Deadpool Movie Review The last movie I saw multiple times in was Pacific Rim, so let that be a benchmark for you to judge my movie preferences. Deadpool is an amazing movie, but not for the reasons one would expect. Was it one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while, yes, was the action well choreographed and fantastically violent, yes, was it well cast/well acted, yes and yes. If you are already interested in seeing this movie but worried it won't be as good as you hope, don't worry it will be. However, if you are on the fence because you think it will be too shallow or simple minded you need to give it a go. This movie hides it's seriousness behinds crude language, amazing violence, sex and nudity, but believe me this movie has a heart. The movie keeps its pacing up by breaking up the first action scene with back story. That may sound like a bad thing but trust me it works, and even the back story is awesome. Sure Wade Wilson may not be a regenerating wisecracking bad-ass, but he is still a wisecracking bad-ass. The love story it sets up actually reminded me of True Romance (if you haven't seen True Romance you need to, right after you see Deadpool.) two incredibly broken people who find each other and realize they're a perfect match. Don't worry though the love story doesn't ruin the story, it doesn't become some sappy piece of shit, it really just helps gives the audience a plot to follow to get Deadpool from one action set piece to the next. The addition of Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead worried me when I first saw the trailer, I couldn't understand why they were shoehorning in these other characters. I had nothing to worry about, Colossus and Negasonic were paramount to making Deadpool work. Colossus may have been my favorite character in the movie if only because of a speech he gives near the end, he is very much a boyscout in this movie playing perfectly as the Straight-man to Deadpool's Comedic Relief. In a movie that could have been over the top goofy (and still been great) Colossus grounds the movie with his presence. Negasonic Teenage Warhead represents those in the audience who like to take the piss out of things. The movie utilizes it's R rating well but surprisingly skimps a little on the gore, don't get me wrong there is decapitations, impalings, dismemberment, but it is all done quickly and with surprisingly little blood, it would never pass as PG-13 but the violence isn't gory. If you want to see more grown up comic book movies, or lets be honest more R rated action movies in general go support this movie. Hollywood has been sanitizing the action movie industry for nearly two decades now, lets go support the type of action movies we want, blood, language, and a little TnA for good measure.

Star Wars Trivia Game

So barely into the new year and I'm already late with my 2^nd blog entry. It isn't even because of lack of things I want to talk about, it's just the same ole laziness I've always had when it comes to blogs. But maybe tonight I can get this one done.

I'm going to review Cardinal's Star Wars Trivia Game.

We celebrated my Mother's birthday yesterday and while my wife and I were out shopping I found this game at Kmart for 19.99. It looked like it might be fun, my Mom, Sister-In-Law, and I are all Star Wars fans and it seemed like it had some decent components.

So we pick it up and headed over last night, and after dinner and gifts, we pulled out the game and lets just say I was underwhelmed by the components. All of the dry erase disk where already slightly bent, and seemed to be just barely above dollar store grade cardboard. The materials for the trivia and timeline cards are pretty cheap as well. I know they have a lot of cards in this game and they needed to keep cost down, but they feel like cardstock at best, and they aren't seeled at all. The edges are also square so be ready for bent cards sooner rather than later. 

They also cram 3 questions onto the trivia cards so if you need reading glasses I'd be sure to have them on hand. The timeline cards suffer from being rather dark, and I mean that as in hard to make out. With a fews of the images being mostly black (Luke defeating Darth Vader in Episode 6, spoiler alearts for anyone who hasn't seen a movie that's over 20 years old.) making it hard to tell what is going on.

The game does have some things going for it though. The score keeping element is pretty cool in that you use a lightsaber hilt, and slowly add/subtract sections as you get questions right or wrong. It's made out of foam and I believe it should be of high enough quality that it will last a while. The pieces lock in nicely but they can come apart easily as well. I know that seems contradictory but trust me if you pick up the game you'll understand, the foam has enough friction to hold the pieces together but with hardly any force it will give allowing you to pull them apart.

The questions and timeline cards cover both the Original Trilogy and the Prequels. However I wish that they would have made the trivia cards into two seperate categories, that way if you have someone who hasn't seen the Prequels, or in a weird twist of fate, has never seen the originals, you can focus on the cards that pertain to a specific trilogy. 

Gameplay is farely simple. Each player roles a die at the start of their turn. The die is six sided with three of the sides being an outline of Yoda's face and the other three being Darth Vaders. The die is really crappy, with the details just being a label that was wrapped on a six sided die. A poorly made six sided die at that. Yoda means that you answer a trivia question while vader means you play a timeline card. 

Timeline cards are pretty straigtforward, there is an image with a breif description of the scene on one side, with the same image and a number on the other side. The number is X.Y, where X is the number the corresponds with the Episode number and Y is it's point in the number of cards for that Episode. Players without looking at the numbered side decide where their card belongs in the time lane in comparison to the other cards already in play for the time line.

