Christian Boutin Dot Com

2011 Weight Loss Recap

2012-01-01T10:54:00.002-05:00

Quick weight recap. As some of you know I note my weight more or less every morning and I crunch this data in Libra, a very nice Android app. Every year I do a recap. This year I've included all three years in the chart, with little green dots when something significantly positive (for my weight loss) takes place and a red dot for something negative. I'll write this year's main events after the break.

This year hasn't gone as planned. In fact, for a while it looked like I was going to go off tracks completely. But I steered back at the last minute, and ended up with a glorious 1lb loss for 2011.

2011 started well enough. Despite the expected holiday bump, I kept the course and kept losing the weight. Then in late February I made a fateful decision. My game development schedule was beginning to slide, my motivation to complete it and the growing competition on Android meant I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible. For that I needed more time. And working out takes time. So I took a break from exercising to crunch for the game. Turned out not to be a great decision. If we isolate the crunch time alone it's not so bad, but going off course for so long meant it would be that much harder to get back on it.

When the game was released I did my best to get back on track, and succeeded in a way. But a few moments later I went to Disney World for a vacation, and when I returned I completely failed to return to my good habits.

For the next few months I would take it really easy. Step on the bike only once in a while, eat like crap and overall returning to a lifestyle that had made me into the near-300 lbs man I hated. But the slide was so slow that I always believed (correctly it turned out) I could steer it back. In November I saw my trend going up, and decided it would not be acceptable to finish 2011 with a higher trend than I began. So I cut back on desserts, returned to the bike on a regular basis and restarted Dance Central, now Dance Central 2, with increased dedication.

And so I end 2011 with 1 lost pound over 2010. Considering I was aiming at losing 40, it's a rather colossal failure. But considering I'm still going "the right way", I dare say it could've been worst. Now aiming for a 30 pounds loss for 2012. I think it's reasonable, or to put it in a way more fitting for 2012, it's not the end of the world.

2011 Personal Twitter Hall of Fame Inductees

2011-12-31T11:45:00.000-05:00

I consider twitter my hive-mind. Basically, if I need to know something, odds are it will show up on my twitter feed. If not, either I didn't need to know, or my twitter feed is broken and I need to add people.

This year I decided to give a special mention to those twitter peeps who keep me well informed, who give good insight and provide me with such a great twitter experience. I've made 2 Top Fives, one Anglo and one Franco, plus a Top Three read-only feeds. Here we go:

Top 5 Anglo contacts: These are awesome people I follow, and I'm quite honoured that they follow me back. I put them in alphabetical order because I don't want to have to sort them out.

EmilyClaireAfan: I was lucky enough to meet with her at this year's MIGS. Recently became director of development and communications for the Canadian Interactive Alliance. Go Emily and looking forward to meeting you again at the 2012 GDC.

mike_acton: When I went to the GDC of 2008, I hadn't heard of Mike Acton. I left his speak as his new biggest fan. It's hard to hold a certain belief and be convinced that you're pretty much alone, and then see someone like Mike Acton confidently tell it like it is in front of an audience that's probably (maybe) going full steam against that, or at least has always been told things should be completely opposite. Since then I've been following his tweets, his speeches and his awesome http://altdevblogaday.com/ initiative.

psychicparrot: My #1 twitter pal, cool dude and maker of all http://psychicparrotgames.com/. Embodies the enthusiastic spirit of indie dev! Continued success through 2012 mate, looking forward reading your tweets.

stevestreeting: The mastermind behind Ogre for 10 years, Steve has positively influence so many people, free of charge, that it's hard to imagine him not deserving whatever good he gets. Dissecting the Ogre source code is probably the single most important factor in me properly learning OOP, which is critical to understand in today's world. His insight on technology, business and politics are generally spot-on.

VillageGamer: Deeply connected to two of the most awesome things there ever was: Canada and Technology. Tami of Village Gamer has been nothing but great towards me and I look forward to seeing more Canada-centric tech articles from her! Thank you for your coverage of Heroes of Zulula, Con Sonar! and Slash!

Honourable mentions (hope to hear more, see more, and maybe work with you in 2012) : SamColes, MasterBlud and stevewhitemusic

Top 3 Read-only feeds: They don't follow me back, but they provide me with great information, and you might not know about them.

MobileSyrup - If you're interested in the mobile industry, and are Canadian, Mobile Syrup can be your first and last stop.

theMapleTap - Canadian history factoids, because you can never know enough, eh?

RealTimeWWII - Interesting concept, RealTimeWWII is a twitter feed broadcasting from 72 years into the past. You can relive World War II through

Top 5 Franco: Mon top 5 franco pour les gens familiers avec la langue de molière.

MarieLuneHB - C'est difficile de pas vouloir suivre Marie-Lune, une geek totale qui s'assume et qui tweet plein de tranches de vie de manière directe et franchement pissante. À noter qu'elle tire comme un Stormtrooper. C'est à considérer avant de l'ajouter à votre squad d'Halo.

mcbernard - Impératrice du MIGS et connectée comme peu sur l'industrie du jeu vidéo à Montréal. Je l'ai croisé au MIGS et je peux dire qu'elle est totalement awesome! Elle tweet dans les 2 langues.

BenDaGeek - Collaborateur à M. Net

MelBChartier - Podcasteuse sur les jeux vidéos. Habite ma région natale et partage mon nom de famille. Suivez-la.

Zomby2D - Vieux pote du secondaire. Fan d'Android. C'est déja bein en masse!

Mentions honorables (à suivre pour 2012) :

Kamelot78, Scalazormo

Velvet Assassin Review

2011-09-11T17:08:00.001-04:00

I'm done with Velvet Assassin, which contrary to what that usually entails, doesn't mean I've finished it. A bit of context: I bought it off Steam for 5$ a few weeks back. I had usually heard not-so-good things about it but I decided to give it a go. I fell in love with the story of the real character that inspired this game, so I started with a positive predisposition.

Took me a while to get used to it. Although the concept of crawling in the shadows and stabbing an unsuspecting Nazi in the spleen is oddly satisfying, the game completely collapses onto itself as soon as you are spotted and suddenly need to be a competent fighter.

As such, the game suffers from three major flaws:

First, the "slit a dude's major artery" button is the "A" button. Whenever you're close enough to a bad guy who hasn't seen you, pressing "A" instant-kills the bastard, one-shot. But what does the "A" button does if you've been spotted? Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. So if you're a fraction of a second away from bringing down a Nazi, and you're spotted, "A" will not do pull out your knife and at least attempt a slash, it'll do nothing. To use a brain-wiring analogy, it would be as though you were an expert knife fighter, but only with your right hand, and if you wanted to assassinate someone, you had to do it with your left hand. Makes no sense. This is made even worst by the fact that what triggers the shutdown of the "A" button is the beginning of the enemy's surprise. So you can be one centimeter away from his throat, and 1/100th of a second away from ending his life, suddenly your attack button does nothing. In real life, the dude would still die, he would just die a bit more surprised.

Second, once surprise is gone, you have to activate the horribly clunky trigger-based fighting controls. This joke-of-a-system turns your expert assassin into a bumbling, drunken, marksmanship-deprived idiot. Throughout their evolution console-based shooters have evolved several compensation mechanisms to counter the fact that controllers are awful when it comes to precision and aiming. Velvet Assassin ignores all of that and gives you raw unassisted aiming. The argument for making manual aiming/fighting clunky and bad in stealth action games is generally based upon the fact that if you play your game well, you're never supposed to resort to that. You're an expert stealth killer, not front line grunt. In a way I could forgive this if not for the third and final flaw : no stealth in the final battle.

For the final battle, the designers decided to throw out everything that was good in their game and focus exclusively on what sucked: the no-stealth battles. Made artificially difficult, not by its design but by the horridness of the controls, the final waves of enemies produce an endless exercise in frustration. Oh and you can't go back and grind to level up your stats.

Velvet Assassin isn't such a bad game, and I would've left with a better experience had the ending just been sneaking up to a dude and slitting his throat, one-shot, rather than this. It's so annoying to give up on a game at the end. I find myself doing that more and more. But that's going to be part of an upcoming rant entitled "Games are too long".

Until then, rant-off.

2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss - Quarter 4: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2010-12-31T10:10:00.008-05:00

If there was one way to describe my behaviour in the third quarter, it would be this: Asleep at the wheel. I failed to recognize the changing landscape and I just kept on course, even though that course was headed straight for a cliff. Fortunately, I woke up and managed to steer clear of the abyss.

October started with the progressive implementation of two new rules that would set myself up to reach my first major milestone. The first one, which was implemented on day 1, was to go up the stairs, 20 floors, four times a week. I was extremely lucky for this one, because a group of cool motivated people at work were already doing this on a daily basis. All I had to do is attach myself to that group. Motivation is always easier in a group. And it's also much more interesting to talk your way up, than to do it alone, in silence.

The second one was the complete boycott of everything related to bloody machine. This means the machine itself, the coffee machine next to it (instant ain't so bad) and any activity benefiting from the revenues of either. I cannot force them to fix the problem, but I can make bloody sure I don't support them until they do. But control is a hard thing, when faced with these options everyday. So I applied control where I could: No change. I empty my pockets of loose change every morning. And I try to never create a situation where I will have spare change in my pocket.

A very wise friend once said to me: The best way to win in life is to pit your weaknesses against one-another. Instead of trying to fix your weaknesses, find out if another one of your weakness would be able to deal with this one. The original weakness being gluttony, the ones used against it would be sloth and pride.

Sure every time I go for a glass of water in the kitchen I am stared down at by the machine and its contents. But will I step on my pride and ask for change? Not really. Will I break a 20 by making the effort of going down the elevator to buy some from the dépanneur? Meh. Maybe I don't want this crap so much, now.

The results of these two rather draconian measures was instantaneously felt, and my weight started to drop rapidly and consistently. I lost a bit more than 2lbs, and reached a huge milestone (marked with A).

What's that? A rapid climb? A giant bump on the road? Are my new measures failing. No they are not. The point marked A in October signalled my passing from a Class II Obese BMI-rated person to a Class I. Huzzah! And as it was planned since the beginning, this called for a week-long binge and a break from any and all exercise.

Considering the circumstances leading up to the achievement, I could've decided to postpone the binge. But what good is a reward system if you deprive yourself of it when the time comes?

So I crossed the line back up again, but rapidly crossed it a third time. This time, hopefully, for good.

November was a great month. It saw the arrival of a new and important piece in the puzzle: The Kinect. Just as Dance Dance Revolution helped me in the past, Microsoft's motion-detecting gizmo would play a huge role in the upcoming month.

There are two ways to look at November. One could say I lost only three pounds in a full month. I prefer to consider I lost four pounds in under three weeks. December would show that the second way to look at it was a better indication of the future.

With a winning combination of the morning bike routine, the almost daily 20 floors stair climb, Kinect Dance Central, and the boycott of the machine, December became my best month on the record. With close to seven pounds lost and almost an 100% trend dropping metrics. There was one exception, marked A, when a convergence of Christmas and Birthday-related obligations led to four restaurant meals in a row, and a very tiny bump. But other than that, even the Christmas Eve party (marked B) didn't managed to bump my actual weight above my trend line.

An so my 2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss ends on an very positive note. Although the road through it was bumpy, inconsistent and often doubtful, I managed, at the very last moment, to get back on track and deliver acceptable results.

Lesson learned: Find weaknesses to deal with your other weaknesses. Apply control where it is easiest.

I would conclude with this bit of advice: Find the proper tools to help you. You can succeed with willpower alone, but if you have proper tools you'll have an easier time, and a lower chance of failing. Who knows what these are in your case, but in my case, those were:

Prioritisation. Your weight-loss process must be #1 or close to #1 in your order of priority. In my case it started to work when I replaced my game development project (which can be an endless time sink) with this as a top priority in my life. Of course, people with families might not be able to bring this to #1, but keep it as high as possible.
My strategically positioned stationary bike along with an endless array of 30-minutes TV shows to watch on it.
The "Libra" app on Android.
Proper Metrics. I can't stress this enough. Being able to properly quantify the consequences of your actions is an absolute key.
The stair-climbing posse (Michelle, Carole and Françoise).
Pride (Trumps Sloth and Gluttony).
Coffee (haven't mentioned that, but it helped a lot. I used to not drink coffee at all. Now I have 1 coffee after lunch and it does wonder to eliminate the need for a mid-afternoon snack).
Sloth (Trumps Gluttony).
Kinect Dance Central (with special thanks to Nelly Furtado, Lady Gaga, Cascada and the Quad City DJ's, all of whose music I would never listen to in any other circumstances).

Considering my current trend, I have every reason to believe 2011 will see my ongoing weight problem as something of the past. I'll come back to this blog in a year, and tell you all about it. Happy New Year!

2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss - Quarter 3: The Fucking Machine

2010-12-29T18:47:00.024-05:00

I deliberately left a piece of the story out of the last entry, because this quarter will be devoted almost exclusively to it. Even though it entered into (dis)service in June, its full effect became quite obvious in the third quarter.

A company that prides itself into offering its employees classes on health and fitness, a company that has been exclusively offering fresh fruit as snacks to its employees. That same company started offering candy bars and chips in the kitchen, inside a dark gray monstrosity of a vending machine. Right next to the water cooler. But these blog entries are about the numbers, so let's start with July:

With a -0.4lbs (I usually round monthly results, not this time). July was very hard. My rhythm was the same, except for that blasted machine. Compulsion works rather sneakily. You slip once, you slip twice, pretty soon you just give up on that week, and then on the month. Although there are healthy options in the machine, what power do these wield? Not much. I was still, strangely, unable to pinpoint the machine as the source of my failure. I failed to see just how much money I was pouring in it. It would take another two months for the wake-up call.

August started much as July ended. In a complete stand-still. Despite sweating my ass off on my bike and rationing my food intake at home, there appeared to be no way of breaking off that stalemate. Until the final weeks of the month came. Then all of a sudden my weight started to drop, in an abrupt fashion. I was relieved. August would salvage my efforts with a striking -4lbs, most of which took place in the final two weeks. It was only a few weeks later, after isolating this drop, that it became clear. My weight dropped while I was on vacations (Marked A).

