Did you think it was possible to get so many great films in one year; The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, Skyfall and several others – well Tarantino looks to be bringing this great year in cinema to an end with a December release of Django Unchained. This latest TV spot is going to make you wet yourself with excitement, like all good trailers should.
Continue reading Django Unchained: New Spot shows Sam Jackson
So the big thing in PC Gaming, and probably gaming as a whole right now, is MMO’s. You know the kind, World Of Warcraft, The Old Republic, or if you go back in time, Everquest. Being a man who has never been much into PC gaming, or the concept of continually paying for a game to keep playing it, I’ve never latched onto MMO’s or any game similar to them. For me there’s never been a game that’s grabbed my interest, although The Old Republic sure gave it a run for it’s money. In my case though, my wallet trumps all, because Money Over Everything. I do have one particular weakness though, and that is anything Game Of Thrones related. With GoT’s popularity right now, they’ve of course announced an MMORPG to go along with it.
Game developer Bigpoint announced today the “Game of Thrones” massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) titled “Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms.” MMORPGs are the type of online game that include the likes “World of Warcraft,” and it looks like “GoT” is joining the fray. [Yidio]
Details about the game itself are scarce, but it’s setting is post-book 1, with the throne itself up for grabs. It’s fairly likely this is more based upon the Song Of Ice And Fire Novels, rather than the Game of Thrones HBO series, since there’s not as many licensing issues there. To that end, if I ever did pick up this game, I’d hope the voice acting is good, the world accurate to the detailed descriptions given in the books, and the concepts of intrigue, honor, and moral ambiguity upheld. I’d hate to see GoT turned into a mindless hack & slash MMO, with people grinding for gold dragons endlessly. One thing the game does have going right, is making the game Free-To-Play, which is a trend that’s been very popular lately. The only downside to this is that nearly everything cool in the game will then cost actual cash, as the game’s cost is subsidized through micro-payments.
Want that cool Direwolf for a companion? $10! Want that shiny Valyrian Steel sword? $15. I’m probably entirely wrong about the actual prices for items themselves, and they may be far cheaper, but the reality is that people WILL buy them, and use them. I have friends who play League Of Legends, another very popular Free-To-Play game, who have spent more on it than even the most expensive collectors limited special edition games they’ve purchased in the past. But of course, people like me who love A Song Of Ice And Fire, and Game of Thrones, who are already accustomed to the MMO world, will probably be champing at the bit to try this game out. While in the past the initial purchase/subscription price combo of MMO’s like Star Wars: The Old Republic was enough to keep me away, the tantalizing prospect of Free-To-Play lingers over my head for Game Of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms. Chances are, when it’s released, I’ll be playing it, “just to try it”.
Wish me and my wallet luck. It’s a dangerous rabbit hole.
Screens from the Official Website.
Breaking Bad is arguably the best show on television right now, and along with its stellar cast, directing, writing and acting, it’s one of the most engaging stories I’ve ever seen. So engaging, that it’s only a week and change away from debuting its new season, and that still feels like an incredibly long time. Unfortunately, the wait could be even longer for Dish Network subscribers, who are SOL when it comes to getting AMC this year. Dish is another satellite TV provider that has at one point or another, failed to make a deal with a popular cable network, and the drama spills out into the public, and fans of that channel have to get involved themselves.
“Dish has not discussed rates with us at all,” AMC said in today’s statement. Dish customers have lost some of their favorite shows because of an unrelated lawsuit which has nothing at all to do with our programming.” [Ad Age]
Basically, Dish says that AMC is charging too much for its channel with its shows with low ratings, (Walking Dead, Mad Men, ) and AMC says that Dish is dropping them because of an unspecified 2008 lawsuit that would lose Dish money, to the amount of $ 2.5 billion. A similar thing happened with FX/DirecTV a year or so ago, and years before that DirecTV and G4, only G4 is such a terrible channel DirecTV decided to not accept their deal and now DirecTV is G4-less. That’s ok though, because G4 has never had anything close in quality to the worst show on FX or AMC combined, and that includes reruns of Two & A Half Men. How this keeps happening, I don’t understand. Perhaps there’s just a constant cycle of lawsuits that are on hold indefinitely to stymie cable and satellite providers, and some great TV Pope declares who will get what network approval every 10 years.
So the Great TV Pope has declared that unless Dish and AMC can come to some agreement, AMC, IFC and We TV will be dropped from Dish. How will they get their dose of Zombies, Meth Drama, Men in Suits, Experimental Indie Cinema and Women’s Programming now?
