Don't let the mystery go now

Some Rings trivia for y'all. The film geeks among you may already know this, but whatever.

1. The first Orc Aragorn kills on Pelenor Fields is Viggo Mortensen's son.

2. Stuart Townsend was originally cast as Aragorn, and was in New Zealand when, according to IMDB.com, "after four days of shooting" he left the production because "they realized he was too young for the role". In fact, Townsend was kicked off because he was an arrogant bastard that didn't get along with the other actors and above all Peter Jackson. Has anyone seen him in anything memorable since then? No? Now isn't that a surprise.

3. Liv Tyler had some serious problems during the shoot. She couldn't handle a horse at all, and when she finally figured out how to sit in a saddle, she managed to stab her horse over and over while attempting to sheathe her sword. Her character, Arwen, was also supposed to be at Helm's Deep for some reason, and she was there to film it. However, when she fired her bow she kept letting go of the bow instead of the arrow, hitting herself in the face over and over. In the end, Weta Digital made her hair blond so Jackson wouldn't have to reshoot the shots where she's just standing there.

4. Sean Connery was offered the role of Gandalf, for a percentage of the profits. He turned it down. Had he accepted, he would have made 450 million New Zealand dollars (about 2.2 billion kronor) and counting. Good call, Mr Connery. He went on to do The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen instead (which I won't link to on sheer principle, since its such a horrid POS). Who else was in that movie? Stuart Townsend, ladies and gentlemen. Good choice to the both of you.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world

Wellington was a blast. After the sightseeing, we went to a great Mexican restaurant, The Flying Burrito Brothers, where we had enchiladas, Monteiths Golden (good local beer), churros and chimichangas, and treated ourselves to a tequila tasting board each.

Tequila to me has always been piss-poor stuff that needs salt and lemon to go down, and hasn't been anything I've had on any kind of regular basis. This was completely different. Three different ages of the same tequila, one that burned, one that went down smoothly with a sharp licorice aftertaste, and one right in between. There's a place in Stockholm that specialises in tequila, might need to go there to do some research...

Then on Saturday we took a Lord of the Rings tour, going around Wellington and the surrounding area for four and a half hours. Turned out it was just me and my brother taking the tour, which was cool. We took in the locations for Helm's Deep, Minis Tirith, Rivendell and others.

Aragorn realised Aglarond wasn't exactly what it was cracked up to be

It would have been hard to actually see that the scenes had been shot there if the guide hadn't brought lots of film clips on his laptop where he could point out trees and rocks that were in the frame. He guided us to spots where we could stand and see the specific views the cameras had over the scene, and showed us plenty of clips in the van while driving around, setting it all up. Very effective. 400 kronor well spent, if you can live with forever seeing in which parts of the Minas Tirith scenes that Pippin is a doll.

The only real downer was that the previous day, when we went sightseeing on our own, we did have some plans to see some Rings sites, but realised they weren't properly marked on any map and so we scrapped those plans. Then we got a little lost, and had to pull into a parking lot to check the map and get our bearings. To our left a big white van was parked, and behind us, across the road, was a quarry. The next day we sat in that same van in that same parking lot while the guide pointed to that same quarry and said "Helm's Deep is right there". D'oh.

After the tour we spent the afternoon at the Te Tapa Museum, checking out exhibits of Maori artefacts, New Zealand art through the years and some natural history stuff (kiwis, wetas, whales, etc). I built a squid. His name is Beardonaut. Check out what he's up to here (click "Enter Squid's name" down the page).

The coolest thing was a Chinese earthquake catcher, constructed in the second century AD, which determines the direction of an earthquake through a pendulum within a large jar knocking a ball loose to fall from a dragon's mouth into a metal frog. Of course. Western science sucks.

Benji the frog insisted he could catch the ball every time. Liar

Saturday ended at the All Blacks vs Wallabies rugby test. Calling it a test is evidently important. Nation vs nation is a test. Team vs team is a game. This was New Zealand vs Australia, a real grudge match. I have just about zero experience watching rugby, and since I'm a football guy I really didn't know what to expect. It was faster than I had anticipated, and while a lot of the rules are as incomprehensible to me as football rules are to an outsider, I think I grasped some of it. Thirty thousand fans and a couple of beers helped put us in the right mood.