There is a reason why my first entry dealt with 2009. It is clear that staying home was a huge problem when it came to sweets and fat accessibility. If, from my home workstation, I only needed to walk five feet to get some crap food, then there is a problem. My workplace environment provided a sanctuary, a place where in order to get crap food, I needed to make an effort for it.

The machine turned that reality upside down. My workplace environment became much more hostile than my home environment. Even though the latter remained as poisonous as ever. That new reality would now lead to the complete failure that is September.

Late August's drop misled me. I really thought things were under control. As September began, my weight zigzagged around my trend line. I was unable to make any progress. By the middle of the month and an endless array of quarters swallowed by the machine, it became obvious that I was losing this battle. Protests against the machine's presence or its content were quickly dismissed or laughed away.

The third quarter was certainly the hardest, with a grand total of four pounds lost. Although my resolve was strong, and my efforts as far as biking and controlling my home food intake remained, it was obviously not enough. When September ended with a positive +0.8 lbs, it became obvious that drastic measures were necessary.

Lesson learned: Never think things are under control, and don't expect or rely on outside support.

More to come in the fourth and final quarter of 2010: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss - Quarter 2: Rhythm Found

2010-12-29T11:58:00.008-05:00

I began the second quarter reeling from what appeared to be a failure in finding a maintaining a good rhythm. Post GDC con crud was over but I had somehow lost motivation. For a long period (marked A) I even stopped weighting myself. I kept on doing little things but I really had trouble finding my rhythm.

Had I kept weighting myself I would've found out the small steps and attempts I was making were actually working. Something I found out when I stepped on the scale after a while. I only lost a bit more than a pound, but it was still positive.

May marked the discovery of the exercise rhythm that more or less holds up to this day. It goes like this: 1x20 minutes of bike, four weekdays out of five, first thing after breakfast. 1x40 minutes of bike Saturdays and Sundays, anytime between breakfast and lunch.

In May I also managed to strike a sustainable calorie/sweets intake regime. I've tried to simply pull the plug on sweets. But that never worked. It always led to a binge or two, generally in such rapid successions that any gain I made would be instantly lost. Going for granola bars or tiny fun-sized treats also never worked. I would simply eat more because they weren't satisfying.

My own personal favourite: M&M's Tiger Brownies. These have the lowest calories of all their dessert offerings. Even though they recommend cutting it in 12, I managed to cut it in 16 and still get a decent amount of satisfaction from them. They don't taste so good that you can't resist having more, or so bad that they don't give you any satisfaction.

This recipe led to an awesome month of May, with a loss of more than 4 pounds. A pound a week is 52 pounds a year, which would be enough, really. So as long as nothing changed, everything would be fine.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't be. Some people at work had a brilliant idea, and it led to the bumps and slides of June.

Still, 3 pounds lost in June is honorable. Not great, not even that good. But it's still in the right direction.

The second quarter of 2010 saw me go from 279lbs to 271lbs, so only 8 pounds. Having lost 11 pounds in the first quarter, it meant things were not progressing as they should. But they still were. 20 pounds for half a year means 40 pounds for a full year. Not too bad right? Unfortunately, things would go from bad to worst in the third quarter.

Lesson learned: Numbers are you best friend. Never stop inputting numbers in the machine. Even if they don't speak to you at first, looking back at them might give you more information than you'd think.

More to come in Quarter 3: The Fucking Machine.

Giftless Christmas

2010-12-25T09:46:00.001-05:00

This year, for the first time ever, the family tried an experiment: no gifts between adults of the family. We got together for the food, and there were still gifts under the tree, but they were for the two children. Whatever couples decided to give each-other wouldn't happen at this event, but in private. We tried several things over the years, secret santa (I hated that), everyone gives to everyone else (strain on the budget of some). And so on. But Christmas was always stressful. There are two reasons gifting didn't work.

The first is that, as a family, none of us are really on the same planet. We all love each-other but have our separate fields of interest. Quite frankly, I wouldn't know where to begin in order to buy my sister a gift. Nor her a gift for me. We fixed that with an exchange of wishlists. And then we decided on a relative budget. But as I explained to them, this more or less equated to all of us putting a 50$ bill in a hat, then each of us picking a random 50$ bill from that hat. I often tried to go outside the list, with mixed results. Exchanging gift cards is even closer to that. So meh.

Above that though, I think the primary reason goes more along the line of: We all have more than enough crap as it is. We're lucky to all be relatively well-off. Whatever we really need, we can get. We all hear that the essential thing on Christmas is to spend time with loved ones. Wasn't it time to focus on that?

Yesterday was the big Christmas Eve party. Here are the results:

Result #1: the pile of gifts was much less obsece and shameful than that of years past. It was still there, and it was still a lot, but it didn't make me want to go out of the house and scream apologies to the less fortunate.

Result #2: More time. The time spend unwrapping my gifts, I instead spend with my nephews building up their new Star Wars lego sets and other gifts. We also managed to play cards, something we always think we'll do but always end up skipping. Wii fit was also part of it. More quality time, less crap.

Result #3: Although a few family members (3 out of 5, actually) proclaimed that it was very hard for them not to buy gifts for people, all of them agreed after the unwrapping that it was for the best.

Result #4: It started and ended way earlier. Less preparations means we could get together at about 6ish. And I was home by midnight. None of us are getting any younger, and none(?) of us try to pretend we're still young. So getting to bed at 3am isn't a requirement any longer.

Conclusions: It was a very good decision overall. And I'm sure we'll stick with that. For me, it means that the forced Christmas consumerist drive is at an end. For mom, it means the stress of "getting the right thing" is gone. For sis it means focusing on getting gifts for her sons. For bro, it means his budget isn't as strained as it was before. Win. Win. Win. Win. Win.

2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss - Quarter 1: Enter the Bike

2010-12-16T21:18:00.012-05:00

January's trend can be attributed to two main elements: A return to work, and the arrival of my stationary bike.

Return to work didn't only mean that I had two imposed 10-minutes walks (to the subway and back), but mostly a slightly more active lifestyle with much less access to crap food like cake or chocolate, which strangely always managed to find their way into my cupboard.

As far as biking went, things were a bit awkward. The tool is one thing, the routine is another. Still fixated on finishing my game, even a few minutes a day appeared a lot. I started with 40 minutes routines during the evening. I couldn't manage to do them more than twice or so a week. It always felt like wasted time, and was unsustainable.

I still wonder how I managed to lose the 4.2 pounds I did. I attribute it to the fact that the first pounds are the easiest to lose.

Note that the big "A" zone in this image marks a time when I did not weight myself or did not enter the data in the spreadsheet. I just had a starting value (290) and an ending value (285.5).

Across January and February, different food rationing attempts and exercise routines were made. None of them were particularly effective. Either because they didn't achieve much, or were untenable. Finding a balance between "not enough result" and "so much effort it can't be sustained" would become the most difficult part of this effort. Still, another 5 pounds gone. It appeared that even though my rhythm was erratic, the effort was paying off.

March marked the very first bump. There would be more, but this one was the first, and it hit pretty hard. I was fully expecting my trip to San Francisco and the GDC (marked with A) to cause an upturn. But strangely, it was far otherwise. However, I caught a very bad case of the "con crud", a month-long cold, and went into a complete exercise shutdown just following the GDC. That prolonged period of idleness whose beginning is shown here, would see its effects continue in April. (Note that I did not weight myself during the period of the GDC).

As a first quarter go, this one wasn't so bad. From a 290 to a 279 trend 12 weeks. In three short months I had lost everything I had gained during the last year, so I had every reason to look up.

I had no clue that in a few more months, one of the main reasons why I managed to lose that weight would disappear.

Lesson learned: Finding a rhythm that's sustainable and delivers results is of the utmost importance. Accept that your first attempts may not be well-adjusted, be ready to readjust.

More to come in Quarter 2: Rhythm Found.

2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss - Prelude

2010-12-12T19:44:00.007-05:00

2010 will have been a great year for my weight, as the data you will be presented with will attest. During the next few weeks you will be presented with 4 quarterly graphs showing my progress, each of which will be accompanied by a blog post like the one you're reading now.

Before I get started, a quick note on the process. I used to enter my weight everyday in an openoffice calc spreadsheet, and have it calculate my trend and so on. A very clunky process. In April I got the "libra" app for Android. More on it later, but it's absolutely awesome.

I cannot stress this enough: For me at least, having as much metric as possible is essential for many reasons. The more obvious one is to know where I am and where I'm going, but it's also awesome to link cause and effect. Again, more on that later.

Let's start with a quick recap of 2009:

Note that the red line represents the calculated trend, the white lines with red dots at the end represents the actual weight of the day. Anything in green was added later, and is referenced in the blog post.

2009 saw huge variations in my weight, mostly on the wrong side. The green line is an estimate based on the times I weighted myself during that period. I do remember starting 2009 in a downward trend. That wasn't the result of any effort on my part, as much as the result of a rather difficult breakup. The following climb also entered into that. First I lost my appetite, then I overcompensated. Wish I knew how I should've dealt with this better, but I consider it the same as getting into a tailspin: you do your best, but you accept you'll lose a lot of altitude.

Point A marks the beginning of a six-months off work sabbatical. Those weren't vacations by any means, but were really meant for me to finish this huge video game project I had been working on for 3 years. Considering I would be off work, I also assumed I would have plenty of time to exercise and so I bought a Dance Dance Revolution hard mat to help me out. Needless to say, that didn't do much.

One thing I will say about weight loss is that it's all in your head. But I don't mean it in a holistic bullshitty sort of way. I mean it in the sense that if you don't really absolutely commit to it, you'll fail. The "B" circle is a prime example of that. Notice how every time I get above the 290 pounds mark, I immediately take a downward turn, but as soon as I'm comfortably below, I climb back up?

This ping pong effect is the result of a great and absolute commitment that has always been with me. It simply is: I will never go over 300lbs. As soon as the threat looms, I adjust my behaviour, I change what I eat, and what I do, and I get results. As soon as the threat is gone, then eating right and exercising play second fiddle to working on my game project. If my brain could rework my behaviour around that commitment, then changing the nature of the commitment would be what's needed to get my weight lower.

Point C marks my return to my job after that sabbatical. I think the fact that I had utterly failed to achieve my project objectives did put things into perspective. I realized that had I focused on weight loss as a primary, and the project as a secondary, instead of the other way around, I still would have failed the project, but maybe I would have succeeded with weight loss.

So I went with the clichéd new year resolution. In 2010 I would take the necessary measures to drop the weight. Starting with buying equipment. Considering the space I had to deal with, I went with a stationary bike. And considering my weight, I went with a rather expensive one. Those kinds of decisions are always hard, because we all know where home exercise equipment usually end up, and that bike was more than a thousand bucks. How would that work out for me? More to come in the first entry of 2010: Enters the Bike.

Why I hate American Dramas

2010-11-28T10:08:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I watched the first episode of "The Walking Dead". I have always been a fan of zombies (although they are getting quite overused these days) but I'm also very wary of recent American dramas. When I watched "The Walking Dead", and suddenly found myself hurling heavy and sharp objects at my TV, screaming at the writers and cursing the series to hell, I finally realized why: It's inconceivable for any American Series, be it period-piece, modern drama, science fiction or fantasy, to be centered around ANYTHING except people cheating on their spouse.

They can't help it. It has to come to the forefront. "I am a high-ranked publicity firm director in the '50s? Of course I cheat on my wife." "Cylons everywhere? Well I'll cheat on my super hot wife and/or husband." "Zombie apocalypse? Let's blow my husband's best friend. After all, I haven't seen my husband in a few days, so fuck it." Is it even remotely possible for them to not have this as the main plot point? Is it a marketing thing? "The female demographic we try to reach needs this gossip/cheating mechanism to get hooked. You have to throw this in. Also, it has to be in the first episode. Chop! chop!".

It sucks, because if used properly, it can become a very powerful element of a well thought-out series. Captain Sheridan's wife in Babylon 5, for example. How that works out. Very mature, very human.

Now it's just part of a marketing checklist. These current-generation characters are supposed to be more real because they're flawed. But once the way flaws are inserted becomes so obvious, they become as fake as the over-the-top heroes of the golden days.

And don't get me started on how this pattern is poisonous for real life human relations. Because if all TV characters cheat on their spouse, what do you think YOUR mate is doing when he or she spends more than 5 minutes away from your sight?

Fuck it. I'll just watch Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes or Fullmetal Alchemist again.

Flash on Android. The End?

2010-09-01T08:22:00.004-04:00

This morning I woke up to a popup screen on my Motorola Droid. It was a system update that would (finally?) allow me to install the Flash plugin on my device. At long last I was going to be able to test out this "full web experience on mobile".

I'll start out with my conclusions: Flash is most likely dead. The "full web experience on mobile" marketing scheme is a total bungle, one from which Flash will have a nearly impossible task of recovering from.

Here's a conversation that probably took place at some point:

Marketing Guy: "Can we get Flash applications to run on portable devices"
Tech Guy: "Of course, a computer is a computer. Code is code. It can be done"
MG: "So we could advertise the full web experience on mobile right?"
TG: "Well, I wouldn't go that far, the technical specifications of mobile dev..."
MG: "You're saying we can't get Flash applications to run on portable devices?"
TG: "We can, technically, but current Flash applications are not optimized to run on low-end equip..."
MG: "FULL WEB EXPERIENCE! We'll definitely kill Apple with that. Forever. We rule. Marketing FTW!"
TG: "But..."
MG: "No time for arguments, get coding, I take care of the press releases!"

So they've spend the last year overselling Flash. And now the smokes and mirrors are gone, and the end result pretty much sucks. People were expecting the full web experience on their mobile (wonder who put THAT in their heads) and they're experiencing what they would if they pulled out a 7 year old computer out of the closet, installed Vista on it and started browsing.

