New Year's

I'm angry. This is an angry blog post. I know that. If you don't want to read something angry, leave now. The next one will be happy, I promise.

I hate New Year's. I've never understood what the big deal was. Nobody keeps their resolutions, people go out and get drunk for no reason, and I had a terrible experience on year on top of that (which I won't get into right now). So yeah, not a big fan. I likely won't be saying "Happy New Year's" unless I'm being polite. It's not a holiday.

Anyway, this New Year's is probably going to end up being the second "worst" I've ever had. This is the first year I'll be spending it completely alone -- and I still live at home. Yep, I've been abandoned. My sister decide to go to my mother's house, despite the fact that we're barely on speaking terms with her, while my father left to spend it with his girlfriend. That leaves me, alone, and doing absolutely nothing of worth. And this is a day when I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo! I should be happy. But serious, fuck this!

Anyway, I'm in a foul mood right now. Sucker Punch is on the TV in an hour, and I'll watch that (my Blu-ray of it is currently in shipping), and then I'll probably go to sleep (an hour before midnight). Way to make a terrible "holiday" worse, family.

Ciao,
Marter

(Worst) Films of 2011

As with my "Best of" shortlist, I avoided many of the films that looked really bad this year. However, I just finished watching one about 30 minutes ago, and just typed up an 1182 word review about it, so I'm definitely glad I waited to post this until now. Anyway, omissions will likely have occurred. Regardless, here's my current list of the worst films of 2011 (again, in alphabetical order):


Abduction
Drive Angry
The Eagle
The Green Hornet
Mean Girls 2
Red Riding Hood
Season of the Witch
The Ward


Tomorrow, maybe I'll post the best films in general that I watched this year. Maybe. We'll see. ;)

Ciao,
Marter

Films of the Year

Note: Keep in mind that I haven't seen some of the heavy hitters like Hugo, Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Dangerous Method, or Jane Eyre yet, so they obviously won't be included. (Two of which I might see by the time my actual list gets posted.)

Anyway, we've reached that point in the year when it's almost over. Oh. Okay, then. So here are some films that were good and that are going to be in my "Best of" list when I write one up and post it on New Year's. I'll come up with an actual order later, but for now, I'll keep it alphabetical:


Captain America: The First Avenger
Harry Potter and the Death Hallows: Part 2
The Lincoln Lawyer
Moneyball
Sleeping Beauty
Source Code
Sucker Punch
Unknown
X-Men: First Class
Your Highness


There's your preview. If you want my "Worst of," you'll have to wait until tomorrow. It'll be a smaller list, though.

Ciao,
Marter

Grammar Issues #1

This might prove to be the last of these, but I want to have something to link to when I want to explain to someone why their grammar sucks. So I'm going to mention a bunch of things that are quite common (especially by certain people on The Escapist, users and contributors alike), and tell you how to fix them. Redlin, I'm not singling you out, although you might make them as well (I haven't noticed that, though).

Let's begin:

#1 There's
If you are mentioning multiple items after the word there, and want to tell me that they are in a location, you do not use "there's." "There's" is a contraction of "there" and "is," and is used only for a single object. "There is a film I like." "There is an apple on the porch." Get me? You don't say "There's apples out there," although I hear it frequently -- possibly even more in speech than in text. Why? It's laziness. There are apples. There are films I like. We good?

#2 Not using an apostrophe when you remove letters of a word
Okay, so you want to use the word "spite" instead of "despite" because it's easier to type? "Bout" instead of "about"? Fine. But you have to fix it up, otherwise your words are different. "Spite" is an actual word. As is "bout." But if you put the apostrophe at the front of the word, your missing letters are accounted for. "I'm writing 'bout something 'spite that it's fun for me." See how much simpler that is? Good. Now do that from now on.

#3 "Of" is not a replacement for "have"
If you are putting something into the past tense, one of the words to do that is "have." You could have done something. Maybe you should have done it! But you shouldn't "of" done something. "Of" does not work. I understand why it gets used -- "should've" kind of sounds like "should of" -- but it's wrong. Stop doing it. You look like a moron.

#4 Pronounce the word "have" properly
Since we've already determined that you should be using "have" more frequently than you might have already, let's make sure you're pronouncing it properly. It is not pronounced like the word "half." There is a V there. Vs are not the same as Fs. So why do you say you "half to do something"? Do it properly!

