waverider37's New Writeups

Empire Records (review)

2013-03-25T06:50:16Z

WARNING: this is a waverider37 review so as usual I take no prisoners in my pursuit of reviewing. Spoilers abound below.

This was a film I discovered last night as my friend loves it to bits and sat us all down to watch it. The 1995 flick shows us a day in the life of the eponymous Empire Records music store, and its assortment of employees. The ensemble cast - which includes very young versions of RenÃ©e Zellweger, Liv Tyler and Anthony LaPaglia (to name a few) - are all about keeping Empire Records an independent music store, and are hell bent on keeping it from turning into a branch of the Music Town chain. Things get more hectic when fading teeny-bopper idol Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield) visits for the day to launch his new album.

I went into this movie expecting exactly nothing. I've learned from experience that this is the best way to jump into a new film or game (except if it's a Blizzard game or a M. Night Shyamalan flick). So I had to…

365 project (thing)

2013-02-04T14:49:04Z

Take a photo, write a chapter, post a blog, do something new, once per day for a whole year.

That's a 365 project.

In a nutshell, it's doing something once per day for an entire calendar year. Sounds easy? Well... no, not really. It can be pretty hard to discipline yourself into doing something every fuckin' day of the year. In fact, the biggest killer of 365 projects is "oh but it seemed too much like a grind and I got bored and I don't wanna do it any more".

So, obviously, step 1 is to pick a subject that ain't gonna get boring. Or grindy. And keep it short and simple, so you only spend 5-15 minutes per day on it. I myself picked "post a photo of the people, places, things and ideas around me, every day in 2011". Only on two days in July did I lapse, and this was understandable as I had had my wisdom teeth out at that stage. But I persevered. And I digress. Moving on.

Step 2 is to decide: are you a…

Splinterheads (review)

2013-01-14T13:37:23Z

It seems like I'm doing this review thing a lot, so here I go again with a movie I just watched for the first time today. As usual, spoilers follow.

Splinterheads is a little-known 2009 romantic comedy, telling the story about how Justin's (Thomas Middleitch) dead-end life gets turned upside-down when he meets Galaxy (Rachael Taylor), a "splinterhead"¹ who works - and hustles - at the carnival in Justin's town. Things are further complicated by the poor relationship between Justin and his mother's ex-boyfriend Bruce (Christopher McDonald), and Galaxy's relationship with her abusive boyfriend Reggie (Dean Winters).

It's a small pity this film never saw much of a wide release. Despite its drawbacks - and there are a few - the film isn't too bad. So I'll start with the drawbacks so I can end on a high note. First and foremost is the film's pace - it feels too slow for a 2009 movie, and it doesn't quite feel right for an older movie. I almost lost…

Life of Pi (review)

2013-01-13T13:05:06Z

It's now been adapted into a film, directed by Ang Lee and starring both Suraj Sharma and Irrfan Khan (among others) as the eponymous Pi. As usual for a waverider37 review, spoilers (and heaps of them) follow.

I have never read the book, so I'm going purely on JyZude's synopsis above. It's more or less the same, except that "part three" (the interview) is not at the very end, but rather scattered throughout the film. It still chronicles the adventures of Pi as he grows up in India, then is the lone survivor of a shipwreck. Again, an improbable story is told in a realistic fashion, but this time we can actually visualise how Pi survives the disaster, then the ensuing hardships on a lifeboat with a tiger (named "Richard Parker" - this oblique name comes from a clerical error).

I'll start with the obvious comparison-with-book stuff. From what I can tell, the book is very linear (please correct me if I'm wrong), but given that the interview pops up at several…

Wreck-It Ralph (review)

2013-01-04T11:16:21Z

Warning: Cheats... erm, spoilers, follow.

It's tough work being a video game character - anybody who has ever died in Leisure Suit Larry would know. It's even tougher being a video game villain, as Wreck-It Ralph is discovering. Sick of living in a dump, being largely ignored for the game's hero (the eponymous Fix-It Felix jr.), and never being the hero himself, Ralph (John C. Reilly) decides to win a medal to try to win the respect of everybody in the video game world. This attempt goes awry and Ralph ends up in the sickeningly sweet go-karting game Sugar Rush. There he meets a glitch character called Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), who is trying to live her dream of being a real racer, rather than just a glitch.

This film is a kids' movie, but honestly, I'd suggest it's a kids' movie for twentysomethings and thirtysomethings. Particularly those who were alive during the video game boom that came after the crash in the early 1980s. Though there are a lot of…

Angry Birds (review)

2012-12-26T12:30:13Z

You've read Uberbanana's synopsis, now time for a waverider37 review.

Puzzles. Usually, when one hears "puzzle games", they think "old folks, kids with nothing better to do, and super geniuses who don't get out of the house". So, before any Professor Layton defenders get into this, it's a long way from true. Fair enough, it's not what you'd expect gamers to enjoy (as a genre), but hell, I'm a gamer. Of all trades (except MMORPGs). Puzzle games are a way to keep me from going insane in between rounds of Borderlands and Starcraft when I just can not win. So, naturally, I have a million sudoku books.

Ahem. Enter Angry Birds. The cutesy-fun puzzle game that has gripped the world, and gripped it very quickly at that. The plot, for those unfamiliar, is that the oddly-shaped birds that the player controls have had all their eggs stolen by the piggies (I say piggies as it makes it easier to dislike them). My first experience with Angry Birds was, not surprisingly,…