Liron-Freaking-Fishypants-WTF-OMFG-Tocker aka Cheeseball Deluxe in response to my post on moving to Kubuntu Dapper Beta asks:

Ever since I had been trying out all sorts of “community” versions of Mandrake/Mandriva, I’ve stopped being an early-adopter. I’ve never had any pleasant experieces with pre-release versions of operating systems, since I have a low level of tolerance and most of the stuff I use my computer for on a daily basis is “mission critical” (read: “work”). However, I’ve been looking for a reason to move away from Mandriva for a short time, as I personally don’t feel the evolution taking place. Being a simple end-user and not a programmer, if I don’t see or feel this evolution it’s a bad, bad sign. More people are moving away from Mandriva as we speak.

My question is this: Would you recommend Kubuntu over other linux os’? If so, why? Do you believe it’s more capable than other distros you have used? If so, in which ways?

I’d definitely recommend Kubuntu over other Linux-based OS—but I’d take it with a grain of salt. My experience in home use has always primarily been Debian-based OS. Since you use Mandriva, like me, you are used to having access to repositories and using apt-get and whatnot. I like it. I prefer it. I’m very inclined to stay in that sandbox.

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A few days ago, after spending a wretched day renewing my ID at the hell that is the Brooklyn DMV, I picked up a copy of “Shadow of the Colossus” for the PS2 to brighten my day. I had no idea what it was about, but chose it because somewhere at some point I’d glanced at a review that raved about it. This is basically how I buy all games as I’ve a decided lack of patience to read gamer sites and magazines. I usually will subscribe to an RSS feed and scan the photos and titles. Games that get a bunch of posts, stick in my memory and usually end up getting purchased in moments of consumer weakness, which is often.

The format of your run-of-the-mill action game is: fight, fight, fight…boss scene. Fight the boss and then it’s back to fight, fight, fight til the next boss scene and the game eventually ends. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose but the boss fights have historically always been my least favorite parts. Give me a room with twenty little baddies that I have to kill á la God of War and I am one happy fucking camper. Games that are boss-heavy usually begin to collect dust shortly after purchase.

SotC is all bosses. There’s nothing else to the game, unless you count running from point A to B. There’s not baddies in between to slay. You go from one boss monster to another and while normally this would have me hating this game, I find myself hooked. SotC doesn’t have just any old bosses. These bastards are HUGE, gorgeously rendered behemoths that combine action, puzzle-solving and strategy to beat. The graphics, scenery and feel are hot shit. Strange, mysterious and moody. There’s little or no dialog in the game so the huge dream-like world sprawled out before you, unoccupied but for the mountainous beasts reminiscent of something out of HP Lovecraft is simply there to wonder about.

The hero of the game is this dinky little fucker, armed with only a sword and bow and a horse to ride. Pitted against giants literally fifty times larger, the little dude has to expose and attack the monster’s weak points. This is accomplished by figuring out how and managing to climb the boss, get to his weak spots and stab the fuck out of them before you lose your grip and fall. Tense shit.

There’s something to be said about a game revolving around my least enjoyed facet of the action genre that manages to completely entertain me. SotC is a great game on so many levels, from the concept to the anime-like look. It’s a short game, there being only sixteen bosses to battle, which sucks since this is a game that keeps you wanting to see more. More bosses, more areas, more everything.

Am I the first person to notice that Sith is an anagram for shit?

I went to a matinee of “Revenge of the Sith” yesterday, fully expecting, after all the input via word of mouth and print that if I didn’t outright love this movie, I’d at least be pleased and see it as an improvement over the previous installments and a nice job at wrapping things up.

I didn’t like it. I fucking hated it.

I actually started falling asleep at one point (mind you, it’s only 3-something in the afternoon). Honestly, I feel worse for having seen it. So, I’ll take a deep breath and tell you why I hated it when, for all intents and purposes, I should have loved it. C’mon, it’s Star Fucking Wars and Yoda’s all hopping around and kicking ass and it’s got fucking Chewy, people! It has been ordained by GOD to be good.

