Youtube Rant!: Gaming and Girls.

I don't really know much about this guy Daniel Floyd. I just happened to stumble upon his video and thought it was well orchestrated and just made a lot of sense. So I thought I'd share the video with you and maybe you'd like to weigh in on the topic:



Personally, I also feel like this hyper-sexualized version of females in video games has gone a little too far. I'm okay with some sexual humor in my games a la MGS3, and I understand the old marketing adage that sex sells, especially to a market with a large population of teenage/young adult males. But I would like to see more games with a strong female role model. Then again, I don't really understand the female mind, and therefore am not sure if it would be enough to pull in a larger female audience. But I will tell you straight up, going "LAWL YOU JUST GOT PWNED BY A GIRL!" and "ZOMG! YOU'RE A GIRL?!?!" in a game of Halo is not helping the situation. I understand that this reaction stems from a history of video games being primarily a guy thing, but why is it like that? If video games are just what they say they are, games produced via video, then what is it that makes it primarily a guy thing?

Jordan

Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer

Alright, let's not cut any corners here. I love this movie. I love this movie so much it makes me question it's existence. I have loved this movie from the moment I saw the trailer and I loved this movie after the credits rolled and I still love this movie while writing this review. I will probably continue loving this movie in the years to come. (This opening paragraph may be a sign that I'm a little biased and you may not take the review seriously now, but hold on, I'm going to explain myself.)
The plot of (500) Days of Summer at first seems like the standard indie romance comedy: Average guy meets quirky girl. Guy falls in love with girl. The girl changes the guy's perspective on life. But where this movie differs from other indie romance films is what the narrator tells you up front; it's not a love story. It's a story of relationships, of feelings, and of fate. The acting was superb. I'm not saying that the acting will win any awards, but there was not one character that I thought was miscast at any point in the movie. The lead male role of Tom Hansen, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a character that all men can relate to at one point or another. I found myself predicting exactly what Tom would say or do because that is exactly what I would have said or done in the same position. The chemistry that Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, who plays Summer Finn, is astounding. Deschanel's role may seem like every other role she's played in every other movie, but the way she connects in this movie with the other characters makes this her best performance yet. The jokes were incredibly funny, and I found myself laughing more than I have watching any Judd Apatow movie. A great move that was made with this film was that it's not completely linear. The movie jumps between days, letting the audience piece together what went wrong and how Tom develops his feelings of love. Another thing I love about this movie is how it takes the city of Los Angels, which is primarily seen as the center of star life, and portrays it as a city of beautiful architecture and everyday people.
I would also like to point out that the soundtrack to his movie is phenomenal. Essentially, it does with The Smiths (one of my favorite bands) what Garden State (One of my favorite movies) did with The Shins. The soundtrack album also features a cover of The Smiths song "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" done by Zooey Deschanel's band, She & Him. I'm sure that this movie will sell a lot of The Smiths records and possibly cause another uprising in popularity for the 80's British pop band.

Jordan