The Karate Kid

We all know how remakes usually go, either really good or really bad, there is no middle ground in the world of resurrected films. This past year there have been a number of remakes hitting the box office. Take for example Clash of the Titans, The A Team, The Crazies, Last House on the Left, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Alice in Wonderland. Some were great, while others fell short of their older predecessors. One that did not disappoint was The Karate Kid, it opened this weekend and was the top at the box office. Grossing an estimated $56 mil, it left it's remake partner, The A Team, in the dust.

I for one, have seen all the Karate Kid movies and was excited for this one to come out. Having not done much research on it, I half expected it to be a sequel but was pleasantly surprised to find it was a total remake. Director Harold Zwart did an awesome job completely recapturing the wonder that was the original 1984 Karate Kid. From the very start of the cinematic experience I was fondly remembering some of the lines and a lot of the scenes from the original film as the new movie played out in front of my eyes. It was the same story: scrawny boy and his mother move to new place, boy meets girl, boy gets beat up, old maintenance man "helps" boy by getting him into a tournament with trained martial arts users, old man does ridiculous training that ends up working, boy goes to tournament, his leg gets hurt but wins any way. It was the exact same story, which is rare for a remake to actually not take too much "artistic licenses." Which you'd think, why bother remaking it at all if nothing big changes. But that's just the point, the writers and the director did such a good job at recreating the story that after the first half hour, I forgot I had seen it all before. There were just enough subtle changes that added to the story but kept with the original innocence of a boy coming into his own.

A few of the most noticeable differences were location, characters, and training. To begin with the characters, instead of Daniel-san and Mr. Miyagi, we have xiao-Dre (Jaden Smith) and Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Also the bullies are a bit different in this one. Instead of being some douche-bag-momma's-boys we have hardcore-born-to-fight-machines. I mean these kids aren't human, the leader, Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), would make a grown man run and hide. I knew I was scared when the group came walking around a corner and it took everything in me not to shout, "Run! Run little Dre! He's going to kill you!!" Those were some mean little kids and their training was tense! Comparatively, Dre's training was not so tense. In the original film everyone remembers the classic "wax on. wax off" line and Daniel-san being made to do Mr. Miyagi's chores. None of that here, nope, Mr. Han is sneaky, he mixed kung fu training with obeying your mother. Which is another difference, but this one actually bothered me a bit. It's called the Karate Kid, right? Well then why was Dre learning kung fu? Shouldn't it be called the Kung Fu Kid? I imagine it has something to do with the fact the story was placed in Beijing China instead of California. Ah well, I'm willing to accept that small annoyance amongst the sea of memories.

All in all, if you enjoyed the first film, you will enjoy this one. If you have never seen the original Karate Kid, I'd still highly recommend going to see this one. It's great, gets the same story across, and has some killer fight scenes!

P.S. as a side note, I feel Jaden Smith looks a lot like Riley Freeman from the Boondocks in this movie.

Year of the Black Rainbow

Let me just start out saying that while I know this album isn't for everyone, I think that everyone should at least give it a try. Personally, I LOVE the band, Coheed and Cambria, and their newest album is no exception. What really makes Coheed a "love them or hate them" band is the lead vocalist and mastermind, Claudio Sanchez, thanks in no small part to his voice that could make a choirboy blush and can hits notes that some women only dream of hitting. Now, that's not always a good thing, but personally I like his vocal style but can see how some find it to be, shall we say, off-putting. Ah well, to each their own I suppose. When I heard the two pre-released tracks from the new album, Year of the Black Rainbow, I pre-ordered the special edition copy straight away. I know that could have been a folly if the album wasn't as good as those two teaser songs, but with it being a concept album, I was willing to take my chances.

The special edition set comes with a DVD with the making of Year of the Black Rainbow on it as well as a few never before released bonus tracks on the CD. Both of there are very interesting but rather standard on special edition albums. What really sets Year Of The Black Rainbow apart from other special edition albums is the novel. Yep, Sanchez got Peter David to help him write a book for this album, and it was extremely good. I haven't read a book in... well, it's been a very long time, but I couldn't put this book down! Sanchez has dabbled in the writing field before, but with the help of the literary giant, his concept has come to fruition. It is a beautiful science fiction novel that really took you to the world of Heaven's Fence. This acts as a prequel to Sanchez's comic series, Amory Wars, and to the band's previous albums as well. I feel that I got to know the characters and the worlds so much better, that their plight was my plight. It was a great read, even if you don't know any of the history of the albums or band or like the music.

As for the music itself, well, it is wonderful. Now I will admit that when I get on a new album kick... I kick hard. I immerse myself in the album, meaning that, I'm pretty sure I listened to nothing but this album for a week after it arrived in the mail. As my tendencies are a little unorthodox, I feel I gain a greater appreciation for the work in a shorter amount of time than those that listen to it like normal people. The lyrics on this album are haunting and beautiful, adding poetic foreshadowing throughout the album. Each song has a story within it that works it into the whole concept of the Year of the Black Rainbow. This is completely my personal opinion and I am willing to discuss and even retract this next statement if you can sway my thoughts.

This could be, correct me if I'm wrong Coheed fans, their best album so far.

But where are the Titans?

