Hey, remember that film where a dude has something taken from him (daughter / son / family / wife / dog) and it turns out that he’s a prior (special ops / grizzeled cop / hitman / god)?
That’s what this is, though there’s some REALLY good acting on Jackie Chan’s part and some REALLY confusing accents from my favorite ex James Bond.
You can hear David Mack wax poetic about Husnock, Pakleds, Ferengi, and more as he answers questions for Bruce and Dan of Literary Treks about his new Star Trek Titan novel Fortune of War.
I was saddened when Longmire was canceled after it’s first three seasons on A&E, and incredibly happy when it was picked up by Netflix for another three seasons. They mysteries of the first couple seasons give way to the meta story of what happened to Walt Longmire‘s wife and the drama that her death caused well after those events, with the final couple seasons not even bothering with episodic mysteries of any sort, addressing only the ‘big story’ of the casino, it’s owners, and Walt. It’s a beautiful series when they show the area that the show is set in, especially Walt’s ranch with it’s open fields and a backdrop of gorgeous mountains.
I’m not happy with how they ultimately resolved a couple plot points, but I enjoyed the ride. My displeasure is less like how they ended Dexter as a lumberjack and more like how Star Trek: Voyager ended. It’s a valid ending and I can’t complain about it too much, but some of the decisions were just not how I would have done it.
This is a quick series to get through and it has some solid acting, I highly recommend it.
Found a UV code for sale for $2 and thought “hey, this was a fun movie”, might be worth it for that price! I was right, it was worth about $2. A fun film with some pretty cool story elements and great visuals.
Q: A teenage boy was delivering papers to an apartment house.
A:
A teenage boy was delivering papers to an apartment house. While there, a stunning young woman came out of the apartment next to the mailboxes wearing only a robe. The boy smiled at the young woman and she started up a conversation with him. As they talked, her robe slipped open, and it was obvious that she had nothing else on. The poor kid broke into a sweat trying to maintain eye contact.
After a few minutes of flirting, she placed her hand on his arm and said, “Let’s go to my apartment, I hear someone coming.”
He followed her into her apartment; she closed the door and leaned against it, allowing her robe to fall off completely. Now nude, she purred at him, “What would you say is my best feature?”
Flustered and embarrassed, he finally squeaked, “It has to be your ears.”
Astounded, and a little hurt she asked, “My ears? Look at these breasts; they are a full 38 inches and 100 percent natural. I work out every day and my ass is firm and solid. I have a 28 inch waist. Look at my skin, not a blemish anywhere. How can you think that the best part of my body is my ears?”
Clearing his throat, he stammered, “Outside, when you said you heard someone coming…that was me.”
I wouldn’t have recognized Danny Masterson, but because of the recent rash of accusations of rape and physical abuse that he’s been involved with, then the continued involvement with the cult of Scientology…well I had loaded opinions when he came on screen. Only reason I watched this was because of Pierce Brosnan and it was free to stream on Amazon prime.
Believe me when I tell you, this movie is not worth your time. It’s an obvious attempt at a morality tale, but everyone starts the movie being completely trash human beings and then turn into even worse trash people. Brosnan gets about 10 minutes total screen time and sucks the air out of the room with his hamfisted impression of what a pimp/drug dealer/devil would be through the haze of a self dosing drug dealer.
Completely forgettable, there’s nothing about this film that even remotely caught my interest. It felt like the director (David Leitch) knew there were music related movies out there and had no clue what the rest of Hollywood was doing and made it up himself.
There was nothing interesting about this film, catch it while you’re high or drunk and didn’t pay for it, nothing about this movie is worth what I paid for it.
So did Tommy kill Jason or not? Seems strange that he’d be content with leaving Jason’s body tied to a rock in the bottom of a lake, why not come back later on with some industrial strength equipment to dredge him up and mulch the body?
The inclusion of a woman with superpowers felt weird, but since Jason is starting to be a supernatural freakshow, i guess she fits in now. I’m not a fan of him losing the mask half way through the third act though, I’m not here for mutant faces, I’m here for hockey masks.
