Category Archives: Uncategorized

Movie Diary

 

Star Trek Into Darkness

I always make a point of trying to catch up on previous movies whenever a new chapter in a serial is released.  Most times, I just can’t fit in the time or effort to watch (got about 40 minutes in of Iron Man 2 the day before seeing Iron Man 3).  Star Trek is massive enough that trying to watch even just the movies or one series before a new chapter would take weeks.  Luckliy the reboot is only one chapter deep, so Dawn and I played scrabble one night and took in the first movie again.  It left us fully prepared for what came next.

Into Darkness is the best Star Wars movie this generation.  That is not a typo.  While I was intially upset JJ Abrams would abandon his sci fi franchise for a space fantasy, I now realize that is what he wanted to make all along so just let him do it.  Kirk isn’t Shatner’s Kirk and not because he’s Chris Pine, it is because he’s playing Han Solo.  Spock is a Jedi Knight.  The Enterprise behaves more like the Millenium Falcon, until they introduce a ship that actually looks like the Millenium Falcon and perform exact manuevers from Star Wars.  And the ship introduced later in the movie to face the crew was basically the Death Star.

I could grumble about this some more but it would serve no point since I already established that Into Darkness was great.  It is a great action adventure movie.  It has amazing performances from it’s cast, it handles twists well, and while the references to older movies before the reboot are frequent, they don’t play so heavy that you need to see the old movies just to get it.  

My only plot gripe is that when the crew and John Harrison are faced with a common foe, that it didn’t turn the expectation sideways and make Harrison and ally rather than have him become a bigger threat.  Also when a character appears to have died the explaination later was cheap and easy. 

Man Of Steel

This was an amazing remake.  Not of Richard Donner’s Superman, of which there is no parallel (but still mired in its period) but of the 2009 Star Trek.  Zod is Nero and he’s going to drill a hole in the planet to kill every body, but not if the son of the man who tried to slow him down 30 years ago can stop him!

It is Zack Snyder’s most accomplished movie.  I famously (in my circles anyway) tore apart 300 as dumb.  I wanted to sleep by the end of Watchmen.  I liked a good part of Sucker Punch, but my expectations were low and it made great efforts to do what Snyder does best with great visuals and music punching every beat in a fight.

Man Of Steel is brutal.  It is very violent.  So violent, I probably won’t let my kids see it for years to come (they’ll start with Donner or more likely Bruce Timm’s Superman).  I’m not sure if we’re making up for lost time here or what, but aside from one daring rescue an a flashback and another as an adult, we don’t see Clark catching or saving too many people in this movie.  In fact, as the destruction mounts from General Zod and team’s attacks, I would’ve liked to see a bit more grabbing people out of harm’s way and juggling that along with the fighting.  Or at least Clark could pull the attack to a safe distance away from Smallville or Metropolis.

And I must stress there is a difference between VIOLENCE and ACTION.  You can still have buildings explode and danger with action. Violence is when you just have 30 minutes of punching with no consequences.

The father/son stuff that Superman Returns fumbled so badly is very effective here.  Maybe it is because I’m a father myself now, but there were many tearjerker moments with Jor El and Jonathan Kent.

I appreciate that one of the most well worn tropes in Superman mythology is the fact that Lois Lane doesn’t realize Clark is Superman and it is just destroyed here.  She figures it out because she is smart and it makes her beleivable as an investigative reporter.

Another apt comparison I couldn’t help making was the 2007 Transformers movie.  Filled with a lot of promised, mired in unexpected military scenes, and more violence that I was comfortable with.  The big difference is that this movie had a lot of heart where Michael Bay’s Transformers had toilet humor.  I hope that Snyder can continue to improve and give us an even better movie next time out and that Warner Bros doesn’t just shove Henry Cavill into a JLA or World’s Finest movie just to compete with Disney.

Perhaps the greatest praise as a geek I can give the movie is I want to see it again and I want an action figure.

