Dragon's Vampire

The Hog Spot

2007-01-09T01:06:00.000+01:00

Do you like motorcycles? Harley-Davidson? If so, check out this blog. Personally, I'm not interested in motorcycles, cars and other things. But, linking to this blog gives me 5 cents. Yeeehaaa!

Life is pain

2006-12-30T14:17:00.000+01:00

You know, I just figured something out - there is no way you can make money on the Internet. Forget everything I said before. There's no way you can make money in real world, too. You can't buy a book you like, you can't go to holiday to some nice country like Greece or something, you can't enjoy life because life is pain. If you think you're happy, then you're just lying to yourself. You're NOT happy! You are going to DIE!

Anyway, it's been ages since our last update. Things I discovered in the meantime:

- You can't get rich doing nothing

- AdSense generally doesn't work

- I'm lazy

- Traffic sites are generally crap

There you have it. I will try to write more posts, just to push that earlier crap away. And I'm going to reactivate my BlogSoldiers account, so that more people can see my blog. Does this make sense? Of course not! But life doesn't make sense, either. Go jump in the lake or something

My new blog!!!!111

2006-10-07T17:35:00.000+02:00

I'm so excited!!! I created another blog, dedicated solely to the computer games! You can find it here. It has only one post so far, but we will get it going in no time! Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop posting crap on this blog. I just wish Google would kindly return those ads here...

I think I know what to do

2006-10-06T01:42:00.000+02:00

Some of you may remember me bitching about the crappiness of my blog. At first I though to just delete everything and start over, but I felt kinda sad to destroy all those beautiful pieces of wisdom and similar crap. So, here's what we will do: Dragon' Vampire remains to be the blog about everything (especially crap), and I will soon create another blog that will be more focused. In fact, it will be so focused it's going to deal only with computer games. Why computer games? Well, simply because computer games are interesting. I love playing (computer) games. So why not waste time writing about them, too? Yeah! Now I feel my life has purpose again!

Oh yeah, while we're at it, I have seen You, Me And Dupree tonight. It was OK, I guess, but what a waste of Matt Dillon! Such a great actor deserved a much better written role. And I don't find Owen Wilson as funny as most people do. He was interesting in Shanghai Noon, but after that he repeated the same role zillion times. Maybe he's a vampire?

Let's face it: This SUCKS!

2006-10-05T01:52:00.000+02:00

I was just thinking about this whole blogging thing, and a small voice in my head told me the following: "What the hell do you think you are? You stupid idiot, you REALLY think someone wants to read all that DAMN crap you're writing? You're pathetic! PATHETIC! Go jump in the lake or something!"

I usually tend to listen to small voices in my head, especially when they are right. All those posts are totally random and let's face it - who the hell would want to read me bitching about NBA Live 2006? Even those Google ads keep disappearing from the site :-(

So, we're going to have a major change in design. I'll take a few days to think about the life, the universe and everything and then (hopefully) return with a more focused and more readable blog. Peace.

NBA Live 2006 sucks

2006-09-29T14:16:00.000+02:00

Hey everyone! Do you remember 1999? Sure, it was long time ago, but that year is crucial for one simple reason - it's the last year that EA Sports released a GOOD basketball game. It was called NBA Live 2000. It was almost perfect - great gameplay, solid animations, at least some trace of reality, etc. The only small problem was that the game was a bit easy. Not too terribly easy, though, there was no way you could easily win the championship with same crappy team like Chicago Bulls or something. But, for example, I started a season with Cleveland Cavaliers (who then had their dream-team with Shawn Kemp, Wesley Person, Lamond Murray all on top of their game) and had 20 straight victories (of course, I'm talking about the hardest level). Then I lost a game, got pissed off and stopped playing game.

Anyway, my weird behavior is not the subject of this post. The point is, the game should have been only SLIGHTLY more difficult, you now, not to allow twenty straight victories, no matter which team you control, but that slight increase of difficulty level should have been the ONLY change made. If they had done it right, they could have easily stopped developing game and only release patches every year to update the rosters. Because that way the game would be PERFECT.

But no, EA Sports thought "Hey, wait a minute! Instead of simply improving the last game, let's make something completely new, terrible and crappy!". So we got NBA Live 2001, where players looked like chimps, acted like they were skating on ice (which seems to be EA Sports' trademark lately) and you couldn't hit a three-pointer to save your life.

I'm not going to talk about every single game since (I haven't played all of them, after all), but it seems that the gameplay never improved. For example, I heard that 2002 version had a terrifying domination of point guards. 2003 was OK (I guess), but for some reason EVERYONE was dunking like hell! Wiseguys at EA Sports probably realised that an average PlayStation freak doesn't give a rat's ass about authenticity, reality and crap like that, they all want to see dunks, dunks, dunks and more DUNKS! So, like I said, everyone was dunking. Not just guys like Darius Miles and Vince Carter - EVERYONE (strange, it was really hard to dunk with Vince Carter in NBA 2000). And the game (again) was a bit too easy. Once I had a fantasy draft and purposedly drafted all terrible players except Antonio McDyess (who has been one of my favorite players since NBA Live 2000, where he helped my Denver team a lot). OK, well, let's count Rafer Alston among those non-terrible players, too. Anyway, I managed to have a score close to 50% (though I had the bottom-ranked team) and in each game McDyess and Alston scored approximately 30 points each.

So then, again guys at EA Sports thought a bit about life, the universe and everything, and they decided - no more easy game. Hell, not only that, we will make every subsequent game so difficult that even the most patient players would be pissed off! Yeah!

So, we got NBA Live 2004. The magnificent idea of purposedly pissing off the players was realised through an unbelievenly clever design decision - the game simply decided not to let you have any offensive rebounds, no matter which team you control, and also the free throws were almost impossible to hit. So, if you have the ball possession ten seconds before the end of the game, and are trailing by one point, pray to God that they don't foul you, or else you're down. Even with calm shooters like Predrag Stojakovic or anyone it was hard to hit a free throw. With centers like Duncan it was almost impossible.

