Rating: 5/5
Black Swan is about a Nina, a psychotic ballerina trying to perfect the roles of the white swan and black swan in Swan Lake. As she struggles against the challenge, she is hindered by painful pyschotic attacks but which seems to lead her closer to perfecting the role. As perfection comes within grasp, she realizes that it’s not just her who wants the role.
If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen Pi also from Darren Aronofsky.
Through great movie-making, Black Swan successfully draws you into the pyschotic world of the lead character for a pretty immersive move watching experience, i.e. you will almost feel the full range of emotions Nina felt. Natalie Portman is absolutely brilliant in the move. As a bonus, it has a lot of beautiful ballet dancing and, of course, the much hyped girl-on-girl action with Mila Kunis. Not for the casual viewer as the movie is dark and heavy but if you’re a serious film buff, you will be rewarded.
Rating: 4/5
I had nothing much to do while recuperating from a nasty cold so I played and finally finished Infinity Blade, an iPhone game. The gameplay itself is nothing to write home about. You, and your descendants, make repeated attempts to kill the antagonist, the so-called God King. To this end, you have a progressively more expensive array of helmets, shields, armor, swords, and magic rings.
Once equipped, you head into the God King’s castle along a pre-set path, encountering a handful of the God King’s champions along the way and impaling or disemboweling and generally disposing of them until you reach the God King in his throne room and try to do the same to him. To accomplish this, you can dodge, block, parry, slash, stab with your sword, and occasionally cast a spell.
Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, right? But how all these was translated into a mobile touchscreen-controlled game and with such gorgeous graphics is the marvelous thing. It’s only a few years ago that this kind of graphics can be found only in monster gaming PCs with bleeding edge graphics cards. But here it is now in the palm of your hand. Nothing short of awesome!
Rating: 5/5
