Traveling Thoughts

I went and saw Cloverfield this evening and I went and saw it because I had been excited about it since the teaser that was shown during Transformers back in July. The teaser that said nothing other than “it’s alive” and showed the statue of liberty’s head hitting the pavement far from where the statue was. The teaser that had everyone (in it) screaming. The teaser that had no name but a date, 1.18.08. The teaser that didn’t exactly have a website that had any kind of meaning other than a couple of pictures that could be moved, and over time more pictures were added, but they still didn’t mean anything to me. So time passes on and every now and then I’d check in and learn a whole lot of nothing. And then, I don’t remember when, we find out the name of the movie at a trailer for it. And so I’ve been waiting, a long time to see this movie. And here’s what I thought:

It was a disappointment. The booing started as soon as the movie started because of the message and the multicolor background. The kind that you used to see on the TV during tests of the broadcasting system. Then we all discovered that it was the movie. And things went on. It was a blair witch project shaky camera movie which is fine since it was a civilians view of the incident but at the same time it wasn’t fine it was annoying. I was also disappointed because it wasn’t probably but a quarter of the way through it when I was bored out of my mind, so bored that I almost got up and walked out. But I stuck it out. I was disappointed that we didn’t find out what the thing was or where it came from but I will say that if I had to identify it, it was a mutated spider/alien thing with ears like Grindel (from Beowulf).

I must say that after all the Lost that I’ve been watching I was expecting a much better movie from Mr. J.J. Abrams. After all the build up and the mystery about it. I was just so disinterested that I really am at a lack for things to say.

It was the beginning of August when I started blogging about National Treasure: Book of Secrets. National Treasure is one of my favorite movies and I just couldn’t wait to see the next installment of National Treasure movies. It was 5 days later that I downloaded the National Treasure: Book of Secrets decoder and every day, I religiously checked that decoder for new puzzles. Supposedly, we’d get access to something special if we solved all the puzzles. The problem is, out of 7 puzzles, only 5 were ever available for me. I’d check the darn thing daily to no avail, the last puzzle I solved was in Sept, the beginning of Sept at that. There was supposed to be some cool thing if you solved all the puzzles, but considering I never saw the last 2 puzzles, I couldn’t solve them and thus never saw the cool thing.

Regardless, I was still really excited to go and see the movie, I saw it the weekend it opened (it was one of 6 movies that I saw that weekend) and I saw it again today. National Treasure: Book of Secrets did not disappoint the way some sequels do, and it was actually left open for a third movie, and I’m already really excited about that.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets had just as much action and the puzzles were just as great as in the original movie. I was all concerned for Abigail and Ben in the beginning but I’m glad that in the end all was well for them. It was cool to meet Ben’s mom, it’s funny because in this movie she’s the same as his dad was in the last movie, all in unbelief about treasure and what not and thinking that treasure hunting is a bunch of malarky.

I was glad to see that Riley was just the same as he was in the first movie, clueless, yet cute. He’d be the geeky guy that I’m attracted to if he existed in real life. I thought that it was cool that he got noticed at the end of the movie.

If you’re feeling that this review of the movie is vague, then you’re correct. There’s so much to tell and yet I don’t want to tell it. It’s a really good movie and I think it needs to be seen. I’m not sure how much of it is really true because my American history is severely lacking, but still, it’s a good movie…so what are you doing still sitting there reading this entry, go to fandango and see when it’s playing at a theatre near you and go see it.

I can’t say here what struck a chord, but one was struck (That chord is over on Ride to Remedy). August Rush, despite it’s failure among critics was an amazing movie.

Me and classical music have a history and so throughout the movie, I was focused primarily on the music. music speaks. music transmits emotions. People know that, people that play/played music know that especially well. If there were no words in this movie other than the few songs that had words, the music would’ve spoken for itself. That’s the beauty of music. It carries itself. It carries pain. It carries love. It carries fear. If we can feel it, music can carry it. Music, it’s a beautiful thing and that’s what makes this movie a beautiful movie.

But I also sat their and every time “the wizard” (Robin Williams) was just not so cool to August (as “the wizard” so renamed him, played by Freddie Highmore), I wished that August would put him in his place and run, and eventually he did run, but I was all heart broken when August was in rehearsal and “the wizard” came in and was like “i know your real name Evan” that was just awful. And then for August to go with him just so that his real name wasn’t known…sad…

Where should I start, I guess I could start with me. I really need to start writing down what it was that attracted me to write a movie down on my “go see” list, because sometimes, like tonight, I was sitting there wondering what the hell.

