Sunday 20th of May 2012, week 20

Entertainment

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11
Aug 09

Did Blizzard just tell us a secret?

blizzardEurogamer sat down and had a talk with Chris Metzen and Sam Didier from Blizzard about the giant gab of money we all call WoW or World of Warcraft.

Quite easy the discussion gets into a show and tell about what they wanted the game to be in teh time before launch. Metzen tells that during the development of WoW alot of developers were in fact playing EverQuest and even Ultima Online, both which are quite a bit more hardcore and raw then Blizzards game did end up. One quite intresting part in this discussion was that the designers seem to have the game beeing played hundred of years into the future of the world of Azeroth. But that they had to let that idea down because, as Metzen revealed, “It didn’t feel like Azeroth”.

At the exact same time I was reading this it hit me that I just had been told a secret about what the X-team at Blizzard actually is working on. Can it really be that easy that the PR-team let out Metzen and Didier to do what they just did – plant the idea of the crossbreed of Warcraft and Starcraft which is a sidestory of which rumors have been passed around for years. And if we combine these rumors with the second largest one, the Blizzard Sandbox, can it be the future?

Personally I feel that Blizzard is too big to pull of a sandbox-game at this time. They have atracted an audience which will follow into their new MMO almost whatever it may be and from a buisness-perspective that would give us a quest-based, class-based mmo from the studio sometime in the coming two years. If a sandbox was to be released I’m afraid that they would loose a portion of the WoW players (at the same time getting alot of new) and this might be the biggest obsticle for them to overcome.

Fear of not making as much money tomorrow as today is cruel.

Feel free to check out the full article over at Eurogamer.

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11
Aug 09

District 9, a preview

district-9-poster

District 9

Perhaps it’s just me but a movie with aliens dropping in on planet earth always make me become intrested. No matter really what the story is there is something with the thought of the unknown knocking on our door.

Anyhow, there is a movie coming up named ‘District 9′ directed by Beill Blomkamp which I have glanced at for a while. It has a spread out releasedate depending on where you live (full list at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/releaseinfo) between August 13 and October 30. I must admit that the fact that it is promoted as “A Peter Jackson movie” had me a bit worried in the beginning but after I saw the trailer I got my hope back.

Story in short is about a spaceship holding aliens which come to rest over the city of Johannesburg in the early eighties. The inhabitants of the ship is kept in confinement down at earth by the South African government and the story itself feels quite alot like the story of apartheid. The movie is created as an mockumentary or a false documentary which is liked by a few and disliked by almost as many. Personally I can’t wait for it to be released, looking forwad to see how they solved the same old story once again.

More on Disctrict 9 at IMDB

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13
Jul 09

Into the wild

During the last week I have read the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer which is a story about a boy giving up his entire life to live a simple life in the wild. Christopher McCandless was the boys name and throughout the book Mr. Krakauer try to identify what is was that drove a more or less common boy to abandon his family and life without a feeling of remorse.

The book was written in a very simple language and the soul of the book remain in the story. After finishing it the reader is left with split feelings about who Christopher McCandless was. One way of looking at him shows an almost religious hunt for understanding. But on the other hand his hunt for answers did inflict massive amount of pain on his family and friends and I can not grasp the utter sadness it must be for a parent to lose ones child and not getting an explanation.

The story has also been made into a movie and whether you read the book or watch the movie I recommend you to do one of them. The story is sad but interesting and deliver questions for you to answer.

More information
Into the Wild at IMDB
Into the Wild at Amazon

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8
Jul 09

The curious case of Michael Jackson

After watching the Mr. Jackson memorial from the Staples over TV and I thought it could be a good time to tell my views of the career of the king of pop. Fist of all the show memorial itself was emotional for all involved and artists and friends stood in line to raise the man for the skies for the work he put into showbuisness but also as a friend. Just as the Swedish commentators on the show I asked myself how many of the people in the memorial who had expressed their support for the now deceased Mr. Jackson when he was alive. Perhaps the broken down man would have needed some of these words of encouragement while he was alive instead of the posthumous celebrations we saw yesterday. It felt a bit strange.

michael-jackson-foto

Image from Google Image

Mr. Jackson will be remembered for both his massive career and all the allegations sadly. I will not go into whether he was guilty for any allegations or not but these are my thoughts on the matter. I say that the allegations against him have been mostly performed by people looking for a chance against an easy target. Mr. Jackson has been chasing his own youth for the last twenty years, the youth that was stolen from him as a kid. For people watching him from a distance this can of course bee seen as something sinister and evil. No grown man should be friends on a personal level with young kids. Of course this must be the work of all evil. That can be taken advantage of.