Now, we are going to fast forward to NBA Live 2006. All terrible ideas from previous games simply fluorished here. It is really a hard work trying to list all of the game's weaknesses, but I'll still try:

First, not only they changed the terrible decision about offensive rebounds from NBA Live 2004 (which is a good thing), they reversed it. Now, you will often have more offensive than defensive rebounds (?), but any way the computer will have more than you. Even if you have two centers waiting to pick up the ball after the opponent player missed, you will often have their point guard somehow get the ball and dunk over your precious centers, who will just stand there like idiots. At times, the game intentionally cheats and doesn't let you get a rebound. Once when I played with Seattle (it's only a single example) I missed a shot, Vladimir Radmanovic was like totally alone, but instead of getting the ball he kept running away from it (???) until the opponent player took it. In general, computer controled players in your team act like total imbecils. One of the reason you can't get many offensive rebounds (though you'll miss a lot of shots) is that their behavior seems totally random. Imagine this: You miss a shot, the ball falls on the floor, keeps bouncing or rolling on the ground, then your player approaches and instead of simply getting it, he jumps over it (???) and goes somewhere else, like in the audience or something. And it's really hard to switch control between players because everything is fast. And also, the game sometimes refuses to obey your commands. For example, if you have a player with a ball unguarded under the basket and you try to dunk, more often than not he will simply stand doing nothing (no matter how many times you try to press the damn dunk button) until either having the ball stolen from him, or three seconds call.

Your players acting like morons would be tolerable if opponent players weren't unstoppable. But they are. For example, there is no way you could beat LA Clippers. I'm sure Michael Jordan in his best days could only stand in awe watching Cuttino Mobley and Corey Maggette here. They hit three pointers when they feel like it, or they dribble through your entire offense and dunk over your two tall players, you name it. Similar goes (predictably) for LeBron James, Wade, Anthony, McGrady, Bryant, Garnett, etc. May the Force be with you if you play against one of these. Unfortunately, if they are in YOUR team, they act like idiots. The computer-led teams ALWAYS hit ALL open shots (including three-pointers, regardless of player's three point rating), and MOST of the impossible ones, like when their average-rated guard hits an easy three-pointer over the hand of my small forward. So, basically, if you want to win, you can't make a single mistake during the game. Because you will immediately get punished with seven three pointers. On the other hand, you have an incredibly tough time scoring. Sometimes I have to rip my hair off and stare in disbelief as my Ray Allen misses five completely open shots. Or Kyle Korver, who has like 88 three-point rating. Oh, and speaking of ratings, they are simply moronic. You have players like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade (ah, that damn 2003 draft!) being rated like 95, 96 overall or something. Hell, I don't remember Michael Jordan or John Stockton or anyone ever being rated that high. And to see how realistic those ratings are, check the US team performance against Greece on this year's World Championship in Japan. Or any other game for that matter. They got to the semi-finals because they played with terrible teams, and ONLY Carmelo Anthony was constantly good and deserved respect. Also, a change was made in blocking. In NBA Live 2003 (and probably 2004) in order to block a shot, you had to jump the moment the player releases the shot. In this game you have to jump BEFORE that, which makes it sometimes hard to block, not to mention how easily they can pump-fake and get past you once you are in the air. Another thing where the game cheats are, as I mentioned, rebounds. For example, Danny Fortson, one of the best rated rebounders in the game simply CANNOT jump to save his life, even against opponent point guards. So, no matter which team you control, the opponent often has like 15 rebounds more than you. Imagine how that reflects on the scoreboard.

So, we can slowly bring this little article to the conclusion - if you want to test (and destroy) your nerves, by all means play this game. And take Seattle. You have been warned.

PTR programs

2006-09-27T22:31:00.000+02:00

Please, first read the previous post, where I talked about the PTR programs in general. I will now mention a few of them.
First, we have

It is the first PTR site I joined, and it is probably one of the best. The payout is 4$, most mails (at least till recently) were 0.5 cents, however lately they've been mostly 0.25 cents, it seems. They don't have PTP program, at least not for free members (you can upgrade your membership, but it costs money). There are trivia games every month, constant flow of e-mails, manual surf option (you get paid to surf various sites, and you can advertise your own, and this site offers the best ratio - you see one site and get 5 points, while showing your site costs only 3).

This site has the most interesting higher-lower game. The game lasts three days. You can have as many tries as you want and each costs one cent. You are given a number between 1 and 1000 and you try to guess whether the next one is going to be higher or lower. You keep guessing until you choose wrong. The people with ten best results share the jackpot (the best one getting 30%). The jackpot usually ends up being around one dollar, so if you're best you can get some 30 cents or something.

Another great site is the aforementioned

The payout is $15, but it is not too hard to reach, due to large number of mails and respectable value of each of them (each mail contains several links mostly 2 cents worth). They also have a higher-lower game, but it's not recommended (you play against the computer, rather than against other players, and they take 5% commission, so you'll probably be on the loss). You can also earn a huge amount of points by clicking on banner, manual surf, etc. You can use those points to advertise, or turn them into cash, or upgrade your account, or whatever you want. So, Seminole Wind is really a great PTR program. One small objection is the lack of PTP program, but you don't need one to reach payout relatively quick.

I'm also a member of three other sites, but they are not as good as these two. But, don't take my word for it. Anyway, here they are: First, the most famous one is

You won't earn much money from reading e-mails or playing games, but this site offers no minimum payout and it has a very good PTP program with $0.75 per 1000 clicks. If you're good at advertising, you'll probably find a way to get much money out of this. I'm not good at advertising, so for me Seminole Wind and Shocking Results are still the best. But anyway, PTP is the most powerful feature of this site, so if you can find a way to utilize it to the maximum, this site can offer a lot.

