Monthly Archives: May 2013

Argo the Review

Movies

I don’t have much to say about Argo. It’s so good that it stands fine on it’s own. The Hollywood-ized telling of the 1980 secret joint CIA and Canadian rescue mission of six American fugitives in Iran. Six US diplomats manage to get out of the US Embassy during a riot (the others were taken hostage for over a year) and take cover with the Canadians. With time running out, a wild plan about a fake movie (Argo) being filmed in Iran is hatched. Send one “Canadian” guy in with the front of scouting for a sci-fi movie and return with his “Canadian” crew. It’s a crazy, brilliant idea.

Argo is an award winner for a reason. It’s a top notch, super engaging movie. Every bit of it is great, casting to production, top to bottom. Really well shot, excellently paced, just a terrific movie. Highly recommended.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Movies

I’m really not the best person to judge anything Star Trek because I’m pretty apathetic to the whole franchise. Then again that might be of some help.

I enjoyed the 2009 reboot. Fun little sci-fi picture. Looked good (ode to the lens flare), great cast, good story and acting with enough nods to the franchise past to keep everyone smiling. Now the sequel comes along and I find it to have all of the same qualities. Into Darkness has a much better villain with Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch devouring each scene he is in. Since it’s a sequel everything is kicked up a notch. More at stake, grander action set pieces. It all works well, I really like the set design in particular and the SFX are top notch.

A lot of hate from the Trek purist comes from an apparent “that’s not homage, that’s a rip off” on the writers part. I know very little about Star Trek lore so I’m left out in the dark in this regard (which probably helps me like the movie more). But, I gotta say there seemed to be a lot more impersonations in this one. The first movie, the actors played their characters with a certain understanding of what was done before them, but also made it their own. Here, things got out of hand (I’m looking at you Karl Urban). There is a lot of lazy writing going on in this flick actually. The good guys get a lot of convenient ways out of trouble. Things just seem to fall just right into place in almost every single encounter. There’s some goofy editing too. For example, someone says “we have 3 minutes to do this or we’re dead!” and a lot more than 3 minutes go by. Later, a ship is careening into Earth and if they don’t get control quickly, they’ll be burned alive by the Earth’s atmosphere. They get power back and hit the breaks about 200 feet above the clouds. Yeah, sorry, you didn’t make it. How did that get through the common sense department? On a more goofy note, we get a glimpse of the always enjoyable Alice Eve in her underwear and it looks exactly like what’s sold today. We figure out space travel but no advancements in undergarment tech in the next 300 years (at least they are consistent, Uhura was rocking underwire in the last movie)?

Good start to Summer 2013 movies.

Xbox One: Climbing out of a hole

Games

It really makes you wonder how Microsoft decides on it’s PR message (and they people they hire for it). The day before the Xbox One reveal. they let it out that the event was going to be an hour long introduction, the “future of entertainment” and that they’re going to talk about a lot of games at E3 about 3 weeks later. It makes sense to hold off information for the biggest industry event in the world (give or take) but why not just hold everything off for E3 at this point? Especially with how this event was handled.

True, it was an introduction. They showed the hardware, talked a bit about what it can do and the improvements to what they’ve been building for the passed 10 years. Now this whole adventure was started with a gaming machine and they barely talked about games. The games they did talk about, were obvious franchises that were of no surprise so they didn’t swing much weight with them. One new game was shown, but that was more of a teaser announcement.

So all the fans who got the Xbox platform to where it is today, were shown no reason to be into this next machine. In fact, they were so vague this whole reveal has turned into a PR nightmare for MS. Instead of laying everything out there, they held back information on the really big issues. How does this thing work? What’s being locked down with this “games must be installed to the HD and authorized by our servers.” You can say stuff like that, raise every console gamers eyebrows and hope for the best. I understand they are trying to do something new with TV integration, a full set top box experience with a ton of stuff that can be switched on the fly. But the focus you are trying to change, the way games are bought and sold and used is some scary thoughts to a lot of people. Valve did this on the PC about 10 years ago with Steam to great success. But they finessed it. They eased into it and laid out how Steam was set up. The message from this Xbox One event confused the hell out of people, making them asks questions…which were answered by multiple people through the rest of the day, long after the event was over. Plus, the answers were all different, so that just made the rumors worse by freaking everyone out. Will I be able to lend a game to a friend to play? If I have a family is the game I bought only going to work on my “console” and not the one in my kids room? How family friendly is this thing?