The timeline part of the game is going to be a toss up for some. To me it was really it's own seperate game, and really it could be, you could play this as a straight up trivia game totally ignoring the timeline part, but the same could be said for the timeline part of the game. 

As for if you should buy it or not, I'd say that depends on if you don't have any other Star Wars games and you have a strong desire to just go out and grab the first Star Wars game you can. Personally, I'd look around online for another one. 

Just a quick search on ebay and I found a few options I imagine are a better way to spend your money.

1. Trivial Pursuit DVD Star Wars Saga, looks like it covers all 6 movies and it's Trivial Pursuit, pretty much the King of trivia games.

2. Trivial Pursuit Collectors Edition Original Saga Edition, I actually have this one and I highly recommend it. Instead of a die it comes with an eltronic toy R2D2 which you press on his head and he has an LED display that shows the result.

3. Cardinal has a Trivia Question only version of this same game, so if you don't want the Timeline aspect go for this one. This one is only the trivia cards so no foam lightsabers.

4. Target seems to have some game called Star Wars Pictopia, I have no information about it though.

No matter what, I don't recommend buying this game in store. It can be found cheaper on Amazon, and really the game didn't seem worth the 20 bucks I spend on it at Kmart. All in all, I'd recommend passing this one, or get the trivia card only version that's only 9.99 on Amazon. Sure you miss out on the lightsaber pieces and the dry erase boards but those are really just a gimick to boost the price of the trivia game.

New Year New Resolutions

A new year, a new resolution.  This years resolutions are a few of the same, and a few new.  Of course, losing weight, cutting back on soda. My new ones are a bit different though. I want to write at least one blog entry a week, no word minumum just yet. My second one is to no longer click on click bait articles, you know the ones, "They put 1,000 fireworks to a power wheel, you'll never guess what happened next."

So what will my first post of the new year be, a review of the new Star Wars, a board game review, some cool new toy that I got for Christmas?

How about a little of all of those. Starting with the new Star Wars.

This will be a spoiler free review and very sparse on any real meat and potatoes.  I thoroughly enjoyed the new movie, I thought the new cast was a very good ensemble, with good chemistry. I felt that they introduced them well, and left enough mystery so that the audience wants to come back to learn more about the new characters.  The effects were closer to the original series real and dirty. I also liked the way they mixed practical effects with cgi.  The story may have been a retelling of A New Hope but I feel that they used that as a bases to bridge the gap between the older members of the audience and the audience members who are completely new to Star Wars.  I give the new Star Wars a 4.5/5.

As for a board game review I'm going to cheat just a little. I'm going to review Exploding Kittens NSFW edition.  

Let me start by saying I'm relatively new to The Oatmeal, having just discovered it earlier last year, but I will say that I really enjoy their brand of humor, so already I’m a fan of the game because it is just more of their off brand of humor.  The NSFW edition is entirely inappropriate, and hilarious. The game is fairly simple, there are a few types of cards. I've played a few games now and only won 2 of them, this is a great game to play when you are inbetween games that take some time to setup, or if you are waiting for others to finish something.

As for toys I got for Christmas, I actually got quite a few, it was a pretty awesome Christmas. I got the new Megatron from the Combiner Wars line. He's perfectly in scale with my Mastpiece Optimus Prime so I think those two might be getting into it soon so be looking for some pictures from that. I also got Ultra Magnus from the Combiner Wars line,  he looks great as well, but his feet are a bit odd, making him a bit harder to pose.

I don't collect a lot of Funko Pops but I did get the Godzilla Funko Pop and I must say he is awesome. He looks great in Pop form. He is one of the bigger 6" pops so I look forward to taking some photos of him fighting my Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

That's pretty much it for now, I hope this year will see 51 more post.

So I've been painting again.

The Gamma World campaign is nearly over, and after that we'll be switching to a firefly campaign using the Savage Worlds rule set. However in between these sessions I've been busy painting and modding for a new game I'm joining. I always get so excited at the prospect of a new game that I make quite a few characters just because it's so damn fun.


A Dragonborn Cavalier


A Dragonborn Warpriest


A Minotaur Barbarian

Still haven't decided exactly which one I want to go with.

To make these characters I've been use the D&D insider character builder, and I know this nearly a year late, but I must say, I HATE the new one.

I had no idea that the old one was no longer offered when I went to subscribe again this last time. So when I went to download it again, since between now and the last time I dled it my computer has been wiped and restored, I was suprised to find it was a web based program now.

A web based program that must talk to the hosting site for every click you make. This is not a hyperbolic statement, it literally does this everytime you click. Somepeople say they don't experience any problems, but for me, every click is followed by a minimum 2 second delay, with some delays lasting as long as 15 seconds.

