Reviews of District 9, Ponyo and Inglorious Basterds.

Mega movie weekend for me.

District 9

I didn’t hear about Niel Blompkamp until Peter Jackson had presented him as his choice to direct the now likely dead Halo movie. Shortly after hearing that I watched a couple of his self produced shorts. The one that struck me was “Tempbot”. It was a small low busget short that had a simple premise. What if an a everyday office was given a very capable robot as a temp. Even on his minor budget back then the SFX we terrific. The short itself is a touching, funnny and sad film that made me instantly excited to see what him and Peter Jackson could do with the Halo license.

Sadly Universal refused to front 100 mil upfront for a picture helmed by a first time full length feature director. Two weeks ago Universal learned their lesson. District 9 is one of the finest pure sci-fi movies I’ve ever seen. For the sake of your first viewing I have to say I will not divulge the plot or story details because the marketing was actually perfect for once. All you need to know is that in the world of the movie aliens do exist and they have landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. That’s it. The trailer shows you some amazing FX work with an incredible mother ship hovering over the city. One other slight spoiler that may help some of you is that the movie starts off as a documentary about a “incident” related to the current situation with the aliens. gradually the film shifts in to a third person omniscient perspective as a normal narrative driven film. For some it was a shocking chnage and deterred them but for me it was natural and teh confusion lasted seconds.

Since I’m not spoiling any plot points I will say what to expect. Expect an amazing lead performance from an actor we’ve never seen before and special effects that are jaw dropping nearly impossible to spot and just completely immersive. The budget of this movie was 30 million dollars. For 30 mil dollars it looks as good as a 200 mil. dollar picture. Just a terrific movie and a spectacular way to start Blompkamp’s film career. 5 doctored alien sex pictures out of 5

Ponyo

Ponyo is master film maker Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film. It centers on a young Goldfish named “Broomhilda.” Broomhilda is the eldest of a whole school of goldfish fathered by a formerly human wizard and the goddess of the sea. At the start of the film “broomhilda” runs away from her father to see more of the sea. After she has a run in with a fishing trawler she is found by a young boy named Saske. Saske names her Ponyo and a friendship is instantly born.

Ponyo is  film in which Miyazaki makes a a signature fairytale in today’s modern world. Set in a small Japanese town which is dominated by the sea trade Saske is the son of a senior care giver and a captain of a coastal guard ship. After he meets Ponyo she is forever changed and falls in love with Saske and the human world in general. Of course Ponyo’s father does not approve(he also generally hates Humans even though he used to be one).

The story is simple but filled with the touching interactions between Saske and Ponyo. This in tune with almost entirely 2d animation that drops your jaw and touches your heart and brings another masterpiece.

If there was a flaw to find I’d say it was the voice casting of the youngest Efron brother as the voice of Saske. Saske is the main lead and he is the one who has the most lines. He provides most of the needed dialogue and frankly the voice used seems terribly forced and blatantly read off a page. Disney’s lone stipulation for bring Miyazaki films to the US is that the theatrical runs use English voice work done by Disney. in the past they have been remarkably good and even rivaled the Miyazaki overseen Japanese dubs. Miyazaki has even commented that Jean Reno’s voicework made the English dubbing of Porco Russo a better movie. What’s sad about the poor voicework of Saske is that once again Disney delivers a very solid voice cast other wise. Tina Fey was so touching and enjoyable as Saske’s mother that I actually got a crush on her as the movie progressed. Liam Neeson also delivers solid work as Ponyo’s father giving some great levity, seriousness and some awkward scientist like tendencies. I await the blu-ray to hear the japanese dub and see how that plays out.

Any Miyazaki fan must see Ponyo. 4 pieces of ham out of 5

Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds is a hell of a film. I mean that in a good and bad way. Tarantino had been working on this movie for years and years. During his 7 year break from film making Tarantino spent 3 years writing Kill Bill and all 7 writing Inglorious Basterds. What he delivered was a very large and complicated meal that is very filling and indeed a signature piece. The film starts off with a small french family living under German rule during the Nazi occupation. A lone family man is running a milk farm with his 3 daughters. Very soon a regiment of Nazi SS troops arrive along with a Captian Landa. Landa is the movies main antagonist, other than Hitler. Landa is this film’s “Bill” and in a simple way of describing him, imagine Columbo if he lived in 1942 and was working for Hitler and was in charge of finding all the jews in France. We get several scenes throughout the movie of Landa smelling out our character’s true intentions all while providing the most charming but false veneer that only Columbo fans could spot.