The Xbox One has turned into what sounds like a money pit to own and MS is holding the shovel with a blank stare. I can’t believe they didn’t think this out at all. They had to be super clear and this shady talk from the side of the mouth about key issues just makes people mad. There was so much not said in the presentation that came up after, questions and deeper looks on the things people actually wanted to know. The rumor for weeks has been that the NextBox would need to be connected to the internet at all times in order to pretty much do anything (like play single player games which is a deal killer for just about everyone). The event pretty much alluded to this and when asked they go, eeehhh, it’s just gotta talk to the servers once every 24 hours. What’s the difference (steam checks every 2 weeks I think)? Did I not buy this freaking game? This goofy thing needs to check my credentials every single day? Games have to be installed to the HDD to play, it won’t run of the disc. There’s a FEE if you want to put it on another machine. I can’t let a friend borrow a game like since the dawn of home consoles? The HDD is 500 gigs and if I’m putting 15Gig game installs in there how long is that going to last? I have to delete and reinstall disc based games as I go (that’s something that could happen and it sounds like they prepared for it by having the game playable as it installs). So many questions.

The new Kinect comes with every box and it is required to be hooked up for the xbox one to work? I think? That’s what it sounds like. It makes sense that it comes with every One so developers know that it’s a standard feature and they can be assured anyone can use it with whatever they come up with. The tech is greatly improved which is great! But even that bothers everyone because it listens to you when the machine is off (you can turn it on with a voice command). That’s some future tech there, but it doesn’t make people feel good thinking that MS could listen and record anything said near this machine. The UI looks amazingly fast, which is a huge plus. The media center aspect of it (which they talked a lot about) lets you switch from game, music, tv, internet, phone (skype!) instantly. The 360 is crazy slow on switching between areas so this is neat. Getting this all up and running is another question mark. The One has 8 gigs of RAM, but 3 of that is reserved for the OS (partly explains how it switches so fast and keeps multiple apps open at once) but does that mean games will only have 5 gigs of RAM to work with? 3 gigs is a lot to lose in that regard.

They say nothing is locked down yet and that’s pretty clear with every contradictory answer. It’s stupid that the company making this thing don’t really know how it’s going to work yet. So now MS is neck deep in a PR hole that has got to have a lot of people over there concerned about their jobs. If they don’t pull of some magic at E3, this thing could turn into the next 3DO. I giant box that pretty much collects dust on a store shelf.

They got some serious long hours to look forward to over in Seattle until E3. I’m talking all hands on deck to get this thing making sense. People are literally afraid of buying an Xbox One right now. A pariah of plastic! A controversy is sitting in their lap and they have to work to win just about everyone back. That means: make sure this thing is consumer friendly, the penny pinching of this thing sound ludicrous. And show the games. Show A LOT of games people haven’t seen before. Show why it has the Xbox name on it and not the MS Media Center Deluxe Duke. They have to clear up the message they’ve drooled out. Odds are accounts will work just like Steam, PSN and Live. Sign into your account and you’ll have full access to your content. This mess can’t be as dire as it looks now, there is too much at stake. I hope they have some incredible games and game features (why should I pay for XBL Gold?) to show because Sony and Nintendo (!) are licking their chops waiting to steal away Xbox users. They’ve said they were holding on to games for E3 and not to panic about it, I really hope they meant it.

The Next Xbox

Games, Tech

In 2 days the next xbox will be shown to the world. It’ll be 8 years between generations and there is a lot of expectations for Microsoft to meet. Sony has already tipped their hand giving a look at the PS4 and Nintendo is off skipping stones in their own world. Here are my thoughts.

I’m surprised they’ve been able to keep quite for so long on the next xbox. It’s good and bad. The hype and hope is at an all time high, but so are the rumors. If you cruise the message boards, many people are convinced that the roles between MS and Sony have switched. Sony is set to make all the right moves for gamers and MS’s hubris will bring them crashing down into the dirt.

Here are the a few things I think we will definitely see on Tuesday. The actual console. They’ll show the physical box, controller, name the system and a “holiday 2013” release date. The next version of the kinect will also be talked about and it’s going to come with every xbox. The kinect has sold well and is a defining feature for MS, they put a lot of time and money into the tech and I think they’ve been able to greatly improve it in the last 3 years.

With E3 so close, they can’t show everything. They’re going to save some stuff for that press conference, which I think will be many 3rd party games and a real release date with launch titles.

