Peter’s Blog V2

Early last year, I came across a so-called “research” article claiming that people who play car racing video games tend to get attached, become car enthusiasts, and end up purchasing more expensive sports cars.  At that time, my interest in cars was close to zero.  I hadn’t driven in years, and had no particular desire to drive or own a car.

Then I bought Burnout Paradise for PS3.  It was on sale.

I beat that game.  Then I bought and beat Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition.  Then I bought Blur, and have 2-3 more racing titles that I hope to get my hands on.  I watched all four Fast and the Furious movies, a franchise that I used to think was stupid.  I re-watched Initial D.  I started being able to name more and more vehicles on the road, and I get more excited seeing “unusual” cars around.  I developed a particular desire for the Lamborghini designs, and I learned to tell apart exotic cars that I can’t afford now from those that I can never afford.

Naturally, I needed to go to some car shows.  In April, I went with David and Adam to the New York International Auto Show at the Javits Center.  It was a manufacturer’s showcase of mostly boring road cars, but the few concept cars, exotic sports cars, and Rolls Royce / Bentley were pretty great:

Then in July, I went with Phil to the other kind of car show, where people brought their proud rides pimped out with all sorts of legal and illegal upgrades.  Some were lame, some were ugly, and some were simply weird.  But there were some serious art works that just blew us away.  Why anyone would spend more money painting a car than the car’s base price was beyond us, but it was awesome to see.

The best movie.  Ever.

Quite worth the 5-year wait.

Storm Riders is an epic comic series started in 1989 and still going strong today.  It was a top legend in Hong Kong’s comic book industry, likely being the most praised and most referenced work of all times.  It was also my absolute favorite epic story… for a long time.  The series started going downhill around 10 years ago, and seeing how the story is going these days, well, let’s not get into that.

Given its gigantic fan base, Storm Riders is probably also the most merchandised HK comic series: toys, replicas, games, TV shows, and movies.  The first Storm Riders movie came out in 1998 and was decently perceived.  It wasn’t awesome, obviously, but given how different the film medium differed from comic books, they did an okay job at capturing the essense of the story.

Twelve years later, Storm Riders II came out featuring the original two main actors:

It sucked ass to an unprecedented heights.  The poster above was honestly much better than any single frame in the movie, and for the last hour and 45 minutes of it, all I wanted was for it to end.  In fact, I went taking a nap after the first half of it.

It should be noted that bad acting and stupid plot are expected in an average action movie, so I didn’t really take any point off for those.  However:

• The character designs are all messed up.  Why does Wind still have both eyes and what’s with everybody’s TV-drama-styled personality?  And the original comic author claims to have been involved in the process?
• So… where’s the script?  Did HK writers also go on a strike?  I partially understood the movie only because I remembered the comics.
• Last but not the least… the special effects SUCKED.  Worse computer graphics than the movie 12 years ago?  How’s that possible?

The only redeeming value of this movie is to remind the hardcore fans how great the story used to be.  I despise the author’s shameless attempt to capitalize on his old work from 15+ years ago, allowing inappropriately funded amatures butcher such a classic.

Growing up sucks, when it involves watching your favorite art trashed by its own creater.

It’s been a while since the average independent short film freely available on the Internet was better crafted than the average Hollywood movie that you have to pay $15 at a theater for.  However, I had never been this impressed before seeing this piece: ?????? (Lee’s Adventures).

If I hadn’t glanced at the forum comments first, I might’ve been turned away quickly by the seemingly rough graphics and ghetto voice.  20 minutes later, I was in awe of the creative, hilarious, sad, and quite deep storyline.  With a plot as random as Alice in the Wonderland, this animation packed in elements of comedy, action, romance, and sci-fi.  The author cleverly incorporated tons of pop culture references and subtle jokes: including the character names.

The story is about a young man with a strange disease trying to get back together with his ex-girlfriend by beating a video game that will turn back time.  His stubbornness about love is a reminder of how naive many of us used to be… but of course nobody I knew had the courage to go through the kind of adventures that he did.

Instead of YouTube, you can also download a higher res version via eMule from VeryCD.

Official website.

Eco-terrorists value the lives of animals or plants more so than they do their own kind: ALF blows up animal laboratories and meat packaging plants; Sea Shepherd Conservation Society attacks fishermen and their boats; others burn down houses, injure hunters and loggers, etc.  The FBI considers eco-terrorism the #1 domestic terror threat.  They might have a noble cause, but the extra mile they go to glorify their “righteous” beliefs is the main distinction between them and the normal people.

Imagine a Hollywood situation where you are at the end of the world among the only dozen survivors on Earth.  On top of that, all food sources vanished, except rabbits who magically reproduced everywhere.  Now, what could possibly make the situation worse, than if half of the survivors were animal rights extremists?