Landa isn’t the main focus of the film though, in fact Tarantino focuses on several storylines only a couple of them actually dealing with the famed Basterds. Watching the movie is like watching the climax of Resivour dogs several times over. the majority of the action in Inglorious Basterds is quick brutal and dirty the build up however is long slow and very methodical. You see how every factor of the violence builds and builds until you actually understand how everything that happens in the 10 seconds of gunfire actually came to pass.

The film is very much another homage to exploitation movies and constantly switches up styles of music, editing and perspective. Tarantino actually utilizes a lot of the style choices from Kill bill to achieve a quasi 70’s style to a strangely realistic recreation of 1942 France.

My problem with the film are that Tarantino did seem to officially enjoy his dialogue a bit too much. Again I loved every scene but the oppressive tension  became really exhausting as the f ilm progressed. As I said the film uses the slow build to quick action many times and the tension seems to multiply as it goes but we so rarely got a reprieve from it. Towards the end of the film Landa interrogates a charecter and we know the jig is up we know Landa has that person in his sights and there seems to be no saving her. Tthe scene still takes it’s time to actually deliver that satisfaction of knowing what’s going to happen. This may have been intentional on Tarantino’s part to really make us feel indoctrinated and overruled by the Germans but it became very daunting to continue in this very long film. BTW Jackie Brown is my favorite Tarantino movie and it’s among his longest movies. I do in fact think this was intentional since Tarantino utilized the Chapter layout that he used in the Kill bill films. Sort of like each chapter is a separate novella and they all work together.

My problems with pacing a greatly over shadowed by Tarantino’s signature dialogue and wit. Each scene has lines and words so memorable and awesome that they are immediately etched into your brain. Violence is a hallmark of Tarantino’s vision, this movie doesn’t disappoint. There’s only a few scattered moments of florish on the violent scene’s this time which makes them all more brutal.

4 Nazi scars out of 5.

I’ve come back and I have stories!

Long hiatus, I know, but really nothing much was going on. Lots of magic being played but writing it up was never as fun as doing it. I’ll likely still do a warp up of bigger events like pre-releases and such but nothing all that big to report of the CCG front.

What I did do this weekend is finally shoot “Chronofluffle”. I originally conceived it 6 months ago and all in all it only took 2.5 hours to shoot. This was my first fully concieved project that I’ve taken on since high school and even then it was for class and I alreadyh had a pasic set of available equipment and shooting locations.

For this project I needed a script, shooting location, cameras props and actors. That last bit was the more mysterious thing to me. Since I’ve usually just directed myself in my music videos. The main point of project was to dive headfirst into making films and doing productions since being knowledgable about real world film making would help me when I started attending Columbia.

So the script didn’t take a very long time to write. I had the premise but was sketchy on the ending for a week or so. The bulk of the script was written on a Saturday night. My friend Anthony at my side making suggestions and being available for me to bounce ideas off of. I’m not great at writing regular stories and dialogue can be even harder for me. What i needed for the script was a a argument that was funny and over the top. The idea being that it would be humorous until the sci-fi stuff shows up later.

After the script I needed to line up a shooting location. My Aunt offered up her house but ultimately my aunt has a really nice modern house with lots of personal flourishes. I really like the house but the story took place ins a small house/apartment with two guys eating breakfast. It just wouldn’t look right in any location in my Aunt’s house. So ultimately I went with my friend Steve’s house. Which is much more fitting to the story.

Next was equipment, I own a Canon camcorder, it’s decent for a low end consumer camera but not that great to shoot with. Luckily a new acquaintance I met through Anthony owned a pro-level canon- camera. So that problem solved itself relatively easily though arranging a good time to pick up the camera proved tricky.

