All reviews - Movies (34) - TV Shows (6) - DVDs (4) - Books (4) - Music (8) - Games (26)

Frozen to Sleep

Posted : 7 months, 3 weeks ago on 22 September 2011 01:57 (A review of Frozen)

Yes, some college kids are dumb but Frozen portrayal is just overboard in my opinion.

Frozen is starts with three friends waiting for their favorite ski lift operator but are soon disappointed and have to bribe their way on to the left.
Later in the day they try for one last run before leaving and in doing so seal their fate when their left is shutdown before they get to the top.

Since the majority of the movie takes place in one place the primary factor of the film is the acting and that is where is fails. The actors are cast well since they're young but because of their inexperience their acting is average at best and lead to a less suspenseful viewing.
The music is par for a teen thriller and some times seem a little forced with the mix of dramatic and sympathetic music.

Frozen isn't the worst thriller ever but not the best. I would only suggest watching with friends and trying to MS3K it while watching.

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Rambo... Going Home

Posted : 9 months, 3 weeks ago on 25 July 2011 07:31 (A review of Rambo: First Blood Part II)

Rambo II is a love hate movie. Some hate people it and some people love it. I'm part of the latter and personally consider it one of my top 10 best action movies.

Rambo: First Blood Part II starts a little after First Blood ends where John Rambo is incarcerated to hard labor were Col. Trautman comes to offer Rambo a mission to gain a pardon and help close a door of his past.
Rambo returns to Vietnam to scout out a former POW camp to capture photos of POWs that Rambo's superiors don't believe exist. Little does Rambo and his superiors the camp isn't empty but full of long forgotten United States soldiers and Rambo goes all out to save them.
Casting is actually quite good even with Stallone's acting. All the actors fit well to their characters and all of them are believable even with Rambo's larger than life persona.
Visual FX are excellent as the movie is pre-CGI everything that is now a days and so the explosions and fire effects are very believable.
Soundtrack is instrumental and only has one 80's song at the end which is one of the only bad part of the movie.

I know some think it's cheesy 80's over the top action movie but I enjoy it immensely and consider it the epitome of the 80's action movie.

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Metal Revolution's Real Story

Posted : 9 months, 3 weeks ago on 25 July 2011 04:52 (A review of Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Metal)

Most people think that metal in the 80's was Mötley Crüe, W.A.S.P., White Snake, etc. but anyone that listened to metal then and now know that they were the posers and bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax were at the forefront and truly pushed the genre.

Hearing from band members, record labels, historians, and authors Get Thrashed goes from Los Angeles to San Francisco then New York and finally Europe covering all the major band at the time that were hard, fast, loud, and pushing the definition of Thrash Metal.
Editing is simple and easy to follow with little confusion on where and who the pundits are referring to and getting a complete summary of the region and style of the area.
Sound is excellent for metal heads like myself because it's metal of the time and bands in the documentary.

Get Thrashed is a great documentary for any metal head and even for people that just like documentaries.

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I Wouldn't Want These Bosses or Movie

Posted : 9 months, 3 weeks ago on 25 July 2011 04:06 (A review of Horrible Bosses)

I saw the trailer for Horrible Bosses at the showing for Green Lantern and saw that Jason Bateman was in it and it seemed to be fairly funny and was wanting to see it but after watching it I don't know why I thought that.

Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis play three friends that good jobs with absolutely horrible people for bosses. One day they all decide that maybe they should kill their bosses to make their lives better and go for a Strangers on a Train plan to have all of them kill each others bosses so they can't link the murders to each other.
"Hilarity" ensues as they all try to carry out their plans but of course fail.
Casting is okay with Jason Bateman, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Donald Sutherland, and Colin Farrell but none of their abilities come out and really is a waste of talent.
As for being a comedy this really fails as most are sex and poop jokes and even they aren't funny like similar comedy that have come out recently.

In the end Horrible Bosses is a craptacular comedy that is waste of time.

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Fraking Fudge Packing Motherfarkers

Posted : 9 months, 3 weeks ago on 25 July 2011 03:49 (A review of Fuck)

I'm one for uncensoring everything because I believe the 1st Amendment is a human right that should be upheld to any cost but Fuck never convinces me, or let alone anyone else, on how to use a rational argument for uncensoring.

A good political/social commentary documentaries to me picks out a argument and shows the points and counter points and try to inform the viewer and have them make up their own mind. Unfortunately Fuck never does this. Fuck basically jumps from one unconnected topic to another without any cohesion or thought.

There are very little amount of political/social commentary documentaries that do a good job showing facts and letting the viewer choose what they think is right and Fuck is one of those that fails horribly and should not be watched.

