WARNING! The following post contains an epic number of links!

Awright, I’ve been away for a few days.

I’d like to say I’ve been doing important things, but mostly I’ve been trying to regain my eyesight.

I’m sure the movies and video games helped.

But before we get to the reviews, TerriblyWrong.com has been updated. There’s another comic strip and an Elwood X-Mas card for all to enjoy.
Go there NOW, you fools!

So with that out of the way, I recently watched I Robot, Collateral, Napoleon Dynamite, and Shaun of the Dead.

I Robot was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I’m not in any rush to buy it, but it may someday end up in my collection. Read this for an objective review.

Collateral looked like a cool idea in the trailers and it didn’t disappoint. It’s a good story, it’s well acted, and the cinematography was original. I’m not saying I’d like to see every movie shot like this one was, but it suited this particular film well.

Napoleon Dynamite I’ve already posted about when I saw it in the theater. It’s one of those movies where there’s no real plot and very little character development and you just don’t know what to think of it while it’s going on, but you have fun watching it anyway. And unlike a lot of DVD’s, the extras are actually pretty good.

But leading the pack was Shaun of the Dead. I’ve been excited about just the idea of this movie for about a year now and my anticipation actually fell short. I was expecting a comedy that devolves into a hybrid-horror film. It’s actually a solid horror film with a bunch of liberally distributed funny moments. It’s also loaded with references to other movies like the Evil Dead series and Romero's Living Dead series. Hell, there’s even a reference to Lucio Fulci for fuck’s sake. If you’re a horror-junkie this is your movie.

The writers, Simon Pegg andEdgar Wright worked on the popular British TV series Spaced, in which they, being horror movie and video game fans, did an episode where one of them was trapped in the game Resident Evil. They had so much fun with it they decided to do a whole movie, and Shaun was born.

By the way, George Romero was so impressed by Shaun of the Dead he offered Pegg and Wright minor roles in his new movie Land of the Dead.

I also rented, played and beat Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I’m a fan of the series going all the way back to the one on the original Nintendo system (that second one kinda sucked though).

They are:
Metal Gear (NES) 1987
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake/Snake’s Revenge (NES) 1990
Metal Gear Solid (Play Station 1) 1998
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance/Sons of Liberty (PS2, X-Box) 2002
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (Game Boy Color) 2002
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2) 2004
Metal Gear: Acid (???) 2004

I’ve played all the Metal Gear games except the one for the Game Boy and Metal Gear: ACID which is a card strategy video game. A video game that simulates a card game which they’ve based on a video game.

Yeah, it makes no sense to me either.

The thing is though, the story, while entertaining and original, was getting pretty goddamn weird by the end of Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty. By the end of the game the plot devolves into "I fooled you all, I was really running things from the shadows all the time!" and "No, I was just letting you think you were running things, but in reality I was really running things!"

After that happens six or eight times you cease to care about the plot at all and you just want to get back to shooting people regardless of who they really are and who they work for.

Well if you’re into the Metal Gear series and you were disappointed at all with the plot in Substance I’m happy to tell you that the plot in Metal Gear 3 is much better. It actually makes sense in the end.

Problem is, the controls and camera angles in MGS 3 suck a big fat dick. Still, the story and graphics are enough to make it worth renting. Were I not strapped for cash I would have bought it. It’s worth playing through more than once.

So I’m going to my Grandmother’s for X-Mas Eve as I have for every X-Mas Eve of my life. It’s kinda weird though because the house we used to go to is the one I’m now living in (and rapidly destroying), so I’ll actually be leaving from the place I used to go to.

I’ll then be going out to my Mom’s place for the evening and splitting X-Mas day between her house and the house of my other Grandmother.

This means I’ll be spending two solid days with my family.

That means my drought of blog posts should be clearing up in the very near future.

Anyways, Happy December everyone.