Actors, are people I respect. I’ve acted in the past and finding people to be actors who aren’t can be tough. If you don’t have the will to act then doing a production of any kind can be really stressful and annoying. Originally my two cast members were Anthony and Chris. Two good friends, but the truth was as much as they wanted to do it no one was getting paid so I knew I was at their mercy. Both Chris and Anthony signed on early but as time wnet on I heard less and less from Anthony do to things going on in both our lives. After I set the date of August 15th as our shooting day. I told both Chris and Anthony at the same time. Both reported that it should be fine. Though I heard Anthony’s confirmation via Chris. I actually didn’t speak to Anthony(despite trying to contact him periodically throughout the weeks) til a week and a half ago when he apologetically informed me that he hadn’t checked his schedule til then and would be out of town on the 15th. I had kept that as a possiblity luckily and was able to get teh location owner Steve as a replacement. Stevie is also a good friend and he seemed keen on helping me out.

So last week, Steve, Chris and I met up and did a rehearsal. Rehearsing a movie is indeed necessary for most productions. It usually occurs months ahead of a movie. It helps the actors learn their characters and also learn how to work off of their co-stars. A director can also learn how well stars will work together and even start working on how to frame shots and block scenes. Rehearsing made sense for me since neither of my actors had acted much and frankly I needed to know how well my dialogue worked. I wasn’t disappointed with either my script or my actors work on their read throughs. Both Steve and Chris were able to evoke their characters quite well. However I learned that the size of Steve’s kitchen would prove hard to do proper two-shots. Ultimatley I found a way via putting the camera on Steve’s stove.

The actual shooting day was overall smooth. I woke up at 7 am thinking we were starting to shoot at 8. Though I quickly found out thanks to a wake up call I made to chris that we were starting at 9. I pick up Chris at 8:55 and he says Anthony wants to hang out and shoot “DVD extras”. I figured an extra set of hands would help. So we picked him up and arrived at steve’s at 10:05. The shoot only took 2.5 hours. Neitehr Chris or Steve really knew their lines but again I didn’t really expect it of them so we just shot around it and I made sure they had some freedom on how the lines were read. plus the majority fo my shots were solo shots so they could switch off on script reading.

Now I have to edit it and then record teh Radio background noises(which are very key to the story). As well as a bit of music for the end.

Overall smooth production so far. Look for teh finished short soon.

I’m on twitter now….

I hate myself for it but hey at least now I know what Jon Lovitz is up to. Oh yeah my username is logicalnoise.

Run Lola Run

My professor for art appreciation showed us “Run Lola Run” a German film about a girl named Lola who has 20 minutes to find 100,000 Deutchmarks and get them to her boyfriend so he doesn’t get killed by a mob boss. I have been meaning to se this movie for a long time but had forgotten about it. When I learned that we’d be watching I was really excited. The movie thankfully was indeed very good.

Inspiration for 24?

The movie takes a non linear slant on the events and ends up providing a plot that relies on karma and existentialism to make a lick of sense. Not that it matters to the quality of the plot just to the mechanics of how the events go down. My professor had asked us to keep an eye on all teh different styles of filmmaking the director(Tom Tykwer) utilized. While Tykwer used many terrific techniques on what was an obviously shoes string budget I didn’t find the the style fo filmaking all than random as my professor did but then again I’ve seen a lot of less mainstream movie sthat he likely has.

I admit there’s a crapload of footage of just Lola running but really it’s always character driven and always required by the plot. Franca Prentente who plays Lola(you may remember her as Marie the female sidekick in the Bourne Identity(and her brief “cameo” in the sequel)) gives a very involved performance that is both scary at times and admirable. At the beginning of the movie her character is quite selfish but loves her boyfriend dearly. The story in a creative way makes her learn the value of morals and dealing with consequences.

Definitely a good art house movie and pretty entertaining even if you don’t go after indie films.

4 flashcuts out of 5.

weekend wrapup and review of “Visoneers” and “Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun-Li”

Friday night

Watched “Day of the Dead” on Blu-ray(as in the original George Romero version). This was my first personal blu-ray experience on my new player. Was a very good experience, the transfer and quality was pristine. Tom Savini’s FX work looked even better in high def.