Bruce wondered why his mate's hand felt so good right there

And for any Americans or indeed football fans reading this, I doubt there's a single football player that could survive a rugby game, even if they did know the rules and had mastered the techniques. We felt some of the full on body hits up in the stands, and these guys make do without any gear on except a teeth guard and a cup.

Then yesterday we boarded the Overlander train and spent twelve hours going from Wellington to Auckland, the reverse version of the trip that took us fifty minutes on a plane. The landscape was spectacular, with wooded hills, deep valleys and snow-capped volcanoes. The trip was at least four hours too long, but well worth doing. Once.

Now I'm back in Auckland for a couple of days of just hanging out, before going up north to Paihia to stay at a BnB run by relatives, write and look out over the ocean. The next few days won't contain a lot of adventure, but I will probably write some anyway.

Next they're gonna give the Oscars in the parking lot. It'll be like a drive-through Oscar lane.

Got back about an hour ago after a twelve hour train ride from Wellington. The first eight hours were cool, with some very spectacular views. The rest was mind-numbingly boring.

So my brain is too scrambled for a long post. Suffice to say that the Wellington trip was very good. More tomorrow.

I will leave you with this nugget of movie trivia. The Gates of Moria, the Dead Marshes and the scenes from flooded Isengard were all filmed in a parking lot on the outskirts of Wellington. Good bye, movie magic.

The traffic warden had a bit of an attitude problem

You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to

Back at the BnB after a long day sightseeing around Wellington and its surroundings. We rented a car this morning, a POS Nissan for 200 kronor for the day, and then drove east and south, to take in the scenic routes along the coast.

It was very windy and cold, which was appropriate since we were at the ocean. The air smelled of salt, and at times I even tasted the salt on the winds. No rain, which was good, but it felt good to get back in the car every time we did so.

The sea was choppy and looked really cold and uninviting. Took some pictures of rocks and waves and houses up on the cliff faces above the coastline.

Coolest. Sign. Ever. No penguins about though

Then we visited Weta Cave, which was cool. I held on to my wallet with both hands, and managed to walk out of there with no more than a Hellboy figure and a little something for a friend. I had thought it would be exclusively Lord of the Rings stuff, but they had some things from earlier movies Weta has been involved with, like the ghost dog from The Frighteners.

It was unclear who was the Uruk-Hai and who was the Swede

Tonight, off to the Flying Burrito Brothers to eat and maybe taste a tequila or three. Tomorrow we're taking a four hour LOTR tour and then the All Blacks vs Wallabies game awaits. Probably no time to write tomorrow, and then on Sunday we're spending the whole day on the train to Auckland, so it might not be until Monday that I write again.

Experience is the teacher of all things

Landed in New Zeeland two hours ago. Now sprawled on my brother's couch, winding down. Soon a shower and then male bonding over rugby and beer. Mmm...bonding...

Ten things I've learned/remembered over the past 36 hours.

1. People I know pop up in the weirdest places. This time it was Set Himself On Fire, so named after an incident involving a can of gas. He has been off my social radar for quite some time. Turned out we were on the same flight, so we reminisced a bit over food and duty free shopping before boarding.

2. 11 hours in the air was less uncomfortable than I thought, but felt longer than I had anticipated.

3. In flight entertainment is the best thing to happen to flights, ever. Six movies, or at least parts of six movies, were consumed over two flights. And episodes of House, Big Bang Theory and 30 Rock.

4. Wolverine really is a POS movie. Horrifying.

5. Kevin Costner can act. I tend to forget this in light of The Postman and Waterworld.

6. I am slowly moving towards being a video game nerd. The "upcoming games" feature in the Xbox magazine I bought for the flight has drool stains all over it.

7. The bed I slept in at the Kuala Lumpur Transit Hotel was the second hardest bed I have ever experienced, only eclipsed by the bed in Prague that felt like three slabs of concrete joined together cross-wise by metal rods that protruded a good inch from the bed.

8. H1N1 is a big deal in Malaysia. Seemed like every other person at the airport was wearing a face mask of some sort. No Outbreak suits visible, though I expect hordes of men dressed in them waiting in sterile rooms to bodytackles feverish travellers.