The backlash is violent, and based on what people have been sold, justified. But is Flash truly over?

First of all, I think it's fair to separate Flash development into 2 categories: website design/navigation and visually heavier web applications (such as games and movies).

As a website design and navigation tool, Flash is dead. Finished. Over. Its hardware requirements are too steep and the added value vs. HTML5 is becoming non-existent. You used to need Flash for things as simple as decent rollovers and any form of movement. Not anymore. Is it worth it for a website to maintain both an HTML5 version for mobile and a Flash version for laptops and desktops? I don't think so.

And since HTML5 now embeds videos, that too is over for the little plugin that could. Sorry Adobe, time to move on.

Here is, I think, the last thing that could both save Flash and also tremendously help Android as a platform: Flash games.

Flash is a unique and incredibly well-crafted integrated development environment. One that has been in heavy use for the past decade. You have legions of Flash developers out there ready to make new or port old Flash games. There are thousands of Flash games spread throughout the Internet at the moment. Many of these games exceed in quality the current Android offerings. Offer Android Application as a target platform for Flash. Of course developers will have to optimize their code, test their games against the actual hardware it will run on. (Meaning Flash applications would suddenly run well on mobile devices). You could then boost the catalog of good Android games. As a developer, the cost-benefits of porting existing code and assets on the platform with just a few adjustments would suddenly make more sense.

Android wins by getting more content, and Flash wins for staying a pertinent development environment (for a few more years). For Flash, that's kind of a last hope. For Android, although the platform did lose face and credibility for not really being able to offer that "full web experience" it promised, its current adoption rate makes this issue a non-threat.

Supreme Commander II: Final Thoughts

2010-07-24T08:51:00.003-04:00

So despite my previous post I ended up finishing Supreme Commander II. The thing about modern RTS is that they assume you're playing the campaign as a sort of training for your eventual online multiplayer annihilation. A completely false assumption in many cases, but nonetheless it means the single-player campaign is relatively short. So I played through it.

I don't hate Supreme Commander II as much as I did originally. It still has some of the ingredients that made Total Annihilation a classic and Supreme Commander I the last great RTS.

The physics-based movement and combat of Total, which even in 1997 made Starcraft look completely obsolete and even puts the as-of-yet-unreleased Starcraft II to shame, is still present.

The story is another positive. Although not as deep and intriguing as Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, is still leagues beyond the previous Supreme and Total before them.

Still, so many efforts were put to dumb down this series. Efforts like unit type reduction and the removal of the crucial factory automation process. Efforts that do nothing to deepen or streamline the experience, but just serve to increase the clicks-per-minute numbers to a pathetic Starcraftesque level.

Final thoughts? You can't win against Starcraft, as bad as that game was and as bad as the second one will be. The crowds will flock to it, buy it, love it. So why change course to match this mundane-magnet? You want their endless supply of money? You ain't getting it. And you're turning your niche against you.

Rant: Supreme Commander II killed Total Annihilation.

2010-06-27T15:12:00.005-04:00

When Total Annihilation came out, it made me look away from every other RTS games for good. Many reasons for that, not the least of which was killed by Supreme Commander 2.

I thought TA, and later SC, was putting the strategy in RTS, while Starcraft and others focused on quick-clicking micro-management. I call typical RTS games "clickfests". It's not so much about having a good strategy, as it is about clicking on the right unit with the right timing to unleash the right power. You're not the general of a competent army, but the mom of a bunch of 2 year-old who won't do a god damn thing unless you tell them to.

Where TA and SC shined was in production management. Factories had orders: Build this, deploy there. All of that packed in a nice queue, which could become endless in SC with queue looping. Once a factory is set, you can forget it for the rest of the game, and focus on strategy instead. As is it in real life, nothing is prepaid. You must supply as units are built. If supply is insufficient, production pauses and then resumes automatically as resources become available. It's very streamlined, very realistic and very good.

Now Supreme Commander 2 comes along, and all of a sudden I'm staring at a generic RTS which I thankfully bought on sales on Steam and not full-priced. I will most likely not play it again after mission 3. In SC2, everything must be prepaid. So if, for example, I want my air factory to make 5 fighters, then 1 bomber, then loop, I have to pay for all 5 fighters and 1 bomber IN ADVANCE. But it's ok right? Once you can afford 1 iteration of the loop, you can loop it and it's set for the rest of the game right? Nope. If at any time you run out of resources, the factory will shut itself down, never to resume production again unless you get off your general's chair and start wearing your industry leader hat, personally walking into the factory and flip the fucking on-off switch yourself.

TA and SC, contrary to all other RTS, made me focus on strategy and planning instead of constant click-festing and micromanaging a bunch of children. It was about shifting battle lines. Now all of that is gone.

And when the enemy punctures through your eastern front and leaves you scratching your head as to how they could have succeeded, you'll realise with horror all your factories have been shut down for 10 minutes and you're sitting on the biggest pile of money in the universe. All useless. Because you were busy taking care of your western front (the actual strategic warfare portion of the game, the fun part), and because the factory heads are complete retards now, you lose.

I don't know if it's the bad influence of Square Enix, but it appears in trying to bow down to pressures to go mainstream, the franchise has killed what made it special.

San Francisco 2010, debriefing.

2010-03-16T12:32:00.003-04:00

Here are a few bullet points about my trip to San Francisco. Will elaborate on each in future posts.

* Air Travel: This was my first shot at air travel. Found out there's really nothing to it. Though I did miss my transfer to Montreal at Toronto, it was no big deal. Flew United to go and Air Canada on the way back.

* The City: San Francisco is probably one of the best city on the continent. Perfect climate, no freeze, ocean close-by, decent public transit. But lots and lots of hills.

* The GDC: With the rise of portable technology and social gaming, the GDC is more relevant to my job than ever before. Learned a lot, will make a presentation to my colleagues later.

Few things to note:

- Became sick with the cold 2 days before I left. This was (and still is) the worst cold I got and I dragged it all along my trip. Rested more than I wanted. Was less social than I would've wanted.

- Did not have time to rent a car and go North. Would've needed an extra day.

- Of course I tried the In-Out Burger.

- Tried to go to Cheesecake Factory on Geary. It was way too full.

- Best Tourist Moment: Visiting an actual in-water WWII submarine anchored in the San Francisco Bay.

- Best GDC Speak: Realtime Metrics by Zynga, the makers of Farmville. Holy smoke!

- Purchases: Didn't buy much. A DVD in Japantown and a set of action figures in Chinatown.

New shirt designs for Tales of the USCA

2010-02-21T10:17:00.002-05:00

I rushed quite a bit yesterday getting those designs ready. Will have to order them rush to get a few of them in time for the GDC. Enjoy!

The 2 updated classic logo designs:
The United States Colonial Authority
Bolivarian Commonwealth

The 3 new character designs:
Jake Dallas
Selena Vargaz
Anton Leary

Thinking of moving from cafepress to printfection so I get one store for all designs. But right now they couldn't deliver in time (I found out kind of late I was headed to the GDC) so I'm sticking with cafepress for the time being. Let me know what you think of the designs. Cheers!

Buying from the Playstation Store in 13 easy steps!

2010-01-23T15:26:00.001-05:00

Step 1) Create an account.
Step 2) Log In.
Step 3) Find the game you want, which is harder than you'd think as they're horrible sorted out.
Step 4) Be told you need to install Media Go!
Step 5) Install Media Go!
Step 6) Try to buy again.
Step 7) Be told that you need something called "PSP Downloader" from Sony.
Step 8) Download PSP Downloader.
Step 9) Try to buy again.
Step 10) Be told you need to upgrade your PSP firmware.
Step 11) Update Firmware.
Step 12) Try again.
Step 13) It works.

Hurray for Sony!

No login: A world turned upside-down

2009-11-29T17:56:00.003-05:00

I was getting a bit annoyed with always having to enter a login to load my Vista and 7 machine. It's not like there's anyone else in here who's going to be using those machines, and if they do what could they find, really? So I decided to do away with requiring login on my PCs at home. I had already done it with my Ubuntu UNR netbook and it was quite easy and at quite the obvious place. So obvious in fact that I forgot it as something so obvious it was useless to memorize it.

I started to dig through the menus of both my Vista and 7 machines. But that option was nowhere to be found. So I looked online and pretty much all tutorials on how to do this include typing a cryptic command in the command prompt or start menu search box (namely something called netplwiz).

Interesting. Ubuntu Linux, easy. Windows, hard. Are we looking at a time when the bloated nature of Windows catches up to it? It will be interesting to see where that goes.

Site facelift

2009-11-10T00:25:00.002-05:00

christianboutin.com is dead, long live christianboutin.com! After months of having a harder and harder time looking at my website without wincing, I've decided to give it a long-overdue facelift. But because all of my time is taken by Tales of the USCA, the only thing I could do was simply turn it into a standardised blog-type website.

Improvements include a new color scheme (one of the basic templates of blogspot, for now at least), but more importantly a fixed-width layout. The other would stretch forever to fill up the screen, and made reading blog entries on bigger widescreen monitors a giant pain. I also added, on the right pane, my identities across the web. Looking for me on facebook? The link is there. Twitter, LinkedIn, Xbox Live and so on. That should make me easier to find.

I should at the very least be more tempted to blog more often, now that entries won't be such a pain to read! Catch you somewhere on the web...

3 years later, Linux still a no-go

2009-11-02T08:53:00.003-05:00

About three years ago I made a rant about Linux, how it wasn't ready from prime time and may never be. In three years, things have changed, but that truth remains.

I got very excited by Ubuntu Karmic Koala, especially the netbook remix (UNR) which I thought was not only a good option for my own netbook, but probably a great option for my parents, who are struggling with the tiny icons and the cluttered, badly disorganized Vista/XP start menu. The desktop paradigm shift, turning it into a pertinently categorized giant menu instead of the typical waste of space, is I think a stroke of genius for non-tech people.

I decided to push forward and refurbish one of my old-but-not-so-old desktop with Ubuntu UNR and try to migrate my parents, mainly my dad, over to it. They have the most basic needs computer users can have. Browse the web, email, IM and crunch numbers in OpenOffice Calc.

So I brought the computer over for a full day of training and migration. Taught my dad about the cloud, set him up with a gmail account so he could now use IMAP instead of POP with both his current Vista laptop and new UNR desktop. Installed dropbox so he could work on his OpenOffice documents on both PCs as well. The idea was to keep his options opened.

Most of this may sound rather mundane and basic for the tech-savvy, but teaching those rather new concepts to people in that age group is a serious and somewhat debilitating experience. Nevertheless I was rather pleased with the results.

On a sidenote, I found out to my dismay that for some reason half of his spreadsheet weren't made with OpenOffice (which I had installed on his Vista machine a while back) but with Works (Ugh!) so I had a conversion job to do (openoffice doesn't open works spreadsheets). That added about an hour to the whole process.

Near the end of the day I noticed he was comparing his on-screen spreadsheets with the printed copies, to see if I had done my conversion job properly. That reminded me that we hadn't plugged in the printer yet. I told him we should take care of that now.

He started to look for his drivers CD and I just said "No need for that, just plug it in". He didn't believe me "You need a CD to install a printer" he retorted. At that point I was showing a sort of arrogant smirk, because I knew that when he would plug in the printer and it would work right away, he would be so impressed.

The printer was a kind of mid-inkjet-era standard, default, run of the mill Lexmark z816. The kind that's on sale every other week. I couldn't possibly imagine that such a printer wouldn't be supported by default. And yet printing on this device was absolutely above and beyond what Canonical's new operation system could deliver.

Googling this problem revealed dozens and dozens of forum posts of people with the same printer and problem, and little solutions outside getting a new printer. A few people mentioned a long and horrible series of command-line operations, package download, conversions and so forth. These posts were followed by a rather high percentage of people saying it didn't work, or it worked with one version of Ubuntu but not another. That was the end of that.

Conclusions : "Congratulations Dad, after a day of hard work you now have, cluttering your apartment, this giant useless brick thing that can't do shit for you. I know you hate Vista, but guess what? VISTA PRINTS".

Few words could describe the rage and disappointment I felt after basically throwing away a vacation day down the garbage. Linux being a free and volunteer-type rig, it's hard to be mad at them for failing to support this printer. I think the printer industry may very well be guilty here. Guilty of requiring so many specific drivers for such a basic task.

I am disappointed that once again, the little OS that could, didn't.

Fantasia 2009 : Love Exposure

2009-07-13T08:53:00.011-04:00

It's hard to summarize Love Exposure in a few words. Yu, the son of an uptight catholic priest (who became a priest after the untimely death of Yu's mother) slowly and painfully rebels against his father (and his own good nature) by committing increasingly sinful acts. Being rather good-natured but motivated to commit sin, he stops at the highest level of perversion he can reach : Stealthily taking pictures of women's panties. This leads him to meet Yoko, with whom he falls in love. In his quest to fulfil a promise to his departed mother, he becomes caught in a whirlwind of characters, from his father, to his father's new fling Saori, the mean-spirited gang leader chick Koike, the mysterious cult members of Church Zero, and Yoko, which despite being the woman of his dream, has a passionate hatred of all men.

The length of that movie almost led me to skip it, and what a mistake it would have been. Love Exposure touches pretty much every kind of love you can imagine : Parental love, religious love, romantic love, friendship, sibling love and so on. But instead of dealing with it in the usual western aseptic way, it takes the exact opposite path. With deception, rape, incest and abuse of many forms taking centre stage, Love Exposure plunges its hand in the vilest forms of them all. But from perfect ugliness, can perfect beauty emerge?

The treatment, as is often the case with Japanese cinema, goes from deadly serious to slapstick comedy to moments of pure spiritual awakening, this truly is a four hour roller-coaster ride of emotions. The execution is fantastic, the cast is perfect, the music is generally excellent (the use of Ravel's Bolero in the first act is rather appropriate for a movie that will go on for another three hours). I was either laughing, fighting tears, wincing, or sitting there with my jaw dropped practially the whole time.