Saturday

I helped my buddy Joe move. only took 5 hours to move everything out his apartment and into his parent’s basement. We hung out in his pool afterwards. It was actually my first time swimming since high school. I shoudl definitely do it more often. Though I felt really dehydrated after swimming and had a pretty mean headache. After I showered off I felt a lot better. Later that night I ended up watching a movie called, “Visioneers”

Visioneers

Starring Zach Galfinakis, Visioneers is about a alternate version of the USA. In this version of our society most fo america’s job market is dominated by a corporation know as the “Jeffers Corporation”. We never learn exactly what Jeffers Corp. does but it supposedly does it better than any company in US history. Zach plays William a distant descendant of George Washington. He works as a team manager on Level 3(out of 5). You see despite productivity being so high in the job market a rash of people exploding has been scaring people all over the nation. As we meet William he starts to show the “symptoms” of exploding.

The movie itself is a veyr dark and odd comedy strung together by some philosophical questions that come off a s a bit preachy but tongue-in cheek as well. Zach remains a straight man for most of the movie but actually does really well in the role. The movie is soaked in his unique style of dark subversive comedy but also utilizes his perfect timing and inventive nature.  The movie at times evokes the Terry Gilliam masterpiece Brazil only with a far more naturalistic tone as well as being set in a more rustic setting. The movie is really funny and still pretty entertaining all trhough out.

4 pole vaults out of 5.

the rest of the night I played and beat a xbox live arcade game called, “splosin man”. It’s a 2d side scroller platform game where your main character is a living source of explosions. The game is full of great style and odd comedy. Frankly it rivals Portal in fun and funny gameplay.

Sunday

Ended up at Stevie’s playing magic. Used my Green and Red/Black decks a lot. They both did pretty well. Stevie was testing a Zombie deck out on my red black and cast two Mind funerals on me. Basically mind funeral can make you discard a lot of cards from your library. So I still ended up winning but on the last turn I only had two cards left in my library and the next turn I’d be drawing those. Very close call. I also built a pretty decent soldier deck thanks to Stevie loaning me a card I needed. Joey ended up coming over for a bit to build and test a new discard deck. It beat me fairly well but it lost twice to stevie’s decks. Some good magic gameplay.

later I watched “Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun-Li”

This is the prequel/reboot of teh old street fighter movie done way back in the 90’s with Jean Claude Van-Damme. It tells teh story of Chun-li and how her father gets killed by M. Bison and blah blah blah. We have some lame fights and a oddly strong amount of gore. Ultimately teh main plotline is boring nonsensical and lame.

The star of the show is Chris Klein or now forever known as “Charlie Nash”. Every scene with out Nash in it is seriously lacking. Klein went all out and delivers one of the most insanely over the top performances I’ve ever seen. He mugs in every possible shot he can. Says lines with such confidence and gravitas that he just is the living embodiment of cheese. and frankly the guy deserves some kind of award for it. His character is completely pointless to the plot and yet he is the most important person in this movie. Go see this movie just for Charlie Nash.

2 crap CG fireballs out of 5.

Nash out-

My first booster draft and a review of “Land of the Lost”

Last night was my first Magic the Gathering Booster draft. Unlike the sealed events I have attended before everyone stats out with 3 boosters instead of 6. And we draft the cards in the boosters. So we all sit at the same table(if you have a lot of people you can make separate tables that draft separately). SO there’s a round for every pack we have and when you start a round you open a pack and choose one card form the pack then pass it in a designated direction. We keep passing what’s left of the pack untill all the cards have been pulled. It’s a tricky format because You have little clue on what type and color cards are coming to you next and so you have to decide quickly what colors you may want and what you want to look out for.

As a deterent to just grabbing every rare card you see while drafting we agreed to back draft the rare cards at the end. Which means at the end of the tourney all the rare cards were collected and arranged so they could be picked one by one in order of how we placed in the tourney.

My drafted deck was pretty weak, while fast it lacked a decent escalation of aggression as I gained mana through a match. I came dead last at 10th. The one good rare I had in my deck is what I wanted to keep, a card called Ball Lightning. He’d a tremendously strong creature for only 3 mana but he gets put in the grave yard at the end of my turn. So he was my first pick. Games-Plus also donated 4 packs to add into the draft pool. So we could choose a rare or another booster pack. On my 2nd pick the pickings were already slim and there was only one booster left. I choose teh booster. and Amazingly the included rare was a planeswalker, Ajiani Goldmine. I came dead last and got arguably the best card of the draft. I was astounded. and when my 3rd pick came up I just grabbed a foil raging goblin(one of the most common and weak creatures in the game).

