Here's the top MCS tags found for "star"

• Star Wars
• Star Trek
• Stargate
• Starcraft
• Star Wars: Episode 6: Return of the Jedi
• Star Wars: Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith
• LEGO Star Wars
• Star Trek: Into Darkness
• Starbucks
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Wars: Rebels
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars
• StarCraft II
• Star Trek: Nemesis
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Battle Beyond The Stars
• Dark Star
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• The Last Starfighter
• Star Wars: Episode 7: The Force Awakens
• Starship Troopers
• Fist of the North Star
• Homestar Runner
• StarTalk
• Star-Lord
• Stargate: Universe
• Star Wars: Battlefront
• Star Fox
• Men Who Stare At Goats
• The Star
• The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek: Beyond
• The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
• Star Citizen
• Star Wars: Celebration
• Starfire
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Star Trek: Discovery
• Starry Night
• Stargirl
• Star Trek: Voyager
• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Starsky & Hutch
• Star Trek: Enterprise
• Krystle Starr
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Star Wars: Episode 8: The Last Jedi
• Star Trek: Axanar
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Canada goes nuclear because Trump

nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-quickly-could-canada-build-an-atomic-bomb

Since Trump shat on his neighbours and loves despots, perhaps Canuckistan should go nuclear?

This bad boy, the F-104 Starfighter,

might be on your doorstep.

Please Stand By review

Wendy is an independent and brilliant young woman with autism. To submit her script on-time for a Star Trek screenplay competition she sneaks out of her group home and travels hundreds of miles not letting anything stop her from achieving her goals.

My god this is a heart wrenching movie. I teared up about 20 times throughout the film. I had the impression from interviews that Patton Oswald was going to play a larger part in the story, but he was in only a couple scenes.

Strongly suggest this, but not for the Star Trek connections, this is a movie that has real heart.

Wanted review

James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie star in Wanted, a turbo-charged thrill ride critics are calling the most visually inventive, trailblazing action film of its kind.

“Toxic Masculinity: The Movie”, Wanted is loosely based on a comic about a league of super assassin villains that all got together one day and decided to just kill all the good guys, then take over the world. In the movie version, there’s no super villainry, no super heroes, no super suits, and no limits to the depths they’ll go to make you feel like a “pussy” if you haven’t killed someone lately. All that said, it’s a fun ride, if predicable at times.

Fun note, if you’ve seen this movie before, you’ll likely remember a scene in which our Hero realizes that he’s a MAN, proceeds to scream at his overweight female boss, then uses his ergonomic keyboard to assault his coworker / best friend, knocking a few teeth out with a few keys that all spell out “fuck you”. The guy that’s getting his teeth knocked out? That’s Chris Pratt. Yeah, I was surprised to not remember him in this movie, but honestly other than peak Angelina Jolie, there’s not much else that’s memorable about the film.

Dropmix game review

Developed with Harmonix, creators of Rock Band and Dance CentralFast-paced music mixing game that lets you create unexpected song mixesKeep the music pumping with 3 ways to play: Freestyle, Clash, and PartyIncludes 60 DropMix cards featuring music from top artists and popular songs

Original MSRP was $100, which was a non-starter for me. They recently dropped the price to $50 and I had a $30 credit on my account. $20 was a great price point to try out Dropmix, which ended up being a great game with some real show stopping problems. For the original $100 they would be outrageous problems, for $20 they’re just minor annoyances.

Some of the annoyances include:

• the mind boggling decision to have a screw on the battery compartment, so when you pull the game out every six months, you’ll need a screwdriver
• requiring four AA batteries with no way to plug the main deck in
• using blue tooth instead of a cable
• only supporting specific versions of android and iOS, out of the four tablets we have in my house, none of them were compatible with the game, so we had to use our phones which do not have great speakers, I’m going to try to plug my phone into a speaker or something the next time I play it.
• No instructions included in the box, you’ll need to watch a video streamed from the Hasbro site, several times in our case.  there’s a giant fold out sheet of paper included in the box with all sorts of cool colors and designs on it which i assumed was going to be the game play instructions, but instead it was instructions on where to download the apps from. Google Play Store and Apple App Store for those of you wondering.
• IRL DLC for $15 a pack for a dozen or so cards.  i think I’ll only be getting those when they eventually get down to $5 a pack.
• This game isn’t going to work in 10 years, so get your playing in now.

All that being said, it’s a fun card game that has music playing in the background.  You don’t even need to hear the music to play the game, it’s all about playing cards with the right bonuses on the screen and knocking your opponent’s cards off the play deck.  I still think it’s a hard sell at $50 and would only suggest buying it if you can get it for around $25.

