You can take the panda out of the jungle…
It’s headlines like this that make me pay attention to the world around me. Thank you, Yahoo! News.
I wonder if I should ever bother with those “what have I been up to?” summaries when there’s a new entry after some absence, because lately it boils down to “bog all.” I’ve been playing Castlevania HD, Left 4 Dead, Pocket Bomberman, Doritos Crash Course, Panic Bomber and several other games. Yeah, but have I done anything productive? Well, er…
That reminds me, I did start work on two blog entries that didn’t go anywhere. I still have that unfinished Zebraman review sitting around (where I compare it to Jingle All The Way. It’ll all make sense when it’s published!) and I wrote a bit of a ramble on Pokémon Rumble, a strangely intriguing WiiWare game that’s probably just the way I want the series to be, if it weren’t for a number of letdowns and limitations (which I’ll probably write up as a General Writing sometime). I’m mostly spending my time redesigning and gathering resources for the Bomberman Shrine Place, which I hope will really expand the site in terms of gloriously nerdy information. I want it to be so nerdy that you start to feel embarrassed for me. If the redesigned Bomberman site doesn’t make you weep for the man who’s wasting his life researching obscure elements of the Bomberman mythos, then I’m doing it wrong.
Let me know if my attempt at hyping it up is working or not.
Watched Kung Fu Panda. As yet another Dreamworks “wahey i’m a talking animal aren’t i just the living end” movies (I really wish I knew where my Robots review was so I could quote the exact phrase. I’m fussy like that, see.), it’s on the same level as their other stuff. As an animated kung-fu movie with all manner of crazy acrobatic ass-kicking (with fuzzy animals), it’s pretty rockin’!
Po’s a panda who loves kung fu (you don’t say!) and works in a lowly noodle stall, but through creative abuse of fireworks is discovered to be the dragon warrior, the local kung fu master believing him to have hidden potential. The other kung fu dudes aren’t quite so willing to believe it, but the masters do a bit of soul searching (after hearing one of their old students is now on a murderous rampage for revenge, of course) and Po goes through a few training montages and everything works out all right.
This is why I’ll never be a DVD copywriter.
I remember the trailers for this playing up nothing but the comedy angle, featuring every possible shot of Po falling on his head and so on, and it didn’t exactly entice me into seeing it. The film doesn’t quite blatter you over the head with comedy the way Madagascar does, but there’s enough instances of people falling down stairs to keep my dad laughing. The plot doesn’t offer many surprises (it does have a villain with an intriguing motivation, at least) and the comedy is what you’d expect from a Dreamworks flick, but where the movie really shines are in its action sequences, and in the beautiful art direction.
You know chop sockey movies? Wire-fu flicks? Bop-a-lot films? Yeah, it’s like that. Except with CGI animals.
Hmm.
This is also why I’ll never make it as a professional reviewer either.
(Man, I really need to get back into writing short stories and whatnot. What happened to my talent for linguistic descriptions?)
(Actually it’s probably the fact that I’m really tired. I should’ve just left this until tomorrow.)
My failed attempt at elaboration aside (I was looking forward to waxing poetic on all the beautiful scenery!) Kung Fu Panda was a surprisingly good watch, and now I’m interested in watching Wall-E again to see which is the better film. Because comparing a martial arts film to a movie about fat dudes in space is such a balanced comparison.
Also, more for my own reference (I like to keep track of what I’ve watched!), I watched Solomon Kane a few weeks ago. My brother’s a big Robert E. Howard fan and was too incensed by the trailers to consider watching it. I’m not so familiar with the character, but I’ve read Howard’s stuff, and the movie really captures his sense of storytelling very well. The ending was a bit crap and I feel there could’ve been more exposure to the mystical elements, like the weird mirror monsters, but it wasn’t a bad watch.
The bit with the whole “Chew ON MY FIST” was a laugh.