All in all a really cool night.

Movie review:

Land of the Lost:

So I sat down to watch this with pretty low expectations. I recall having watched the 90’s redux of the original show on Nickelodeon as a kid but I remember never enjoying it all that much. I do recall teh show being pretty kid friendly and benign though.

This movie was something all together different. The story follows a Dr. Rick Marshall, who has just gone public with his revolutionary theory of time portals and hyper-realities. He gets laughed out of teh scientific community and is left as a elementary science class teacher 2 years later. A young woman named Holly comes a knocking and tells Dr. Marshall that he was right all along and that she’s found proof that time portals can exist. This of course leads to Marshall being rejuvenated by the new evidence and they seek to test his theories at the mysterious location where Holly found the evidence. Turns out it’s a cave that has been taken over by a hick entrepreneur named Will(Danny McBride). They of course dissappear into a time portal and end up in the land of the lost….

What follows is a series of pretty odd and dry gags that awkwardly walk the line between funny and just odd. It plays like a cartoon but also has some hackney pop-culture gags that still manage to feel pretty weird in the setting. There’s plenty fo decent special effects and a whole lot of running and pompus behavior from Will Ferrel but ultimately it’s a fluff movie that is very reminiscent of the Sid and Marty Kroft barely real world relevant kids shows. But even so the movie has plenty fo pretty Adult humor. Mcbride’s Will eventually exclaims while noticing a large vibrating phallic crystal that Holly should sit up top, she’d love it. I’m no pride, I love raunchy comedy but it really clashed with the “clean” feel of the movie. Overall just a slightly amusing movie to waste some time with.

2 boob jokes out of 5.

weekend mega post wrapup and movie review bonanza

So my birthday was Thursday and as a present Stevie agreed to pay my way in a sealed Magic 2010 tournament for this past weekend.

The tourney was on Sunday so I agreed to drive. Steve, and Mike, my friend Joe also attended. The place was way out in Naperville but really it was a very nice comic book store. Great mix of old and new stuff and lots of budget items. Defiantly worth the drive. Oh yeah it was called Graham Cracker Comics. anyways 6 sealed boosters were given out to make a 40 card deck. I got some killer cards and such but ended up making a relatively weak Blue/White deck. None of us got over 1 win per match but hey some nice cards and fun times.

Movie reviews:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Saw this Saturday, and franklyu Half Blood Prince is my favorite of the books. It’s full of Mythology and Pathos and really brings the whole conflict of the entire series together for the final well done conclusion. The movie however is a sappy teen romance with sprinkles of plot strewn about. They spend 20 minutes on a redundant part of the love plot from the book and give the final conflict a total of maybe ten minutes of screen time. Even the actual half-blood prince storyline is barely touched and then it’s finished in blink of an eye. relatively accurate to the book but there was also loads more foreshadowing, cat n mouse and such. When WB first announced that Deathly Hallows would be a 2 parter I questioned why. Deathly hallows isn’t a long book and a large portion of teh middle of it is redundant and adds nothing to the plot or character development it just wastes time because each book as to begin and end around when Hogwarts would be running. Meanwhile Half-blood prince is the longest of the books and layers in a tremendous amount of good stuff that makes the Potter world real. There’s the politic sof teh witch world and the real world dealing with Voldermort, the various deals of voldermort and the death dealers. Numerous death eaters which will serve key roles in the final movie were just shown and never explained.

It wasn’t unwatchable and it was still worth seeing but it really is among the weakest of the movies produced so far. It’s a shame too because the three lerads ahve become great actors and have become the roles. They just spend most of this movie worrying about romances and such when really there’s plenty more going on. As usual the hall of fame British supporting cast delivers some terrific lines and performances.

2.5 busted brooms over my head out of 5.

Hudson Hawk

You know Hudson Hawk is one of the most bewildering crappiest movies I’ve ever seen. Considering I’ve seen the majority of Uwe Boll’s movies that’s quite a fucking statement.

So the gist is Bruce Willis plays a newly freed from jail world class cat burglar named Hudson Hawk. He is immediately blackmailed by his parole officer into stealing a wooden horse scultue Leonardo da Vinci created which holds a clue to a mythical Gold making machine that da Vinci created in the prologue to this brutally odd film. The movie drunkenly swerves from serious noir sendup, to cartoon like fist fights to some pretty brutal gore.