Fahrenheit 451 review

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

This latest interpretation of the original novel plays it safe by translating “mindless chatter of television” into “mindless chatter of state mandated social media as delivered by Silicon Valley”. It doesn’t make much sense, only barely holds together, and I still think the original story is much more solid, with it’s society that has a sick fascination with vapid reality television and focuses on how people weren’t going to have freedoms taken away, they would be given up willingly.

I think Michael B Jordan is still looking for a role to really do well in, I’ve yet to see him in a movie that he was able to carry himself. He was good with Sly in Creed, terrible in Fantastic Four (but EVERYONE was terrible in that) and was his character in Black Panther didn’t have to exist at all for the movie to move forward. in Fahrenheit 451 he’s vastly out acted and out performed by the incredibly Michael Shannon, but honestly that guy is a force unto himself, even in his bad roles that guy is just intense like no one else can be.

Out Today 3 different IncrediBuilds books with model sets

Out today are three different Star Trek IncrediBuilds sets:

IncrediBuilds: Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise Book and 3D Wood Model
IncrediBuilds: Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise Deluxe Book and Model Set
IncrediBuilds: Star Trek The Next Generation: U.S.S. Enterprise Deluxe Book and Model Set

Here’s the book’s synopsis:

Build your own U.S.S. Enterprise with this IncrediBuilds: Star Trek model kit, featuring a full-color book with facts and trivia on one of the most iconic starships in pop culture history.

Get ready to boldly go where no one has gone before with this exciting Star Trek wood model set. The deluxe 32-page hardcover book is packed with information on the U.S.S. Enterprise, from its basic capabilities to its pivotal role in the Star Trek universe. Complete with stunning imagery and behind-the-scenes content, this book and model set is a must have for any Star Trek fan. The wood model is easy to assemble and snaps together to form a dynamic, displayable 3D version of the Enterprise that fans will love.

Available on both Amazon.com and Books-A-Million.com

from www.startrekbookclub.com/4768/out-today-3-different-incredibuilds-books-with-model-sets/

Making Fun The Story of Funko review

“Pop culture purveyor” Funko started in a garage in 1998. Today its vinyl figures are beloved worldwide, and the company credits fans for its success.

I don’t get the Funko ‘craze’, I’ve never been a fan of their toys, but I can clearly see that they’re a well loved and sell well enough to keep adding to the 400+ items in the Funko Pop line. Wanting to learn more about the company, I watched this and now I know more about them. They’re now firmly in my “I don’t like them but man they’re doing something right” list that includes Bruno Mars and Pitt Bull, it’s obvious they have a passion for the bobble head genre and everyone involved seems invested in making their fans happy. There’s a touch of insanity when they interview their bigger fans that have collections in the thousands, people that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their collection and have them all on display for no one to ever see in their own homes. I have a touch of this insanity myself with my Star Trek collection, but my own collection pales in comparison to theirs.

I suggest watching ‘Making Fun’, it was an illuminating and fun experience.

5th Passenger

Five crew members are forced into an escape pod built for four after their starship is destroyed. Just as rescue seems imminent, an alien creature boards their craft and attacks them.

from Movies – 2Queue

APOLLO 50th Anniversary Logo

Created by NASA graphic artist Matthew Skeins, the logo offers a nod to the past with a few elements borrowed from the original program emblem, and a glimpse into the future with a graphic depiction of NASA’s vision for the next half-century of deep space exploration. The arc through the word “Apollo” represents Earth’s limb, or horizon, as seen from a spacecraft. It serves as a reminder of how the first views of Earth from the Moon – one of NASA’s crowning achievements — forever transformed the way we see ourselves as human beings. It also affirms NASA’s intention to continue pushing the boundaries of knowledge and delivering on the promise of American ingenuity and leadership in space. The original Apollo emblem, adopted by the program in 1965, used drawings of the Moon and Earth linked by a double trajectory to portray President John F. Kennedy’s goal of “putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” by the end of the 1960s. In a similar fashion, the Apollo 50th anniversary logo describes a contemporary goal, with images of the Moon and Mars filling the first and second “O”s, respectively, and the phrase “Next Giant Leap” beneath the word “Apollo.” Neil Armstrong declared his first step onto the lunar surface from the ladder of the Eagle lander on July 20, 1969, to be “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Today, NASA is working to return astronauts to the Moon to test technologies and techniques for the next giant leaps – challenging missions to Mars and other destinations in deep space. The original emblem was a composite design derived from the ideas of NASA employees and contractor personnel. It featured the constellation Orion overlaid on a capital letter “A.” The constellation was positioned so that its three central stars formed the bar in the initial for “Apollo.” In the 50th anniversary logo, elements of the same star field recall the collective effort of some 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo Program – an 11-year series of 33 spaceflights including six that reached the lunar surface. The three central stars are repositioned diagonally beside “50” to emphasize the many sacrifices made in pursuit of the lunar goal — especially the lives of Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee who perished in a capsule fire during a test on the launch pad in January 1967. The star field, like the rest of the anniversary logo, is set against a blue nebula as an acknowledgement that human footprints on distant worlds is not too big a dream, and confirmation that NASA already is working toward that goal. Image Number: N/A Date: June 1, 2018