To those who think this isn't a long time I want you to do something, go to google and search "New D&D character builder sucks". When I did it I got "About 52,600 results (0.19 seconds)"

So google can search for that much data in a fraction of the time it takes me to bump 1 ability score up 1 point.

Just makes me sad. But hell making a character on there still takes less time than it does for me to find the perfect miniature, or close to it. Modify it, and paint it up. So I guess in the end, it all works out.

Gamma World First Adventure

So I picked up a copy of the new Gamma World setting that uses a condensed version of the 4e rule set. After looking over the rules I decided I really wanted to give this setting a try. I gathered some players (still looking for a fourth at this point) and came up with a good starting point.

When we got together on Sunday the 13th we started out rolling up characters for the game. For the first game I allowed characters to pick their two origins, yes technically that isn't in the spirit of the game, but I wanted my players to really enjoy the start of this campaign.

To start we had a demonic felinoid.

Next up we had a Hawkoid Doppelganger

And to round out the team we had a Electrokinetic Gravity Controller

With that done they set out on their adventure.

I live around Louisville, Ky so my Gamma World local was set there as it was a place all of us playing had familiarity with. The characters started on the Indiana side of the Ohio River and were crossing into Lazville (Louisville) when they triggered a silent alarm and the campaign really kicked off.

While I had read that Gamma World could be a deadly setting I learned that first hand during our first encounter. From here on out I'm going to take a stab at writing this from the perspective of the players.

(Players haven't named their characters yet so I'm going to make some up for the story)

Demonic Felinoid - Selena

Hawkoid Doppelganger - Houdini

Electrokenitic Gravity Controller - Newtonian

As the weary travellers crossed the decrepit bridge they took their time weaving in and out of the worn out husk of vehicles, Selena realized moments to late that they had broken the beam on a laser trip wire. After a few moments of inactivity the heroes decided that the alarm either didn't set anything off, or if it did there was little to nothing they could do about it now. Heading further forward one of the effects of the trip wire became evident. Four sentry drones crawled out of some of the burned out husk of the cars, while a Security drone hovered out of one further back.

The Heroes readied themselves for the attack. The combat was fast and ineffectual for the most part, Newtonian was naturally resistant to the electrical damage the drones were attacking with, Selena's attempted to boost her Alpha Mutation and succeeded giving her full immunity to the electrical damage as well. Unfortunately for Houdini he was not resistant or immune, he avoid most all attacks but the head security drone hit him hard near the end of the battle. The strike was powerful blast dropped Houdini. He slipped into unconsciousness immediately and if not for Selena's quick actions might have slipped away permanently. After reviving Houdini the heroes finished off the last drone.

Crossing the last few yards of the bridge the heroes spotted a mutant around the corner of the building, Houdini went to check on him. Deciding he was crazy the heroes went the opposite direction. After a few hours of searching around they came across a group of survivors that were holed up in an old hotel. There they learned that this area of Lazville was currently being ruled by a tyrant leading a group of Archivist.

After that they decided to team up with a group of resistance fighters and that was were the story ended then.

Kick Ass lives up to its name

So I've seen Kick Ass twice now, and I've been trying to determine exactly the type of review I want to do, not only for this movie but for all other reviews I do from this point on. My opinion isn't a fact, it isn't the end all be all for if a movie is good or not, so in my reviews I'm going to give my opinion, then at the end, I'll give a short list of people who I think will enjoy this movie, and people who should probably avoid it. But now on to the review.

The movie starts off in a very inspiring way, but unfortunately if you've seen the preview it takes a bit of the majesty of the scene away. And after that we're introduced to some of our characters, and the movie takes on a usual story plot, rising tension, point of no return, falling action, but it does so in such a stylish way.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and really it never seems more true in this movie. Kick Ass wants nothing more than to be a hero, stand up for those who we as a society let get picked on. But it cost him nearly every time, he isn't your average super hero, heck he's not even your average hero, and while some say the metal plates that end up attached to some of his bones, and the loss of nerve endings thus reducing the pain he feels is his power, I disagree, it is undying optimism. He just doesn't let up no matter what is thrown at him.

Of course the topic of controversy isn't Kick Ass so much as it is Hit Girl which really to me, just dumb founds me. Other than being an 11 year old girl nothing this character does is any different than any other female action star we've seen before. Hell she isn't even the most violent or foul mouthed kid we've seen in movies. But people seem to forget movies like Children of the Corn, Pet Sematary, or the Exorcist. Her character is there for two reason, the shallow one being it's just plain bad ass watching this girl kick the shit out of people, and a deeper one or just what type of person do you have to be a successful super hero.

