STUFF OF THE DAY...


I woke up all kinds of fuzzy headed today, maybe not enough sleep? It could have been the Slurpee from 7-11 I sucked down at 9:00 last night,  but I'm sitting here wondering why we only have five fingers and five toes on each hand and foot? Why not six? For that matter, why not four? Who made this decision? Granted I know some folks are born with an extra digit here and there, but it still seems like we'd be able to get more done faster with more fingers. I know I'd be able to type faster. For that matter why do we only have two arms? Goro from Mortal Kombat had the right idea...  Strange brain space today... 

ANYWAY onwards dear readers. Had a chance to catch a screening of Frances Ha last night and I gotta tell you well worth it, pick up my review on my new page Flick Show Ticket and decide for yourself if my unabashed praise for this gem of a comedy is enough to convince you to find it in your area.


Today's random topic is...

X-BOX One VS PS4 

Whenever people start talking about which video game console is better than the other, I always picture this scene from RoboCop...

 As most of you gaming individuals are no doubt aware(unless you live under a rock) there are two NEW!!! video game systems hitting the marketplace this fall. YAYA! or BOOOO!!! Depending on how you want to look at it. Do we really need new systems? Probably not? Are they going to be fun as hell? You better believe it... well... maybe. The trick dear readers, we may be about to experience the first generation of console gaming where you don't actually OWN the game you payed money for. No, that doesn't mean Microsoft and Sony are going to stream games(which they should), no it means the game you pay top dollar for, you are merely licensing. Dat's right. Licensing. If you want an interesting, if not one-sided breakdown check out this rant on Forbes. I swear this is not going to be a shit on Sony or a shit on Microsoft post. As of this writing it is only Microsoft that has unveiled full specs for their system, in addition to confirming the long rumored axe to used games. While you can argue that they do allow used games, what they don't allow you to do is barrow your friend's game. SO say you're heading over to your best friends place and want to get a little two player action going, in order to do that you have to unhook your system, cart it over to your friends place, hook it all up again and then start playing. Sure the disc will work on your friend's machine... only after they pay for it! Since this system is yet to launch, there is still time for Microsoft to clarify and potentially right this wrong. Now Sony's new PS4 is NOT off the hook on this either. Sony has yet to give any real specs for the PS4 beyond the graphics, games, and show off the new touch pad enabled controller. That's it. They haven't even showed off the system! So there is still plenty of time for X-Box and PS4 to wander down the same rabbit hole together and both learn how to equally piss off their fan base.
   What do I find interesting or exciting about these consoles? Well aside from the graphics capabilities, not all that much really. Sure they're going to have 4kHD resolution graphics but since the cheapest entry level 4kHD TV set costs over $25g's that isn't really an up shot. Both come Blu-Ray enabled, cool... but still... so what? Microsoft offers a slew of interesting entertainment center features that are both interesting and outright frightening! For one the new X-Box will be able to voice and visual cue control your TV. COOL! But in order to do that, the microphone has to always be on, AND it saves your voice and image sample to create a user profile that is cataloged and stored... Not Cool... too 1984 for it's own good I say. As for Sony, well... until I actually SEE what the system looks like, I'm inclined to believe that there isn't going to be one. I know this isn't true, but the hours are ticking away and they don't have a whole lot to show for themselves.(UPDATE)
Apparently I spoke too soon? about being charged a fee? Check out what the AP has to say. Honestly at this point, I am just confused what Microsoft intends to do with their games. One thing is for sure, they are not owning the story here. Rumor and speculation is winning the day and that is not a good thing.
   What system am I inclined to get? Well, to be perfectly honest, neither. Both are cwoming with a price tag north of $350 and I just don't play enough games to plunk down that much cash. With more games focusing on lifetime sucking multiplayer and less on interesting single player story telling, I'm having a harder and harder time justifying a $60 price tag for a new game. Unless one of these systems flies out of the gate with some of the most bleeding eye inducingly beautiful graphics and exhilarating games that gives people heart attacks... I'm probably going to stick this round out. From the Apple 2GS, to the Sega Mastersystem, to the NES, SNES, Genesis, PC, Playstation 1, 2, and 3 - I have been playing games quite awhile, and to be honest... I don't think I'm going to miss them all that much. Maybe I'm growing up.

  Anyway, thanks for reading folks! If you have thoughts about the next round of console wars, take your comments out of your pocket and leave them below! If you missed my first issue of ToyAddiction, pop on over and give it a read. Till Monday, enjoy your weekend, get some rest and have fun. Adios - MGH

 

Who Likes Good Horror Movies?

