Monthly Archives: August 2010

Summer is almost over

Life

My favorite season always goes by so fast. Last week was a downer weather wise, it rained for about 4 days straight. That put a sour ending to an other wise fun visit from my sister and niece and nephew. Being cooped up in the house all day is no good for a 3 and 6 year old. The day after they left the sunshine came back and summer is now giving the Northeast at least one more heat wave. Been about 90 for the past 3 days but the humidity isn’t bad. Really nice, I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

Tomorrow is September already! Last quarter of the year and work is about to get really brutal.

Here’s Chloe’s latest life achievement!

Movie Review Lightning Round

Movies

I’ve seen a few movies lately that I think are better served as quick hit reviews than one of my full on blabber format.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is based on a comic book of the same name and is expertly directed by Edgar Wright (best known for Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz). SP is about a young Canadian man and his trouble with ladies. He starts dating a High School girl and then meets Ramona Flowers who he immediately becomes infatuated with; love at first sight. But she has more than her own baggage in tow! Enter the 7 Evil Exes that Scott must defeat in order to be with Romona. The world of Scott Pilgrim is rooted in video game fantasy. Everyone is a fighting master, super powers aren’t out of the ordinary and there are a ton of video game/anime references. It has a very narrow market (as seen by the box office results) but it’s a really well made movie. I like Michael Cera as Scott, the whole cast is great really. The soundtrack is tops (I’m listening to it now) but I was really impressed by the direction and special FX. Every dime they spent can be seen on screen. The CG is fantastic, the editing and direction are just eye popping, there isn’t a single boring cut in the movie. The fight Choregraphy is some wild shit too! Expertly made, there was a tremendous amount of time and love put into the production. It really looks like a comic book come to life. I dug it more than I thought I would, it’s exciting and pretty funny at parts as well.

Batman: Under The Red Hood is a direct to DVD animated feature. It rocks. A great story that involves Robin and Nightwing that just gets better as it goes a long. I was completely enthralled when the end credits hit. Production values that fit Batman; great animation, fantastic soundtrack, really well written and a tasteful amount of violence. Batman and Joker have new voice actors which I was worried about, but it didn’t take me long to get used to them (John DiMaggio does an incredible Joker laugh). Highly recommended for Batman fans.

The Princess and The Frog– I haven’t seen an animated Disney movie in awhile and this one was pretty good! Loved the animation, there is some crazy set pieces (mostly for the music numbers) with eye popping color work. It takes place in New Orleans so there is Jazz running all over the place which I really enjoyed. The songs are all pretty catchy (Dr. Facilier’s number being my favorite). The story is pretty standard fairy tale fare with a slight twist. Instead of the prince turning back into a man with a kiss, the girl gets turned into a frog which of course leads to a wild journey of danger and self enlightenment with a batch of colorful characters (Raymond the firefly rules). Good times.

Welcome to August

Games, TV

Summer is whipping right by. July did prove to be pretty epic, lots of fun events happened for me.

I’m currently addicted to Starcraft II, along with a few million other people. It’s been a long time since I bought a PC game and it was near impossible not to pick this up, 11 year wait for the sequel to one of my favorite games of all time. It lives up to it which is a great relief.

Speaking of addictions, I recently finished watching the entire Xena TV show from the 90’s. I watched the first 2 seasons or so when it first aired and stopped for whatever reason. Since seeing Lucy Lawless on Spartacus, it made me want to revisit the show and Netflix has them all up on Instant. So 6 seasons later I can say it was a pretty good show. I think it took me 5 months to get through and I gotta say I’m kind of bummed it’s over. The ending was pretty satisfying all in all (pretty logical for the message and direction of the show), but the episode before the last one was atrocious. The show probably would have been better at 5 seasons. 22 episodes per season is a lot, and cutting out the filler and bullshit episodes probably would equal 5 full seasons. The episode I mentioned above flashes forward to present day to try and fill a gaping plot hole from season 3 or 4. It was terrible. That plot hole should have been addressed right when it happened, not 2 season later with a horrible plot device to try and explain it. The section taking place in the “world” of Xena worked but everything in present day was terrible. Season 6 also went a step above in dark tones and violence, it was a strange tonal shift. The sloppy writing really kicked in in Season 5 and whenever they ran out of actual episodes with real plots there would be garbage episodes to get them to the end of the season where they knew how they wanted to end it. So avoiding the rough spots, it was a fun show and 15 years later I still have a crush on Lucy Lawless.

My Weird Windows 7 NIC restart bug update: It seems to be gone again. 5 restarts and the network kicked in right away. Maybe it’s the new FIOS router?