Kevin Smith once talked about his experience shooting Die Hard 4 and working with Bruce Willis. It’s a tremendous tale and you can find it on the DVD “Threevening with Kevin Smith.” Smith speaks about how Bruce pretty much got his way on set and loved having a writer on set so he could come up with something McClane would do instead of what’s in the script. So Kevin ended up rewriting the scene even though he was only there for his acting. The stuff Smith describes in the story sounds exactly what caused this mess of a movie. Willis seemingly coming off the high of Die Hard 2 wants to be a more laid back action hero and decides that he can be funny and cool at the same time. Is it a so bad it’s good movie? No, not really it’s a weird movie to watch if you have any interest is script writing or directing. Because frankly it fails on both fronts.

One lame fucking pun out of five

Finally a new art post.

Yes magic was last night but I did so terribly the only memorable thing was that a 7 year old kid showed up with his honestly attractive mom. I taught him the basics of magic since I was on a buy for the first round of the tournament. Nothing came of it but as I said it was the only memorable moment.

ART!

So yeah art appreciation has been going well. I got a A on my mid term and I’ve been introduced to a couple of really cool artists.

Jasper Jones

Jasper was considered tehf irst major step away from Jackson Pollock’s Abstract expressionism style.

Simply titled, “flag” it’s obviously a inaccurate american flag. The 40 stars wasn’t explained by my instructor but I’d imagine it goes with the style of the piece. Honestly other than the brush style I’m wholly underwhelmed. He used a technique where you mix oil paint with hot wax so it sets very fats and in very defined layers. Makes the painting look sculpted.

Jones had an over all American theme to his work.

Again the sculpted paint look really makes his work very unique for the time.

Eventually he would actually sculpt objects.

by scultpting a everyday lightbulb as art that was supposed to be the actual statement alone. This predates Andy Warhol’s soup cans by a few decades.

Tomorrow I’ll write up a colleague of Jones’, Robert Rouschenberg.

Regional Magic 2010 prerelease/UFC100 wrap up

Went to bed at midnight Friday so I could arise at 7:30 AM. I get to the confrence center by 8:30AM.

the semi professional surroundings were intimidating and the faux windows chilled me to my very essence.

Registration didn’t start til 9AM so I had a half hour to kill. I Kind of checked out the trader’s selection of cards but I knew I wouldn’t be spending any extra amount of money if possible. I saw the advertised special guest artist “RK Post”. Every magic card needs art and RK Post is one of the best. Looking through his catalog of magic cards that he’s done over the years is impressive. Then I saw that he did teh art for a card called, “Mind Funeral”. His art depicts a sorting trough made of black stone and littered with skulls some of which are sliding down a ramp into it. The card itself makes your opponent put quite a lot cards from his deck into his graveyard. I immediately splurged and bought an “artist proof” of the card for him to sign. for 5 dollars I thought it was a fair value even though the card can’t be used in the actual game.

Shortly there after wards I looked to start a casual game while I waited but there were no takers. But I did strike up a conversation with a guy just getting back into the game. Pretty cool guy. But as soon as registration opened up I said good bye. Registration was a 30 dollar fee which got you a coupon for free entry to Friday Night Magic at a local game store as well as 6 boosters of the new Magic 2010 set and a promo card.

Magic nerds...we're sneaky.

The event I signed up for was called sealed format. You sit in an assigned seat. you’re given a deck registration sheet and then given 6 sealed booster packs. When everyone has all the same supplies were open teh packs and write down which and how many of each card are in the boosters.  You see once the booster contents are recorded you pass them to another person. This allows for full subjectivity when recording the contest of the deck. I was pretty impressed with the cards I registered. Two mythic rare cards and a lot of rare cards that I had wanted. So then it was announced that we would be passing the cards to ourselves! So of course I immediately started evaluating my cards for a potential deck.