Yeah, they vow to destroy you if you dare touching the rabbits.  You can choose to die starving or be killed by your fellow critter-loving humans.  That’s totally messed up.  Isn’t it?

I present to you… Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots and the prime example of somebody with a noble cause and freakishly too much passion for it.  Protecting humans is a great thing to do, but going as far as sacrificing himself and slaughtering his own kind puts him right up on the list with the Whale Wars people.

Let’s see.  The Transformers are a dying species and the Decepticons are working hard to ensure their survival.  However, since the early 80′s, the Autobots had plotted to destroy their every attempt at collecting food = energon cubes.  I thought the Autobots need energon to survive, too, but for whatever reason they enjoyed throwing the entire last colony of Transformers into a lose-lose situation.

Sure, the Decepticons might have to stomp on a few hundred people or blow up a volcano or sun during the process.  But should Transformers really care?  For the prosperity of human kind we also slaughter other animals and cut down trees, so there’s hardly any difference.  Unless you’re one of those who enjoy pouring blood on rich women’s fur coats or support the killing of abortion doctors, please join me and say -

Optimus Prime is messed up!

I went to see Toy Story 1 & 2 tonight, back-to-back, alone.  This was the only movie I ever went to the theater by myself for, besides the Passion of the Christ (yeah… kind of in a different category).

For the longest time, I wondered how it’d feel to pay $16 to watch two movies that I already knew by heart.  It was totally worth it.  Aside from the new 3D rendering, the higher video definition made visible differences from my DVD copy and I saw a lot of details for the first time.  In addition, Disney/Pixar made a bunch of fun clips to fill the 10-minute intermission, so there was something new.

The crowd was also great.  Given their age range (most of them not younger than myself), I’d think of them as veteran Toy Story enthusiasts.  However, everyone still enjoyed the movies thoroughly, cracking up at those 14-year-old jokes that they probably saw coming.  I think Toy Story is the greatest cartoon ever created, and it was nice to see these other fans.

After work today, I went with a bunch of coworkers to see Yankees play the Blue Jays.  This was the first baseball game, also the first sporting event since graduating from Tech, that I have been to.  Well, I figured that as I start my fifth year being a New Yorker, this was sort of a necessary experience.

Prior to this, all my knowledge surrounding baseball came from the Mitsuru Adachi comic books, and all I knew about the Yankees was that the entire island of Taiwan raves about Chien-Ming Wang.  As a result, I didn’t know any of the terms in English and couldn’t name any of the top stars.  Then I learned some tonight.

The new Yankees Stadium:

The game:

The remaining gang after 10pm:

So the Yankees got their ass kicked 10-4, so I declared myself a Blue Jays fan and celebrated the victory.

I wanna see this!

Trailer on YouTube

Once again Pixar has done a fantastic job with their annual animated film, Up, the flick about an old man and a lot of balloons:

It’s unusual to see any movie, let along a cartoon, to center its story on a whithering old man.  Up had done it so well, that our theater was unusually crowded with senior citizens.

It’s also unusual to hear tough 20-something young people to admit shedding tears.  But the first thing that I heard from both persons who saw this movie before us was how they cried like a baby (or almost there).  We were also deeply touched by the nearly silent delivery of a simple yet loving story of the two common folks.  Maybe this is how love stories really should be told.

What’s more?  Read about how Pixar granted a dying girl’s wish.

We went to see the second Transformers movie on IMAX.  I had never seen a real movie in an IMAX theater before.  This was a great first time.

It’d be asking too much to expect a sequel to top the original, but Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen did have every element from the first movie that everyone raved about: big(ger) robots, big(ger) explosions, hot cars, funny people, Megan Fox, etc.  Sure, the focus on things blowing up might’ve been slightly over done, but whatever.

My personal biggest disappointment was with the Constructicons / Devastator combo.  The Voltron-copycat had been my second favorite Transformers after the Dinobots, so I was thrilled to hear that Michael Bay recruited some of the world’s largest construction vehicles for this.  Unfortunately, this guy didn’t do much in the movie… at all… the camera didn’t even focus on any of the giant machines before they merged into a vacuum cleaner.

(what he should’ve looked like)

The greatest parts of the first movie were the subtleties that fans could pick up on.  Why did we all cheer as the big truck rolled out?  Well we knew who it was before the formal announcement.  In this movie, there were two or three places where I saw an excavator and said, “YESSS!  A Constructicon!!!” and was wrong about it.  That was pretty lame.

What I can say?  Let’s hope the Dinobots kick ass in Transformer 3!

*** Update *** I did not know that the satellite-hacking thingy was Soundwave!  Well glad that another of my favorite old-timers made it into the movie, although that’s quite a fancy ”upgrade” from his tape player disguise.