So here we are folks, I have a second rant after a short while prepared, and today I am touching on an issue that I'm sure many people have bickered and whined about prior. Judging from the title, you would probably know that I'm talking about the Lions Gate film franchise, the Saw series. Please bear this in mind, if you have plans on watching any of the Saw films in the future and don't want to read any possible spoilers I may end up writing about, then hit the back button now.

Back in 2004, an independent film known as Saw was released. I have only seen this movie fairly recently, but I found it to be one of the freshest and most inventive horror films I've seen in years. The idea of a "serial killer" who doesn't really kill his victims, rather he gives them the option to attempt to save themselves if they managed to save themselves from the trap they were put in, was quite a neat idea for a horror movie setting. The person who does this is known as Jigsaw, and he pretty much tests a humans will to survive depending on what their sins are. He provides quite a few philosophic ideas for his victims to ponder, and he makes them able to appreciate the fact that they are still alive after what they have gone through. Of course that's just the main idea of the first film, the film itself is based on his newest victims who have to determine their will to live.

Luckily for the directors, the movie was a HUGE box office success, raking in $102 million. And that's a lot of money considering the fact that it was made on a budget of $1.2 million. So after that, the folks at Lions Gate decided that they would try and see how much the film was worth to them by releasing the sequel, Saw II. Basically, Saw II is more of the same from the first movie, but unfortunately with an all teenage cast that gets pretty annoying, and a slightly bigger budget, thus resulting in some cooler traps. I'd personally say that Saw II is a decent enough sequel despite its flaws, it worked in what it set out to be at the end of the day.

Of course after making even more money than they did last year with Saw I, Lions Gate could come to this conclusion, "We've got a Cash Cow ladies and Gentlemen. It's time to start milking." Me personally, I think this became evident when they released Saw III. The movie itself was pretty mediocre in my opinion since it's supposed to be based on John Kramer aka. Jigsaw's death, yet for his final moments in life, he focuses his efforts on some random guy who had no relation to him at all. I mean if I were in my last days, I'd do what I could to do the most meaningful things in life possible. At first I thought John was going to confess to this guy that he was the drunk driver that killed his son, but instead it just doesn't add up to much. The movie at least had a good ending though, and it would have been a perfect point to stop the series.

But no, another year, another gallon from the Cash Cow, another farmer in the form of Saw IV comes along to milk it. Jigsaw apparently had been watching a lot of people before he finally keeled over, because he's apparently capable of working his magic after death, and going on to other random characters who he had no relation to prior to make final amends. Instead he's just continuing his work, but the story is even weaker this time around, and barely makes much sense at times. For me, it was up to the point of Saw IV that I just decided to give up on this series, because it was getting so redundant and pointless that I just couldn't see myself being interested in it anymore. So as a result I haven't seen Saw V, but I don't think it could be any better than III or even IV thus I can't say anything about it. And also for a while, there hasn't only been a Saw VI out this year, but there's also a video game that came out.

I'm just amazed as to how Lions Gate is capable of making all these cash ins and still making enough money to fund the Saw movie for next year. Because really, if you think it's ending at Saw VI, then you really need to smell some open trash cans, because for next year, a Saw VII is being made, and of course a Saw VIII for the year after, and a Saw IX after that year. If you can't see a Saw X on the horizon, you probably need to get out a telescope and notice that it's there and who knows how many other sequels are going to be preceding it?

Up to this point, the only way the series is ever going to end is if either A) Tobin Bell dies, at which point they might just start making prequels anyway, or B) People finally realize that they have been seeing the same movie the first 5 or 6 times and stop seeing them. Personally I'm the kind of person who's cool with sequels, if I liked something, then I don't mind seeing the same formula two or three more times. But if those two or three more times are done poorly, then I don't feel like trying to give a crap about the series anymore up to that point. Saw is just a perfect example of this, Saw III wasn't my favorite, but it at least managed to tie everything up and just should have ended there.

I know some might argue, "Well at least they're caring about narrative continuity unlike a lot of other sequels." My answer to this is, "Why should the directors get an A for effort in trying to make a long convoluted series of trap settings by Jigsaw, all of which have no relation to him whatsoever?" By that logic, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin are great movies just because they made an attempt to chronologically follow the Tim Burton Batman movies. (No they aren't great, but not too bad either. Batman Forever can be pretty boring when Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey aren't on camera, but Batman & Robin has camp value in a post Dark Knight world.)

Overall, this is just what I have to say to the folks at Lions Gate, yes I know up to this point it's pointless to act like I'm actually writing a letter of complaint to the company itself, but it's a good way to close off a rant and it makes me feel a little less agitated. What I have to say is this, "STOP! JUST STOP ALREADY! It's not cool anymore, its originality is soon to hit rock bottom, and every sequel that's been coming out has had about as much point as your typical Land Before Time sequel (Yes, I went there.) Personally I thought only the first two movies were particularly good, but if I was supposed to recognize the Saw series as a film series, I'd only follow it up to Saw III. Or better yet, just stick to the first one and act like the sequels don't exist." Of course considering the title of my blog, I doubt that anyone at Lions Gate is going to be reading anything I write.