As an indication of the power of this movie, one of the more beautifully erotic moment was met with a theater that was awe and silence-stricken rather than ready to scream "Yeah" or "Alright!" as is often the case with the Fantasia crowd (even in serious movies, unfortunately). Something worth noting, Love Exposure is completely nudity-free. A strange contrast from the subject matter.

The movie, however, isn't perfect. Although the first two hours just zoom by like an arrow, the remaining two have a few pacing issues, minutes here and there where points that were already made, clearly, are remade. Perhaps an iron fist with a perfect sense of timing could've trimmed this to a somewhat better 3 hours experience.

Still, you shouldn't let the length, or anything else really, stand between you and this movie. Through this four hour path of destruction, and reconstruction, at least a thing or two you hold sacred will be damaged.

For the subtitled trailer : Click here!

Resurrecting the archive... again

2009-04-06T19:50:00.003-04:00

There's been a few sales of the OSP Complete Archive CD-ROM on cafepress. But this is the information age, and the CD-ROM may not be the optimal way of distribution anymore. The OSP Complete Archive just went digital! visit http://christianboutin.com/osparchive and click on "BUY NOW", you'll have a choice to get all those older games for 5.99$ instead of 14.95$ for the CD-ROM. Also, the first 100 customers to type in the coupon code WALL-32RF-BRTK will get 1$ off, how cool is that?

Fantasia : Repo : The Genetic Opera, Sasori, Hunting Grounds and Going by the Book

2008-07-23T21:37:00.002-04:00

This year's final movie block averages the lowest of all the movie blocks I've seen this year. In fact, before sitting through one of these films, I could have proclaimed "Best Fantasia Ever", in the sense that I had seen absolutely no dud. Oh well, here's the rundown.

Repo is very interesting film, with an awesome rock/opera soundtrack. Although musically strong, the writing was only average. The universe is very imaginative and interesting, the visuals are artsy and sharp. The cast is great. Overall a good film.

I have no doubt that porting a manga series to the big screen is a very difficult task. Some succeed, and then there's Sasori. Disconnected, trying desperately to fit too much material in the time it has, suffering from intense pacing problems, Sasori is an unfortunate example of how not to adapt a manga to the big screen. It's unfortunate though, because many of the fight scenes are spectacular and very well done. Many characters are interesting, and I would have liked to see their story better told. Sometimes '70s sexploitation, sometimes intense action flick, Sasori keeps looking for itself and just doesn't succeed.

After enduring through last year's Recon 2022, I was apprehensive of Hunting Grounds, the DIY Quebec-Science-Fiction-Post-Apocalyptic-Zombie movie. But it was just too hard to resist. Hunting Grounds is one of those DIY movie that you can be proud of for many reasons. First : the special effects including green screen effects are well executed. Second : This is a movie that doesn't pretend to be American or doesn't take the "so generic a setting that it could be american" like many indie films try to do (to maximize profits, no doubt). This one openly takes place in Quebec city and the Saguenay region, the characters are part french, part english (with reverse subtitles, a nice touch). So that's a pretty good approach. Unfortunately, it suffers from two of the greatest plagues that often strike DIY movies : Bad sound and less-than-adequate acting. Despite those flaws, the movie is still competent in direction and editing to warrant kudos.

Going by the Book, this year's last movie (for me) is one of those gems that just makes you laugh all the way through, although it has a few creepy moments. It has stylish direction, excellent casting and acting throughout. With enough clever shots to have you wonder if it will remain a comedy throughout, or if you will face a darker ending. Going by the Book has a couple of inconsistencies, but is overall hilrarious and an excellent movie. I highly recommend.

Fantasia : L Change the World, Chanbara Beauty, Roborock and Be a Man! Samurai School.

2008-07-13T20:46:00.003-04:00

Not a single bad choice this year it would seem.

L : Change the World wasn't as good as either of the Death Note movies, but Ken'ichi Matsuyama once again so brilliantly portrays the misfit genius L that he makes it all worthwhile. Fans of the anime will also see a broader use of the universe of Death Note, namely the Wammy's House and its members. It's good, but not great.

Chanbara Beauty is what you would expect. Attractive women kicking ass against the zombie hordes. What's not to like? The darkness in which the movie often takes place originally led me to believe there was something wrong with the projector, but it wasn't the case. Fortunately, a big chunk of the movie takes place during the day, which helps the audience appreciate the visuals. The final battle has a very anime-esque side to it which I haven't seen that much before.

Roborock is extremely cool and stylish. It suffers from a few pacing issue, abusive use of flashbacks and a slight lack of focus, or at least misplaced focus. Still, it's overall one of the better Fantasia movies I've seen this year.

Tak Sakaguchi was on hand, as cool as ever, to show us Be a Man! Samurai School. Tak is well known (Death Trance, Battlefield Baseball, Shinobi, many others) and he was really beyond cool, showing up in costume and performing planned action choregraphies on stage. The movie itself was machist, hilarious and full of pretty solid action. Though the first half, where the students are at school, was definately better than the second half, in which they have to fight for survival.

Fantasia : Disciplines of the 36th Chamber, Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge and Sukiyaki Western Django

2008-07-11T15:59:00.002-04:00

Wow! I notice my last blog post is almost a year old and about Fantasia. It's as though there isn't much else to report! Truth is, I'm extremely busy with Tales of the USCA, and keep that blog well-fed.

This year's fantasia won't get detailed reviews on this blog. Just quick notes, and here are the reports for week 1:

Disciplines of the 36th chamber : This year's Shaw Brothers movie. One of the better ones, but certainly not as good as Heroes of the East.

Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge : My own personal favorite so far, and probably my favorite romantic comedy of all times, with Shaun of the Dead. But the coming-of-age aspect of it makes it a bit better I think. I loved it.

Sukiyaki Western Django : My main gripe with the movie is with the decision to shoot it in english. It's always weird to listen to people who don't appear to know what the hell they're talking about. But that was required in order to stick in all the classic spaghetti western quotes in there. Overall a pretty decent film with interesting characters. Takashi Miike is awesome.

There you have it folks. Week two coming soon...

Fantasia : Postal

2007-07-24T22:25:00.001-04:00

Here he was, the most hated video game to films director Uwe Boll, presenting his latest film Postal. I have been lucky enough to never have been exposed to his work, having only seen the trailer of Alone in the Dark, to which I screamed an endless array of insult at the screen for it not being a period piece. But that's another story. Postal is probably the kind of film that Uwe Boll should've been making all along, instead of films based on serious games like Alone in the Dark or Dungeon Siege.

Postal, the game, is just meant to be a provocative pointless excuse for a first person shooter. Postal, the movie, tries to be a bit more. Think of it as South Park live-action, an often made comparison. It's dirty, scat-filled, afraid of nothing, but underneath it hides a rather clever and honest political commentary.

Postal was a resounding success with the crowd, yours truly included. I wouldn't go as far as to say that "the world needs movies like that", but I will say it is one hell of a ride, and it does a good job of exposing a lot of the hypocrisy and stupidity that rules this world. And no matter show hard to shock you think you are, there will probably be a point in this movie where you will have to look away, shake your head, or just walk off.

7.5/10 with a butt-factor of 1.5 (9/10)

Fantasia : DJ XL5 Kaleidoscopic Zappin' Party

2007-07-21T18:38:00.001-04:00

It was my first year going to XL5's party. A strange mix of locally and internationally made shorts such as Internet-available classic Dr. Tran and the world-premiere episode 13 of Tom et ses Chums. The show is preceded, and sometimes interrupted, by '70s and '80s trailers of soft-porn and violent B-movies. It's tough to describe the show except that it's like a crappy TV evening with a group of friends. The shows are uneven (from excellent to crappy) but the experience is made better by fan participation. I'm not sure I'm in love with the concept, but it was an entertaining 2 hours anyway. I should note the always awesome Daniel Walther was in some of those clips, which made them awesome. For some strange reason, I left the party wanting to smell underwear, hyped about some Asian kid's next action movie, and browsing adult sites for Poutine Anale. 6.5/10 with a butt-factor of 1.

Fantasia : Recon 2022

2007-07-21T17:53:00.000-04:00

I will be exceptionally harsh on Recon 2022, the locally-made sci-fi epic story starring a group of elite space marines on their quest to help the fledging human race overcome their terrible enemies, the Ma'hars. Producer/Director Christian Viel was on-hand to present his movie, and in his opening speech he told the audience "Not to think about it too much", as it's just a "fucking space marine movie". Fair enough.

I can forgive a lot of things about this movie. I can forgive the fact that although their enemies are supposed to be Ma'hars and Greys, they are barely in the movie (the bad guys are mostly humans/mercenary cyborgs). I can forgive the many cheesy CG shots that are the landmark of low-budget movies. These factors are due to budget constraints. Unfortunately, director Viel seems to be unaware of very basic concepts in cinema such as “the reaction shot”. It would seem the script or storyboard of that movie must have parts like "Film people shooting randomly for 20 seconds. Then the bad guy falls for no apparent reason". This kind of filming constitutes the bulk of the action scenes. One particularly bad example of this is when an enemy cyborg is shot dead, as it falls down it fires one final missile at the good guys. Where did that missile go? We'll never know. It doesn't hit nor does it misses, it just disappears. The movie is filled with moments like this. That doesn't have anything to do with budget constraints, it's sloppy planning, and amateurish execution.

I was more lenient on the first one because I believe first shots can be given a break. But by now the cost in time and money of CG shots should be known, and it's better to have 15 well-made CG shots than 45 duck-taped inconsistent shots. However, not all is lost. Characters are generally better-defined and more interesting than in Recon 2020, and the script's quality is also better, with some funny moments and clever dialogs. But overall it's very disappointing, especially considering the insane amount of work involved in all those CG shots.

Side by side with lower-budgeted feature-length titles such as Maurice Devereaux's End of the Line and last year's The Descendant by Philippe Spurrell, this independent film is left far behind. 3/10 with a butt-factor of 1.

Fantasia : The Rug Cop

2007-07-21T17:51:00.000-04:00

After last year's almost too-hilarious Executive Koala, one could only realistically expect something not quite as funny with the toupet-throwing antics of The Rug Cop. In that case, wrong would be one's expectations. Not only is the Rug Cop funnier than Executive Koala, but it barely contains a few moments in which I wasn't laughing out loud. It helped a lot that the crowd was really into it, cheering on our rug-throwing hero. This is the most fun I've had at Fantasia since Bubba Ho-Tep. 9.5/10 with a butt factor of only .5 (laughter helps the pain).

Fantasia : Death Note and Death Note : The Last Name

2007-07-21T17:49:00.000-04:00

Death Note is based on a manga and anime, and it shows. Some shots feel like they were taken straight out of a comic book. The characters are over-the-top, but always interesting. One character in particular, "L" truly steals the show as a sweets-eating boy-genius. The design of the Gods of Death are awesome. The first movie is the best and ends with one of the most awesome cliffhanger I've ever seen. The second seems to loose it's footing at first, but comes back at the end with a few clever twists, although a couple of those involves the characters being much smarter than they could and knowing much more than they could. 7/10 with a butt-factor of 1 for Death Note, 6/10 with a butt-factor of 1.5 for Death Note : The Last Name.

Fantasia : Jade Warrior, EXTE : Hair Extension and End of the Line

2007-07-14T13:04:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my annual Fantasia review. As always I will be giving straight-up "last paragraph-only" reviews of the movies I see at Fantasia. Only 11 movies this year, down from last year's 26. My butt just can't handle the Hall's seats anymore, for any extended periods of time anyway. So I went with a reasonable 11. I will still put in my butt-factor, which is the penalty given based on the pain in my butt. For example, if a movie score 6/10 with a butt-factor of 1, it means the actual score of the movie probably would've been 7/10 if I hadn't been distracted by the pain.

I usually attend the opening night movie, but this year I was on vacation, so for me Fantasia opened with the Finnish/Chinese movie Jade Warrior. Jade Warrior's premise is interesting, to say the least. An ancient artifact from feudal China is discovered in Finland by Finnish researchers. The movie switches back and from between modern-day Finland and ancient China. Much less action than I anticipated and a rather slow pace made this a rather average movie, despite the original premise. The cast is good, the cinematography is good but nothing special. It is much more about characters and their internal struggles, than about kung-fu. Although you do get some form of white-dudes kung-fu action. 6/10 with a butt-factor of 1.

Moving on to EXTE : Hair Extension with the stunning Chiaki Kuriyama. This one is both hilarious and scary as only the Japanese can do. Treated with the utmost seriousness at times, and extreme silliness at others, it is bound to left most westerners scratching their heads. Fortunately for the director, who was present for the screening, the Fantasia crowd got it, and laughed their asses out at all the right parts. The finale had me practically in tears. Did I mention the presence of the ever-gorgeous Chiaki Kuriyama? The bad guy is also awesome/ridiculous. 8 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 1.

Moving on to the End of the Line for the End of this Entry. When a film is a Canadian production, I will always be more prone to go see it, even if it looks and feels like somewhat generic. I was very pleased at last year's The Descendant, but I enjoyed End of the Line even more. It's effective, scary, and has an unusually attractive cast that are also better than the genre's standards, performance-wise. Thumbs up for on-hand director
Maurice Devereaux and everyone involved. A few cheap scares that takes away some points, but real ones and a great story that puts this score up to 7.5, with a butt-factor of 1.

Vote, and don't vote like a retard

2007-03-24T14:37:00.000-04:00

In two days is the provincial election. As always not a lot is at stake, and at the same time, with every election no matter the level, everything is at stake. You might be tempted not to vote. Don't take the easy way out. Get off your butt and go to the polls. Every elections we have a chance to show the powers that be what we think of them. There is only one good way to vote, visit the parties' websites, read their platform, and pick what YOU think makes the most sense. Most people add tons of strategic layers on top of that very basic electoral concept. I like party B, but I'll vote for party C otherwise party A will win and thus I'll have wasted my vote. This kind of thinking is highly unhealthy and plays no small role in the lack of progress our country and province go through. It also benefits the corrupt old parties and the money-backed far-right newcomer. The media, through polls, dictate the line the people must follow, and the people vote for those parties that get the most exposure.

