Gamer takes place “some years” from now according to the opening caption, which seems lazy, although given the subject matter, I’m sure it’s meant to be ambiguous and alarming. A man named Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) has invented a self-replicating nanite which colonize in your brain and give someone else control of you, i.e. mind control. The first implementation of this technology was used in Society, a fakecommunity where players could control real people and live out interactions, much like the PC sim Second Life. The technology was then used to create Slayers, which the plot of the movie revolves around. Meanwhile, an anti-nanite movement called Humanz is trying to bring Castle’s empire down.
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As the film opens, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are on a ferry headed to Shutter Island to invesitage the disappearance of a patient from the AshcliffeHospital for the Criminally Insane. A storm is on the way and the sky is grey and overcast. Teddy Daniels is seasick and vomiting. And soon, Shutter Island is looming in the distance.
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2012 is about the titular year and oh what a year it is. There’s a longstanding belief that the world will end in December of that year, as that’s the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar. NASA has compared the 2012 hysteria to the Y2K hysteria of the late 1990s, but many stand firm in the belief that the apocalypse is just around the corner. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich saw the prediction for what it truly is: a fantastic movie idea.
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Despite the mixed reviews, I went into Surrogates with high hopes given that it featured three things I love: robots, Bruce Willis, and comic books. The film was adapted from a comic book and stars Bruce Willis as FBI Agent Tom Greer in a world where most of humanity lives out their lives through robotic surrogates. They sit at home, fat, lazy, and unshaven, while plugged into much better-looking robotic dopplegangers.
Read the whole review at Movie Vault.
Sony really needs to shake up its creative team. Last year they released a mini camcorder called the Webbie and this year we get a camcorder called the Bloggie? Who is doing this?
The sad part is that the Bloggie looks good. The specs are great, with all three models filming in 1080p and taking 5.0-megapixel photos. The design looks sleek and its even got a fancy 270-degrees swivel to film or snap your big ugly mug whenever you want. The ability to film yourself makes the name “Vloggie” more appropriate, but don’t tell them that.
I’ve been looking for a good pocket camcorder and with the PM5 model going for $169 the Bloggie wouldn’t be a bad choice were it not for the awful name. And I might even be able to look past it if it weren’t displayed proudly on the front of the camera, so as to remind the whole world that you’re filming with your beloved Bloggie.