First up, in keeping with a recent rant about the utilitarian usefulness of Superman's underpants, as if on cue, the good gents over at Screenrant posted up a nice and concise history of Superman's red, yellow, and blue suit in it's various comic book and cinematic incarnations, so check that out here if you're so inclined. Well worth the read in my opinion, but correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a late 80's "Superboy" show too? I have vague memories watching an episode or two and just hating it... of course that could just be memory regurgitation of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Anyone have more info about this?

Also in time for next week's release of "Man of Steel" I'll be putting together a memory review of the past Superman Films. Superman has served a huge chunk of my life for a good long while, so part of me reverts to a child-like state when I read about any new movie coming along.

In other news...

It appears that, at least for the time being, GOOD horror movies are making a comeback. Starting with the suspenseful and effective Mama, onwards to the chilling and outright terror inducing Evil Dead remake, we find ourselves with this week's release of "The Purge." No, this is not a movie about bulimia, it is a movie where in the near future, crime is at an all time low of 0% because one night a year, the US government legalizes all crime. Murder, mayhem, destruction is all legal. You can participate, or you can hide and hope you're safe long enough to make it through the night.

Until today, I have purposely avoided actually watching this trailer. Not out of disinterest in the picture, but because I love genre films, in particular I love horror films. Ever since I was a small kid I spent my Saturday mornings watching the Thriller Matinee Double Feature on TV 20 out of Detroit. This was my avenue to watching edited down movies that my Mom probably wishes to this day I didn't see. They showed everything from Halloween, to the most recent Friday the 13th, to The Howling and beyond. Due to this early exposure I've become immune to most fright flicks that have come down the Hollywood pipeline, so when a new horror movie comes out and it actually looks GOOD, I get really excited. 

"The Purge" opens tomorrow and I honestly can't wait. Even as of this writing, the %54 Rotten Tomatoes score doesn't dissuade me in the least bit. In fact it probably encourages me more to give it a shot based on the simple fact that not everyone likes it. When all the critics gush over a horror movie, I tend to be a bit dubious about how scary it could be. Just watching the trailer you'll see it has an interesting if improbable hook to create(hopefully) a visceral and effective terror film. The heavy handed political commentary is there, sure, but so long as it doesn't overshadow the entire show, I'm okay with being preached to by deranged would be killers in sadistic looking masks. If anything that's why I enjoyed the underscored subtleties of the original Nightmare on Elm Street and the Halloween movies so much. Fingers crossed for this one to hold out and deliver the goods. If not tomorrow, in the very near future I'll be getting a review up, so keep on the lookout for that.

I have procrastinated all morning, I need to get more writing done on my book, so on that note I will leave you all with the teaser promo for my beloved and long missed favorite Saturday afternoon children's program. Aside from Svengoolie on ME TV on Saturday Nights, I don't know of any local channels that are as dedicated to getting recent horror movies out onto TV screens quite like Detroit Channel 20 used to do on a weekly basis. Good times man, good times.

Until next time... be cool, stay in school... even when it's summer vacation, go to school. No one else will be there.

LADY TOLKEN ELVES ARE BADASSES!

Welcome back ladies and gents! My first novel, tentatively titled One Minute To Midnight progresses each day. Since I'm writing the first and second entries at the same time, you should be able to enjoy these in back to back releases. This was originally a screenplay I wrote titled "Quarantine" but that title got eaten up by a bad remake of "REC" and most of my awesome plot points I had cooked up were used in the remake of "The Crazies."  Shit happens, at least The Crazies was a decent movie. So now I am working on adapting what I've got that still works into another horror film I wrote in an attempt to expand a one off idea into series. I have a third part planned but it'll be awhile before that comes to fruition. 

Also if you happen to be a LaserDisc fan like myself, you will not want to miss my first edition of LaserDiscArchive:RawHeadRex!

Now a little spark of controversy in the nerd realms has been smoldering for a little bit of time. For those that don't keep up with the real news of the world, I am of course referring to the made up female warrior elf Tauriel to be featured in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug. Before we get to the commentary, lets take a look at the first promo shot released today from Entertainment Weekly shall we?

Wait for it....




HOOOOOOLD!!!!



NOW!

Huh... well, hmmm... okay I can see what Jackson's going for here but why does she look like Link from Legend of Zelda? Now the look of this character played by Evangeline Lilly, isn't the real source of controversy - I'm sure in action she's quite badass and awesome at dispensing rapid fire arrows into slimy orks - no, the "controversy" arises from the fact that she is simply made up by Peter Jackson and friends for this movie. 

