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

Diamonds Are Forever review

Sean Connery returns as 007 to follow a diamond smuggling ring.

Other than the gratuitous amounts of sex, it’s difficult to recognize this as a Bond film, it’s more akin to Bullit or The Gauntlet than any previous 007 movie. It has over the top Vegas stereo types, midwestern oil barrons and a completely unsatisfactory wrap up to the revenge plot started in the final minutes of the previous film. I’ll give this one a hard pass in any future Bond rewatches.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service review

George Lazenby stars as Bond in this fan favorite. Blofeld returns to threaten the world once more, this time with biological warfare.

Weird to have a new actor in the role, but enjoyable none the less. George Lazenby did a great job as Bond and the story was interesting throughout. I do believe this is the first Bond film to show a full on nipple in the movie proper. It’s jarring to me how sexually charged these earlier films are compared to the more modern ones, and just how interesting the plots were too.

The ending seemed weirdly out of place, but makes sense in the context of who Bond is. As i haven’t seen this film before, the ending really defuses some of the arguments for the tortures that Daniel Craig has gone through, primarily the “but we don’t know what drive him as a man!” arguments.

Omega Sub: 4 Blood Tide review

The ambition and folly that destroyed three-quarters of humanity lives on in the radioactive rubble of nuclear holocaust. In the South Pacific, an insane fanatic and his army of bloodthirsty killers have begun obliterating the last scattered outposts of civilization. The madman’s goal: to rule what remains of the shattered Earth. For that, he needs the awesome power of the U.S.S. Liberator…and he holds captive the one man who can make his demented dream a reality. For unless the crew surrenders the mighty submarine intact…Captain Tom Donovan will die!

Amazon says I bought this August 4, 2013, so it’s only taken me about 4 years to actually get around to reading this, most likely because after each of these books I need a palate cleanser of about 10 other books. Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m doing this to myself, they’re not the greatest books and they have some seriously fucked up morality lessons in them. This is a 30 year old pulp fiction book that you’ll likely never read (and good riddence) so here’s some spoilers: The manliest man known to man (aka “The Captain”) has been captured by a clearly evil pirate king who’s been raping and killing his way across the south pacific. The evil pirate king then starts a journey back to their home island, why is not explained, but during this expositiony journey we discover that the island is where the evil pirate king has imprisoned hundreds of women and children they’ve captures to turn into sex slaves. The Captain manages to escape when his sycophantic crew on his state of the art laser submarine surface immediately under the boat he’s being held captive on, where upon he retakes his rightful place in the captain’s seat. He then proceeds to launch nuclear missiles on the island as they make their escape, killing all the pirates along with this prisoners too.

But don’t worry, there’s not just one section explaining how this was the right thing to do, but TWO.

Don’t read this series, it’s horrible.

I have two more of these to get through unfortunately though.

Colossal review

Gloria is an out-of-work girl who, after getting kicked out of her apartment by her boyfriend, is forced to leave her life in New York and move back to her hometown. When news reports surface that a giant creature is destroying Seoul, South Korea, Gloria gradually comes to the realization that she is somehow connected to this far-off phenomenon. As events begin to spin out of control, Gloria must determine why her seemingly insignificant existence has such a colossal effect on the fate of the world.

Anne Hathaway stars as Gloria, an alcoholic piece of trash that can’t hold down a job, leeches off her rotten boyfriend and invites friends over to his place while he’s at work. They break up and she goes back home where she quickly discovers a unique connection to Seoul, South Korea. It’s a fairly original story with incredibly awkward moments that cut deeper than I would have expected in what I assumed going in was going to be a B-rated science fiction film done while Hathaway had some downtime from her more serious roles. As a fan of Jason Sudeikis, this was pretty hard to watch, he really did a great job in the role he was given and Hathaway played her role perfectly. I was surprised by the quality of the special effects, they were really on the same level as Pacific Rim, but with a down home Juno feel for the rest of the scenes.

PS, the “All she could do was save the world” tagline on the box art has absolutely nothing to do with the movie.  There’s no world saving in this film, just some hard looks into the choices that alcoholic dirt bags make when forced to inspect their own shitty lives.

Wonder Woman review

Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers…and her true destiny.

