February 3, 2015 Tuesday 10: New-To-Me Movies So Far This Year
I’ve seen a lot of movies already this year, and more than half of them have been new to me. On top of that, there’s only been a couple that were meh and I haven’t outright hated any of them. We’re off to a good start, 2015. Keep it up!
Here’s my 10 favorite new-to-me movies so far this year, and I really had to work at not putting Ghostbusters on the list. Sure, I’ve seen it a bunch of times before, but I got to see it in 4K a couple of weeks ago, and that was pretty sweet.
10. Chinatown – I finally got around to seeing this and it was pretty good! Should I watch The Two Jakes next?
9. A Walk Among the Tombstones – Liam Neeson, but he’s not doing the Taken thing. I mean, there’s shooting, but there’s not a lot fancy beatdowns and shaky camera.
8. This Is Where I Leave You – I mostly got this one for Tina Fey, by which I mean she’s in it, not that I got it so she could watch it. I’m not generally one for “family drama” movies, but I ended up liking this one, mostly because it has a (mostly) great cast.
7. Fat Kid Rules the World – I’m not into punk music, either, but I think it’s largely (no pun intended) intended as a backdrop here rather than the point. A much sweeter movie than I expected.
6. The Raid 2 – A lot of great fights in this one, and a really cool scene during a car chase that I didn’t know was as cool as it was until I read about how they did it. I won’t try to explain it other than to say it involved at least three cameramen, one of whom was disguised as a car seat.
5. Charade – Hey, I just wrote about this one yesterday!
4. American Sniper – I know this one’s got all kinds of debate swirling around it, and I don’t much care. It’s a well-done portrait of an American soldier and Bradley Cooper’s Texas accent is pretty much amazing.
3. The Four – I don’t completely understand the word wuxia just yet, but I’ve seen enough to recognize good examples. I really enjoyed this one.
2. The One I Love – The poster for this one weirds me out a little, but it really suits the movie, I found. I don’t want to spoil anything about this one, so I’ll just mention that Ted Danson has a small role as a marriage counselor.
1. Bad Words – This sort of surprises me, because this movie was way more foul than I expected – the title should have tipped me off, right? – but here it is. I’m inclined to like Jason Bateman in things, and a story about a 40-year-old guy entering a kids’ spelling bee on a technicality was right up my alley. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this movie “sweet” or “heartwarming,” but I will say it has a weird kind of heart, and that turned out to be the right kind.
We’ll see what the rest of the year has in store, eh?
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February 2, 2015 Movie Monday: Charade
For 20-some years now I’ve thought the movie Charade was an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Watching the movie didn’t change my mind on that opinion. It wasn’t until I read the first item of trivia on IMDb for it that I realized my error:
Due to the suspense, the stars, and the frequent plot twists, many people believe that this is an Alfred Hitchcock film. He was not involved in the making of the film at all. This confusion has prompted fans of the film to call it “the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made.”
Ah, well. In spite of all that, it was a great little film – and I say this as a person with very few pre-1980 films under my belt.
The absolute best part of the movie is that it stars Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, two of the movie-starriest movie stars that ever movie-starred. They are just the best, folks. Yes, there’s a 25-year age gap between the two of them, but when they’re in the midst of their snappy patter, you won’t mind at all, I promise you. Add in Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy, and you’ve got quite the cast going on here.
As for the plot, there’s theft, murder, fighting, deception, and love. (What else could you want?) Regina’s husband has died, and several mysterious men are after her for the $250,000 he apparently had. She doesn’t know anything about it, but their threats are becoming more and more real and she doesn’t know who she can trust. As the name of the movie implies, not everyone is who they seem to be.
Apparently, after finishing this film, Cary Grant was quoted as saying, “All I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn,” but it didn’t happen (source). It really is too bad, because they were so enjoyable together.
Charade was my 39th movie of the year. It is available on Netflix Streaming.
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January 28, 2015 Lyn Plays SimAnt
When I played SimCity last week, Mark said he’d never even seen SimAnt, so now I know how he feels when I tell him I haven’t seen [insert pretty much any movie here]. So, at his request, here is SimAnt.
If you’re wanting a high octane power fueled zooming game of dare devilry and explosions, you are in luck! No not really, SimAnt is a game of strategy. Slow, drawn out strategy as you do you darndest to take over the entire backyard and house while wiping out the red ants. The red ants not only compete for food, but are a threat to your queens so the sooner you can smoosh them the better.
