Personal Vendetta

All the templars are dead. All of them.

I've been playing Assassin's Creed for the last month and a half or so, and it's been a lot of fun. Since I already beat the game about a year ago, this time I'm focusing on the secondary goals and tasks to unlock all the achievements I was still missing. The last two I had left were killing all the templars and collecting all the flags. I'm still missing a bunch of flags (not too many, though, but of four different kinds, so those four achievements are still locked), but the templars are all history.

After thoroughly exploring the Kingdom, I only had one left, so I downloaded a map from the Internet, and I visited the whole Kingdom of Heaven one more time, and all three cities as well, but the last templar was nowhere to be found. I decided to try all the cities one more time, and yesterday I managed to find the last templar hiding in a little cul-de-sac in Acre. Imagine my big smile when I looked down from the roof of the building I had just landed on and saw him down there in the corner. It was bloody, and it was good.

The End of the War

I finally got to read Witchblade issues 128, 129, and 130 --the second half of the War of the Witchblades arc written by Ron Marz and illustrated by Stjepan Sejic, whom I met at the San Diego Comic Con last July. As it's always the case, these books are great, and the end of the war is, if not completely unexpected, at least sprinkled with a couple of surprises and promising beginnings. Once again, I must urge you readers to pick up Witchblade, because it is an outstanding series. I can only hope Marz and Sejic will want to stay for many, many months to come!

Los que se han ido

Me ha costado tres años, pero por fin he visto The Departed, y me ha encantado. De hecho, me he pasado las dos horas y media que dura la peli pegado al sofá sin apenas moverme. Recordaba que Nash la había visto, y creía recordar que le había gustado, así que, pese a no tenerlas todas conmigo, decidí ponerla en mi lista de Netflix. Y como ya he dicho, me ha encantado.

Al terminarla, he releído la crítica que nuestro querido coblogueador escribió en su día, y debo decir que estoy de acuerdo con él en todo lo que dice. La peli está muy bien, y el hecho de que Scorsese se centre más en los personajes y su situación que en la acción y tiroteos es, en mi opinión, todo un acierto. Además, con los actores que cuenta y el papelón que hacen todos, como para no recrearse en los personajes. A Nash le resultó especialmente acertada la interpretación de Mark Wahlberg, que, estoy de acuerdo, probablemente es su mejor hasta la fecha, y debo señalar también a un increíble Jack Nicholson, comedido pero aterrador. Sin embargo, no puedo sino darle crédito a Leonardo DiCaprio, que creo hace un papel formidable. Llevo desde que vi Catch Me if You Can diciendo que el amigo Leo es, como mínimo, más que competente, pero en The Departed demuestra lo que puede llegar a hacer. Posiblemente por eso Martin Scorsese insiste en trabajar con él una y otra vez, tal y como su cuarta colaboración Shutter Island (que se estrena en febrero) demuestra.

De nuevo, y al igual que Nash, la única pega que le pongo es la coincidencia de que ambos protagonistas (Matt Damon y DiCaprio) acaben liados con la misma fémina (Vera Farmiga), y aunque no es tan improbable dada la situación de los tres, sí que pone a prueba la verosimilitud de la historia. Y, por supuesto, que la amiga Vera no enseñe más.

De todas formas, la peli ya tiene tres años y seguo que la habéis visto todos, pero, si no es el caso, haceos un favor y alquiladla. ¡Estupenda!

Qué recuerdos

Seguro que Nash sabe de qué va esta entrada. Hacía siglos no ya que no había visto esta clásica intro, sino que ni siquiera había pensado en la serie. Y, ni qué decir tiene, nunca la había visto en inglés. Echadle un vistazo al vídeo, a ver si no os suena de algo u os trae gratísimos recuerdos.

PD: Y no os perdáis el vídeo oficial de la canción completa!