That said, MS needs to be really careful how they approach this. The xbox started as a video game console and has been morphing into a set top box. Those set top box features will continue to grow, but at this point I think they really need to focus on the games portion of the machine. Talk about the guts, how it’s going to make games better. Show and talk about all first party stuff they are working on. Exclusives have fallen by the wayside for the xbox in the passed 2 years or so and MS really needs to drum up that kind of support and dedication to the machine. Give more reasons to get an xbox because the competition has closed all the gaps.

Xbox Live isn’t the draw the used to be. Sony has made some great moves and has improved year over year. MS has raised prices and added things that are available on many other products. Making people pay for stuff that you can get for free elsewhere isn’t a feature. The xbox platform has cemented itself as FPS juggernaut. The Call of Duty fan base is absolutely massive on xbox and pulls all those players in year after year with no effort. People pick up that game on xbox because all their friends play it on xbox. The early start, the much better Live service grabbed those guys in early and kept them there. There was no need for a person to drop hundreds of dollars to switch systems (look at how COD did on the WiiU, the online lobbies are basically a ghost town). That could change during this hardware switch. Then need to get people to stick with Live as their premiere online gaming experience by raising the quality and usefulness of the service in every way.

Xbox Live needs much bigger incentives to stay relevant. The friends list limit will definitely be raised to a huge amount. Paying for multiplayer is beyond lame, you can’t push netflix as something special any more. PS+ is a brilliant idea on Sony’s part. Reward your fans for a higher level of service and loyalty with great incentives. MS has a great thing with Xbox Music, but it’s completely worthless on the xbox. There is so much competition in the streaming music space that it’s hard to tear anyone away from the ecosystem they already use. Without paying for Gold AND a Xbox Music sub, you can’t use the Music service. It’s just empty, useless windows sitting in front of you. That service works on very little, it’s an incentive for Windows 8 and it needs to be an incentive on Xbox. It’s a cool and useful service that no one even thinks about because it’s behind so many walls. You get Gold, you should get full access to Music. Spotify is perfectly usable for free on PC for crying out loud. They should get it to stream music through the machine regardless of what you are doing on the box, don’t confine people to having just the Music app open, think multitasking. It makes it much more useful. MS has to bring Live to another level. Give big discounts, prizes, exclusives to your paying fan base. They love it and will feed into your eco system.

They also better learn from the RROD fiasco. Don’t build a piece of junk. I know that regardless of what they put out, I ain’t touching one for at least 6 months to make sure it’s not another faulty machine. They took a beating in the press, loss billions in repairs, they cannot afford to get through another piece of junk scenario. Make sure that thing is reliable before it goes out! Stress test the hell out of it and FIX what is wrong from the start!

I don’t expect to see much difference in the controller and I think they’d be wise to hold back on the “extra” feature talk for E3. Talk about a lot of games, it’s social features and a few apps like Skype and stuff that makes it a complete ecosystem. Be VERY clear about what does and doesn’t need a internet connection to work. I don’t think it’s going to be as doom and gloom as many thing because the internet infrastructure around the country, let alone around the world, varies greatly. It’s just not reliable or equal just a few towns apart. They’d lose a huge potential userbase if everything has to be online to work. I expect some sort of cable TV integration like google TV, but I don’t know how many people are look for or looking forward to that. Leave those big details for E3, win over your core video gamers first.

Head returns!

Music

Last year Brian “Head” Welch played on stage with Korn for the first time since 2005. It was a sign that their relationship was returning. Then a few months ago, it was announced that Head would be playing a few summer festival dates with Korn in Europe (with his band Love and Death in tow). Then came the US tour dates, which kick off their entire summer tour (I’m going May 22nd, couldn’t pass up seeing a show with Head back).

Now it’s official, Head has rejoined Korn! He’s been recording new material with them since January! The sample in the video above makes me happy beyond words. It is so beautiful, I can hardly believe it. 10 years since he was on an album and 8 since he left the band. There have been little bread crumbs sprinkled about for a return. I was happy to hear that he had reconnected with Fieldy around 2010 and slowly began mending bridges with JD and Munk. The guys I had listened to and loved since high school were becoming friends again. Head playing a song on stage, then a video from producer Ross Robinson saying exciting things were happening for Korn. Now this teaser video of the sounds that are to come? I had high hopes for the album before, with Don Gilmore producing and the early word that it was going to be a return to a more guitar focus sound over Path of Totality’s experimental dubstep fusion. Now with Head back in the lab with Munky? My two favorite guitarists creating together again? This album could knock me right out of my moon boots!