Mirror, Mirror (1995) TV Series

Mirror, Mirror is a 1995 TV series, filmed in New Zealand about a bunch of kids who find a magical mirror, that when placed in the house where it originally was and aligned perfectly with its former self, can transport people between the present day (well 1995) and nearly a hundred years in the past. Time-travel hilarity and drama ensues as the characters explore both the old colonial world, and respectively the new futuristic world, from the perspective of the children on the other side of the mirror. 

Classic time-travel moment. "I'm in naa-tee naan-teen?" *gasps*

In present day the series is a depiction of modern day New Zealand, with the kids involved in some school projects like archeology, history etc. In the past though some serious historical events are unfolding with the involvement of a young Russian monarch, treason, betrayal, all in all it switches between slice-of-life and period drama, whenever someone touches the mirror.

At one point the couple (hardly so, but heavily shipped throughout the whole series) end up in a sort of purgatory, a timeless place in 'reality?' where they're stuck until someone saves them. And a lot of the rest of the series focuses on moving the mirrors from one place to another so for example someone from the future can enter a locked jail cell, by placing the past mirror through the bars.

Time-travel is played with in all ways possible. People see their graves, or their great great grandparents, as kids their age, time is not what it seems to be since you can leave a groceries note in a tree trunk for the future folk, and ten minutes later someone will pop out of the mirror, asking you if you want your OJ with or without the pulp.

I remember watching this series ten or more years ago, and it was one of my favourite things to watch. It's clever, it's exciting, Mirror, Mirror is all in all one of the great memories of my childhood along with Pokemon (the Gameboy version) and my Nintendo 8bit. 

Requiem for a Dream: Darren Aronofsky

Requiem for a Dream is a 2000 movie from director Darren Aronofsky, who's knows for such culturally defining films, such as Pi, The Fountain, The Wrestler and Black Swan. The movie is based on the novel from Hubert Selby Jr. and its premise is exploring the means by which drug addiction in many ways changes and eventually destroys the lives of the people who meddle in them. 

The movie's protagonist, Harry(Jared Leto), his friend Tyrone(Marlon Wayans), his girlfriend, Marion(Jennifer Connelly) and his mother Sara(Ellen Burstyn) all have somewhat of a problem with substance abuse. The former three are products of the culture of their time, they're brought together by the act of shooting up heroin, although they come from different places. Harry and Tyrone are old friends, and Sarah is the daughter of rich parents who wants to gain her own independence by starting a designer clothes business. The movie starts out with Jared Leto's character 'stealing' his mother's TV in order to pawn it at the local market for some cash to go shoot up. His mother in the meantime's locked herself in her closet, and for an opening scene it's pretty intense in portraying the effects of heroin withdrawal in Harry who at the same time needs the hit bad, but professes a sort of misguided manipulative love for his mom.

Later on the movie tracks the characters through their daily lives, living a life of careless enjoyment from one hit to the next, never knowing where the night will take them. All of us should know better than to think it romantic, but the movie makes a great effort to compel with images of the complete wireless bliss that is reducing ones needs and wants in life to a simple substance addiction.

After some time our character decide it'd be a great idea to score some pure heroin, since there's the local heroin convention coming up, cut and sling it for some hard cash. After all Marion needs the money for her clothes shop, and Harry and Tyrone probably don't want to haul that TV every day for the rest of their lives. For a while it actually works out for them, but then it starts going downhill - and fast. Tyrone gets into trouble with the local drug-lord, Harry's arm is already gangrenous from shooting up so much, and Marion and Sara's fate is probably the most horrifying of them all. Meanwhile Sara has been a drug addict herself in a more socially acceptable way taking amphetamines (which at the time were prescribed along with sleeping pills for weight-loss).

Near the end of the movie we see all of the characters completely broken by the consequences of their choices. Back when Requiem for a Dream movie came out it was universally appraised, as an eye-opening tale of how substance abuse can and will ruin both your life and the lives of the people you love.   

Raid Food: Three quick easy and cheap recipes for gamers.