I'm not a big history-buff or anything, but I do love mythology. I don't care if it's Greek, Celtic or Luxembourgian, I find it all very interesting. Most cultures have similar gods and myths, but the Greek's are experiencing a new resurge in popularity at the moment, as well as being really well known. Therefore it's no surprise that the remake of a 1981 classic film, "Clash of the Titans" is the top grosser at the box office this weekend. What more do you need? Angry gods, beautiful women, epic monsters, and oh yeah, it's in 3D.

I've mentioned before that I enjoy 3D technology, but am not really a big fan of it being used in everything. In this new "Clash of the Titans", the third dimension is used rather well, although it sometimes looked like an after thought, a worrying trend in this 3D generation. Not over used, not underutilized, but just enough to make it worth the extra dineros for the glasses. Once again though, these modern day 3D glasses are made to look more like sunglasses, tint and all, dimming the actual movie. I wish they would quit doing that! I can only imagine how much better the film would have been if the color had been 100% while still maintaining the 3D. Its not a really big deal, but can get distracting.

I didn't have many complaints about this film, it was actually pretty good... but the one thing that distracted me (aside from the color loss) was the fact that the mythology and storyline were a little off. As mentioned earlier I'm not a scholar in mythology, but they did get a few things mixed up. I'll write it off as "artistic license" this time, although I'm not quite sure there is any need to take artistic licenses over ancient lore. The topic of this post suggests there were no actual Titans in this movie entitled, drum roll please... "Clash of the Titans." There were plenty of other monsters, gods, warriors, and little beasties... but not a single Titan. For shame.

Well, I take that back, there were a few Titans, not from mythology mind you, but titans of acting. In one corner we have the awesome Liam Neeson playing the mighty Zeus, and in other corner we have the trickster Hades played by the talented Ralph Fienne. Neeson made a great Zeus, such a volatile god, loving one minute and vengeful the next and always full of emotion. Fienne came to please as well showing the darker side of deity. They worked together as beautiful opposites.

All together it's a fairly good movie. The story is simple and easy to follow, as long as you don't think about it too much, and makes a nice backdrop for some intense CGI. This movie is by no means award-worthy, but damn if it isn't nice to look at!

Click both sticks to gouge out eyes - God of War III review

Nerd confession time; I am relatively new to Sony's ultra violent God of War series, in fact 3 was the first game that I actually completed in the 5 year old franchise. I managed to miss the previous two games thanks to a broken PS2 when the original was released and being blinkered by next-gen gaming when the second came out. Had I actually experienced the games first hand I would have discovered that the lowly PS2 was pushing boundaries that even the next gen consoles weren't. Luckily for HD obsessive types like myself the original two games have had some make-up slapped on and have been shoved onto the PS3. Having finally played the games I can't help but feel I missed out the first time around. The scale of the battles and the creatures fought are impressive, even more so when the limitations of the hardware at the time are taken into account, the graphics (even before the next gen upscaling) must have pushed the Playstation 2 to it's absolute limits and the quality of the audio is fantastic, especially the music. All of these elements are what made the games completely epic, and i can see now why the second game is considered one of the best games to be released on the PS2 period.

As I said previously GOWIII was my introduction to the series, and at times I felt like I was being punished for not being loyal from the beginning, for example the plots of the previous two games are told in the form of a stunning James Bon-esque silhouette opening sequence mimicking classic Greek art. While this introduction looks amazing and is really enjoyable, unless you know what happened in the previous two games it will be hard to decipher what is actually happening. Luckily the characters have no problem in declaring their intentions as well as reminding Kratos of their roles in his previous adventures, so the experience does soften up to newcomers. Something that doesn't soften up so quickly is the combat, the learning curve is fairly steep for a first timer, although the game does give a run down of the buttons it doesn't give much insight into the vital combos that you'll be needing, and any difficulty above Easy will require more than just blind button mashing. Despite my complete lack of skill when handling muscular Greek men I found the game a joy to play, and while it's true that during my repeated failures in certain boss battles I was muttering 'worst game ever' once I'd cleared the hurdle all my frustration completely washed away.

It turns out a good cure for frustration is slicing through swathes of minions in a strangely beautiful bloody rampage. God Of War III is an insanely good looking game, raising the visual bar for consoles even higher than Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain had previously. The opening sequence of the titans climbing mount Olympus is quite simply out of this world, the mountainous level that you start out in is revealed to be the back of a completely massive titan, the developers are clearly proud of the awe inspiring scale they have achieved and use a constantly shifting dynamic camera to really show off. Although the concept of a fixed camera may sound completely old fashioned in practice there is nothing remotely 'old school' about the way it is implemented here, the angles used are cinematic and dramatic, at times Kratos is only a dot on the screen while titans clash with the armies of Zeus, these moments are never canned and in many player control is retained. Having now played a game with such a cinematic camera it feels really unnatural to play a game with a fixed over the shoulder view, only changing for cut scenes.

Despite being part of a pretty niche genre I think God Of War III is a game that is impossible to hate. There are elements that all gamers can appreciate, the cinematography, the music, the gameplay, the graphics, the story, there truly is something for everyone in  this game. In all honesty I went into GOWIII feeling skeptical as I'm not a particularly big fan of  hack and slash games, and I felt that the series was famous only for the 'brutality' and gore it presented. Having played this game I can say that while it is true that this is a very violent end to a bloody trilogy, to discount it as shallow mindless game without first experiencing it would be a big mistake.