It’s Flash Dance, but instead of sinful dancing, it’s sinful fashion. I’d never seen it before and my wife was insistent that the experience would be transformative, and she was right, it was a great film.
Fly to the farthest edges of the future right here in a death-defying race to save time itself as Faith leads the charge alongside Valiant’s greatest heroes…and becomes a new legend for the ages!
Collecting FAITH AND THE FUTURE FORCE #1-4.
Received for free through NetGally, I feel like I was dropped into the middle of a time and dimension spanning story, but it wasn’t as jarring as some recently read comics. I did have questions about who “Faith” was and they were not answered in this book, so I’ll be doing some googling later today about the character. The only reason I got this was I saw Rai from the 4001 AD mini series on the cover, but he only appears for a couple panels and is dead in several others (time travel shenanigans, ‘natch).
Despite the lack of context and absolutely no “previously on”, I do feel like I got a complete story out of the book, though it would have been helpful to have a story primer with a character index.
Not as good as the first book, I feel like there was something to the underwater seclusion of the setting that really gave the story a unique and cool feel. Maelstrom is still a fun read, but it has the burden of being the middle books, so there’s no real beginning and no real ending, just a lot of good middling action that will eventually get us somewhere interesting.
Ahhhh, get it? Spider-man is in the MCU, so it’s his homecoming IRL.
There’s also a Homecoming dance in the film!
GET IT?!
Still a good film, though I nearly turned it off during some of the highschool cringe scenes. I’m happy they cast all the supporting cast as young highschool kids and not 27 year old actors that try to look younger for the parts.
The synopsis is longer than the ‘film’ was, but I really did enjoy the short form. Also, the guest star ‘god’ was pretty cool to see, we don’t get to see the sleeping one too often in motion pictures.
At only 8 episodes long, this is a very tightly scripted season that delivers on everything I wanted from the Stranger Things franchise. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can actually start with season two, there’s not a whole lot here that’s dependent on the first season, though the first season was awesome too.
When the network of satellites designed to control the global climate start to attack Earth, it’s a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything and everyone.
We’ve carried Deadpool backpacks over the years, but this isn’t A Deadpool backpack. It’s THE Deadpool’s backpack. Wait. Deadpool’s THE backpack? It’s the backpack Deadpool carries in the Deadpool movie, the same bag we see him pull a Glock out of in the cab. Hello Kitty backpack filled with guns. Because it’s Deadpool.
When the movie came out, our ThinkGeek merchant monkeys were like, “We HAVE to have that Hello Kitty bag. It’s great for cosplay (frequently we get stuck with characters who have NO pockets – not as much a problem with Deadpool – thanks, Rob – but still). Where is this from!? Who has the license to make Hello Kitty bags?” We finally tracked it down and found out that particular backpack wasn’t being made anymore. Not for several years. So we had to convince them to restart the production process, basically recreating it from scratch for us. They did it. (We might have promised a lifetime supply of chimichangas in exchange.) And now, this glorious Deadpool’s Hello Kitty Backpack is a ThinkGeek exclusive. We’re it, baybee.
Tod stopped by the chatroom today and asked why the admin bar wasn’t working when he visited the site on his tablet. I said it was broke, but it would get moved to the top of the “I Can Fix It!” queue, which I believe I have now completed.
You’ll need to do a hard refresh on your tablets or phones, no clue how you would go about that other than loading the site in an incognito window, which is how I was testing.
Next item on my list is to convert some database tables, but since the server is relatively stable right now, I’m pretty hesitant to start mucking around with that shit.
PATRONS $5 and up each get a download code for this game for either Steam or Xbox!
Our guests for this show are David Chen and Jeff Mattas. David was one of the main writers on the game Narcosis, an underwater, deep-sea survival game. Jeff also worked on the script, and played the lead in the game. I voiced a character in the game too.
The three of us had a conversation about working on the game together.
We avoid the biggest of spoilers, but save this episode if you want to experience the game without knowing some of the details.
There’s no music in Narcosis, so there’s no music in this episode, to prepare you for that.
