The Happening

I ended up watching M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening lately. The trailers had intrigued me, and for the most part I like his movies. The Happening starts off with an unexplained "gas" attack that breaks out in New York City's Central Park. The unexplained result is that people become disoriented and start committing suicide. News of this spreads and people quickly try to escape the city. Unfortunately the "attacks" spread to the rest of the US Northeast.

Wahlberg and Leguizamo play school teachers that try and get their families out of the area by train. The cast was convincingly quirky and kept my interest. Some have said that the inclusion of kids in the traumatic scenes were a bit disturbing. But, if this were a real incident, the kids would realistically be caught up in the mess. Adds to the drama.

I do have to say most of the shock scenes were adequate, but could have been done better. One scene in particular was poorly done and laughable. It was a scene in where people were viewing an iPhone video of someone being mauled by bears. It looked like a Saturday Night Live sketch filmed on a blue screen, completely fake looking. At times in the movie I felt I wasn't actually scared but startled by the loud music that punctuated every shock scene. I did like the situations that transpired though, as it seems to be similar in theme but the total opposite of a zombie horror flick.

In the end though, I left unsatisfied by the movie. The events that occur are poorly explained and purposely vague. I really wanted to see more of what was "Happening." I wanted to see more of what was going on in the major population centers, but was forced to follow the characters into the countryside. Then just as quickly as the "Happening" started, it just ends with the cop out explanation that things can happen in nature that we will never fully understand. This kind of ending works great on a TV show like The Twilight Zone or The X-Files, but for a feature film is hardly acceptable. M. Night Shyamalan's trademark twist ending fails this time around.

Mirrored

Just to let you all know that I now have this blog mirrored on other sites.

http://lynxswift.blogspot.com/

http://www.xanga.com/lynxswift

http://www.myspace.com/lynxswift

At the moment the Xanga one is the most complete. But, I'm thinking the Blogger one will be my main blog from now on. I like all the customization that is possible.

Pasta Hut

So I was doing some shopping and saw a Pizza Hut location while walking home. I had seen the commercials for the new Pizza Hut Tuscani Pastas. So, I decided to give it a try. Big mistake. First of all, I should have just gone home and ordered from there, because I was informed I'd have to wait 10-15 minutes for the order. The location was one of those bare bones Pizza Huts that only did deliveries. When did Pizza Hut stop doing actual restaurants? In any case by the time I got my order and walked several blocks home with an unwieldy tray of pasta on a hot, humid day, the pasta was kinda luke warm. How was it? Well, I had ordered the Meaty Marinara version, and I found the sauce to be too sour, but passable. The cheese was the usual crappy cheese that Pizza Hut uses. One thing I found odd though was that there were all these hard dry pieces of pasta all along the edges. It was kinda annoying. I don't think this was frozen, but maybe the pasta they are using is the kind that isn't boiled but cooks in the sauce?

You can only order the pasta in a 3 pound tray for $11.99. Depending on your appetite, you can get about 3-4 meals out of this tray. If you're single, you're going to be sick of the stuff by the third meal. At least that was my experience :(. In all honesty, you can buy a better quality, frozen, pasta meal at a Costco/Price Club or Sam's Club or BJ's Wholesale Club. I'm not sure if the Creamy Chicken Alfredo is any better, but three other people entered the place and ordered that instead of the Meaty Marinara. Maybe I just ordered the wrong one? In any case, I'm not going to be recommending these "Tuscani Pastas."

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

Last night on the G4 channel, I saw the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It's about the controversial, current contention for the world record high score on the Donkey Kong arcade game. I was fascinated by this glimpse into the classic, arcade, game subculture.

We are introduced to Billy Mitchell, named the Video Game Player of the Century, holding world records in several classic arcade games. He's arrogant and over-confident and has a solid clique of gamers on his side. Then comes Steve Wiebe, a soft-spoken, middle-school, science teacher who attempts to claim the new world record high score. Controversy ensues as claims of fraud force the players to meet at an official arcade location called Funspot. The tension and repressed animosity is unbelievable, and makes for a good story.

I know most people who are not into video games will make fun of this documentary. But, I really admire these gamers and am glad to see another geek subculture film akin to the Trekkies documentaries. It's at least a validation that there are other like minded geeks and nerds out there that take their hobbies seriously.