Naturally, when in the middle of a gaming session none of us have time to cook, but why order pizza, when it's expensive, unhealthy and most of all it takes half an hour to forty five minutes to arrive anyway. So instead get these simple ingredients:


flour / eggs / salt / baking powder / cooking oil / bulk cooking yellow cheese / meat: any meat will do / veggies if you sway the vegetarian way - onions, leek, potatoes etc. / any kind of spices - pepper, chili, barbecue spice etc.


You'll also need tin foil an oven a bowl to mix stuff, one plate, one fork and one knife and a frying pan, preferably a cheap-a$$ non-stick wok and a pot and probably a wooden spatula.

Some quick common sense tips before you start: If cooking for the first time you can waste ingredients and money

at the least and kill yourself at worst. Burning protein like meat chars and eventually catches flames. Overheated

oil smokes up and bursts into flames, totalling your kitchen in seconds, if that happens don't throw water onto it,

unless you want a fire-ball in your kitchen - use a wet towel to smother the flames, since fire hates a lack of oxygen

more than it hates water. Burning carbohydrates such as veggies boiling in a pot (with the water boiled out) 
smoke up and release Carbon Monoxide, which will kill you in minutes, it's a smokeless, odourless, 
colourless gas that can fill up your kitchen in mere minutes.

1: Trinidad Aloo Pies

Start by peeling 3-4 large potatoes throw them in salted water and boil until you can cut them in half with the fork without any effort - that's the easiest way to know they're ready. Meanwhile in a bowl mix half a bowl of flour, 1 table spoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt and water. Add like 3/4 tea-cup of WARM water and with a stirring motion make a soft dough that shouldn't be sticky. If your dough is softer you can always add flour while you knead it, if it's harder add some more water and stir well.

Your potatoes will not be ready by a long-shot, so dump that dough onto a large plate and sprinkle it with flour. Spread the flour on top of the dough and on the sides so when it inevitable sticks to the plate you can use your fingers and the flour to lift it up. Then KNEAD, like you're grinding fishing in WoW, don't burn yourself out just punch it up, until it's flat then fold into a ball again, flour if sticky, and punch up again - do that for 10 minutes.

By now those annoying potatoes should have started to bubble every now and again, but ignore the weak-sauce pre-boil and move on, being rightfully disgusted by the insane amounts of energy that salty water is able to buffer, before it starts to give a f&*(.

Take your dough and make a cylinder out of it, then cut it into 6-9 equal pieces, then roll those in balls, and leave them on the side, but make sure they're not touching each other, since they'll try to merge together, like the Terminator and annoy the living hell out of you, having to do the whole cutting and shaping all over again.

Now your water is probably boiling so go have a smoke, have some coffee, chill out, think about the meaning of life, and come back in about 20 minutes. Try if you can drive your fork into a potato. Do you have to push? No? It goes all the way through and that poor thing ends up in halves? Score! Take off of the stove, dump the water, and using your fork mash the potatoes into pulp, then add spices like pepper, chili, whatever you like, and mash some more. Flatten the thing on the bottom of the pot, and with your fork cut it into the same number of divisions as the balls of dough you have.

Finally heat up your wok with half an inch of cooking oil and be careful here, cuz that thing will smoke up and eventually catch flame if you forget about it. Take a ball of dough flatten it into a pancake the size of your palm, then dump the potato mix, press and fold in two until you have a dumpling shaped thing. Squeeze the edges together and twist to close it. Now flatten it between your hands as thin as possible without breaking it, then fry until golden brown on both sides. Keep in mind it takes 1-2 minutes on high heat per side, and 3-4 on medium heat. Easy way to find out when its done is it's going to sizzle like a motherf*^$#r at first, then it's gonna go quiet. When it goes quiet it's done. Flip it using your wooden spatula, then drain on a sheet of tin foil.

If you've closed the dough well, and your pies didn't have any holes in them, they'll puff up to 2-3 times their thickness, when you fry them. So don't worry about flattening them too much, as long as there's no holes in the dough. The flatter they are the better they'll taste.

You can leave some for later, they're spicy and taste great both hot and cold and in combination with anything else you can think of, they'll also last in your fridge.