Food Fighters

The kitchen is under attack!! Join the food fight alongside Banana, Hot Dog and Corn minifigures! This project started two years ago with the Banana suit guy, and continued with the other food related minifigures. Every person I showed them chuckled, especially kids! The three suits are highly articulated and can assume many combat poses without falling off. Each mech is equipped with a personalized weapon: Banana Storm, Hot Dog MachineGun, Corn Blaster (although the Corn Guy prefers boxing!) They’re relatively simple builds (intermediate for young builders), with an estimated 250-300 pieces per mech. I really hope that you’ll smile seeing them. Help me to reach 10000 supporters and we could start a full scale food war!!

Game Night review

Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams star as Max and Annie, whose weekly couples game night gets kicked up a notch when Max’s charismatic brother, Brooks (Chandler), arranges a murder mystery party, complete with fake thugs and faux federal agents. So, when Brooks gets kidnapped, it’s all part of the game…right? But as the six uber-competitive gamers set out to solve the case and win, they begin to discover that neither this “game”— nor Brooks—are what they seem to be. Over the course of one chaotic night, the friends find themselves increasingly in over their heads as each twist leads to another unexpected turn. With no rules, no points, and no idea who all the players are, this could turn out to be the most fun they’ve ever had…or game over.

A color by numbers comedy with some pretty good bits in it, Jason Bateman is easily one of the best straight men in Hollywood right now, I hesitate to imagine him trying to be funny himself. I’m really happy to see Lamorne Morris in a movie, he did a couple impressions here that were hilariously spot on.

This was fun, might be great for a date night.

Doctor Strange review

From Marvel Studios comes DOCTOR STRANGE, the story of world-famous neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose life changes forever after a horrific car accident renders his hands useless. When traditional medicine fails him, he travels to remote Kamar-Taj in search of a cure, but instead discovers the mystical arts and becomes a powerful sorcerer battling dark forces bent on destroying our reality.

I enjoyed seeing his magic stuff in Infinity War, so I went back to watch this on Netflix. I guess I should start buying the Disney/Marvel movies while they’re $10 each since they’re going to eventually pull the movies for their own streaming services, though I might pay for that for a bit, rumor is there’s going to be a Star Wars series streaming new.

Black Panther review

When young King T’Challa is drawn into conflict with an old foe that puts his homeland Wakanda and the entire world at risk, he must release Black Panther’s full power to save them.

Surprisingly, the UV codes for Black Panther are only going for $5-$6 each out there. These aren’t 4k, but for a fresh release from Disney, it’s a surprisingly low barrier to entry.

I still feel like this movie has some issues. They completely lost me in the third act when they return to Wakanda with the dead body (why did they kill off one of the best villains in the MCU?) and proceed to show that for all their high tech equipment, Wakanda still has a long way to go politically.

How silly is it that one guy can come in, take over the throne in one hand to hand battle, then send the entire country off 180 degrees from where it was heading just a day earlier? I would have hoped there would be more than just one tribal king to rule the country as advanced as theirs, and even then, I would hope the entire country wouldn’t just shrug their shoulders and start following a guy that literally calls himself “Killmonger”.

Dark Shadows review

Continuing their creative and commercially incandescent partnership (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands), superstar Johnny Depp and macabre movie master Tim Burton reunite yet again in this silver screen adaptation of the cult classic supernatural soap opera that follows the life and loves of New England vampire Barnabas Collins. Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer (Batman Returns), Eva Green (Camelot), Helena Bonham Carter (Harry Potter) and Australian newcomer Bella Heathcote as a young woman who finds herself inexplicably entwined in the vampire’s fated love story two centuries earlier, DARK SHADOWS brings to light Depp’s vampire from 1752 into the lava lamped vamp camp of 1972!

Insufferably angsty in nearly every scene, there’s a ton of star power in Dark Shadows but none of it shines very bright.

All Joy and No Fun review

Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on their parents?