A similar site is

Its payout is low (1 dollar), and they send tons of e-mails. The problem is that the links in the mails for some reason expire very soon, and most of the mails are only 0.01 cents. Which means you have to read 10000 mails to reach the payout. Fortunately, you can exercise your advertising skills on the site's PTP section ($0.6 per one thousand clicks).

The last one I will mention is

This is another one with no PTP program, and the e-mails usually don't pay much and arrive rarely, so I still haven't "cracked" that one. There's probably a way to earn more money, but I haven't found it yet.

No matter which sites you join, you should always try to get as many referrals as you can. This will increase your winnings and get you to the payout sooner. Most sites pay using e-gold, and it usually takes around 20 days for the money to appear on your account after requesting payout. I'm currently near reaching the minimum on Shocking Results and Seminole Wind, so I will keep you informed on my money-making adventures after that. Till next time, take care of yourselves... and each other.

PTR

2006-09-27T21:48:00.000+02:00

Some of you may remember I promised to talk about the PTR programs a few days ago. Centuries ago, actually. But, never mind. Here we are...

Anyway, you probably always wanted to earn tons of money from the Net. A good idea is to check that site I mentioned in the previous post, dedicated exclusively to that topic. But, what is the problem? As you could see, most of the moneymaking programs listed there required at least a small financial input from your side. So you opened an e-gold account (hopefully using that link to the bottom of the link section of this blog, so I would get credit) and wondered what next. You have an e-gold account, but it's empty. And maybe your mother is not willing to lend you her credit card to spend her hard earned money on that "crap". In short, you may find yourself in a so-called "empty e-gold account" situation.

How to solve it? You don't have a credit card, no means of transferring "real-world" money into the electronic form and all hope is lost. This is where PTR programs kick in. They give you the opportunity to make money from scratch. This is NOT a big money, and it takes TIME to earn enough, however this will give you a unique feeling of accomplishment once you spend months to get, say, ten dollars in your e-gold account, and then turn them into millions within weeks using one of those programs the other site mentions.

So, what is PTR? PTR stands for "paid-to-read" and, in short, these are sites that will pay you to read e-mails. Basically, the situation is as follows: You open a free account (most sites accept international members, if you're from USA, you don't care about that, but for me it's very important since I'm an international member) and choose to receive mails in site inbox only (trust me, it's much better having to spend a few seconds to log in than have your regular e-mail inbox flooded with messages, especially if you join more than one PTR site). You will start to receive mails probably the day after registering. So, it works simply like this - you get an e-mail with link (or links) inside it. You click the link and you're taken to a site. You wait a few seconds (usually 15 or 20, but don't worry about that, you're notified about time remaining) and your account is credited. With how much? Well, that depends on the site. Mails are usually from quarter of a cent to a whole cent. Of course, there are extremities on both sides. For example, Midnightclicking credits only 0.01 cents (isn't that a bitch?) while on Seminole Wind they go up to 5 cents.

The important thing is the payout - the minimum amount of money you have to reach to get paid. For example, at Seminole Wind the payout is $15. At MidnightClicking $1. But those payouts are equally easy/hard to reach. The sites that offer low payout as a general rule pay you much less for the e-mails. There are also some sites that have no minimum payout, i.e. you can request payout anytime. Most of the PTR sites offer many other goodies apart from mails. There are many contents, banners to click, games, bubbles, referrals, etc. Once you join some sites you will see that every single one is different, but you'll get the hold of it in no time. I'll only mention two most important features:

First, there is paid-to-promote (PTP). You have a link, similar to your referral link (but NOT the same). When someone clicks that link, they are taken to the site and you get credited for that. Usually you get around 75 cents for 1000 clicks. It is a pretty good feature to use, especially when a payout is a bitch to reach, due to low-cost e-mails. You can use some of those traffic websites, or advertise on other PTR sites, or something else, it's your choice. One warning, though: You can only advertise on approved sites. You have the list of all approved sites in the PTP section of your favorite PTR program. Also, not all PTR sites offer this feature.

The second feature are bubbles, and it seems they have them on all sites. It works like this: You pay a certain amount of money, say, 8 cents. When you make a payment, you get to the bottom of the line. You have a "bubble" worth 8 cents (or whatever the amount is, they usually range between one cent and one dollar). At the same time while you are at the bottom, your payment (and other payments) are used for the bubble on top. Once the bubble gets on top, the payments made after that moment are used to "burst" that bubble. It means, when 125% of the bubble amount is reached, the one on top get that amount of money. So, you're on the bottom, right? When someone makes a payment after you, they get at the bottom, and you're one place above. And when (after a few days, usually) you get to the top, other payments work for you. Once the other people pay 10 cents (for that is 125% of 8 cents), you get 10 cents. So, you turned your 8 cents into 10 doing nothing. But don't start drooling over this, it's not as good as it sounds. If you think about it a bit, you'll realize that the more money is in the "bubble pool", the more time you need to get your 125% back. So, as the bubbles get older, the more time it takes to get on top.

Now, in order not to get too long a post, I will publish this and describe several PTR programs in the next post.

Cyberbegging

2006-09-26T01:03:00.000+02:00

You know how it sometimes happens that you walk down the street, minding your own business, when you suddenly notice someone sitting on the sidewalk with a hat or something lying beside them and you are expected to put some money into it? That is what we shall call: BEGGING.

