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Movies on Vacation

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

I'm down in Key West for the week on vacation, relaxing, eating as much seafood as I can and smoking every cigar I can find. At a full week it's the longest vacation I've been on since I was a kid, and while I'm really missing Demon's Souls (that game's not going to beat me!) and Brutal Legend, it's nice to get away from everything for once in my life. I even left my laptop home, and the separation anxiety should have been crippling but it's almost freely, strangely. Course I write this on my wife's Mini so the internet still has its hooks in me...

I did get to appease the movie geek in me on Monday, however, when we stumbled across this awesome little theater called Tropic Cinema that was playing Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Leaving the girls behind my buddy and I grabbed a few drinks (really wish more theaters in NYC served beer and wine) and got ready to experience one of the finest and campiest films from the duo. No, I don't understand why Abbot and Costello is seen as more of a guy's thing, because as we waited for the film to start even a dog came to see the movie. (Seriously. He slept through the whole thing though, clearly not appreciating the subtle humor of the duo)

Sadly it turned out that they didn't have a print of the film and were just projecting the dvd- really a crushing blow- but it was still a blast. The youngest people in the theater by at least a couple of decades, it was amazing to see how well the 60 year old film held up and played to an audience.

The TV show is probably my favorite of all their work- some of their finest and most refined bits appear there- but of course their Universal monsters team-ups are probably their most well known. They never really topped Frankenstein but Invisible Man and the Killer, Boris Karloff are also some of their finest, and really led the way for all the horror-comedies to follow. Going to definitely have to have a marathon when I get back.

Anyway. The rest of the vacation will be filled with snorkling, raw bars and more cigars, but I'll be back and posting on the site soon enough. See you guys around.

I'm hot blooded

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Last Sunday before our screening of Frankenhooker I somehow managed to come down with one wicked fever. I ran home early feeling like I was about to collapse, and found out with shock that my temperature was at 104.2.

Today's thursday, and the first day my brain feels complete again to be writing again, let alone thinking. Even with tylenol and motrin my temperature didn't seem to want to dip below 102, and kept bouncing back up to 104.4.... 104.5.

A fever that high teeters on the edge- a few more tenths of a degree to 105 and it's recommended you go to the hospital, and at 107 to 108 your brain starts to melt. Any higher than that and Elizabeth Pena comes over with all of your neighbors to pelt you with bags of ice.

The worst part about a fever that high is that you can literally do nothing. I couldn't even concentrate on a movie or play a video game, for god's sake, spending most of the time staring at the wall and hating my life. But fever dreams are a scary thing, man- I can now see how easy it is to go delirious and absolutely insane with this. On my worst night I sat up, sleepless, and every time I closed my eyes my mind would write stories at high speed, illustrated ones, right before my eyes. I'd open my eyes and my brain would stop zooming and whirring, but when I closed them it'd kick back into gear again. It's terrifying not being able to control your own head, when you can literally feel your brain start to pump faster and overheat. It's enough to make you take after Max Cohen from Pi and put a drill to your head.

Thankfully it broke yesterday, bringing me down to normal fever temperatures. It finally hit 100-101 and I felt like running outside and doing backflips up a mountain. Hah! You call that a fever? Downing gallons of gatorade and watching about five MST3K episodes in a row helped even more. Never mind the delicious, delicious codine that my doc prescribed.

But anyway, barring some possible bad news from blood work that's coming my way from the doctor today (besides the inevitable bill) I'm back.

My friend's kid has Swine Flu.

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

No really, he does. There's a lot of it going around in Queens.

Know what his parents did? They took him to the hospital, got him some medicine, and he's getting better. They put a tv in his room and are keeping his siblings away from him, and he's having a blast staying home from school. End of story.

Now if every friggin' idiot in the world wasn't dragging their loved ones to the hospital every time they so much as coughed, they would have had an easier time of it. Hospitals have triage centers out because every goddamn media-crazed idiot in the world thinks they're infected. Guess what- you're probably not. And if you were you could easily survive it. Stop panicking!

I'd love to know how many people have died of the regular flu in the last few months since this Swine Flu mania hit.

Things I learned in Montreal.

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Went up there last weekend for an Army of Two: The 40th Day community event, possibly the first of many. It was the first time I'd been to the city. You never get a chance to really check out the cities you visit at events like these, what with the usual hectic schedule, but I thankfully got some free time to walk around in my off time. Really dug what I saw, and here's a little list of things I noticed.

- It sure is a quiet city. For a place so crowded it's strange to not hear cars honking and people yelling. Then again, I'm used to NYC, so...

- There's one big problem with having the legal drinking age set at 18. It's not what you'd expect, though, the biggest problem is one of embarrassment. Waiting for my car to the hotel, I was sitting at a bar having a beer when a guy pulled up a seat near me. The bartender turned to him and said "Hey, you can't sit here unless you're 18." The guy looked taken aback. "I'm 25!" Ouch.

- Canadians apparently like hockey! The things you learn! So many cars flying pennants, people talking about the games, even a guy wearing a helmet and cape.