The DCU gets another entry in it’s pale facsimile of the MCU, while doing better than any of the other DCU movies (man of steel, batman v superman, suicide squad), still misses the mark in some significant ways.  The movie was fantastic in it’s first act, but the moment that the story started to get going it became to get bogged down by the same ill tempered and bland color palate that the other films found themselves in. The third act has a number of narrative problems, most of which have more to do with this being a comic book movie than anything else.

It’s better than what’s come before, and for that I’m grateful, the world’s better with better movies in it.  Gal Gadot made huge strides in making me believe she could handle the role, and apparently the film has already broken $100 Million for it’s opening weekend.  I’m hoping that November’s Justice League will have the same incremental increase in quality, maybe by the time they get around to making the Flash movie, they’ll be able to make something of the same caliber as Iron Man.

Post Script: my wife loved the film and couldn’t stop saying as much, I’d be interested in seeing how the female critics review the film. Anyone have any good ones to check in on?  The last film reviewer that I seriously followed was Roger Ebert.

Designated Survivor

it’s a show about politics

its feature semi or fully competent politicians and as we all know that’s bullshit. No way in hell that could happen in real life

it started out strong but started losing to trumps newest tv show”House Leaks”

I’ve broken, then fixed the favorites code

TL;DR: I fixed the favorites so everyone can use them on all the subsites, I may have wiped yours, if you’re missing all your favorite posts, let me know below.

There’s a rather nice wordpress plugin that allows users to add posts to their favorites, but it’s broken in several ways, the big ones are:

1. No wordpress network support, we didnt’ see that too much here since there’s only about 5 sites on the MCS network, but I have about 80 sites on my TWG network, but that’s still on php 5.5
2. No php 7.1 support, primarily brackets no longer get automatically translated into arrays when you try to append a value to it.

The guy that original wrote the script made some interesting choices like putting all the favorited posts for each user into their own serialized string in the database, which coupled with the get_user_meta’s choice to return strings and not arrays if there’s no results of the query…well that caused some headaches.  There was a point where I upgraded the site from php 5.5 to 7.1 and we got all sorts of nice performance increases, but it incidentally broke the ability of anyone new to the site to add favorite posts, which I discovered when I was trying to fix the images for the  Top 10 page over on the NSFW side of the house.  Some of the images are still broken, but the thing that really attracted my attention was the fact that the “most favorited” sections weren’t populating at all.  That was a damn week ago, but now I have that fixed I can move onto fixing the images.

The images are going to be a bigger issue to fix, because the images are broken due to a decision I made nearly 5 years ago to make a separate subdomain for the NSFW content.  The decision itself was sound and I think it’s turned out for the best.  My method of doing it though was to export all the posts that had a category of NSFW and import them into a new wordpress install.   Everything’s gone great except for some weird image and url issues with the posts, which I just recently discovered was due to a column in the wordpress database that still had the original www url on it.  While I could just find and replace those values, there’s about 20,000 posts with them and I’d rather not blow everything up.  I first ran into the problem when I redid the archives, it worked great for the main site, but good god it’s a mess to load the images from the NSFW posts. I have like three nested if statements and http_referrer checks to see if you’re asking for the post from the nsfw subdomain.

There’s a small possibility that I nuked your favorites.  I made a back up of that column before I started messing with it, so if you’re missing yours let me know below and I’ll restore them.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 review

Set to the sounds of Awesome Mixtape #2, Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues the team’s adventures as they unravel the mystery of Star-Lord’s parentage.

They nearly got to the same level of mentioning family as Fate of the Furious and the plot seemed contrived in a way that only comic book movies can make work. I enjoyed the film, but boy howdy do I disagree with how they treated a few characters in the film. It’s a good second entry into the Marvel Cosmic Universe with definite room for improvement.

If you go see it in the theaters, stay for the last credits to roll, there’s like 5 stingers!

Night Night, Groot

Ebook on Amazon for $12.34 or Physical version for $9.33, which seems reversed, but there it is.

from Movie Ties www.movieties.com/night-night-groot/

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Adult Toys

NerdBastards has an interesting puff piece on these sex toys. Normally I’d put an image in this post about them, but I fear that Google would be upset with me if I did that. GeekySexToys has products, they run from $50 to $99 and range from things you can put in you to things you can put yourself into. I suggest checking out either link just to see the off brand “wink and nod” names they’ve given each of the toys.

from Movie Ties www.movieties.com/guardians-of-the-galaxy-sex-toys/

Guardians of the Galaxy Geeki Tikis

The Guardians of the Galaxy are here to protect all of us. They’ll engage in combat against interstellar enemies and battle the forces of evil in a cosmic showdown, all while rocking out to an awesome mix tape (or two).