So it crossed my mind that so far there probably aren't any Internet equivalents of beggars around. Which is kinda strange, because almost every single social, cultural, subcultural and you-name-it phenomenon from the outside world has found its Internet equivalent. Let's first consider one of the most obvious ones - spamming. Years ago, before we got blessed by the presence of Internet, you would return home from work, opet your mailbox (your REAL mailbox, you know the one where you insert the key in the lock, unlock it and open the little door?) and find it full of various junk - bills, bills, more bills and tons of advertising flyers, like BUY HERE or CUT YOUR HAIR THERE or IF YOU SCREWED UP YOUR TOILET, WE'LL FIX IT and stuff like that. It's completely the same with Internet, except that the spam is now virtual, which means you can erase it with one click (those flyers you had to burn, or throw into the trashcan, the latter obviously similar to putting spam in your TRASH folder). And of course, the messages have much more imagination - instead of flyers advertising stores, malls and similar stuff, you now have golden opportunity to fix every single aspect of your sexual and financial life in like one second, from the length of your you-know-what to the depth of your bank account. Aren't we happy?

But anyway, I'm digressing. The point is, Internet still hasn't got its equivalent of begging. I.E. having someone ask you for your money and promising nothing in return (except giving you some form of gratitude). So, Dragon's Vampire is here to test whether the cyberbegging is unjustifiably overlooked, or there's some reason for it. Of course, we're not beggars, but for the time being we will act like them. Of course, this is only for testing purposes and has nothing to do with us wanting money and having to do nothing in return.

So, the point (finally) is: Give Us Your Money! It doesn't have to be much. We don't ask you to give us, say, ten million dollars. No, a mere thousand or two would be perfectly alright. Just click on that "pay with e-gold" thing to the right. Of course, you have to have an e-gold account. To get one (if you don't already have it), click on that link in the "Earning money on the Net" post, so I would get credit for it and get tons of money. There! I really hope more people would see this blog, because we obviously have some revolutionary ideas (like this one) and it would be a shame for them to go unnoticed.

Make Serious Money On The Internet .ws: Introduction

2006-09-25T00:13:00.000+02:00

Okay, this is just a short note. If you remember, last time I talked about making money on the Net. I just found this blog that covers the subject in detail:
Make Serious Money On The Internet .ws: Introduction
You may want to check it out. I still owe you that article about PTR. Yes, yes, I will write it soon!

Earning money on the Net - can it be done?

2006-09-15T18:03:00.000+02:00

I haven't mentioned it earlier, but apart from listening to prog-rock music and watching all sorts of crappy movies my main occupation is trying to earn $960799, so I can buy a house in Greece for my mother and a few little things for myself, like a nuclear warhead or a pack of chewing gum or something similar. Those of you who immediately remembered that immortal quote "I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum!" get a plus. Anyway, why would anyone try to earn only $960799 instead of, say, one million? Well, first of all, life teaches us that you should always be humble and never want too much. As they say in my country, he who wants more, loses from his sack. In my language it actually rhymes.
Where was I? Ah, yes - 960799 is the sum you can (theoretically) earn if you enter the magnificent 7DollarsMagic program. You pay $7.5 and get $960799 within weeks (!). Sounds terrific! But does it work? Don't ask me, I'm still working on getting my first $7.5. It's a real pain. If I had a credit card, I would pay with it and everything's fine. Since I don't have one, I have to either steal my mom's card or try to get the money myself. Naturally, being a good son and respecting my mother's hard work, I decided to go with the second option. So, how can someone with not a dime in their pockets get $7.5, the ticket to wealth & fortune? My first option was to try some PTR (paid-to-read) programs. I will be writing about them in more detail next time, but to answer the question that inevitably popped up in your mind ("Does THAT work?") - no reason to doubt. Of course, you may be skeptical and think "Yeah, right, as if someone's going to pay you to read e-mail!", but first, they are not paying out of their pockets (they share the money they get from their sponsors), and second, there are many good sites that discover scam and immediately notify the public. So far none of the PTR programs I joined ever appeared on any of those sites. If you think of joining a PTR program, it is recommended that you first check www.ptrpolice.com and www.gptboycott.com to see if that site is blacklisted. Some recommended sites you can find to the right (by joining some of those programs, you will become my referral and I will earn more money and I will be nearer to buying that house in Greece for my mother, and I will be forever grateful to you). As I said, more about PTR next time.
Another "great" opportunity are those HYIP's (High Yield Investment Program). What is that? Well, basically, you pay, say, ten dollars, and in a few days you get, say, 15 dollars. It is that simple, though the percentages vary. For example, I ran into some sites promising to give you like 300% of your investment within the hour (!). It is simply screaming STAY AWAY, IT'S SCAM!!! But heck, I'm not going to stay away because I'm an adventurous person and like to try new things. As soon as I get my first e-gold payment, I will try that and you will be notified if that works. It shouldn't. The percentage is simply too high, and the time too short. But, who knows.
One last word - if you're from one of those countries (like myself) that can't get a PayPal account, you may try http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=3419678 It is a payment service that accepts members from any place in the world, unlike those lameasses from PayPal. I use e-gold to get my payments (of course, I'm still waiting for my first payment).
So, over and out, finally. Next time we will talk about PTR programs, and probably about HYIP, though I don't know much about the latter. You can abuse the fact that I'm an adventurous person - if you find a HYIP that sounds too good to be true, tell me and I'll try it before you can spend your hard earned money. You may call me ScamTester. Hehe. But, nothing can happen before I get my first payment, and I expect it will happen within a week or so. Stay tuned.

Embarrasing stuff

2006-09-10T12:26:00.000+02:00

I just thought a great way to embarass yourself in front of your friends and/or family. Imagine you put a DVD in your DVD player. Since you're alone in the room, the first thing you do is, naturally, fast forwarding to the nude scenes. Then, imagine that you hear someone coming. Of course, you press STOP (or EJECT), take the disc out quickly and everything's OK. Right?
WRONG! A few days later you decide to watch that same movie with friends and/or family. You put the disc in the player completely forgetting about that ghastly LAST MEMORY thing, so naturally the first thing that pops up on the screen is that very nude scene you managed not being seen seeing a few days later. And your relatives and/or friends will naturally laugh their asses off and call you a loser for watching those nude scenes. Cool, eh?

