May 2012

Challenge Accepted.
Submitted Saturday, May 19, 2012 - 8:56:26 AM by Skari

So, Klaitu came up with an interesting, deceptively simple sounding challenge the other day. While there's a bit of a videogaming lull and nothing too interesting on the horizon (besides my always massive backlog, that is), he put out this idea; Watch the top ten grossing films from 1980-1995. Each person has the ability to veto one movie from the list per year, so that brings the total down to 8. The catch is that we can't move on to the next year until everything in the previous year has been watched, besides the veto films, so no skipping from 1980 to 1985 because you really want to watch Back to the Future. Honestly, I'm constantly behind on films. If you've asked me if I've seen something, the answer is almost always no, unless it's some weird thing that happened to catch my fancy or a documentary. It took me five years to watch The Matrix. This is a good way for me to catch up on some older films that I've missed, so the challenge was naturally accepted.

And so we begin with 1980.

On the Veto list:
Klaitu vetoed Stir Crazy, a comedy starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor that placed 3rd in the top grossing list, because he has an unnatural hatred of Gene Wilder that I don't quite understand.

I've vetoed The Blue Lagoon, a drama starring Brooke Shields and Chistopher Atkins that placed 9th in the list, because I've already seen this slow paced, fairly uninteresting film twice and that was two times too many. It was nearly a toss up between that and Private Benjamin, but I haven't seen the later so I figured I'd at least give it a chance, even though I've heard it's awful.



Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Sci-Fi
Starring: A bunch of awesome people you've heard all about.
Top Grossing Rank of 1980: Numero Uno!

Ok, we cheated a little on this. We didn't actually watch it. We've already seen it a bunch of times, we all know it, we all love it, why even bother reviewing it? I could complain about this or that, I'm sure, but in the end it's still freaking Star Wars.

Score: It's one of the first three original Star Wars, it defies scoring.













9 to 5
"Comedy"
Starring: Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman
Top Grossing Rank of 1980: 2nd place...somehow.

People were working hard in the 80s. Ladies were especially working hard for the money, and apparently not getting any respect. This is basically Office Space for secretaries. Posh office jobs with regular hours sure are oppressive, I guess.

Looking back on it now, it's a little hard to believe that this was the second top grossing film for 1980. Other films that were produced in 1980 and didn't breech the top ten have become legend, including The Shining and Caddyshack. This one, not so much.

Jane Fonda looks and acts ridiculous in this movie. You're supposed to feel sorry for her, her husband has just left her for his secretary and she has to get a regular job. Unfortunately, she dresses as though she's sixty years old, seems confused by the simplest tasks, and gasps primly at the most mundane things. After a few minutes of watching her bumbling around, I also wanted to leave her.

The movie itself hasn't aged well. Jokes that aren't particularly funny last too long. I learned that if you give middle aged women a joint, their obnoxious laughter begins to sound like chickens clucking while you sit through three tiresome fantasy scenes of them thinking up various ways to off their obnoxious, sexist boss. Wacky hijinx seemed to ensue forever.

Score: 3/10 There were a few laughs here and there, and Dolly Parton was fun to watch, but overall the movie was pretty poor.




Airplane!
Comedy
Starring: Robert Hays, Leslie Nielsen, and Peter Graves
Top Grossing Rank of 1980: 4th, right behind Stir Crazy.

Passengers lives are in the hands of an inept former fighter pilot with a "drinking problem" when both pilots and many of the passengers come down with a mysterious case of the Bird flu.

This held up surprisingly well! Just coming off of the 70s, and on the heels of Saturday Night Fever, there were a lot of disco jokes, but most of the jokes could have worked at any time.

Leslie Nielson was great, perfectly understated and brilliantly funny. Robert Stack was also excellent, though every time I saw him I couldn't help but hear him talking about a unsolved mystery in the back of my mind.

Score: 7/10 Not every joke worked, but a good majority of them did. I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would.


We started off with a pretty good night. A lot of the films we looked at for 1980 aren't streaming on Netflix at the moment, so it might take some work or a visit to the local rental shop to view the rest. However, I'm excited.

Mass Effect 3 (spoiler free!)
Submitted Monday, May 7, 2012 - 6:37:20 PM by Klaitu

So, how could I have missed a review of my favorite franchise of all time? Well, life(tm) got in the way.. but now that I have a few moments, it's review time!

ME3 had some big shoes to fill.. after the resounding masterpiece that was Mass Effect 2. Not only did it have to live up to the hype, it also had to cap off the story to the trilogy.

In case you hadn't heard, there was huge controversy regarding the ending of the game.. and I'll get to that, but first let's talk about "everything else"!

The graphics and gameplay of ME3 live up to those in ME2.. they may be slightly improved, it's hard to say, but the art style carries over very well to the new game, and it's much less jarring than what happened from ME1 to ME2.

Gameplay is most similar to ME2 with the additional twist of a more robust melee attack system. It works quite well, and you can get along just fine without it, if you feel so inclined.

Music is much improved, no doubt due to the new composer. ME1 and 2's scores felt cheap, much like Babylon 5's did. This time around, there's still plenty of ambient electronica, but we also get horns, pianos, and drums.

Voice acting here is top notch, with the notable exception of Jessica Chobot's Diana Allers. Listening to her dialogue is absolutely punishing.. thankfully, she doesn't have many lines (and you can even kick her off your ship if you want).

Then there's the story. The story is absolutely as you might expect a Mass Effect game to be. High Quality, in depth characters, attention to detail. It's no secret, this time around, Shep is out to save Earth itself. Along the way, you meet all sorts of friends from games past, as well as a few new faces.

... that is until the last 10 minutes of the game. The story veers off from Mass Effect and drives directly into crazy town. The ending of Mass Effect feels absolutely nothing like Mass Effect. Closure to many of the characters and stories you've been a part of for the past 30 hours or so is not provided.

Additionally, like everything in Mass Effect, you're given an ultimate choice at the end of the game, but each of these choices leads to nearly identical endings... It's a lot like in Mass Effect 2 where you can choose to destroy the collector base, or save it..

To make matters worse, the ending is somewhat abstract, and doesn't really explain what just happened in any detail. When I first completed the game, I felt disappointed that the story ended so abruptly and with no closure.

For all the hype that's been put out regarding the conclusion, you'd think the sky was falling, and while I did feel the ending was disappointing, it was only the last 10 minutes of a 30 hour game. I enjoyed my time with Mass Effect 3 overall.. and Bioware has announced that they will patch the ending of the game, though who knows how they might alter it. We'll see how it goes.

Bottom Line: If you liked Mass Effect 2, it's pretty much that style all over again. I highly recommend it!

Overall Score: 8 of 10
Quality Rating: 5 of 5
Buy it!