2: Home-made pan pizza

Make the dough as you would for the Aloo Pies, but add a tablespoon of cooking oil and a pinch of sugar. Spread it on a piece of tin foil, large enough to cover the baking tray of your stove, the flatter it is, the better. Set your oven on the highest heat (300 Celsius for mine), and throw the dough in it for 3-4 minutes. It may start to form bubbles of air, poke and flatten those with your fork. Don't brown the dough, or you'll end up with a lame excuse for Turkish bread, take it out after 3-4 minutes. We do this so your pizza isn't doughy, cuz it takes more heat for the dough to cook, than your regular ingredients.

So take that out and add some ketchup or tomato sauce on it, cheese, meat, spices, whatever you like. Any leftovers you have will do. Go crazy experimenting. Throw it back in, until the sides are nicely brown and crispy, which on high heat would be around 10-15 minutes. You can add spices after its done, or an egg.

The trick to adding an egg to pizza is it takes 2-3 minutes to cook, after which it turns into rubber. So only add it when your pizza is done, throw a pinch of salt on it, back in the oven, and watch it as it cooks in front of your monitor strained eyes.

3: One-piece hot dogs


Make the dough same as for the Aloo pies, although add an egg, that's gonna make your dough more puffy. Spread it really thin, you can roll it using a rolling pin if you have one, or a thick glass bottle. Make sure to dust it with flour as you roll it, and flip it every now and again or else it'll stick to the tin foil and you'll have to clean that off piece by little piece, which sucks.

Then cut the dough using your knife, into pieces the size of your palm, take some hot dog wieners, or any other meat or veggies or cheese you like, throw them on top and close the dough in the shape of an envelope. Pinch the edges, so it doesn't open up when it bakes, but leave it open on the top, so you can later on add some ketchup to it or whatever you like.

Make sure the oven is heated on max, and throw those things in, making sure they're spread apart on the tray, since they'll expand and you probably don't want to have to cut them off from each other.  As soon as the top is nicely brown and before any of it starts to burn, take them out, add fresh vegetables, sauces or anything else you like and enjoy. 

A new Guess the Movie Challenge! and some WoW gameplay.

Since it's Saturday I've decided to kick back a little bit, and give you some gameplay of WoW. I'm not much of a WoW player, but I like to play from time to time. More reviews will be coming up in the days to follow. Also please tell me what's your favourite movie and I might review it in the next week.

Also I'm going to set you up with another part of Guess the Movie! This time the movie is about an Eastern European trying to make ends meet in America. The lead actress is a pretty, petite, dark haired Superstar on the European music scene, who is known for her short temper with journalists. For her role she won a Palm d'Or for best actress and the movie won another palm for best movie.

The movie itself is a dark psychological drama, rivaling by its impact the likes of The Green Mile and Requiem for a Dream. As a last tip, the opening scene of the movie features the same snippet from last week's challenge - you know Roses and Rainbows and Whiskers and Kittens :D 

And here's the play-through on this blog's YouTube channel. The character is an Alliance Holy Priest, the dungeon is Halls of Stone. Parts 2 and 3 are in the video's description. 

American Beauty: Kevin Spacey and Thomas Newman

American Beauty is a movie that doesn't play around with it's premise, from the beginning it's awfully clear what our main character (played by Kevin Spacey) is on about. The movie starts with the revelation that he's dead and this is the story of how he came to be this way. But don't be too sad for him, since he's been dead for quite a while, even though he was still breathing. The opening scene is an overview of his unexciting life, in a passionless marriage, on the verge of a mid-life crisis. 


Then something happens, he's at his daughter's high-school sports event, and he sees a girl in the cheerleaders team, that seems to embody everything he used to love about life, and the entirety of the mindless careless dreams and hopes of his youth.

The movie is a classic example of how a grown woman can take away a man's bollocks, for the better half of twenty or thirty years of marriage, then when he suddenly remembers what he used to be like as a young man, those acquire a coating of pure steel and return to their owner by means of a quantum leap straight into his pants.