Another embarrasing thing (again related to the nude scenes) can happen when someone comes into your room totally unexpectedly. If you had your nude scene running in full screen, you had a pretty big chance of being busted. The thing is, you have to think (and work) fast, and at that particular crucial moment it is unclear what you should do. Quickly double-click the screen and then trying to minimize the window (which could take too much time in terms of miliseconds, leading you to being caught), hit the ESCAPE key like a maniac (same problem), press CTRL-ALT-DEL, or even trying the extreme solutions, like pressing the reset button, or even POWER (note that the last solution may not work, in fact it is generally considered as a very bad move to press POWER, as that button probably works only for turning the computer ON). You can even try ducking and hiding under the desk, gaining enough time to plug the computer cable out. The downside of this choice is that eventually you have to come out from under the table and then everyone will know it was you. Also, there's a possibility that the person that entered the room uninvited will notice your absence and look under the table.

As you can see, watching nude scenes can lead to a whole lotta embarrasment. So far, the scientists are still working out a solution for this. One helpful strategy is to watch "things" only when you are completely alone in the apartment / house, and with all doors locked. That gives you enough time to clear all traces of your lewd and indecent behaviour. I love my blog.

Movie Reviews: Three

2006-09-05T16:00:00.000+02:00

Why, o why do people have to make these terrible, terrible movies? There is only ONE reason to see this movie: If you watched that nice little thriller House of 9 and liked the main actress (who happens to be called Kelly Brook). Because here you can see her pretty much naked.
This movie follows three characters who survive a shipwreck and end up on a deserted island. A rich man (Billy Zane), his young and beautiful wife (Kelly Brook, though he looked MUCH better in House of 9) and some Latino stud, I can't even remember his name. Anyway, that Mexican-Spanish (or whatever) dude is one really irritating bitch, just like Kelly Brook for that matter, and you can see straight away that they are going to have lots of sex and that bastard of her husband is going to try to kill them and he's going to die. Well, that's pretty much what happens here, with some small alterations. The irritating Latino-dude had an earlier trouble with his girlfriend (?). She slapped him a few times (apparently because he didn't want to marry her), and then he slapped her and then she threatened him and there was lots of yelling and stuff, all in Spanish (or maybe Portoguese, I'm not good at languages, I even thought that SHUTTER was a Korean movie, while in fact it was made in THAILAND, silly me). Anyway, the girlfriend leaves pretty pissed off and we immediately discover that she's some sort of a voodoo-witch or something, because she immediately starts performing an extremely long voodoo-dance including some voodoo-clothes (unfortunately, no nudity there) and a voodoo doll of her boyfriend. I have no idea what was the point of that dance (except maybe to extend the length of the movie), but the scenes from it are often inserted into the island scenes with the three survivors. Of course, everything looks totally ridiculous.
Anyway, that Latino-guy works as a waiter (or something) on the boat that the rich guy, his wife and some of their friends rent to sail and have some fun. From the beginning he dislikes Billy Zane. Sure, Billy Zane wasn't extremely sympathetic (though he was nowhere near as bastard as he was in Titanic), but that guy (which we shall abbreviate as GUY from now on) is sooooooooo incredibly irritating, due to terrible dialogs, overacting and the Latin-soap-opera nature of his character. So, as expected, Billy Zane and the Guy are not getting along, Kelly Brook has sex with the Guy, Billy is pissed off etc. etc. etc. Everything was seen million times before, except that this movie is worse than others. The reason is that the writer-director was obviously drunk (or drugged) during the entire filming (and writing), so he expected us to sympathize with Kelly and her Latino-banger (who's probably a gay, anyway) and hate Billy Zane's character. Of course, we should ignore the fact that he does her while Billy Zane dives into the shark-infested water to find some food. Bitch! And also, when Billy finds a boat and wants to leave alone (what would you do? your wife has just had sex with some moron!) they STEAL the boat from him and leave him on the island. Fortunately, it turns out that he actually predicted this (he watched them while they were screwing and at the same time making the plan to steal his boat) and left a hole in the bottom, so they didn't get far. They managed to swim back to the island and then the final battle took place. I'm not going to spoil it (though there's nothing to be spoiled in a movie as terrible as this one), but I can say that the ending is totally unsatisfactory. It's not as horrible as in Pleasantville, but it sure sucks.
This movie smells not only because of lame writing and crappy and irritating characters. It is also terribly directed, having such a huge amount of goofs that you simply cannot overlook them. For example, someone is swimming and you can easily see that it is very near the shore, you know, by the colour of the water and stuff. However, then they cut and it is an underwater view, showing that the water is VERY VERY VERY deep and even the sharks are there. It is so frustrating, they swim in the water that is so shallow they could probably walk, but the director expects us to believe they're somewhere out there, on the open sea and stuff. Not to mention the fact that none of the male characters grows a beard during a one-year stay on the island, Kelly's pretty white bikini is always white, not a hint of dirt on it, not to mention that they have a lighter that works perfectly despite being in the water (and even a year later there's still gas in it), not to mention the scene where Kelly Brook goes into the water completely naked and returns with the bottom part of her bikini, etc.
There's only one nice scene, and of course it is the one where she gets out of the water topless (though technically she should have been completely naked). The rest is utterly forgettable. So, better idea than watching this movie is going to mrskin.com and downloading that scene. You have been warned.
This movie is also called Survival Island, but I don't guarantee you'll survive watching it.

Dragon's Vampire

2006-08-30T20:17:00.000+02:00

"It's down to the final four and the four best teams are still alive to win the championship," said Team USA's Shane Battier. "That's the way it should be."

