Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

This is paradise! (and it’s very nice!)

Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 10:04 pm Comments (6)

Watched Mad Max 2. Man, am I glad I did.

So, remember the first Mad Max, where there was some degree of civilisation and Max had some kind of goal in life? Well, whoops, civilisation has only thinned out even more and Max is even more of a sullen, wandering soul. After stumbling across a bumbling gyro captain, he’s led to an outpost where a small civilisation of people are trying to live a decent life by harvesting fuel for their appliances, but are eternally hounded by bikers with questionable fashion sense. He helps them out only to further his own means, but after his car gets blown the fuck up, he has nothing left to live for, so, hey, he’ll help them for free.
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DIE! X-CHICKEN

Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 11:54 am Comments (6)

Site progress: Kinda sorta nearly done! It’s mostly just a manner of tying everything together and fixing up the loose ends, though that’s probably going to be a bit gruelling. I’m hoping to have to done and uploaded by mid-June, but we’ll see what happens. I’m a mite concerned that after nearly a year of supposedly working on this revamp, there probably won’t be much in the way of new content besides some prettier layouts. We’ll see what happens.

I went to see X-Men: First Class a couple of days ago. I’ve come to forget a lot of the details, so excuse this horribly mangled rummage of my memory.
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We belong dead.

Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 11:12 pm Comments (5)

Well, things have been slow and awkward this month. Northern Ireland has been swamped with heavy rain and ferocious winds that’s kinda kept me indoors until yesterday, and life as a whole has been very meandering and sluggish. I get by, but it ain’t the most enjoyable of predicaments.
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Frankie & Fritz – crime fighters of the sea!

Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 7:34 pm Comments (1)

I watched Frankenstein a couple of nights ago; the old 1931 version.

Everyone knows this story. Do we even need a summary? Dude wants to create a functioning human being with science, and then the monster gets a bit uppity and eventually they both die. Bada bing.

For a film over eighty years old, it’s held up remarkably well, at least in the visual design. I think it’s hard to top Boris Karlov’s monster, and Colin Clive is a really, really rad Dr. Frankenstein, at least if you like having the ‘stark raving mad’ aspect played up . It’s a pity the guy died like six years after the film was made, as Clive has such a distinctive look that I feel he could’ve gotten a cult following in later years. Or maybe that’s just me.

It’s kind of interesting watching this and comparing it to other ‘early’ horror movies I’ve seen, particularly Nosferatu and Creature From The Black Lagoon. Music is a vital part of those two, particularly for Nosferatu since it hasn’t any spoken dialogue at all, while Creature practically sledge hammers music in your ears when it wants to set the mood (you could probably see the Creature shopping at Asda and that bloody ‘terror’ music would still be playing). Frankenstein has absolutely no mood music whatsoever; outside of the opening and closing credits there are no music cues to try and set the scene. The stark and unfriendly atmosphere carries the film by itself, and the absence of music really boosts it along. I don’t know if I’ve blogged about it before, but I’ve always wondered how different movies would be if you dropped all the music. I mean, Star Wars relies so much on it to imply “look, this is whimsical!” or “watch out for this dude, he’s a bad guy!” that if you removed all the music… well, who knows. Would be interesting to see, though.

The monster himself is a very tragic character, although I imagine the producers back in the day didn’t fully intend for it. Yes, the monster has a “criminal brain”, but he doesn’t wake up and immediately think, “I know, let’s strangle the shit out of everyone in sight!” The only reason he acts out against his masters is because Fritz, the hunchbacked assistant, is a real nasty piece of work who takes pleasure in threatening him with fire, and it seems Frankenstein and the professor are just itching to snuff the poor guy the moment he acts out of line. And when you can’t even rest in the dungeon for some peace and quiet without a hunchback waving a flaming torch in front of your face, you can’t blame him for being grouchy. The reason he kills is because that’s the only way he knows how to solve his problems; it’s not like Franky and Fritz ever tried interacting with him any other way. Let’s face it, the monster is practically like a big baby (with better listening skills) in the body of a 7 foot tall power house; you don’t try and set fire to a newborn the moment it kicks aside its breakfast. Then again, maybe they did in 1930s Germany?