Kick Ass wants to hold onto his humanity and wants to basically deal with the symptoms of crime rather than the source. Hit Girl and Big Daddy, well they want to burn the whole thing down. But one could even argue that really only Big Daddy understands the big picture and that by making everything a game for Hit Girl he's taking away the consequences of it all, which is something that dawns on her the first time she bleeds.

This movie is oozing with its love of the source material, ie classic comics. It really shows the ups and downs of a super hero in a real life setting, the value of life, the idea that some might need to die so that others will live, what real responsibility is.

I would also like to add one more thing about Hit Girl, there seems to be some talk on the internet that she's too provocative and I honestly don't see that being the case, here are the only two outfits I could see causing controversy but even they don't seem bad to me.
Now to put the school girl outfit in context she is wearing it to lull some of the villians into letting her into a secure building belonging to a crime lord, she acts like a little girl who's lost looking for her parents. So there I've said my piece if that's perverse then I don't know what people are smoking now a days.

I loved this movie and I for one can't wait to buy it on Blu-Ray.

Now for the who should go and who should stay.
Go
if you love over the top violence, comic books, superheroes, and a movie that will make you think.

Stay home
if you hate violence, think that all children are innocent and should never be depicted as violent sociopaths, hate cursing, or are a cinema snobs who thinks the only good movies are movies that either make lots of money or are like Citizen Kane.

PoV films and why they suck.

To begin for those who may not know, PoV, stands for point of view, and in filming it is used to place us in a characters point of view as if we were seeing things through their eyes.

PoV shots in films aren't new, and not all of them are even bad, in fact when used correctly they give us insight into characters, or give us a perspective that can chill us to the bones.

One of my favorite PoV moments is in the first Halloween in which we get to watch Michael as he dawns the clown mask, grab the knife, and go onto murder his older sister and her boyfriend. (Also by first for those younger people I do not mean the garbage remake put out by Rob Zombie) This scene was new to most movie goers and I don't honestly know of another main stream movie that had a shot like this first. People weren't use to being this much in the action, and for scary movies the killer was usually a reveal, you didn't know who it was until the end.

But I'm losing track. This is about why full length PoV movies are terrible.

I just finished watching the travesty that is Quarantine, I have not seen REC but from what other say it is the better movie. This is not surprising for 2 reasons:

1. REC is the original and because of that it was most likely had more depth and less awful Hollywood clichés.
2. Being a better movie than Quarantine isn't saying much seeing as the movie is an hour and a half of crap.

To be fair parts of Quarantine were good, but those parts are so few and far between... ugh... lets move on.

Movies like Quarantine, Blair Witch, and to another way Cloverfield, all suffer from what I consider the exact opposite of what they are trying to achieve.

They want us to be lost in the movie, they want us to forget we are in a theater, or in our home, watching a movie, they want us to believe that people are actually in these scenarios.

This to me is just a terrible idea and I'll try and do my best to explain.

When I go to see a movie I know I'm going to see a movie, which means I turn on my suspension of disbelief, which means I'll let things go that are either impossible in the real world, highly unlikely, or fanciful. If you enjoy most any fiction movie at all you do this and may not even know it. It's how you can watch Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and think that it is one of the best movies ever made even though it involves things that are complete fiction.

I remember years ago the hype that surrounded The Blair Witch Project, for those who are too young to remember let me tell you it, that movie was one of the best promoted movies of my life time to date.

My family and I went to see this and we got stuck in the front row watching this PoV film, and all I could think was, "This is terrible, I know this is a hand held camera but damn, can't they at least try and hold it still."

But that wasn't the biggest problem, and this is where these films fall apart...

People film things in these movies that no sane person would film, their attention goes to what suits the film best but in all honesty that is probably the last place their attention needs to be, also, most of them should have dropped the heavy equipment long before the end, but then we wouldn't have these awful movies.

You see, when I watch these movies I'm suppose to believe they really happened, I'm supposed to stretch my mind around the fact that these are real people, really experiencing these things, but heres the problem, I know they aren't, and something about someone trying to make me think they are through this style of film making causes my brain to reject the movie as a whole.

I don't think I'm explaining this well enough, but I'm going to try one more time before I just chalk this up to learning how to blog and using this as an example of what not to do next time.

PoV is just too much, my brain for some reason never makes that leap, and before you decide I just nitpick to much, let me say I like a lot of bad movies, and I mean badddd movies. I love campy Godzilla movies, I love old episodes of power rangers, hell I enjoy the Super Mario Brothers movie more than I enjoy any of these movies. Because they never try to not be movies, they don't try to convince me that there real through the dumbest trick ever, an entire movie shot in PoV.

So not that my opinion is going to change the world, but directors please stop making PoV movies, they don't add anything to your movie except annoyance.