As a new school year is upon us, another of my yearly attempts at blogging falls onto the poor, unsuspecting masses. A few unique traits to this year’s trial:

1. I may be attempting to learn CSS with this thing, so the whole blog may move on to a server and be radically changed on a weekly basis. 
2. I’m trying to be a reporter, so from here on out I will be reporting and reviewing professionally. No more first person, no emo-musings and hopefully well-sourced and written material.
3. Film remains in the title, but apart from the occasional film review, games will receive extra attention this year. I need to prove I can actually take them seriously, in some ironic twist of fate.
4. Hopefully this blog will serve some utility to someone other than myself this year. I’d like to think that my writing is not some exercise in ego-stroking.

Snow, sleet, ice. Winter in Wisconsin sure is great. There’s about an inch and a half of solid ice covering almost the entire campus, and it will likely remain there until spring as a lovely undercoat to any snow that fall making every walkway a potential ass bruising. And we’re over the record snowfall count by at least 7 inches as of yesterday.

At least the trees are pretty when they are completely cased in ice. They look like crystal trees with bushy white bunches of snow for leaves.

Apart from the snow, the shitstorm known as midterm season is all but completely raining down upon me. The dual-group projects that make up the bulk of my journalism classes this semester are starting to have pointless waypoint assignments due and the “cooperation” involved is giving me small ulcers, not so much because I have to do all the work but because I don’t seem to operate on the same timetable as normal students (i.e. they do their work on time) and thus I feel like I don’t contribute enough. Guess I’ll have to kick it up a notch or else I’ll have a pack of angry future PR reps after me to destroy my reputation.

Likely no film or game reviews this week as a result of some deadlines, but I am itching to see the vagina-fear-mongering horror flick “Teeth” coming out at Westgate this weekend. May have to slack a bit more beyond the waste of a Sunday known now as  “3 complete discs of Lost.”

It doesn’t get released until Friday here in Madison, but animation fans, take note–”Persepolis” is one of the finest films of the year.

It’s the sort of film that establishes what’s possible with a well-done animated feature– the art helps you connect with the characters and conveys moments too unreal for the reality of traditional cinema, both awful and wonderful.

It’s both funny and heartbreaking, a story about the ups and downs of growing up against the ups and downs of a nation consumed by political turmoil.

Almost makes it worth getting shafted by fees over at Sundance608.

Will Smith’s “I Am Legend” represents the best and the worst in modern filmmaking.

On the one hand, there are the Hollywood aspects that are easy to tear to shreds. If you’ve seen “I, Robot,” you seen just about all there is to see–again, Will Smith is the lone savior for mankind, now virologist Robert Neville. Again, he is facing destruction by an unstoppable hubristic invention of mankind, this time a cancer-curing virus that turns out to create rabid, light fearing and creatively named “dark seekers” that have taken over the nights in New York City. And again, he hocks fashionable electronics and sports cars as his character struggles against his threat.

However, these moments are dark spots on a film that delivers on so many levels in the first and second acts. The feeling of loneliness we feel as Neville goes about his daily routine is heartbreaking at times, in part due to the superb design of a NYC ravaged by both disease and years of disuse, as its residents dwindled to bloody corpses and the dreaded dark seekers.

It’s a one man show, and even though by the third act it seems exactly like one we’ve seen before, the first hour and a half are a ride that really deliver on the production design, acting talent and overall delivery of the spirit of the novel by the same name.

Fans of the novel will hate the film for the huge amount of changes levied on the story and characters, but audiences seeking a decent albeit flawed action film will not be disappointed.

Wow, really thought it would take the record over that shitty Spidey flick. Then again, I disagreed with the critics as well: Pirates was a spectacular summer flick. Meh.

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Games I’ll be playing this summer:

• Halo 3 Beta
• Mario Party 8
• Shadow Run
• Guitar Hero II on Hard
• Super Paper Mario
• Xbox Live Arcade
• Gears of War Online
• Crackdown Co-op

You should see reviews thoughts as the summer progresses.

Exciting.

Switched from Blogger over to Word Press for additional features. Plus I was bored. Exams are lame, but I’m excited for summer. And the Halo 3 Beta.

The beta looks amazing and I’m very jealous of all the people who are living at the current location of their TVs and Xbox 360s who are finally able to play after yesterday. I was pissed about the delay, as it deprived me of the only time I could play before I moved back home, but I was even more pissed at the gaming community for their reaction.

Kids swearing off Bungie completely? Threats of lawsuits and wrist cutting? Who gave everyone a Golden Ticket of entitlement?

Anyone who claims they were denied what they paid for is an ingrate. Crackdown was a damn fine game, fun to play even today with the added content, and if all you can play is Halo or anything Halo related, you’re selection of games is going to be pretty slim. And then how can you call yourself a gamer in the first place?

Anyway, its all blown over now that the children got what they wanted, plus four extra days. That means the three I lose from finals are back in my hands, so I’m happy. Impressions to follow whenever I give a crap.

To me, it is a cliche to go to the movies and complain that it is too expensive.

This time of year, millions of people nationwide are dropping obscene amounts of money not only on inflated box office admissions, but overpriced junk food and sweets to placate the tiny demon spawn they drag along to the blockbuster they are seeing to avoid direct contact with sunlight.

This being the case, what possible creativity could one have in an act so regular it has become white noise to box office cashiers nationwide? Even if it is purely cathartic, a little jab one can take at a name tag to make it easier to line the pockets of Sam Raimi and Sony movie executive producers, there’s got to be a more satisfying way to vent for them that could provide more creative options. Flaming on message boards perhaps?

That being said, the prices will never go down unless people stop going see garbage. The general public is learning though– Spiderman 3 dropped 60% in box office gross this weekend, and a lot of that was due to people recognizing its lousiness and avoiding it entirely. It’s a start, but we still have mutants coming to see Delta Farce. Go Figure.

If people stop going to these movies, the theater model as it exists will become unsustainable. The current tactics of catching you with a big draw and clubbing you with inflated prices won’t work unless for at least part of the year, people are coming in droves, regardless of what they are seeing. Theaters know this, and they are looking for all sorts of new sources of revenue that will allow them to maintain or lower prices and still remain afloat despite a more informed and fickle movie going public.

So I ask of you, what would you pay for at the movies that isn’t available now? Booze? Live shows? Valet parking? Or something new entirely?

Bad.

Hacked up plot, wasted characters, wasted screen time for stupid emo scenes and pudgy crying face scenes. Unbalanced, unworthy of even the movie franchise, and practically unwatchable.

Actually, you could just watch the Venom scenes on repeat. But that’s 20 minutes of movie tops.

Another prime example of movie by committee. “Venom” and “Gwen Stacy” are just brand identifiers to these people, not living, breathing characters. That’s why they are ghosts in the film–they were put there to get you in the seats, not to make you glad to pay to be there again and again.

You know a movie franchise has taken a turn for the worse when some butler new to the movies can solve three movie’s worth of tension in one line of dialogue.

Let’s just hope Spiderman 4 starts the franchise over, so we can see a REAL Venom movie.

Spidey Begins? Hell yeah.

PS Just another brand with a “3″ in the title that Sony decided to run into the ground as they laughed all the way to the bank.