Written by the same mastermind behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith tackled in this historical horror the secret life of the sixteenth president of the United States of America. The story is told by Abe himself through a long chronicles of journalism, starting when he was eleven years old. It's your typical revenge-premise of fallen family members spurring unmitigated rage that only festers over the years. But from that average and ordinary plot evolves a lot of twists, turns, politics and cameos. For example, how does his passion for vampire hunting fit into the Civil War? How does it fit into his presidency?
As you can probably expect from the title, this piece is driven by it's entertainment value more than anything else. The book had it's faults such as dry personalities, lack of character development, and a poorly thrown together ending, but the fight scenes and horror scenes not only guide you through to the next chapter, they make you want to read the next chapter.
Overall, I rate this book 3 3/4 *'s out of 5, or 7 1/2 *'s out of 10. There may be better fiction out there, but I certainly don't regret my time reading this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the premise.
On September 1st 3DS owners that were a part of the Ambassador Program received 10 NES games. We were also promised 10 GameBoy Advance games by the end of the year. I know it's not the end of the year yet, but there hasn't been one mention of the Ambassador Program since September. It's now November, and still no sign of a date. I hope Nintendo still goes through with their promise... they have to... right?
1) "Megalithic Symphony" - An really cool intro-song. I don't rate intro-songs, cuz no one is going out of their way to play them back, but as far as intros go, this one is excellent.
2) "Some Sort of Creature" - A sketch, or a soundbite, whatever you want to call it. Pretty weird and not worth rating since no one is going to go back and make and effort to listen to it.
3) "Soul Wars" - Fun, upbeat, peppy, but missing the "it factor". I think what this song needed was more of a point or message rather than being just a dance song to play at clubs. Still, 4 *'s.
4) "People" - Strikes a chord with me like an electro-version of Baba O'Riley. Great lyrics, great beat, great matching tone. Someone needs to make a high budget music video set to this song, because it evokes a lot of visuals in my mind. 5 *'s.
5) "Jump on My Shoulders" - A well-produced song, but comes off as really silly. I don't think it's meant to, or that it should for the effect it has on the flow of the album. A generous 3 *'s.
6) "Burn It Down" - One of the singles on this album but not one of my favorites. It's got the "It Factor" but it just doesn't connect with me. I think it might be the lyrics and lack of focus. 4 *'s.
7) "Guilty Filthy Soul" - An alright song. Nothing special to me. I like the chorus but everything else falls flat, and the entire production of the vocals comes off as a little too "recorded inside a fish bowl" sound. 2 1/2 *'s.
8) "Kill Your Heroes" - As soon as I saw the title of this track I had high expectations, and for the most part, this track lived up to them. I was looking for something bit more gritty and somber, like "Sail", but this was still a pretty decent song. 4 1/2 *'s.
9) "My Nightmare's Dream" - Soundbite. No rating. Pales in comparison to the intro though.
10) "Sail" - Yes. This was the track that caused me to get the album. So good that everyone should hear it. I love the music, the lyrics, the vocals, the message, it's all good. 5 *'s.
11) "Wake Up" - A decent song. The tone and beat really make the song, as the lyrics and vocals don't do this track any favors. A run of the mill, easily skippable 3 *'s.
12) "Not Your Fault" - Just the opposite of "Wake Up", "Not Your Fault" is driven by it's lyrics and vocal work but the music is really misguided or missing it's mark all together. Unfortunately, while a great beat can salvage a poorly sung song, the opposite is much harder to pull off. 2 *'s.
13) "All I Need" - A great song with a Billy Joel vibe. It's slow, melodic, and has great lyrics giving a great message. 5*'s.
14) "Knights of Shame" - I'm not sure why AWOLNATION made this one song fifteen minutes long, as it could have easily been broken up into different songs given it's lack of chorus and frequent change of tone. This could have even been used to replace the soundbites if it were multiple tracks. All of those tracks would have even been stand-alone awesome. So this track, albeit long, is a definite 5* track for me.
My Highlights:
"People", "Sail", "All I Need", and the excessively long but still awesome "Knights of Shame".