The real case scenario is, of course, that Saw movies generate a lot of money, and in a capitalist economic system, if it generates money, more of it is made. There's no question of quality or anything like that, just a "generate and take" scenario. Though I can say that one thing is true about every Cash Cow, the utter eventually goes dry. People just have to start realizing that it's pointless for adding any more sequels to the Saw series and stop seeing these movies in theaters. Although if you are going to see Saw VI in theaters just because you actually managed to enjoy Saw I-V, then I can't really stop you from doing that unfortunately. Me however, if I ever do end up watching any of the future sequels, I'll just use the same "method" I used to watch Dragonball Devolution so that no money goes to the directors.

That's my rambling on the Saw series. If you want my recommendation, then just watch the first one only. If you want to watch any of the sequels though, I'd say just watch up to Saw III, believe me, you'll be thankful that you did. Have a happy Halloween, and I hope to do something productive another time.

That's the news from Myviewing as of October 31, 2009. Happy Halloween yet again.

Hey folks, it's been a while yet again. It's amazing how fast time goes when college is riding you for all its worth. But a little while ago, I just got a new topic to rant on, and obviously as you can tell, it's about charge stations. Mind you, this rant may be a bit ill-informed since it's only based on what I've experienced over the last week. If the charge station you own works perfectly for you, then congratulations you have more luck with rechargeable batteries than I do. Anyway, on topic.

About two years ago, in the Winter of 2007, I got Christmas money, and I decided to buy a charging station for my Wii. There's one thing Wii remotes have a disadvantage with, and that's the fact that the batteries, at least for me, don't tend to last as long as I'd like them to. So in order to keep playing my Wii, I'd have to buy batteries on a regular basis, and I already put my parents through that strain when I was in my Gameboy days playing Pokemon to death. Of course now that I'm older, I'd have to buy those batteries myself, and buying them myself would be pinching me constantly and I wouldn't be able to buy the games I wanted for my Wii.

So I found out about the charge station from one of my friends, and since it seemed to work for him, I decided to check one out. Basically charging stations are devices that come with compatible Wii remote batteries that when you leave them in the station, they charge up more power so you don't have to buy new batteries. That would be cool, if they actually managed to keep working and not break on you.

I've had my charging station for over a year, and it worked fine, but then one day it started to not work as well as it should have. There were cases when I'd load the Wii remotes into my station, and the station is supposed to glow blue when it says it's charging, but when I took them out to play the game I wanted to play, it would stop functioning properly after about six minutes. That's when I started to notice that there was something wrong with the Wii remote batteries. So after much testing, the batteries seemed to be on their final days, and I thought it was simply time for some new batteries. Unfortunatley, life just can't be that simple.

I bought another station and two new batteries, but when I used these batteries after charging them, they didn't work any better than my old batteries. So I eventually decided to go back to playing with traditional batteries and, surprise surprise, they worked perfectly. No matter how many times I put the batteries into their stations and charged them until their lights faded out, they just would not fully charge at all.

Overall, I think this is what demonstrates the tremendous amount of "help" that charging stations give. Buying new batteries doesn't help, putting them in two different stations doesn't help, and not even leaving the battery in the station for two days seems to help (In fact I probably killed the battery by doing that&hellip. So there's the Wii Remote Charge Station in a nutshell, works for a year, and then decides to keel over. My dad recently got a charge unit for rechargeable batteries that I could use, and they work just as good as regular batteries do. So I'd say if you really want to be able to buy batteries so you don't have to buy too many more, than just go with this method.

That's my unfortunate life's story on this failed hardware, and I hope I at least managed to warn a few people about the overall risk of buying these stations. I don't know if I bought from the wrong brand or whatever, but I'm pretty displeased with this. For more productive contributions to the internet, please stay tuned for my Dune book mini-reviews and my Halloween special rant, you'll find out the subject when we cross that bridge. So until then, I'll try not to be a stranger. For that long at the very least.

That's the news from Myviewing as of October 26, 2009.

Hey folks, you won't believe how lucky I got at Gamestop the other day, Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story came out a little over a week ago, and the Gamestop I usually visit was sold out of copies. Luckily, another Gamestop was nearby, and I was able to buy a copy from there, and they only had one copy left. Dang, how lucky huh? I can tell you this for sure, Bowser's Inside Story is going to be pretty big, considering so far it's sold .69 million units in Japan alone, even more than Partners in Time's lifetime.

Also, I HAVE FURY! Because Fawful returns, and he's hilarious! What with great lines like, "Fawful lacks beef! Fawful is beefless!" For more, just play the game yourself why don't you?

Gameplay wise, it is epic! An RPG that actually makes you feel like Bowser is a true winner. Just like the title implies, you play on the inside of Bowser with Mario and Luigi, only you play from a side-scrolling perspective. So there you go, another game, another award winning DS game.

Recently I got around to seeing two movies, Gamer and State of Play. State of Play is an old school political thriller in the vain of All the President's Men with an original scenario as well. If this is your kind of genre, definitely check it out, it's a really well done film for its genre.

