Gaming Day

Yesterday, my friends and I went to the friendly neighborhood internet cafe and spent the whole afternoon playing CounterStrike and DOTA. It’s been some time since I played any game but I did reasonably well with CounterStrike. On the other hand, I sucked big-time at DOTA. My excuse is my lack of interest in it :P But seriously, I don’t quite understand its appeal. It’s basically just persistently sending your character on a relentless assault along three possible paths. If it’s character development I’m after, I’d rather play Diablo II (or one of the multitudes of MMORPGs available). If it’s strategy I’m after, I’d rather play Starcraft. Now THAT is a strategy game! Had it been available on the computers in the cafe, I’d have insisted on playing it. And I’d have done much better. It’s such a great RTS that I can’t hardly wait for its sequel, Starcraft 2. But for now, Starcraft anyone?

Badminton Milestone

This morning, I played badminton. Actually, It’s been a regular thing for a few weeks already. But today is special because I hit a milestone: I played my first scored game! Yeah! It was a doubles match and we lost 2-1. But hey we fought hard :P Now, though it’s still several milestones off, I’m now looking forward for that milestone when I get my own racket. But then again with my playmates having so many rackets why not just borrow? Hmmm.

Cole Haan Everywhere

I was reading a magazine when I saw this ad for a Cole Haan shoe. The shoe was pretty nifty-looking so I checked the Cole Haan website. That was a week or two ago. Now, I’m seeing Cole Haan ads on some of the websites I go to. It’s just a small illustration of how an integrated marketing system works. You can just imagine ads in trimedia resulting in a visit to a product’s website which is then recorded and triggers ads related to the product when you surf, use email, or chat. And it could also be the other way around, you could surf, email, or chat, and mention a product and it triggers ads shown or spam sent to you. Now who has such a scope? One company comes to mind right away: Google.

Death Proof

Yesterday, my friends and I decided to check out the ongoing Cinemanila film festival and we decided to watch Death Proof, a film directed by the legendary Quentin Tarantino. The film is a parody of exploitation movies, the kind of movies shown in so-called grindhouses. In fact, this film is, along with Planet Terror (a film directed by Robert Rodriguez), is part of a two-movie set complete with trailers called Grindhouse.

As we settled in for the movie, in walks to applause none other than the man, Quentin Tarantino, himself! He gave a short introduction, punctuated with jokes and laughter, to the film. He then settled in with the audience, which is composed mainly of budding filmmakers (Quark Henares among them) and film buffs, to watch the film.

Death Proof is about a bunch of women from the show industry being offed serially (or should I say in sets?) by a deranged stuntman on his “deathproofed” muscle car. As expected, it’s full of action, including a longish car chase involving not one but two muscle cars. And, of course, there’s an exaggerated amount of blood and gore. In addition the film is full of intentional bad filmmaking. It’s an obviously synthesized crap movie. Which makes it quite enjoyable for what it is.

Rating: 3/5