Author: Sardoken

Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014)

By Sardoken on

“An inheritance leads a young man and his friends to an abandoned resort inhabited by two sketchy caretakers and a clan of mutant cannibals.” (source: IMDB)

The final chapter is the worst of the entire franchise. It isn’t as bad as to stop the movie before the end, but it’s far from the quality of the other instalments. The Wrong Turn vibe is missing, it has been replaced by a slow plot that isn’t even rewarded by fun kills. The other chapters were about watching tourists getting slaughtered in a good slasher tradition, Last resort is about the weird reproduction of hillbilly cannibals.

The film does increase the nudity with the four different actresses taking off their clothes and there’s also some pretty weird and kinky sexual stuff going on. As for our three main killers, it’s without a doubt the most boring use of them in the series.

If you’re a fan of the show, watch it, for the sake of completion, but it isn’t representative of the franchise, at all.

Where to Draw the (CSS) Line?

By Sardoken on

During the last two decades, I’ve been coding all our blog themes. I’ve had them in all shapes and sizes: minimalist, supercharged with scripts, responsive, non-responsive, sidebar, no sidebar, mobile first,… In the end, I got tired of blog themes that confuse simple blogs with “pro” websites.

So, for two years, I’ve been stripping my themes. While it took me months to create the perfect collapsing menu in javascript, it took me less than 5 minutes to remove it. Did the blog became harder to navigate? Then the sidebar disappeared, who cares about “subscribe” buttons anyway or, even worse, a tag cloud. Also gone are the popup search fields, the gravatars and the fixed headers.

But where to draw the line? Why keeping the “load more” and the “back to top” buttons? Well, it’s pretty simple: because we use them ourselves and it doesn’t take our eyes away from what we write. It’s not minimalism, it’s content-oriented design. A blog has to look like a blog to be a blog, happy as a hippo.

And what does a blog look like? Like a man who talks to himself and not like a sales man. We’re not trying to increase our traffic, we’re just keeping a log of the things we do. Believe me or not, there was a time when we had 10 times more comments than posts, but that time almost got us burned out of blogging. So we really don’t need all the bells and whistles required to increase traffic and comment numbers.

No one enjoys post previews, contents hidden behind clicks, self promotions, ads that make you lose the line you were reading because they changed the height of the page,… The only people who benefit from these designs are the web designers and the click baiters. Let’s not encourage them.

Building the Falcon – Step 7

By Sardoken on

The build continues… We’ve now completed the 8th step on 17. The model is getting big and heavy, I’m very glad that we’ve purchased a 3D printed stand that can hold it vertically because we don’t own a table that could hold it horizontally, except our dining table, unfortunately we still have to eat. We also continue to record timelapses of the build and I can’t wait to see the final video.

Also, this is our 300th post, long live Spacewocket!

Blair Witch – The Video Game

By Sardoken on

The Blair Witch Project is one of my favourite horror movies ever, it was only normal that I would play the video game based on the franchise.

Searching the haunted woods in company of your dog to find a disappeared child was a great idea and I directly got caught in the story. I also enjoyed the mechanic that had me watch video tapes to unlock portions of the story.

Warning: Spoilers!

I really don’t understand why they needed to add a second plot to the story. The whole PTSD thing was useless and brought a psychological side to the game that only made it heavier and broke my immersion at times.

The final scene, inside of the witch house was the creepiest, especially the scenes where I couldn’t look at the monsters, otherwise I’d die. They even had me stay in a corner, while the witch was in my back, asking me to look at her… Unfortunately, the memories of the the dead soldiers from the time the hero was still in the army broke the rhythm of the main story, making the scene too long and not as creepy as it could have been.

Even if I would have preferred a more horror, less psychological approach, it was still a great game and I advise it to any fan of the franchise.

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012)

By Sardoken on

A typical meeting at the Wrong Turn production board:

Producer: How can we make Wrong Turn 5 better than Wrong Turn 4?

Writer: More sex and more gore

Producer: Didn’t we already do that with the fourth?

Writer: Yes, but we can always add more sex and gore

Producer: Go for it!

If you enjoy watching kids being slaughtered after having sex and smoking weed, you won’t be disappointed. So what makes this chapter different from the previous ones? Well, this time, it happens at the police station of a little town hosting a festival. As the father of our 3 favourite hillbillies is held inside of a jail cell, his boys attempt to rescue him by slaughtering every single person that stayed in town during the concert. As usual, blood and guts (and boobs) are the main ingredients to this perfect movie, for a Saturday horror evening.

TIL While Watching Tenet

By Sardoken on

If the entropy was reversed, this generation would instantly disappear because, while we are the future’s past, we’d become the future’s future.