Overall Rating:
Averaging all of these tracks together, this album gets 4 *'s out of 5, but given how many hits this album has, I'm going to add just a small 1/4 * big-picture brownie-point-addition to it, to make the final score 4 1/4 *'s out of 5, or 8 1/2 *'s out of 10. A great album that everyone should give a chance, but hopefully will be viewed by AWOLNATION as good practice, as there was still some let downs about this album.
Premise:
Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is a brilliant young telepath who thinks he's the only one different in the world until he meets the shapeshifting Raven Darkholmes [later known as Mystique] (Jennifer Lawrence). The pair get picked up by the military to track down The Hellfire Club, a gang of mutants lead by former Nazi scientist, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and his own personal telepath/girlfriend(?) Emma Frost (Janurary Jones). Having a common enemy, Xavier and Raven team up with a former concentration-camp imprisoned mutant, Erik Lensherr, later known as Magneto (Michael Fassbender) who wants Shaw's head. Soon after, the trio expand into an entire team known as the X-Men, all on a mission to hunt down Shaw.
Standouts:
I didn't see the need for the character Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) which was forced down our throat. I get the importance of having a protagonist lost in the woods so that the viewing audience both feels grounded to the terms of the understandable and rational in this fictional world, and so that we find out things as they find out, but MacTaggert added nothing to the film. She was a powerless, non-mutant, without an interesting thing about her other than another character's jealousy. I also thought that the ending scene dragged on and could have been condensed into a much more powerful moment.
My Highlights:
Finding Wolverine, Beast in Beast-mode, and Magneto dawning the helmet.
Overall Rating:
A great superhero film, but not one I was as engrossed in as much as Spider-Man 1, 2, Iron-Man, or The Dark Knight. Those were near-perfect films for their genre, and this is just a really great film. I award this film a strong 4 1/4 *'s out of 5, or 8 1/2 *'s out of 10.
When You Should See It:
If you're a fan of action films, sci-fi films, or comic book films, definitely see this right away. Otherwise, just see it when it comes to cable. I'm sure FX Network or something will pick up on it within the next year or two.
Premise:
Annie (Kristen Wiig)'s best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting married, and as the maid of honor, she has to help make all the arrangements for the wedding. Problems start stacking up for Annie however, as she's hopelessly single, followed by bad luck at every turn, and in intense competition with one of the bridesmaids, a rich housewife named Helen (Rose Byrne).
Standouts:
I was late to catch this movie and had heard for a long time that it was the best female-casted comedy ever created, and on par with The Hangover in both comedy and in plot comparisons. This probably raised my expectations to unreasonable levels, because as I was watching it, scenes and characters that missed it's potential stood out the most to me. What could have been a well-traveled plot like The Hangover stayed primarily in the same town the entire film. We get promised Vegas and Paris in the film, and see neither. We also got just the tip of the iceberg of some really interesting characters in the rest of the Bridesmaids, but were left with just that. It also stands out that while Kristen Wiig steals the movie with her acting and comedic timing, the character of Annie is bland and one-dimensional. In her times of empathy she comes off similar to another of Judd Apatow's characters Alison Scott in Knocked Up, played by Katherine Heigl.
My Highlights:
Plane ride drunkenness, wedding dress shopping, police speed trap with Officer Nathan Rhodes (Chris O'Dowd), and the final jewelry store scene.
Overall Rating:
While the film is definitely funny, it doesn't have very many memorable moments that will stay with you long after you've watched it. It also didn't live up to the crazy hype it got due to both unfleshed character subplots and unexplored setting expansion. Still a great film and deserving of a solid 4 *'s out of 5, or 8 *'s out of 10.
When You Should See It:
When you're on a date. I tried several times to watch this with my girlfriend but something always came up to interrupt those plans, so I had to watch it solo. It's definitely a film that both genders will enjoy equally despite the one-sided casting.