Also Gamer, I was quite interested when I saw the ad in theaters. Premise is that in 2034, mind control technology is revolutionized when Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), creates nanites that allow players from way further away to control another person in a program like "Society" or "Slayers" to either play as some different person altogether or fight in Slayers like the ads have been promoting. It's a pretty cool premise, but it's rated R for a reason, because it can be pretty grotesque at times. Not to mention there's this one scene that has me wondering a lot recently. You see, there's this one scene where Kable (Gerard "Sir THIS IS SPARTA!!!" Butler), chugs a whole thing of Vodka, manages to run through a whole battlefield, then he pukes and pees into a vehicle's fuel tank, then he manages to start up the car. Is this really plausible? Pretty alright movie, but it could have been better over all.

Also, what I wanted to do was post up my thoughts on a work in progress from Peter Berg, which is none other than a remake of Dune. Yes, Dune. The legendary book series that continues to influence science fiction to this day. If you read it, you've also probably heard of the David Lynch movie and the Sci Fi Channel mini series. In a nutshell, they both made different attempts to bring Dune to life, but they both had their faults. I'll try doing a review of both the miniseries and the movie someday, but I'll tell you how people generally think of these adaptations: "The movie, great production values, not so great adaptation of the story. The mini series, bad production values, great adaptation of the story." The end result is that there are waging sides within the Dune fan base bickering about which adaptation is better.

The David Lynch movie was the result of many years of a Dune adaptation long in development that couldn't get out. David Lynch's adaptation was also a rushed product since he was trying to make a faithful adaptation, but due to time constraints, he was only able to get the barebones story out onto the big screen, but the end result took out everything that made Dune what it was. To this day though, Lynch's adaptation has a cult following, and fans of the movie will usually make two arguments, "It's not a perfect adaptation, but at least David Lynch made an attempt. He at least tried unlike most directors at the time would have tried." (Don't believe that statement? Check it out.) and also that its imagery was very influential in how people view the world of Dune. This can be seen in the video game adaptations that followed in the years after, so as a result the attempt wasn't a total loss.

Fans of the mini series promote it because of how faithful it was to the book. My dad is a fan of the mini series because of how faithful it is to the book, and if all your looking for is a faithful adaptation, it's bound to give you what you're looking for. But because of the bad production values (It's a Sci Fi Channel production, you do the math.) there are those who say it's a bad adaptation because of that.

And now to introduce you to the new attempt, Peter Berg. If you want to see the details so far, check out the Unseen Dune website: http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/jodorowsky.asp. Peter Berg is going to be leading the third attempt to make Dune on the big screen a reality. Peter Berg is a fairly new director, but one thing that sets him apart from David Lynch is that he's actually a fan of the book series in question. He's responsible for films such as The Kingdom, Friday Night Lights, The Rundown, and Hancock. I've only seen Hancock, which I admittedly liked, but I can't say much else on his other works.

There is one statement that he's been using that's kind of got me questioning. Berg says he's planning on venturing for a more "muscular" interpretation of the story. Basically he says that he's looking for a supposedly more adventurous story, though he says it's possible to do without offending fans of the Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach ideology. On one hand, I'm glad to hear that he's not going to ignore what made Dune what it was, and Dune isn't without its action sequences. But overall, I'm hopeful that he doesn't end up getting lost in making Dune a heavy scale action movie and ends up meeting the same fate David Lynch's adaptation met.

For a hopefully more hopeful note, the creators of the miniseries are going to be involved in the movie, so if we're lucky, we might in a one in a million chance get the miniseries on the big screen but with infinitely better production values. Also the scriptwriter is confirmed to be Joshua Zetumer, the same guy who revised the script to Quantum of Solace.

For a bit of an outro, things that you can take as you will. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are going to be Co-Producers. Again, take that as you will. And if you're hope the art direction from the first movie is returning, it's not likely since concept art is being produced by "Jock" (Mark Simpson). And finally, Peter Berg has apparently been meeting with Robert Pattinson for something (You know, that dude from Twilight). There have been some suggestions that he could be going "from vampire to Kwisatz Haderach". I've only seen him in the Harry Potter movies as Cedric Diggory (Come on, you wouldn't expect ME to see Twilight would you?), so I don't really know if his acting would be convincing for the role as Paul Maud'Dib. I tried starting up a thread asking if people thought Pattinson was qualified for the role, but nobody answered. So I wouldn't mind hearing your input. Do you think he's Paul Maud'Dib? Judging from his looks I think he could pull off a good Feyd-Rautha or even maybe even Rabban if he put on a few pounds. On a totally unrelated note, I just remembered there was a fat guy in Gamer that I think would be physically similar to the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

Well those are the details so far, there's not much else to go on. But here's to hoping maybe Peter Berg will surprise us with the LOTR treatment Dune has been long overdue for. I also just remembered I didn't talk about what made Dune as special as it was in the first place, but don't worry, I plan on someday possibly doing an overview of the Dune books I've read to give you the idea. So until then, let the spice flow.

That's the news from Myviewing as of September 23, 2009.