The Easter Weekend
Well, technically this post should have gone up yesterday but I thought you guys would prefer the usual Trailer Tuesday feature first. Plus my body decided to rebel yesterday morning after a weekend of overeating rich, oily and sugary foods - forcing a very rapid, painful and involuntary detox on my system to the point where I had to retreat home and work from there for the day to avoid embarrassment.
Anyway, the 4-day Easter weekend included several family get-togethers, celebrations and meals which saw us shuffling between Yellowwood Park, Pinetown and the Midlands. However, I'm sure that doesn't interest you at all, so I'll just stick to chronicling my pop culture consumption of the past few days.
Watching:
I finally got around to watching Monsters Vs. Aliens on Thursday evening - in the traditional 2D format as opposed to 3D, which was double the normal ticket price. Anyway, as usual, you can expect a full review of the film up on this blog soon (probably tomorrow) but the short version is that while Monsters Vs. Aliens has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, it's really quite superficial and forgettable. If we're comparing it to other animated Dreamworks films, it's more Over the Hedge than Kung Fu Panda. Fortunately though it's still 1000 times better than Madagascar and Bee Movie.
We also began watching memory loss thriller Memento, which, as a big fan of director Christopher Nolan, I've been dying to watch for ages. However, it was late, the bf started feeling very tired, and seeing as we were watching the DVD at a friend's house we had to leave the film just 30 minutes in. Another time.
On Easter Sunday, we were in the mood for a braindead movie experience, and found it in the form of Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties, in which the lasagna-loving feline stows away to England and gets confused with an identical English cat who has just inherited a castle. Garfield laps up the luxury and pampering but he also has to contend with Billy Connolly, who, as this film's Cruella de Vil, is intent on killing the cat so he can claim the estate for himself. As you can imagine it's gripping, original entertainment.
Monday's viewing included Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, an often surreal, A-Team-style action film from the 1980s, and several episodes of South Park Season 12. Highlights from the second half of the season include an episode that depicts last year's American presidential elections as a clever distraction that allowed Obama, McCain, Palin and co. to stage an Oceans 11-style diamond heist in the Smithsonian. The final episode of the season, The Ungroundable sees the local goths infuriated when the school is flooded with lookalike "vampire" kids following the latest pop culture craze.
Playing:
There are some classics you just always find yourself returning to when it comes to multiplayer PC games, and this weekend we played a good few games of Battlefield 1942, the Desert Combat mod, and WarCraft III.
Speaking of WarCraft, I decided to power level my secondary cooking profession in World of WarCraft this weekend, and start going after the various Cooking Achievements. I'm still not actually running the dungeons or doing daily quests, which I'm quite bored with. I'd much rather make money off my 2 main professions, devoting playing time to gathering resources (in my case herbs) instead.
Oh, and in terms of pen-and-paper gaming, in our weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign my paladin is now starting up his own paladin/fighter training academy, and making moves to take over command of the elite Demon Hunters squad from the power-hungry warrior queen who may, or may not be, a black dragon.
First though, Herkon and his fellow Demon Hunters (battlemage Micah, ranger-assassin Kalinae and bard Valesh) probably have to contend with an actual god who has come through a portal into the Empire, and is now holed up in the underground dwarven kingdom.
Reading:
As for reading, I finished Neil Gaiman's Coraline this weekend, the second of this youth novels that I've read in the row (the first was The Graveyard Book). A brisk read, Coraline is deliciously creepy and I'm of course very excited now for the stop-motion film, which releases in South Africa on 8 May. I'm definitely forking out the extra cash to see this one in 3D!
Anyway, inspired by MJenk's hilarious review I've now started Orcs by Stan Nicholls. What can I say? He used the magic words I just can't resist: "Unicorn horn dildo." Anyway, although my expectations going into Orcs were super low, so far it's been passable - the battle scenes are surprisingly well written, and I've only had to endure one "eat the heart of an orgasming man" sequence.
