Google Earth 5 is here! As a geography fanatic, I'm happy that a new version is out. With several new features, such as:

- Historical viewing (!)
- Ocean Floor Viewing
- Tour Recording

Among several improvements such as adding more 3D buildings. At about this time, all the major cities have almost all their buildings in 3D. This is a fantastically pulled off feat. However, some may be disappointed that some cities have many buildings that are just white, no detailed color. This was the case for Washington D.C., although almost all of the buildings were in 3D, only the landmarks were in color.

Another feature is historical viewing. Using this, YOU CAN SEE SHOTS OF YOUR CITY FROM ALL THE WAY TO BACK TO 1940. This of course, is not perfect at all. If you want to see what Nazi Germany looked like in the early 40's in high detail, you're out of luck. It is very hard to explain how this historical viewing system is organized. It seems like in the 90's, America is the only place to have black and white satellite images, but it is in somewhat high detail. The rest of the world is in color, but not detailed at all. This changes as time goes back and forth. This feature just seems very mushy (in a bad way) and you can't really get anything out of what this historical viewing feature is offering.

Now we go to a feature that is actually useful and is actually not broken. This is the Tour Recording, which is allows you to record tours of whatever you want; it essentially just records your screen as your browsing this world called Earth. You can playback these tours and save them. In addition, although I haven't tested it, I believe you can record your voice like commentary using a mic while doing your tour, as there is a button with a Mic symbol on it.

Finally, we have Ocean Floor Viewing, a feature that allows you to explore underwater oceans, and as useless it is, IT'S BEAUTIFUL. Seriously, I'm amazed how hard it must it must have been to do all that detail for the oceans. You can find particular locations in the ocean and watch National Geographic videos of events that occurred in that area of the ocean. If you don't believe how beautiful it looks, look at the picture below.

So, as mediocre as this beta is, it is still filled with great concepts that just need work. A lot of it.

This year was the best year for movies ever.

5. Burn After Reading

I normally don't like the Cohen brothers (I hated No Country For Old Men), but I think they did a great job of making a very strange, yet very amusing dark comedy. This is definitely high on my list of favorite dark comedies. This movie was funny (especially Brad Pitt), smart, and unique in the characters and how they acted. I was very impressed by this movie, but I wasn't "changed".

4. The Wrestler

This movie was the most emotional movie of the year, and definitely one of the best performances of the year by Mickey Rourke. This movie follows a washed up wrestler, and portrays it very well. However, there was something missing from this movie. There were definitely some very teary moments, but it just seems that a lot of it was missing something. I really wanted this movie to be #1 or #2. If the movie was shot a little differently with some things tweeked, this movie would be a masterpiece.

3. Tropic Thunder

This movie struck me to choose one of my favorite actors from now one: Robert Downey Jr. His fantastic performance in this movie blew me away, and he is the only reason this film is on my list. Funniest, yet most realistically played performance of the year. Probably the best acting performance of the year. Other than Robert, This movie had good, but not great, other actors and comical value.

2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Every minute of this 3 hour 20 minute film was worth it. This film is written and played so well by all the actors, and the make-up and visual effects used to form Benjamin Button's age was among the best of that field. This movie had so many emotional parts too, and it really shows about life and death and growing and aging and everything. Absolutely spectacular film

1. WALL-E

This is the only film this year that I can call a masterpiece of the modern art of film. I am a huge Pixar fan, and this has to be my favorite. This masterpiece just beautifully screams fables and stories about love and other human emotions, expressed in two robots in an apocalyptic world using an art used at its best: body language.

I love every minutes of this movie. I fell in love with the characters, human and robot, that can only be formed by the one, the only Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo). This movie deserves every Oscar in the book. This is a masterpiece of animation, and exceeded the emotional capabilities ever thought in animation into a living breathing experience. I highly recommend everyone seek this movie and watch it. And love it, your soul damn well needs it.

I absolutely loved Resident Evil 4 for the PS2 back in the day. It was one of my favorite games. Since I beat that masterpiece, I've been waiting and waiting for the next installment. And what do you know, it's today, and I downloaded it, and played it for a while on my Xbox. Here are my impressions:

In the Resident Evil 5 demo for the Xbox 360, you have 2 levels to play from. Remember that I forgot all the names of the levels. In one level, you and your female partner (yes kids, this game is co-op, either with a computer or with a friend, either offline or online) witnessed a large gathering of your favorite infected zombies, somewhere in Africa. After a sane human is decapitated by the zombies, the leader witnesses you through the window in which you watched from. This is the part where dozens of zombies go after you. Don't worry, they don't come all at once. But they seem to never end, and they come from all directions: from the window, through a hole in the wall, and through a ceiling. It was very hard, and you find yourself always running away so you can spend the few seconds it takes to reload or the 10 seconds it takes to open up you menu and switch weapons or heal yourself. If that doesn't get in your way, then your partner will. I don't care if she helps you, she's always in the way and will take some ammo on the floor that could be yours, and, when you are in a corner fighting zombies, you see your partner with a zombie around her neck needing help, and if she dies, you must start over. This is a mistake on Capcom's part, but it is unchangeable since essentially the partner will be involved in the story. In addition, the controls seem slow and are not friendly to the fact that zombies are coming from all directions. The graphics seem minimally improved from Resident Evil 4, and they seem disgusting knowing this is on an Xbox 360. Anyways, this level was hard and I didn't even get close to beating it.

The other level seems more of a relief. It's more balanced with the zombie count per square foot. You'll travel around a town, breaking into buildings, shooting zombies in the face, picking up gold, and watching helicopters break down, assisting your partner from a distance, and trying to fight bag-face covered chain-wielding psycozombies, just as fun as it was in the good old days.

Now for the so called "co-op" from what I've tried today, I could not host nor join a game online, I just couldn't, so I haven't experienced online multiplayer, but I can imagine it being a lot more fun then the computer is.

From what I've played, there is no information at all about the story, I assume these are levels from the middle of the beginning, no background is given.

Overall:
7.4 / 10

I take a potato chip...

AND EAT IT!!!!

today i wached advent children

this r cloud

Another great one from the Killers:

"Your sky is full of dreams, but you don't know how to fly" - This is Your Life by the Killers

HAIL SATAN!

"I feel this energy beneath my feet like something underground's gonna come up and carry me"

- Sam's Town by the Killers

I made a topic last night while Poozy was online, and the topic I made wasn't totally worthy of deletion, and yet it was deleted anyway. Later I found out Poozy deleted the millionth topic.

I have a gut feeling that I made the millionth topic...

Aren't I right?