What are you, some kinda wise guy? Thank you very much. Shane on you, Shane.

Movie Reviews: 2001 Maniacs

2006-08-22T02:22:00.000+02:00

I like watching movies. Every movie teaches you something about the world that you hadn't known before. For example - if I hadn't seen all those American movies, I'd never would have known that all Southerners are extremely religious (although in a very unorthodox way), they all have funny accents, live in small and isolated villages where everyone screws everyone including the nearest relatives, they just LOVE anal sex (pigs and sheep are preferred, but sometimes a common man can do the job), their favorite meal is human flesh, and of course - they instantly kill everyone that comes to their village.
I don't know why, but it seems that people from the south are constantly being demonized, movie by movie, for decades. When you make a list of all bad guys from American movies, Southerners would be fighting a tight battle with Russians for the first place, followed closely by Arabian terrorists and, more recently, Serbs.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's concentrate on the movie itself. For some reason, I'm extremely fond of movies where a small group of people stumbles upon a peaceful and quite village with lots and lots of nice people, only to discover that those nice people bang sheep, kill people and serve their meet for dinner. This is one prime example of that type. Movies like this, when done correctly, often manage to create a good one-against-everyone atmosphere and a feeling of hopelessness. Sure, we all know that our heroes are going to get a chance to get out, only to die a horrible death in a bizarre and shocking last scene. But nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, I simply love that type.
What separates this movie from its siblings is its weirdness. It's not your average "these-people-are-crazy-we-have-to-get-out" movie. It's an almost non-stop parade of superultracheesy one-liners ("It's Ricky on a sticky!"), totally pointless sex scenes (unfortunately, most of them are pretty short and are always somehow interrupted, but you get to see almost all major female characters naked), some of the most inventive killings I've seen recently and, what's most important, the completely laid-back attitude, like "Hey, we're killing tons of people in most brutal and sadistic way, isn't that cool?". Even from the other side of the screen you could feel complete lack of sympathy for the victims by the filmmakers, even enjoyment when someone is knocked off. Every single death is followed by a sarcastic remark from the killer and generally everyone in the village is very happy and totally insane. The whole movie could be described as singing, dancing, sex, killing, more singing and dancing, more killing, more singing and dancing, more sex and killing, etc. It can hardly be called a horror movie - EXTREMELY black comedy is probably a better description.
So, anyway, this movie is highly recommended. It is so overblown (intentionally) in its weirdness, you don't see it very often. A small flaw is that near the end it gets an unnecessary supernatural conclusion, but we can live with it.
By the way, it seems to be a remake of a movie called Two Thousand Maniacs. I haven't seen that one (or even heard about that), so you won't find a comparison here. I'm still wondering whether this movie was made by a Yankee who hates Southerners and wants to show them as retarded pig-screwing murderistic cannibals, or by a pissed-off Southerner who got fed up with all that South-bashing propaganda and decided to kill as many Yankees as he could in most imaginitive ways without going to prison for that.

Movie Reviews: BloodRayne

2006-08-20T03:19:00.000+02:00

Imagine this: I watched an Uwe Boll movie and it wasn't a total disaster (!) Well, actually, I think Uwe Boll is unjustly demonized as THE worst filmmaker ever. It seems all of his movies are placed on the IMDb bottom 100 list and people are considering his movies crap almost by default. True, one certainly can't call Alone in the Dark a good film (or even watchable). But, Boll's films often have that weird amateurish charm, you know, like when you're watching something and it's so unbelieveably bad that you just can't take your eyes off it. House of the Dead was like that. Sanctimony too. On the other hand, had someone more "famous" made Sanctimony, they'd probably call it a masterpiece.
Anyway, I'm getting carried away. The point of this post is BloodRayne, which I have just seen. It's certainly the best of Boll's films I've seen so far. I don't know how the heck did he manage to convince all those people to appear in the movie (with his reputation and all that stuff), but what we have here is almost an all-star cast: Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley, Billy Zane, Meat Loaf, etc. None of these people is Robert de Niro, but for an Uwe Boll film this sure is an achievement. So, the acting is vastly improved. Usually, every time when it comes to talking in an UB film, you want to bang your head on the wall. Here, it's different. Somehow those (rare) scenes suffer only from terrible writing, rather than from BOTH terrible writing and terrible acting. Fortunately, the filmmakers wisely realized that a film based on adventures of a dhamphire (half human, half vampire) wanting to kill her own father wouldn't make a good drama, so they turned it into an action movie. Luckily, action in Uwe Boll's movies usually passes smoothly. It's nothing spectacular, but it's not unwatchable, either. Here we have LOTS of action, and lots and lots and lots of blood. So, when you have a large fight scene, with, say, fifty actors, and everyone's cutting everyone everywhere, and every cut causes a fountain of blood to flow, you can't help but feel at least a bit satisfied. And Uwe even manages to surprise us with some very nice-looking outside scenes, you know, sunsets, mountains, forests, pretty pretty, it looked as if he used some scenes that Peter Jackson threw out of his Lord of the Rings trilogy (which is a good thing).
Naturally, the writing is terrible. The source material (an action game from PlayStation) is nothing spectacular, of course, but the writer tried to further destroy things with absolutely crappy dialogue and some extremely pathetic and lame scenes. Surprisingly, the worst moment of the movie is the sex scene (?) which was completely unnecessary and terribly directed. Actually, it looked and sounded like someone was raping someone with a wooden stick. Sure, Kristanna Loken shows her baloons in clear light, but even with that great advantage that scene was so painfully terrible that it was painful. It seems that Uwe Boll can't direct sex scenes. He has finally learned to make talking scenes, now he will probably have to spend three or four movies to make a decent sex scene.
I will shut up now. The point is - although this movie is far from good, it is definitely not what you'd call crap (like Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever, or Charlie's Angels). So, I recommend seeing it. Of course, if you're not a rabid Uwe Boll hater who has given up on him long time ago just because he directed like fifty terrible movies.
By the way, it seems that Boll's next project is an adaptation of the already legendary FPS game FarCry. Let's hope he does better than with Alone in the Dark, which was probably the worst film adaptation of any work from any medium ever.