#5 "And" instead of "to"
This is another one that really bugs me. You know how a lot of people say they're going to "try and do something"? Or similar phrases? They're wrong! By using "and," you're separating the two actions. You're "trying" and you're "doing." What are you trying? Nobody knows because there's nothing to follow it but another action. Now, when you "try to do something," you're having the "try" part apply directly to the "do," meaning the actions are connected, not separated. Using "and" is wrong; "to" is the correct word.

That's all for now. If I can think of more, I'll make another one of these. But this is what's bugging me at the moment.

Ciao,
Marter

Tests

I had two tests today. I got four hours of sleep last night. That's 6 whole hours in the last 72! So yeah, tests were difficult today. And yet, I think I did okay, especially on the French one.

Tomorrow, I have my final exam, and then I'm done! Also, having friends over tomorrow, so after I post my review (which will be at around 2:30 my time, approximately), I'm offline until the next day. Anyway, I'mma try to sleep now, although if things happen like the previous days, I won't be able to.

Ciao,
Marter

Exhausted Rambling

Note: If this ends up making little-to-no sense, then forgive me.

Okay, so it's currently 11:00PM on Sunday, December someday (18th?). I haven't slept properly in two days in a row. No, I don't know why. I've gotten about 2 hours of sleep over the last 48 hours. Normally, this isn't terrible. But I had done something similar a few days prior, and it's really catching up with me. I have to write this sentence by sentence just to keep it coherent.

Why is this bad? Because I have two exams tomorrow, one of which begins at 8:00AM. And it's French. Yeah, not being able to write proper English means I'll do great on a French exam. But French is also my worst course, and I could very well fail it if I don't do well on the exam (I have to pass it, basically). And then at 3:30, my other exam starts, for Urban Studies. That's my second worst class. Again, I have to pass the exam to pass the course. I'm less worried about it, but the French one is really, really worrying me. And, yet again, I cannot sleep. I was tired, and tried to get to bed around 8:30. I stayed in bed for 2 hours, and nothing. So I'm up doing some more studying, hoping I'll absorb something. Probably not, though.

So yeah, not sleeping sucks. Not sleeping right before you have the two most important exams you've ever taken -- that's much, much worse.

Ciao,
Marter

First Real University Final is Today

Technically I already wrote my first one over a week ago. But considering that one had questions like "What colour was Bella's truck?" on it, and it only took 10 minutes to write, I don't count it.

My real one is tonight. Am I nervous? No. Should I be? Probably not. It's my Film Studies final, a class I currently have an A in. No, I'm worried about the tests next week. I have two on Monday (one is at 8:00AM), and then one more Tuesday. The Monday ones are both my two weakest classes, and the tests are going to be hard.

Gotta study this weekend.

Ciao,
Marter

"New Year's Eve"

I liked Valentine's Day. It was a fun, wholesome experience that will make you feel good. Is it deep? No. Is it particularly interesting? Not really. But I found it funny, and it accomplished what it wanted to do: Make me laugh and make me feel good. It also made a ton of money because audiences, not critics, felt the same way I did (or at least some of them did).

Because it made money, a pseudo-sequel, New Year's Eve, was created. It was originally planned to be a real sequel, but for whatever reason, that idea was dropped. It's finally out, and once again, critics are hating it. Audiences aren't as negative, but according to Rotten Tomatoes, it's sitting at a 64% approval rating. (To contrast, Valentine's Day is currently at 54%, despite the fact that it made $200+ million at the box office.)

I don't understand the strategy behind New Year's Eve. Firstly, more cast members were added. What was already a crowded film became even more crowded. No doubt, stories are going to be even shorter and get even less development. Next, the running time was cut by somewhere around 10-15 minutes. This further hampers those stories. Finally, Valentine's Day was actually released really close to Valentine's Day. This is why it made money. Guys took their dates to see it because, well, who can resists a film called "Valentine's Day"?

New Year's Eve, on the other hand, was released on December 9th, weeks before the actual event. The novelty of going to see it won't be present, and I predict that it won't make anywhere near as much money as its predecessor. Oh, I have no doubt it'll make back budget, but with the lambasting that it's taking by critics and the three factors I already mentioned, I don't see it being anywhere near as successful as Valentine's Day.

