Towards Mecca

I know this is a silly reason to make a blog post but I was so happy with the MSN avatar my friend Hugo made for me that I just had to show it off!

Anyway, check out his DeviantArt page! He really is a talented guy!

When I heard the news that the new Iron Man movie was actually pretty good, I have to say that I took it with a grain of salt. To be honest, I don’t think much of the recent Marvel movies. Sure, they’re pretty much all better than Superman Returns, but none so far have been as good as Batman Begins (with the possible exception of the second X-Men movie). Coming from me, it might sound strange since I’m a huge comic book fan and movie enthusiast, but I started to believe that non-Batman comics and movies should not cross paths again. At least not when Hollywood is involved.

That was until I saw Iron Man. I think the best word to describe my thoughts on Iron Man is one I borrow from a friend. After I explained how I felt about loving and hating the Iron Man movie, he explained that I was conflicted. Good word. I think I’ll hold on to that one.

On the one side, I loved the movie! I thought the script, acting, directing, and special effects were brilliant! I can’t really find much wrong with the movie and I’m usually very perceptive! Nothing much except….

… being a Muslim myself, I’m very sensitive to Hollywood’s demonising of Muslims. I understand that United States is at war with some Muslims, and that Hollywood happens to be in the US, but it still irks me when I see Americans being portrayed as the heroes of the world and Muslims as their heathen counter-parts.

To be fair, the movie did only demonize some “bad Muslims” that were actually oppressing innocent Muslim. This, in itself, is admirable. Also, one Muslim is even shown siding with and befriending Iron Man. And last but not least, the movie did touch upon the topic of American Corporations selling arms to its own nation’s enemies. The actual enemy ended up being an American as well so it wasn’t as bad as with most movies out there that use Muslims as the new Nazis unapologetically.

All in all, the movie really was great and extremely entertaining. Its handling of Muslims as enemies rubbed me the wrong way, but was still handled better than most movies out there. I highly recommend Iron Man to anyone who hasn’t seen it despite my slight conflicted emotions about some of its content, and that by itself speaks volumes to its greatness.

On Saturday, my little brother (age 15) and I went to the EB Games near his house. While there I saw an inexpensive second-hand copy of Bioshock and proceeded to the cash register to pay. I was refused.

You read right, the teller behind the cash register refused to sell me the copy because I was with a minor who was not my child. He said I couldn’t prove that I wasn’t buying the game for my brother. If he were my son, then they would explain what the rating system was and let me decide, but since he was just my brother I couldn’t buy anything rated Mature.

Obviously, this ticked me off because I really was buying it for myself. Sure, he was probably going to play it once I was done, but my mother wouldn’t have minded. I know that. Hell, he watches movies with worse content than Bioshock probably has on a weekly basis!

I had stormed out of the store in utter confusion and disbelief, but when I let my rage subside, I realized that this wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Maybe if more stores had this policy the media would give M rated games a break! Well eventually I’m sure they will have to one way or another. Either they’ll be tired of beating the same old dog or their audience will be. Especially since, in a couple of years, most of their audience would have grown-up with video-games and see them for what they truly are: Interactive Entertainment. A co-worker also told me that liquor stores have the same policy for people who walk in with minors so it’s not totally unprecedented.

What this boils down to is that I was initially peeved at being turned down and sent home, but now that I’ve had the time to cool down and collect my thoughts, I see it as a positive move on the part of EB Games and I commend them for making it!

I just found out that Sony is now selling to Canadian in their own currency! So what does that mean? Initially, the Playstation Store’s prices didn’t reflect the newer, much higher, value of the Canadian Dollar. Now, Canadians will no longer overpay for downloadable content (well not more than their American counter-parts at least)! In my opinion this should have been a given from day one, but since the XBox Marketplace has been around much longer and is still using the misleading Microsoft Points currency, I have to hand it to Sony for having made this move.

Now, all that’s left is a decent exclusive title…