Working on Narcosis was really fun. Sam and I got to go to Berkeley, California twice for a bunch of days, and Sam helped out with the recording process.
Here’s a short clip from the game, warning about spoilers still applies:
Gareth Coker is back! You may recall that we spoke with him a couple months ago about his music for the VR game, The Unspoken.
This time, we talked about his score for ARK: Survival Evolved. Gareth’s music for this game is fantastic and we think you’ll enjoy it. The Philharmonia Orchestra played for the recording. There were 93 of them, they recorded at Abby Road, and it’s wonderful.
We talked forever and the playlist is long. All of it is from ARK.
Main Theme
Deep Water
Main Theme
Main Theme
Main Theme
Tree Trouble
The Broodmother
Snowbound
Scaling the Island’s Peaks
The Dragon
ARK Battle March
ARK Battle March
Writhing Swamps
The Southern Islets
Shores and Stars
In Deep Water
Slow Steps Forward
Danger Up Top
Ascension
The Overseer
Creation
Creation
The Megapithecus
Not So Plain and Simple
Not So Plain and Simple
The TEK Cave & Hall of History
Not So Plain and Simple
Shores and Stars
Writhing Swamps
Writhing Swamps
Technology is both powerful and wonderful at the same time! Over a decade ago, innovations in the high-speed broadband market as well as proliferation in the smart phone space meant that casino lovers could play their favourite games from within the comfort of their homes. Now that we are in 2017, virtual reality casino games are seeming like the future of this industry. What more, you’d soon be able to play such games at any reputed casino, using no deposit casino bonus, almost at zero cost!
Let’s take you through the top 4 VR casino games that are gaining huge popularity these days.
NetEnt’s Jack’s World
A reputed developer in the online gaming space, Net Entertainment is one of the few companies well known for their quick adaptation to emerging technologies. ‘Jack’s World’ is their first product in the VR gaming space, which uses ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, the classic slot game as its foundation. It was a mini release featuring amazing graphics as well as 3-D soundscapes, capable of delivering exhilarating experience to people who owned Google’s cardboard technology (a virtual reality platform that employs a smartphone-based head mount for translation of screen images into a VR environment).
NetEnt’s Starburst
One of the first few VR-based slot games to get noticed by experienced gamers, this one from NetEnt features an immersive soundtrack, unrivalled gameplay and outstanding graphics. Although the game only has 10 pay lines, its high-stakes have made it highly popular among the seasoned slots enthusiasts. The game has stood the test of time and continues to be one of the most sought-after high-quality virtual reality casino games in the online gaming space.
NextGen’s Miss Midas
NextGen was the first casino games’ developer to give the classic tale – King Midas a major revamp, with the release of its VR title – Miss Midas. As evident, the ageing King has been replaced by a ravishing Miss Midas! While the former-day hero was known for his generosity, and could turn anything into gold, Miss Midas, his female successor also seems equally generous in this innovative 25 pay line slot game.
What sets this VR title apart from the others is the NextGen’s trademark ‘Superbet’ technology through which an additional lucrative layer is added to the proceedings. It enables players to purchase extra symbols for creation of additional winning combinations. This particular feature has garnered plenty of attention in the past few years. After being given a VR uplift, Miss Midas slot game is all set to usher in a new generation of casino games!
Microgaming’s VR Roulette
There’s nothing that beats the thrill and excitement of waiting for a roulette wheel to come to a halt, especially if you’ve bet a large sum of money! Those last few seconds when the ball might just nudge over to the next number can be heart-stopping! While online roulette is full of excitement on its own, its VR version from Microgaming takes the thrill to an altogether new high! It’s one of the few conventional casino games that have been reproduced in a virtual environment.
I’ve changed our chat services from a homegrown IRC channel to Discord, I’ve been highly impressed with them since I started using them for a client a few months ago.
Absolutely fantastic movie that I truly regret not seeing in theaters. The special effects were on point, the acting was great and the plot made a whole lot of sense, all of which was panned by the critics, incorrectly so in my humble opinion. I really hope this movie finds it’s audience in DVD sales, the Universal Dark Universe has some good stuff coming if they’re all of this caliber.