In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior tries to tackle this question, isolating and analyzing the many ways in which children reshape their parents’ lives, whether it’s their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today’s mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear.

Recruiting from a wide variety of sources—in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology—she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young children and progressing to parents of teens. Through lively and accessible storytelling, Senior follows these mothers and fathers as they wrestle with some of parenthood’s deepest vexations—and luxuriate in some of its finest rewards.

Meticulously researched yet imbued with emotional intelligence, All Joy and No Fun makes us reconsider some of our culture’s most basic beliefs about parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today—and tomorrow.

A very sobering look at what horrible things will happen to you and the people around you when children come into the picture. Ends on a terribly depressing note that reminds us that we all die alone, even if we have loved ones.

Sunshine review

In 2057, the sun is dying, and a crew must reheat the star to save mankind in this limited-release film directed by Danny Boyle. Bonuses: commentary, deleted scenes, production diaries, short films.

Murphy’s Law meets Event Horizon, with all the shenanigans you could imagine. Funny story though, my wife asked me to get this film because she heard the soundtrack, then it took me about a month to convince her to watch it. Fun to see Chris Evans with normal people arms instead of Captain American arms.

fallout boy minimalism

I started playing Fallout Shelter, then there was a sale on Fallout 4. I’ve played about 50 hours of Shelter and about 2 of Fallout 4 so far.

Head On review

John Scalzi returns with Head On, the standalone follow-up to the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi’s trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.

Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth?and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

I’m not a fan of mystery novels, I’m also not a fan of sports novels, but I definitely like books about robots, which Head On sorta has. There’s an interesting hook to the telepresense sports league but I was never pulled into the story the way that I’m accustomed to with Scalzi’s novels. I think i’ll skip the next one in this series, if there are any.

GQ 2018 Comedy Issue

GQ would like to apologize to Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, and Sarah Silverman for the egregious mistakes made in the process of creating the cover for our 2018 comedy issue, the latest in our pantheon of mostly annual love letters to the funniest humans we know. Our intention was to celebrate the three super-funny superstars, who are all that is smart and perceptive and riotous and necessary in comedy right now. We deeply regret that the results violated GQ’s rigorous standards of editorial excellence and the laws of nature.

In an effort to ensure that an error of this magnitude never happens again, and because this sounds like the right thing to say, GQ will be conducting a thorough internal audit of our cover-development process. To demonstrate our commitment to transparency, we will release the results of the review, quietly, in 17 months, on Medium.

Stunning Mara Jade Skywalker Cosplay

Cosplayer April Gloria looks absolutely perfect as Mara Jade Skywalker for the non-canon Star Wars Universe. Who knows, maybe Disney will bring her back at one point. Photos by David Love Photography & CG. [Source: April Gloria | David Love Photography | Via GG]] Advertisements

Legends Of The Fall review

This is an epic story of three brothers bound by loyalty, tested by war, and torn apart by love. Brad Pitt stars as Tristan, the wildest of the Ludlow sons, whose failure to protect his brother puts his entire family on a path of betrayal and self-destruction. From the battlefields of Europe to the farthest reaches of civilization, LEGENDS OF THE FALL follows Tristan’s turbulent journey from boyhood to manhood to legend. Also starring Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond and Henry Thomas.

Great actors, great acting, settings, and story, but holy moley it’s a sad story.

Enders Game review

ENDER’S GAME is an epic adventure starring Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis and Abigail Breslin. Based on the best-selling/award winning novel

I really thought I was buying the 4k version of this movie, but the VUDU code system continues to confuse and stimie my movie collecting experience.

It was a good movie again though, so at least I enjoyed the 1080p version instead of the 4k HDR experience I was hoping for.

Summer Wallpaper

summer means bbq, or at least grillin.

I think I want to start grillin!

Spiderman Homecoming review

A young Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland), who made his sensational debut in Captain America: Civil War, begins to navigate his newfound identity as the web-slinging super hero. Thrilled by his experience with the Avengers, Peter returns home, where he lives with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), under the watchful eye of his new mentor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). Peter tries to fall back into his normal daily routine – distracted by thoughts of proving himself to be more than just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man – but when the Vulture (Michael Keaton) emerges as a new villain, everything that Peter holds most important will be threatened.

I found a 4k code for cheap ($10 on amazon or $6 on a UV code site), so I bought it in 4k. Absolutely glorious in 4k, I recommend watching it in 4k, bu not because of the 4k, because honestly I don’t really tell the difference between 1080p upscaled to 4k vs “real” 4k. Watch it in 4k for the HDR. There’s a scene towards the end with a cloaked airplane that absolutely pops in HDR.

