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September 07 Disappointment 9The short verdict on "District 9:" Watch "Enemy Mine." "District 9" wasn't the most boring thing I've ever seen but that's not a very high bar to clear. After all, I've seen "500 Days of Summer." The thing that pisses me off most about this movie is that it was grossly misrepresented in its trailers. Don't be fooled: the interrogation scene in the trailers has nothing to do with the movie. "District 9" is nothing more than an action film with decent special effects. The "Prawns" were cute, though. Especially the juveniles. May 02 Pandemic II - Patience is a virtueThe key to Pandemic II appears to be patience. I quit playing two weeks after it was released on account of frustration. Like many, I dubbed the game impossible.
As it turns out, it's not impossible, just really slow paced. This time around, I won on my first try. Fast forward should be the middle option for speed.
Move in slow measured steps. The key is to sneak up on the population. Start by eliminating your symptom early and then spend a lot of time getting mutation points before doing anything. After you've got some points stored up (40 - 100, depending on your disease type), get level I resistence in everything (except drugs). Be patient.
As soon as the governments of the world start to react, spend all of your points on infectivity. Start with the transmission methods, then resistences. Slow the game down for this part. This is the battle. The governments have no effective method of erradicating you once infected (unrealistic) but they can, somehow, prevent disease from spreading across their borders (also unrealistic). So, as with many games and much of life, the true competition is over key blocks of real estate like Madagascar.
If the governments start reacting and you don't have Madagascar, you might as well stop the game. It is such a low-probability event to infect Madagascar with respect to the risk of Madagascar closing down its ports that the game is basically lost. It seems like if you play your cards right, though, that you'll be fine. Madagascar is like the middle of the chessboard.
With the exception of Madagascar, most governments have a graduated response to infection. This makes the the battle for the surrounding territories more interesting. Don't get anything that increases visibility without careful consideration and certainly don't waste points on anything that doesn't increase infectivity.
Once you have all of the territories or have set your self up to take them as best you can, it's back to the waiting game. Turn fast forward on an wait for a solid foothold in each territory.
If you get all the countries before it is impossible to win, that's when you start to get symptoms that do damage. There is the possibility that the humans will create a vaccine. I've not seen this be a problem and, I suspect, you can combat it with drug resistence.
Even in the end, it's a waiting game. The last few stragglers hang on unreasonably long, considering thay have a disease that shuts down their kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, and causes massive blood loss. March 13 Murder Machine on PauseI have marked this entry as being on the subject of "entertainment" for obvious reasons. The state of Washington was gearing up its slaughter machine for its first judicial murder in eight years and then decided to change its mind. I say "bravo." This is, probably, the first redeeming act I've seen from Washington and I hope it is not the last. People: This issue is actually really cut and dry. The most heinous act a government can perpetrate - worse than genocide - is to murder someone in the name of "justice" for a crime he or she did not commit. ...and guess what? Everyone might be innocent. You can no more be certain that someone is guilty of a crime than you can that there will be an afterlife waiting for them after your blood lust has been sated. There is only one way to prevent execution of the innocent and that is to prevent executions altogether. That is an indisputable fact. If you believe in the death penalty, you are a bad person; plain and simple. If you believe that innocent people should be killed just to quench the public's thirst for retribution - and that is the very nature of the death penalty - then you do not deserve to live. To be honest: You are probably a worse person than those whom you would have executed and your running free is certainly more detrimental than their sitting in a prison-cell. The world would better be served by striking you from its surface than by the death of any incarcerated individuals. The problem is that the only people despicable enough to kill you are those like you. So... um... I guess the question is this: If you are vile enough to support capital punishment could you just go ahead and kill yourself? That seems like it would be a really tidy solution to the problem of you. March 31 SPOILER ALERT: 10,000 b.c. (it was good)I really liked it. I'm sure a lot of people did not. I also bet most of the people who watched it just thought it was some adventure movie.
There clearly was more to it than that...
I think it was about the Big Event to which all the great monuments (the mounds, Angkor Wat, temples near the Pyramids at Giza, et cetera) allude. Either there was an amazing coincidence, or the makers of this movie really did their research. Watch it and look for the details. If you've studied this subject, I think you'll enjoy this movie. March 11 Imagination Land, Im-aa-aaaa-aa-aaa-aa-gi-naaa-a-tion Land...the movie.
I'm curious as to what they might have added to make it worth buying instead of just buying the DVDs for the whole season when they are released. March 27 I Had a Premonition: "This movie will suck.""I have become unstuck in time" - Billy Pilgrim, Slaughterhouse Five NO SPOILER ALERT: This movie spoils itself. Someone doing their laundry and dropping their kids off at school is not a basis for a movie, regardless of how the events are ordered. Forward, backward, it doesn't matter: "Premonition" is still, for the most part, just a movie about that chick from "The Net" doing chores. Rent "The Lake House" instead. |
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