Andy Wood

A little fuzzy and in black and white, but still

If you haven’t paid much attention to this show, it’s about time you started. It’s a consistently well-written and doesn’t have a thing to do with Rick Berman. (let the flaming begin)

The DVD set has much-improved bonus features from the early seasons of the show. There are commentaries for every single episode with director, cast, and crew, as well as featurettes on a handful of episodes selected as director’s favorites. This is something that I wish the Star Trek’s offered.

My favorite episode of this season is “Fragile Balance,” featuring a teenaged Col. O’Neil. The storyline is pretty interesting stuff, this kid is phenomenal, and mimics O’Neil flawlessly, down to exasperated stares and snarky comebacks. The mannerisms and voice inflection is dead on accurate too, one would think that they were related.

Now, I am very behind on my SG-1 watching mainly because I was not able to view the last disc in this series. It would seem that there was a recording/pressing flaw and it affected the last 1/4 of the 1st episode and impacted the very last episode on the last disk, so I was stuck. Upon getting a replacement (from the same place) the replacement disc was all messed up too. In the exact same places!! needless to say, I got a working disc and was able to finish this series and what a cliff hanger too.

Just like the original Half-Life 2: Episode One keeps the player entertained almost the entire time through perfect pacing, a rich atmosphere and incredible production values. By being inventive, surprising and getting the basics absolutely right, Half-Life 2: Episode One is a wonderful advert for the excitement that true episodic content can generate when approached the right way. The sooner more developers go down this road, the better.

But as much as we’d all love to cling onto classic elements, it’s fair to assume that some of the less partisan fans will feel a pang of disappointment that Valve hasn’t done more to shake up the Half-Life status quo a bit - but maybe that would be missing the point of what Episode One was trying to achieve. In truth, the main focus for this release wasn’t to be a sequel and change the recipe, but to deliver more of what we loved about HL2 while advancing the storyline. As an exercise in revealing how Gordon, Alyx and company manage to cope with the disintegrating Citadel and how they escape the hellish confines of City 17, it does the job just fine. (To explain or discuss the story in any more detail would ruin a large part of the point of playing it in the first place, so we’ll resist that particular temptation). So long as that’s clear, we can resolutely assure the legion of Half-Life 2 fans that you won’t want to miss out on what is a fine adventure that’s well up to Valve’s impeccable standards.

Perhaps we’ll only really be able to fully judge the Half-Life 2 Episodes in context once we’ve played all three, but even at this early stage it’s abundently clear that there’s more gameplay variety and design inspiration in the first five hours than most full-length games at triple the price. Throw in the fantastic ‘director commentaries’ on top and you’ve got even more reason to invest. More over at EuroGamer

Wesley Snipes returns for a third outing as action hero and vampire-killer Blade in Blade: Trinity, and while he is still a first-rate action hero in a very unique mold, the film itself just doesn’t quite stand up to the expectations set forth by the previous two installments. I did enjoy this film and very much enjoyed having the choice of watching either the theatrical or the extended version of the flick. Even though I liked it, I think it was for the wrong reasons.

This third and likely final installment in the Blade series, Snipes must team up with a group of young vampire hunters led by Hannibal King and Abigail the daughter of his good friend and ally, Whistler (whom has died for the 2nd time now).

Blade and his new posse must face the implementation of a vampire “final solution” by smartass bad chick Danica Talos and the freshly arisen father of all bloodsuckers, Dracula (Dominick Purcell, dude from Prison Break), who now goes by Drake.

As DVD packages go, this one is really first-rate. As action movies go, this one is second-rate. As Blade movies go, this one is third-rate. But, that said, it’s an enjoyable romp in an action-packed playground. So, go ahead and complete the collection. While it doesn’t do Blade justice, it’s still a good time.

As I look over at my stack of movies and TV series to watch during my time off, I don’t think I am going to have enough stuff to make it the full length.

Any suggestions?

SBC/AT&T/Yahoo has been my ‘homepage’ for the past couple of years and I didn’t think much of MS’s “live.com“, until just recently.

Live.com is a work in progress, built on the back of Microsoft’s original demo start.com. With Live.com, users add ‘gadgets’ to their page. Gadgets are basically mini applications - like widgets in Konfabulator (now owned by Yahoo).

Currently the gadgets on offer in Live.com are the usual set, which most if not all of the other AJAX homepages also offer: mail, stock quotes, weather forecasts, horoscopes, ticking clocks, quote of the day, etc.