My Back Hurts.

Well, it did, anyway.

Last Friday was my girlfriend's birthday, and so we spent the weekend together doing random-but-already-somewhat-planned-by-her-mother stuff. Friday consisted of work, followed by giving her presents, then getting takeaway pasta from a nearby place. Luckily they were good on the gluten-free thing, so weren't killing me via foodiness.

She was given a new car stereo for her birthday - with a huge (read scary) subwoofer in the boot. Hilariously enough, the subwoofer unclips and can be removed if we want to use the boot for, you know, holding things.

I gave her a trinket box with a dragon on top, and a large dragon figure. I forgot to take a photo of it, but that wouldn't do it justice anyway. Its a large red dragon, wrapped around a castle tower, wings spread out. The entire figure is taller than my head - it surprised me when it came out of its box!

On Saturday morning, we went and had a massage. This is why my back hurt - it was my first time having a massage, and the dude probably figured out quite quickly what my occupation is, considering the amount of time he spent doing ouchy related things to my back and neck. Eventually I caved in and got the guy to put less pressure on me - as good as it would have done, it was simply hurting too much.

The massage did wonders for my fingers though, which I've annihilated with years of gaming.

After that, we spent some time gaming, then went out to a French restaurant for dinner. It was alright.

Sunday was a lazy day, spent mostly on videogames, and in the pool, though we did spend some time beginning the cosplay outfits. Now I have cut material for my cape. Kinda scary really, now that its started. We also went to the Starlight Cinema that evening, to watch Tomorrow When the War Began. The film was average (admittedly not as horrible as I expected the book to movie conversion to be), though the cinema people megafailed us.

Mainly due to the fact that, somehow, they had managed to have the focus of the projector completely wrong. The ads were crystal clear, but the movie was blurry as all hell - it was almost like I'd taken my glasses off for the duration of the film, without the comfort of actually not wearing my glasses! Annoying!

Anyways, Happy Birthday Sarah!

Programs and Users, now in 3D

I saw Tron:Legacy last night. I was given 2 premiere double passes by my boss, mainly because he wasn't able to use them due to a work call which would land smack bang in the middle of the movie. I was able to scrounge together a group of 4 (including myself) to get to Fox Studios to watch the movie, on incredibly short notice.

It was really lucky that a bunch of my friends were in the city yesterday, and that my girlfriend also works in the city.

So, we got to the cinema, and entered (after the guards relieved us of our phones and iPods... paranoid much?) and got our seats. And our 3D goggles.

I hate 3D goggles. They go over the top of my glasses, the ones they had there were "return them when the movie's over", so they had fingerprints on them (because, clearly, what people do first when given glasses is to stick their filthy fingers all over it in an effort to make it impossible to see through them), and were quite flimsy. Despite this, they didn't fall apart mid-movie.

However, Tron is also one of those movies which wasn't made with 3D in mind - it was shoehorned in afterwards. How do I know this? Because the movie gave a WARNING at the start, stating that some scenes will be in 2D because that's how they were intended to be seen.

In fact, the 3D scenes were at the start, before Sam goes into the grid. Yes, the only 3D I really noticed in Tron was n the real world. A missed opportunity, I feel. Even though I am quite vocal in my views of 3D as a gimmick, if there was ever a chance to convince me otherwise, that was it.
(For the record, I have NOT seen Avatar)

So, the movie was quite fun. I haven't seen the original Tron either, in fact, all I know about the original movie came from the level in Kingdom Hearts 2, and I played that at least a year ago and forgot most of it!
Happily, Tron:Legacy stands alone enough that people who haven't seen Tron won't be totally lost. This is a good thing too, since the first movie is close to 30 years old if I recall correctly.

I won't spoil anyone on the plot, but I will mention two moments that I found hilarious.

At one stage in the movie, a "program" (they ARE inside a computer, after all) gets injured. So they mess with the data circle on its back - you know, look at the code to fix it up. Programming is SO much cooler in Tron than it is in real life. A digital sphere pops up, and the guy starts manipulating it, looking for bugs in the code. He eventually finds the bug. He pulls out a physical bug, which flies away. The program then starts to regenerate. Awesome.

Also, Daft Punk (who did most of, if not all of the soundtrack, which in itself is cause for seeing the movie) cameo. This made me so, so happy. There is a scene in a club, and you can quite clearly see them playing the music. You know, doing their usual jobs. Wearing their usual outfit - the skin-tight suit and the helmet visor with flashing lights. Their regular performance outfit looks so much like it was from Tron in the first place that they likely didn't need to be fitted or costumed at all!

All in all, I enjoyed the movie. Don't expect it to be accurate on the technical side (though I clearly saw someone using a grep command early in the movie), but it never claims to be either. Its just a load of fun.

And I'm totally gonna buy the blu-ray - but not a 3D version.