While I know a lot of people thought the first film was bloated and can't see the purpose of extending it into three films, I quite liked An Unexpected Journey and I enjoyed the 48fps 3D Imax presentation I caught, so I have faith in this one too. I've been reading a lot of flack about the faithfulness of these adaptations to Tolken's source material and I gotta say, quite honestly, this is a tempest in a teapot folks. Is Jackson making up some of the details now? Sure he is, but that isn't to say that he hasn't been given cause to do so by the - lets be honest - limited presentation Tolken gave in the first place. While I love every word the man wrote in his time, he was to say the least, sparse on descriptive details. So any filmmaker brave enough to venture into adapting his work is in short required to make stuff up to fill the narrative gaps. Now this character of Tauriel is a bit of a special case. Paraphrasing Jackson's own words, he made her up for no other reason than to have another woman to round out the cast. Given that the bulk of these movies follow a Wizard, a Hobbit, and a company of 13 hairy dwarfs, not to mention the numerous male orks, trolls, goblins, and elves; this new trilogy of films was turning into quite the sausage fest if you don't mind my saying! Personally an athletic female warrior elf would be a welcome addition to all the beards on screen! 

However, my approval of this new character doesn't come without the worry of her impact in the greater story. If she's there to serve as a poor replacement for Liv Tyler's Arwen, then it's going to be a misguided effort to say the least. She needs to have a purpose to the proceedings, but as long as her presence isn't a major distraction form the real show of Dwarfs on a quest to kill a dragon and reclaim their homeland, it should be a rousing success... I hope! Fingers crossed. Knock on wood. We'll have to wait for the Holiday movie season to know for sure. Until a new trailer drops, gird your loins fantasy fans and try not to get too worked up about it. 

That's all for now, in case you missed it MST3k fans head on over to Rifftuesday for my review of the first "official" MST3k episode of "The Crawling Eye." As always, be good dear readers and leave your thoughts below!


-MGH

Superman's Underpants

   

While I know there is a lot of controversy about how the new Superman isn't wearing underpants on the outside of his tights. I feel there is a rational explanation for this. Some people think that the outside underpants work to highlight Superman's penile promenance. This could be true, Ol' Blue Boy does like to show off his superbatch in tight spandex. Maybe he's lucky that way, or maybe he's insecure about himself in spite of his numerous superpowers and feels the need to keep himself on "display" as it were. Some people think that the underpants serve as some sort of armor to help protect his troops that are waiting to deploy into action. This could be, but then again, he is virtually invincible so any kind of stray bullet or errant shot to the genitals would have little to no effect on his personal DNA distribution unit. I myself have a different theory that bares some weight I believe. Now did you ever think that the reason why Superman wears his underwear on the outside is because they're not underpants at all, they're in fact adult diapers? Part of the reason he's always compelled to travel faster than the speed of sound could be to find a private restroom that could handle his super-sized deposits. Since Superman is a hero of action and is always fighting danger, it could be that when terror strikes his intestines, he might not have a chance to break free and therefor needs that little extra ounce of security. So this new Superman featured in The Man of Steel may just be the first Superman to come along that doesn't have an incontinence or uncontrollable diarrhea problem! I know this is a controversial issue so I welcome all supportive and dissenting feedback.

Welcome back fine folks around the world!

News of the day: Not much... 

Cool stuff of the day: I launched my new page RiffTuesday! RiffTuesday? What could RiffTuesday possibly be? Well I should come clean and be honest to you all... I... this is hard... I am a Mystery Science Theater Addict. There, I said it. Feels good to be honest with you all. I have been addicted to movie riffing since I was a kid after seeing a really bad Hercules movie being shredded by a guy and his two robot friends many many years ago at my friend Mathias' house. Since then the show has stuck with me through it's run on Comedy Central, Sci-fi channel, and beyond into spinoff projects like Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic. Originally I was going to do an episode a day, but since there are nearly 200 episodes and they last nearly 2 hours each, I thought that might be a little insane, so now Every Tuesday you the good people of the world will be treated to a review of an episode starting from the very beginning with "The Crawling Eye."

For you good movie fans out there, BestBuy has over 200 Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD titles for sale %50 off in store and online! If you've been waiting to expand your home video library with some of the finest titles ever released in fantastic special editions, now's your chance to jump in and go hog wild! Also Amazon seems to be price matching. So if your local BestBuy store is sold out, you can get what you're after online. 

That's it for today folks, gotta churn out some pages for this book I'm working on or it'll never get finished! So long, farewell

Auf Wiedersehen, and until next time! - MGH

Here we go, the first of what I hope is an ongoing series of posts:

INTO THE 3rd DIMENSION:

 DREDD on Blu-ray 3D

THE REVIEW:

What to know about this movie up front:

1: It is not, I repeat NOT a sequel or in any way related to that fairly bad to awful Stallone movie that can really only be enjoyed if you're a kid or just need a movie to do shots with(seriously, take a shot every time he yells out "I am the law" or any variation.)