Let these Marvel box office favorites protect you from the Terran evils of scurvy and malaria with these Guardians of the Galaxy Geeki Tikis. They come as a set of 6: Baby Groot, Drax, Gamora, Groot, Rocket Raccoon, and Star-Lord. We can’t split them up; they’re not so much a team as a family. Each holding 14 oz. more or less, they look pretty dang adorable with a tiny cocktail umbrella and some skewered fruit. Just don’t tell Rocket.

Thanks to GAS for the heads up, you can buy these on ThinkGeek for only $79.99.

from Movie Ties www.movieties.com/guardians-of-the-galaxy-geeki-tikis/

Patreon Plus Post

I’m going to start locking off the upcoming queue and pending submissions on mcs plus so only Patreons can see them, and soon I’ll start removing the precious Plus icon from people that aren’t active Patreons.

Why?  I’m about to hit a negative balance in my MCS account, not enough income to keep things afloat.   Would be very nice to stop being so stressed every month when the server bill comes out.

Become a Patreon today, for as low as $2 a month, MCS+ badges kick in at the $5 level, which according to my calculations is 2 bud lights or 1 craft beer.  Do you feel like the entertainment provided on MCS is worth a single craft beer? I do, which is why I sink so much time and effort into the site.

A big idea to those that want to take part, there’s now a $25 monthly Patreon level that will give you your  own subdomain on MCS where you can publish anything and everything you want to with no moderation.  For those of you that remember him, casemods had one of these, but he could never figure out how to really use it.  RIP casemods.

EDITED TO SAY: it’s all hidden now. Please be a patreon. Please.
Please? Please.
PLEASE.

Omega Sub 1-3 review

This book series is about a futuristic submarine filled to the brim with the manliest men that all men wish they could be and all women would give anything to be with. It’s your typical early 90’s post apocalyptic story with every character acting as some form of Mary Sue, which was great for teenage me.   I read the first couple books back in my youth when they were first coming out and lost track of the series, which unfortunately there were only six books written.  According to GoodReads, JD Cameron is a pseudonym used by Michael Jahn with David Robbins, neither of whom I’m familiar with. By any measure, these are not high brow stories, following a submarine crew after a nuclear apocalypse, they’re still incredibly entertaining. I bought them all on amazon on the cheap, then stacked them up on my dresser and promptly forgot about them. Found them while i was cleaning over the last weekend and remembered that I needed to get to them.

I should point out that there was a show named Last Resort that mimicked the same very basic plotline of submariners and a nuclear war. It starred the absolutely fantastic Andre Braugher, who was the only reason I gave Brooklyn Nine Nine even a moment’s chance, and the end of that show was when I bought the books, so they’ve been sitting for a while now.

The Collapsing Empire review

Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster than light travel is impossible?until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars.Riding The Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war?and, for the empire’s rulers, a system of control.The Flow is eternal?but it’s not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals?a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency?must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

Not Scalzi’s best work but by far not his worst book at all. It was enjoyable for what it was: the first chapter is a much longer story. Unfortunately I feel like this new universe he’s building is going to interfere with the OMW Universe that I actually want to get more stories from.

I highly suggest the book as it was a fun read but felt let down by the clear lack of any story resolution. Look forward to the next book sometime in the next year or so :/

Assassin’s Creed review

Michael Fassbender stars in this action-adventure film based on the acclaimed video game franchise about a man who discovers he’s a descendant of an ancient line of Assassins.

While enjoyable there’s too little emotion and too many foggy scenes where everyone is shrouded in smoke. I’d like to see this in 4kHDR just to really get a good feel for what they intended the audiences to see vs what I could actually make out. As with any movie that’s been condensed and distilled from much larger source material, the story feels rushed and has too many interesting things happening all at the same time without any answers or explanation. My only experience so far has been a couple hours in AC2 and completing Black Flag, and I have to tell you, I don’t remember any talk of the Apple of Eden in either of those games, and it was weird to see them all salivating over some trinket that didn’t end up being an apple at all. They didn’t explain what it was, but I know an apple when I see it and that was no apple.

