Sproing

That's the sound of Spring springing, as today is about as nice a day weather-wise as one could hope for. The sun is shining, the temperature will be 18, and yesterday's gale is now a light breeze. Pity I won't be at the U2 concert tonight.

Yesterday was actually not too bad, except for the very strong wind. I took my almost pristine inline skates to Yoyogi Park to try them out on a range larger than the road out front of my apartment. I'd been to Yoyogi Park several times before, but only to the same part, and only to lie on a blanket reading a paper in the sun. Once one starts skating around it, one realizes that it's actually pretty big. So for most of the afternoon I ceaselessly skated about.

Ceaselessly was because either the wind was pushing me along (or back), and I still have no idea how to stop. I remember some kind of "T" stop could be done from my very brief foray into skating at the Kirwan skating rink back in my high school days. But this technique seems to have been lost to the dimness of the ages. So now I'm unsure how the younglings of today actually stop these contraptions. And there was no one to copy off, as the only other inline skater I saw was skating beside his mate who was riding a bike. As they both had command of their machines, after streaking past they quickly disappeared. But there were no broken bones, and I returned exhausted, so that's a good day.

Allan & I watched A History of Violence on Saturday. Easily Cronenberg's most accessible film, it's experiencing a bit of fame here in Tokyo, as last week it received the highest viewer approval rating for the films currently playing. The cinema for our showing was almost full. Who would have thunk that about a Cronenberg flick?

We decided to continue watching movies so retired to his place for pizza, cookies, ice cream and DVDs. After the quality of A History of Violence we could only go down. Way down, as we watched Stealth, Daredevil: Director's Cut, and Elektra. Stealth is so dumb it's actually enjoyable. To criticize it would be to miss the point - it would be like complaining the computer game Doom has little story. Well, duh. It would be too easy to hate it, so instead I decided to set brain to "stun", and enjoy it.

Daredevil: Director's Cut was very interesting to me, who enjoyed the cinema release enough to do an FF of it. It's not just the usual addition of a few missing scenes, but a very different retelling of the story. The love story is almost removed, and in its place is an investigation by Matt Murdoch and 'Foggy' Nelson, into the death of a prostitute. In many ways it holds together better than the cinema release, but it could still be much tighter. Also the woeful CG at some points hasn't been fixed. Still, it was a worthwhile exercise for me to watch it.

What was not worthwhile was Elektra. It's almost unbelievable that a mere 97 minute long action movie could drag, but it does. Too slow, with action that is either poor (half of the villains major minions are offed in the lamest fights I've seen), or replete with MTV editing that is used to hide either the fighters' lack of skill or the director's lack of vision. And it is padded with sub-plots that go nowhere, and are only there to try to give it an epic feel. These scenes are so divorced from the plot they could actually be edited right out, and the story would lose nothing. Lame.

King Kong on the PSP would not be supplanted for long by Guns, Germs and Steel, as my mind refused to do anything that may improve it. What I really love about King Kong is its sheer simplicity for the controls. Part first-person shooter (as Jack) part Jurassic WWF (as Kong), both in-game games are so easy to control a child, or in this case man-child, can learn them. Playing as Jack is ok, but I really prefer supplexing as Kong. I never really got into those fight-type games where one had to learn oodles of joystick / button combinations for maneuvers. But fighting the denizens of Skull Island with Kong is so much fun because each button has at most two functions mapped to it, and the functions have a logical connection. "Grab" then "Grab" again to throw, "Grab" then repeated "Grabs" to lift and throw, "Grab" then" "Rage" to bite. You get the idea. I haven't finished the storyline because I keep going back to replay the classic Kong fights. The 3 T-Rexs at the waterfall is a personal favorite. "Grab", then repeated "Grabs" to lift the doomed T-Rex first over your head, and then over the falls. Hahahaha, plummet to your death, you hatless fool.