Let's do something revolutionary and actually vote for the party we find the best. Don't vote like a retard.

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-23T16:57:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays to anyone passing by. Merry Christmas and take care of yourself!

Cheers!

Bumping off the Linux rant

2006-10-24T18:46:00.000-04:00

Just bumping off my last Linux rant. Shortly after that rant I pulled Xubuntu off the computer and went back to good old reliable but slow Ubuntu. So far so good. I didn't try to mess with automatix or what not. I managed to install and run Azureus with the latest Sun Java (that was a major pain in the ass) and aMule. Not too bad. I'm looking a bit into freespire. It looks as easy as Ubuntu but doesn't delve into the "completely free" rhetoric that will, eventually, drag Ubuntu down in the mud. A perfect quote I read about freespire : "People want a computer that works, not a computer that makes them work." So far Linux and Ubuntu has done more of the latter than of the former. Let's see this thing unfold. One thing for sure, Linux is part of my network now, for better and for worst.

Yet another linux rant.

2006-09-17T11:01:00.000-04:00

I've had it with that muthafucking Linux on that muthafucking computer. Linux may be a great command-line OS (like DOS used to be with my great ancestors painted cave walls) but it is absolutely abysmal as a desktop GUI os. Case in point. I have 1 Linux box. It's a Xubuntu box. Its purpose is one fold : Serve as a place for all my downloaded crap. It has 1 hard drive for the OS, and one shared hard-drive, called Q. No matter what computer I use on my network, I download crap on this drive so it can be accessed by all the other computers. The system itself runs TWO applications : aMule and Azureus. Those download various podcasts and p2p files and the like. The computer does NOTHING ELSE. I don't install ANYTHING else on it, in fact I rarely ever use it except for the very very rare, occasional firefox browsing whenever my other computers are off and I need to find something out quickly.

This computer runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's never off. Once in a while, it will get abysmally slow. Fair enough, windows does the same thing. So I reboot it and everything is fine.

Every so often, when I boot it, it will only see half of my Q drive, the other half is just missing. For no reason at all. First few time I panicked, rebooted, and the other half was there. So it became part of the process. Reboot/verify/be happy.

Today it was running slow as it often does. I reboot it, and lo and behold, the Xfce title bar is gone, the task bar below is gone. Both Azureus and aMule run in the upper-left corner of the screen with no menu bar and no way to move them around or close them. Now if that had happened after I downloaded and/or installed a bunch of suspicious applications or some bullshit I would've blamed them, or myself.

Thing is, this computer DOES NOTHING, it just needs to BOOT for crying out loud. Is it really too much to ask that it doesn't break itself just by being plugged in the wall? I can only imagine what a nightmare it would be if I actually USED the damn thing.

Maybe replacing Ubuntu with Xubuntu was one of the greatest mistakes in my Linux life. Perhaps this underground branch of the Ubuntu core is just not well developed and supported. But since it was an older, slower machine it sounded like a good idea at the time. All I know is that I will toss out several hours of my life, trying to get this do-nothing computer to do it's nothing again. Oh well.

Fantasia : Conclusions

2006-07-26T19:10:00.000-04:00

And so ends another Fantasia festival. 26 movies is a new record for me, from here that number can only go down. I cannot say I enjoyed this year's edition as much as the previous one. The main reason being the terrible seats at the Hall Theater, which led me to create my new "butt-factor" rating modifier for every movie I've seen. It's bad enough that the seats were terrible, but what makes bad really worst is that we were told last years that new seats were on the way, and that was not the case.

Now that my butt, and my brains, have had a chance to heal, I've devised my new rules for Fantasia.

1) Buy 10 movie tickets at most at the beginning of the festival. Buy the others halfway through if you feel you can handle more. Aim for probable sold-outs and must-see at the beginning.

2) Double-features are good, because you wait in line only once for two movies, but they're a real butt-killer. Make sure you put at least a day off between double-features, to allow time to recover.

3) Favor weekday movies to weekend movies. (I'm already downtown during the weekdays. Solves parking and transportation problems).

4) No more late-night Japanese soft-porn. In fact, no more late-night soft-porn. In fact, no more late-night or soft-porn. Porn is meant to be watched at home anyway, and for two years in a row I didn't really enjoy the soft-porn movies presented. So that's done. Exceptions might need to be made for late-night non-porn must-sees. But they should be exceptions.

5) Favor weird and funny over traditional and serious. As such, movies like The Bittersweet Life, Typhoon and Seven Swords would be sacrificed for the likes of Executive Koala, Funky Forest and Tokyo Zombie. Not always the right choice, I liked Typhoon better than Funky Forest, but it's generally better.

6) Check for alternate ways to see a movie before buying a ticket. For example, and The Descent and Bon Cop, Bad Cop, will both get standard theatrical releases soon. Death Trance is already out on DVD. It's useless to wreck your butt seeing them at Fantasia.

Fantasia : The Great Yokai War, Executive Koala, The Five Venoms, Re-cycle and Zombie Self-Defense Force

2006-07-23T14:09:00.000-04:00

The last Fantasia weekend was filled with a great bunch of movies. Here are my reviews, in even more express form than usual.

The Great Yokai War is a children's epic. It's from Takashi Miike and it is an absolute delight to watch. Great character and creature design, awesome mechanical design. In this story a young child is destined to save Tokyo, the capital of all anger, from an army of mechanical monsters created by combining trashed, but still functional, items with the souls of the Yokai. Chiaki Kuriyama (of Kill Bill fame) proves in this movie that no matter how ridiculous her outfit or hairdo, the camera still loves her, and so do I. Acting is usually good but fails at times. The ending really doesn't make much sense, but it's beautiful. 8 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 1.

Moving on to Executive Koala, the movie that had me laughing out loud long after it was done. Part Perfect Blue, part romantic comedy, it is important to note that although the main character is a Koala, he could've been human without affecting the scenario. The result however would have been less than stellar. Seeing someone bad tripping and going insane is something that can be seen in any other movie. But a Koala? Instant entertainment. 8.0 with a butt-factor of 1.

The Five Venoms is ranks as the second best Shaw Brothers movie I've seen. Finishing after last year's hilarious Heroes of the East but before the others. It's a Shaw Brothers movie. It's old and it's mostly good for the cheese factor. 6.0 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 1.

The sold-out Re-cycle featured lots genuinely scary moments. While seeking inspiration for her next best-seller, an author is propelled into a nightmarish world made up of all the things, and people, she threw away in her life. Old acquaintances, old toys, old secrets. All are there to torment her. Visually impressive, good acting, but a bit too predictable. 4.5 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 3.

Zombie Self-Defense Force would be my last Fantasia movie this year. Not exactly the best way to end the festival, this movie is a weird DIY zombie flick. Beginning with a strong anti-Bush, anti-American imperialism and yet pro-Japanese imperialism (Japan saved south-east Asian from occidental imperialism during World War II. Right.) Moving on to the movie itself. Lots of cheesy gore. Reminiscent of Bad Taste or Dead Alive, ZSDF lacks a good plot, good special effects and good acting. Like Dead Alive, it has a few good quotes and is entertaining for the gore and cheese factor. It has a pretty funny zombie fetus, which gives this movie a few extra points. 4.5 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Fantasia : Typhoon and The Order of One

2006-07-23T14:07:00.000-04:00

Typhoon is what happens when you take a James Bond or Tom Clancy story and use human beings as characters instead of one-dimentional cliches. That is what Typhoon is about, and although it is by no means a chef d'oeuvres, it works. One interesting note, the movie is actually shot in several languages including Korean (it is a Korean film), Chinese, Thai and Russian. And not just one or two sentences to look cool like any U.S.-made spy flick, but entire dialogs. So if you're into spy movies or political thrillers, look it up. It's worth it. 7.0 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Those who've seen Sinners and Saints two years ago at Fantasia will no doubt recognize the cast of The Order of One. And although the former had genuine funny moments and kickass fight scenes, it had a messy storyline with an artificial, pasted-on ending that didn't make sense. I can only congratulate this dedicated team of DIY Canadians for pulling off a movie that is better in every way. The Order of One isn't just appealing because of the cheese factor, but actually has a decent storyline, good dialogs and even better fight scenes than it's predecessor. Shot like an old kung-fu movie of the '70s, it even has cartoon bubbles naming every major kung-fu maneuver before it happens. Great stuff. 7.5 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Fantasia : The Descendant and Reincarnation

2006-07-23T13:37:00.000-04:00

Philippe Spurrell and most of the cast of The Descendant were on hand to present their solid DIY movie. To say I went to see this movie reluctantly is an understatement. The trailer did nothing for me. But I was going to see Reincarnation later on, so what was I to do between work and that? I went. And I enjoyed it, quite a lot. Those who have seen Saint-Martyr des Damnes or David Lynch's Twin Peaks will recognize the premise : Strange events lead a regular city boy to a typical quiet,peacefull little village... which hides a terrible secret. The population of that village, who areapparentlyy nice and friendly, are pretty much all whack-jobs and psychos bent on preventing city boy from exposing their secret. So far, so good. There are a few things that set The Descendant apart though, not the least of which is the fact that it is based on actual event and does have a cultural and historical purpose. Where both Twin Peaks and St-Martyr suffered from an horribly confused storyline that seemed to be headed in every possible direction at the same time, The Descendant is actually very focused. It doesn't have the awesome writing of Twin Peaks nor the production quality of St-Martyr. This is pure DIY, very little budget and it shows. Virtually no special effect shots. I always said that if you're going to do a DIY movie, make it a comedy. People are much more prone to forgive the cheese factor in comedies than in serious drama. The Descendant is an exception to this theory. I give it a 7 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Reincarnation is from Ju-On director Takashi Shimizu. Strange events appear to haunt the set of a movie whose goal is to recreate a gruesome series of murders. Could it be that the souls of those who died have come back to play their part, again? Much less scary than Ju-On, Reincarnation aims for the same kind of atmosphere. Didn't leave much of an impression on me, and did absolutely nothing to hinder my attempts to sleep later on, which both Ju-On movies managed to do so well. 3.0 out of 10 with a record butt-factor of 3.

Fantasia : Vampire Cop Ricky, iDol, Sukeban Boy and Negadon

2006-07-18T18:02:00.000-04:00

Vampire Cop Ricky is, much like Frostbite, a vampire-themed comedy, but this one is even more light-hearted than the Swedish gorefest of Frostbite. Ricky is a... well... who's Ricky really? Truth is, nobody in that movie is named Ricky. Nobody. The plot is rather thin, as expected in those kinds of movies. Fly stings Dracula, turns into badass fly-vampire hybrid. Badass fly gets to Korean and bites out hero. Our hero turns into a vampire. Actually, a were-vampire who can only turn into his vampire-self when he gets a hard-on. That leads to some pretty funny moments. Actually, there are very funny moments spread throughout the movie. Unfortunately, those are too few and far between. And there's a reason for it too, the movie is 2 hours long. A little editing could've done wonders for this movie. 6 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 1.

Next were 3 short films. The iDol, Sukeban Boy and Negadon.

After The iDol, the only thing I could think about is : "Where can I buy an Alien Kun?". Made by American Director Norman England but shot entirely in Japan, The iDol is a weird, surrealist look at how one toy can change the lives of many. The story is nice, feel-good and the actors are all good. 6.8 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 1.2.

After Sukeban Boy, the only thing I could think about is : "What the fuck?". Indeed, what the hell was that? It's from Go Nagai? The same Go Nagai who brought us Cutie Honey and fucking Grendizer? This one blows them all, and your brains, to hell. It has cubed the sexploitation of Cutie Honey. Senseless violence, and a little child molestation of a boy by his father to complete the mix. And it's all done in a very hippy, cheerful tone that just makes your mind go blank. What kind of crack did he shove up his butt to come up with that? Impossible to tell. The result is sometimes entertaining, often shocking and often brain-numbing. Can't give this more than 4 out of 4.7, with a butt-factor of 1.3.

Those who walked out during Sukeban Boy, and I know a few, missed out on the very sober, technically flawless Negadon. A rather short homage to monster movies such as Godzilla. It has all the elements of monster movies, but is kept short as to not become boring (I usually get bored quite fast with monster movies). Touching story, very well executed CGI, of which it is completely made out of. I still don't like monster movies, but if you're going to see just one in your life, see this one. At least it will only take half an hour! 6.1 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 1.4.

Fantasia : Hell, Shinobi and The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai

2006-07-16T09:10:00.000-04:00

Saturday was a butt-killing triple feature starting with Hell.

Hell is a Thai movie. Much like Necromancer, it is very serious and very violent. 7 people die in a car crash and end up in hell. But this hell is similar to most government bureaucracies : It is chaotic, confused, and prone to very basic errors like, for example, putting people in hell who aren't dead yet. Visually, Hell resembles the original Conan the Barbarian movie, dirty but beautiful. The characters all have their sins to pay for, and as expressed in the movie alcoholism yields a bigger punishment than theft. Somehow the way hell is organized is very disturbing. Not because of the endless scenes of torture the inhabitants endures, that's the whole point of hell if you believe in that sort of thing. What disturbs me the most is how disorganized it is, how easy it is to escape or hide, and how surprisingly, despite all of this, our seven hero appear to be the first ever to make such attempts. Good but not great. 5.5 with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Moving on to Shinobi. Shinobi's story may be standard fare, but that's where "standard" ends. Visually, the movie is stunningly beautiful and smells of high-budget, high-quality cinematography. The story, as I said, is traditional : Romeo and Juliet combined with Ninjas. Which is as good an idea on-screen as it is on paper. To settle a war between two villages, 5 shinobis from each village are send on a battle to kill each-other. Once all the members of one village are dead, the others will be able to gain an enormous amount of power in determining the next Shogun. The problem is, the leaders of both gangs of shinobis are lovers who are tragically made to fight one-another. As is most often the case, just a tiny bit of rational would save a tremendous amount of suffering. But that would make for a pretty boring movie now would it? And boring, along with ugly and uninspired, are traits this movie does not have. The design of the 10 shinobis is awesome, they all have their own special powers, from breathing out a poisoning clouds of mist to being unable to die. The story, albeit standard, is not without it's twists. And at the risk of repeating myself, what sets this movie apart the most is the production value and awesome imagery. 9.0 out of 10, with a butt-factor of 0.5. If you see one martial arts movie this year...

