Saturday, April 23, 2011

Eclipse- Live Tweets

I watched Twilight:Eclipse with my housemate after she killed her brain with an all-nighter then an exam. It was an okay movie, but Taylor Lautner got some excellent one-liners. Otherwise a pretty drivelly movie. I also liked getting some background on the Cullen Clan and the wolf pack. Those were actually more interesting than the main plot.

Anyways, without further ado, here are the live tweets.

And heeeere we go!

K: Shitty weather for a shitty movie. Apropos, no?

I HAS A CAPE! YOU HAS NONE! I BE FASTER THAN YOU!

Run pretty boy, run!

Run fail. Now you writhe in pain. Good set up. Please, let the rest of the movie compare.

Bella Swan - most emotionless voice over ever. I care not for your...angst? Happiness?

He's SO SPARKLY! And you can only bask in his sparkles.

Annnd my movie just paused. My PS2 refuses to play this movie.

Alright, technical difficulties over. Back to high school.

I spoke too soon. It just restarted again. It's not the disc (no scratches/smudges). WTF?

Alright, take three. Here we go.

Party? Fun? That's what you said last time. Way to be a downer, Bella.

Oooh, the plot thickens. Disappearances? Volturi? Could get dicey!

Oh Charlie, you're so oblivious. Poor man.

No, Bella, it's a present. Act happy! I know it's a stretch, but please.

It's blue and dark. Creepiness factor: Through the roof.

Epic chase scene!

Culminating in some epic fail.

Oh man, Taylor Lautner + Awesome music = BAMF.

Oh teenage drama. Etc., etc.

Oh the pack. And not a shirt to be seen.

Gee Jacob, you're just scoring SO many points with Bella. Badmouthing her bf and his family. Her life choices. GOOD JOB.

Oh hello pretty boy, you're being a huge creeper right now.

I take it back, Edward's a much bigger creeper.

Please boys, stop comparing and focus on your mission. Protect Bella. She's Switzerland, ja?

Doesn't he own a shirt? LOL. You're just jealous because when you shed your shirt, you're a DIAMOND CUPCAKE!

OMG Vampire army! EVERYONE PANIC!

Bella and Edward are still the most awkward kissers. Not much has changed since the last movie.

Jacob, you have emo hair. *twitch twitch*

Bella just punched Jacob. It was great.


Yay Charlie. Stepping in like a boss. Breaking up fights. Like a boss.
 
 ...And she broke her hand...punching my face.
 
Total misunderstanding.
See Bella? Your life isn't as bad as Rosalie's was.
 
Graduation! Everyone's so full of possibilities!
 
And now we PARTY!
 
Or not. An army of newborns are coming. Time to plan and strategize.
 
Training montage!
 
Ooh, deep dark secrets revealed. Backstories are a win for this movie.
 
Eau de wolf coming up! Oh, this is so very funny.
 
You know, with all this planning and strategery, I'm wondering what they've told Bella's dad.
 
Oh wait, nevermind. They just gave the cover story.
 
Oh this just turned into the birds and the bees talk. Awkward.
 
And another awkward talk. This time with her bf. Bella, I believe you need some practice in non-awkward topics.
 
OH GOD HORNY TEENAGERS. And the boy is being the sensible one in this instance.
 
D'aww marriage proposal.
 
The subtle manipulation of her puppet by the redhead is just SO subtle. Way to go scriptwriters.
 
Epic music for an epic buildup to a fight scene!
 
THEY'RE IN THE WATER. O CRAP.
 
Um, way to go Edward. Worst possible spot for a camp.
 
Oh god the one-liners out of Jacob's mouth. "I am hotter than you." Bahahaha.
 
And Edward stares impotently across the tent.
 
Aw, and now you two are having a heart-to-heart talk.
 
And more drama. Great.
 
KISS ME JACOB! Because that'll solve all your problems, miss engaged to edward.
 
Yes battle scene. Finally a distraction from this lovey-dovey drama.
 
Breaking vampires kind of sounds like loose change.
 
Think fast bella! How can you be of help in a vampire fight? The answer? CUT YOURSELF! Blood distraction!
 
win.
 
Ah, Jacob, one last try? I suppose you must.
 
Angsty introspection. Yay.
 
NO EDWARD, NOT EVERYTHING'S ABOUT YOU. It's all about Bella, you know that.
 
Oh gee, Charlie's going to flip his lid.
 
FIN. It wasn't a horrible movie, not great. Kristen Stewart has one face, but Taylor Lautner's one-liners made it pretty great.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Time travel and Alternate Realities - A rant

I just had a long rant to my housemate and thought it would be interesting to just put it out there. If you, dear reader, have any thoughts, please comment below.