Well under $100k apparently? This follows a long list of badly made fan fiction movies that I’m hoping the new Star Trek rules will hamper from future release. The CGI was amazingly well done, but the story was just so so and the acting was straight up horrible.
I was messing around on my Roku and somehow landed on Crackle, which it turns out has had a great UI refresh and is a pretty good looking app now. The content however… Ultraviolet was the best I could find. I remembered it being a rough movie, but boy howdy this was a terrible film. The entire movie was filmed on a green screen, with a soft lens, and no script. I think vampires were involved somehow?
I really enjoyed this film again. I’m going to watch it yet again soon to refresh my memories, but boy howdy Marvel’s done a great job at letting James Gunn do his thing with the GotG. Baby Groot got right up to the edge of annoying, I’ll be happy to see Teen Groot in the next film, which I believe is actually Infinity War.
I’m giddy with excitement for that film, it has to be amazing.
As a Netflix exclusive, it was great to get 8 episodes all at once, but I don’t think I’m happy with these shorter seasons they seem to be testing out, I’d much rather have a full order of 15-20 episodes.
It was too short, but still very good. Next season is in October, so not so long to wait!
Side note: I’m getting more and more frustrated with Netflix’s UI, it’s gone from good to not good to straight up bad now. I’m unable to find my queue at times and there are zero notifications of when series I’m interested in have new episodes out. In a perfect world, I could have stuff in my queue to watch, then also have a “following” or “subscribing” section that would automatically add stuff to my queue if I was following a director, actor, or television series.
Also, the new ratings system is utter shit, I miss the stars!
Eight years after LeVar Burton tweeted his intention to revive Reading Rainbow, he’s now being personally sued for essentially hijacking the long-running PBS show that encourages people to read. On Friday, WNED (a public broadcaster in Buffalo, N.Y.) filed a wide-ranging lawsuit that demands among other things that Burton’s company hand over administrative access to various websites and social media accounts. The lawsuit also seeks to enjoin Burton from using the Reading Rainbow catchphrase, “But you don’t have to take my word for it,” on his podcast, LeVar Burton Reads. —Hollywood Reporter
Proof that business politics will always get in the way of a good time. Much more information at the link above, please read it and let us know how you feel in the comments below!
I’m a big fan of this burgeoning trend of movies set to a soundtrack of pop songs, but including the music in the plot of the movie, ala Guardians of the Galaxy. Baby Driver take this to the next level, with music that isn’t just plot related, it’s sound design related as well. I can’t imagine how much fun and how difficult it was to time up some of the scenes they set the soundtrack to, but I applaud the efforts, it turned out extremely well.
Edgar Wright wrote and directed this film, it’s the first movie he’s released since he parted ways with Marvel, he was originally the writer/director of Ant-Man, but they made a mutual decision to not continue forward with the project after Marvel wasn’t happy with the writing portion of his contract. While I’m sad we’ll never likely get to see his version of Ant-Man, I’m happy he was able to make Baby Driver, and he’s quickly starting to become a director that I’ll watch his work regardless of anything else about the movie. Don’t believe me? Here’s a list of movie’s he has written/directed:
As the first Kickstarter that I’ve supported I was happy to see that the project was completed and released to the backers. It’s a shame that I’m not a fan of the music, but I’ll always support Marty O’Donnell, his work on the Halo franchise is what brought me back to video games after a very long time away from them.
Humans, Orcs, Elves… everybody is just trying to get along. Get ready for the world of Bright, a new Netflix Original Film, starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton.
Michael Sweet is the Artistic Director of the Video Game Scoring program at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He’s been a composer and sound designer in the game industry for many years too, scoring more than one hundred casual titles and the like. If you ever played Xbox 360 in the beginning, you’re well aware of his work as a sound designer, since he created the startup sound for that console.His newest project is music and sound for Walden: A Game, about Henry David Thoreau and his book about Walden Pond. And it’s gorgeous music (also a beautiful game)!