That feat was actually kind of tricky. You see I started magic right as magic had become very reliant on cards that are “multi-colored) meaning the majority of the newer cards required to you to use multiple kinds of mana to use them. So I had always built decks based off that ideology. This release was nothing but single color cards. So because of the small pool of cards we had to make a deck with you still needed to do a multi color deck but then again none of your cards greatly benefited from the other color you would be using in the deck. I knew my green cards were very good and my white ones seemed pretty good but there wasn’t enough creatures in my green to balance out teh white cards. So I made a green black deck. It didn’t do so well and after running into a pal named Dan who I play magic with on Tuesdays. He convinced me that I should reengineer the deck as a green/white. That did indeed help but I still lost 3 rounds in a row. It’s nice to win these events since you get more boosters but the point is to get early access to cards not being sold yet. So I had already won out IMO.

BUT, turns out Dan had signed up for the third “flight” of teh same event I signed up for. A “flight” is teh diea that some people show up late so you hold multiples of the same event but staggered through the day. The first flight is the one I signed up for. Dan had signed up for flight 3 which needed 4 more people to sign up before it could start. Dan begged me to sign up so he could play. I told him I would but I needed more money and there was no ATM at the conference center. Dan actually lent me 8 bucks. So that was another 6 boosters, coupon and promo. Though I did get the free promo from flight 1 already and yes it was a mythic rare card it also was pretty useless in most decks. The deck I registered was pretty bad, there was a planeswalker card in there(I had gotten one already in teh first flight). But overall I didn’t like what was in the deck mostly just really not very good cards. Luckily this time we did pass the decks and I ended up with some really nice stuff. Unfortunately I couldn’t use any of the cards I got from the first flight so my deck still sucked. the last guy I faced was real class though. He was a silent player who only spoke to announce the new phase of combat but he wasn’t annoying. Then after trouncing me 2-0 he offered me all the uncommon and common cards he drew. I immediately thanked him. Considering at most you can get 2 rares in a booster he gave me the majority of the cards he got from the prerelease so that’s pretty much 17.5 boosters for 60 bucks spent.

I left shortly there after and later at night went to the fox and hound for UFC100 with Chris, overall a good event. Lesnar pummeled Frank Mir heavily and proved that he can dominate most competors. he gained my respect…then completely lost any I could have had. He literally did a WWE style speech as if he was still a heel in Vince Mcmahon’s pro-wrestling league. He insulted teh guy who went two brutal rounds with him. He insulted the main sponsor of the event bud light then endorsed Coors which is probably the shittiest beer around(considering I dislike beer as is that’s pretty bad), then he insulted Dana White by claiming he wasn’t making enough money yet. Of course after being in his locker room and getting a visit from a certain “Mr. White” he completly apologized at teh press conference after wards.

Dan Henderson brought teh fury with a one punch knockout over Bisping. Bisping should have had more sense and not circled into Dan’s rocket Right hand but Bisping tends to make mistakes like that. I really wish Henderson hadn’t done that 2nd dropping punch when Bisping was already out cold but it was teh ref’s job to stop the fight not Henderson’s.

GSP continued his dominance but Thiago still showed great heart and despite losing every round he still came off looking like a true contender.

Akiyama faced Belcher and won very split decision. I completely agreed with the judges for once and then Joe Rogan screams, “Belcher got robbed!” Everyone around me and even chris said, “WHAT?” Akiyama won teh first 2 rounds hands dopwn and then the third could’ve gone either way. Akiyama answered every hit belcher trhough and dsipite getting low blowed(brutally) and eye poked Akiyama remained solid. Neither man was able to do much damage but Akiyama still scored a takedown in most of the rounds.

Chris and I watched Kung-fu panda afterwards. It is indeed Dreamworks most watchable animation movie still pales next to Pixar’s worst.

Sunday I got to play some magic at Stevies and I complied a really nice white soldier deck. Hopefully it’ll do well on Tuesday.

Busy Saturday planned.

So this weekend is the magic 2010 pre-release weekend. lots of magic events are going on to celebrate and sell packs of the new set early. I’ve chosen to go to the regional event in Melrose Park. It starts at 9AM but this actually works better for my schedule. This is my first big “official” magic event. Plus my first sealed deck event. Sealed deck play is quite a bit different from the play I’m used to. on my weekly Tuesday night events. The weekly events use the “constructed format” in which you hand pick your cards and make a deck of at least 60 cards. In sealed play you buy 6 booster packs and construct a deck of at least 40 cards. Since you’re limited to the luck of the draw and really only 6 rare cards in your deck play will be very hard to predict and plan for. I’ve read the description of every card that is in the new deck and I still have no clue on what I will need to do since I don’t know what cards I’ll have. Even if you get a pretty terrific card there’s no guarantee that you’ll have enough similar cards to use it correctly. Should be pretty fun.

