Reviews Galore...

So here we are halfway through a long weekend, and given I'm still in town, might as well update.

On Friday I ended up catching two flicks, both very different. The first was the new one with Jim Carrey called Bruce Almighty. There was one particular scene in this movie that had me absolutely cracking up. The rest of it was pretty funny. Didn't knock me flat, but it was the type of good fare expected from a Carrey movie. I'll go with 4 M's out of 7, which is pretty good for a comedy, given it's almost impossible for them to get up to 6 or 7. I do enjoy laughing my ass off every once in a while though.

Later that evening since I ended up at a matinee of the first movie and having a few extra bucks on me I decided to go check out the fare at the el cheapo pretty much ghetto $3 theater on Hollister. The showing was Better Luck Tomorrow an independent film I'd heard a lot about. Randomly two of my friends ended up at the same show, which was pretty neat. A few of the people who had seen the movie had made comments about "asian shock" or something, given pretty much the entire cast is of asian descent. I guess the reason I hardly noticed was I've been growing up in that kind of breakdown for most of my life. I'm really oblivious to people's races really, in just about all aspects of life. The main actress was pretty cute, but I'd already heard she was 28, so that kind of killed it, even though she does look 16 in the movie. Overall I really enjoyed it, especially all the cutesy wutesy scenes involving the concept of boy likes girl but girl has boyfriend and thus boy gets shafted. Poor guy. That must have sucked. False happiness is eventually achieved though, in what I'll say is a pretty unfulfilling ending. Many plotlines are left open, so you sort of leave with a "well how is that going to work" type feeling. I'll give it 5 M's though even with the crappy ending, just because it was cute too.

I also finished playing through Splinter Cell, which ended up falling somewhat flat as it went on. Initially the idea of shadows being cast by everything, including realistic shadows cast by yourself and enemies, was really cool. Sneaking from shadow to shadow to avoid being "seen," and being able to tell what kind of weapon an enemy is carrying based on his shadow coming through a doorway, led to some really neat effects though. When it came to gameplay though, it was nothing special. The set pieces in a game like RTCW or MOHAA were much better, but overall this was a step in the right direction. Of course Half Life 2 and Doom 3 will bring all this and more, but hey, you have to entertain yourself with something in the meantime.

Next on my plate is Vice City, the expansion for Grand Theft Auto 3, which should keep me busy for a few days in between books. That is, if I can ever actually get the thing fully downloaded, which seems to be more challenging than it first appeared.

And then there were twenty days to graduation, scary thought.