The Ex-Wife

Q: The Ex-Wife

A:

Tom finally decided to tie the knot with his longtime girlfriend. One evening, after the honeymoon, he was welding some stuff in the garage just for fun. His new wife was standing there at the bench watching him.

After a long period of silence she finally spoke, “Honey, I’ve just been thinking, now that we are married maybe it’s time you quit spending all your time out here in the shop. You probably should just consider selling all your tools along with your gun collection and that stupid vintage Harley.”

Tom got a horrified look on his face and began choking.

She said, “Darling, what’s wrong?”

He replied, “There for a minute you were starting to sound like my ex-wife.”

“Ex-wife!” she screamed, “YOU NEVER TOLD ME YOU WERE MARRIED BEFORE!”

Tom replied: “I wasn’t.”

from Tiki Humor www.tikiwebgroup.com/32034/the-ex-wife/

Peter David in major trouble with American Government Agency

Peter David, one of the most prolific writers of Star Trek books, suggests that he has issues with the Internal Revenue Service, all due to the misdeeds of a past relation. He says on his website:

Many years ago I had a television series on the air called “Space Cases.” And I made a lot of money that year. I mean a lot. And I had a ton of money sitting in my bank account ready to send to the IRS on April 15th. It was all good.

And then the day that I was going to send the check, I swung by the nearest ATM to withdraw some cash and was astounded to see that half the money in my account was gone. Why was it gone? Because my then wife withdrew it in order to pay for a divorce lawyer, which was how I found out my marriage was dissolving. So the money never went to the IRS because I had to use the remainder to hire my own attorney.

He requests that if you have the means, please visit his Go Fund Me page and help him out of the problem that he’s found himself in.

from www.startrekbookclub.com/4380/peter-david-in-major-trouble-with-american-government-agency/

The Wraith review

Jake is killed by neighborhood thugs, and returns as a mystical figure (The Wraith) to gain revenge. Starring Charlie Sheen and Randy Quaid.

Don’t look too closely at the plot, just enjoy the car racing, hot women and awesome practical effects. There’s some pretty interesting choices in cars and some great early appearances by actors that later went on to do some incredible work.

The Audience Responds to the 2017 Oscer Mishap

I was drunk when this happened and started to freak out.  See The Rock’s face?  that was me at one point.

The Girl With All The Gifts (movie) review

Six-time Academy Award nominee Glenn Close stars in a post-apocalyptic story about a devastating disease that eradicates free will and turns its victims into flesh-eating “hungries.”

Despite what Amazon’s blurb says, Glenn Close isn’t the star of this movie, though she does play a pretty big role in the story. There’s a book by the same name, which I read a few months ago and enjoyed. The movie changes a few minor plot points for obvious reasons (no inner monologue, time, etc), but the changes are for the better. It’s a good post apocalyptic story that really deserves to be more fully fleshed out, but I was entertained.

Jackie review

Natalie Portman stars in this powerfully stirring drama as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, whose faith and strength see her through the death of President John F. Kennedy.

Only reason I watched this because I’m a fan of Natalie Portman and it was nominated for an Oscar. It was horribly depressing and sad to watch. Portman did a great job as the grieving widow of a husband that was taken far too soon and far too publicly. It didn’t make for a good movie however and made me feel like an emotional voyeur intruding on someone’s darkest moments.

I don’t recommend this to anyone, other than those that wont to get inside the mind of a grieving, grasping woman who had so much taken from her.

Don’t Think Twice review

When a member of a popular improv troupe becomes a solo success, the rest of the group start to realize that not everyone is going to make it after all.

Watched this because of Keegan-Michael Key, enjoyed it because of Gillian Jacobs, I’ve really missed seeing her on TV every week. Anyone that’s been part of a group has seen it self destruct after somethinng external changes. Don’t Think Twice is a great story with great examples of how you really can only look out for yourself in the world.

The Cell review

When Stargher, a serial killer who drowns his victims in torture cells and performs bizarre rituals with their bodies, falls into a coma, the FBI asks Deane to enter the his mind…

Jennifer Lopez’s butt saves a girl from drowning by going inside the head of a serial killer. I mock, but I really do enjoy this film (and her butt), lots of very familiar faces that do a great job with a great storline that comes together very well. There’s some unfortunate CGI, but it can be overlooked for the amazing practical effects and miniatures, as well as the set and costume design.

I still cringe at the stomach spooling scene, it hurts to even contemplate.

