PixlBit

Things happened in my absence: I got a lot more stuff off my Pile of Shame and not just gaming. I read a book called “All You Need is Kill.” With a weird title like that, it is not surprising it comes from Japan! I got interested in the book after hearing about a new movie in development (renamed “Edge of Tomorrow”) starring Tom Cruise. The book is about a soldier stuck in a time loop where he is doomed to fight and die in the same battle over and over. Think Groundhog’s Day for the war buff. That cool premise and the awesome cover art sent the book straight to my Amazon shopping cart!

The story is actually as good if not better than I was expecting. Even at only 200 pages this book has a lot of depth and it never stopped being interesting. I can tell you right now this will make a great movie if they do it correctly. Of course, casting Tom Cruise in place of what should be a 20-year old recruit might have not been the best start. Seeing Emily Blunt swing around a giant axe in a mech suit could sure be something though. That’s right, I said mech suit!

I also watched the entire Vengeance Trilogy, which was sitting on my shelf unwatched until now. The Vengeance Trilogy is basically a series of South Korean movies by the same director with no continuity between them other than the theme of revenge. I can tell you right now, don’t bother with the first and the third movie. The second movie is clearly the masterpiece of the set (the other two are merely “okay”). It should be mentioned that the movie is loosely based off a manga of the same name.

Anyway, Oldboy is probably the best movie I’ve seen in a while. Aside from the great story, it had a really memorable 4-minute, dozen-man action sequence done in one continuous take. The trailer above for the high-budget American remake coming out later this year might get you interested.

I then watched quite a few of my anime DVDs. The standout was Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture. It’s about an anime/video game college club. It felt like accurate depiction of nerd culture, has great characters and is just a ton of fun overall. I also made it up to the second half of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and I am still not digging it near as much as the first series. Something’s missing. Maybe it’s the lack of crazy writing involving alternate dimensions and occult Nazis! It’s still really good though and I probably just have my expectations too high. Finally, I watched Samurai Champloo for the first time in almost five years and I have to say I like it even more than I did before. Now it is one of my new favourites and it simply looks great on Blu-ray (for a 9 year-old series).

And,that’s all folks! No games this time, but we all know there is enough room for other geekery!