Our Patron of the Week is David Bangerter, a podcaster and YouTuber who loves the Assassin’s Creed series. He’ll explain why there’s a relative absence of AC music in his list below. We talked about the first two:
4. “Pursuit ~ Cornered” from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney by Masakazu Sugimori
5. “Ballad of the Wind Fish” from The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening by Kazumi Totaka, Kozue Ishikawa, Minako Hamano
PLAYLIST
All music written by Michael Sweet unless noted
PLAYLIST: Walden: A Game “Introduction” Time Warp: Flintstones “Living Room” Walden: A Game “Meadow” Walden: A Game “Winter” Abzu “Ichthyosaurus communis” Austin Wintory Walden: A Game “Fall” Walden: A Game “Meadow” Walden: A Game “Meadow” Lego Stackit theme
Contact the person that represents you in the facility of laws and law discussion!
Some sites are using today to slow down or to show you what a broken site would look like under the latest and greatest political pile of bullshit that the Republicans have started to excrete onto our faces. I don’t have to do that though, we already know what a broken MCS looks like!
www.battleforthenet.com has a nice little form you can use to contact people in power, people that have no moral compass and likely eat babies or well done steak, with ketchup. Just because they’re the most evil people known to humanity doesn’t mean they won’t listen if enough people pile on them and tell them what kind of idiots they are for even considering doing away with Net Neutrality.
As Marvel continues to dominate on the big screen, things are also heating up for the television shows. In addition to the next Netflix show The Defenders gearing up for release next month and Inhumans premiering this fall, Marvel is also preparing for a bunch of new television shows. Runaways was announced for a 2018 release on Hulu and has fans excited. Marvel will also be premiering Cloak and Dagger on the new ABC channel Freeform. In addition to Cloak and Dagger, Freeform will have another Marvel TV show next year, The New Warriors. nerdbastards.com/2017/07/11/meet-squirrel-girl-and-the-rest-of-the-new-new-warriors-cast/
Actress Milana Vayntrub (This Is Us) has been cast for the role of Squirrel Girl!!!!
what happened to the Knights of Ren? Any of you read the latest Star Wars novels that went into those happenings? I’ve been focusing so much on Star Trek books that I haven’t really paid much attention to the Star Wars side of the equation.
Bond spent more scree time hunting down and seeking revenge over his friend’s dead wife than he did for his own dead wife. The story takes place completely in North America, bouncing between Florida and Mexico and involves a Miami Vice esque storyline of murder and revenge all with a backdrop of drugs and the drug cartels. Timothy Dalton did the best he could with what they gave him, but they didn’t really give him very much to work with. There’s some interesting casting, Benicio Del Toro playing a psychotic henchman and Anthony Starke, who I can’t place and IMDB isn’t ringing any bells, but the man is damn familiar to me. There’s a couple scenes that there’s plenty of cocaine flying through the air, enough that James Bond would be sky high, just in time to be a big rig driver for several scenes. Sadly, this was Dalton’s last opportunity to play Bond and it’s a bit of a stinker, which I think he agrees, considering his tone in some of the interviews he gave about that time period.
I watched this a couple nights ago (release night, ‘natch) and somehow forgot to log it. I’ll not go into spoilers here, but boy howdy was I happy with what they did in Spider-Man: Homecoming. I do have some minor complaints and one large one, but the large one dives deeply into spoiler territory, so let me just hint at it by saying: it is heretical that she’s not a red head.
Having recently wrapped up a re-watch of all the MCU movies, I feel like I can put this one in the top 5, likely even in the top 3. Tom Holland is as perfect as Robert Downy Jr was when he first started, and there’s significant rumors that Peter Parker will eventually take the place as Tony Stark is phased out in the next several movies.
There’s two post credit scenes, one is great and the other is pretty awesome in it’s own regard. , so please stay until the credits stop rolling, if you have patience it’ll pay off.
The original movie of the same name was a childhood staple of mine, and unfortunately they didn’t recreate the magic that the original had. There are no common themes between the movies, other than the broad concept of a boy and a dragon being found by a woman. The original had some good family themes and made it a point that Elliot The Dragon was only helping the kid because he needed help, and once he got the help, Elliot The Dragon moved on to the next kid that needed the help of a goofy dragon. The modern tale presents Elliot as more like a dog and needing Pete as much as Pete needed Elliot.