2: It is a low budget sci-fi(I refuse to acknowledge "syfy" as proper spelling) in the best ways. This means while yes it was done on the cheep, it exudes imaginative visuals, beautifully glorious violence, and a sense of scale that even the largest budgeted movies can't master.

3:Yes it was natively shot in 3D so it has an incredible sense of depth for cramped set pieces.

   I'll say up front that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Top to bottom. Sure there are some things you could nitpick, but taken against the greater whole this is one of the BEST comic movie adaptations out there. Set hundreds of years in the future, the world is in chaos. Hundreds of millions of people are living in the squalor of the Mega Cities. Enforcing the law are the Judges. They are judge, jury, and executioner all in one individual. Karl Urban plays our titular hero with a outstanding sense of strength, authority, and subtle humor that any fan of the 2000 A.D. comic series would demand. At his side is Olivia Thirlby as the psychic Judge rookie Anderson on her first day on the job. Olivia brings a sense of innocence to the proceedings that is a welcome respite to the desolate future this film takes place. Together they must take down a former prostitute turned master gang leader called Ma-Ma who has become the manufacturer and distributor of a lethal and addictive narcotic called Slo-Mo. This new drug of choice makes the user perceive time at one percent normal. You might argue that this was used as an excuse to get showy on a small budget, but it is striking imagery lends an odd sense of beauty to the scenes with viscus gore and violence.

   Throughout, this movie plays like a futuristic re-imaging of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo(one of my absolute favorite movies). You have two agents of the law, trapped in a confined space who must face the greater evil head on or die. They can't wait for help, they have to fight their way out. Set in a "Mega-Block" a 200 story super building that is home to thousands of people; like a giant series of housing projects built high into the sky. Ma-Ma has put a price on the heads of Dredd and Anderson and together they have to do everything they can to survive. It's this simple plot and premise that makes for some of the best action sequences as well as some truly striking 3D visuals. The story isn't over thought and like a GOOD action movie doesn't need to be clever to be effective.

   There isn't a whole lot more of the story to review or potentially spoil. For what the filmmakers had to work with, the production design is fantastic. It is a fairly straight forward movie without much in the way of narrative surprises. That said, the striking visuals, clean story telling, and fantastic performances make this one worth watching and owning, that is of course if you have a strong stomach for beautifully shot near relentless violence. Definitely an adults only release, not in the least bit kid friendly. Due to its initial theatrical reception, the prospect of a sequel was as bleak as the future in this movie. Thankfully it has found an audience and a movement of fans is growing pushing for a second outing. If you want to do your part, join up on facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/MakeADreddSequel?fref=ts

THE THIRD DIMENSION:

  Natively shot in 3D; this is an absolutely gorgeous transfer for this blu-ray release. Detail is sharp and clear, little to no digital noise, and since it wasn't a film-to-digital transfer, there isn't any digital noise reduction or smoothing applied that I could see. Even in the cramped spaces with numerous close up shots of the actors' faces, there is always a fantastic sense of depth without the eye gouging effects of things popping out at you. Like any good 3D presentation it turns your TV set into a window looking in to a new world. The real highlight of this movie are the SLO-MO sequences. To achieve the level of clarity they needed, the filmmakers developed a new camera rig capable of shooting at 1000 frames per second. To the laymen your average film is shot and projected at 24 frames per second. The result here is beautiful, you feel like you could reach out and touch the movie. If you're not 3D inclined, the 2D presentation is on the same disc and equally spectacular, only not in 3D and therefor not nearly as fun!

THE EXTRAS DIMENSION:

   In addition to the 2D version mentioned above, the extras here are sadly fairly paltry. A smattering of behind the scenes featuretts offer some incite but little depth(pardon the pun) to this 3D movie. Still though you can get this one fairly cheep on Amazon and it is worth EVERY penny.

THE END RESULT:

   Due in part to a lackluster marketing effort that even good reviews couldn't bolster, this movie came and went from theaters without even earning back half of it's production budget. But thankfully to outstanding word of mouth, this movie has sold and rented well on DVD and Blu-ray becoming an underground hit. Hopefully this is enough to convince the powers that be to green light a nicely budgeted and deserving sequel! If you have a 3D set and need a fun if slightly grisly action movie, you won't get much better than DREDD. 

Here's the link to Amazon to make your purchase if you're so inclined:

http://www.amazon.com/Dredd-Blu-ray-Digital-Copy-UltraViolet/dp/B005LAII80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370300124&sr=8-1&keywords=Dredd