Harry Potter: and...... what the hell just happened?

All right, back in the saddle..... well not literally the saddle, but rat6her returning to something that is greatly enjoyed and familiar to me and my (1-1/2) viewers; bashing new, and popular movies (games, books.... you know the drill{etc}).

So now the much delayed review of Harry Potter: and the Half-Blood Prince.

First of all for all It is safe to say, nothing happened they spent the entire time getting shitfaced and "slogging" or the hogwarts-ism for making-out. Yes in this "grand masterwork" the only significant event was the death of Dumbledore, Before you cry "spoiler" remember that the death of this "mighty" wizard has been on the airwaves for months, c'mon with the release of the book (well the most recent one) the buzz was about Dumbledore dying. Though you may taught the other "twist" of the story as significant: the turning of Snape to the 'dark-side' was pretty much a foregone conclusion, if you seriously believed after reading any of the books or seeing movies that Rowling was creative enough to use a twist like "Snape is actually the good guy" you probably should line up for your free Scientology screening.

"it's called Scientology and it's more frightening than
all the shit we deal with, combined!!"

So after the previews roll we are whisked away to Hogwarts (well an English train station.... close enough) where we find harry transformed into some magical pimp that can bone any 'muggle' girl he chooses, well not really but it does make a better exposition don't you think. So harry is his same old (loser) self (in a train station) and is yet again recruited by Dumbledore who has somehow in the course of a year learned to use magic as well as gaining a sense of morose humor (or was that me). any way the story is something like this...

Harry is
in a restaurant
in a house
talking to a chair
with the Weasly's
running through the Weasly's burning estate estate
getting his ass kicked
getting shitfaced
at Hogwarts
talking to Dumbledore
brewing potions with a cheat sheet
talking to Dumbledore
getting shitfaced
"slogging"
Dramatic speech
(repeat the last four steps for an hour)
running for his life
watching Dumbledore die
getting his ass kicked
Dramatic speech

a scene in which three of the four primary
'story' elements come into play

So as you can hazard The story is lacking, "but there must be something to qualify this as a worthy movie,"-you say. The music is as always top notch, the effects were good, but far to artificial: replacing the actors in most cases as a stunt prop would replace the hero prop, all the while landing in the "uncanny valley". The action was...... lukewarm, though most of the "action" was Harry's crew getting some, the rest are thrills of the cheap, shit your pants, ghoul-out-of-a-cupboard variety. So when asked If the movie should bee seen, I'd say yes; if only to keep up with pop culture, for it's greatest flaw is relying on the Name and Rowling's poor story too cull the herd and drain their colective pocket.

The Legend of the Seeker: I Think my Neurons are Burning

First of all I would like to point out to the few (if any) of the people who have read Goodkind's early books and legitimately enjoyed the Scifi mini-series 'the legend of the seeker'; that I could not even finish the first episode, there, you got it, I'm F*ck*ng unprofessional. Now with that out of the way; the 'first impressions' review.

So this is more bitching than an actual cool headed review; now the seeker is only in the loosest of terms the same as the book, sure it bears the trappings of the universe, (names and such), but only to the extent that queen Elizabeth bears the trappings in common with William the Conqueror. The basest of elements are there, the sword of truth, the main characters, the three lands, and the three boxes of Orden; but despite this of itself speaks more of overconfident screenwriting (*after all they wrote 'Xena'* heavy sarcasm, ha ha) than actual artistic ability. But of course to defend their pathetic foray into writing this, they claimed: according to the 'ancient, infallible' scrolls of Wikipedia they were trying to "honor the books without literally translating them", and in showing their "honor" they have indelibly fouled up the story of the Wizard's First Rule. Now to the second Failure of the series, the actors, admittedly not all of this is their fault, but rather the fault of poor casting director, who apparently had never even thought to mach the characters with their descriptions. Overall the cast (so far) have been very poor actors, their performances ranking equally with the worst of fantasy role players. Over all I had to force my self from seppuku with the knife I keep at my desk, to end the infernal horror of the series.

Even worse for the dignity (lol) the series; 'Krog Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire' a Comedy Central series of which I am now wholly that was designed to parody the 'seeker'; is superior to it in every way, the acting is good (much better), costuming significantly better, the story didn't make me wasn't to burst into flames as a preferable alternative.