So, in terms of Kenneth Branagh’s career, Gilderoy Lockhart would be Andrei Sator’s past. But, if the entropy would be reversed, Lockhart would become Sator’s future. Of course, the entropy would have to be reversed by the first Lockhart, using technology sent to him from the future by Sator and I’m not even sure that Harry Potter would be made a second time in a reversed future, but it was fun making this image in Photoshop because I like flashy arrows.

More trivia about Tenet:

  • It is written, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan. I can’t imagine how much his head must have been spinning writing the story, mine is still not back from watching the movie;
  • 3 actors from the casting of Harry Potter play in Tenet: Clémence Poésy, Kenneth Branagh and Robert Pattinson;
  • The stunning soundtrack is composed by Ludwig Göransson, who’s also behind The Mandalorian’s OST;
  • It took me exactly 2 hours and 11 minutes of watching Tenet to understand the concept of reversed entropy while it took me only 21 minutes to write this post (Photoshop included). It doesn’t mean much, but I enjoy statistics.

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)

By Sardoken on

If I had to give you one advice, in case you’d get lost in a snow storm, it would be: don’t seek refuge in an abandoned sanatorium. However, if you have no choice, just hide, don’t make noise and wait for the storm to quiet down, then leave.

Of course, if people would follow these advises, there would be no movie about young folks getting slaughtered (and eaten) by cannibals, and the world would lose a great source of entertainment.

It seems that, with each sequel, the Wrong Turn franchise gets more gore and more sex. We still have 2 more chapters to watch and I wonder where this is gonna lead us… Anyway, it was a good horror movie, perfect for a Saturday evening. I’m actually surprised to see how different each Wrong Turn turns out to be, while keeping on the same topic.

Oh, one last thing: I’d advise against watching this movie while eating a fondue, trust me.

Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead (2009)

By Sardoken on

While rafting, four college kids are attacked by the mutant cannibal hillbilly Three Finger. Meanwhile, a group of dangerous criminals are transported from the West Virginia Grafton Penitentiary. The bus is hit by a tow truck driven by Three Finger and falls off the road. The prisoners and a guard, led by Carlo Chavez accidentally meet Alex, the lone survivor of the college kids.

I enjoy to watch college kids being slaughtered by cannibals, I wouldn’t watch all 7 episodes of Wrong Turn if I wouldn’t. But for the first time, the cannibal’s murder spree felt righteous, those prisoners were unbearable and to see them dismembered by Three Finger felt more rewarding than usual. Oops, I should have warned for the spoilers… But did anyone really thought that the prisoners would survive?

PS: I could have used an image of the girl on the left having her boob pierced by Three Finger’s arrow but I wouldn’t want to shock my readers sensibility. Also teens in bikinis smoking weed while giving the finger isn’t so bad.

The Post-Modern Prometheus

By Sardoken on

We’re in the middle of an X-Files rerun and the fifth season is probably the best so far. After being treated with an excellent episode about the origin of the lone gunmen, we had what was probably our best X-Files evening with a black and white homage to Frankenstein.

Mulder and Scully find themselves investigating reports of a monster known as the Great Mutato in a small Indiana town after a woman reaches out to them to find out why and how she was rendered unconscious only to wake days later impregnated. They are led to a geneticist whose experiments resulted in the creation of Mutato, who was rejected and taken in by the doctor’s father who wanted to help create a mate for his new friend. Later, the townspeople come to realise that Mutato isn’t the real monster, it’s the doctor, leaning heavily on the themes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The episode ends with Mulder and Scully taking Mutato to a Cher concert.

Cher was asked to appear as herself, but decided against it, as it was just a scene of her singing, not really giving her much of a chance to act. However, the Post-Modern Prometheus is now regarded as one of the best episodes of The X-Files, leading to Chris Carter being nominated for Outstanding Directing by the Directors Guild of America, as well as seven Emmy Awards nominations, winning for Outstanding Art Direction. Cher is said to have noted that if she knew how good the episode would have turned out, she would have agreed to appear.

What We Left Behind

By Sardoken on

This documentary is the ultimate tribute to Deep Space Nine. Soforah and I slowly became “niners” throughout the years and, now, it has become our favourite show in the Trek universe, if not in the entire world of TV shows.

We love the story, the setting and the universe of DS9 but what makes it special is the character development. Each character has been so fantastically matured during each episode that watching the show is like growing with them. That’s exactly what this documentary puts in the spotlights, the characters and the actors behind them.

During the show, Ira Behr and his team work on what would be a new DS9 season. While I’d be very excited to see it happen, I’m also scared that it would damage something as perfect as DS9.

Anyway, if you even remotely enjoyed Star Trek – Deep Space Nine, you have to watch this documentary, not only for the nostalgia but also to realise just how much pioneering the show was.

The documentary begins with Max Grodénchik singing and, if you stick long enough, you’ll see Jeffrey Combs, Casey Biggs, Armin Shimerman and Max Grodénchick singing through the credits and it’s an absolute delight.

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