Fast Times At Ridgemont High

With TV in reruns all summer, I’m trying to catch up on movies.  Dawn and I had never seen Fast Times.  It is a 1980s comedy with all the same pedigree of movies I love from that era from Caddy Shack to Ferris Bueller.  The cultural significance is a little lost on me since I was very young when this movie takes place, (in that way Clueless is more generationally significant to me) but I’m glad to finally get to see stuff I’ve heard referenced for decades.  Sean Penn’s Spicoli is clearly the model for characters as going from Wayne Campbell to Michealangelo from TMNT.

And it was funny in a way that comedies aren’t funny today in.  The 80s high school comedy is indescribable as a genre, but it has so much going on in the way the characters behave like adults and real struggles between the gags.

Also boobs.  So thumbs up.

Total Recall

Got about 2 minutes into the remake before I turned it off.

Awesome freak potatoes.

Episode%20Twelve_%20No%20Adam%20Required

notopicrequired:

Episode Twelve: No Adam Required
Adam is out, so Zac has Logan, Mike, Jordan and Ernie fill in. Talk will drift from the Xbone and E3 to Man Of Steel. Also Mike reads us some Sonic fan fiction and Jordan gives us a bonus bathroom story. Please don’t tell Adam.

Get this podcast:

iTunes/ RSS / Download

How I normally look your instagram photos. #selfie

I WILL NEVER REVEAL THE WU TANG SECRET.

Juan to make more money?

notopicrequired:

Episode Eleven: Pilot Can At The Craigslist Of God 
Zac, Adam, and Mike talk Craigslist and a little bit of Xbox, Fast & Furious vs Expendables crossover, quarter feeding arcade machines and why Zac is banned from Google ads for life.

Get This Podcast:

iTunes / RSS / Download

They will buy a game, play it, bring it back to their retailer to get credit for their next purchase. Certainly, that impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content. Why is that? Because the replayability of our content is super strong. The consumer wants to keep playing Mario Kart. The consumer want to keep playing New Super Mario Bros. They want to keep playing Pikmin. So we see that the trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average – much, much less.

Reggie Fils-Aime (President of Nintendo of America) from our report Nintendo: If devs are worried about used game sales, they should make better games. (via polygondotcom)

My daughter is from an alternate universe where only the crusts get eaten.

#milwaukee art museum

The system is down today but I brought a backup. #transformers #brothersinplastic #springer #paidtodonothing

Campbell’s chunky soup is basically dog food for people.

Lunch on the river #Milwaukee

Yamzie

Peacock attacks Pepsi machine at Milwaukee County Zoo

#grill #burgers #brats #bigpimpin

Schlitz Park #milwaukee #schlitz

notopicrequired:

This week we talk about TV technology and read your comments and questions.  We also talk about beets and beat juice.  Would you like some beet juice?  It is fresh squeezed and delicious.

Download NOW.

Subscribe in iTunes

#comeatmebro

TV Diary: HIMYM, New Girl, The Office

In the last week I saw three season finales from sitcoms I regularly watch and all three leaned heavily on the tried and true plot device of a wedding.  For the love of god, of course there are spoilers.

How I Met Your Mother
In a perfect world this would have been the last episode.  Midseason the actors signed on for a 9th year and as such the writers had to pump the brakes on the plot and leave the titular Mother off the table a little while longer.  I hear people complain about the lack of momentum in the plot on this show a LOT and it is usually from folks who had the same complaints about Lost or similar sci-fi/fantasy drama.  The difference is, this is a situation comedy.  A pretty pure situation comedy, if not a more well evolved one with lots of call backs and deep mythology.  So as long as the 22 minutes I watch has jokes, I’m fine.  I only care if we meet the mother if the mother is also funny.  So the only frustration in this episode was that it was trying so hard to move the pieces into place for a final season.  Lilly and Marshall moving, Marshall being offered the job, Ted putting the house up for sale and moving to Chicago, Ted knowing where Robin’s necklace is… All this plot and not enough gags about it.  The strongest part of the show was Barney and Robin going out to dinner and feuding with another couple.  They are getting married soon and nothing in the episode disrupted that.  The characters were free to just be funny.
As for the moment when we get “One ticket to Farhampton” It was a big moment for the show and for fans who have been waiting, but I’d be a lot more invested in her importance if I’d seen her do anything remotely as interesting as Robin, Barney, Lilly, or Marshall do in every episode.  Note to Bays/Thomas, you’re still writing a comedy show.  Season 9 is your victory lap.  We met the mother.  Justify her existance by making her shine brighter than the cast we’ve come to know.

