My own self

I've had this movie on VHS for years and years, and some months back, I rewatched it with my youngest brother. It really isn't as bad as everybody makes it out to be.


I mean - it IS bad. Of course it's bad. But it does have some redeeming features, most notably among which are the villains. Jeremy Irons and Bruce Payne star as the, respectively, arch-villainous politician/wizard and the arch-villainous general/warrior. Especially the latter does quite the memorable job in this movie, and his probably the character you'll remember the most clearly a year or two after watching it.

The actual group of protagonists are adequate, but that's it. Justin Whalin and Marlon Wayans do rather decent performances as the Hero and his Best Friend slash Sidekick, though, I'll give them that. Other than that there is little to write home about. There's the compulsory love interest (albeit with an interesting cultural, social AND political barrier between her and the rest of the good guys) who also functions as the group's mage, and there's a Dwarf who more than anything else feels like an ugly and perverted parody of Two Tower's amusing portrayal of Gimli, only released two years before that of course. There's also an Elven Ranger, though she's so mysterious she barely speaks in the movie.

Apparently, the movie's been slandered by fans of the roleplaying-game it's obviously based on for not being true enough to the game. This might be true - I've never actually played D&D. I'm geek enough, however, to have read some old rulebooks and spent some hours of my teenage life googling the stuff, as well as obviously having a rather decent familiarity with the fantasy-genre in general, and to me, it feels rather strongly like a stereotypic fantasy RPG. It's got everything I'd expect, and you can recognise many game mechanics and clichès in the movie if you look for them, which greatly add to the enjoyment of it and is one of the main reasons I actually enjoyed watching this and why I'll probably, some day, watch it yet again.

The movie does hold a few small positive surprises as well, and I honestly think that for a cheap movie's worth of afternoon entertainment, you could do much, much, much worse.

A very strong 5,5/10

Or, hopefully, anyway. I'm not handing out guarantees.

Is this post late, you say? Is this not in keeping with the fine standard I set last year? And what about the Prime Minister Speech Review? Didn't do that one this year, either. Nor did I do the review of the King's Speech which I wanted to do to make up for last year.

Fear not, gentle reader.


Oh, and fear not, violent readers, I hadn't forgotten you, either, I'm just favorizing my gentle one.


Anyway, fear not.


'Cause I've got me some explanations.

I was at my grandfather's this New Year's Eve and Day. So, no internet. Zap. Zilch. Nil. Nada. Splonge. Bupkiss. Bippers. I might have made up some of those words. No net, though. Net-depravement is big around those parts.

He lives in a valley so secluded you had to transport your cars there by boat 'til 1989 'cause there were no roads.

Anywho.

No net, no immediate ability to Report On My Thoughts and such. Also, I've been busy. Busybusybusy. As in the kind of state where you're, you guessed it, busy. (Good guess, by the way, were you peeking ahead?) I've had other stuff on my mind. Plus, this whole (non-)blog-thing isn't as new and fancy and interesting now as it was a year ago. Then again that's life. ("That's liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife! That's what all the people saaaaay." That commercial has killed my taste in music)

The Prime Minister's Speech, that one I would have done a post on. Had I fracking watched it. I just caught the last five minutes. Probably a blessing in disguise, it's not like they ever say anything new. I caught the King's Speech, though, naturally, I'd be a poor sod of a monarchist if I didn't catch the one time throughout a year the King actually speaks directly to the people. But it's been so long since, now, I can't remember enough of it to comment properly. It was the same old same old with the thematic twist of the year, as usual, but I liked it. It dealt a lot with xenophobia and common decency and that kind of thing. Very humane. Sappy, but that's the point, I guess. Kudos to Harald and his speechwriter(s?).

Just for the record, though, I caught the national anthem after both speeches, and the King's song before his speech, and I rose and stood through all three. I might be a closet nationalist. I might just like the song. Or I might just think it's plain cool to revere something which is purely symbolic.