On an interesting side note, FX was originally going to pick up Breaking Bad, until the president of FX thought that Walter White would make one male anti-hero too many for their channel.
“We had three dramas with male antiheroes and we looked at that script and said, ‘Okay, so here’s a fourth male antihero,’” Landgraf recalled. “The question was: ‘Are we defining FX as the male antihero network and is that a big enough tent?” [EW]
I suppose this means that no matter what, at some point every Satellite TV customer, would have to have worried about not getting their fix of Breaking Bad. What with FX’s fans’ main rallying cry being to save It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, in some alternate universe somewhere it very well may have been “Save Breaking Bad! Tell FX you love meth!” Mostly, I’m just glad I have DirecTV right now…
It has a few flaws, but for a first installment of the rebooted Spiderman franchise it is better than any of the original films, especially Spiderman 3! The characters especially where far better this time around with Andrew showing Toby how to play Peter Parker. I will be looking forward to the next films in this great new Spiderman reboot. But I would love to see flaws I found fixed, they are so small though that a sequel would be able to see and fix them.
The Amazing Spider-Man is the story of Peter Parker (Garfield), an outcast high schooler who was abandoned by his parents as a boy, leaving him to be raised by his Uncle Ben (Sheen) and Aunt May (Field). Like most teenagers, Peter is trying to figure out who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. As Peter discovers a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his father, he begins a quest to understand his parents’ disappearance – leading him directly to Oscorp and the lab of Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans), his father’s former partner. As Spider-Man is set on a collision course with Connors’ alter-ego, The Lizard, Peter will make life-altering choices to use his powers and shape his destiny to become a hero.
To start off let’s talk about the acting. The acting was very passionate which was a little surprising as it’s a super hero film, but you could really feel the emotional responses from its main characters (Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone) when various emotional scenes play out, beyond that would be a spoiler. Now for the main character who’s name I forget, nah only joking its Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) who I must say is the best interpretation of New York’s friendly neighbourhood Spiderman I have seen in a film. But as his competition is a cheap 80s film and Toby Maguire it was an easy win.
The best part about Garfield was that he looked and sounded the part, nerdy kid from Brooklyn. He was a teenager who had enormous power and treated it like a toy as you would. But my main compliment to this Peter Parker was that he made jokes even during battle’s which was always missing from the last Spider-man.
Sadly the thing many of us worried about was it feeling too soon for a reboot and it was lingering about. Mainly I would say in the origin of his powers but I don’t see how it could be avoided, at least with this film they tried to explain a very clever excuse for the radioactive spider what with using spider silk to create super strong cable.
Think I have talked enough about people and their silly human emotions. Now let’s talk about something more fun like the visuals. The special effects, physical props and visual landscape shots where excellent viewing as expected of a web slinger film. There’s nothing quite like being taken around New York through the eyes of Spiderman.
The lizard looked good and I am one those people who commented on him not having a snout but thinking about it now am not sure how they would get him to talk using a snout without it looking absolutely stupid, but at times the lizard looked more creepy than scary (Picture above for example).The best thing I felt about this films look was the way that the set of action scenes and spidey web slinging took place at night which was what Spiderman should be doing since he fights crime and it’s easier to keep a secret identity when you are fighting crime at night (don’t ask me how I know that).
My favorite scene without giving anything away would be the fight scene in the high school between the lizard and Spiderman, because it shows a great physical fight which plays with the effects and also shows a lot of the Spiderman humour whilst in the fight, which was never used in the original Spiderman. But of course this scene also includes my favorite Stan Lee cameo yet (you’ll see) The Avenger cameo was good this one is better.
What I liked about this films origin of the hero and the villain was that both a very much in development today, for example splicing technology used on the lizard has been in development a lot recent with plants to make super strong and big vegetables. Now another good point we see more spider-like creativity with Spiderman, this time for example in the pic above he sends out webbing in all directions and senses for vibrations much like a tarantula does to catch its prey plus he makes his own web shooters, I love clever stuff like that and it’s more true to the comics. Finally it’s a small flaw but it grinds my gear, why didn’t Uncle Ben state the legendary life lesson for Peter “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” to be far there was some variation of those words but I don’t see why they couldn’t just do the damn line! But finally it’s a good film with strong characters.
4.5 grizzlies
Grizzly Bomb 