Next CW superhero crossover to introduce Batwoman

The CW will host another superhero crossover event this fall, but this time they’ll be introducing the character of Batwoman into the fold. Arrow star Stephen Amell shared the big news at Theâ?¦

Changes to the site archve

I’ve made a small but significant change the way the archive pages work.

The way they worked previously is that the archive page for say Star Wars https://www.myconfinedspace.com/tag/star-wars/ would list all the attachments to all the posts, then link back to the post.  that’s fine for posts that have just a single image, but it sucked when you had posts with 20 images attached to it. I found myself opening 5 different copies of the same post, then having to go back and finding the 5 images I was interested in.

Obviously this was a bad user experience!

Now, if the post has more than 2 images, you’ll be taken to the full image for the thumbnail you clicked on.  You can see this is effect on the Star Wars tag https://www.myconfinedspace.com/tag/star-wars/ specifically the Star Destroyer with three images on one post and the Battlefront 2 image.

Thoughts?

Marvel’s Inhumans officially canceled

ABC has pulled the plug on Inhumans after one awfully reviewed first season. Anson Mount, Iwan Rheon, Serinda Swan, and Ken Leung starred in the Marvel series, which followed the royal family of Attillan after they were splintered by a military coup.

Obviously this was expected, but I wonder if we’ll see these characters in Agents of SHIELD or future movies?

Oliver North to be NRA’s new president

Oliver North, the Fox News contributor and central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, will be the National Rifle Association’s new president, the group announced Monday.

Can’t even start to make this shit up

Casting: Dora discovers its Explorer

Now we know who’ll be sporting the purple backpack when Nickelodeon’s favorite problem-solving adventurer makes the jump to the big screen for her first-ever live-action movie.

2018-05 Previews Order

Here’s the comics I’m going to be lookin at soon:

(more…)

Mystery of the Wax Museum review

The disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor.

Absolutely fantastic movie, I’d say it’s even better than the “House Of Wax” remake that I watched to see Vincent Price. The two movies are nearly a shot for shot remake for the initial scenes: there’s a rainy night, there’s a money hungry patron, there’s an artist who refuses to compromise his moral stance, then there’s a fire. What happens after that isn’t the same movie in any regard. “The House of Wax” was obviously retooled to be a Vincent Price vehicle, which I can’t fault at all, but this original “Mystery of The Wax Museum” was another entry in a series of movies staring Glenda Farrell as Torchy Blane, a smart as a whip reporter who was reportedly the basis for Lois Lane. Every moment she’s on the screen she owns it, to a degree that now I want to see all the Blane films specifically, then watch more Farrell movies in genera.

The story has some pretty fun stuff, as unlike it’s remake it’s set in prohibition, but also set during New Year’s Eve, so there’s a fair bit of alcohol humor here that I find adorable for a nearly 85 year old movie that holds up very well. There’s some obvious foley work during the opening scene’s thunder storms, a few of the wax figures are obviously people (at one point an older woman wax figure was blinking 5-10 times in the 30 second scene!) but there can be no fault found in the movie over all, I really enjoyed it.

85 years old and still one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while, if you have a chance, check it out!

Avengers Infinity War review

Ten Years In The Making

NO SPOILERS HERE.

There’s been about 19 Marvel Entertainment movies that have built this universe, depending on your personal choice of including the Edward Nortan Hulk movie or nothing, each of which making around a billion dollars each at the box office, then coupled with the after market dvd and merchandise sales, I think they’ve done well with their $4 billion investment. There’s been a couple other smaller expenses after that, but the last piece of the puzzle will be the sale of Foxes’s entertainment assets, which will bring the X-men and the Fantastic Four back to Marvel. Avengers Infinity Wars sold around $250 million, so it’s safe to assume that it’s going to cross the $1b line very quickly.

All that is just impressive IRL business stuff that just boggles my mind. 10 years of comic book movies and 50 named comic book characters share the screen in this two and a half hour movie (budget 3 hours for previews and credits + after credit scene), and they still made it feel less cramped than Avengers: Age of Ultron. There was never a time that I felt like there were too many people on the screen at once or that anyone was getting a short end of the stick. Additionally, it really took this movie to make such a pronounced comparison of the different theme songs that each character or teams had. There was no surprise when a 70’s rock band song started up that the Guardians were just moments away or when the heroic Avengers theme started up that serious action was about to begin.

I can’t say anything negative about the movie other than maybe it was too short. It certainly caps off an exciting 10 years of movies and definitely sets up another 10 years of something special to look forward to.