So, the year. Interesting thing, the year. It's a natural cycle. It's not man-made, like the second or the hour or the century or the millenia. There actually would be such a thing as a year even if we hadn't made up a name for it.

Sorry, I digress. I meant "the PAST year", not years in general, and by believing that was obvious, I seem to have misled myself, 'cause apparently, it wasn't. I need to stop taking everything I write literally.

So, the past year. Well, it's past. And it was a very good one. For me, anyway. They hung Saddam, though. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can do. I mean, he's even in the South Park-movie. He's like Cæsar; you just can't picture the guy die. Sure, he's a swine, but even so. He's like an icon. Doesn't ring right, his being dead. Like you kind of can't really believe it. It's scary, that, realizing how frail human life is even when you're the world's possibly best known genocidal maniac. If HE can die, everybody can die. He didn't lose his cool, though. Kudos to him. I'm generally opposed to execution as a form of penalty - I figure that nobody can really know what it entails without having died themselves first - and I kind of think imprisonment for life is the worse sentence anyway. Apparently, though, the Iraqi government was clear on this being to spare the people of him, not to punish him, so, that's a moot point. I just can't quite wrap my mind around his being gone. Even though the world is probably a slightly better place for it.

Other people I have never known, met or really wanted to meet have died this past year, too. The only ones of them to make an impression on me, though, were a couple of actors and the like. Right now I can only remember Sverre Holm and Peter Boyle. Thanks, guys. You've made me laugh.

So, that's the morbid section of this post. Me, I'm good. Good year. Better than good. No major bad occurancies in my immediate family, me included. Good health. Good life, rather good economy. Good getting-my-civic-service-postponed-indefinetely. Good studying. I'm regretting I didn't take an additional course in spring, 'cause one of the two I did take turned out to be far less work than I could have ever dreamed, but still. I re-took an exam in March, and improved my only post-high school grade below B, a D, to a B. One of my prouder moments, that. I had two more exams in June, one in an interesting subject where I got really lucky with the questions on the exam, and one in a dreadfully boring subject where I wrote my bachelor's assignment and somehow did extremely well without having read more than 10% of the curriculum. Summer was nice, but uneventful, maybe. Other than making my webcomic. Of which I'm rather proud, to tell the truth. Otherwise, this summer, I took a short trip with my family like we usually do in summers, and beyond that, I mainly just worked. I'm starting to tire of working where I work in vacations and weekends where I'm home. I'm starting to grow more comfortable there, yes, with the people there and the assigments there and so on, but I'm tiring of it. It's so dreadfully boring. Anyway, on to the autumn, where I took three *very* interesting courses, making for my academically most interesting term since spring 2005, and the two I've learned the results of yet turned out really well, too. January 17th will prove whether or not the third one followed suit. I have hopes. ("He's got HIIIIGH hopes. He's got. HIIIIGH hopes. He's got high apple pie in the sky hopes!" I love Goofy) If it does, it'll be pure awesomity. Personally, too, it's been a great year. I'm very lucky, I have a very easy life and no major worries, never really did have. I hope it'll last a long while yet. I've grown more social, too. This spring, I kind of regressed, I didn't share courses with anyone I know and I didn't really make much contact with the ones I knew outside my courses from before. Right before summer, though, it changed, and I made an effort to keep it up the first few weeks this fall, and voilà, it held. Suddenly, I find myself socializing almost one day or so every week. It's crazy. Nice people, too. Not a lot of people, but very nice people. Obviously. I'm way too picky to keep up seeing people I don't think are very nice. And I incresingly realize, I know a lot of very nice people online, too. You know who you are, but thank you for making my year that much better for having chatted with you and listened to me. So, great year. And in the humble beginnings of October, it got even better. Sure made me glad I don't keep this weblog in Norwegian.

I hope next year will be as good. Or possibly even better. I've signed up for some courses in Latin on top of my full-time studying history, so academically, it's suicide, but I'm hoping it will be a good year even so. This far, it's looking pretty promising.

