Shmee.Me

October 12, 2013

Get Pulled In By Gravity!

I finally got to see what all the fuss is about, and I went and watched Gravity. It is amazing! You should really stop wasting your time and just go watch it now. Don’t make my mistake and watch it on a standard screen: see it in 3D IMAX because it is stunning. Alfonso Cuarón has created a masterpiece, and he will be a force to be reckoned with this awards season.

The story is simple. There is a disaster in space, and Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) has to find a way out of the sky before she dies. That is it, but it is breathtaking. I literally stopped breathing few times. There is no time to look away, and there is no down moment. The disaster happens over three hours and you are there for an hour and a half of it. It is you and Dr. Stone trying not to fall out of space.

Ryan is brought to life by Sandra Bullock, and she owns this movie. Everything is from her point of view. I have never seen a movie use so much first person point of view camera work, but it works and it draws you in to Dr. Stone’s struggle. She is scared and courageous all at once, and she makes us all feel the same way.

Alfonso Cuarón has made a feast for the eyes. Everthing works, from the aforementioned first person camera work to the crazy good special effects. It looks and feels like you are in space, and you just want to Dr. Stone to get on the Earth in one piece. It is tour de force filmmaking.

Like I said when I started this review, you need to see this film, and you need to see it in theaters. You need to let space envelop you. Movies like this are the reason theaters were made, so go get your butt out there and check it out. Otherwise it will be like Pacific Rim and you will have missed it.

October 11, 2013October 11, 2013

Why Is There No Avengers Love For Captain Marvel?

I have been hard on DC for not releasing a Wonder Woman movie for a long time, but I decided that DC wasn’t the only major comic book movie house ignoring a major female superhero. I should be just as hard on Marvel for not releasing a Captain Marvel movie, or at the very least including her in The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

While it is true that Captain Marvel has not always been a woman, but she has been since the 80’s, and now they have cemented that by merging her with Ms. Marvel last year, which was kind of a no brainer. She may not be the most well known hero, and a lot of people confuse her with DC’s Captain Marvel (AKA Shazam), but she is as main line as it gets. Plus no other movie studios can lay claim to her. She is way more well known then the Guardians of The Galaxy which get their movie next year, and way more popular than Ant Man which is in pre-production.

What is great about her for a movie is that she can stand on her own, and she is not a part of X-Men or something. She plays well with Avengers, as a multitude of comic books can attest too, so working her in to the next movie just makes sense. She is one of the best heroes in Marvel’s catalog, and she is being left on the sidelines.

I know they are just movies, but I think it is time for one of the ladies to get up there and join the men in the spotlight. Captain Marvel can hold her own, she just needs a chance to prove it.

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Daniel adds his thoughts to the lack of female superhero movie’s today as well, but about Wonder Woman.

October 10, 2013

Not Ready To Give Up On S.H.I.E.L.D!

Geeks are a funny breed. They can turn on something so quickly after they were extremely excited about it. A few weeks ago Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D was going to be the best thing ever: a weekly show firmly rooted in the Marvel Movie universe, but now after just three shows a lot geeks are calling it the worst thing ever. They are the reason Firefly got canceled.

Geeky shows tend to have slow starts. It is just a fact. Star Trek: The Next Generation wasn’t great until season 3. Deep Space Nine was the same way. That is not even counting all the Joss Whedon shows. Buffy and Angle both had slow starts, and Dollhouse wasn’t good until they decided to cancel it. Firefly had a great one season, but the first episode wasn’t that good and its ratings never recovered (starts to weep uncontrollably).

People just need a little patience with shows, especially shows in large universes that need some time to establish who they are, and what their reason for existing is. Nobody watched Breaking Bad at first because they didn’t get it, but thankfully AMC had nothing to run in its place, and Netflix got people interested in it again.

So no S.H.I.E.L.D has not been the best show ever in the last three weeks, but it isn’t that bad either, and I am willing to give it the time it needs to find itself. Because I don’t want to be one of the people that gets the next Firefly or Star Trek: The Next Generation canceled.

October 9, 2013October 9, 2013

A Hands On With Ascend: Hand of Kul!

Lately I have been playing around with the new Free to Play RPG Ascend: Hand of Kul. It is free for owners of the Xbox 360 with Gold Accounts. It is the second Free to Play game for the system: The first being Happy Wars.

In this game you play as a Chaos Giant in service of a new god, and you are trying to help them take down the Titians. The Titians are the old gods that have gone mad and are just eating people. So you hack and slash your way through the country side while occasionally throwing humans at the bad guys.

This game runs on the currency of souls. The more you have, the more cool loot you can buy, and the more you can upgrade your spells and perks. As you may have guessed you can get the souls two ways: By killing bad guys and converting worshipers, or by just getting out your credit card and buying them. They do a pretty good job of letting you earn enough souls in game to be fun, but they do taunt you with the idea of just buying cool stuff all the time. In every menu you will see more stuff you can buy.

They also have a leveling system that allows you to gain more health and access to more powerful weapons and spells, but the catch is that you can only level up five levels unless you Ascend (It’s the title of the game!). Every five levels you get a chance to pretty much kill your character and change him up a bit, and make him more powerful. You can save your stuff if you want to spend the souls to add item pillars so your new character can have your gear from your last one.

The next big feature is that you are not playing this game alone. Tons of people are playing the same levels at the same time you are and you can see them as kind of ghosts while you play. You can curse them or bless them as you see fit, or you can even challenge them to a little one on one combat. They of course can do the same to you.

Speaking of combat. It is pretty standard hit with the ‘X’, hit hard with ‘Y’, spell with ‘B’, and interact with ‘A’, but it is still fun. There are combos and stuff to mix it up a bit, but you will hit the ‘X’ button a lot.

I was surprised how much I liked this game, and I am glad that you can play it and advance without paying all sorts of cash, but it is unfortunate that you could just plop down $100 and win. Which is clearly what they want you to do. It is free, and that is a good price for a game, so I would suggest checking it out.

October 8, 2013October 8, 2013

Why I Pre-Ordered An XBox One

I almost didn’t pre-order an Xbox One, but thanks to K-Mart releasing their stock for pre-order on the day I sold some stuff on eBay, I got one on reserve. This was going to be the console cycle that I held off and waited to see if there were any issues with the hardware, or any major gotchas attached with getting one, but the tech lust go to me.

I would like to say that I got one because there was a game I needed to play, or some feature that I had to have, but really it was just because I had gotten both previous Xboxes on day one, and I had to do the same this time. That’s it. It is a new Xbox and I had to have one. Nothing is more consumer America than that.

I can’t wait to set it up and fiddle with it. I will let you know how it works, and maybe I will post one of those awful unboxing videos. Since Microsoft now lets me turn off the Kinect, I no longer have to worry about it watching me … watch it. I am also excited about the new indie games program id@xbox, and I hope it pays off. If they really let me use my Xbox as a dev-kit, it may be time to create my own game. Blade and Feather: The Game!

I can’t wait for November 22nd to be able to play with my new toy! If you ask nice maybe you can come and check it out too. Though you may have to bring an extra controller.