Recently in Reviews Category

The New York Times has a short review of the new Doctor Who online. Pretty decent.

The familiar blue police box doesn't seem much revamped, either; it appears to run on pneumatic tubes, and there is no sign of a computer on board. The Doctor, on the other hand, almost quivers with energy. In previous regenerations, depending on the actor playing him, this character has variously been crotchety, spacey, avuncular and even a little glamorous. Christopher Eccleston brings a kind of manic blokishness to the part, giving the Doctor a sardonic grin and a working-class Manchester accent. (When another character says, "If you're an alien, how come you sound like you're from the North?" he replies, "Lots of planets have a North.")

This Doctor is a little forgetful and inept, but nevertheless fairly contemptuous of the human beings he has come to save — except for Rose Tyler, a shop girl to whom he takes a completely understandable shine. Rose, played by Billie Piper, a former pop star who used to occupy roughly the same niche in Britain as Britney Spears does here, is not just cute but also quick and inventive. She's much less frightened of lumbering mannequins or boiling plastic than either her vain, slutty mum or her well-meaning but dopey boyfriend, and she even gets the careless Doctor out of a jam.[New York Times]

While the rest of the family was out at the movies today I finished reading the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon. It was a fascinating book. Christopher Boone, a 15-year old autistic boy, discovers his neighbor's dog dead and decides to find out who did it. It was a look into the mind of someone with Autism, showing someone who was very intelligent, but who just didn't interact with the world as we do. It's quirky, funny, deep, and just made me feel good when I finished it. And yes, the mystery is solved, though that's just half the story.

So I finally gave into the whole MMORPG craze. I'd played a bit of Asheron's Call back when it was in Beta and enjoyed it. And even played a tiny bit when it was released, but it never really sucked me in that much. But I have a good number of friends playing World of Warcraft, and it's one of the few games I can play on the Mac and still be able to play with them.

First off. Big high-5 to Blizzard for releasing a game that runs on both Mac and PC beautifully. More companies need to do this. I have no idea how much extra effort it requires on their part but they really do a great job. Thank you for giving me something cool to play while all my friends are off playing CoH.

So, about the game. It's beautiful. I took some screenshots that are okay, but nothing as nice as some of the ones shown on the World of Warcraft site. The colors are vivid and for the first hour or so that I played the game i just kept looking all around me. I can't wait to explore more and see what kinds of places I can find.

Next, gameplay. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this game was easy to learn. I saw the manual that came with the the game and was a little nervous at first. It's not huge, but it just looked like there was so much to learn. So, in proper geek form I just dove right into the game. After about 10 min I created my character and was on my first quest.

So far, I love the game. As I play a bit more and get a little deeper into it I'll report back with more details. The screenshots are hosted at Flickr, and there is one other up there.

(Cutey Honey after blocking LOTS of bullets with her sword)

So I finally got a chance to see the Cutey Honey live action movie. It was one of the more fun movies I've seen recently. Cutey Honey first came out years and years ago as a TV series by Go Nagi (the individual responsible for many classic shows) and has had numerous other animated versions throughout the years. Finally, someone did enough drugs to decide that the next incarnation really needed to be a live action movie.

What makes this movie great is that instead of going and tweaking the story too much it sticks with the same over the top feel that the anime has. It almost feels like you are watching an animated movie with live actors subbed in. It's cheesy as all hell, but then again Cutey Honey is cheesy to begin with. My only complaint would be that the ending battle where she goes up against Sister Jill left me wanting more, but in the end it works out alright. Now I just think they should do a live action TV series. I mean, if they can do a Sailor Moon one this should be no problem! Oh yeah, and the theme song for the movie, performed by Koda Kumi, rocks.

Okay, I must agree with Suw that Shaun of the Dead is great. I'm not a huge fan of horror movies in general, but this is more than just a zombie movie. It's a zombie movie with comedy, or actually it's a romantic comedy with zombies. Whatever it is it is brilliant. It opens next Friday and everyone must go see it. Here's the Official Website . Go there and check it out so I gain pint points.

I'd been looking to pick up a new DVD player recently, since my old one croaked on me recently. After doing some hunting around online I decided on the Philips DVP642. I decided on this one for a few reasons. First, it supports DivX. This was a big deal for me because I watch a lot of anime that is encoded in this format. Second, the price was right. At $69.99 it wasn't too expensive a risk. Some of the reviews indicated that the DVD playback wasn't that great, but I figured at $70 even if it was good I'd be happy.

Today I picked up my player at a local CompUSA (the only place locally that had them in stock). Initial setup was easy, as was updating the firmware to the latest version. This entailed downloading two files from the philips.com website and burning them to CD and starting up the dvd player letting it read the CD. I haven't tested a DVD yet, but I did test with a DVD-RW that had a few files on it. The good: it read the DVD-R and could play some of the files. The bad: it couldn't play them all. I'm trying to figure out what the differences were in the files it wouldn't play, but so far nothing is jumping out at me.

I've also set up a page on my wiki about this player so that I can keep notes on what works and what doesn't. If anyone has anything they think would be useful to add, please let me know.

The wonderful folks at TRSI just delivered my copy of the LE of ROD TV. The case for the series is like an actual book with plastic 'pages' for the DVDs. It's definitely the coolest of the DVD cases I have. I took a picture with my crappy little phone cam since I can't seem to find my digital camera at the moment. Click on the image to the left for a bigger picture.

The other day I was at the video store and happened to see a copy of one of my favorite '60s movies, The President's Analyst. James Coburn plays Dr. Sidney Schaefer, the analyst for the President of the United States. Of course this becomes a dangerous job since every other government on the planet wants to find out what the President has been talking about. IMHO, It's one of the best spy/conspiracy spoofs ever. I remember the first time I saw it, it was on TV as the afternoon movie when I was a teenager. I loved it then and I've loved it almost every other time I've seen it. I'm so happy to find this out on DVD.

One side note, the case for this DVD is one of the more strange ones I've ever seen (see image). It has latches on the side to help keep the DVD case closed. When i first tried to open it I was baffled for the first few moments. Has anyone seen any other releases with this type of case?

Phew. After quite a long time I finally finished Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. I'd zoomed through a bunch of it a while back, but hadn't had as much time to play recently. Overall it was quite fun. At times it was a little challenging, but never so hard that I felt frustrated by it. Definitely one of the better games to get for the Gameboy Advance.

Next up: Advance Wars 2