To all of you out there reading this, happy new year. I wish you all the best. And thank you for all you've done for me in the old one. ^^ Keep flyin', people. I implore you. As does Mal.

Oh, and if any one of you tries making jokes on how late this post is, there will be fatal beatings administered.

So, we're walking over to my grandparents' (on my dad's side) house, who live a walk the shorter side of half an hour away from my parents, me and my little ten-year-old sister, when she looks up on the night-sky (it's November, so there's night-sky at five in the afternoon) and goes "It looks round."
I reply that that's 'cause it is, and how the sky is another ball around the ball we live on, assuming she knows the basics of our living on a round ball-like planet. And she replies "So, all the countries, they have their own skies?"
I quickly figure out, my sister has never grasped the difference between countries and planets - a little shocking, considering her age, to my mind, but then again, what do I know of the average ten-year-old's grasp of the world. Anyway, she thought Norway was one round place where there lived people, and other places (like "Africa", which was her example) were other "round places". Stumbling my way through explaining the concept of planets in terms she can understand, I feel like she's maybe getting it now, and then we continue walking. Then she goes "is there people on the other planets as well, then?" And I say that, no, not that we know off, 'cause the planets are so far out in space we can't go there. After a digression - on her accord - on the possibility of aliens (and me feeling relieved I explained this well enough she knew where the aliens would enter on the picture) - she marvels on how we can't visit these other planets, she thinks that's really strange. I repeat my attempt at trying to explain the extreme distance and the like, and then I throw in a comment on how there have been people on the moon, so we've gotten that far. She goes "Really? On the moon?" She points at it, and I nod. She continues.
"Coooool. Do you know anyone who's been there?"


I love my sister. I really, truly, totally do.

Seeing as Obdormio was in on this one, I thought I should write a wee rapport, in the eyes of the Lion.


The Lion, this time, as it turned out, was me, and boy did I make a piss-poor job at it. First round, I played okay, but with mistakes. Second round, I played fairly well. Third round, I stunk. Fourth round, I stunk again. And after that, I had one obsese little squad of Lannister guardsman trotting around the Riverlands and the eastern Westerland on search for something to do. I played the Lion like an itty bitty kitty.

To be fair, it wasn't all my bad. While I positioned myself wide open for what would be the main blow against me, I still think it was the smartest, albeit riskiest, thing for me to do. Yes, it was lousy done to the other players to do what I did, but that does not make it rational to choose to hurt me, who at that point was the weakest player on the board in all respects, over the player who not only was clearly in the lead, but who would in addition be the sole player to profit should I be targeted.

Of course, I was targetted, and I should have foreseen that. The player making the call was new to the game, the board-positions wouldn't look as obvious to him as they did to me, and he was right in wanting to punish my move, I shouldn't have expected him to have such a grasp on the game and the current situation as to realize that he rationally couldn't do that without effectively handing an already stronger player the victory. It really bugs me ho I often seem to lose games like this from overestimaiting my opponents. Oh, well.

The Kraken, of course, was the strongest player, the Stag being a rather distant second for most of the game. Highgarden was very latent throughout, never really going over into agressive-mode, which, if I should speculate (and why not, I spent most of the game walking in circles with a single over-supplied regiment with nothing better to do), was his main mistake. He played a very fair game up until the three last rounds or so, when he should have brutally expanded navally, either in the west (which he should have done in concordance with a similar naval assault in the northeast by the Stag) or in the southeast. I'd have preffered west were I him, not because the Kraken was the easiest target - it wasn't - but because that could have given him a chance at the Throne, while launching at the Stag would only increase Grejoy's relative power in the game. However, I might be wrong in assuming he could have held Baratheon back if he'd gone up northweast, so maybe southeast was his better choice, I didn't pay it THAT much attention. Anyway, I think Highgarden would have profited from getting more aggressive mid-game. As far as I can recall, aside from claiming Sunspear, Tyrell didn't do one single attack throughout the game, and obviously, that's not right.