House of Wax 2007 review

A group of friends on their way to a college football game falls prey toa pair of murderous brothers in an abandoned small town. The friends discover that the psychotic siblings have expanded the area’s main attraction–the House of Wax–and created an entire town filled with the wax-coated corpses of unlucky visitors. Now the group must find a wayout before its members also become permanent exhibits in the House of Wax. Remake of the Warner Bros. horror classic, which was the first release of a 3-D film by a major studio.

I often wonder what kind of crack the Amazon synopsis writers are smoking. Other than a very basic premise (dead people covered in wax) there is absolutely nothing about this film to tie it back to the original (and much better) 1953 version. There’s so many damn spoilers in the synopsis as well, the whole town being made of wax was a huge twist, one that I somewhat appreciated, though to be honest, this film was not for me. It started out as a campy ‘friends on a trip’ movie that slowly morphed into a suspenseful horror film that made a sudden turn into torture pornography with some absolutely horrid things happening to everyone involved. I stay away from movies like the Saw franchise because I know what they’re about, and that ain’t for me.

A couple notes though from my watching, there’s spoilers here, because honestly, F this movie:

• I think I had that same highchair. Mine didn’t have arm and foot straps though, just the metal bars on the side.
• that’s Paris Hilton….and she’s the best actor here so far? wtf.
• disturbed soundtrack does not fit for the gentle car ride they’re taking in that scene.
• the guy that’s throwing all the animal bodies around reminds me of tucker or dale
• is that one of the brothers from Supernatural? Why yes it is. Looks like he beat his on screen brother to the movies by a couple years.
• sleeping in to 2:30pm while sleeping in tents? bullshit, I have never once slept in that long in a TENT.
• entire house is actually made of wax?  does it not get over 80 degrees in that town at all?

Trench Run

this is not from star wars, but it looks like it could be.

Blazing Saddles review

The railroad’s got to run through the town of Rock Ridge. How do you drive out the townfolk in order to steal their land? Send in the toughest gang you’ve got…and name a new sheriff who’ll last about 24 hours. But that’s not really the plot of Blazing Saddles, just the pretext. Once Mel Brooks’ lunatic film many call his best gets started, logic is lost in a blizzard of gags, jokes, quips, puns, howlers, growlers and outrageous assaults upon good taste or any taste at all. Cleavon Little as the new lawman, Gene Wilder as the wacko Waco Kid, Brooks himself as a dim-witted politico and Madeline Kahn in her Marlene Dietrich send-up that earned an Academy Award nomination all give this sagebrush saga their lunatic best. And when Blazing Saddles can’t contain itself at the finale, it just proves the Old West will never be the same!

Could you even make this movie today? Imagine the outrage of using period appropriate language in a comedy western! I re-watched because there were a couple scenes in Westworld that reminded me of Blazing Saddles (the sheriff getting locked out of his office!) and Mel Brooks can honestly do no wrongs with his comedies.

The Shadow review

Alec Baldwin stars as the crime-fighting superhero who battles his most dangerous nemesis yet in this thriller with incredible special effects, humor and a dose of the macabre!

Do any of use truly know what evil lurks in the hearts of man? This is in my list of top 10 films, I music, the pacing, the actors…wait, is that Neelix from Star Trek Voyager?

Never mind that, there’s Tim Curry, Alec Baldwin, Ian McKellen, and more! I love the idea that The Shadow is a super hero that has a pretty limited skill set: he can cloud men’s minds. Make them see things that aren’t there and not see things that ARE there. Using those mental powers, he’s built a network of agents across the world that work with him for the greater good. Sure, he started his journey as a drug lord in Asia, but he eventually atoned for his sins, if only in the most superficial of ways.

Miracle Mile review

“Miracle Mile” starts conventionally enough with bashful musician (Edwards) going ga-ga over waitress (Winningham). After a pleasant if somewhat quirky day together, Edwards and Winningham plan a tete-a-tete at the all-night restaurant where the girl works. While preparing to call her on a pay phone, Edwards intercepts a frantic call from a soldier stationed at a midwestern missile silo. The message: nuclear warheads have been launched, and it’s only 70 minutes to Armageddon. This unsettling news casts severe doubts over the future of Edwards’ and Winningham’s relationship, but they manage to touch base before the big bang. This is an optimistic slant on the end of the world.

That line about “optimistic slant”, I disagree with it. There’s some good here, but humanity clearly cannot be trusted to act nicely when the end of the world is at hand. I enjoyed the film, it’s a great look into a possible end of days response. I took some notes:

Westworld 1973 review

For $1,000 a day, vacationers can indulge whims at the theme park called Westworld. They can bust up a bar or bust out of jail, drop in on a brothel or get the drop on a gunslinger. It’s all safe: the park’s lifelike androids are programmed never to harm the customers. But not all droids are getting with the program.