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Masks are for Racoons and Thieves Only

Posted : 11 months, 2 weeks ago on 1 June 2011 08:11 (A review of The Sly Collection)

Having never finished the second game in the series back when the games first came out in 2002 I was interested in playing them when I heard Sony was making a HD remake. And it was a fun play through.

The game series stars Sly Cooper and his band of thieves as they go from place to place in attempts to steal certain objects and foil master plots from a score of bad guys.
The first game, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, follows the team in finding the missing pages of the Thievius Raccoonus which holds the family thieving secrets of the Cooper clan and by doing so stopping the plan of the evil Clockwerk, a mechanical owl, from killing Sly and taking over the world.
Sly 2: Band of Thieves, the second in the series, follows the group in finding and destroying the recovered mechanical part of Clockwerk.
Game three, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, has the crew recruiting the help of others to help stop Doctor M, a evil genius monkey, from opening the Cooper Vault and stealing the family's treasures that have been accumulated over the years.

One of the main draws to the collection is its high definition update to the visuals. When the games were first released the graphics were considered very stylized due to the cell shading and with the update those graphics are really bought out and looks great.
The game is completely voice acted and while the writing can be cheesy most of the voice actors are well done and cartoon like exaggerated to give humor.
The controls back when the games came out were considered one of the best in the industry and while most of the time the controls are responsive and spot on there are some times where the controls can be frustrating when missing a jump or going in to wrong direction for no good reason but it's fairly uncommon.

Anyone that never got a chance to go through the games or a big fan of the games should have a good time playing the games and reminiscing on old school PS2 gaming.

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*swoosh in* BOOM!

Posted : 11 months, 3 weeks ago on 25 May 2011 04:32 (A review of Backdraft)

Every young boy going up has a fantasy of becoming astronauts, firefighters, police officers, Olympic athletes, etc.
I personally wanted to be an astronaut but fireman was a close second and when I first saw Backdraft I was completely enamored. And even after growing up and picking a better and more interesting career path I still find Backdraft an excellent movie and brings back great memories.

William Baldwin plays Brian McCaffrey who as a young boy sees his veteran firefighter die in an fire and who later follows in his father's and older brother Stephen McCaffrey's, played by Kurt Russell, foot steps and becomes a firefighter himself.
Brian is pushed hard by his brother while in his fire house to the point that he takes up the offer of a local politicians to help Robert De Niro's character Donald Rimgale find out the cause of a string of related fires but falls into a conspiracy that shakes his world and the fire department.

William Baldwin portrayal is not very exceptional in the film but Russell, De Niro, and Scott Glenn's performances more than makes up for it that they all feel to be veteran firefighters.
Being made in 1991 the music has some remnants of 80's but is almost completely overshadowed by Hans Zimmer's Fighting 17th which is iconic to the movie and later used as the theme music for the Japanese show Iron Chef.
The icing on the whole entertaining cake is the visual effects. While some of the effects were made in post-production for scenes that were too hard or too dangerous some of the flames were real with the help of rubber cement and mechanical ingenuity using multiple flammable substances that gave the film an almost real feeling of fires out of control.

Even after 20 years after its initial release (crap, I feel old) Backdraft is a wonderful film that still visually stands out to modern films and is a personal favorite that brings back my childhood.

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До свидания

Posted : 11 months, 3 weeks ago on 25 May 2011 03:19 (A review of Eastern Promises)

I watched the movie back when it was just coming out but didn't like it too much because I was a little confused to what I was going on but I blame myself because I probable wasn't paying attention. After watching it again, I shouldn't been such a idiot because it was a excellent movie.

Naomi Watts plays Anna Khitrova, a British midwife, who comes across a diary from a girl who dies in childbirth. Trying to get the diary translated to find any relatives for the baby, Anna finds her way to a Russian restaurant that is run by one of the London's Russian mafia bosses and gets in deep trouble as she finds out what the diary entails.
On the other side of the story is Nikolai Luzhin, played by Viggo Mortensen, who is the mafia family's driver and "cleaner" and is wanting to get into the family's more devious business. When Nikolai meets Anna he tries to keep her and the baby safe while trying to keep his true intentions secret from the family.

Viggo Mortensen's role as Nikolai is a sigh to behold. I mean if it weren't for his other roles in films I would have sworn that Mortensen was Russian and a former Russian mobster.
Everyone else on the cast plays their characters wonderfully except for maybe Vincent Cassel but that might be because I know he's French and can't get pass that.
I'm a fan of traditional music from other countries including Russia and some of those are present in the film which give the soundtrack some character as the rest of the film is pretty standard symphonic music that compliments the senses well but aren't truly memorable outside of the movie.