New Girl
Unlike the HIMYM or The Office, New Girl isn’t ending any time soon nor is it intending to.  So they left a lot on the table and thats why it was a successful finale.  I want more.  Of course I’ve been saying that New Girl is the best sitcom on TV for most of this amazing second season. Schmidt has become the runaway success of the show with countless one-liners and obnoxious choices keeping the show hilarious even in the face of momentum killing romance between Nick and Jess.  Luckily, it appears they’re not going to make things easy or happy for Nick and Jess. They like each other a lot, as has been established, but they’re going to fight and nit pick and argue and probably storm off a lot in the future.  But that is going to be OK because those moments are going to come in the middle of stuff like chasing Bucky The Badger through an air duct.
Keep up the good work, make Winston even crazier next year, and don’t let anyone decide for sure what they want for as long as possible.  New Girl works best when its characters are reduced to children in adult situations.

The Office
I made a big deal earlier about how HIMYM shouldn’t be so concerned with plot and instead just focus on being funny.  The Office has been historically pretty uneven in this department.  Plot threads come and go, and hilarious highs are met often with uncomfortable dramatic lows.  The heart of this show is Pam and Jim and their happiness.  Fuck anyone who think this show was about Michael Scott and said it should have ended when he left.  Any weakness shown in the last 2 years since Michael left was based on lazy writing (Andy got rebooted a half dozen times) and the writers not knowing where to send Pam and Jim next.  They were happy and had 2 children.  Comedy doesn’t usually come from complacency.  The “Brian” sub plot from earlier this year was met with a lot of fan resistance because he threatened to ruin Pam and Jim.  Athlead should have been enough stress.  We didn’t need Brian.
Pam and Jim got their happiness though.  And Andy went far away so he can be unpredictable and uneven somewhere else.  Everyone got some kind of moment where the were sent off into the sunset, even if it was as bizarrely forced and Joan Cusack and Ed Begley Jr arrving at a Q&A to reveal to Erin they’re her birth parents.  Dwight firing Kevin was a long time coming.  I actually would’ve been disappointed in Dwight as a manager had he not done something like that.  No emotional attachment, just based on merit.  And since it was the last episode, it was OK to not have Kevin around anymore.
Dwight’s growth is amazing though.  With Angela at his side and the manager’s desk, he suddenly doesn’t seem as infuriatingly difficult to work with.  He got eaxctly what he always wanted and laughs off a decade of Jim’s pranks by asking Jim to be his best man and doing him a huge favor by the end of the episode.  Dwight will look after The Office better than Michael or Andy did, and without that disfunction, it is a perfect end.  The Office itself as a non living entity got closure.
I’m glad Michael did cameo, and his single talking head moment was one of the better lines in a good episode.
The reason I give The Office a pass on all this plot and drama is because I did get emotionally invested in the characters. Seinfeld is one of the all time great comedies and remains rewatchable today.  But the last episode was a disaster because the characters were funny but we just didn’t care what misfortune happened to them, and the parade of proof they were assholes all along just made you care even less. On The Office, even when the show was weak, it was still satisfying to check in with everyone.  I’ll miss it because I miss them.

Text “redcross” to 90999. It is stupidly easy and takes less than a minute.

Magnum

#River #water #notclean #gross

Demolition derby!

#Saturday #Morning #Selfie

Jehovah’s witness outside. Theodore wanted to see.

My daughter sent me a letter. #TheDarkKnightReturnToSender

Dandelions are not weeds.

Everyone likes cat pictures right? Here is Henry.