I think that Michael Jackson was a very lonely and sad child who were forced to grow up even though he just wanted to be a child. When this childhood was stolen from him he took the chance as soon as he grew out of his parents house to create that childhood in a secure environment which became Neverland. But a grown man building toys for himself, this must be the work of evil!

I think that Marlon Jackson’s speech in the end of the memorial did sum up the life of their brother. It was a life where everyone had an opinion about everything and where ever Michael went, there would be someone chasing him. I too hope that they all now can give the man some peace which he have been looking for his entire life. I think that Michael was a grown man chasing his childhood, just wanting to do the things other children did his age. The world who right now worship the memory was the same world who did chase and point fingers after him the day before. It is the same world who worship him that is standing in the shadows with blood on their hands.

If we for the memory of the artist put everything else aside I think that Mr. Jackson will be remebered for a very long time for his great masterpieces. He did leave us too soon and I think that his shows in London would have been something that would be remembered.

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5
Jun 09

Terminator Salvation

So I just got back from the movie theater after watching Terminator Salvation. I am one of the people who didn’t really like the old Terminator movies but still am really fond of the back-story of the movies. Due to this I had quite high expectations for this movie because of other reviews I read which said that this was a movie not like the others. A bit darker interpretation of the mythology and also a bit more theatric instead of just plain action.

My first thought after the movie was done was that they did in fact show off to much of the movie in the trailers they have been showing both in movie theaters but also online and on TV. There are spoilers within the trailers that would have been better of if the audience were to discover them during the movie itself.

“The world is a bad place and there is really no light at the end of the tunnel…”

This aside though it is a quite good movie. As with most re-visited movies in the action genre now days the story has been darkened down a bit. The world is a bad place and there is really no light at the end of the tunnel, much like the latest Batman movies where they have totally revamped the story to be more raw. In short there are terminators everywhere and the war is raging on for the survival of the human race. Special effects are everywhere but the raw feeling make them blend in just fine. There is a number of flaws in the story itself where one can clearly see that they had to improvise to get the plot going which does lower the overall score of the movie.

terminator-salvation

Image is from The Internet Movie Database

Christian Bale really do pull of the role of John Connor and his charisma is great for the character and also Sam Worthington is doing a good job being Marcus Wright, not as strong as Bale but still good. Mr Bale was reluctant on taking the role for quite some time before shooting but I am glad that he did do it in the end.

To sum it all up, if you are looking for a good action movie which gives you mini-guns, swollen muscles and big explosions all mixed within a story of annihilation and judgment – this is a movie for you. Of course it makes the best appearance at the movie theater due to powerful sound and graphical effects.

Best part of the movie is the long consistent scene in the beginning of the movie which opens up the story and introduce John Connor. Beautiful piece of art created by a camera and backpack of GFX! The least appealing part of the movie I’d say is the poor way of telling the end of the story, which I am not to tell here, and it feels a bit like they ran out of time and had to wrap it all up in a bit of a hurry.

The flaws in the story is the major problem with the movie and what needed to be fixed for it to become a better movie then it was.

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19
Feb 09

Die Welle, aka The Wave

I REMEMBER BACK IN SCHOOL quite some years ago, we got a book in our hands and about one week to finish it. The title of this book was The Wave and we all read and tried to analyze. Probably the understanding of the actual story in this book did not hit me until a few years later, I thought I understood it but I guess I didn’t.This old thought made me fire of one big smile when I found out that this story actually had been made into a movie. Had to see it.

THE MOVIE kept the story and the feeling as I remembered it, some parts of it was changed to better fit a visual interpretation of course. The Wave is about a teacher which is a warrior of the old reactive ways and his mindset of letting the kids understand how the world works. By setting up a one week project where he aims to show everyone how easy it is to be caught up in a dictatorship he cross the line of what a teacher actually should let his pupils do.

BY THE FACT that the movie also is a German production, set in Germany in our time, the question about if a people who were enslaved in about fifty years ago can be so blind that they fall into the same trap once again is perhaps more up-to-date today then in a long time. The world spins on and it is so easy to forget about old teachings and do the same errors over and over again.

I CAN RECOMEND The Wave for most people out there. If you are a teacher speaking of the power of a group this is a great tool of education. Or if you are a parent trying to explain to your child about how easy it is to be talked into doing things you never had done else; this movie is for you all.

You can find more information about the movie over at IMDB.

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