What attracted me to it today, 3D. Anything in 3D excites me, heck. some of the previews tonight were in 3D: Journey to the Center of the Earth, that one excites me, but it is also a decent movie that was remade in 1999, it’s also a Jules Verne book and Jules Verne is a good writer, he wrote 20000 leagues under the sea. That kind of information warrants me going to see a movie.

But back to Beowulf, maybe it was that I like Angelina Jolie as an actor, but somewhere along the line, I missed the whole part about animated, that was until Colleen twittered something today, but it still didn’t quite click, but Angelina Jolie wasn’t quite Angelina Jolie in this movie. Guys, if you’re attracted to Angelina Jolie, and you’re excited to see this movie because you get a full frontal, let me just say, it’s not all that great, her boobs don’t even have nipples.

Other than the fact that Angelina Jolie was in, I honestly can’t think of why else I wanted to go see it. The story was lame, in fact, it sucked, I can sum it up in all of like 3 sentences: You sleep with the demon, you don’t die, you’ll be protected, she’ll produce offspring, someone else will kill the offspring, sleep with the demon, and the cycle starts all over again with that person. I think that counts as 1 sentence. *rolls eyes*

it was so bad, it’s almost not worth the effort I’ve put into writing it. I will say this though, and this was kindof cool, I had my camera in my pocket, so I was curious, if the camera was looking through the glasses would it take a clean picture as though I were the one looking through the glasses, and it did, and that was cool.

here’s a no 3D glasses pic

and a 3D glasses pic

oooooh yea, there was one other big thing that I was thinking about as I was watching this movie. I’m so glad that we can’t smell the smells that you’d smell on screen. Like scratch n sniff movies or something or whiffs of smell put in the air as we’re watching the movies. Just looking at Grindel, and his rotting corpse, talk about making me want to vomit, I could imagine the smell in my head, it seriously made me sick…

oh, but the dragon, the dragon was a good looking dragon. oh, and I hate when i know something scary is going to happen, I just hate sitting there in suspense, gritting my jaw, scared to death when what I was expecting happens, well, not exactly what I was expecting, but when the scary thing I was expected happens, you get what I mean…

so, my official opinion of this movie, i can find better things to waste my money on, 3D or not…

A few years back I bought an AirSoft Pistol because we thought it was cool to run among the trees along the river bank and shot each other with bbs. When I was looking at the various air guns in the store I had wanted a semi-automatic pistol but was told that I would be deadly if I got one so I had to get the traditional cock the pistol everytime you want to shoot it gun (I guess it would be a single shot gun. I ended up with a pistol similar to the Crosman Stinger P30). It’s a pain though, a single shot gun, when you’re running through the woods and you just want to spray bbs at your opponents instead of taking the time to cock before each shot.

I have an image in my head though of what I want (or what I’d like to be like if you will). There’s this one scene in the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider at the beginning of the movie where she’s fighting Simon the robot. Mid-air she pulls her guns out of her holsters fires them a bit flys through the air, lands against a wallish thing, releases the magazines, reloads them and goes on her way. That was totally awesome.

With that in mind, I need Lara Croft’s guns. If I had to pick something real nice, I think that the Walther CP88 Blued 6 would fit the ticket nicely. (Except that it uses a clip instead of a magazine, but it also looks like her gun)

However, since I want an airsoft gun that uses magazines instead of a clip, I think something along the lines of the Crosman Pulse P50 would work. Except I would need it in black.

I would also need some leg holsters, one for my left and my right leg. The Elite Tactical Leg Holsters would work great, they have them of course for both right handed and left handed people.

(Yes, I’m a dweeb, I like Lara Croft and would like to have guns like her. Personally, I think it would be cool to do a Lara Croft thing for halloween, and if I did, I’d need the guns and holsters, I’ll worry about a costume later.)

[Pyramyd Air has the holsters and guns and I have to go scour their website for a mistake on their website because anyone that finds one gets a 5% off coupon, that’s a discount and I’ll take it.]

I think I can sum this movie up with: it makes a better trailer than a movie. I was so captured by the trailer that for months I couldn’t wait for the movie to come out. When it came out in selected cities, I was bummed that Albuquerque wasn’t one of them (no shocker there), when it was fully released and it still wasn’t in Albuquerque I was really bummed, but then this week, it’s in exactly 1 theatre out of like 10 in Albuquerque. Somewhere’s better than nowhere I suppose.

My initial frustration with this movie spawns from the trailer that captivated so many young girls who were so immature that they were giggling at the scenes where there were naked body shots. And these girls comprised like half the very packed theatre. It was disturbing, not so much the movie’s fault as it was the trailers.