Here’s a song by the Helen Reddy, who starred in the original film:
Interesting that both Sean Connery and Roger Moore’s final films came out sequentially, it’s a great pausing opportunity for me to start watching other movies to take a brief break from my Bond marathon.
A View To Kill opens with Bond in an arctic wasteland being pursued by Russian soldiers, with everyone involved on skis. There’s a brief moment where Bond uses some wreckage as a snowboard and the music switches from classic Bond-Action music to the Beach Boys, it was incredibly weird and misplaced for what was happening on screen. The scene ends with Bond leaving the Russians in his dust and he boards a submarine/boat that’s in the shape of an iceburg, it’s the most Austin Powers moment that I’ve seen in these films yet.
There’s a great plot thread that moves Bond from the old world to the new, both metaphorically and literally, as James investigates microchips at a massive and gloriously beautiful horse stable. It thread takes him from the stables in stuffy Paris to the cutting edge technology of Silicon Valley, where a very Superman esque plot to blow up a chunk of California is being put into motion by the Villain name Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken, who apparently is a fan of playing characters named Max? He played a Max in Batman Returns as well.
This was a great send off for Roger Moore and a great transition from the old style of spy movie with insane yet some how believable to the newer over the top / nearly unbelievable films to come.
Sean Connery’s final appearance is also the first movie that I know of that has the same actor remaking the same film and plotline as before. The only other one that comes to mind is the Evil Dead franchise, but that was redone because they had a lot more money to throw at it compared to the original’s shoestring budget. In this retread of Thunderball, Bond is again sent to a vacation spot to convalescence, this time because his new age hippy boss accuses him of having too many “free radicals” in his bloodstream. The plot is the same with some technological updates, no longer did they take a whole jet with two nukes, this time it’s two cruise missiles. The third act was another big change, they didn’t have a big underwater battle like the original, just Bond and the man villain ended up in a knife fight while straddling a nuclear warhead. To be honest, this was a let down!
This movie had one of the better title work ins and was completely natural in terms of how it was presented, I’m happy Connery made this is final film, while it was a great film, he was starting to show a little too much grey for such a spry secret agent.
The last good Iron Man, and the only appears of the One True War Machine. Iron Man three turned him into a hot rod painted like the American Flag and Civil War slimmed his frame down too far and made him weak. While I’m saddened that we didn’t get to see Terrance Howard in the role again, I welcomed Don Cheadle to the role, he’s a damn fine actor. My favorite scene of all the MCU films thus far took place in this movie, the grotto battle still takes my heart every time I watch it, especially with surround sound and the bass turned to 11. The hand cannons and explosions just sound so damn perfect!
My wife and I have moved on from the X-Men movies to the official MCU films, starting with the greatest of them all, 2008’s Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr is perfect in the role and the foundations of a decade’s worth of story telling in nearly 20 more films and television series are rock solid. I often wonder what would have happened if this film wasn’t as good as it was, and frequently thank the gods both old and new that this timeline is the one that I call home, at least for the movies.
To sum up this movie with a slightly paraphrased qutoe:
Bond: “But why did you steal the Moonraker that was built for the Americans?”
Evil 1%: “Because I deemed it so, now stop asking questions and let’s get on with this space battle!”
They’re back to giving the female lead “clever” names. This time it’s Dr Goodhead, which I fully enjoyed Lois Chiles in the role. Another spoilerish thing I enjoyed was Bond’s not too subtle prodding of JAWS to have him turn on his employer while stranded 100 miles in space (don’t worry, he landed ok with his gf while riding down a piece of space debris).
An interesting side note, at the end of the previous film (The Spy Who Loved Me), the after credits blurb mentioned that Bond would return in “For Your Eyes Only” but according to several sources, they went with a space-based caper due to the success of both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The space laser battle in the third act along with the key pad sounds really lend credence to this, it was straight up weird to hear the Close Encounters tones during a Bond flick.
