via John Scalzi’s The Whatever.

Exciting news! John Scalzi’s novel, Redshirts, is set to become a series on FX. Redshirts is about a group of red shirt-wearing people on a spaceship that realize they’re always the ones to die and that their lives follow strange rules. Eventually they realize that a TV show from hundreds of years earlier seems to be ruling their lives. It was a very fun novel, and I’m looking forward to the TV show now!

Scalzi seems to have a lot happening. Old Man’s War, another of his novels, is being made into a movie. In addition, he did the writing for an upcoming iOS first-person shooter called Midnight Star and its interactive graphic novel tie-in, Midnight Rises. And we can’t forget that he’s one of my favorite authors and bloggers. There’re lots of Scalzi-related things about which to be excited!

John Dies at the End Vegan Chocolate Soy Sauce Cupcakes

John Dies at the End Vegan Chocolate Soy Sauce Cupcakes

Before I do anything else, maybe I should explain the title of this post. John Dies at the End is a great comedic horror novel written by David Wong, a pseudonym for Jason Pargin. It got more attention when it became a movie, although the general public probably isn’t aware of it. You should be though, because it’s really fun. (And really, the novel is so much better. Go read it!)

On October 14, the John Dies at the End Facebook page linked to this recipe for Vegan Chocolate Soy Sauce Cupcakes inspired by the book/movie. In the novel, there’s a street drug that’s called Soy Sauce because it’s black like soy sauce. It kills most people who come into contact with it, but it also gives some “lucky” individuals the ability to see things that most can only see out of the corners of their eyes – shadow men, monsters, etc.

The recipe does actually use a bit of soy sauce, but I suspect the tiny amount was really just an excuse to tie the cupcakes to John Dies at the End. That’s okay with me.

John Dies at the End Vegan Chocolate Soy Sauce Cupcakes

Sorry for the terrible iPhone photography. I’d never really baked besides ruining some pies with a friend back in high school, so I decided to take a try at it. There’s chocolate on top of the cupcake, but you can’t really see it under the delicious raspberry sauce. They turned out really well. They weren’t necessarily amazing, but I was very happy with them, and they were fun to make.

John Dies at the End Vegan Chocolate Soy Sauce Cupcakes

This also reminded me that the sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don’t Touch It, was released slightly over a year ago. Why had I never read it if I loved the original so much? I don’t know, so I bought it and read it. I prefer the first, but the second was great as well. I hope we see a film adaptation of this as well as more novels in the future.

T.M.N.T. vs. C.H.U.D.: Sewerpocalypse

I had a fun conversation with Chris Grant, Polygon Editor-in-Chief and former Joystiq Editor-in-Chief.

Pacific Rim was awesome

After wanting to see this movie for a long time, I finally watched Pacific Rim this weekend. Others had told me mixed things about the movie. It didn’t live up to a lot of expectations. I’m not sure what anyone else was expecting, because I watched an amazing two hours of giants robot suits fighting giant monsters.

There were subplots and character development that might not have been deep enough for some people, but honestly, they were just there to justify fight scenes, and they did a good job. I jokingly told my friend after the movie that my favorite scene was the one where the jaeger (German for hunter) punches the kaiju (Japanese for monster) a bunch. I couldn’t really pick a distinct favorite scene. I can say that there was a lot more humor than I expected. Multiple characters served as comic relief. And if you haven’t seen the movie, stay for a scene midway through the credits.

As an immense Portal fan, how could I not like Pacific Rim? It even features Ellen McLain, the voice of GLaDOS, as the jaeger AI. Guillermo Del Toro got permission from Valve to use her voice as an homage, using Valve’s filter at first. After finding it too distracting, he created his own for the final version of the film that’s a little different.

I’m ready for a sequel now or perhaps a simple game. I’d like a “bad” game, but I’d like an old-fashioned bad game. A simple fighting game with jaegers and kaiju would be cool, but the trend currently would likely be for the game to try to be amazing, making it bad in a bad way. Something like the old Godzilla video games would be fun!

District 9 was surprisingly good

For some reason, I was expecting District 9 to be bad. I might have been harboring resentment due to the fact that I wasn’t sure what it was about. Sometimes that happens, and then I forget why I was originally down on the film. Maybe it got grouped with Cloverfield in my mind, which I also think is bad despite never having seen it.

District 9 was a great sci-fi flick, telling a story that’s a little different than the norm. When an alien ship arrives on Earth over South Africa, the aliens don’t make contact. Their ship just sits their in our sky. Eventually we find them malnourished and seemingly lacking knowledge of their ship. Instead of the aliens being more advanced or looking down on us, humans house them in a slum. The aliens are basically a liability and dependent on us. It’s a bit of a different sci-fi story. Technologically more advanced alien race somehow dependent on us. It also deals with speciesism with humans feeling superior to the alien race. The film is told as a documentary looking back on past events. There’s talking and learning about the situation and relations, but there’s also plenty of action.

It’s based on the actual relocation of citizens of District Six in South Africa under the apartheid regime. The best thing science fiction can do is to comment on the past or present and get people thinking. It puts those events in a new context, which is especially good for people who might not be very familiar.

I don’t know why I wrote the film off when it was released, but I’m glad I’ve watched it now.

The Disastrous Daredevil

As a Daredevil fan, I figured it was about to time I watch the movie that’s universally despised. Having watched it, I can understand why.

The two biggest problems with the movie are probably Ben Affleck didn’t seem to really care about the role and that Daredevil didn’t seem to be a true hero. The fight scenes weren’t great either. It’s too bad Frank Miller wasn’t directing.

There were some minor differences that didn’t bother me too much. For one thing, I was sad that Matt’s father wasn’t called Battlin’ Jack Murdock, but oh well. The big problem was revealed when we saw Daredevil origin. As he runs away from the reveal that his father’s a thug, he causes an accident that spills radioactive waste in his eyes, blinding him and heightening his other abilities. How heroic. Boy runs away and causes an accident. The hero I know as Daredevil saved an old man from getting his by a truck, thus getting in the accident himself. Speaking of being a hero, in the comics Daredevil chases the man involved in his father’s murder into a subway, but the man has a heart attack. This was transposed onto an unrelated person for the film, but rather than simply having a heart attack, Daredevil leaves him on the train tracks to get by a train. Leaving someone to get killed is not in his character at all. It’s confusing that they would even think to put that in the film.

Elektra enters a coffee shop and sits to drink before even buying anything. There’s a goofy romantically tense fight between Matt and Elektra in a park when they first meet, and no one seems to care. Scenes seem to shift as people fight. The Kingpin isn’t the calculating, brilliant man of the comics. And why was he involved in Jack’s death? They throw Karen Page into the film for no reason. Was it just so fans could recognize a character from the comics? There were no sparks between her and Foggy or her and Matt, leaving her inclusion pointless. It was just sloppy.

There were, however, redeeming qualities. For one thing, Jack Murdock decides to win his fight against John Romita despite being told to throw it. He also learns that many other people he defeated actually threw their fights, including Miller, Mack, Bendis. These are all obvious references to important people involved in the writing of Daredevil comics, which I enjoyed. Michael Clarke Duncan portrayed Kingpin excellently. I also enjoyed Colin Farrell as Bullseye even if I kind of missed his costume. Bullseye is crazy, and this is especially noticeable in his facial expression and eyes. Farrell pulled it off.

While I wouldn’t think about saying the Daredevil film was good, I enjoyed it. However, I’d recommend that if you’re not a fan, stay away. That isn’t because you wouldn’t appreciate it. Rather, it’s because I wouldn’t want to taint your impression of Daredevil before experiencing Frank Miller’s take on the Man Without Fear.