9. Shutter Island and Inception may well rekindle my faith in Leonardo de Caprio.

10. Jetlag is a gloriuos thing. Jetlag going east is even more glorious. I expect it to be even more glorious in a few hours.

If a man goes into business with only the idea of making money, the chances are he won’t

That evil and despicable mega-corp Disney has gone and done it again. The day before yesterday it was announced that Disney is buying Marvel. Let me repeat that. Disney, as in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, is buying Marvel.

Now, this may not mean a whole lot to most of you. In fact, most of you probably don't care. To me, though, and to othr comic book nerds around my age this is a pretty big deal.

Marvel comics were an integral part of my teens. X-Men, Spider-Man, The Hulk and, above all, Daredevil, were like friends to me. The Marvel universe is the first that I found escape in, and regardless of the ups and downs Marvel and it's titles have gone through over the years, I will always look back at all that stuff I read in the early to mid 90s with a smile on my face.

My favorites are X-Men circa 1991-1995, Frank Miller's Daredevil and some Punisher stuff. Oh, and Marshal Law, but that's not really Marvel Marvel.

So now Disney is swooping in, assuming control of a Marvel Comics once again on the top of their game. This is a company that filed for bankruptcy in 1996, after being the most visible comic book company for a long time. The recovery they've gone through since then is nothing short of remarkable. And much of this is due to the success of the movies based on Marvel characters. This began in 1998 with Blade, and continues to this day with blockbuster hits like Iron Man.

Let's take a moment to ponder all them Marvel films. Being a fan of many of the original comics, I have watched these movies with a mix of fascination and utter dread. There have been disasters and there have been surprising highlights.

The surprise was Iron Man. I was never a die-hard fan of the character itself, but as soon as that first trailer surfaced and I saw Robert Downey Jr's crooked smile, I knew it would be a wild ride. And it was, and still is. I await Iron Man 2 with a not so crooked smile.

The disaster? Daredevil. A train wreck, of epic proportions. I know the word may seem inappropriate here, but it was a downright rape of one of my favorite characters. Horrendous.

Daredevil, which is sort of Marvel's equivalent to Batman, is one of the reasons why I view the acquisition of Marvel by Disney with a great deal of horror. Sure, they had the good sense not to mess with Pixar's recipe for success after they bought them, but that's not really the same thing, to me. Marvel has a darker side that I imagine may be hard to swallow for some Disney execs. This dark side is rarely more evident than in Daredevil. And there has been talk of a reboot of the Daredevil franchise, a la Batman Begins. Darker, edgier, without Ben Affleck and Colin Farrell. Oh the possibilities.

Now though, Scrooge McDuck has opened his vault of infinite dollar bills and let them rain over Marvel's shareholders. An astonishing 4 billion dollars is the price for my childhood nostalgia. Time will tell if anything good comes out of it. I expect disappointment. My gut feeling is that Disney is after the possibilities to sell toys, video games and all that jazz, and will focus on churning out blockbuster movies based on Marvel characters. Not in itself a bad thing, but like I said, I doubt they will embrace the darker side of Marvel.

If there are any comic book fans reading this (and yes, the question is to you too, Steelwheels, oh mighty Marvel geek), please share your Marvel memories and tell me your fave Marvel movie. If anyone says Daredevil, I will disown you.

A mercenary, a psychopath & a bundle of cash...what could go wrong?

Again, a question of plot.

I recently finished the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, on my Xbox 360. It received mixed reviews, and some people I know with insight into the gaming business sort of sneered when I said I had bought it.

Lynch was a bit pissed at Kane's snoring and bought him a Breathe-Right

In the campaign mode, you play Kane, a former merc who is rescued from a prison transport and then paired up with an unstable psycho called Lynch to retrieve a large sum of money that Kane supposedly stole from his former mercenary partners, The7. The game involves shootouts, sneaking around, family members murdered, betrayals, yada yada yada.

Kane & Lynch is definitely not the best game I've played, nor is it the worst. And while there are some problems with the actual mechanics of the game (is that the right term, oh game geeks? Mechanics?), the main problem is the story. The plot.

It begins promising, but clichéd, then builds through a number of cityscape scenes obviously inspired by, among others, Michael Mann's Heat (Best. Shootout. Ever.). Unfortunately, the end doesn't deliver, at all, and throughout the game, it feels as if there are cut scenes missing between levels, and no real explanation of why you move from one setting to the next.