The Wolf, now, the Wolf I didn't pay that much mind, so my thoughts there might be way off, but... I think he did rather well. Had I not been given the penalty the Kraken should have gotten, the Wolf might have been fighting Kraken rather closely for the leading position - a fight which could easily have weakened both enough to open for any of the other three players, but probably the Stag, who was both the strongest runner-up and the best positioned player to do so. However, I have one small quarrel with the Wolf - he should, really, really should, have accepted my round 2-offer for an anti-Kraken alliance. While this is obviously easy to say in hindsight, and I agree it wasn't that clear-cut a decision right then and there, I'm pretty sure that would have smothered the Kraken quite nicely - and, I might add, would have weakened the Kraken enough so that when the penalty was dealt to me, the Kraken wouldn't be able to take full advantage, placing the Wolf firmly in the lead. (Overlooking the fact that I wouldn't have bid as I had if the Kraken hadn't been so strong I considered him the only possible choice for the penalty) All speculation of course, but I do think that's how it would have played... and, well, I was right in my assumptions on how the actual game would go, so why not in this speculative one?

All in all, however, the Wolf did well, keeping the Stag at bay, and holding the Kraken off by subtly maneouvering for keeping the Lion weak enough for keeping the Kraken's main interests in the south. A maneouver which in the end, as I foresaw, worked to his disadvantage, but in the early-game, it worked just as he wanted, and kudos to him for that. It wasn't 'til the Ironborn had utterly finished the Lion off they turned their attention to Stark, and, well, up until that point the Wolf had been doing pretty damned well. Of course, that point came, as I knew it would, but... it was still a decent attempt.

All things considered, it was a good and entertaining game, despite my early fall from grace, and (hopefully) I've learned not to overestimate other players. I probably haven't - I didn't last time, or the time before that, or the time before that, etc, etc - but one can hope. And hopefully, next time such a situation arises, there will be a slightly more experienced player making the call. Cause gosh darn it, I did make the right move, had I just been able to convince others of my being right. (And that's veeeery easy, when the only one knowing it instinctively sat at my left hand side and would be the one profiting from it, wisely arguing against what he knew would destroy his already big advantage. Brotherly love indeed. And yet the bastard kept sparing my last little troop for no apparent reason later in the game. I think he felt bad. XD)

You have to admit, as taglines go, that one's pretty good.


I'm amazed. That's what I am.


How can anyone - ANYONE - choose the mediocre nonsense they showed in cinemas above this?! This is GOOD. This is better than good; this, my friends, is very good. I'm not sure if I'll give it a "great", but it's damn sure "very good". My brother - who considers the cinematic version one of his favourite superhero-movies, coming in behind "Batman Begins" and the Spider-mans, if I remember correctly - is SO going to love this, I'm going to have to watch it with him just to enjoy his reaction.

Okay, so, the changes. It's been a while since I last saw the "normal" cut (from now on referred to as "the horribly inferior cut" or simply the HIC), but some changes I noticed/got told of and remembered when watching the commentary.

First of all, there's just MORE, of virtually everything. Most notably, there are the following:

- A much longer getting-to-know-DareDevil-scene where among other things the barfight is heavily extended.
- Longer, and thus more intimate, insights into the relationship between Matt and his father, making one care a helluva lot more for both of them than one did in the HIC.
- Generally longer fight-scenes. I don't think there's one important fight-scene in the entire movie not seriously prolonged. This obviously pulls one more into the battles, and furthermore, it lets these supposedly brilliant fighters impress us a little bit more than they did before.
- More fleshed out friendship between Matt and Foggy - which also, of course, fleshes out both of the individual characters, with great warmth and conviction. Foggy is brilliant in all the cut-scenes he's in.
- Some (but not that many) additions to the scenes presenting the Bullseye-character (one especially cool one near the end) and some more scenes with the brilliantly casted Ben Urich as well. There is also an early extended scene showing the full extent of Kingpin's brutality, lending more potency to his threatening presence later in the movie.