I’ve still got Bride of Frankenstein to watch, so… well, I’ve no expectations, but it sounds like it’ll be an intriguing watch.

By Hemsworth’s nipples!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 4:03 pm Comments (1)

I’m getting increasingly concerned about how quickly this year is skimming me by. Are we really nearly halfway through? That’s not fair, mang!

Well, what is there for me to say? From the viewpoint of a productive mindset, I’ve done a lot of work on the perpetually-upcoming site revamp, and although slowly progressing, it’s coming along really nicely. I’m, uh, not sure if there’ll actually be much in the way of new content besides the directory rearranging, CSS design rampaging and so on, but it’ll be nice to get the stupid thing done. From the viewpoint of interesting blog entries… well, yeah, I have not been up to anything exciting.
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“We’re like the world’s gayest ninjas!”

Friday, April 29, 2011 at 10:02 pm Comments Off on “We’re like the world’s gayest ninjas!”

Lost Planet 2 finished its rental yesterday. I was originally going to write my thoughts on it and ultimately I was finding it hard to make notes, but then I went into town and got the first instalment and two other games as part of a three-for-£20 offer in GAME. I’ll largely be talking about the sequel since it’s the one I sunk three days into and the other I’ve barely dipped my toe into it, but heck, why not talk about ’em both and make things confusing?
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Super Smash Ponies

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 11:01 am Comments (6)

I had a dream last night that Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was a playable character in Smash Bros. Brawl.

I wonder if my brain is trying to tell me something.

Sonic Colours made me sad

Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 11:15 pm Comments (5)

Finally got around to covering Resident Bongo on Random Action Hour. It’s actually got some good bits, but the rampant repeating of sound effects and voices just gets grating real fast.

So, I rented Super Street Fighter IV about two weeks ago. It took a while to get into, if just because I’m a total scrub and was so used to Marvel vs. Capcom and its newbie-friendly Easy Mode, but after three nights of light playing I had warmed up to it quite nicely. Having no choice but to properly learn the control inputs for moves really encouraged me to learn these characters and their movesets (though I only had the time to spam Hadoukens and Shoryukens as Sakura), and even the really brief story modes had a certain charm to them – I barely know these guys, but the short glimpses of gentleman boxer Dudley talking about roses and drinking tea with boxing gloves on, it was all rather cute. I had picked up the game on a whim, but I thought it was a worthwhile rental. Heck, if the temptation ever crosses me I might even buy it! It’s not like it ever kept its original £25 price tag for long.

It left me quite optimistic after returning it, and I thought – why the hell not – let’s rent Sonic Colours!

Aheh.
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I’m oldschool.

Monday, April 4, 2011 at 5:48 pm Comments (1)

More Resident Evil goodness is happening by Random Action Hour.

How about some more really brief movie reviews of kids films? I caught the CGI film of Astro Boy a couple of days ago. It had decent animation and some surprise voice actors (Nicholas Cage as Dr. Tenma! Donald Sutherland as the evil president! Samuel L. Jackson voices a giant robot for all of three lines!), but it really had nothing to offer no other CGI kids flick couldn’t. They got the license to a franchise with nearly fifty years worth of history behind it, and then they just didn’t seem to have any grand ambitions with it.
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I only know one Resident Evil joke

Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 12:21 pm Comments Off on I only know one Resident Evil joke

The second part of the Resident Evil coverage is up on Random Action Hour. Get your sandwiches ready!

I watched Up a couple of nights ago. I’ve a bad habit of seeing commercials for animated films, thinking “I must go and see that sometime in theatres!” … and then I spend too long thinking about it that by the time I’m ready, it’s no longer listed. Same thing happened with The Princess & The Frog. Kinda vexing!

Like all of Pixar’s stuff, everyone else on the face of the planet (and probably a few Venusians for that matter) has gone on about how they’re great films in better paragraphs than I’m capable of. I could run through my regular review routine, but I’ll just focus on the element I admired the most.
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