I’m not a big cowboy fan, but I sure do like some robots. I never gave this movie the time of day until the HBO series, and even then I had some trepidation about the original 1973 movie, which to be honest I can’t really defend too well. The movie is great, though it does take way too long for all the murderin’ to start up.

The final confrontation in the other part of the park is straight up terrifying.

Ash vs Evil Dead has been canceled after three seasons

Three seasons into what began as a planned five-year series run, Starz has elected to end Bruce Campbell’s bloody, campy run as Ashley J. Williams.

The first two seasons of this show were fucking bonkers, I loved every twist and turn it made.

Westworld’s Thandie Newton joins Evan Rachel Wood in securing equal pay for season 3

The premiere for Season 2 of HBO’s Westworld is just around the corner, but the future beyond that already looks to have made some good strides for its female stars.

Beyond Skyline review

When the population of Los Angeles is sucked off the face of the earth, Detective Mark Corley (Frank Grillo) storms his way onto an alien ship to rescue his estranged son. After the ship crashes in Southeast Asia, Mark must forge an alliance with a band of survivors to discover the key to saving his son and taking back the planet once and for all.

I had no intention of watching two Frank Grillo movies in a row, in fact I had no clue he was even in this film, a film that I was only watching to see what kind of a trainwreck it would turn out to be. It’s a sequel to an absolutely horrid movie that I didn’t like at all, but I watched in theaters nearly eight years ago. Maybe it wasn’t actually as bad as I remember it, but there’s a huge different between a movie you pay $15 to see and a movie that’s included in your $15 a month Netflix subscription.

My point is, this movie is about as stupid as the first one, but due to Frank Grillo, the improvement of low budget movie graphics, and I assume a sizable grant to film on the same sets as The Scorpion King 4, I don’t have the same low opinion of Beyond Skyline as I do of the original film. Sure, they’re literally punching the aliens to death (after using guns and rockets, but failing), but that’s just what happens when you get the same stunt team as The Raid or Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Sure, the heroin chemist in the dank dark tunnels has a DNA sequencer and can merge human and alien blood, but that’s to be expected, right? Maybe the giant mechs were a step too far, but truly, is there any step with a movie that can be considered “too far”?

My favorite line from the movie makes no sense at all:
“we did more than just survived, we evolved”.

Action Comics #1000 review

Celebrate 1000 issues of Action Comics with an all-star lineup of top talent as they pay tribute to the comic that started it all! From today’s explosive action to a previously unpublished tale illustrated by the legendary Curt Swan to the Man of Tomorrow’s future-this very special, oversized issue presents the best of the best in Superman stories! 

Low quality art with stories that had no connection to the stories in Action Comics #990-999 and will have no impact on issue #1001. None of the stories even featured the CURRENT Superman, which is a time hopping nightmare for Booster Gold, the current “guardian of time” that tries to prevent Superman from destroying the time stream. See, Superman went back in time to see what the final moments of Krypton were like and somehow managed to break everything, but nevermind about that, that storyline was dropped with no real resolution so Superman could come back to the current timeline to watch Lois Lane die. Don’t worry about that though, Booster Gold changed the timeline to save Lois Lane.  He’s apparently left Superman and is off breaking Batman’s timeline now, so much for being the guardian of time!

None of this is mentioned in Superman #1000, which is a low effort, low quality cash grab from DC Comics. $8 for an 80 page comic anthology featuring 5-10 page stories of OTHER supermen.

Remember when superman was interesting? When he was dead?

I’m canceling this series after this issue, what a waste of time and money.

Wheelman review

A getaway driver for a bank robbery realizes he has been double crossed and races to find out who betrayed him.

I’m seeing Frank Grillo more than I thought I would, I think I first noticed him in the Captain America movies where he played Crossbones, then he was in a much beloved Purge film, then it seemed like every film he made that hadn’t been released yet started showing up on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I’ve seen the same thing happen with Vin Diesel and The Rock, it’s just funny to see it happening again where an actor gets a little heat then suddenly you’re seeing a 20 years version of them in a film about finding true love while adopting cats.

Wheelman takes place in a single car for 90% of the film, then the rest is spent in another (smaller) car. It takes an incredible skills set on both the director and the actors to be able to do these types of films, some of them work and some of them don’t. Wheelman falls into the “it works” camp luckily, if only because of the supporting crew that comes and goes from the car’s cabin.