Why I Shouldn't Pass Fine Arts

One of my classes in first term of university was called "Fine Arts." The topic we were "studying" was "Death and Destruction." Sounds fun enough, right? Right. It was a good class, that I officially finished today (with the most bizarre final I've ever written, but more on that in a later post). We mostly just sat around and watched movies, though, and the tests didn't even seem to have anything to do with death or destruction -- they were testing our memory on the movies we watched (and the two Shakespeare plays we read).

That's all fine and dandy. Oh, and to pass the course, you had to attend four Fine Arts events outside of class time. That included plays, dances, musical numbers, etc., as long as the teacher went to see them as well at some point (there was a list we were given for "approved" events). Still, no big deal.

Enter me, who doesn't go to plays and is very, very lazy. Of course, I put off going to any of the events until my selection was severely limited. Now, it said in our course outline that 3 events had to be "theater" events, while the fourth could be "other," which is where that Left 4 Dead thing came into play. So I went to the Left 4 Dead thing, I went to a dance thing, and I went to two plays. I figured I was all set, especially considering those were the only options I had left. If I couldn't have attended one of those 4 events, I wouldn't have had 4 and I would have failed. Yikes!

However, last Saturday, I got an email. In the email, it said that 3 of the events had to be dramas, not "theater" events. I suppose that "theater" could just mean plays, but since I put it off for so long, I was in trouble. There weren't any other plays playing that were "approved." I was in deep trouble, and I knew it. I ended up handing in my four events anyway, hoping that the dance thing I saw would count.

It did, thank goodness.

Technically, I shouldn't have passed the class, as I didn't meet the course outline. Or technically, I did, but I didn't really, if you get what I'm saying. If I would have failed, I would have appealed based on working of the outline and might have succeeded. But that was avoided as I checked my marks and I had a check mark beside all of my events. I was so, so happy. Failing such an easy class would have been devastating.

Ciao,

Marter

Still Sick

I'm still sick. I even had to leave class early today because I couldn't breathe and needed too desperately to clean out my nose because it was too stuffy.

And I have homework to do and tests to study for. I did, however, finish my Urban Studies paper, which is due Thursday. Just need to do my Film Studies paper, which is also due Thursday. I have two tests tomorrow, though, neither of which I've studied for yet. Off to do that now. Then sleep. Because I hear that's a good thing. Even though I've been too sick to sleep much (before last night, I had gone 70 hours with 5 hours of sleep because I just couldn't sleep because I couldn't breathe).

Ciao,
Marter

I'm sick.

I just thought you'd like to know.

"The Green Hornet"

Do you wanna know what that movie needed? A fire breathing monkey. In a wheelchair. Why? You'll have to wait until I decide to descend from my platform located two feet above the surface of the earth and post my review. But oh, will you be enlightened. Yessiree.

Hyped yet? You should be! But that review might not be posted for several months. So, the joke's on you!

Ciao,

Marter

Yawn

I'm unsure what's up with me lately, but I've been feeling more and more tired. Example: I wanted to go to bed at 10:00 tonight. I mean, I didn't, but I wanted to. And it's not like it's due to a lack of sleep either; I've been getting an average of 9 hours a night over the past couple of months. (Yes, that's right: I have time to write daily film reviews, go to school, do all of my assignments, exercise, coach soccer, and I get 9 hours of sleep a day. Go me!)

It's now almost 11:00, which is the time I'm going to go to sleep. I wake up at 8:00AM, assuming that I sleep until my alarm (which is generally the case).

This is no fun. As you get past your teens, you're supposed to be able to not need as much sleep! Or maybe I've just accumulated so much sleep debt that I'm being forced to catch up. Maybe...

Side-note: My right eye waters randomly. No idea why. That's one of the reasons I picked my current avatar, as it represents that, but this eye thing is really weird.

Ciao,

Marter

American vs. British (vs. Canadian?)

I have written over 500 film reviews. Only 414 are currently posted, but I have the other 86+ written and ready. I mentioned this so that you're aware I do a lot of writing (assuming you're someone who just randomly stumbled upon this post and don't already know me). I had already been writing film reviews for over a year when I noticed something: I write like the Brits. Not in terms of spelling -- Canada already uses the British spelling of words -- but in punctuation rules as well. I checked online to see if I was doing it correctly, but it turns out, Canadians are supposed to use American grammar conventions. That's right -- we're supposed to spell like the Brits, but write our prose like Americans. Figure me that.