With more time, more work on the story and a more powerful ending, this could have been a great game. Dark and intense, and above all different. Now it feels like any low-rate action thriller that didn't get the proper budget or script treatment. Too bad.

Oh. Of course there's a movie in the making. Lo and behold, it's stunt coordinator/second unit director Simon Crane who'll make his directorial debut, and rumors point to Bruce Willis starring as Kane and possible Mickey Rourke or Billy Bob Thornton as Lynch. In the hands of an experienced director and above all an experienced screenwriter (Kyle Ward has written one movie that no one has heard of), Kane & Lynch could be really great. Again: dark, intense, different. Is it too much to ask for the Coen Brothers or David Fincher to do a video game adaptation? Script by Jonathan Nolan? No?

If the audience never understands the plot, it can be counted on to be attentive to the very end

The concepts of plot, narrative and story have been occupying my thoughts a lot lately. Not just in connection with my own writing, but more generally as well.

I like being confused. I like having no idea what the hell is going on. When I read a book or see a movie that is. I'm not talking a story with unnecessary twists and turns, confusion for the sake of confusion, but a well-crafted tale that asks as many questions as it supplies answers. Open-ended stories, or stories that end with a punch in the stomach, are my favorites.

One problem I have with a lot of movies, and TV shows for that matter, is that they assume the viewers are stupid. When a character has a flash-back to something we saw only 30 minutes ago, they see the need to show that specific flash-back instead of assuming we can get into the character's head. This dumbing down, the assumption that those watching cannot think for themselves, infuriates me to no end.

And yes, this is the kinds of things I fill my head with. What I walk around being irritated about. I can't help it.

So, when I see or read something which doesn't assume I have the attention span of a six-year old with ADD, I get excited. When someone sees fit to craft a story that doesn't end the way you expect, or that simply goes against convention and ends badly, if it's an American movie, I get excited.

We're watching Stranger Than Fiction tonight. A movie that at its very center deals with the concept of narrative. If you haven't seen it, see it. It excites me.

Windows are made in your mind

It's been a good weekend. Good people. Good food. Good stuff.

Had meaningful conversations with some people. Talked about letting your guard down, which circumstances can trick you into doing and it turns out to be a good thing. Talked about not having children, ever, and the things you can do to live by that. Made lasagna. Ate lasagna. Marveled at how good a lasagna we make. Played some Lego Batman. Felt like a child again, which is a good thing. Which I should do more often. Listened to new Bat For Lashes songs. And Kongh. Lots and lots of Kongh. Read the 20th anniversary issue of Empire, which is guest edited by Stephen Spielberg. Realized, once again, that there are too many movies and not enough time. Worked on monster Kongh interview, soon up here. Hugged the girl. Watched lots and lots of TV. Hugged some more.

Now, sleep and dream. Tomorrow, off into the City of Masks. More on that tomorrow.

Over the years, through good times and bad, through seasons of hope and change, she stood by me

Today I feel like Jeremy Piven, about 28 seconds into this clip.



Minus the joint. And the receeding hairline.

Today its ten years since she became Mah Girl. We're celebrating at a dear friend's 30th birthday party, and then spending the weekend in a hotel. Yay!

Grown ups are quirky creatures, full of quirks and secrets

My day, in short.

Woke up. Had myself a turbo morning. Went to work. Had meetings from eight until four. Lunch during a meeting. A chicken sallad. Wrote a Change Request for our statistics system. Finished a Commercial Description for a new project. Took the train home. Finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. Excellent, excellent book. Noticed the girl had cleaned the entire apartment. Squeaky. Fucking. Clean. Smile. Ate hamburger. Watched The Others. Scary-ass movie. Cuddled in the couch. Watched Eddie Izzard's Circle. Laughed. Soon sleep. A good day.

But I'd trade it all for just a little bit of piece of mind

So here I am, Thursday night, watching Criminal Minds, a semla in my stomach and a smile on my lips. A shitload of things to say, but no real peace of mind to say it.

It's not that I am in a bad place, I'm actually feeling pretty good, but I can't seem to be able to structure what I want to say. There are some things that I feel I need to get out, but they will just have to wait.

