Kristen Stewart Fails at Acting; Still Pretty Hot

Mar 24 2009 Published by under Hot Girls, Movies

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It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but the other day I gave in to curiosity and watched the teen vampire flick, Twilight. To summarize my thoughts, it was pretty terrible.

Unless you’re a 13 year old girl who’s in love with the eyebrow monster vampire, Robert Pattinson, I think you’ll find it pretty hard to sit through the film’s brooding, juvenile tone. But judging from its success at the box office, I guess that’s exactly what its viewers are asking for.

You see, I remember growing up with awesome movies like Robocop and Total Recall - masterpieces of storytelling and violence. Sure, they were a little light in the romance department, but when you have explosions and gunfire in almost every single frame, you’re hardly going to miss it! But I digress…

Regarding the plot in Twilight, very little happens; it feels rather like a filler episode from some weekly teen melodrama series:

Basically, a girl meets a guy, someone gets angry, and then the credits start rolling. After they’ve done about five of these films, I think it’ll make a lot more sense to just queue up all the movie trailers and watch them in sequence. Seriously, they just didn’t deliver enough of anything in this film!

Acting wise, it’s a mixed bag. Robert Pattinson, with his British heritage, offers a bit of depth and mystery to his character, but unfortunately he’s tied to a silly script that makes him seem suspiciously homosexual, and perhaps partially retarded.

Kirsten Stewart in comparison, downright butchers her lines. Couldn’t we just have our vampire fall in love with a sexy blood producing comatose patient? I mean, what does a 100 year old man have in common with a high school girl, anyway? His ‘need’ for her seems highly contrived and unrealistic.

Despite my personal disdain for Kristen Stewart’s acting, I’m sure some misguided fan will post a video collage of her ‘best moments’ on Youtube. In fact, I’ve already seen some of this crap the other day. I don’t know what I find more hilarious: Kirsten Stewart’s attempt at acting, or her fan’s warped perception of her abilities.

So is there anything that I like about Twilight?

Well, Kristin Stewart is pretty cute – I have no problems admitting that. She’s attractive in an unconventional way. She’s hot, but doesn’t really act like she’s hot. But yet she knows full well that she’s hot. And that brings out a subtle hotness in her, if you get what I’m saying. But from a sober perspective I think her hotness is probably more rooted to her youth and unblemished looks than to anything else. Regardless, I’ll settle for whatever I can take away from this film, even if it’s just the confirmation that I won’t be seeing the sequel. Well, unless Kristen Stewart gets naked or something…

Twilight gets a 3/10.

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Dexter TV Show Review: Season 1, 2 and 3

Dec 15 2008 Published by under Reviews, TV Shows

Showtime Dexter Season 1, 2, 3 review

I’ve been a big fan of Showtime’s Dexter since a friend recommended the series to me during the summer months. After getting hooked on the pilot episode, I quickly ate up seasons one, two and three, relishing every episode for its amazing cast, beautiful photography, and its, erm, killer script. I’m going to share with you some of my thoughts, covering a bit from each season, but I’ll leave out the specifics so as not to offer any spoilers if you haven’t watched all the seasons.

Get full seasons of Dexter right now on DVD and Blu-ray.

Season 1

The first season does a great job of introducing the star of the show, the world he inhabits and the secret he keeps. The show uses a saga format, blending each episode into the next, giving the viewers a personal and engrossing experience throughout.

Parts of the first season that I enjoyed the most were often the little moments where Dexter tries to blend in as an ordinary, quiet forensic specialist amidst a group of overzealous cops trying to find killers who are just like him.

There’s also an abundance of comedic moments, which helps lighten the otherwise dark and grizzly nature of the show.

Season 2

Season two starts with a bang that’s so loud you’re basically guaranteed to watch all 13 episodes after the opening scene!

In stark contrast to the first season, Dexter’s sophomore outing begins at a much faster pace. With the kid gloves off, the reserved careful plodding of the first season’s storyline is completely abandoned for a racetrack velocity that never slows down.

A host of new characters are swiftly introduced and many interesting interactions are allowed to happen between Dexter, his co-workers, and these new players.

Some people have remarked that season two loses some of Dexter purity. But others say the quicker pace is simply a natural progression, if you see both seasons as one continuous storyline.

With this in mind, I think the first season does a great job of setting things up for the second, allowing all the fireworks to launch only after a snowballing and tension gripped build up.