Seeker <>

The 'seeker' is perhaps the greatest paragon of film based upon a book....

THE.

BOOK.

WAS.

BETTER!
(much better)

Update: What a Couple of Weeks

Ah so as you can guess from my title I have decided it more efficient just to do a generic update rather that to post individual thing I have been buzzing about; after all I am just one busy (very lazy) frood. So without further ado the stuff

- On new ground the other week I found this interesting flash game that is at the same time brilliantly executed, unbelievably cute, and vomit inducing (quite literally), it is called Spewer, as the subtitle says: "a game about puking", I admit it is not much more than that though it ma help to say that it is a platformer with great (if slightly wonky) physics , in which you primary puzzle solving tool is projectile vomiting (just like elementary school) to your target. But be warned this game is very tough, and those who do not want to be frustrated by repeated gruesome (if undeniably cute) deaths of your puking worm-thing.

- Last weekend the adventures of my band of chaotic treasure-looting mercenaries continued, the first "real" dungeon of my campaign was completed and the next is up coming. The mantle of divine spell caster was taken up by a new player: Bridger, another veteran of d&d and a druid. Yet again the party proves the old constants of being perfectly unpredictable, trying their best to temp death, and taking the violent solution above all others. There was also the bit of starting up a hither to unknown to me "zombie campaign" to pass the time at five in the morning when we were all to inebriated (mostly due to caffeine, late night, and propane fumes) to continue within a narrative structure of a traditional campaign.

Yeah, something like that

- last week I also found a relatively new roleplaying system, pathfinder, currently in an early stage a good portion of the manual can be downloaded on their site: paizo.com (Pathfinder RPG). I would basically refer to It as AD&D v3.75, for it is clearly a direct decedent of the game (certainly more so than fourth edition), I personally chose not to use it because it is basically interchangeable so therefore would be more difficult to convert (you know, people not remembering what they are playing), and may of the "significant" changes I had already included in my home-brew update/setting which I use for my campaign (though it is still mostly D&D), though one thing that may make little difference to those dedicated Role-players is the overly stylized (gamer english for: can't draw) Anime-ish art style

- I have just finished the fist cycle of the Elric novels by M. Moorcock , they are good, origional in the description and function of the planar multi-verse if a bit to existentialistic at some points for my general enjoyment of continued existence. the story kind of "pulpy" (as in the 50's-70's episodic type writing) Elric's adventures consist of moping, gaining hope, going fantastic places, meeting interesting characters, then after the struggle being driven to kill then by his psychotic-soul-sucking sapient rune-sword: Stormbringer, to relate this to you purely vidogaming types; Aurthas' (you know warcraft) blade Frostmorne took it's name and powers from the twin blade of Elric's; Mourneblade, in fact much of Aurthas (early on) was based upon Elric.

The Drawing of the Dark

What do mythological creatures, king Aurthur,vikings, Suleiman, and a drunk Irish landsneckt have in common, well for one thing they all are featured in a hidden gem of a book called the Drawing of the Dark, which despite it's stereotypical sounding name for fantasy, is the one of the most unique and certainly one of the best books I have ever read.

The story goes something like this;It is the year 1500-something and Brian Duffy an Irish Landsneckt (a mercenary, for those dolts who can't even tell you what the holy roman empire was) gets steaming drunk in the streets of Venice and up fighting, and kicking the asses of of three nobles who's father he called 'the bastard pimp of Suleiman. a passing.........( well at first you don't know what the hell he is, but it is important to the story so spoiler alert) sorcerer, called Aureleanis, who wants Duffy to be the bouncer for a tavern recently converted from a monastery famous for brewing Herzwesten (western heart) beer in Vienna, Duffy accepts this at an unusually high pay rate. so he travels north to Vienna along the way encountering bandits, demons, Dwarves, and a hunchbacked swiss artillery officer. upon arriving things get even weirder, he defends the brewery and the so called king of the west against the turks who mean to destroy it and therefore wipe out the western world, and he does it mostly drunk.

This book is truly great; It combines great story telling, witty (and not so much) humor, memorable characters, and it combines the best elements of all western mythology to create a completely interesting explanation for the western world (I'll give you a hint it has something to do with Fin Mac Cool and beer). If you have never seen this book find it and read it, for the drawing of the dark is a one of a kind read.