My other frustration (and this is my fault for going to a musical) is that all those girls, felt the need to sing. At first I didn’t understand how they knew all the songs. And then about 3/4 of the way through the movie it dawned on me, all the songs were Beatles songs. I didn’t know them because I grew up on country. Well, I take that back, there’s 2 Beatles songs that I’m familiar with, Yellow Submarine and All You Need Is Love.

Now, onto the movie itself. I liked it because it was a musical of sorts. Why it made a better trailer than it did a movie is because it didn’t flow well from the parts where they were singing to the parts where it was a regular movie and they were speaking. Other than that, I can’t really comment on the movie because it was over my head.

After careful consideration and examination, I’ve decided that the National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder is smoking crack.

There’s several answers that are correct but it won’t let you into the secret page unless you entered the answer in all lowercase letters. This causes me heartburn because they’re proper nouns, they should be capitalized. Crap like this shouldn’t be case sensitive. It’s called ToLower or ToUpper. Change everything to one case and let the world turn. *shakes head and rolls eyes* Like seriously.

The other problem I have is the fact that it took me a couple days to figure something out that I shouldn’t have had to figure out. Loch Thirds is an anagram for Rothschild not Rothschilds. There’s only 1 ’s’ in Loch Thirds not two.

It’s little things like this, that really can turn something fun into something not so fun and frustrating. When I have to sit and think about why something that should be working isn’t working as it should be and it’s not something I built, I’ve got issues…

If you’re lost check out these posts:
National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder -> Collection Code: Secrets
National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder -> Collection Code: Andrew Johnson
National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder -> Collection Code: Richmond
National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder -> Collection Code: Judah Benjamin
National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder -> Collection Code: Rothschilds

The final current clue on the National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder is this:

Some theorists say that Lincoln was assassinated as a result of his monetary policies - a family dynasty that was linked to this conspiracy was one of the most powerful bloodlines in history.

Solve the anagram below to discover their last name:
Loch Thirds

This one frustrates me simply because I know I have it right and they’re wrong (but I will be posting about my frustrations of the decoder later…and yes, I know I’m right). In the meantime, if you think you have the right answer and it’s telling you that it’s wrong, smack an ’s’ on the end of it and see what that does for you.

The hint they provided this time (which means nothing, once again, unless you know your American History during this era very well) is:

think BANKING

Now, on to do some ranting about this dumb National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder (and really, it’s not the decoder that’s dumb, it’s doing what it was meant to do, it’s the programmers that are dumb…)

While I was in the hospital last week 2 new puzzles popped up on the National Treasure: Book of Secrets Decoder. This is the first one of those two that I’ve not completed yet.

Some think that Lincoln’s assassination was the result of a Confederate plot.
Tied to this plot was the man responsible for burning all records before Richmond was evacuated. He was the only member of the Confederate government never to return to the United States.
See if you can decode his name.
RCF8J EXTR824T

These things I love. It’s simple substitution, although I’ve never seen a key that involved both numbers and letters, that made it a little harder for me. I used to think that ‘e’ was the most commonly used letter in these things as it is the most commonly used letter in the alphabet but after the last time I did a puzzle like this it turned out that ‘a’ was my most commonly used letter. As such, 8 being the most common character in the puzzle, 8/T became ‘a’. (i had several lines of possibilities going on.) My favorite consonants come from the show The Wheel of Fortune “rstln” so I started playing around with those letters.

After a while I needed some help because I couldn’t figure out the two words just based on my brain working the way it was. So I clicked the hint button (and actually used it this time).

He was the Confederate Secretary of State. His name is encrypted with single letter substitution, a simple and easily cracked encryption technique. To solve this 13 letter code use the key provided below.

B=E, A=8, J=R, N=T, M=2, Y=H, E=X, U=C, I=4, H=J, D=F, T=W, R=S, F=3, S=Z, O=G, C=9

It’s an odd key that makes no sense (and usually keys have some kind of rhyme or reason to them) but I was able to solve the puzzle. Although I was able to solve the puzzle it still makes no sense to me. Once again my knowledge of American History is failing me.

This clue popped up last week on the National Treasure: Book of Secrets decoder at some point (near the end of the week) and I didn’t get a chance to write about it.

Some claim that John Wilkes Booth’s original plan was to kidnap the President and hold him in exchange for Southern prisoners of war.
The city Booth conspired to bring Lincoln was:
inch dorm

These ones are so much fun, anagrams, I used to do them in grade school, words made up by rearranging the letters in other words. This particular word was split into two, inch dorm, but the resulting word, is well, a single word. It’s not too difficult, but if you’re still having problems, here’s the official hint:

Unscramble the anagram from two words into one for this 8 letter code that was also the “Capital of the Confederate States of America”.

I hope you’re having as much fun with the National Treasure: Book of Secrets decoder as I am.