- Too many friggin' tourists. It's the bane of my existence whenever I travel out of the country- I inevitably end up surrounded by drunken loundmouth asshole Americans. It makes me cringe. Then again, this weekend was also hockey playoffs and a huge UFC match, which led to streets swarmed by hockey fans and huge MMA types looking for a fight. Quite a crowd.

- Cubans are legal! I don't even know why I didn't think they wouldn't be, it was just a pleasant surprise. Picked up a couple of Romeo y Julietas.

- Keith's makes a pretty tasty beer. Dug both red and blonde varieties.

- According to our waiter at a fine restaurant nearby, the best strip clubs around there were completely hands on, letting you touch anything "except for the honey pot". Also "for 80 bucks she'll touch you with her mouth, and for 120 she'll touch you with her insides." Oh, how we couldn't stop laughing. The French Canadian accent probably made it better.

- Speaking of, there's about 3 stripclubs for every church in this city, and there are a LOT of goddamn churches. (Huge old ones. Even the second-biggest one in the world.) Course, it looked like more people were headed to stripclubs. A lot of them have hawkers outside letting you know how much more you can touch their girls than their competitors.

- Having both English and French as your languages leads to lot of strange double talk. Every time you were greeted it was by "Bonjour, hello!", as people tested out just what you were.

- It seems that lots more people smoke, although that might just be the French influence. Lot of people smoking more than tobacco, as well.

- At two different places I saw porta-potties up on scaffoldings on the side of buildings. Wha?

- Customs and security is so much more relaxed up there. I don't mean that in a "Hey, they let me bring this machete on board!" way, but in that they're not barking and yelling at you nonstop.

- Can't wait to go back.

My cat tried to kill me in my sleep.

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

So the other day I woke up, opened my bedroom door and was blasted in the face by the smell of gas. The window was a crack open- could it be that the asshole Con Ed employees working on the brownouts in my area hit a pipe or something?

But no- the farther I walked in my apartment the worse the smell became. I lit a match to see my way (no I didn't) and soon found out where the smell was coming from. My oven. The front-right burner was clacking away, trying in vain to ignite the gas pumping out... but the flame wasn't on and the gas was steadily filling up the house.

It's then that I discovered who had tried to kill me. He was still at the scene of the crime, slinking around all guilty-like, giving me the eye and hoping, perhaps, to be fed.

The culprit:

Yes, my ever-climbing cat had apparently been hanging out on the counter above the stove, jumped down and hit the knob on the way. He's actually done it once before.

I think I might have nailed the motive, as well.

See, this is the sad thing. My cat's name? Tyler Durden. I didn't fucking name him... the previous owner (who had him for a month and was going to give him back to a shelter) did. We just call him Tyler so he can hide his shame.

Although I do secretly delight in grabbing him and shaking him, screaming "YOU ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING KHAKIS!"...

Anyway, it's obvious that he's ashamed of his real name, and falsely think we were the ones to bestow him with it. He must have watched the movie and figured that blowing up our apartment Durden-style would be the best way to be rid us of both us and our Ikea furniture.

Anyway, we took all the knobs off the oven and are hoping he doesn't figure out another way to get at us and make it look like an accident.

American Pop

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Don't you hate when you watch a movie for the first time and kick yourself for not getting to it sooner?

I've talked before about being addicted to Netflix's Watch It Instantly feature on my Xbox, and it really is one of the best options for a movie buff around. Especially for someone as broke as me, having thousands of movies to choose from is beyond awesome. Some might bitch about the selection but I don't see how you can complain- there's just tons of great selections here- from TV shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and 30 Rock to films like The Atomic Cafe and The King of Kong. Course, I love cheesy horror movies and am thrilled that films like Decampitated and Food of the Gods are on it.

But there are some genuinely great selections on it, like American Pop, Ralph Bakshi's ode to the music of the last century.

I absolutely fell in love with this film. It's a beautiful, stunning experience, chronicling four generations of musicians who are just trying to make it. That's such a cheap way of putting things, though. It's almost a music video of sorts, one that takes you through all the important periods of American music, It's sentimental and fast-paced and makes you want to go back and listen to all this amazing music once again.

Definitely check it out if you haven't already. I honestly didn't know Bakshi was so talented a filmmaker, as I had only really been familiar with Fritz the Cat (a rite of passage for film fans, really) and his mangled Lord of the Rings adaptation. Going to have to make my way to the Bakshi films I haven't seen yet (like Fire and Ice) and do my best to track down Coonskin.

Hype.

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Just today I've gotten a ton of emails from people wondering if we're not hyping Let the Right One In too much. Devin started it on the site when he saw the film and (rightfully) fell in love with it during Fantastic Fest. It'd been hyped up for me as well before I was finally afforded the chance to check it out, and it still exceeded my expectations.

Hype is a bitch, there's no doubt about that. It's disappointing to see something that's supposed to be great and find out that it doesn't connect with you at all. But one thing I have to wonder is why people seem to not understand why we're writing about the movie so much. I've gotten almost angry emails from people saying that if the movie doesn't hold up (or isn't perfect, as apparently evidenced by my score) I'll be to blame. A review is by nature subjective, representative of one individual's tastes and opinions. Not everyone's going to agree with me, of course, but wouldn't it be wrong of me not to talk about a film that hit me perfectly on every single level? That I talked about and debated for hours after seeing it for the first time? That I've seen twice and can't wait to see it a third time? Why wouldn't we want more people to share our experience?

