Rants from the Alright Guys: The Cartoon Nightmare is No More

Movies and entertainment have come a long way over the years. Special effects and animation in particular have advanced along with computer technology. Maybe it's the cranky, nostalgic old man in me, but CGI really doesn't impress me anymore and actually I'm pretty damn tired of it. I thought it was pretty bitchin' in Lord of the Rings when the Ring was cut from Sauron, and that big blast wave knocked all the make-believe orcs, elves and men over sure, but now I think CGI is just over-used and makes movies cartoonish.

Bring back Terry Gilliam!

The original Star Wars trilogy has charm even now, largely because they had to bust their asses, using smoke and mirrors to make everything look as realistic as they could. In the new trilogy, are there any scenes where the actors aren't standing in front of a blue screen doing their lines? That makes it much harder for an actor to deliver their lines in a convincing manner. Well, that and the casting for Star Wars was great in the original trilogy and fairly abysmal for the new ones, but that's another story. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher had pluck. I think Ewan McGregor did a great job, but Hayden Christensen has no charisma and don't even get me started on goddamn Natalie Portman. But anyhow...

I was watching the movie 300 at a friend's house and there was a scene where a boy was facing down a huge, horrifying CGI dog, and it was not interesting or dramatic to me at all. Maybe it's partly due to the fact that I play a lot of video games, but I feel like I'm watching a video game during CGI-heavy movies. This isn't to mention poorly-done CGI scenes - nothing takes you out of the moment quicker than a crappy CGI scene. Remember that scene in The Matrix: Reloaded when Neo is fighting all the Smiths? Pretty cool scene until Keanu Reeves launched himself up in the air and everyone in the theater sat up and thought "wait!....that doesn't look right!"

Movie magic!

I like the new Star Wars trilogy, and I like a lot of movies that have some CGI but there's something lost in these types of films for me. That undefinable human quality, what the french call a certain I don't know what.

And a few random notes:

- It's shaping up to be Detroit vs Pittsburgh in the NHL finals. That would be a matchup of my 2 favorite hockey teams and one hell of a good series.

- We're watching that show where a family pays a guy to break into their house, then shows them how to secure it. This is the only sort of reality TV I can get into.

- For the first since I've moved out of my parents' place, we have a dog. He's a miniature shnauzer named Baxter. It's a brave new world.