For now, a short list of wohoos!

- Faith No More is reuniting. One of my all-time fave bands is playing in Europe again this summer, after a ten year hiatus. Apart from dead bands and The Tea Party, they're the band I thought least likely I would ever get to see again. Wohoo!
- I've bought a new laptop. A Lenovo Ideapad 10-inch. A pretty sweet little machine. Wohoo!
- Tomorrow I'm hopefully getting a load of DVDs from Amazon in the mail, to go with the package already waiting at the post office. We're mostly looking forward to seeing The Escapist. Wohoo!
- I'm currently reading Starbucked, about the rise of Starbucks. Excellent stuff. Wohoo!
- Tomorrow night a bunch of people from work are going out to down ridiculous drinks and get Jakob, who is leaving to go to a small web development company, drunk beyond relief. Wohoo!

What are your wohoos right now?

The most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance

This weekend has been all about rest and recharging my mental batteries. I've had three Saturdays in a row, and tomorrow, Monday, is Sunday. And we've gone through six movies so far, aiming for nine. Sweet!

Only two months into 2009, and already it looks like this will be a superb year when it comes to live music. Currently on the calendar, I have Wintersleep on March 7th, 36 Crazyfists and Poison the Well on the 30th, Woven Hand in May and the Arvika Festival in July, with Depeche Mode headlining, and I Are Droid, Burst, Thåström, my friend Magnus' band Engel and a shitload of other bands playing as well.

Really, the prospect of a good live show is something that can elevate my spirits almost infinitely, and I know both Woven Hand and Depeche Mode will be mindblowing. So I have decided that 2009 will be a good year, musically.

It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen

I ended up going to bed at 3 in the morning between Friday and Saturday. My intention was to be asleep before midnight. Instead I spent the night watching two football games, shooting 136 terrorists, talking to various friends and foes online, and waiting for my Mah Girl to come home.

I'm not really the worrying kind, but there's something about sitting up, waiting, that appeals to me. Not really sure what though...

So yesterday was a very mellow day. We kicked back and watched three movies.

Dawn of the Dead
(note: the remake, not the original) Yawn. The first time I saw this it was pretty cool. Turns out it's a POS. It has the most unmotivated naked boobs scene ever, and while I accept that characters in horror movies generally suffer from a lack of logical thinking, these dumbasses are exceptional. I won't need to see this ever again. Dawn of the Dead gets a shaved chin. Not a single hair.

The Prestige
Christopher Nolan in top form, as always. If you haven't seen it, do it. Do it now. It's about two 19th century stage magicians trying to outtrick each other. It has a murder mystery, twists and turns, David Bowie and pseudo-historically correct science signed Nikola Tesla. Outstanding stuff. Five beards out of five.

Tesla's field of lights in Colorado

1408
Swedish director Mikael Håfström's adaptation of Stephen King's short story is pretty good. The best Stephen King adaptations have always come from his short stories (Apt Pupil, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption), and often short stories without any supernatural content. 1408 however stands firmly in horror territory, though with a streak of dark humor that had us chuckling a few times. Granted, our sense of humour might be more twisted than most...
Anywho, 1408 has a few scares, a few laughs, and John Cusack. What more do you need? Three beards and a moustache, out of five beards.

What I have learned from this weeked, and some basic Googling, (other than that I should never ever watch Dawn of the Dead again) is that I need to learn more about Nikola Tesla. Fascinating man. Someone to write something about.

I'm trying to feel more well adjusted than I really am, which is, I guess, the human condition.

The definition of "geek".

I'm at some friends' place in Borås. Why, you may ask. Not getting into that now. Not vital to the definition.

They pull out three different movies from a well-stocked DVD shelf (vital to the definition of another kind of geek: they have a better version of Jaws than I do. Must...upgrade...), and ask, "Which movie should we watch?".

We can't decide. One friend says, "Let's roll the dice to decide". Excellent, geek-friendly idea. Applause all around.

One problem. No dice.

Hence: online dice.

Ladies and gentlemen, "geek" is hereby defined *points to self*

It's too bad she won't live... but then again, who does?

We came to the conclusion today that Mah Girl is a replicant. A skin-job. A biorobot.