Why Dwayne Johnson almost quit Rampage over its ending

The following article contains major spoilers for Rampage. Dwayne Johnson may have another box-office hit on his hands with the monster action movie Rampage, but there was a moment when the superstar actor almost walked away from the project completely.

Cause he’s a bleeding heart pussy that….no wait, it’s cause he knew it was a shit ending and the one they went with is 100% better!

Thanos Rising review

The vile face of Thanos left audiences in shock after last summer’s Marvel Studios’ “The Avengers” movie…but who is this eerily disturbing villain? Discover the hidden truth, as Thanos rises as the unrivaled rogue of wretchedness in this gripping tale of tragedy, deceit and destiny. Where did this demi-god of destruction come from – and more importantly, what does he want from the universe? Death has been shadowing Thanos for his entire life, watching his inner darkness grow…but why? The answers come from the incredible creative team of Jason Aaron (Wolverine, X-Men Origins) and Simone Bianchi (Wolverine, Astonishing X-Men)! Prepare for a journey that will not only change the course of one boy’s life…but will soon change the very nature of the Marvel Universe. What comes after “Marvel NOW!”? Whatever it is, it starts HERE!

I believe that this story has already been invalidated, dismissed, and retroconned, so thanks Marvel for not having any idea what you’re doing with your comic books!

That being said, this is a great book, if a bit predictive around the middle part. Great art and the story flows well enough that I can recommend it to anyone interested in reading a story about how Thanos came to be the Mad Titan, just read it with the knowledge that this is already not the official story anymore even though it only came out in 2013.

Free if you have amazon prime or kindle unlimited.

2018-04 Previews Order

This is the first time I’ve done an official previews order for comic books, where I went through their entire catelog of bullshit they’re selling and pick out what I’m interested in and give it to the local comic shop (LCS), who adds it all to a spread sheet, then manually go through the Diamond website and orders all the shit.  It’s one of the most backwards ass systems that I’ve personally used.  There’s talk about a modernized system coming “soon” where you just log into the Previews site and select what you want, then 60 days later it shows up at your LCS, but who knows when and if that system will ever be delivered.

Since I’m all about generating content for my sites, I’m going to be posting my orders to www.myconfinedspace.com www.comiccovers.com and www.comic-images.com along with some comments on why I’m reading it or perhaps even making fun of the cover.

These comics are due to be delivered to Local Comic Shops in June.

Quick edit: this post is breaking the entire site, so uh, lemme put a more tag here to try to fix it:

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Coffee Sampler Pack

I’ve honestly never been able to tell much of a difference between the shit I get from Starbucks and the shit I get from work.  it all tastes like coffee, creamer, and sugar.  Even the coffee I make at home tastes the same to me.

via maximumble.thebookofbiff.com

Lost In Space netflix review

After crash-landing on an alien planet, the Robinson family fights against all odds to survive and escape. But they’re surrounded by hidden dangers.

I never watched the original series, and while I was a big fan of the 1998 movie, I didn’t have any kind of personal attachment to the primary aspects of the franchise. There’s some big changes here from the original concepts, all of them imho, for the better. From start to finish this was a great opener to what I hope will be a many many season series that really fleshes out the plot lines that were started here.

Not once did I think to myself “hey these people are doing dumb things” or “hey that’s not how that works at all”, and every secret they have seems to get resolved quickly and appropriately. This is amazingly well done series that looks totally dope in 4k, so if you have the opportunity…take it.

Predators review

Robert Rodriguez presents a bold new chapter in the Predator universe. The film stars Oscar-winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist) as Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors who come to realize they’ve been brought together on an alien planet… as prey. With the exception of a disgraced physician, they are all cold-blooded killers – mercenaries, Yakuza, convicts, death squad members – human “predators” that are now being systemically hunted and eliminated by a new breed of alien Predators.

I had to do a double take when I saw the year this came out, I really feel like it hasn’t been 8 years, but here we are, 8 years later, and there hasn’t been another great Predator movie since 2010. Robert Rodriguez did a great job refining down the key elements of a good Predator story, even including Topher Grace as the stealth character to watch for his behavior in the background of scenes. Having him in the movie gives me the impression that the Predators are a much more intellectual species than you may assume from first impressions.

Night of The Comet review

A huge comet passes near the earth, vaporizing nearly the whole planet. Only a few teenagers, who were inside a steel movie projection booth, survive–all those outside were turned to dust.

It was getting late into the night and I wanted to put something on that wouldn’t take more than an hour, so I turnedon Pluto.tv on my Roku and it landed on this movie right as it was starting, so of course I had to re-watch it. This is a classic 80’s take on the idea of 99% of the planet going missing in some way, and for all it’s rough edges, it’s a fun movie.