One big controversy seems to be my 10/10 score. Hear this- the film's not perfect. Hell, no film is- why bother keep making them if that was the case? But it is flawless in execution, like no other film in recent memory.

Another reason for writing about it so much is because of the fact that this is getting a very limited release, and most of you unfortunately won't be able to check it out. But for those of you that do, please, at least give it a shot instead of watching whatever mainstream crap is playing near you. The Saw series doesn't need any more money.

Anyway, just my thoughts. I really do hope more of you do get a chance to check out the movie and hope it affects you as much as it did me. For all the shitty horror movies I watch it's nice to see one that reminds me why I love the genre in the first place.

The only reason you should ever watch The Happening

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Is if you do it with Rifftrax.

Hopefully you haven't seen the movie yet. It's truly one of the worst movies I've seen in years, and this from a guy who watches z grade horror flicks all the time. That clip should give you an idea of the incredible acting on display, and the terrifying horror of THE WIND. I would never, ever recommend subjecting yourself to watching this movie but with that Rifftrax, you'd be safe.

Answering hate mail.

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Answers to a few questions I've been getting over and over about my MCP coverage-

"Do you EVER give a game a bad score?"

Well... yeah.

The last ones I truly ripped into were probably Blacksite and Manhunt 2 (when they were advertising on the site, no less) but you know, it has been a while. There's been some incredible games coming out over the last year or so, but I can at least understand this complaint. No one wants to read positive review after positive review. In my defense I'll point to the fact that I think ratings systems are useless (what's the point of all those words if it can all be summed up in a number?) but the biggest factor to this is that I've really only been requesting games to review if I'm interested in them. So of course there's a good chance I'm going to like them.

I'm pretty much on my own with this thing so it doesn't make sense for me to waste my time and ask for a copy of the Two Worlds: Epic Edition or Too Human or Infinite Undiscovery (sorry, Jon) when there's stuff like Mercs 2 and Dead Space and Fallout 3 on the way. I also tend to be more lenient with downloadable games, since the risk/reward is much less when you're spending 10 bucks on a few hours of fun.

But you've got a point. Maybe I should get Gamefly going again and rip into some turds.

That being said, two more positive reviews are on the way...

"Why don't you have more PS3 coverage?"

Trying to work on that. I don't own a PS3 cause I'm a broke bastard right now, and tried to get a loaner from Sony to no avail. I don't hate the system (far from it) and don't like to have to play favorites, but that's just the way things are.

Heavy Rain is most definitely going to be my breaking point, though, as I'll have to do whatever it takes to be playing that sucker day one.

"Why'd you cancel my friend request?!"

Dude, my list is damn near full, and I need space for real life friends, and people who I'll actually play games with online. I include my gamertag at the end of reviews so you can see all the achievements I've gotten and see that I've actually played a good chunk of the game, something I think all reviewers should do (you'd be surprised how many times I've heard of someone not finishing a game before reviewing it). It's cool to get requests from people I'll play a game with online here and there but I hate adding gamertags just to have a ton.

But, speaking of that, keep an eye on the main page in the next few weeks or so, as we're going to try to set up specific MCP nights where all the Chewers can come together and kill each other in peace.

Anyway, I really do hope you've been enjoying the coverage on the site and have learned about a few new titles from it. Don't want it to seem like all I get is hate mail (and it's much more strongly worded than I let on here) because I get even more kudos, and it's greatly appreciated.

Nothing like hanging out in an airport at 5 in the morning.

no@spam.com (Alex Riviello) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

I'm on my way back from a week of game-related events- two long trips to places far away from home to play video games and hang out with journalists from around the world. I got extensive playtime with two games that are months away from release, flying and sleeping and drinking on someone else's tab. Not a bad way to spend a week, but I'm aching to see home, my fiancee, and my friends.

One game I've already talked about. Dead Space. Monday morning my article will go up that details the incredible time I had with the game, and why you'll be wanting to buy that sucker come Halloween. You really, really will. This is going to be a huge game for EA, which is great, because it'll show them that the market for original titles is there. Not to say there (probably) won't be Dead Space 2, but...

The second one that I spent a day with yesterday is under embargo, but on August 20th you'll read about what I saw.

The best part about these community days really is the chance to be able to see behind the scenes in a game's development. There's something incredibly cool about seeing the games in an unfinished state, especially if they already show promise. The people attending are really the eyes and the ears of the consumers, and the developers take their opinions and advice to heart. I've heard of countless times that journalists influenced games for the better- the most glaring example being EA's complete overhaul and delay of Army of Two.

I'm lucky, though, that the games I've checked out so far have ranged from good to great.... and that the people at these things tend to be some of the most laid-back, personable ones around.

Anyway, let me stop before I get too mushy. One hour of sleep and two flights on the way.