Saturday night is UFC 100. Quite a good card and will likely be playing at nearly every bar. Though I enjoy house parties more since I can eat whatever food I wish.

Main event: Brock Lesnar vs Frank Mir to determine the HW champion of the UFC(Brock lesnar holds teh real belt, Frank Mir holds the interim belt and also has a win over lesnar).

Brock lesnar and yes that is an extremely phallic tatoo pointed at his face.

Frank mir, guido, BJJ black belt and all around good fighter. Still kind of a dick at times.

Brock is a powerhouse, a big raging bull of a fighter who is growing in skill and remains one of the strongest fighters in the UFC.  Brock has to cut weight just to be legally allowed to fight in the UFC by the time the fight will actually occur he’ll likely be over the limit again. Meanwhile Frank is a world class fighter who only this past year has regained his former self after a death spiral that cause him much embarrassment and pain. This fight over all is hard to judge. Lesnar has shown a lot of strength but a complete lack fo ability to be able to finish a fight on teh ground which should be his best position. Meanwhile Frank should be his best on teh ground but can also possibly dominate the fast but clumsy striking of Lesnar. Frank via experience(submission)

Next up as a “co-”main event

George st. Pierre vs Thiago Alves for the Welterweight title.

George st. Pierre(aka GSP) is among the top 5 P4P MMA fighters in the world. The guy trains his body like a swiss clock. His cardsio is likely unmatched in MMA and his technique is incredible. GSP and stand with the best but is seemingly unmatched in takedown defense as well as offense. Even teh best olympic wrestlers have been out wrestled by him in fights. Throw in his shear dominance on teh ground and you ahve a complete fighter. He isn’t perfect but he obviously is one of teh best examples of a MMA fighter today.

Thiago Alves is also a prime example of a different aspect of the sport. A strong and fast striker, Thiago prefers the stand up fight and uses his BJJ and wrestling to avoid the ground. He has a record that’s very impressive and may be the kind of guy to finally make GSP stumble enough for a win.

GSP via TKO

Jon Fitch vs Paulo Thiago

Jon Fitch is the guy who beat everyone to get to the WW champ GSP and then proceeded to get pummeled into a pulp for 25 minutes straight. But anyone who looks at his performance against GSP shoudl note that never for a second did he give up or not try and push for a win(see Thales Leites’s performance against Anderson Silva for the opposite of what an outmatched fighter should do). Fitch is a wrestler at heart but also a strong willed stand up fighetr and amazing at escaping trouble on the ground when he’s not doing solid Ground and pound work. Fitch hopes to regain his foothold in the WW division as a #1 contender and hopefully grow enough to take on GSP again and win.

Paulo Thiago on teh otehr hand is very much a reincarnation of Royce Gracie. The sooner the fight leads to teh ground teh better for Paulo though again Fitch is reknowned for his ability to stifle BJJ practitioners and still dominate enough for a decision win.

Jon via unanimous decision

Dan Henderson vs Michael Bisping

Dan Henderson is one of the best wrestlers in his class and works very much to take the fight to the ground(preferably near the fence). Standing he has a deadly right hand that can KO most any fighter.

Michael Bisping is a wrestler and boxer who made the drop to Middleweight in order to actually be bigger than some of his competition. Michael has remained a star in the UFC and holds a lot of skills needed to compete but also seems to lack the ability to finish his opponents.

Dan Henderson via split decision.

Yoshihiro Akiyama vs Alan Belecher

Akiyama makes his UFC debut and as one of Japan’s best current fighters he shoudl have more that enough tools to make a dent in teh WW division. A fast and accurate puncher and a ground game that’s impressive Akimiyama should have everything he needs to beat Belcher.

Belcher on teh otehr hand needs a punchers chance. Coming in as a strong underdog Blecher will likely hope for an opening to appear and hopefully capitalize.

Yashihiro Akiyama via KO.