In case you're unsure what I mean, I'm primarily talking about the way quotation marks are used. If you're quoting someone, or using them to highlight your sarcasm (as I often do), and the words inside of them are followed by a comma or period, according to American punctuation rules, you put them inside of the quotation marks. For instance, if the quote I'm using ("I like cheese" even though I don't really) is to be used as a full sentence, it would be written like this: "I like cheese." The period goes inside, as would also happen in British English. But if the sentence wasn't full, and I was just randomly throwing out that he said that he "like[s] cheese," the comma goes inside of the quotation mark as well. It's the same if I'm ending a sentence with quotation marked piece, like how, at the moment, I'm being way too "serious." See, even one-word quoted words have the period put inside of the quotation marks.

The latter two examples of those vary from British English, meaning I had been doing it wrong. (And nobody ever corrected me or taught me the right way. Good on you teachers.) In British English, if I'm going to quote somebody to end a sentence, but the quotation itself isn't a full sentence, the period would go outside. Like, if someone "likes cheese". See, the period goes outside. The same goes for a comma. If I'm being "sarcastic", well, that's just me. See, the comma's outside! I had been doing this my entire life, and according to one or two internet sources, I was doing it wrong for Canadian English.

So now that I know this, I write "properly." Or at least, I try to. Sometimes I forget, and I'll miss it, but from now on, I'll write like a real Canadian, which means I'll write like a stupid hybrid of British and American.

Note: For those wondering, exclamation marks and question marks follow what would make sense, in both cases. If it's part of the quote, they'll go inside. If they're not, they stay outside. Why Americans don't stay consistent, I don't know, but it makes sense for Brits because that's how it generally is anyway.

"Stone" and Other Thoughts

I watched Stone tonight. If stars Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Milla Jovovich. A review will be coming, trust me. But it took me by surprise just what the film was like. I expected a movie about two characters playing off one another for a couple of hours, but I didn't expect it to get so philosophical and religious on me. By the end, I wondered if the film took a stand on any of that, and I think its last shot affirms that. I'll leave you to see it if it interests you, but that's what I'll be thinking about tonight.

I promised other thoughts. I'm sick. Not physically. Actually, I feel quite well right now in that regard. We finally got the treadmill up and running, so now I can finally use that. I get enough exercise as is, but really need better cardio and whatnot. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm sick of a lot of things in my life, and I'm not sure how much long I can go as I'm still going. I'm thinking of leaving the internet, at least, in my current position. I've thought about that for months now, and while it'll pain me to leave some of the people I know, it's causing me a lot of stress and absolutely no relief at the moment.

See, I have absolutely no social life outside of the internet. My current life consists of going to school. I just pay attention to the lectures there, and I talk to practically nobody. I have five classes, and I know maybe one person in one class by name, and even then, I talk to him maybe once a week. If that. Whenever I don't have class, if I can, I come home. I don't hang out with friends. I don't go out and do things. I come home. I leave to go to school or to do that soccer coaching thing.

If you're reading this, you probably got here from my Escapist profile. If that's the case, you probably know that I write film reviews. Daily. I don't mind this, and generally enjoy doing that. Posting them is another thing. Of all the sites I post my film reviews on, I get the most comments on The Escapist. I have a lot of support there. It's nice, and I thank you all (assuming more than one or two of you are reading this) for that support. But there are detractors as well. I take those kinds of comments very personally, even though I know that I shouldn't. Same thing goes with, as an example, being unfriended on The Escapist or even on something like Facebook. Sometimes, I won't notice because I've been known to friend people on The Escapist without actually talking to them. I didn't used to, but I do now due to a lack of time and the desire not to be rude. But if I did talk with you, and for no reason -- not even a fight or something -- I get unfriended, I take it hard. Like I said, I know I shouldn't, but I do.

This has happened in at least a couple of cases. Sometimes, the "friend" status is kept but it holds no bearing. If I'm no longer on friendly terms with you, for seemingly no reason, it feels really bad. This happened a couple of times in real life, and yes, it did hurt more there. But online counts for something for me. And I have lost the patience that I used to have.

But, like I said, this has been thought about for months, and I haven't done anything about it yet. So maybe this is just another empty thought. I haven't because I think I'll miss too much, and that's probably the truth. We shall see.

I'm rambling. I know. Essentially, I'm contemplating leaving most of the internet, at least, as it is right now. We'll see. I know that'll be disappointing for some, but I don't feel like me spending so much time on there is worth it for me. I need to make some changes, and this might have to be one of them.