When you die (and you will), you are reborn as a new ant right away assuming your queen is still alive. If she’s died, and you die – that’s game over. You can die not just from starvation and red ant attack. Many threats wander the yard including a spider and a lawnmower. Since the guy who lives in the house with his dog spends an unnatural amount of time mowing the lawn, this is a constant threat.
It’s a pretty simple premise, and oddly compelling. If you like simulation games or strategy games and haven’t played this, it’s worth an hour of your time. Don’t blame me when that hour becomes an all night session and you have to explain to your boss why you keep whispering “the red ants are coming.”
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January 27, 2015 Tuesday 10: Movies of 1997
I have seen 59 of the movies released in 1997, and I’m not counting the Star Wars re-releases even though they were the Special Editions (take that, George Lucas!). 1997 was the year Titanic was released, the first movie to make a billion dang dollars. Of course, it was also the year Batman & Robin was released, and it there were two movies about murders in the White House. This year also had one of my favorite movies ever in it, so let’s get to the list.
10. Alien: Resurrection – I’ma list four names here to tell you why I like this movie: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, and Joss Whedon. Yes, the ending Alien is creepy (and not in a good way), but I still like the movie.
9. The Fifth Element – For years I was convinced I didn’t like this movie because I had friends who didn’t like the movie (and I guess I was afraid of them?), but I know now I was wrong (but they were more wrong).
8. Nicolas Cage (Con Air & Face/Off) – I cannot pick between these two movies, which are both the highlight of Nic Cage’s career. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to decide between them.
7. L.A. Confidential – This is a better movie than many ahead of it on this list, I’m aware, but these lists aren’t Best Of lists and you know it.
6. Titanic – The boat stuff is the best stuff. The people stuff is an all-caps MEH. George and Jerry sum it up pretty well.
5. Liar Liar – I tend to like Jim Carrey in most things.
4. Waiting for Guffman – I did a bunch of plays in college and have been on stage a few times since, so this one speaks to me.
3. Men in Black – I like Will Smith in most things, too. This one is such a great mix of humor and sci-fi, like I was its intended audience.
2. As Good as It Gets – I don’t care how schmaltzy or over-the-top it is, that “You make me want to be a better man” speech is the bee’s knees. Nertz to your stone-cold heart if you roll your eyes at me for it!
1. Grosse Pointe Blank – One of my all-time favorites, probably in my top three.
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January 26, 2015 Music Monday: LEGO Rock Band
I got it in my head a while back that I’d like to finish up some achievements in LEGO Rock Band. This was most likely prompted by two things:
- My annual New Year’s Eve party, which always includes setting up Rock Band on a projector in the garage (we’re a garage band, see).
- Knowing I’ll never get over “50% achievements unlocked” by playing new games – gotta play old games and clean some stuff up.
The LEGO octopus was my favorite part of the game.
So while my wife was out of town for a couple of days, I worked towards a couple of goals and got one: the Endless Shameless achievement, for playing the Endless Setlist.
I’ve played the Endless Setlists on Rock Bands 1, 2, and 3, and those were a bit more brutal. The non-LEGO Endless Setlists have you play through every song that came with the game (no DLC), so it was 6-7 hours. Rock Band 2 had a separate achievement for playing the Endless Setlist with pausing, and I don’t recommend you try that one without other players to swap in.
The LEGO Rock Band Endless Setlist is a little bit different. First of all, it only has you playing 30 songs, which seems paltry compared to the 83 (or whatever) from previous versions. Secondly, it includes DLC, so that mixes it up a bit.
I started it at 6:35p and was done by 9p, and I took a couple of breaks. Not so bad. If you want to attempt it sometime, though, I will give you a hint: play it on a machine that doesn’t have any DLC whatsoever on it. See, LEGO Rock Band has this nice little feature you can turn on if you’re inclined. When you are setting up a playlist, you can hit the yellow button to “Play short version.” As you might guess, this has you play a truncated version of the song, usually about two minutes’ worth. With that in place, you can finish up a lot of goals (including the Endless Setlist) pretty quickly. However, it only works on songs included on the LEGO Rock Band disc. No DLC or otherwisely-imported songs have that option, so if you have even one non-disc song in the playlist, the short version option isn’t included. So that’s my tip to you!
I am missing four more achievements for the game, but will most likely only be able to get one more, the “finish all gigs” one. That will take time, but is doable. The “get 100% on the guitar solo in ‘The Final Countdown'” and “have all band members get 100% on a song” achievements are quite unlikely, unfortunately.
Tags: Achievements, Lego, Rock Band
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