Under The Sun review

A fascinating portrait of one girl and her parents in the year as she prepares to join the Korean Children’s Union on the ‘Day Of The Shining Star’ (Kim Jong-Il’s birthday).

Sub titles make movies difficult for me to watch, especial with movies that have such rich imagery that I want to take in, so watching this led to a lot of pausing and rewinding to take in the various scenes. Great movie that raises all sorts of questions but doesn’t answer any of them, just leaves them for the viewer to ponder them.

My main ponderance: I would be spiteful and hateful to the world if I were a flower grower in North Korea. They waste so many flowers in how they show reverence / respect to the statues they worship.

Great film!

Men, Women & Children review

From Director Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno), Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner and Ansel Elgort star in this powerful story about navigating our complex relationships in an era defined by social media, online exchanges and instant gratification.

Well acted movie with some characters that were all screaming out for attention in an ever more connected world, all trying to force their own versions of being ‘right’ on each other. I jokingly said that I expected Wil Ferrel to show up at one point due to the narration.

Enjoyable, but very frustrating to see characters making silly mistakes in their social interactions. Also, that Fanning girl needs to eat a sandwich!

Seed of Chucky review

The killer doll is back! The all-new film is the fifth in the popular series of Chucky (“Child’s Play”) horror comedies. Making his directorial debut is the franchise creator and writer of all five films, Don Mancini. The film introduces Glen (voiced by “The Lord of the Rings” star Billy Boyd), the orphan doll offspring of the irrepressible devilish-doll-come-to-life Chucky (again voiced by series star Brad Dourif) and his equally twisted bride Tiffany (again voiced by Jennifer Tilly). When production starts on a movie detailing the urban legend of his parents’ lethal exploits, Glen heads for Hollywood where he brings his bloodthirsty parents back from the dead. The family dynamics are far from perfect as Chucky and Tiffany go Hollywood and get rolling on a new spree of murderous mayhem; much to gentle Glen’s horror. Chucky can’t believe that his child doesn’t want to walk in his murdering footsteps, and star-struck Tiffany can’t believe that the movie will star her favorite actress, Jennifer Tilly (playing herself), who soon becomes an unwitting hostess to this new family in more ways than one.

Not as good as Bride of Chucky, this sequel is really just the Jennifer Tilly show with guest appearances by Chucky and their weird as fuck son/daughter/candle doll. I believe this is the first Chucky movie with nudity of any sort, doll or human. I look forward to 2017’s Chucky movie, hopefully the plot is somewhat tighter than Seed of Chucky, it just felt clumsy and amateurish.

Final Touches Have Been Completed On The Site!

I’m happy to announce that the site is now feature complete! There are currently 1,451 books catelogued on the site, with well over 900 of them fiction. The remaining 500 or so are behind the scenes, memorial books or episode guides of some sort or another. I’m looking for someone to help with the blogging responsibilities, so if you’re of the mind, please either comment below or send me an email at adam@tikiwebgroup.com

from www.startrekbookclub.com/4364/final-touches-have-been-completed-on-the-site/

xXx: Return of Xander Cage review

After coming out of self-imposed exile, extreme athlete turned government operative Xander Cage must race against time to recover a sinister weapon known as Pandora’s Box, a device that controls every military satellite in the world. Recruiting a new group of thrill-seeking cohorts, Xander finds himself entangled in a deadly conspiracy that points to collusion at the highest levels of government.

I do wonder who this film really appeals to. You get a lot of action from an older action star (Vin’s turning 50 this year!) and the stunts all seem like they came out of a 1990’s Mountain Dew / X-Games commercial. The soundtrack was pumping and the sexiness was amped up to 11, though honestly, Ruby Rose was the only good looking gal in the flick. The plot and script was pretty horrible and you simply cannot think about any one of it’s plot elements for too long, you’ll grow less and less able to suspend disbelief. The CGI was unfortunate in a few scenes, but acceptable in others, but usually very noticable.

It was exactly what I thought it would be for better or worse, and I got exactly what I wanted from it, which was some mindless diversion from the ongoing political frustrations. My one big concern about the film, is that if I can’t figure out who they’re marketing the movie to, I seriously am unable to tell who they’re marketing the xXx: Return of Xander Cage movie novelization to. What there simply too much plot to be contained in just the movie?

I kinda want to find out.

Production Has Begun!