Concluding with the final part of this threesome, the soft-porn political commentary that is The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai. It all sounded awesome on paper. Softcore pornography combined with philosophical and political commentary. The premise is as twisted as it is imaginative. Average horny tutor Sachiko is accidentally caught in the crossfire of a shady deal gone wrong, and is shot in the head. Strangely, that bullet doesn't kill her. Instead it turned her into a genius who is obsessed with and has an apparently infinite capability of learning. She starts studying great philosophers such as Descartes and modern political commentators like Noam Chomsky. And she can't stop discussing deep philosophical and political matters, even during intercourse. Which is just added value for a fellow male teacher, a concept similar to the famous massage parlor scene in Le Déclin de l'Empire Américain* (The Decline of the American Empire). You see, she may have become a genius, but she is no less horny than before. The plot twists when she finds a cloned finger of George W. Bush in her purse, and even starts seeing the evil president in dreams and fantasies. What is the purpose of that finger? Watch and see. However let me warn that although it all may sound awesome on paper, watching it isn't. The sex scenes areplentifull and as graphic as softcore pornography can get. As with mostJapanesee sex movies there is at least one and probably two cases of rape (the point at which one third of the theater audience leaves). At least there aren't as many as in last year's Stop the Bitch Campaign, which had only that. Most of the sex scenes are so weird that they don't get to be very exciting, despite the beauty of the lead actress. There are a few funny moments, and you can't help but admire the premise. Overall though, it was pretty disappointing. 3.5 out of 10 with a butt-factor or 1.

*Although the concept of this film is seen in part in Le Déclin de l'Empire Américain, I am in no way comparing both movies. That one being a masterpiece and this one being, well, sucky. Just thought I'd get that out of the way.

Fantasia : A Chinese Tall Story and Frostbiten

2006-07-14T15:43:00.000-04:00

Both movies I saw on Thursday exceeded my expectations, and both for the same reason. I was expecting, in both the case of A Chinese Tall Story and Frostbiten, movies that would take themselves very seriously. I was pleasantly surprised.

A Chinese Tall Story wasn't the pompous, confused mess I was expecting it to be. Instead we are presented with a clear, easy to follow story, well-defined characters and a slew of often cheesy but always entertaining CG shots. And those CG shots don't pretend to be anything but. In one instance in particular you see a ton of explosions, and then the explosions freeze and the camera spins around, matrix-style. Well that spin reveals, in fact places emphasis on, an age-old CG trick of pasting 2D explosions facing the camera to increase render efficiency. As the camera turns you clearly see that the explosions are flat. They don't care. Neither do I. The tone is light-hearted and comedic, despite the epic nature of the tale. The design is imaginative. It may try to go everywhere at once, flirting with fantasy, science-fiction and epic battles, but it does so in style and without ever becoming confused. This movie has been a charm to discover, and I highly recommend it. 8.5 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Moving on to Frostbiten. Again my expectations were that this would be scary and serious. It was mostly wacky and didn't take itself seriously at all. Frostbiten could be described as a mix of Argento's Demons and Meet the Parents. Put one vampire in a room of druken carefree teenagers and you quickly end up with a room of druken carefree vampires. And also nothing ruins your first meeting of the in-laws like slowly turning into a vampire during dinner. The latter is especially funny. One particularly clever twist, as the movie takes place in northern Sweden, nighttime actually lasts several months, making this the ideal playground for vampires. Funny, clever, gore is on the average side of average, and it's not that scary. But I don't believe it was meant to be. 7 out of 10 with a butt-factor of 1.

Fantasia : SARS Wars and Necromancer

2006-07-14T15:36:00.000-04:00

Wednesday was a Thai double-feature.

The Thai have been turning out pretty good comedies in the last few years. The Bodyguard and Heaven's Seven to name a few. SARS Wars may not be the best, but it's still pretty solid entertainment and has a good share of hilarious moments. Always self-referencing, often crude but always funny, SARS Wars gets a 7 out of 10. With a butt factor of 0.5.

However, when it comes to drama, they still have some way to go. Or maybe it is I who no longer have much fun watching those kinds of movies. Necromancer takes itself very seriously, and as such would have needed more polish. The gore factor is rather high, but overall it's not that good a film. 4.5 out of 10. With a butt-factor of 1.

Fantasia : Funky Forest

2006-07-10T10:53:00.000-04:00

Those who've read past reviews know that I am usually quite fond of what I like to call Japanese Insanity. Survive Style 5+ ranked second best movie of last year's festival, after the equally crazy Karaoke Terror (which gets absolutely no love at all and is impossible to find). I absolutely adored Tokyo Zonbi and I really enjoyed FLCL or Excel Saga.

Herein comes Funky Forest. How to describe it? Take FLCL. Remove the good music. Make it live-action. Make it individual, disconnected sketches. Remove any thread that would hold them together. In the end you don't have much to stand on, and you'll stand on it for more than 2 and a half hours.

Funky Forest isn't without it's moment. "The Home Room !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" sketches are quite funny. The Guitar Hero is made good by the presence of the always charismatic Tadanobu Asano (of Tokyo Zonbi, Survive Style 5+ and Ichi the Killer). But a lot of this stuff is just plain gross and "imaginative, just for the sake of being imaginative". Many of the dance numbers are just plain boring and not that well executed (that's supposed to be the point, but still). Not even some of the cutest girls in the world (which I believe this movie has) can save it from being a disorganized unpleasant mush. Oh and the final, deafening sketch is only made to confirm the mistake you've made of going to see this film.

Based on the cheers and laughter coming from the audience, some would say that my review is lower than it should. But I would say that these people are insane. 4 out of 10 with a butt factor of 0.5.

Fantasia : Call of Chtulu, Monarch of the Moon and Exodus

2006-07-09T10:37:00.000-04:00

Call of Chtulu was made to look like a silent, black and white film. This makes it unique and surprisingly refreshing. Those familiar with Lovecraft, even if not with Call of Chtulu itself, will recognize the premise. Inheritance, forbidden or paranormal research, people going crazy and/or (usually and) dying for going too far in their research. It's known and loved by the fans, and it works. The illusion of an old movie works very well at times, a bit less at others, where it becomes apparent it was shot with in modern video and CG-filtered to look old. Acting feels over-the-top, as it was at the time, which add to the authenticity. The music is perfect, and is the only sound in the whole movie. A pretty interesting experiment gives a pretty interesting movie. 7.4 out of ten with a butt-factor of 0.1.

When Monarch of the Moon showed up, I realized I had absolutely no idea what it was. Blind choices like that often yield terrific surprises, and Monarch of the Moon was exactly that. Like Call of Chtulu, Monarch of the Moon is a recent movie (more like a miniseries, with all episodes showed back to back) made to look like it's coming from another era. The illusion, in this case, is nearly perfect, aside from the all-to-often presence of cheesy CGI (I would rather have had to watch even more cheesy "real-life" effects). The theme, acting, horribly sexist and racist undertones, all appear to be lifted straight from the '40s. During the '40s, the Nazi and Japanese tried to destroy America. But they were only tools, tools of the evil Monarch of the Moon. Afraid of America, with it's freedom, democracy and good old American know-how, the Monarch uses Japan and Germany to weaken America before the final attack from the Moon forces. But thanks to superhero Yellow Jacket, who gained his superpowers from being tortured and drugged in a Nazi prison, America will be safe. Or will it? Monarch of the Moon was an awesome ride, if maybe stretched thinly in the middle. I think it would be beneficial to watch the series in an episodic fashion, rather than having all 6 episodes shown back to back. Still, entertaining, hilarious and very refreshing. 7.5 out of 10, with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Last and least, Exodus, the beautiful Thai children's epic. First and foremost, parents should be warned that Exodus may be considered a children's epic, but it has rather violent scenes (including torture). Maybe Thai children are not little wusses like children over here, so be warned that your little ones may need their dose of ritalin after that one. The story has been told thousands of times before. Humans are being attacked and destroyed by a race of bad guy. One hero emerges, he needs to gather a party of friends (in this case, 4 beautifully designed elementals), train and fight legions of bad guys, then face off against the evil boss, then live happily ever after. Still, the movie is beautiful, the elemental design is awesome, the shots with floating Tarot cards are imaginative and effective. However it all has a pretty generic feel to it. Not that most children will mind, but I did. 6.5 out of ten, with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Fantasia : Tokyo Zombie and A Bittersweet Life

2006-07-08T20:51:00.000-04:00

Another day, another double-feature. I believe I have seen the best Fantasia had to offer this year. Let's see if the rest of the festival proves me wrong.

The night started off with Tokyo Zombie (Tokyo Zonbi), actually, it started off with God's Left Hand, Devil's Right Hand, which was inadvertently played instead of Tokyo Zombie for several minutes until the rioting mob gave notice to the staff by chanting "ZOMBIE! ZOMBIE! ZOMBIE!". There was then a scare, that perhaps the film wasn't even here and wouldn't be shown. It was finally shown, but in HD-DVD format instead of 35mm, so it was in a relatively smaller format than it should have. Oh well, it's the content that matters, and boy that was some content. References to Shaun of the Dead will be unavoidable, and understandable. However the movies differ quite a lot. Aside from the premise (two loser-friends face off against a horde of Zombies), the rest is quite different. Tokyo Zombie is surrealist, and the sense of humor is very Japanese and very slapstick. In this film, the horde is birthed on Mt. Black Fuji, a giant, black mountain-like landfill located in central Tokyo. This landfill is unregulated, and when I say unregulated, I mean it. People bring in all sorts of garbage, from still-working appliances to hazardous chemicals to annoying stepmothers, still kicking and screaming as they're being buried. The result? The souls of the appliances, combined with the hatred of the people buried alive and the hazardous chemicals, spawn zombies (of course). That's all the plot I'll spoil for you, suffice it to say that it's laugh-out-loud from beginning to end. The first half may be a bit funnier than the second half, but there are still awesome moments in the later half. The gore is, for a zombie movie, very low, but that's not what this movie is about. You'll recognize Tadanobu Asano from Survive Style 5+ (and many other movies). He's hilarious, and his partner, played by Sho Aikawa, is equally wacky. Don't let the word slapstick turn you off, the movie is still pretty sharp and has quite a few twists and turns that makes it a must-see for any zombie fan or comedy fan. 8.8 out of 10, with a butt-factor of 0.2.

Moving on to A Bittersweet Life, who will get a much shorter review. What is there to say? It's a mob film, it's about falling in love with the wrong person, it's about ego and pride. It's like most other mob films you've seen a hundred times before. Is it bad? No, it's not, it's very well made and well acted. It's artsy and stylish. The tone reminded me of Boondock Saints, in which tragic and violent events are mixed up with comic relief in the form of rather dumb characters. To me it felt a bit like every otherAmerican Mafia/gang movie, except as it's not anAmericann film, predicting the end will be a bit tougher. 6 out of 10, with a butt-factor of 1.

Fantasia : The Descent and Seven Swords

2006-07-07T13:25:00.000-04:00

The Descent is probably the first British movie I've seen at Fantasia (shame on me for missing Shaun of the Dead). It's tough to review a movie that so perfectly achieve what it sets out to do, that any review will only match the cover description of it. The movie is edge-of-your-seat, it is claustrophobic, and it is scary as hell. It is gory enough, but not overly. It's incredibly effective; the characters, all women, are believable, as it is true that some people are insane enough to go into caves like that, believe it or not. Acting is pretty good. Overall a very entertaining and scary film. 7.5 out of 10, with a butt-factor of 0.5.

Seven Swords is from the legendary director Tsui Hark, of Chinese Ghost Story fame. I had reservations about this movie, as my last exposition to his work with Vampire Hunter had left me rather cold and only slightly amused. Seven Swords disappoints. The story is confused and hard to follow, the characters are vague and not so well defined. There are many cool and interesting concept, but they're brought in clumsily and usually in a rush. The movie suffers from being too long, and at the same time, not long enough. The film would have benefited from being a TV series, with enough time to introduce the characters in a slower, more approachable fashion, while at the same time giving us a pause between episodes to assimilate everything they're trying to say. Although the good guys feel pretty generic in general, the bad guys, especially the general Fire-Wind and his female officer (whose character design is absolutely splendid) are especially effective. The fights are sometimes confusing and not always well-paced, but there are a few very effective sword fights, like the one in a very narrow corridor, this battle starts out horizontal but quickly escalates to a uniquely styled vertical fight. I give this movie a 5.5 out of 10, with a butt-factor of 1.5.

Torture in the modern world

2006-07-07T11:40:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in a third world country prison, there exists a small, dark, damp room. The prisoners call it "the chair room" and most prisoners cower in fear at the mention of this room. The room is empty save for one chair.

It is said that spending three hours on this chair alone is enough to break any prisoner. It has never failed, and with it, the corrupt government of this third world nation takes pride in being able to break even the most stubborn political opponent.

Among the prisoners, many of which have broken fingers, missing fingernails, and charred body parts, the mere mention of that chair sparks fears and hysteria beyond anything humanly conceivable.

Meanwhile, in Montreal, legions of geeks come in droves to sit on that very same chair model, at the Fantasia Film Festival.

Yes folks, those butt-wrecking knee-killing chairs are back, and after yesterday's double-feature, the discomfort and pain is enough to seriously make me reconsider my attendance to the festival for the next years. If I could record the feeling I get after 2 hours in this chair, and play it back just the second I get near the Admission counter, I'm sure that I wouldn't go see 24 movies, as I am this year. That's right folks. I've beaten my record once again. But why go to so many movies when you're so uncomfortable in those seats?