Movie Reviews: A Tale Of Two Sisters

2006-08-17T03:28:00.000+02:00

As a general rule, you may want to stay away from South Korean horror movies. I know that to us Europeans everyone from Asia looks the same, but when it comes to movies, the differences are important. For example - people from China make the best action films. In Japan they make good horror films. I don't know what South Koreans (sp?) are good at, but it sure isn't horror. True, they made one really great scary Ringu clone (Shutter), but the rest is pretty much forgettable.
Take this movie for example - it's absolutely and completely terrible. One thing that I hate about recent movies is how they put all this bizzarre supernatural Lynchian stuff in, and in the end everything is explained like "this character is MAD, so he's imagining things, this one is schizophrenic, so he also has some problems with reality, this one is being eaten by guilt for cooking his neighbor's cat, this one is of course DEAD" and you're like "DAMMIT, what the hell am I watching????". This movie is exactly like that. It starts with two sisters returning home from a mental institution. Their father is married to a woman who's a real bitch, so you can see straight away that lots and lots of supernatural stuff is going to happen, with the obligatory long-black-haired creepy ghost girl staring at you from under that hair that's covering her face (wonder how she sees anything) and wanting to rip your heart out, put it in the oven and then serve it to her pet iguanodon. But, I'm digressing. Anyway, I was saying, you COULD notice those things if you were paying extreme attention. Of course, I haven't. So, while I got the grip on the characters (heck, how hard can it be? There are only four of them!), their backgrounds and motivation were pretty foggy. And everything went straight to hell when they started introducing other characters (!)
Note, however, that my lack of attention should be blamed on the crappiness of the movie and not on me. The author of the movie made three fatal mistakes: First, there were only two scary scenes (one with opening the door and pulling down the blanket, nice, but it was done much better in Shutter, and the other one was really scary, with that Ringu-like movement and stuff). Both scenes appear relatively early in the movie. It seems like the movie is divided in three parts: 1) Ripping off the classic Japanese ghost story 2) Nothing happens in a very Cubrickian sort of way, with extremely looooooong and slow scenes that, unlike Shining for example, work against the movie (or rather, they work in movie's advantage, since the point of this movie is to induce boredom and frustration). 3) Lots of weird stuff happens, where the author is rubbing his hands with glee and muttering to himself: "Tee hee hee, I rule! Look at that girl under the sink! And all those blood trails! And everyone is acting strange at dinner! And she's locking her in the closet! Hell, I'm better than David Lynch!" Note that, of course, the author of this movie is NOT better than Lynch - you will enjoy most of Lynch's movies, no matter if you understand what's going on or not, because he's kinda good at creating intriguing atmosphere, you know, and besides, he has a habbit of including sex scenes with Laura Anna Harring and Naomi Watts. Anyway, I think we went over the first mistake in detail.
The second mistake is that the sisters show NO KIND of incestuos behavior whatsoever! I don't know what kind of a sick bastard the director is, but he's sure one sick bastard.
The third mistake is of course the aforementioned tendency to make random crap and putting some crappy plot twist that "explains" things. Right.
Oh, I almost forgot about the fourth mistake - the movie is totally uninteresting and often boring. You have been warned. Now it's up to you whether you're going to trust all those high rankings at IMDb and www.kfccinema.com or Dragon's Vampire. I suggest the latter. Just because a movie is crap doesn't mean it's a masterpiece.

Sin City

2006-08-14T02:30:00.000+02:00

So finally, after many many months, I decide to watch the infamous Sin City. The reason I hadn't watched it earlier is because the whole thing sounded terribly uninteresting. Not to mention the probably irritating black-white photography. The reason I watched the movie is because I decided to watch at least one movie in one day, and have succeeded for more than ten days. During that time, I watched literally everything in my movie empire that was worth watching (and also a few things that weren't). So, the only thing left to watch was Sin City.
And I have to say - the movie was a pleasant surprise. It was dynamic, interesting, violent and all that stuff and the black-white-with-occasional-colour photography really worked. It was great how they designed all the scenes to be almost identical replicas of the scenes from the comic book (of course, I haven't read the comic, this brilliant comment owes (sp?) its existence to the Behind The Camera DVD feature). Of course, absolutely the best part of the movie is when Carla Gugino gets out of the bed and holds a gun. This scene alone made the movie worth watching. Sadly, this leads us to the sad part of the story, which we shall call: Why Robert Rodriguez Smells.
Here's why - one of the main characters in the movie is Nancy. She's a stripper. Most people (Robert Rodriguez excluded) know that what strippers do is - stripping. I.E., taking their clothes off. He wisely hired Jessica Alba for the part, but what happened was that she refused to do any nudity. Oh, no! Another Julia Roberts in sight! And what did Robert do? NOTHING! He thought it wasn't important to the movie and just let her dance wearing clothes (!!) EXCUSE ME??? NOT IMPORTANT??? Nudity NOT IMPORTANT in a movie called SIN City? As we all know, nudity is one of the greatest sins, so excluding Jessica Alba nude scene delivered an almost lethal blow to the movie's credibility. That Mexican bastard, he should have fired that bimbo (who's going to get naked very soon, anyway) and give the role to... I don't know, Brittany Murphy. Yes, I know she already was in the movie, but she also played a non-nude role. Terrible.
Another terrible decision is in the scene where Nick Stahl is torturing the aforementioned Alba. It was originally designed to be extremely violent, but Rodriguez toned it down with the explanation that "it crossed the boundaries of good taste". Heard that? GOOD TASTE. In a movie where Mickey Rourke cuts Elijah Wood's legs and lets his dog eat him, where Bruce Willis beats Nick Stahl's head to a pulp and so on. Good taste. Robert Rodriguez, you suck.
Another thing that sucked in this movie was the decision that bloody scenes be coloured white. So, when someone cuts someone's arm off, it looks like the arm is ejaculating rather than bleeding. But I guess it was that way in the comic, so they had to leave it, right? WRONG!!! Nancy was naked in the comic, and Brittany Murphy's character showed pretty much, but no, that WASN'T IMPORTANT! And the torturing scene wasn't important. But hey, white blood - THAT'S important.
And one final criticism, that is related to the making of the film, rather than film itself: You know how Robert Rodriguez always has his guitar with him when he shoots movies? Well, not this time. Not a sign of a guitar! I found that terribly strange and discouraging.
Having said all that, the movie actually kicks ass. The third third is the best, with fine interaction between Jessica Alba and Bruce Willis, not to mention that ending ruled. I can't wait to see the sequel, and maybe even read the comic if I ever have a chance.
By the way, don't get too attached to characters in this movie. Seems like Frank Miller is one dirty rotten sadist, introducing tons of characters just to kill them fifteen minutes later.