A tease of the new uniforms and a quick shot of the captain’s chair, this video is announcing that production has officially begun on the new series. Check out that awesome set they’ve built!

from www.startrekbookclub.com/4333/production-has-begun/

Jane Got A Gun review

Natalie Portman stars as a mother and wife fighting in the rugged western plains to defend her family from being massacred at the hands of a ruthless and violent gang.

Natalie Portman can do no wrong, even in a western movie. It’s good to see her working with Ewan McGregor again, and just reinforces the idea that their lack of chemistry in the Star Wars prequels was someone else’s fault.

This is a great film, with a script that doesn’t go over the top and action scenes that seem believable, with the exception of a overly verbose explosion or two.

Passengers review

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt star in an adventure about two passengers traveling to a new planet when their spaceship malfunctions.

Watched this with my wife last night, we’re starting to take advantage of AT&T’s free ticket tuesday program, which is working out pretty well. They’re not opening week movies, but are great for movies like Passengers where you’re not really going because it’s a big even like Captain America: Civil War (or Ant-Man!). The story in Passengers is good, if you’ve seen any of the trailers, you already know all the broad strokes. They’re both passengers on a 130 year voyage to another planet and wake up early. Like Pandorum, but instead of face eating monsters you have a funny robot bar tender and two of the hottest actors in Hollywood making goopy eyes at each other and having lots and lots of sexy time.

A side note, this is the first movie I’ve seen with the latest version of the “thank you for not pirating this film”. While there’s been a few versions of this message that were downright insulting, this version made it clear that they’re happy to have you in the theater watching the movie instead of watching it at home. This is where I should mention there was a total of three people in the theater when we watched it.

Hidden Figures review

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

Insanely good. Good enough to go to the movie theater good. I’m starting to become a big fan of Octavia Spencer and I’m happy to have been introduced to both Taraji Henson and Janelle Monae. I watched the movie within minutes of watching Obama’s final public speech as POTUS, so I came out of the super amped for the future of our country with high hopes that we’ll eventually get things right. Trump’s press conference the next day really put a dampener on those feelings, but it was great to have them for the night at least.

I’m interested in reading reviews that go more into what science / events this movie got right and what they got wrong, but from my perspective it was great. A little heavy handed with the message at times, but I think recent events in US history show that even heavy handedness isn’t enough to convince some people to do the right thing.

Trekonomics – How much does Capt. Picard’s cup of ‘Earl Grey, hot,’ cost the Federation?

Quick answer – nothing. But I thought the Trekkies here might like the article and book below on the post-scarcity economy of free energy and replicators.

Article (open in incognito mode if you get a paywall):

news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/stephen-gordon-how-much-does-capt-picards-cup-of-earl-grey-hot-cost-the-federation

The book: Manu Saadia, The Economics of Star Trek:

www.amazon.com/Trekonomics-Economics-Star-Manu-Saadia/dp/1941758754

The Accountant review

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world’s most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King (J.K. Simmons), starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk (Anna Kendrick) has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise.

This movie was worlds better than I would have guessed from the premise. Very easy to go the wrong way with the story, but they did damn well with it and made it into a great movie.

For the Love of Spock review

“For the Love of Spock” celebrates the 50th Anniversary of “Star Trek” through a personal, intimate look at the life and career of Leonard Nimoy and the enduring appeal of his alter-ego, Mr. Spock, as told by his son, Adam Nimoy. Includes interviews and clips with Jim Parsons, Zoe Saldana, William Shatner, George Takei and many more.

Very powerful semi-biography, semi-love letter to the man behind the ears, very enjoyable to watch. I do have one complaint, and it’s that between segments they show clips from the original series, but instead of showing the original clips, they show the updated cgi stuff that CBS put together several years ago, and it’s damn weird. Why not show the original stuff?

Regardless, it’s a great film with great moments interviewing the hearts and minds behind one of the best science fiction franchises known to man.

Mineral

Road rage – Bikers vs Car

Road Rage Level – Brazil

This guy on the car hits a bike before the video starts.

So, the biker with the camera start to chase him and curse him because of what he does before.

Now, other bikers join at him in this chase and it ends in a huge fight.

This biker that shows up in the middle of the video was the guy who was hit by the car at first, before the video starts…

RIP Carrie Fisher

www.cnn.com/2016/12/27/entertainment/carrie-fisher-obit-star-wars/index.html

2016 can go fuck itself.

