Category: General

The satisfying ring of ears that have en(joy/dur)ed another big night out.

Morgan Avery1 Comment

There’s just something about stumbling through the garden, past the happy din of the morning chorus, and falling in through my door that just feels… Right. Anyway, my ears really are ringing and the bed is calling out to me like a sirene, but I want to get a few things down before I crash (let’s just say I’ve enjoyed a few drinks, and that I want to get some memories down before I risk letting them evaporate in the alcohol & dance induced coma I feel is now entirely inevitable).

Right: Burgers with Mike’s crew at 3am.
Wrong: That           . (Sorry           , I’m sure there are lots of good things about you, but I                  .)
Right: Making our way to Flight Lounge, I don’t remember who had the good idea, but it was genius.
Wrong: Not having a better chance to               . (           akward.)
Right: Having the 2 guys that tried to get into the club in front of me be sent packing, then being ushered in by the bouncers with a big smile and a few nice words.
Wrong: Giving out my new cards to all and sundry. I can’t help it – I just love these damn cards. XD
Right: I don’t want to go on about    . Take a hint.
Wrong: Making so many passes at Kat. Teehee. (Kat & Mike are so friggin’ perfect for each other, I want a relationship like that.)
Right: Telling the             that I didn’t         .
Wrong: Being so blunt by not              any     when I was getting rounds. I didn’t mean to be so             . Mea culpa.
Right: Making lots of new friends.

Ok, so I don’t like this formatting, but I only have time for a quick drink of water before I fall on the floor and sleep, slack jawed and drooling openmouthed on the carpet here in the lounge, so I’m just going to have to leave it as is and move on. (And maybe evaporate mentions of any              before anyone who knows what I’m talking about notices and shames the hell out of me for my lameness.) XD

Nighty-night my dear internet friends.

(You should get in touch.)

But do trust me when it comes to Californication.

Morgan Avery

There is no question in my mind that Californication is by far the best new TV show of the year. And when I say by far, I mean nothing else compares, not even close.

If you’re not a digital media junkie like me, then your time has already come.

Ok, that sounded menacing. All I meant was that it’s starting on free-to-air TV in New Zealand already, this Thursday night on TV3, in fact.

The only drawback to the show is that it’s a half length season – 12 episodes – and each episode is only 30 minutes. 12 glowing precious little 30 minute nuggets. Of brilliance.

I call it a drawback, but is it? Perhaps not, in fact you could say: Californication is brilliance, distilled.

Please try it, I’m quite certain that even if you don’t like it as much as your mum likes me, you’ll still like it a great deal.

Never trust a critic.*

Morgan Avery

I was out for dinner with a couple of friends last night who’d just seen Resident Evil: Extinction. Their conclusion? They didn’t really think too much of it.

So, remember this simple rule when you read my reviews: Morgan is Morgan is Morgan is Awesome.

Actually, keep that rule in mind at all times – it’ll make your whole life better and more productive when you come to terms with it.

In addition to that simple rule, here’s another one, only marginally less important to us all: Do things for yourself so you can judge them on your own terms. (Especially when it comes to zombie movies, as I’ll always rate them unreasonably favourably – due to my uncontrollable addiction to being scared out of my wits.)

Oh, the dinner was at Mezze, good conversation, reasonably good food (though overpriced) but the thing is that I have a lot of memories invested in that place that are a bit distracting for me.

I think perhaps I should                                                                                         , that’d wash away the ghosts.

* Especially not me.

1408 (2007)

Morgan Avery

The thing about movies based on Stephen King stories is that they’re all over the place, one year we have The Green Mile, The Shining, or Shawshank Redemption, and another we have Maximum Overdrive or Sleepwalkers. So you just don’t know what you’re going to get, right?

Anyway, this one isn’t one of the stinkers.

It certainly helps that John Cusack takes the role, I really do like him. Which is a good thing, if you took 10 random seconds out of the movie, chances are better than even that every one of them would feature him, by himself, in a hotel room.

It’s all about the hotel room, you see. Indeed, the hotel room is the titular 1408 (1 + 4 + 0 + 8 = 13), also there’s no level 13 in the building – the elevator goes from 12 – 14, so this is, in fact, on the 13th floor.

John Cusack is Mike Enslin – and here’s a shock for you, the male lead in a Stephen King story, dun dun dunnnnn: is a writer. Mostly writing about haunted hotel rooms and so on, which finally leads him to the Dolphin Hotel in New York, where they really, really don’t want to let him take room 1408. (Usually, you see, the proprietor is gagggging to get him into one of their “haunted rooms”, so this is an unusual start.)

When he finally gets into the room, the Japanese girls sitting behind me in the theatre go into fucking overdrive. I don’t blame them. Shit got scary in no time flat.

Die in a fire you creepy goddamn alarm clock!

Anyway, I thought it was good and scary. It made my skin prick and my hair stand on end. (Shut-up)

If you want a good scare, I reckon you should take your favourite girl (or guy) to this movie, then you can snuggle up close when it gets too scary. It’ll be a good time. Promise.

P.S. You are here.

We have Explosive Life!

Morgan Avery

So it was a beautiful sunny afternoon to wake up into, bleary eyed and regretting that 5th, 6th and 9th drink. But, as cotton-mouthed as I was, I was a man on a mission. A mission to get a tiny little engine running.

So I drained out the petrol tank, and what did I see? That’s right: sweet, sweet, milky confirmation.

Petrol & water up a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

The opaque wonderfulness of water contaminated petrol. Water and petrol don’t get along at all well, you know. It’s not so much a love/hate relationship, as a hate/hate one. (Ask me about love/hate relationships some time, and heartache! XD )

Anyway, I rebuilt the carburetor again, walked up the street to my friendly neighbourhood servo, and got a can full of beautiful freshfaced, clear-eyed petrol. All happy and excited to be out and about, and looking forward to being set on fire.