Congratz on those who guessed right in the Let's Play update and for the rest who might have not seen the film, American Dream comes highly recommended as one of the best Kevin Spacey movies out there. Oh and on top of that, the soundtrack comes courtesy of Thomas Newman. 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow of Chernobyl

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a 2007 PC game by Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, that's loosely based on the novella Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and the 1979 movie of the same name by Andrei Tarkovsky. The premise of the story revolves around the Zone, where a freak accident, this time based around the Ukrainian Nuclear Reactor explosion in Pripyat, has been the cause of paranormal activity and heavy mutations amongst the local fauna. 

Unlike the movie, where the horror, if it can be called that, is purely psychological, the game contains some very real monsters among many irradiated dogs, huge mutated beasts reminiscent of the Fallout Maul Rats, and not the least a throng of human soldiers.

You're a Stalker and that's all you can remember as you wake up in an unfamiliar village somewhere in the Zone. The only clue to your past is a note in your PDA calling you to 'Kill Strelok!'. So you embark on a journey to find Strelok and find out why you should kill him if at all.

What makes the game great is the Fallout suspense and atmosphere, while the action is involving and laden with insecurity and the constant fear of running out of ammo, if you haven't stocked up for the scenario of a Third World War, what really shines about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is how the Ukrainian studio has translated the feeling of the movie into an First Person Shooter form. The game starts out in a small town, with a bar and little else worth noting, but pretty soon you'll be crawling on all four through the sewers and bunkers and fields of Pripyat, running between concrete blocks for cover, from one quest to the next.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. simulates the feeling of an open world game and although you won't feasibly be able to just walk around into the next area unequipped, each quest chain is set in its own large and expansive terrain, that's completely unique save for the ever present washed out Eastern European daylight, the dust and the ticking of your Geiger counter.

Besides being an FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl possesses some RPG elements. You have a segmented chart-like inventory al-la Diablo, although it's limited by the amount of weight you can carry, rather than the trivial blocks of space you have. Nevertheless the sectioned grid gives you a rough idea of what each item weighs and pretty soon you'll find yourself balancing between carrying an extra weapon or some health packs, or stocking up on ammo for your trusty scoped Kalashnikov, that also happens to be maxed out on shooting speed. Best of all the weapons have grades and statistics, again much like Diablo. Rare weapons are spread throughout the game in tough to find or heavily protected areas, and they also may posses a special ability like extra damage, extra shooting speed, or stability etc. On top of that there's sets of armour, some provide trivial everyday Kevlar in-lay or even just some metal plates to hold them together, others are suited towards radiation-resistance. Both the weapons and armour suits in the game look futuristic and at the same time resemble completely technology that's readily available in the world today.

Among the few problems of the game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a resource hog, and that's probably its biggest let-down. For a game of 2007 it could barely run on a mid-grade computer of that age and held it together just almost right on maxed out graphics on a high-end rig. But you shouldn't have these problems these days.

So now that prices for both the hardware and the games have dropped significantly, there's no reason why you shouldn't enjoy this particular game to its fullest. There's two expansion that came shortly after the original game - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat. The games are exciting, original, they're stuffed with content and they offer it in a compelling way. For a Fallout fan like myself there's nothing better than some post-apocalyptic lone-man journeying around the wasteland - be it my own beloved Eastern Europe.

Also Check Out: Yesterday's Movie Feature: A Scanner Darkly and my previous Review of Stalker 1979 by Andrei Tarkovsky.

A Scanner Darkly: 2006

A Scanner Darkly is a 2006 movie with Keanu Reeves,Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr. based on the Philip K Dick novel of the same name. The story revolves around a narcotics agent, who also poses as a drug user, and gradually gets more and more involved into the lifestyle of his junkie friends. 


The film makes use of a technique that saw some amazing movies back in the days. Rotoscoping, although it never became very popular, is a style, where the movie is shot in live action, and later on hand drawn images are layered over the footage in order to create the effect of an animated film with a full 3D depth panning and tilting of the camera. 


As far as the story goes A Scanner Darkly is reminiscent of movies such as Trainspotting, Requiem for a Dream, The Acid House, although the 1977 book far predates the sources of those titles. Other titles that make use of the rotoscoping technique are Waking Life and Sin City.