Opinions aside, season two is a wild ride with Dexter being attacked from all angles. Often, it feels like he’s juggling chainsaws while standing on a house of cards; you really begin to feel that at any moment his web of lies, cover ups and murders will come crashing down upon him. And it sort of does.

Season 3

Season three has just completed, and I can say that they’ve returned the series to a style and pace more reminiscent of season one. Because of this, I initially felt that the writers had burnt themselves out, as initially, not much was happening and some segments were – dare I say – boring. But as the pieces were being set and the story began to unfold, I realized that they were simply focusing on a cleaner storyline with less subplots and characters to muddle things up. In doing so, they’ve created a highly polished product that I think is unparalleled on television today. The level of acting, directing, and script writing is nothing short of phenomenal.

In retrospect, season three seems to assume that you’re already a fan of the show; the writers don’t compromise their method of storytelling by forcing cheesy moments nor injecting meaningless action. The result is a deeper and more believable world that our star inhabits. Sometimes, I stop and think about how every character, relationship and situation is geared towards creating this believable, yet clearly preposterous reality. Eventually, if feels as if Dexter’s secret becomes your secret.

*UPDATE*

Since writing this, I’ve had the pleasure to watch season 4 and 5 of this great show. Although I feel that season 3 is the pinnacle of the series thus far, my friends insist that the show keeps getting better. Whatever the case, Dexter is still one of my favorite shows on cable TV today.

Get full seasons of Dexter right now on DVD and Blu-ray.

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MacBook Pro Faux Review – A Look Back One Month Later

Nov 22 2008 Published by under Apple

After a full month on Youtube my faux unibody MacBook Pro review has broke 7,000 views and has garnered over a hundred interesting comments. I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I posted the clip, just days after the notebook arrived in my hands, but I knew my review would stir the waters with its unorthodox mix of facts, fantasy and pure flame bait!

A few people seemed to have grasped that it’s impossible to take my review seriously if you actually consider what I’m saying and doing in the video (like ‘docking’ a load of Apple crap onto the display!), but apparently many others are completely oblivious that my piece is purposely ridiculous. Indeed, I didn’t want things to be too obvious. Where would the fun be in that?

What I was hoping for was to bait a variety of emotional responses, and judging by the vociferous nature of the comments posted thus far, I’ve certainly succeeded. From barely legible insults to congratulatory praise, I think I’ve heard it all. But the best comments are those that scold my incorrigible parlance to butcher the names of various Apple products and my inability to recognize that the English pronunciation of ‘aluminum’ is the exact same element used to make pop cans and car frames.

Right now I’m sort of torn between continuing with this series of misreviews or just keeping my content straight and honest (as it is with anything that I write for this blog). Having said that, it’s kind of hard to stop when I’m having this much fun and apparently entertaining a good portion of viewers as well!

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MacBook Pro 2.53Ghz 9600M GT: COD5 Game Benchmark

Nov 06 2008 Published by under Apple

A game that’s sure to get a lot of play on the PC this holiday season is Call of Duty: World at War (COD5). The multiplayer beta has been available for a few days, and already I’ve logged a good couple of hours in online matches.

COD5 is an excellent test for the late 2008 MacBook Pro’s discreet graphics chip. Overall, I found the nVidia 9600M GT to perform quite well, rendering the game with a high amount of detail at comfortable frame rates.

For the deathmatch purist, having beautiful graphics is a distant second to having silky smooth frame rates. For my tests, I kept this in mind, but I was also thinking about the single player aspect, where graphical detail is important for providing an engrossing experience.

Starting at the highest resolution, a native 1440 x 900, the game felt a bit choppy and textures looked flat and lifeless at their lower settings. Dropping down to 1280 x 720 and having the details maxed out to ‘extra’ produced a gorgeous palette of colors and textures, but the frame rate took a noticeable hit any time the scene had to render a lot of objects. Working down to 1152 x 864, I found this to be the lowest acceptable resolution for the MacBook Pro’s 15.4” screen; any lower and the graphics looked too blocky, muddy and aliased. At this resolution, I chose a combination of medium and extra detail settings. The result produced acceptable frame rates for online play with graphics still pleasing enough to showcase the 9600M GT’s abilities.

Further tweaking and running the final code of the game may produce even better results. I can’t wait for Call of Duty: World at War to be released now that I’ve tried the beta. It might just give COD4 a run for its money!

Slightly higher quality video here.

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