There is also the addition of a subplot where Matt gets to be the lawyer helping the underdog and the blind detective, which ties beautifully in to the main plot and makes some things in the ending make far more sense then they ever did in HIC.

Some very few things are also removed, notably the confessional-scene (replaced with an equally good scene were Matt elects NOT to go to confession, even at the direct urging of his priest), which I miss, and the scene were he gets to bed Elektra, which I miss, although for different reasons.

These changes both add to the new subtextual point of the movie, though - that Matt is alone, very alone, and troubled, and I like them. The main-focus being on the romance with Elektra is gone, shifted to DareDevil's crusade against the Kingpin, without detracting from the potency of his relationship with Elektra - maybe strengthening it, even.

All in all, I have but one major complaint, and that is how they exploited their now-higher-rated-movie-anyway to have Bullseye go "I want a fucking costume" instead of "I want a bloody costume", which to me sounds ten times better. But then again, I'm a sucker for British swearing, so... it might just be me.

Everybody who likes DareDevil (who thematically (but not character-wise) is Marvel's version of Batman, if you ask me, which should be argument enough to like him) should go get hold of this movie and watch it. Trust me. It's waaaaay better than the HIC.

8/10, maybe even an 8,5, I need to contemplate this. I'm not positive, it's been too long since watching it, but I think I'd give the cinematic version 5,5 or 6.

is upon me. I've had one exam - out of two, the one I had the least worries about, obviously, so that I have the worst one left - my brother has had his confirmation, and all these television-series I for some reason am watching are coming to their seasonal end. Don't read the paragraphs titled with names of shows you haven't seen the latest season finale of yet.

Prison Break:
Good episode, not-so-good season-finale. I felt the cliffhanger was too clumsy and too few threads were wrapped up. But I'm looking really forward to season two anyway.

24:
Amazing, I loved how they finally paid off season 4's ending in the last fifteen minutes.

Veronica Mars:
Awesome. Simply. Awesome.

Scrubs:
Really picked itself up in its last bunch of episodes, loved the two final ones.

Smallville:
Decent ending, now if they only mind not to solve everything with yet another convenient Lex Luthor mindwipe in season 6.

Lost:
Good last bunch of episodes, and they even moved the plot along in them, which has been sorely lacking this season.




As for my exam, I wrote about Krishna's similarities and differences with Shiva, which was more or less the exact assignment I'd have ordered if the teachers phoned me last week and asked me what assignment I'd like on the exam. I've even written a small paper on the exact same subject two months ago. If this one doesn't go well, I'm officially confused. Even more than normally.

The confirmation was splendid. Obviously there are things my mother felt went not-quite-as-well-as-she-hoped, but there always are, and everybody else were to the best of my knowledge very pleased with the day. I even held a small speachy-toast-thingy during the dessert. (I sort of had to - my younger brother (not the one who was the centre of the evening, the one between us in age) was going to hold one, and my not doing the same would look very bad.)

So, it is the eve of the last day of my self-prolonged Easter Holiday back with my parents and my siblings. Sigh. By all means, I like it in my apartment, I look forward to again being able to plot my every second totally without regard for other people, it'll be cool not to have to have fish for dinner at least once a week again, und so weiter, but, Hel, it isn't the same as being home. Sigh. I feel good when I'm home, for no other reason than for just being here. And with the exception of my youngest brother's confirmation-ceremony, I won't be going home again before the summer holiday - and then I'll have to work, which takes like 50% of the joy out of the entire thing. Sigh.

I should be getting to bed now, I'm getting up in six hours.

Sigh.

Just re-watched it with my youngest brother, who hadn't seen it before. (This was a trick on my part to get him interested in Alan Tudyk, seeing as I knew he'd love the character of Wat, and thus have another argument when trying to make him watch "Firefly". He adores "Buffy" and "Angel", in some ways even more than me I think, but he has these insane ideas sometimes which he rarely ever backs down from. With "Firefly", he just decided, out of no good reason whatsoever, that he wouldn't like it. And that's it. That kind of illogical behaviour annoys me to no end.)

