Mary Magdalene Risen

Two movies for Easter.

Mary Magdalene

When home life becomes far too aggressive, Mary (Rooney Mara) makes the decision to follow a wise healer (Jesus, played by Joaquin Phoenix) to travel and teach across Judea until the end of his mortal days. Pretty good cinematography in this one and I do like their take on Judas too. If anything I'd complain they whisper too much. Obviously a movie for religious people though, and if you aren't one of those there's not much in it here for you. I suppose it's pretty challenging to make a movie about a tale people already know about (or on the flip side, don't care about). This was an OK attempt.

Risen

With the impending visit of the Emperor, Roman Tribune Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) is tasked with keeping the peace which includes finding the missing body of a recently crucified man claimed to be the Messiah  "Yeshua" which could act as the spark for rebellion. Props on making a different story to tell for the Easter season and while it still falls well into the religious film category they managed to get some fight scenes in there too. However, there are way too many quiet scenes which quite literally were putting us to sleep. For that problem alone Mary Magdalene is a better movie.

Son of God

Where Pilot is a bad ass.

A tale focusing on the life and death (mostly the death) of Jesus (played by Diogo Morgado), this decently budgeted film is actually the condensation of a mini-series which explains all the cool old testament segments right at the start.

Spoiler: Jesus saves.

Diogo plays his part well and the others are passable to good. The stand out part for me was Pilot, who is often portrayed as a neutral party in this tale, has quite the iron fist this time around which is gets a thumbs up from me.

Of course, there are some oddities like one particular Pharisee who seems to be everywhere and Barabas not being quite as evil as I'd like him to be. Still surprisingly watchable. Would I watch it again? Eh... maybe after a few more Easters. I give it two crucifixions out of five.

Today I Smiled: Quiet Easterling

Hi all! It's going to be quiet here for a few days over the Easter weekend as I'm off on a small holiday! Hope you have a safe and happy one! Since you took the time to stop by, here are some random links for your amusement until I return:

Space X's reusable rockets!
Earth Wind Fire Map.
Jetsun Pema, currently the world's youngest queen.
Trump Criticizes himself (without realizing) on reddit.
Sir Nils Olav. He probably outranks you. He's also a penguin.
Honey Badgers are resistant to machetes, spears and arrows.
"Don't just stand there, come in!" Ants play Stalker too.
Chipmusic from Toni Leys - "Through a cardboard World".

The Passion of the Christ

I hope you like blood and subtitles.

For anyone that celebrated Easter for the other reason beside chocolates, this movie basically follows the Stations of the Cross starting from the garden of Gethsemane and onwards. For everyone else, this story focuses on a man gifted with healing and prescience, and how (almost) everyone else condemns him to suffer and die, mainly because he claims he is the son of God.

I spend the whole movie getting beaten up!

While there is a LOT of blood and torture in this film, it doesn't go as far as the gorier movies I've reviewed before. It is also not in English, which actually works in it's favor I think as the Romans speak Latin and everyone else speaks in tongues I am not familiar with (Hebrew)? Costumes and settings are awesome and it also makes subtle use of CGI for things you wouldn't think of. Well, things I didn't think of. They do get a bit heavier handed towards the end.

Most of my problems come from expecting stuff from the story as I've heard it enough times. Little things like, I expected Herod to be an old dude (unless that Herod was succeeded by another Herod)? Jesus seems to only have four disciples? The inclusion of death / the devil was an interesting one but ultimately unnecessary as he too ended up just being a spectator. It was funny to see Jesus curbstomp a snake though. Didn't hear of that in any version! Lol! :P

If know about the Stations of the Cross and can stomach the blood and subtitles then you will probably enjoy this movie which I give three and a half bloody nails out of five. For everyone else, I'm not sure what you'd get out of it as the last scene would not make sense at all and probably provoke a "What was the point of all that?". Regardless, it's not something I'd be looking forward to seeing again.

Flame, Frost and Donkey Kong

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

ArenaNet has been pushing out its Living Story the past few months with all the pace of a sun-bathing glacier. Basically the proud Norn and warlike Charr are getting their butts kicked by a Dredge and Flame Legion alliance (aka "the Molten Alliance") so badly that they are mostly withdrawing not just to their capitals, but all the way to the karka infested isle of Southsun Cove. Well, supposedly. Sure, the molten dudes are popping out from magic portals and APCs here and there but there are still lots of towns out there that haven't noticed this supposed on-coming force; Butcher's Block is still in endless party mode and that place up in Wayfarer Foothills where they cook wurm eggs and have dozens of snoozing patrons hasn't changed one bit. Maybe they're just too drunk to notice anything wrong? Seems the only people actually affected come from previously unknown areas and I suspect part of the reason they are so pathetically weak is due to their unnatural clumsiness.

Or maybe they were also just drunk?

With their meager possessions (being refugees) lots of them still manage to "misplace" them along the various routes they took to run away while defacating themselves like the cowards they are. One of the tasks given to the COMMANDER OF THE FIRE-TRUCKING PACT is to go poke the mounds of dirt and feces left behind by these losers to retrieve them. Yep. For some reason this is one of the "highlight" activities of this story arc. Shovelling shit. Thanks ANet. As for the molten alliance themselves there are hints laying about in another scavenger type quest that indicate it's not Primordus driving these two armies together but something else. Popular theory is it is the Consortium, the competitors of the Black Lion Trading group. Their previous actions included happy things like letting the karka invade the mainland and opening the irritating and unstable fractal dungeon which now requires eternal vigilance lest it destroy reality. Far as I'm concerned all these pirate scum should die. May as well wipe out the barbaric Charr and soulless Sylvari while I'm at it too.

What's that? The Asura? No I love those little goblins, especially since part of the April release was the Super Adventure Box! Personally I feel this is ANet's best content since the Mad King (I did miss Wintersday so maybe that one was good too) which is ironic given all of its 8-bit Mario-ness. There's definitely a certain charm in the nostalgia, and for someone who absolutely dislikes the dungeons in this game I find the Super Adventure box to be awesome. No idea why, but it's a strong enough reason for me to get back into GW2 for a bit. Hopefully it sticks around and doesn't vanish at the end of April like ANet has said, because if it did - they really would be April fools.

Belated Happy Easter too! :)