Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Unstoppable: Mini-Review Rampage #3

So being summer, I find myself without any way to "productively" spend my time (emphasis added by parents) which results in a majority of my time still be spent in the consumption of media, which once again means I have a large back-log of things I've watched and want to write down my thoughts of.

I keep saying I'll make some posts that aren't reviews... but then I keep losing the motivation. I still have high hopes, though. Until then, though, enjoy my opinions on the following ten works. Pictures provided for your visual pleasure!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Mind Games, Son, Mind Games: Viewing Traditional Vs. E-Sports

Anyone who has been hanging out with me in the last couple months has probably had me bring up the Starcraft 2 competitive scene, something I've been following rather closely for many weeks now. Indeed, I'm not alone in this; although places such have South Korea have commonly had video games streamed live to audiences of hundreds of thousands, it is only recently becoming more popular in the Western scene.  With that said, now that it's catching on, it's growing incredibly rapidly: for instance, MLG Columbus' 3 day tournament had a 16,000 member live audience and served over 1.3 petabytes of livestream data. Impressive numbers, and they only seem to be growing.

When I first started seriously watching the games and began getting really into it, I figured it was another kind of phase; I would get really into it for a few weeks, and then I would lose interest and move onto another hobby. However, here I find myself almost 6 months later still firmly entrenched in this world, and even watching a game while I'm typing this.

I had never really considered myself as someone into sports; I'll watch the Super Bowl, and the rare sports game when it's on TV and others are watching, but in general I couldn't name most sports team or major athletes, and I would never go out of my way to watch a game, especially alone. Despite this, I find myself staying up regularly till 4am to watch GSL and devoting many hours to watch VoDs and Youtube videos from major tournaments. Because of this sudden shift, I began wondering what makes the SC2 competitive scene different than any traditional sports scene that most of my other peers are fascinated with.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Blood, Swords, and Honor: A Review of 13 Assassins


Being back home means catching up with old friends, and I did so the other day by seeing a movie. My friend suggested 13 Assassins, and after quickly skimming a synopsis and seeing Rotten Tomatoes had overwhelmingly positive reviews of the movie, I agreed and off we went to the local art-house theater to see this imported Japanese samurai movie.