I seem to recall last year, during the speech of the opening movie, that "new seats had just been received but there wasn't time to put them in place". Those "new seats" look, and feel, exactly the same to me. Newsflash : the old seats weren't defective. They were crappy. And if those seats are new seats, they're equally crappy.

So that's my rant for today. As with every year I will bring you reviews of every movies, but to reflect my frustration with the current seating arrangements, and to help alleviate the responsibility of my unpleasant movie going experience from the movies themselves, every score given to every movie will be accompanied by "THE BUTT FACTOR".

This represents the amount of points I consider the movie lost, not because of content, but because my brain's primary job was to suppress pain, and not concentrate on the movie. So if a movie gets a 6.5/10 with a BUTT FACTOR of 1, then this means I probably would've given the movie a 7.5, given enjoyable watching conditions.

Stay tuned for my reviews of "The Descent" and "Seven Swords" later today.

Why do I even bother with these duct-taped together, stress inducing nightmares of OSes?

2006-07-01T11:10:00.000-04:00

Don't interpret this as support for Microsoft, although it is. Today I boot up my trusty Ubuntu, load up Azureus and my eDonkey client and they all say my "in progress" data is not found. I check on the data drive that I mounted in my "home" to find out more than half the data on one of my drives is gone. Not all of it, if it were the case I would blame it on a failed "mount" attempt. Because mounting a drive in Linux really is an act of faith. If it doesn't work, just reboot. But this one showed only PART of the data (2 folders instead of 10) which, in most normal OSes, means that the rest of the data has been erased. Now that seemed to indicate that I would spend the rest of my vacations running file recovery tools on that drive to pull back what's on them. After a bit of cursing and promises I would never ever deal with these patched up pseudo-OSes again, I decided to just reboot.

Well lo and behold, the data is all back. Safe and Sound. So mounting a drive in Linux isn't an act of faith as I understood it. Thinking it either worked or didn't. It's actually more complex than that. It can partially work, or partially not work. There is probably some complex random algorythm within the mount command that calculates what percentage of the drive to mount depending on the weather. That must be it.

Linux is not ready for prime time. It may never be.

2006-06-22T11:09:00.000-04:00

As if I actually had spare time, I tried, as I did twice before in my life, to install and run Linux on one of my machines. I am very pro open-source, pro windows alternative and all of that, but once again I am forced to admit that Linux is yet very far from prime time.

Two things are different between this time I installed Linux and the preceding times. 1) I will actually keep the Linux machine and not go back to Windows. 2) I will stop pretending that Linux is somewhat close to going prime time, or that it is close to being "consumer-friendly".

Why will I keep it? Simple. The computer it is on now has a very limited responsibility on my network. It needs to serve files and printers, to scan documents, and to download bittorrent and edonkey files. And I believe I will be able to manage that.

Now the meat of this entry. Why do I feel that Linux is further away from prime time as I did the last times I installed it? The answer is that Linux doesn't seem to have much will at all to move towards being a more user-friendly platform. Last system I installed was Ubuntu Breezy Badger, and the current one is Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I still believe Ubuntu is the most user-friendly Linux OS out there. Still, there are absolute no-nos that need to be addressed, but aren't. Here's a pretty generic problem and the solution.

1) I install a secondary hard drive, format it ext3, mount it under my home drive. But I can't do crap with it. It says I don't have permission. It says that drive doesn't belong to me. This is emblematic of what Linux stands for : protecting you against non-existent threats.

I have a pretty decent security system that prevents people from accessing my data. It's called a door with a lock. Most apartments and houses come with those. It means that if someone crashes the door or picks the lock, my data is theirs. If they can't, then it's not. I'm pretty happy with that system. Worked so far. My point is, how dare a stupid OS tells ME I don't own the drive. Did I steal it and not know about it? I still have the invoice for it. I even scanned the invoice, figuring if the OS reads it , it will recognize me as the owner of the drive. But no. I still don't own it.

Permission for this, permission for that. Every time I want to sneeze on this machine now I have to beg for the permission to do it. I keep whining that Micro$oft is stealing control away from the users. Well it still has a long way to go before it reaches the level of Linux.

2) The problem I've mentioned above certainly have a simple solution. One I will find out by searching a few keyphrases on Google. On some forum, some guy who has enough heart to share his infinite knowledge will have detailed out the solution. It usually takes the following form : Open up the console and write "sudo some bullshit /etc/home/whocares gedit right /user +crapme -r -b hde1". Of course! How could I not figure this out by myself? This is why Linux is not ready for prime time. With windows, even if I don't KNOW how to do something, I can just dive-in with my trusty mouse and eventually I'll stumble upon the solution. There's just a few places, all relatively obvious, to look at. The Control Panel, Program Files/System Tools. You don't know? Just search until you find. With Linux the answer is always a complexly written unintelligible sentence which brings back the nightmarish era of MS-DOS. I should need a command prompt console to install a new hard drive as much as I should need a cave wall and some cow blood to paint something.

Could it get better? Of course. But somehow it doesn't look like a priority. The enigmatic stoneage-worthy concept of the command line seems to be admired, even revered by the Linux community, rather than shunned and hated as it should. Such archaic concept should be driven out of mainstream operations and kept only for the most obscure, advanced usage of the OS (installing a new hard drive and getting it to work doesn't count).

There was a time, starting with Corel Linux and up to Ubuntu Breezy Badger, when I saw tangible steps taken towards reducing the reliance upon the command line. But since then it is as though a ceiling has been reached. Can giving myself permission to access my own hard drive be too complex to implement into the GUI? It sure seems that way.

I'm sorry to declare that as a consumer-ready OS, Linux is still trailing way behind Windows, and will for the foreseeable future.

The Archangel Chapter website opens to the public

2006-06-04T12:18:00.000-04:00

My latest indie game project, The Archangel Chapter, now has a website opened to the public. Visit http://archangelchapter.com for all the details.

Galactica Reconciliation

2006-05-28T08:41:00.000-04:00

I had tried to watch Battlestar Galactica 2003 when it first came out. Unfortunately I could only focus on how the series was destroying my childhood by completely ignoring (or deliberately raping) concepts that were brought forward by the original series which I was fond of (Starbuck and Boomer women? Baltar a part of the crew? Please). But after hearing everyone and their grandmother claiming this was the best show on TV, ever, I gave it another shot.

I've finished watching the miniseries and 2 of the series episodes. Here are my thoughts. I've done my best to avoid spoilers :

- Ship design : Vastly inferior to the original. Should've left it as-is. The new "everything must be rounded" philosophy is really not a aesthetically pleasing as the old retro-tech squarey look of the original series. The Cylons are the ones suffering the most from the "upgrade", as both raiders and base-stars look awful. The most prevalent Colonial Viper in the show, the Mark II, looks pretty similar to it's '70s brethren, which is a good thing, because the newer Vipers don't look that good.

- Cylons : Aside from their ship, the newer sex-craved bio-cylons are also kind of lame. Obvious demographic-targeting ploy to lure in young boys with the dreams of kinky robot sex. It does provide a good opportunity for a "The Thing"-like suspicion fest, as the crew could now be infiltrated with human-like cylons. Except they should be easy enough to spot. The hornier someone is, the most likely he or she is a cylon.

- Characters : There's something you didn't have in the '70s : character development. The new show beats the old one hands-down here. We are no longer in a clean-cut, good or evil environment. Characters are now ambiguous, make decisions that kill innocent people, by mistake or deliberately. Baltar is particularly interesting, although he spends entirely too much time inside his own head screwing his cylon lover.

- Plot/Direction : Another point where the new show mops the floor with the old one. The sense of urgency and isolation is a lot clearer. The number of humans left alive is accounted for and updated, and it goes down more than it goes up. The first episode is particularly effective in expressing just how desperate the situation is.

- Stupid gripe : You know the rather recent camera trick used in exterior shots to track fast-moving object? The camera starts badly focused, zoomed and oriented. It stays that way for about a second, then zooms/focuses/orients itself really fast towards the subject, then stays on it somewhat erratically as if the cameraman had trouble keeping track? Well, in Galactica, they use this trick WITH ALL EXTERIOR SHOTS, even those without fast moving objects. Now THAT is slightly amateurish and rather annoying.

- Music : The original Galactica theme ruled, and it was a bad mistake to leave it out of this show. Speaking of the introduction of the new show. So far it's horrible. Music is really not that endearing and the opening of the show is made from shots of that very episode, sometimes containing spoilers. Thumbs down.

- Overall : I'm hooked. It is, so far, a much better show than the old one, albeit one with relatively poor ship design, annoying exterior shots and artificially injected sex. The characters are awesome and the dilemmas gut-wrenching. It's qualities far outweighs it's shortcoming. Looking forward to the rest of it.

Development Blog

2006-03-06T06:26:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know I've started my own indie gaming project. I've decided to create a production blog in order to help me remember the different steps and milestones of the project once it's done. If you're interested in game development or programming you might be interested. You can find it here.

Star Wreck, in the Pirkinning

2005-12-04T20:05:00.000-05:00

If you're a fan of either Star Trek or Babylon 5, odds are you've heard of Star Wreck : In the Pirkinning. This hilarious parody of both Star Trek and B5 is the result of seven years of voluntary work by a group of tremendously dedicated and talented people from Finland. But on the off-chance you haven't, and are a regular visitor here, then go see it now. Be forwarned though, this isn't your average sci-fi parody, many references will be obscure to those who aren't big fans of at least one of the two universes. If you aren't, you will be as lost as a starfury straying off the hyperspace beacons.

Go see Serenity

2005-10-04T22:11:00.000-04:00

The movie is awesome. Haven't had this much fun at the movies since Fantasia. Simply amazing. You can't not see this and pretend you're a science-fiction fan. It's incredible to see how George Lucas can do so little with so much, while Joss Whedon does so much with so much less. Go see it. Now.

Greatness in webmail

2005-09-12T18:03:00.000-04:00

Having switched webhost, and being unable to use their webmail account due to some firewall issues, I spend the last week desperately trying to find a webmail program that would work with the lightweight php and requires pop3 access this webhost requires (no imap support). After spending a week of installing, uninstalling, trying to code myself, I was just ready to give up. Then comes iloha, and all my problems are solved. Unbelievably effortless installation, and everything worked on the very first try. If you have webspace and are looking for a way to access your pop3 mail from anywhere, check it out.

Server switch

2005-09-04T12:00:00.000-04:00

I've recently switched over from my old host and domain provider to godaddy.com. If you've sent mail to me between friday september the 2nd and sunday september the 4th, it is entirely possible that your mail fell in a limbo created by the server switch, even if you have not received a "bounced" message. Please send it again. Thank you!

Fantasia : Stop the Bitch Campaign (I and II) and Night Watch

2005-07-26T18:42:00.000-04:00

Shot on video with a non-existing budget, both Stop the Bitch Campaign shorts are japanese sexploitation flicks. The acting is suprisingly good for a movie of this genre, especially the crazed mysoginic Kenichi Endo and his sidekick (in the second episode). There is a hilarious scene where Kenichi explains to his sidekick why having sex with prostitutes and running away without paying is actually doing a service to Japan. That aside, this movie is extremely violent and the plot is ridiculous. Victims of some of the long and extreme torture scenes are either completely innocent or the wrong target of revenge. As the movie progresses you can either get up and walk away (as many did) or just become desensitized to all this mostly gratuitous violence. I'd give it 3/10 as one of the most disgusting, pointless, ridiculous excuse for a movie I've ever seen, but there's Aoi Sora naked and having sex in this one so 10/10.

With a budget of 4 million dollars, you'd expect Night Watch's special effects to be cheesy, at best. A hollywood producer with a similar budget wouldn't be able to make a 5 minutes short, much less a 2 hours special effects extravaganza. Director Timur Bekmambetov succeeds at making this low budget feature feel like a multi-million dollars hollywood film. However, that is the only saving grace of this movie. It all feels rather familiar : stock vampires (known as Dark Others) square off against equally generic shapeshifters (known as Light Others) in something that could've been lifted straight out of Underworld or Blade. The characters are bland, uninspired and have a feeling of interchangeability. The plot is confused and lacks focus, the death metal soundtrack is mostly irritating and the uselessly stylish subtitles are hard to follow. I had high hopes for this one, but it turned out to be this year's biggest disappointment. 5/10.

Fantasia : Jason and the Argonauts, Heroes of the East and G.O.R.A.

2005-07-25T11:09:00.000-04:00

Representing a milestone in stop-motion animation, Jason and the Argonauts is undeniably one of the most important B-movie of it's time. However the focus of this event wasn't the movie itself but the genius who is mostly credited for the "stop-motion revolution" : Ray Harryhausen. He was on-hand with one of the skeleton from Jason and the Argonauts. The movie itself remains good after all these years, but not great. So much has gotten so much better in the last 40 years, that most of the dialogs, action scenes and special effects can only be enjoyed as historical artifacts. Rating the movie as it is rather than as what it represents, I give it 6/10.

Heroes of the East is a jingoistic ride through the minds of the world-famous Shaw Brothers. If it were made today, the unbelievably over-the-top scenario that expresses the undeniable superiority of China over Japan in every conceivable way would most likely be taken as an edgy, second-degree movie. The sad truth is that although the movie doesn't take itself seriously, the message is probably genuine. Still, of all the four or five movies of the Shaw brothers I've ever seen, this one was the most entertaining. From the cheesy "swoosh" sound effects to the hilarious "crab-style Japanese kung-fu", this movie will deliver a ton of laughs, intentionally or not. 7.5/10.

It's always refreshing to see non-US sci-fi. It's even better when one has Hollywood-quality special effects like G.O.R.A. This is a Turkish science-fiction parody similar to Spaceballs in style and intent. Gags are not particularly subtle and often fall into the obvious. However they are well executed and usually deliver. The jokes are pretty much aimed at science-fiction fans. If you haven't seen Star Wars, The Matrix, The Fifth Element and others, you won't get most of it. If you have however, G.O.R.A. is bound to make you burst into laughter at least a few times, and you'll smile in-between. 8.5/10.