Movie Diary

Pitch Perfect
I recently cancelled my netflix by mail. I had no problem waiting 2 days for any movie, but I had pulled myself down to only 2 movies a month and at that point it is really just a lot cheaper to rent from Redbox, so that is why I rented Pitch Perfect, since I’m limited to new releases. It did come with a reccomendation from Will West earlier that week who praised the accuracy of college acapella groups depicted. I can’t speak to that, but I did enjoy the music for what it was worth and also the performance from Adam Devine (Workaholics) in a less mentally unstable role. Anna Kendrick is an actress I really like in everything I’ve seen her in and playing a mashup DJ was a recipe for a huge crush. It reminds me of the Josie & The Pussycats movie in the way that it should have been very lame and by the numbers, but has enough bizarre humor and clever moments to elevate the material to a point where it can be safely enjoyed by someone not a teenage girl. There is puke, a physchotic whispering girl, and big nerd who I can’t help feel is making fun of Glee by his inclusion. Can’t say I’d watch it again and again, but it is worth a rent. I might watch the “Cups” video a few more times though.
Iron Man 3 
The runaway success of this movie is not something we should praise but expect. It is better than Iron Man 2. It is also better than the original Iron Man in a lot of ways. I’d even say it tops Avengers as far as telling a story with character development (Avengers was a series of amazing events and jokes, but no real development). The female parts of this movie stand out against the titular Iron Man very well. Tony’s girlfriend isn’t a Bond girl, she’s the CEO of his company and his most trusted ally. The female AIM agent that stands in his way wasn’t easily dispatched. The scientist Tony met with 13 years ago doesn’t pop up to rekindle an old flame or get revenge, she just wants to get the rest of the formula Tony wrote on a cocktail napkin. And with little exception NONE of these women are sexualized nor do that dress in a way meant to seduce him. Yeah, this movie passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. And we’re rewarded with an amazing climax and a ride off into the sunset. Please, no Iron Man 4. Do not try to top this. Bring Tony back for Avengers and cameos, but let Iron Man 3 be the movie that closes his solo adventures.
Superman Unbound
These DC movies can be hit or miss. Red Hood, New Frontier, Apocalypse, Wonder Woman, Elite… These were great stories with the characters and it helps that most were adapted from great stories with the characters. I mentioned before that Avengers was just a series of events with those characters, and that is kind of how I feel with Unbound. The movie is bookended with scenes featuring Lois Lane and Clark’s relationship with her. In the middle there is some good Supergirl stuff showing Kara being homesick. But the bulk of the movie is Superman fighting Brainiac on multiple fronts. That fighting is fun, good action dialog, and superb WB animation to bring it together. But the movie never once shows why it is called “Unbound” aside from the one time he is bound by Brainiac and breaks free like 12 seconds later. There are lots of reasons for Kal El to lose it as part of this story, from being worried about Lois or Kara or pining to live inside Kandor with his fellow Kryptonians. All those are touched on but never dug in to. I guess that is a lot to ask for a 72 minute animated feature, but I’ve see these movies characterize Superman and family well and the fact they only half assed it bothers me more than if they went full on Justice League mode and made the entire story about the action and never talk about secret identities and relationships. The movie’s opening shot is also the weakest most unrealistic thing I’ve ever seen animated. Thankfully the movie picks up and is fun from there, but I could not suspend my disbelief that a swat team would pour on to a rooftop with armed kidnappers firing with NO COVER AT ALL and then only a few are slightly injured. I’d have junked that gun battle entirely in storyboarding and have the bad guys get away as soon as swat arrives since that is what happens anyway. Spent that recovered 45 seconds telling me why they kidnapped Lois in the first place. All told, it is still a fun movie and worth watching, just doesn’t elevate to the same level as Superman VS The Elite or Under The Red Hood.

“Yo dawg, I heard you like paper towels so we put a paper towel dispenser on top of a paper towel dispenser so you can get a paper towel while you get a paper towel.”

Want to buy a cake on mother’s day? Ha.