Me aburro

El otro día recibí Valkyrie en mi buzón cortesía de Netflix, y me dispuse a verla. Pese a que me habían dicho que estaba muy bien, los constantes retrasos en su estreno, la pobre acogida que recibió cuando por fin llegó a la pantalla grande, y la extraña decisión que llevó a Tom Cruise a interpretar a un soldado alemán en la Segunda Guerra Mundial me hacían recelar. Un soldado alemán, debo decir, que ha perdido un ojo y luce un estupendo parche a lo largo de la película. Parche, que, de vez en cuando, reemplaza con un ojo de cristal que, una vez puesto, parece de verdad porque, obviamente, es el ojo real del señor Cruise. Ojo que, por otro lado, el amigo Cruise mete en vasos ajenos para transmitir sutiles mensajes, se pone en el bolsillo, y acaba en ni se sabe cuántos lugares más. Muy higiénico no me parece, pero a lo mejor soy yo el raro.

Aparte de esto, lo único que puedo decir es que la película trata de un intento de asesinar a Hitler, pero la verdad es que no llegué a esa parte, porque a los cuarenta minutos quité la película y me fui a leer Witchblade, que está mucho mejor escrita y es infinitamente más entretenida. Los primeros cuarenta minutos de Valkyrie son de un sopor, un aburrimiento, y una lentitud que tiran de espaldas; y digo esto literalmente, ya que acabé tumbado en el sofá leyendo la gran serie de Ron Marz y Stjepan Sejic. Y ahora que lo pienso, lo mismo me pasó con la anterior película del director, Bryan Singer.

Vosotros mismos, pues. Si veis Valkyrie, decidme cómo acaba... o no, porque me da bastante igual.

Cute

Whaddaya know, I actually enjoyed The Clone Wars. This is the computer-animated movie that opened last year as a prelude to the TV show, and I skipped it because I thought it was going to be awful. However, I did think the character designs were pretty sweet, so after accidentally attending a panel at the San Diego ComicCon where the voice talent discussed their work on the show, I decided to give it a try and I rented it.

The story is pretty simple: Anakin Skywalker and his new padawan Ahsoka Tano must find Jabba the Hutt's son and return him to the Hutt crimelord so that the Republic's supply lines can safely be routed through Hutt space. Nothing spectacular, true, and neither is the dialogue, which is serviceable at best (and awfully clichéd at worst). Plus, the time period the action takes place in means nothing to me and I really couldn't care less about what happens. So why did I enjoy the movie? Two reasons, actually.

The first one is, like I said a couple of paragraphs above, the character design. I find the cartoony look the characters have really attractive. Both Obi-Wan's and Count Dooku's faces are very cool, with all those bold planes and sharp edges and daring lines. And Ahsoka is plain cute, with her round face, her big eyes, her multicolored head tentacles, and her matchstick figure. In one word, this whole movie looks super cute, even if the animation feels a bit stiff.

In second place, Ahsoka Tano is a fun character. She is spunky and sassy, an adorable know-it-all, and his interaction with Anakin (who acts better than his human counterpart) is very enjoyable. She actually reminded me of an eighth grader, so I unexpectedly identified with Anakin having to deal with her, teach her, and train her. Which means that if you don't deal with eighth graders on a regular basis, this whole thing might be lost on you.

There you have it. The Clone Wars is cute and somewhat fun and little else, which I know is not a lot, but it is by all means way more than I was expecting. Should you check it out? Probably not. Will I give the follow-up series a try? Well, I just might.

Come Take a Bath

If I have learned something about Hayao Miyazaki's movies after having seen four of them is that you never know what to expect. Whatever happens next is always a mystery, always a surprise. His movies are so whimsy, so original, and so out there that I guarantee you have never seen anything like them.

That's what I was thinking last night as I was watching Spirited Away. I had no idea what the movie was about before a friend invited me over to watch it, and I could never guess what was going to happen next. In true Miyazaki fashion, there were spirits, there was magic, and there was a sense of everyday life and routine to it. The main character was once again a little girl, and absent parents also influenced the story somewhat heavily. And yet, even though Miyazaki uses several of the themes and topics he always features in his stories, Spirited Away was unlike any of his other movies except in what really matters: it was a lot of fun. So check it out and let us know what you think!