Fantasia: Ghost House, P and Survive Style 5+

2005-07-20T11:20:00.000-04:00

Ghost House is a light-hearted haunted house comedy movie starring the absolute cutest ghost of all times, Seo-hee Jang. Although about half an hour too long, the movie generally works. It features gags reminiscent of Evil Dead : Dead by Dawn, Bewitched and Beetle Juice, which is sometimes a good thing, sometimes not so good. 7.5/10.

P is your typical stripper/prostitution flick. Girl needs money to pay medical bills of relative. Girl gets a job whoring. Girl is mistreated by fellow strippers/whores and abusive clients. Girl uses ancient Khmer magic to destroy said rivals and abusive clients. Girl turns into a demon. We've all seen this a million times folks. Jokes aside, the movie has decent acting, lots of effective scary moments and pretty strippers. Do not under any circumstances see this movie if you plan on visiting Bangkok brothels anytime soon. 7.5/10.

Featuring five insane, intertwining stories, Survive Style 5+ is a witty and surreal roller coaster ride that will surprise you at every turn. Supernatural phenomenon, comedy, violence, touching family drama, sex, and the craziest hit man you've ever seen this side of Firefly, this movie has it all. And it comes wrapped in some of the brightest dialogs you've heard in a long while. 9/10.

Fantasia: Phantom Master, Tetsujin-28 and White Dragon

2005-07-18T09:51:00.000-04:00

Phantom Master : Dark Hero from Ruined Empire is a visually stunning and thoroughly entertaining piece of Japanese-Korean animation. The character design is outstanding, the production quality is excellent throughout and the story is engaging. It does share the same episodic feeling as Dragon Head, but as with that movie, this one doesn't see itself weakened by it. A must-see for any anime fan. 8.5/10.

Tetsujin-28 is a modern adaptation of a giant robot manga that first appeared in the 1960s. As such, it is extremely naive and kid-oriented. The robot design is excellent, the Black Ox' look reflecting it's sinister nature while Tetsujin relays a sense of innocence and gentleness. You will definitely like this movie if A) You go with your kids or B) the kid in you is not completely dead. As neither is my case I was mostly bored with the movie's slow fight sequences and the long, drawn-out emotional dilemma of the 12 year-old boy whose decision will change the face of the earth. 5/10.

Not knowing anything about White Dragon before seeing it, I was fooled into thinking this would be "just another" feudal wusha flick. But a few minutes into the movie it becomes clear this movie takes as much from Clueless as it does from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The lead character is a completely normal Chinese schoolgirl who, by a twist a fate, downloads (yes, feudal china was apparently familiar with the concept) powers from a mysterious crime-fighting master. With tons of modern-day references and an arch-enemy inspired by the character of Zatoichi, White Dragon will make you laugh with it's unrefined yet good-willed sense of humor. 7.5/10.

Fantasia: Le Protrait de Petit Cossette, Breaking News and Dragon Head

2005-07-17T01:37:00.000-04:00

Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (I'm not misspelling that, they are) is a 3-part Japanese OAV consisting of three 40-minutes episodes. The art is splendid, and Yuki Kajiura (Noir, .hack//sign) once again impresses with her haunting soundtrack. However the story itself feels disconnected. I can't say I figured it out, which can be a good thing, however I feel like watching it again wouldn't help, which isn't. Having enjoyed Furi Kuri, Serial Experiment Lain and even Video Girl Ai, I consider myself a fan of Japanese weirdness, this however didn't hook me. 6/10. The art and music in, mostly for the art and music.

Breaking News is an excellent Hong Kong police flick. Making a social statement about the importance of the media in police business, the movie turns a hostage situation into a circus, where cops and bandits alike become so obsessed with winning the media war and earning the public's trust and sympathy that they forget how to do their job. Funny at times but often serious, Breaking News is effective and entertaining. 8/10.

Dragon Head begins as a train gets trapped inside a tunnel by a gigantic and unexplained explosion. The claustrophobic beginning leads to a This movie brings a grim and depressing view of mankind's reaction to crisis situations. Claustrophobic at first, terrifying in the middle and depressing at the end, Dragon Head won't earn any nomination for the feel-good movie of the festival. It is however very well-made, with good acting, stunning visual and a tight script. The story very segmented, and at times feel like episodes of a miniseries sewed together. That didn't bother me at all, but could potentially put off viewers. 8.5/10.

Fantasia: The Place Promised in our Early Days, R-Point and Ju-On : The Grudge 2

2005-07-16T01:34:00.000-04:00

The Place Promised in our Early Days is a beautiful, touching and naive story about a childhood promise that, if fulfilled, could lead to the end of the world as we know it. If you've seen Makoto Shinkai's previous movie, Voices of a Distant Star, you'll feel right at home. Similar tone, similar subject (two innocent lovers torn apart by extraordinary circumstances). It's the same, only better in every way. 8/10.

R-Point is a combination of supernatural horror and war. This movie reminded me a little of The Keep. While watching I felt like I was watching a much older movie. It uses a lot of scary tricks that seemed to work much better in the '80s (bleeding radio anyone?). The acting ranged from adequate to bad. It does have it's scary moments, and some of the low-budget special effects are put to good use. 6/10.

Ju-On : The Grudge 2 is, overall, more of the same as the original Ju-On. The new twist will disturb many I'm sure, especially pregnant women (don't see this movie if you're pregnant, not only because of the stress it creates, but because the subject matter). Creepy as hell, disgusting at times. 7/10. As a side-note, seeing these kinds of film at fantasia may not be a good idea. It seems the crowd find it necessary to laugh most of the time, probably to hide their own fears. Rent and watch before going to bed, if you want to miss a good night's sleep.

Fantasia: Ashura, Arahan and Karaoke Terror

2005-07-10T08:45:00.000-04:00

As you may know every year I go to the Fantasia Film Festival and I see an insane amount of movies in a very short amount of time. This year is no different, as I will see 19 movies in the span of a little less than three weeks. I will record the movies I see here for my own reference and also help you decide if you want to see them (if they still play at Fantasia, or later on DVD). They're by no means complete reviews, just pointers.

Thursday I saw Ashura, an entirely forgettable Edo-period demon-hunting action adventure film with a hint of comedy. The comic aspects are actually what works best in that movie, as the action scenes are nothing you've never seen before. There's enough good moments to recommend a rental on a slow night. 6/10

Saturday night was a double-feature : Arahan followed by Karaoke Terror. Both were fantastic. Arahan is a hilarious Korean action-comedy film where everything just seems to work. It's about a group of old, washed up Tao masters who find a young klutzy cop that they feel will be the new Tao Master. It still plays twice at Fantasia, so don't miss it. 9/10

Karaoke Terror is, at this point, the highlight of the festival. A brilliant ultra-violent gang war movie. Pitted against each other are young kids with no purpose in life and equally dispassionate middle-aged women. Their war will rapidly escalate to unreal proportions. The acting is awesome, the script is fabulous. You will either laugh yourself silly or be totally depressed. A real must-see. 10/10

PSP Dead Pixel Woes

2005-06-29T11:57:00.000-04:00

Before I went to Amos, I bought a PSP at my local Toys R Us. I didn't open it until 600km later when I reached my destination. Turns out there were 2 dead pixels and 1 piece of dust stuck in between the protective screen and the LCD itself. I was infuriated. Not because of the fact that I had bought a defective product (I thought I could always return it) but because of what's stated on page 13 of the PSP manual :

"Red, blue or green spots (bright spots) or black spots (dark spots) may appear in certain locations on the LCD screen. The appearance of such spots is a normal occurence associated with LCD screens and is not a sign of a malfuction. LCD screens are made using highly precise technology. However, a very small number of dark pixels or continuously lit pixels exist on each screen."

Now, I understand that for all that it does (movie/music/console) the PSP is on the cheap end. And to get it out that cheap you had to make compromises. Among those compromises were poor quality control on the LCD screens. Fair enough. I don't mind a company that accepts that a certain percentage of units will be defective to lower costs. What I do mind is a company that guilt trips it's customers into thinking it's their fault if they think there is a problem with their screen. A company that lies about the nature of LCD screens, stating that "each screen" as in "all LCD screens ever built" have burned, defective pixels. A company that tries to make you feel like a moron for thinking there's a problem. That I mind.

I have used several LCDs, on my laptops, digital cameras and Gameboy Advance. I have never had any dead pixel on them. Don't tell all LCDs have them, unless you previously painted "sucker" on my forehead.

I have to say this turn of event stressed me during my vacation. I was 600 km away from the place of purchase and had no idea how Toys R Us would deal with my return. Would they try to tell me my unit was fine (like Sony is trying to tell me)? To my defense, the piece of unremovable dust caught in the middle of LCD screen would probably save me, as it was not a "normal occurence found in all LCD screen".

I went to Toys R Us and I'm happy to report that they've accepted my return. In fact, even 1 burned pixel would've been enough. I'm very happy and satisfied that unlike Sony, they recognize that shelling 300$ for a piece of equipment that is defective is not something to be happy about. They gladly replaced my PSP and this one looks top notch. I still have about 40 days to make sure of this before my store warranty ends and I have to deal directly with Sony. Hope it never comes to that.

Thumbs up Toys R Us, thumbs down Sony.

One C.R.A.Z.Y. movie

2005-06-27T18:44:00.000-04:00

I saw the movie C.R.A.Z.Y. over the weekend while on a trip to my hometown of Amos, Quebec. Excellent movie, great acting. It's in french (you can probably get it subtitled). It's drama with a touch of nostalgia. You follow one child of one suburban Quebec family from the '60s all the way to the '80s. It's mostly about homosexuality and how intolerant towards it people were in those days. (Of course there's still alot of intolerance, but I like to believe it's not as widespread). Anyway, check it out. 8/10.

Things that suck about the Battlefield 2 demo

2005-06-13T19:22:00.000-04:00

- Most servers run 12 minutes games. Come on people, 12 minutes isn't enough for any serious games.
- Server time limit is badly reported on the server selection screen. You'll often see 12 minutes even with games without time limits.
- Server selection screen will make the computer freeze completely when you try to use filters.
- Many servers don't have VoIP support. No VoIP? Why not play Desert Combat instead?
- "There is a problem with your connection", yeah, except in every other game or application.

Getting to a 32+ game without the 12 minutes limit and with voice support is getting to be very complicated. If you know of any good reliable servers without the problems above, let me know!

Look me up in the Gulf of Oman

2005-06-12T19:42:00.000-04:00

Downloaded the demo of Battlefield 2. Like it so far. Not enough people use voicechat I find. Squad and strategic features are also underused. Maybe it's all too new. Look me up, I'm Sheng Han Abdoulette.

Update : Finally had two awesome experiences. One as part of a squad that used voicechat extensively, we were really really working out as part of a team (malarkey###, a few others). Unfortunately the team commander was silent and passive, so the next game I got to be commander and it really rocked because 3 of the 5 squad leaders were using voicechat so the effort was coordinated like I've never seen in Battlefield. Integrated voicechat is IMO the defining upgrade since 1942. Strategic mode and homing missiles rank second. Can't wait for the real deal.

BTW the demo is buggy, first release will probably be buggy. Already looking forward to the patches :-)

Episode III sucks!

2005-06-04T10:22:00.000-04:00

Episode III was a major disappointment. The number of inconsistencies within that universe skyrockets again, as this movie is a series of artificially and forcefully strung together events. That wouldn't be so bad if the dialogues weren't even more artificial than the plot. Some say bad acting, I say you can't deliver these terrible lines with any credibility, no matter what your acting skills. Want to show your position to the vocal but very wrong majority? Check out this store.

And check out these people, who are just so damn right about this. Here, and here.

Update : 2028 hours, another good review from the Montreal Mirror.

G4 didn't kill them folks

2005-05-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

Last year when G4 engulfed TechTV and destroyed it, many of us mourned what was the death of a close friend. TechTV's flagship show The Screen Savers was first revamped into a pseudo-technological show, and was more recently completely destroyed and replaced by a trendy teenager-targeting "entertainment" show called "Attack of the Show". When The Screen Savers was at it's peak, it featured what I thought was the greatest tech/geek information/entertainment bunch I'd ever seen. Well, that optimal Screen Savers team is back together publishing a weekly audio podcast called "This Week in Tech". TwiT as they call it is a very entertaining and, more importantly, informative radio show that features content similar to the old Screen Savers. Check it out!

Also, Kevin Rose, another former Screen Saver who's also on the TwiT cast, has also launched his own television podcast called systm. Check it out!

The OSP Complete Archive is out!

2005-03-28T20:42:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to announce the release of "The OSP Complete Archive". This CD-ROM contains every game that's ever been developed by OSP Enr. as well as prototypes and cinematics of never-released games. The CD-ROM is available from cafepress.com and costs 14.99$. The official website is up so you can check it out. If you see any broken link or whatnot please let me know. Thanks!

Check out Ubuntu

2005-03-25T23:34:00.000-05:00

I was recently toying with a great number of Linux distributions for a very specific task. The task was to turn my old 350mhz computer into a Samba server without really learning Linux (that'll come later). While installing and uninstalling a variety of distros I stumbled upon Ubuntu. It was love at first sight. This distribution is highly evolved (it can be updated as easily as Windows XP). It looks absolutely gorgeous and through it's very helpful website I managed to get it to do exactly what I wanted with a minimum of command-line interventions. If you're looking to get into Linux, I highly recommend Ubuntu.

Back from the dead!

2004-10-16T20:25:00.000-04:00

Welcome back to christianboutin.com. Although it may look similar from the outside, the site's core has been completely redesigned using php (instead of javascript). The result is a better, faster-loading and easier to maintain site. This means I should update it more regularly than I used to. It took me three days to learn php and reprogram the entire site. About a week to enter all the data from the projects database (the old data was really messed up to work with javascript). I still have a lot of work to do in the Projects section, so if you go there understand that it's still in a flux. The resume is also messed up. It was made using Microsoft Word so the html it produces isn't compatible with Mozilla. Expect a new version soon.

Thanks and welcome back!