BMW M5 vs. AUDI RS4, on a crowded highway!

2006-08-13T16:09:00.000+02:00

Check out this video shot from the dashcam of a BMW M5 while racing an AUDI RS4! Incredible driving on a crowded Autobahn. When they kill themselves, hope it's against a tree so they take nobody innocent with them.

Fuzzyness

2006-08-11T11:33:00.000+02:00

Fuzzy Logic, we all heard of that, right? Well, this post hast nothing to do with that. It´s about my examination in "Human Resource Management" I had today. So what´s so fuzzy about that (besides the TOPIC itself), you may wonder. Well, on the first page of the exam, where they have all those nice instructions (where to write your name, the duration of the exam, consequences if you cheat - i.e. get caught doing it, etc.) they also wrote this nice thing:

"We expect precise answers to all questions!"

Normally, I would agree with that. I´m sure all of you would, too. But, when you read something like that, you do make an implicit assumption, don´t you? You assume (WRONGLY, in my case) that the questions are written in a precise way! Boy, was I wrong. That´s why I´m gonna fail miserably. The responsible persons should be identified and banned from this university.

Homosexuality

2006-08-11T02:28:00.000+02:00

Hah. Another controversial topic. I remember, when I decided to finally start this whole blog business, my mother said: "Son, having a personal blog is a big move in anyone's life. This certainly makes me proud, but I have to warn you - stay away from controversial topics! They are so controversial they can ruin your mind!" These are the exact words of my mother. I intended to follow her advice, but there are moments in life when everything you know (or THINK you know) just falls apart and knowledge strikes you like a lightning and the words appear in your mind like crystal blue letters - I'VE GOT TO DO THIS! Something similar happened to me when I was walking home last night. It was a beautiful sunny evening, it was raining like ... I don't know, anyway it was raining, and then I thought: "Well, I simply have to write about homosexuality tonight!" And there you have it! When something crosses my mind, like an idea or something, I don't wait long to realize it.

Gratuitous nudity

2006-08-10T02:32:00.000+02:00

Hah! You were cheated! No gratuitous nudity in this post! (Btw, I had to use Yahoo! to find how the heck do you spell g-r-a-t-u-i-t-o-u-s).
The only thing even remotely connected to nudity is the lack of nudity in the movie I just saw. It's called Boat Trip and it sucked. Even ROAD Trip is better than this one, not to mention EUROTRIP, which is almost good (!)
But wait, you say! Boat Trip is FULL of nudity! Theoretically yes, but for some reason my DAMN DVD copy is like 8 minutes shorter than it's supposed to be. Aaaargh!!! They cut out all the best parts (though the movie was so lame that it wouldn't have been saved by 100 beautiful naked women (or maybe it would?)).
Anyway, today was a magnificent day for me! I got up early and had breakfast, and then I spent some time listening to music and writing that thing that I don't know English expression for, but it's SOMETHING you have to do to finish college, or however they call that thing that goes after High School, presuming that "High School" is what comes after Elementary School, under assumption that you go to Elementary School after spending some time (though it's not required) in the kindergarten, and by "kindergarten" I mean the place where your parents throw you when you are very very young and small and everything and they want to be alone to watch movies and listen to records and stuff.
And then I watched some soccer, Red Star Belgrade played vs. AC Milan and, imagine this, they lost. By the way, I'm hungry. Tomorrow I have to it, now it's too late. Wait... it IS tomorrow!
I'm stuck in a time warp.

Whee!

2006-08-02T22:03:00.000+02:00

The first post! I'm so happy! In fact, I'm as happy as a Frenchman who has invented a pair of self-removing trousers!
Actually, to be perfectly honest, this will probably get boring in a few days, so why even bother? On the other hand, random crap does tend to appear in my head pretty often, so why not post in on the Net and save it for future generations? It may happen that there will be a shortage of crap in the future.
Speaking of crap, instead of creating a blog, another good idea is to write an autobiography. It seems that these days everyone has already written one. Even people who probably can't put two sentences together. Even soccer players. Even YOUNG soccer players. Even Wayne Rooney (!) What's up with that? He's like 20 years old and already has an autobiography! I wonder who could be dumb enough (except his nearest family, who have sort of a moral obligation) to buy that book. Everything you can find in it is probably a list (though a looong one) of places where Wayne Rooney got in a fight with someone else.
- Soccer field
- Dressing room
- Bar
- Street
- Car
You name it. I'm gonna shut up now.