Why? Because she can only remember her childhood in snapshots, like actual photographies, and she can make kick-ass origami unicorns.

The glory that is Blade Runner.

OK. So I lied about the origami. But still. I might need to unpack my Voight-Kampff test.

I hardly think a few birds are going to bring about the end of the world

I woke with a persistent headache this morning, like someone had fixed a metal ring to the inner circumference of my skull and kept turning screws making it expand ever so slowly.

Thick fog shrouded the world outside, and I couldn't even see the school below our apartment building from our kitchen window.

Stevie Wayne: Well, my gauges must be wrong. I've got a wind blowing due east. Now what kind of a fog blows against the wind?
Dan O'Bannon: You got me.
Stevie Wayne: I'm not so sure I want you.

Walking outside felt like a dream. Sounds were muted, colors bleached of intensity. Whoever was inside my skull kept turning those screws, slowly, gleefully.

At the train station, hundreds if not thousands of jackdaws perched everywhere. On pylons, on power lines, along the outlines of the station house. Their eyes seemed to follow me. Some of them moved from pylon to pylon in sync with my steps. Music by Bernard Herrmann should have been playing in the background. I looked for masses of seagulls, but saw none. Exhaled.

No birds awaited me as I got off the train. Exhaled again.

Over the course of the day, I've managed to if not destroy, then at least distract the bastards playing with the screws. Ibuprofen, a big club sandwich and solitary confinement in a conference room so I can actually get some stuff done has helped.

Believe me when I say I will be on the lookout for flocks of birds on the way home...

Building better worlds

The highlight of today's Geekorama...I mean science fiction convention wasn't the members of the 501st Legion, and it wasn't the fact that I don't feel like such a geek when faced with people wearing Star Trek uniforms their mother has sown.

No, the highlight was my colleague Björn, who showed up to have his picture taken with Carl Weathers, in full Ivan Drago outfit, red satin robe and shorts with “Drago” on them and all. He even cut his already blond, square head of hair to match Drago's heli pad closer. He's mad, I tell you, mad! Though Weathers got a real laugh out of it. Pictures will be posted if I can score them from Björn.

Oh. And Lance Henriksen was there. I like Lance. To mark this occasion (and my geekiness), I wore my Weyland-Yutani tee. Had I thought about it, I would have brought a knife and asked him to repeat Bishop's trick from the mess hall onboard the Sulaco. Then again...maybe not.

I think it's safe to assume it isn't a zombie

Things like this, to me, is the reason for the Internet's existence. I shall build an altar to the glory of Angry Alien Productions. Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is one of my favorite movie sites. It gathers reviews from all over the BBI and from American newspapers, and displays an average percentage (the Tomatometer) to give you an indication of how movies have been rated.

Some examples from their list:
- Toy Story. 100%, on 49 reviews. My 50th wouldn't change that one bit.
- Jaws. 100%, on 34 reviews. Again. No change.
- The Usual Suspects. 89%, on 45 reviews. The best movie experience I've ever had. Should be a hundred, but what do critics know?
- The City of Lost Children (La Cité des Enfants Perdus). 82%, on 33 reviews. The most visually stunning movie ever. A fairy tale for grownups.
- Fight Club. 81%, on 124 reviews. One of my favorite films, but still not much off what I would have said.
- 28 Weeks Later. 71%, on 173 reviews. Errr....no. POS. POS POS POS. So lame I don't know where to begin...
- Daredevil. 44%, on 202 reviews. This should have been a ten. Five. One. But then again, I can't be objective when it comes to childhood heroes.
- The Number 23. 8%, on 181 reviews. I thought this rating was very unfair after seeing the movie. But then again, I read a lot reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for this movie before seeing it, so my expecations were significantly lowered.

Can you find anything you really disagree with on their site?

I'm on their email list and get updates regularly. Today my eyes were drawn to the result for Max Payne. Zero. I repeat. Zero. So of course I had to go look. Turned out it was seven percent, but still. Seven. During the day it has gradually increased, and now stands at 15.

My favorite comment:

The film's best line sums up my feelings on it perfectly "Stay away from Max Payne." But they probably don't mean it the same way I do, huh?

Hilarious. I expect it to suck. I bet it could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. And I dare all of you to name a movie based on a video game that doesn't.