Episode%20Six%20Ten%20Years%20Gone

notopicrequired:

Ten Years Gone:  We discuss the lighter side of being trapped in a basement for a decade!  Zac Shipley and Adam Gardner are joined by Will West of http://www.williambrucewest.com/ for a discussion of all the random pop culture events and minutia that someone out of the loop for a long time would need to catch up on.

 

This episode is explicit, not really in tone or language but in subject matter.  Obviously the women captured for a decade deserve respect, this podcast is merely taking the concept and setting and assuming the least essential details like whether they’d seen Avengers or if they would understand an Android phone.

 

Direct download

subscribe in iTunes!

(don’t forget to rate it!)

#douchebag #parking

#triceratops #sidewalk #chalk

Not a drop to drink

Vibe ripe tomato

Family has been indifferent about dinner. Made a menu.

tumblr_mlwcmbOVi51qgg19t

DJ Lance Lockarm.  He took his web zone down like 4 years ago, tracks are all gone.  This is one of his best.

Ice cream with a fork

notopicrequired:

This episode is not safe for… watercoolers? Adam and Zac invade their step sister podcast and are subject to intense grilling and smoking with mesquite flavor. If you listen carefully, you can hear Shannon’s vagina dry up when we start talking about video games.

Direct Download!

subscribe in iTunes!

Discovered at the in laws. Carefully hidden on inside of always open door.

#sunday #morning #selfie

Movie Diary

the post in which I write about movies I have recently watched.

The Campaign

Local elections, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis. Some pretty low hanging fruit here on the comedy vine and this movie to its credit made the most of it.  Contrary to my expectations, Ferrell was not playing a version of his “W” but instead more of a John Edwards type.  They beat you over the head with how money is running politics, and even though that is surely true, it could’ve been done without the satire of the Koch brothers.  Biggest laugh comes in the credits sequence when the Dylan McDermott character uses the alias “Dermot Mulroney.”

Lincoln

Tommy Lee Jones delivers more laughs than either of The Campaign’s stars, and the movie at large has more to say about today’s politics and back door dealing.  Perhaps an unfair comparison, but I don’t mind making it.

Liberal Arts

The majority cast of TV’s “How I Met Your Mother” have good to great careers in my opinion.  The exception has to be the star Josh Radnor.  He prefers to write, direct, and star in independant movies.  I gotta give him credit, he could turn his CBS stardom into a big paycheck in summer romcoms and buddy movies with Bradley Cooper, but instead he does what he really wants to do.  Which is why it is disappointing that this movie was a real bore.  Like my wife and I literally fell asleep in the middle of it.  We finished it another night but only after debating whether it was worth finishing. There was no payoff.

The Giant Mechanical Man

By comparison, here is another movie staring a beloved TV actor that wants to address the 30 something malaise and minutiae. Maybe I just have slightly more affection for Jenna Fischer.  I can relate anyway to taking a job you’re overqualified for because you can’t keep it together enough to do the job you know you should have.  The Topher Grace character was so obnoxiously terrible and so obviously full of shit it broke the movie ever time he reappeared because I couldn’t believe that anyone thought he was OK.  Much of the rest of the movie was enjoyable though.  The post credits sequence was far too tacked on.  Should have stopped when it faded to black.

Brave

Have rarely been disappointed by Pixar. This was one of their more enjoyable tales.  If they stick to original content and avoid sequels, they’ll stay the best in my book.  I’ll just continue to avoid the sequels anyway. Fine music, amazing visuals, fairy tale story, and a strong mother/daughter screen relationship.  This one we’ll revisit when my daughter is a little older.

Episode%20Three

notopicrequired:

Adam and Zac have a conversation with Brad about Boston. This was recorded on Wednesday night, April 17, two days after the Marathon Bombing. We don’t have standard show format anyway, but this is very different just the same. There are still some laughs, and it is still worth listening to. Thanks.

 

Direct Download

subscribe in iTunes!

Why did Ultra Magnus come with Soul Edge?