PixlBit

Geez, it has been a while since I did a blog.

Sorry if i hadn't done a blog. After the last one, I got bussy with real life and even now that I'm in summer vacations, I still had things to do and currently i'm studying for the state exams (or the Colombian equivalent) that will be done on August. That, and I wasn't having that much inspiration for a blog, but now that I got back my inspiration, I felt like doing a blog of TIHBD. With that said, here's my blog.

Gaming:

I think due to the announcement of Super Smash Bros. 4, I got excited and decided to return to Brawl to prepare myself for the game and just because this is one of my favorite Wii games. Since I haven't played the game in like two years, my skills got rusty and I had to get myself familiar again, which fortunately, I did very quickly.

Like I said, Brawl is one of my favorite games on the console and probably the game I had spent more time on. I still hold to that. It's not only a very fun game, but it's very varied and oh boy, is it long. Right now, i'm finally mastering the smash attacks, learning how to use the shield and dodge abilities and it's only now that I realize that Wario and ROB are actually pretty good fighters. Only catch: the tripping and I still don't know how to do the codec conversations with Snake.

Also, before Brawl, I was playing Rayman Origins, Sonic Rush and Sonic Heroes. The first two are great, but sadly, Sonic Heroes, my first 3D Sonic game, hasn't aged well.

Movies:

Disclaimer: The next part is an overy long opinion. Skip to Televison if you don't want to read my long tirade.

My father visited me last week and I spent the whole weekend with him and by his request, I went with him to see After Earth because he was interested in seeing it. Well, that was dissapointing.

Okay, let me explain. I think one of the first things that I didn't like was the acting. First, Jaden Smith didn't know how to express emotions, he had a very grating voice and everytime he tried to go for drama, he just ended up as a whiny brat, but i'll go to that later. Will Smith actually did a decent performance, but even if that's how he is supposed to be, he's so emotionless that he just becomes boring, but i'll also cover that on the next paragraph. The rest of the cast had kind of a Meh acting. Not good, but nothing espectacular.

Then there's the characters. Jaden's character is the main protagonist and like I said, plays a kid who is a whiny brat. I could have sympathy for him, since he's stranded in in a very dangerous deserted planet Earth and he has to go through a rough path, but the fact that he acts stupidly and his desperation mostly comes from sister issues and lack of common sense for being over emotional in a bad teenage way of lack of self control, really ruins his character. There's also the father, who I admit, has more reasoning than his son, but everything that could have make him a good character gets thrown out of the window because of one aspect of him: emotionless. I know it's his defining characteristic and it's made very clear, but at the same time, he just doesn't have anything that could make him an interesting character and just comes as dull person.

Then there's the script which affects the characters and everything about the movie. The problem with the script is that it doesn't develop anything correctly. The movie has a good setting to tell and I know this movie is exclusively about father and son relationships, but I think a bit of backstory about the earth evacuation and a bit more information about the aliens in this film could have fleshed more the world. But even it's own script is flawed. Due to the mentioned flaws of Jaden and Will's characters, the relationship between them (which is the main selling point, together with Jaden's character overcoming obstacles) is kinda dull and even doesn't have good development. I also wished there was more backstory with Jaden's sister and maybe develop other characters like the mother, alas they didn't appear and one reason is that the script is very rushed leaving any characterisation and story elements short and made the movie TOO short. Seriously, I felt like this was a 40 minutes tv episode.

I guess the only saving graces were the scenery, some special effects here and there, some actually entertaining scenes like the wingsuit one and the movie actually has an emotional scene at the end, but they just tame compared to what i've said.

I think I could spend this whole blog talking about this film and I might have left other details, but it would make this very long as it is now.

Television:

 

Serie on the left: Code Geass. On the right: Death Note. 

Recently I started the above mentioned shows with the first episode of each one and hopefully if I don't get lazy or distracted by anything else, i'll continue them.

On Code Geass, the first episode grabbed me. I think it has a very interesting setting that I hope to see more and well I really want to see how the story develops, as the main character, Lelouch, has something going on. I think my only nitpick with the first episode was that it was kinda rushed, but it had an interesting premise and I gotta say that the Ghetto scene really had an emotional punch. I mean, WOAH!

Now, I actually lied when I said I started Death Note right now, as I actually watched the first episode two years ago and impressed me a lot, but fot some reason I didn't continue the series. To finally start watching the series for real, I repeated the first episode. Didn't gave me a big whoa like two years ago, but it's still a very nice episode and one that easily grabs the viewer. I just liked how interesting Light is and there's a pretty cool scene where pretty much Light is writing in the Death Note like there was no tomorrow.

So yeah, I will continue watching those shows.

Literature:

I'm currently going through the three books above.

A bit late, but finally I have the second book of The Song of Ice and Fire saga (aka: Game of Thrones), A Clash of Kings. So far, it has pretty much grabed me like the first book. Since i'm pretty early in the story, the exciting stuff hasn't happen, but the intrigue is keeping me reading it.

Last year I bought at my city's book fair Dune, which people told me was a great book, if a bit hard to follow, something a friend of mine who read the book also thought. Because of A Clash of Kings, I haven't paid much attention to Dune, but what I like what i've read so far of the first chapters. As far as being hard to follow, I can't say anything since i'm too early, but there's indeed names of stuffs and definitions that are made in what I think it's the language of the Dune universe. The good thing is that my copy has an index of definitions, which I always use when I see a name or definition of that kind.

Finally, we have Freefall. For those who don't know, in this blog I said that I was repeating one of my favorite books of my pre-teen years, Tunnels, which is part of a saga. Turns out that I not only finished Tunnels, but also it's sequel, Deeper, in a short lapse of time and now i'm in the third book, Freefall. Due to Dune and now A Clash of Kings, I haven't given much time to this one, but after the events of the second novel, which raised a very high bar IMO, i'm excited to continue Freefall someday.

Let's Play:

Because i've been in a let's play mood, I decided to check this group of Let's Players called The Runaway Guys, which i've heard of, even if i'm not too familiar with the solo work of the three LPers, which I think are famous around Youtube. I decided to start with their Let's Play of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. So far, i'm having a good time. The LP is mostly a humorous one, with them trying to complete every World with all the gold coins and pretty much what makes the hilarious is them killing each other accidentaly or incidentaly. Pretty amusing stuff and it could serve as a guide to get the gold coins.

 

So yes, that's pretty much all for this series of TIHBD. Any thing you guys are doing lately?