And by Odin, it was far better than I remembered. I remembered it as "corny but somewhat exciting, and with a couple of hysterical scenes spread thinly around", but hey, it had a virtual rock-slide of cool quotes!

"Better to be a silly girl with a flower than a silly boy with a horse and a stick."

(And, in somewhat defiant response to that one: ) "It's called a lance!. He-llo?"

"Your men love you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough."

"God love you, William. So do I."

"Well, the Pope may be French, but Jesus is English!"

"Uh, betray us, and I will fong you, until your insides are out, your outsides are in, your entrails will become your extrails I will w-rip... all the p... ung. Er. Pain! Lots of pain."

"I don't understand women."
"Nor do I. But they understand us. Well, maybe not you."

"All human activity lies within the artist's scope! ...Well, maybe not yours..."

And my favourite and new MSN-subnicktext:
"Of course I lied! I'm a writer! I give the truth scope!"

Late. Tired.

Got rid of the virus/malware/spyware. Mostly, at least, there's some lingering nuiscances I didn't manage to kill off, but I'll live, and so will the computer. Tolerable.

This is the end of the second-last day of being home with my parents and siblings before I go back to school for spring. Melancholy.

MSN-subnick-text changes again. Quote from same page as last time. New quote is "Suffice to say that Yaweh spent endless hours testing his people's obedience, and they in turn tested his patience to the limit." Already had this one for a day or so, so tomorrow I'll change to "En gang var jeg nysgjerrig, men nå...", which is a quote from this month's Norwegian rerun-issue of the Fantonald (Duck Avenger) - comic, "Project Cold Sun", said by the character of Camera 9, an engimatic yet cool chap to say the least. It translates to something like a very resigned "Once I was curious, but now..."

Non-blog's not being very non-blog'y. Irritation.

Remember to do something about that in next post. Pressure.

Post ending. Bye.

All hail.



I was at work today. For a little over nine hours. So I'm rather tired. But we won't go into that here seeing as that would be a very blog-like thing to do. And, as previously stated, this is not a blog-like thing. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. Yes. You guessed it.


It is a non-blog-like thing masquerading as a blog-like thing claiming to be a non-blog-like thing.


Confused yet? If not, don't worry, we're just on day two, you'll get there with the rest of us eventually.





Well now. More Game of Thrones today, my brother possibly felt bad for yesterday and arranged a game, and due to some very, very, very clumsy mistakes (one where I somehow ended up thinking 1+3 was equal in total to 2+3, and one where I simply forgot to execute my carefully laid out plan) on my part, my brother once again won. Not that he didn't deserve it, he showed great ability with his calculations. I think I managed a poor third. (We were five players, three of them newbies...)


To quote the Governator, I will be back.

No, not in the perverted way. I'm simply trying to make a pun, seeing as I'm somewhat annoyed that my brother's friends chose today of all days to ask if he (and myself) wanted to play a round of board-games. Good board-games, like "A Game of Thrones" which we probably will play tonight - usually take time. And tomorrow is the only day during the entire vacation where I have to get to work at nine in the morning.

Conclusion? Faith's a bitch. (No offense intended towards all the Dushku-lovers out there)



I'll probably get only five hours of sleep tonight. Way too little, of course, and it still won't let me stay up as long as I would had tomorrow been almost any other day of the year.





Anywho. Having ranted somewhat about this blasted conundrum, I'll go over to less blog-like-things, to keep in style with the non-blogyness that hopefully encompasses this, er, blog.

SNOW.

It's white, it's cold, and it's damn dangerous when placed in the wrong spots or appears in the wrong amount, but darn it, it's nice. There's snow outside now. Has been for some time. Still far less than it would have been on the twenty-eight of December ten years ago, but that's global warming for ya. Hopefully this will invoke the wrath of Ymir upon humanity and smite them all asunder. (I do like Knox and count myself out for purposes of health. Of course, he died right afterwards...)