Short story told only moderately too verbosely: I’m fucking awesome, man.

The engine fired to life after 4 or 5 kicks, and I immediately took it for a blat. (Only to discover, of course, that the front brakes are as soggy as a biscuit, thankfully the rear brakes are still firm like a policeman.)

Am I happy? Yeah, I’m happy as Larry. I enjoy doing mechanical work, and enjoy it even more when it actually works.

The bike isn’t looking too hot, I guess that’s what uncovered storage will do to you. The seat is looking weathered, and there’s a lot of surface rust around the place.

I’m considering painting it up, but not sure if I can be bothered. If I can be shitted doing it right, it could look cool, if I can’t I’ll just give it an evil looking matte-black ‘survival bike’ paint job with a rattle can. (50cc scoots can’t really look evil – they can’t keep a straight face, you see. They scowl, but then giggle and giggle and giggle. It’s because of all the oil they smoke, nothing seems serious anymore. Silly little things.)

Interview with Portal writer Erik Wolpaw

Morgan Avery2 Comments

As you’d expect, he’s a smart, charming sounding guy. But then I love me some self-deprecation.

As a novelist, you just need to think of a few decent strings of words and then fill the other 98% of the book with more or less random descriptions of things and exclamation points. In a game, the 98% garbage section is filled with the actual game. Even worse for game writers, the 98% garbage part of a game isn’t even usually garbage because instead of reading something boring about the history of Belgium, the “reader” probably gets to jump a Camaro over a dinosaur. That means the pressure’s on to make the two percent wordy part that you’re responsible for really, really spectacular. It’s a tough job.

Read it over at Rock Paper Shotgun.

Eastern Promises (2007)

Morgan Avery

Viggo Mortensen putting in a pretty convincing performance as a Russian gangster in London.

Dude goes balls out, and I meant that entirely literally – if you’ve ever wanted to see Viggo’s skinny bare ass, or his dick & balls, this is the movie for you. (I hadn’t ever wanted to, but in context it wasn’t exploitative – it’s not a hot scene.)

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie that was so graphically, realistically, disturbingly violent. Where other movies would cut away to a face shot, we instead see the bolt cutters grinding through flesh and bone, and cutting off fingers, or razor blades being forcefully sawed back and forth, cutting through a throat.

Punches are not pulled.

Even if it isn’t all good, it’s still an exceptional piece of film making.

Actors wanting to learn how to project a palpable air of menacing power, violence held in check but ready to go at a moments notice, without screaming and shouting and putting on scowling and gravelly voices, would do well to pay close attention to Mortensen’s work in this role.

There was at least one scene which seemed to have the entire theatre (which was full of Russians, for obvious reason) shocked to the point of holding our collective breaths. Followed by a long release, with the odd nervous laugh from various around the room. Truly intense.

It’s quite something, if you have a strong stomach, you should see it.

Resident Evil : Extinction (2007)

Morgan Avery1 Comment

I like: hot women, science fiction, zombies. Roll them all up together and what do you get? That’s right: Resident Evil.

This is the third in the Resident Evil series (so far?). Now, what’s the normal rule of sequels? Who cares! This is by far the best of the bunch.

Everything is fucked. Everyone is dead. Well, practically. There are a few Umbrella complexes operating around the world, there are a few stragglers out in the wild, running to live. It’s been years since everything went to shit… And as it turns out, the zombies don’t need to eat to live (they just like human flesh a lot, go figure) so they’re going to be around for decades. It turns out that the virus that causes the zombieism also affects other animals, and even plants… So the entire world is turning to desert.

So, like I said, everything is fucked.

But Alice is still alive, and she has guns.

It’s brutal, visceral, violent. You know how in some movies you get scared? You jump, and maybe feel a little embarassed, so perhaps you try to take a different posture in your seat to hide the inevitable next jump. Maybe you get so scared of the music building up to a climax that you even go as far as looking off to one side of the screen, as if peripheral vision will save you from being eaten.

This is totally one of those movies.

And – with the given caveat that it is a horror/zombie/scifi movie – it’s really very good.

Great performances, with returning roles for characters from the previous movies, and the introduction of that crazy-hot and plain crazy MPD chick from Heroes, as well as a small group of others. (Including some who get their just desserts with cherries on top.)

(Karl, I’m sure you already are, but you have to avoid this one like the plague.)

Everyone else will dig it.

Portal

Morgan Avery2 Comments

Now here’s the thing, I’d heard a lot of really great buzz about Portal, so of course when the Orange Box finally came out last Friday I managed the track down a copy in the city (not as easy as you might think, I called 5 or 6 places that had sold out before I found a Dick Smith which had a single copy left – luckily I happened across a sales assistant who was super super helpful) and over the weekend I fired it up.

Portal is a game about a test. Or a series of tests. And you’re the subject.

I guess I’d been playing for a couple of hours, I hit level 18 and I lost interest. It was super hard and I just wasn’t seeing what people were digging on with this damn game, so I shut it down and headed out to have lunch with friends and watch an episode of Heroes (this is how we roll). Then on Sunday night I decided to have another go, discovered I was being an idiot, nailed level 18, and carried on with the game.

But I was dissatisfied by it, I mean it was really clever – and the gameplay is simply awesome – but I just didn’t see where the buzz was coming from.

And… Then I did.

This is the best game I’ve ever played.

If perhaps I’m overlooking a great gaming experience from the past and it turns out that Portal is really only the second best game I’ve ever played, it still has what it most certainly, without a shadow of a doubt, no question in my mind, the absolute best ending of any game. Ever. (Ever.)

You must try it. And cake.

[MEDIA=1]

(Song contains spoilers.)