Terra Nova is a new high budget sci-fi TV show on the Fox Network produced by Steven Spielberg. It starts in the dystopian future of 2149 where the Earth has been ruined by pollution and overpopulation. Slowly, groups of citizens who hold high qualifications (doctors, soldiers, agricultural scientists, etc.) are being shipped through a one-way portal to the past on a pilgrimage to the Cretaceous period to live on a settlement surrounded by dinosaurs. While Elisabeth Shannon (Shelley Conn), a trauma surgeon has been selected to move with her husband and two children to Terra Nova, trouble erupts when the government finds out she has three children. In what may or may not have resulted in a high fine, Elisabeth's hot-headed cop-husband Jim Shannon (Jason O'Mara) flips out and starts swinging on soldiers, getting himself arrested and the third child taken away. The same hotheadedness gets Jim and his youngest daughter Zoe through the portal illegally where his transgressions are looked past by Terra Nova leader, Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang). There's too much danger, curiosity, exploration, and drive to survive on Terra Nova to worry about laws thousands of years in the future.
Production-wise, this show is outstanding. Much like how some people saw Avatar (another great Stephen Lang starring piece) for the visuals more than the story, Terra Nova is going to be a bar raiser for audiences. I was initially worried about two things relating to this show. The first was how long the first episode was - 90 minutes, a feat that very few shows get in their pilot, and often a condition that drives me away from a show when I'm looking for quick thrills, chills, or laughs. Thankfully time just flew by watching it, because there didn't feel like any filler at all. It didn't feel like a movie, but it did feel like I was watching three back-to-back half hour episodes of a really awesome show. The second thing that worried me was for some reason, I got a Lost-vibe from things. I'm speaking of Lost, because it's a show known for it's ridiculous twists for the sake of twists and adding mystery regardless of resolution. In this first episode of Terra Nova I watched, I saw A LOT of different subplots and mysteries and had my fingers crossed that they weren't being too overzealous.
Acting-wise, I have no complaints. The most inexperienced actors and actresses had their weaknesses masked and their strengths emphasized. Naturally, Stephen Lang and Jason O'Mara were excellent in their roles. Character-wise, there was something left to be desired. Some characters like Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang) and a teen heartthrob named Skye (Allison Miller) were like onions with different layers you could peel with ease without shattering them completely. I was particularly put off by Jim Shannon and his oldest daughter Maddy (Naomi Scott) because they came off as shallow archetypes that the writers didn't know what to do with. There's still plenty of time to work out the cogs however, so this wasn't such a detractor to put me off from watching again.
Final Say: I think everyone should give this show a shot. If you're open to the 90 minute pilot, definitely check it out. If you're too busy to invest that kind of time, give a future episode a chance since they'll be about half an hour shorter (maybe only 45 minutes if you take out commercials). This is definitely a show that is going to have everyone talking, and you don't want to be the only one not knowing what's going on. Though it feels early to slap a rating on the show, I was impressed enough to award a 4 1/2 *'s out of 5, or 9 *'s out of 10.
Premise:
Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) is a private eye in New Orleans, specializing in digging up dirt on cheating spouses with his sidekick, Marcus Deckler (Sam Huntington). Little does Marcus know that before Dylan was a private eye, he was a peacekeeper between all that goes bump in the night - vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc. That part of Dylan's life is dragged back up from the grave when he's forced to come out of retirement for one last case involving the murder of a wealthy importer.
Standouts:
Dire acting by most, Sam Huntington came off sounding like Shia Lebeouf only about ten times better, and some of the ideas implemented in the film were really great. Especially liked all of the twists in the plot, keeping things interesting.
My Highlights:
Each time you find out it wasn't a suspect, narrowing down who the actual bad guy is, as well as the scene from the body shop.
Overall Rating:
This movie is what it is. It's not for everyone. It's a modern day B-Movie with horror and comedy elements to it, and a ton of action and mystery. Some parts are terrible, but some parts are really enjoyable. I found myself enjoying it, and give it 3 3/4 *'s out of 5, or 7 1/2 *'s out of 10.
When You Should See It:
Only if you're a fan of B-movies. It's not a film that will cater to the mass audience. Don't go in with high expectations.