The instigator for this rant was me going to see Source Code, as I mentioned in the previous post.
In Source Code, the entire movie is Jake Gyllenhaal in a machine that has him live the last 8 minutes of another person's life before he dies. This is to investigate the bombing of a train and to find the perpetrator before he sets off a dirty bomb in a major city. That's all fine and well.

****SPOILERS****

However, the explanation given by the inventor is that these aren't just memories, they're alternate realities. Jake's actually displacing the man and is, for all intents and purposes, that man in that reality. This usually wouldn't matter since he dies one way or another after 8 minutes. At the ending of the movie, Jake insists on going in one last time before they pull the plug on him in his original reality and he dies. This is to save everyone on the train, including Michelle Monaghan, with whom he's fallen in love. After saving everyone, he sees the clock count down his last few seconds, and he prepares to die. Presumably the original man will reappear, somewhat confused, be a hero and get the girl.

But that's not the end. Oh no, that would be too sad. Instead, to Jake's surprise, he's still alive and goes on to, presumably, live happily ever after as the man he displaced.

BUT WAIT.

He's not himself in this new reality. He's a history teacher. What happened to the original person? He's been completely replaced by Jake. Is he dead? Also, Jake now has to fake being someone else. Someone with different memories, a different personality, different skill set. How can he pass himself off as a stranger? The girl he's in love with is in love with the original person. She'll eventually realize he's essentially a different person from the man she used to know. Etc, etc.

This has been bothering me for the last week.

****END SPOILERS****

I love time travel and alternate realities. I think they're awesome, but I am very wary when they're used as plot devices.

If the entire premise of the TV show/movie/book hinges on time travel/alternate realities then the mechanics and rules should be well thought out. Admittedly, a bit of hand-waving is necessary, but there should be a consistent set of rules with loop holes thought of in advance. For example, in Quantum Leap, Sam Beckett displaces people much like Jake Gyllenhaal does in Source Code. However, they explain that the person who is displaced appears in the "waiting room" in the present day and is returned once Sam leaps out of their life. Quantum Leap was not completely perfect, but gave a reasonable explanation for what happens to the poor sod who's replaced.

Another inconsistency that's been bothering me takes place in my beloved time travel series, Doctor Who. In the revived series, in the first season, they establish an important rule. You may exist in the same time as a previous version of yourself, but can never have physical contact. This creates a paradox that the time-space continuum really hates and creates rips in the fabric of reality. This formed the entire basis of an episode.

Fast-forward to the end of the latest season. As reality is collapsing on itself, Amy Pond is sealed in the Pandorica until approximately 1997, and subsequently interacts with and physically touches the 1997 incarnation of herself. This may be acceptable since the Amy in the Pandorica and the young Amy are not precisely the same person, due to the collapse of reality.

However, the most recent Christmas Special does infringe upon this rule. It's the Doctor Who version of a Christmas Carol and the Doctor is playing with a Scrooge's past selves to make him into a nicer person. It nearly works, but doesn't quite until the Doctor brings the child version of the Scrooge into the present day and horrifies him with the nasty man he will/has become. This finally softens the old Scrooge's heart. And he hugs his past self.



This blatantly disregards the previously established rule. And this is the same individual, not going through the collapse of reality loophole, otherwise the Doctor's scheme would not work.

Basically, time travel and alternate realities are fantastic devices, but my plea to writers is this: Think of the rules and stick to them. No more, no less.
And I didn't even mention Back to the Future

Sunday, April 17, 2011

I'm not dead yet.

I haven't posted in a while, and for that I apologize.

Life happened. Last two weeks of class were just an avalanche of design projects. And I wasn't even the worst off since I'm not taking any electives. Everyone in my class was pulling late nights in the computer cluster. I also was busy assisting other groups along with my own group. Somehow, I ended up as one of the people with a better handle on the projects we were assigned.

I also discovered that Excel really doesn't like having too many rows. One spreadsheet ended up having over 10,000 rows, and Excel was not happy about it. I asked it to graph 10,000 data points and it froze. I felt really bad. I apologized profusely. I imagined an anthropomorphic Excel huddled in a corner, with 10,000 data points running in front of its eyes. I felt horrible after imagining that.

On a bright point, I managed to finish most of my work before the ChemEngChem End-of-Year Banquet, which was a fantastic time. Good food, good wine, and good friends.

So thus ended classes, with frazzled nerves and lack of sleep. I saw Source Code with my friends to celebrate not having any work to do. Choir and orchestra concerts happened and were very fun and very successful. Then I go some pretty bad news.

My grandfather was in a car accident. He wasn't egregiously injured, but he did break his leg. I went back to Toronto to help my grandmother out whilst he was in the hospital. Just driving her around and helping around the house. It was stressful since my grandfather didn't take the anesthesia well. Seeing my grandmother stressed made me pretty darn stressed. But he pulled through and my dad came back up to help with all the paperwork, so that worked out well.

So now I'm back in Kingston and am cracking down to study. Two(!) exams and then headed home.