Stay tuned.

Ciao,
Marter

The Muppets

I've never liked The Muppets. When I was younger, I didn't find them funny. Now, I just find them sad. I put them in the same category as other kiddie shows, although they might be worse than some due to how unfunny they are. You can't even laugh at them for being silly, terrible or because you aren't the target audience like you can do with some things. I dunno, guys, but I just never enjoyed them. As I grow older, I actually feel a disdain for them, especially because the new Muppets film is doing really well with critics (and audiences).

So yeah, not a fan. I was happy to see them die off, and I'm angry at this new film for bringing them back to the popular culture. Or at the very least, attempting to. I'm off to bed now, and I'll be back tomorrow to say something else.

Ciao,
Marter

I Have an iPhone

As a result, I can post from it. This makes me happy, although don't expect a ton of posts from it. I dislike its keyboard and if I'm using my phone, generally I'm not going to have the time. This is mostly just a test.

Ciao,
Marter

My First Game as Head Coach

This soccer season, I decided to coach soccer. Well, I was volunteered by my father and am now stuck with it. I'm not really complaining, but when I said "I might be able to help out if there's absolutely nobody else," I didn't mean "Offer my name right away." Oh well, c'est la vie. Anyway, he ended up being the head coach, while I'm the assistant. What does this mean? He talks to the referees before the game and gives our team a "pep talk," while I run practices, set-up the lines, and do most of the real coaching tasks.

He's not at soccer tonight. I get to be the head coach. That's fine. Our team isn't very good, and we're two players short tonight, so I doubt we'll win. We'll see. I have no expectations, except that it'll take approximately 3 hours of my life because we're playing down at the other end of the city and it takes about an hour to drive their. Oh well.

Ciao,
Marter

Things I Learned from "Left 4 Dead" and "Spiral Knights"

Today, I had to do something I rarely get to do. I had to play an online FPS, and an MMO. Okay, so the FPS wasn't technically online, as I was playing against people seated beside me, but it was with more people than if it was on a console, so it's a new experience. Kind of. See, to me, it played out far more like a generic match against bots for me.

Even though everyone was sitting beside me, we were in rows and our row was stupid enough to evenly space where our teammates are. There were six of us. Instead of having the left 3 as the Infected and the right 3 as the survivors, we decided to make the jolly decision to mix and match, meaning communication was difficult. Everyone mostly ended up playing alone. Oh, we tried to be teammates with one another, but it didn't work particularly well without communication. And no, yelling at each other couldn't have happened because we were in a room with 60+ other people, all of whom were also playing with their rows of 6.

We were playing at my university, for a school assignment. Sounds awesome, right? Well, it's certainly better than writing an essay. Unfortunately, being a console gamer, I'm not good with PC controls. I played terribly, although still better than the people who had never played an FPS before. At least I had a vague idea of the maps and controls, given that I'd played the game on the 360. You know what really sucks, though? Lag. I hate it, and since this is the university, we don't have computers that can handle dozens of zombies on the screen. So yeah, that sucked. At the 1.5 hour mark, we switched over to a game called Spiral Knights.

Spiral Knights was less interesting, although I believe my experience was darkened further by more lag. For whatever reason, my computer couldn't run the game smoothly with the lowest graphic settings, while the person beside me could run on default. Essentially, I wasn't even really playing the game. In the few sections where it didn't lag, the game wasn't all that fun. It was too easy, and I wasn't a fan of the combat system. I left about 20 minutes in, though, as I was bored and the lag was killer.

This was my night. What did I learn? I learned that lag is the worst thing in the world for PC gamers. And I also learned that console gaming skills are not particularly transferable when switching over to the PC.

Ciao,
Marter

The Dawn of a New Era

I was recently inspired to start up a blog. Why? Well, I constantly felt as if I didn't whine about my life enough. You know how sometimes, you think to yourself: "Why am I not whining to random strangers on the internet?" So here this is. If you don't know, I write movie reviews sometimes. By "sometimes," I mean that I post one online every day to a few sites. Why do I do this? Because it's fun for me, that's why. People also sometimes read them, which is always nice. And when I hear that someone took my recommendation and enjoyed their time with the film, that's probably the best feeling.

No, I don't know how often this will get used, or if I'll even continue to post on it after this introduction. But it's here, and I might feel the need to continue making posts.

Ciao,
Marter