Peter David Hospitalized

Peter David‘s wife has made a post on his website:

What we do know that Peter is in the hospital with severe leg weakness. He can’t walk and even standing is dicey.

This all started this past Saturday when he had to go to the hospital because he could not stand on his left foot due to ankle pain. It was diagnosed as a sprain. It was wrapped up and he was sent home with crutches.

Sunday he could barely move and standing was agony for him.

Monday he couldn’t even stand and that’s when he went back to the hospital where he has been the past couple of days where the Doctors are doing their best House impressions trying to figure out what is going on.

I wish him the best, head over to his site to read more, she mentions a couple ways you can help directly!

via PeterDavid.net

from www.startrekbookclub.com/3945/peter-david-hospitalized/

No Man’s Sky

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival video game developed and published by the indie studio Hello Games for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows. The game was released worldwide in August 2016. The gameplay of No Man’s Sky is built on four pillars: exploration, survival, combat, and trading. Players are free to perform within the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion (1.8×10¹⁹) planets,^[b] many with their own sets of flora and fauna.^[1]

Players participate in a shared universe, with the ability to exchange planet information with other players, though the game is also fully playable offline; this is enabled by the procedural generation system that assures players find the same planet with the same features, lifeforms, and other aspects once given the planet coordinates, requiring no further data to be stored or retrieved from game servers. Nearly all elements of the game are procedurally generated, including star systems, planets and their ecosystems, flora, fauna and their behavioural patterns, artificial structures, and alien factions and their spacecraft. The founder of Hello Games, Sean Murray, had wanted to create a game that captured the sense of exploration and optimism of science fiction writings and art of the 1970s and 1980s with No Man’s Sky. The title was developed over three years by a small team at Hello Games with promotional and publishing help from Sony Interactive Entertainment. The British band 65daysofstatic assisted in developing the game’s music, with sound designer Paul Weir developing systems to procedurally generate the soundtrack.

Significant attention and expectations were given to the title in the months leading to its release, leading Murray and some journalists to recommend caution due to the indie nature and niche appeal of the title, seeking to avoid the pitfalls that had previously occurred at the launch of Spore in 2008. At release, the game received a wide range of mixed reviews, praising the technical achievements of the procedurally-generated universe, while considering the gameplay lackluster and repetitive. No Man’s Sky also suffered several technical problems at launch, while lacking several marketed features, including a multiplayer element, that further marred the players’ experience with the game.

Hello Games expressed commitment to fixing technical issues with the release, as well as plans to expand features of the game in time, but otherwise has not communicated with the community following the release window, further straining reactions from players. Though the game was a top seller in August 2016 in both the United Kingdom and North America, perception of the title plummeted to an overwhelmingly negative level in the months following release. The promotion and marketing hype for No Man’s Sky became a subject of debate, with at least one advertising industry group reviewing their materials for any potential breaches and false advertising.

Grow Up

Grow Up builds upon the gameplay of its predecessor, Grow Home, once again putting players in control of a robot named B.U.D, who is able to climb on landscapes. While the game still features B.U.D’s ability to direct the stalks of Starplants into energy sources to help them grow, the main goal of the game now is to recover parts of B.U.D’s ship, M.O.M, which are spread across the planet after she crashed into the moon. New to the game is the ability to scan various plants, known as Floraforms, which each have unique properties such as allowing B.U.D to jump high or launch into the air. Once a Floraform has been scanned, B.U.D can plant a seed of it at any time to grow anywhere else. By finding ability capsules, B.U.D can obtain new abilities, such as a jetpack, gliding, and rolling into a ball, which can each be upgraded by collecting crystals hidden across the world. By completing challenges, which require B.U.D to go through multiple checkpoints within a time limit, the player can unlock optional B.U.D Suits, which each give B.U.D unique properties, such as a bee suit that attracts bugs or an aviator suit that increases gliding speed.^[4]

Kirby: Planet Robobot

Kirby: Planet Robobot (?????? ???????? Hoshi no K?bi: Robobo Puranetto^?, lit. “Kirby of the Stars: Robobo Planet”) is an action platformer video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. It is the fifteenth main installment in Nintendo’s Kirby franchise. The game was released in Japan in April 2016 and in North America and Europe in June 2016.