Except, no. It blows my mom. Here’s why:

1. The acting is beyond sub-par.
   The actings not just bad, it’s non-existent. Video games have more emotion and depth to them these days. It is true that most of this film was shot in front of a green screen and substantial portions of the dialog features actors interacting with objects or beings that are computer generated but seriously, if such technology fosters such lousy acting, forget it, I’ll stick to the video game. Everyone is subdued, wooden and so obviously disassociated from the human drama that they’re supposed to be conveying that at times your thoughts just drift because such dialog, in a consistent disaffected monotone for such long stretches would put even the staunchest Wookie in an daze.
2. For a movie based so much on effects and the creating of “another world”, they sure don’t let you see much of it.
   Just about everything except the acting in this film is too fast. There’s a lot to see in this movie, huge space battles, Wookie wars, tons of great stuff you only dreamed about 20 years ago. The trouble is, you can’t see it. Lucas throws so much at you, so fast that the effect leaves you bombarded. You’re watching something and you think you’re following it, but honestly if someone pressed stop and issued a quick oral quiz on the state of the storyline at that point, you’d be pausing because all you can remember is shiny, blurry things moving across the screen really fast. Could of been the movie, might have been a flashback. Who knows? Everything’s so blurry and hard to focus on, you wonder, if it costs so damn much to make these amazing special effects, why can’t you slow the fucking thing down a bit so I can actually see it and appreciate it? There are a few scant moments, specifically towards the end where Lucas stops the swooshing about and soaring bird’s eye views and gives you a brief look at Coruscant at night and it’s beautiful. Really great stuff, down to the smallest details. But, before you know it, the cameras are once again shooting all over the place.
3. Darth Vader is so fucking gay it hurts.
   To think of all those years I looked forward to finally seeing why Darth Vader was the way he was. What would possess a good guy like Anakin Skywalker, Jedi prodigy to go from being cool and probably getting laid to the gayest thing in black leather and rubber in the galaxy. I guess maybe in the late 70’s, the Vader look was working, but these days, he looked like a joke. The LED board on his chest just looked pathetic. I get it, Lucas was keeping it real. Still, Vader was missing everything in the way of presence that he had in the first three films. Also, Having some big emotional scene, performed by a dude in a big, bulky mask with no moving parts looks incredibly stupid. Seeing him all leaning back, screaming “Nooooooooooooo…”, I just kept thinking that it almost seemed like some surreal parody of Star Wars movies.
4. Chewbacca is just a tall dude in a rubber hair suit..
   While this film earns some points for limiting my exposure to Jar-Jar Binks to only 2-3 seconds, it loses in oh, so many painfully cheeky, saccharine and blatant inclusions of gratuitous cutsiness. Fucking vomit. Seeing Yoda bust out a lightsaber and beat ass last installment was awesome. This time, it’s old news and way too much of it. I get it, he’s a pissy little green guy but I’ve seen it once and anything more than that becomes pointless because it’s shown too damn fast. When I heard that Chewbacca and his home planet of Kasshykk would be in this film, I was thinking it was going to be the coolest thing ever. Unfortunately, the actual business lasted only a couple of minutes and left me realizing that Wookie’s are just as lame a Ewoks. The moments with Chewbacca are lame and cheesy and I’m sorry, but you can’t evoke emotion through a rubber mask, especially when it’s covered with hair. It just seemed that whatever gave Chewbacca character was gone, as with most of all the returning characters in this movie. R2-D2 has several minor fight scenes shamelessly milking any sentimentality the audience might have left after Yoda. The plucky, human-like personalities of the robots were tolerable in the first three films, but in these new ones, all the robots talk and have attitude. It’s just not right. And it leaves you wondering whether you’re reading a script for Saturday morning cartoons. It’s just lame, not necessary and in no way helps the film.
5. General Grevious is stupid.
   General Grevious is the worst of all the villains Lucas has come up with. A hunched mostly robot cyborg, wheezing and coughing and commanding an army of robots with attitude. Unlike the first villain of the new series, he has no presence and for the most part, is just silly looking. Watching him on screen, I couldn’t help but wonder that if he’s a cyborg, why can’t they just replace his lungs? Why is this guy coughing? Who’s idea was this? How does this help?

The bottom line is this movie did not effect me in the slightest. I went in, watched, got sleepy and left. My pulse did not quicken, at no point was I amazed and never did I feel any emotion for any characters. I definitely think not seeing this movie and just reading the synopsis would have been better, because having seen it and knowing it’s the end, it leaves a sour feeling because the next one won’t be better and honestly, if this is what Lucas is turning out, Revenge of the Sith should be the last thing he does. Lucas should focus on his effects industry and produce for new directors because he’s used up and I feel like that $10.75 cents I paid went to finance a complete waste of time that should have been a good film.