Anyway, the 4-day Easter weekend included several family get-togethers, celebrations and meals which saw us shuffling between Yellowwood Park, Pinetown and the Midlands. However, I'm sure that doesn't interest you at all, so I'll just stick to chronicling my pop culture consumption of the past few days.
Watching:
I finally got around to watching Monsters Vs. Aliens on Thursday evening - in the traditional 2D format as opposed to 3D, which was double the normal ticket price. Anyway, as usual, you can expect a full review of the film up on this blog soon (probably tomorrow) but the short version is that while Monsters Vs. Aliens has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, it's really quite superficial and forgettable. If we're comparing it to other animated Dreamworks films, it's more Over the Hedge than Kung Fu Panda. Fortunately though it's still 1000 times better than Madagascar and Bee Movie.
We also began watching memory loss thriller Memento, which, as a big fan of director Christopher Nolan, I've been dying to watch for ages. However, it was late, the bf started feeling very tired, and seeing as we were watching the DVD at a friend's house we had to leave the film just 30 minutes in. Another time.
On Easter Sunday, we were in the mood for a braindead movie experience, and found it in the form of Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties, in which the lasagna-loving feline stows away to England and gets confused with an identical English cat who has just inherited a castle. Garfield laps up the luxury and pampering but he also has to contend with Billy Connolly, who, as this film's Cruella de Vil, is intent on killing the cat so he can claim the estate for himself. As you can imagine it's gripping, original entertainment.
Monday's viewing included Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, an often surreal, A-Team-style action film from the 1980s, and several episodes of South Park Season 12. Highlights from the second half of the season include an episode that depicts last year's American presidential elections as a clever distraction that allowed Obama, McCain, Palin and co. to stage an Oceans 11-style diamond heist in the Smithsonian. The final episode of the season, The Ungroundable sees the local goths infuriated when the school is flooded with lookalike "vampire" kids following the latest pop culture craze.
Playing:
There are some classics you just always find yourself returning to when it comes to multiplayer PC games, and this weekend we played a good few games of Battlefield 1942, the Desert Combat mod, and WarCraft III.
Speaking of WarCraft, I decided to power level my secondary cooking profession in World of WarCraft this weekend, and start going after the various Cooking Achievements. I'm still not actually running the dungeons or doing daily quests, which I'm quite bored with. I'd much rather make money off my 2 main professions, devoting playing time to gathering resources (in my case herbs) instead.
Oh, and in terms of pen-and-paper gaming, in our weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign my paladin is now starting up his own paladin/fighter training academy, and making moves to take over command of the elite Demon Hunters squad from the power-hungry warrior queen who may, or may not be, a black dragon.
First though, Herkon and his fellow Demon Hunters (battlemage Micah, ranger-assassin Kalinae and bard Valesh) probably have to contend with an actual god who has come through a portal into the Empire, and is now holed up in the underground dwarven kingdom.
Reading:
As for reading, I finished Neil Gaiman's Coraline this weekend, the second of this youth novels that I've read in the row (the first was The Graveyard Book). A brisk read, Coraline is deliciously creepy and I'm of course very excited now for the stop-motion film, which releases in South Africa on 8 May. I'm definitely forking out the extra cash to see this one in 3D!
Anyway, inspired by MJenk's hilarious review I've now started Orcs by Stan Nicholls. What can I say? He used the magic words I just can't resist: "Unicorn horn dildo." Anyway, although my expectations going into Orcs were super low, so far it's been passable - the battle scenes are surprisingly well written, and I've only had to endure one "eat the heart of an orgasming man" sequence.
Comments
If you like it, Orcs II just got released here in the States (I don't know if it's worldwide or not). Nicholls talks about it a little bit at the end of Orcs.
Oh, and I just found the unicorn dildo scene:)
Yes, the ending is very, VERY predictable. *sighs* But, a lot of the back end of the book is just interviews and stuff with the author.
And fortunately I discovered a friend owned a copy so it was simply a case of borrowing it. I certainly wasn't going to fork out cash to get my hands on it.