David Cronenberg's films are pretty hit or miss for me but Eastern Promises will always be one of his best films and Mortensen's portrayal will stick with me for a long time.

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Season 1: Okay Start but Not Great

Posted : 1 year, 3 months ago on 23 January 2011 08:39 (A review of Top Gear USA)

Having only watched the original British version of Top Gear for the last couple months I heard that we in America were getting our own version of the show. Of course I had my doubts as most British turned into American shows turn out to be shite Top Gear USA did a lot better than most.

Borrowing heavily from the British version, Top Gear USA reviews exotic and expensive cars that most people will never see in real life let alone drive one and also subjects the hosts to crazy stunts in old, almost junk, cars that they've bought for low budgets.
I feel for the hosts as they have almost no say in what the shows does and haven't had years of bonding that the British hosts have had and it's kind of awkward and embarrassing.
And unlike the hosts on the British version, some of the hosts don't really fit the show since they are race car drivers (Tanner Faust) or automotive analysts (Rutledge Wood) while the British hosts are all writers and presenters and not true car experts and so they give the audience a better description of the cars since they're not using technical terms but terms everyone can understand which the majority of the viewers love.

It may not sound too positive of a review but I understand the writers and host predicament and giving them a break and I know that with time they'll all grow and think up their own ideas and might be equal to the British show.

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The Facts Were These...

Posted : 1 year, 6 months ago on 10 November 2010 05:42 (A review of Pushing Daisies)

Pushing Daisies' first season was cut short due to the Writers Guild strike and was canceled before the second season was finished due to low ratings. Baring all there troubles, Pushing Daisies was one of the best shows to air in the last five years if not the last twenty.

The show is centered around Ned, a friendly pie maker that has a unique gift of being able to bring dead people back to life. At first Ned was the only one that knew this but was found out when private investigator Emerson Cod saw him bring back someone to life. They then form a partnership of solving murders by asking the dead who murdered them. One of their investigations involved someone from Ned’s past which would turn out to be the love of his life, Charlotte Charles, who was murdered and brought back to life. And the rest of the show mainly revolve around solving murders, Ned and Chuck’s relationship, and keeping certain secrets secret.

Visually the show is gorgeous. While most shows either go for a true to life or some times darker look, Pushing Daisies took the opposite approach by having bright vibrant colors that popped out and truly gave the show a one of a kind look. The wardrobe for show was also interesting. While still being set in the late 2000’s it equally seemed to be set in 40’s-50’s garb which made a wonderful mix.
The soundtrack for the show was also a delightful treat. Consisting of mainly strings, chimes, flutes, and accordions, giving the feeling of cheerful quirky sounding atmosphere even when the scene is tense or dangerous.
Casting is also a shining light to the show with everyone, including the guest stars, played their character splendedly. Lee Pace played Ned perfectly as a nervous shy romantic, Chi McBride as the tough, no nonsense PI Emerson Cod is excellent, and Anna Friel as the newly undead Chuck wanting to live life is excellent.
Lastly is the writing. The stories and mysteries are excellently written and the dialogue is quick and witty that it’s a joy to hear.

With all the crap that comes out on TV now a days it is extremely saddening that a show like Pushing Daisies is passed off because of stupid reasons and other terrible shows continue on because Pushing Daisies is a excellent show that was expertly written, acted, scored, costumed, etc. and it all makes for a very quirky enjoyable experience.

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Occupation: College Student

Relationship status: In a relationship

Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Bruce Campbell, Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Russell Crowe, Matt Damon, Bruce Willis, Paul Giamatti, Jason Statham, Richard Dean Anderson, Mel Gibson, Jackie Chan, Ron Livingston, Damian Lewis, Mark Wahlberg

Rammstein, Megadeth, Living Sacrifice, Dream Theater, Demon Hunter, Project 86, Johnny Cash, Trivium, Clutch, Killswitch Engage, Audioslave, 'Weird Al' Yankovic, The Seatbelts, As I Lay Dying, Iced Earth, Thrice, Dogwood, Evanescence, The Showdown, Opeth, Zao, Relient K, Still Remains, subseven, Nodes of Ranvier, Few Left Standing, They Might Be Giants, Five Iron Frenzy, Slick Shoes, Slayer, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Eat World, NOFX, Switchfoot, Pillar, Megaherz, Roper, The Beach Boys, The Black Mages, Black Sabbath, Black Flag

Tom Clancy, Douglas Adams, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Mick Foley, Alton Brown, Frank Miller