Mighty No. 9

Mighty No. 9 (Japanese: ???????????? Hepburn: Mait? Nanb? Nain^?) is an action–platform video game developed by Comcept, in conjunction with Inti Creates, published by Deep Silver and distributed by Square Enix in North America. The creation of the game was based on the online crowdfunding website Kickstarter^[3] and incorporated heavy input from the public. Mighty No. 9 closely resembles the early Mega Man series in both gameplay and character design, which project lead Keiji Inafune worked on, and is considered its spiritual successor.

The minimum Kickstarter goal for Mighty No. 9 was successfully funded after only two days of the creation of the campaign in September 2013.^[3] However, several other features including additional stages, special modes and ports to other platforms were announced after additional “stretch goals” related to it were achieved, increasing the total funds obtained to over 400% of the original goal. The game was originally scheduled to be released in April 2015, but was delayed multiple times until it was eventually released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Wii U in June 2016, with the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, OS X, and Linux versions still in development.^[4][5][6]

Mighty No. 9 was highly anticipated when it was announced, but lengthy delays and Comcept’s decision to fund another project, Red Ash: The Indelible Legend, through Kickstarter were met with accusations of mismanagement. The game received a generally mixed reception from critics and Kickstarter backers upon launch. The game’s design, graphics, content, voice acting, and technical issues were criticized, and critics agreed that the game failed to live up to expectations.

Mr Right review

A young woman who’s been unlucky in love discovers her perfect match is a professional hitman in this killer comedy starring Anna Kendrick, Sam Rockwell and Tim Roth.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, if only because of Sam Rockwell. Anna Kendrick is nice, but her character was a bit much for me to take seriously. The red nose thing? never really explained and only shows up a few times. One major complaint I have is in the final scenes, it’s obvious that the ‘rain’ they’re in is just some dude off screen shooting them with a hose.

Fun, but not a serious movie. Enjoyable but I hope there’s no sequel.

Sicario review

Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Oscar® winner Benicio Del Toro star in this acclaimed thriller about an idealistic FBI agent on a perilous mission with an anti-drug task force.

Absolutely everyone involved in this film knocked it out of the park, the acting was superb, the visuals were stunning, the sound design was amazing and the story was lean like a tiger. Well worth your time to watch, it paints a great picture of a fictional (but not too far from the truth) universe in which the drug war is spilling over the US border and the three letter agencies decide to take action.

The Nice Guys review

A private eye investigates the apparent suicide of a fading porn star in 1970s Los Angeles and uncovers a conspiracy.

What a waste of my time, boring and non-nonsensical, I now have a growing distrust of anything Ryan Gosling is in. Maybe it’s the director (Shane Black), he seems to have peaked with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and gone downhill from there, he’s really the reason that Iron Man 3 was such a trainwreck imho. I’ve read other reviews that praised The Nice Guys as one of those 80’s buddy movies, but I really don’t see it, the two main characters have little reason to buddy up and the story don’t offer much in the realm of plot that would give them even a background reason. Lots of set pieces that make no sense and nudity that’s just random and uninspired.

Skip it, there’s better movies out there.

REVIEW: The Roddenberry Vault

When The Roddenberry Vault project was announced to the world earlier this year at Comic-Con, it was a huge surprise to the legions of Star Trek: The Original Series fans. The Original Series is 50 years old this year, and fans thought that whatever there was to see from TOS had been seen; after all, for the 40th anniversary it had been given a proper HD scan, which meant digging all the film out of the CBS/Paramount archives. So what else is there? Read on to find out… TrekMovie.com

An excellent review of an awesome gift to fans, I look forward to watching this myself!

from www.startrekbookclub.com/3839/review-the-roddenberry-vault/

Kubo and the Two Strings review

A young boy with the gift of telling fantastical stories is sent on a mystical quest to discover his family’s magical legacy. Starring Charlize Theron and Matthew McConaughey.

Absolutely great movie that has awesome visuals and a story that will make you laugh and cry.

Also, there’s a talking monkey in it.

The Neon Demon review

When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will use any means necessary to get what she has in this horror thriller from Nicolas Winding Refn.

Great movie with all sorts of star power appearances that goes way off the rails in the third act. I’m still not sure I’m happy with how drastically the entire tone and feel of the movie shifts after a particular pool party, but right up to that point it was a beautiful and well acted movie.

Watch it if you enjoyed movies like Lost Highway, Swiss Army Man or Drive, these movies also have the same wtf feel to them.

Come Monday

Some things start simply…