When "The Thing" Copies it's Self it Becomes a Poor Prequel.

    First thing that needs to be said about “The Thing”, this is not a remake, or a reboot.  It’s a prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 “The Thing”, based on the novel “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell.  That being said it needs to be held at the same standard as its 1982 sequel.  Which this prequel falls flat.  Lacking the key elements that made it’s predecessor, er, successor, the cult classic it’s become today, suspense,  doubt and terror. 

    The series is based around an alien parasitic organism that has the ability through grotesque absorption to make an exact copy; looks, voice, and thoughts, of its host.  Which will then infiltrate and infect others, leading to the paranoia of nobody is who they seem to be.  

    Beginning three days before the events of it’s sequel.  Columbian paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) is recruited by Norwegian scientist Sander Halvesen (Ulrich Thomsen, Fringe) and his assistant Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen, Beerfest) to travel the snowy wastelands of the Antarctic.  Where the Norwegian science team has discovered not only a crashed alien spacecraft, but also incased in ice, it’s seemingly dead pilot.  

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Kate Lloyd

    Director Matthijs van Heijningen, does a fine job capturing the look of the ’82 film.  Building everything to eventually look exactly like how it looks when Kurt Russell’s character from the sequel flies to investigate what befell the unlucky Norwegians who discovered the alien.  Where this movie fails is in it’s writing.  Written by Eric Heisserer (who also wrote the the lack-luster remake of Nightmare on Elm Street), “The Thing” tries (much like the monster it’s about) to mimic its sequel.  Following a beat-for-beat formula of the original; even copying certain memorable scenes from it’s sequel, but at the same time tries to be it’s own entity.  Which works for two thirds of the film, until it takes a severe left turn and becomes less of a horror movie and more of an action film while the few survivors hunt the Thing down.

    The sequel succeeds in the doubt that no one is who they could be.  Anyone, even the main protagonist could be the Thing.  Its the mystery that makes the movie fun.  As you watch characters who know and trust each other so well, immediately turn on one another.  The prequel doesn’t deliver that mystery.  It’s not hard to figure out who is the Thing monster and who’s not.  Which just boils down to poor lazy writing.

Joel Edgerton as Baxter Carter

    The cast does a good job with what they are given.  Winstead does very well portraying the main protagonist, similar to Sigorney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley from the “Alien” series.  An intentional choice so not to take the flame away from Kurt Russell’s character in the sequel.  Which is interesting choice since the the lead male protagonist, Baxter Carter (Joel Edgerton, Smoking Aces) looks almost identical to an 1980’s Kurt Russell.   

Kurt Russell as R.J. MacReady in the 1982 sequel

    The Thing monster it’s self is brought to life entirely through computer animation.  A luxury that wasn’t available in 1892, forcing John Carpenter to relay heavily on extreme makeup, and puppeteer work.  Watching the Thing monster rip apart it’s human form to become the hideous deformed alien creature inside is jaw dropping with how life-like it looks.  And 29 years later is still hard to watch.  Watching the same thing done entirely in CG reminds the audience just how fake it is, in turn making it less scary.   Relaying only on CG it’s 2011 prequel fails at capturing the essence.  Feeling like its just the next thing that happens in the movie, only because the audience knows it’s coming.  

    As a film it stands on it’s own two feet well enough.  The newer generation who haven’t seen the 1982 sequel will walk out of the theater feeling it was just an alright movie.   Those who have seen the sequel and fans of John Carpenters film will walk out of this movie very disappointed and wishing they had just watched the original instead.  Because knowing the beginning of the ’82 sequel makes this film pointless to watch.    Save your money and rent John Carpenters far superior “The Thing”.

    "The Thing" is rated R for strong creature violence and gore, disturbing images, and language.

*Pictures Copyright of Universal Pictures

Gamestop shortage of Foza 4 Collectors Edition

    According to a few Gamestop employees, the company sent out a company wide e-mail to it's stores stating that they won't be receiving enough copies of Forza 4 Collectors Edition to cover the pre-orders of the game. Whether or not this rumor is true, it deffinately isn't a good thing for Gamestop. Gamestop and or Microsoft in the past has given incentives(DLC) to compensate those affected by a shortage such as this. Which won't be very much as the collectors editions tend to not sell as many as the standard retail edition. Keep in mind this is rumor from a couple Gamestop employee's. The company Gamestop has neither offically denied or confirmed this.

About the Ice T Thing.

    With the recent event of Ice T being so kind to share my site's link on his twitter page. *Seriously, thank you!  I received over 3,000 hits in a span of 3 hours, I couldn't ask for better publicity.*  I feel like I need to respond with my own thoughts.  Earlier yesterday (Sunday October 10, 2011) Cliffy B retweeted Ice T's tweet about requesting people to say that Marcus and Griffin deserve closure with their beef from the Gears 3 campaign.  I responded.  And that lead him to see my following tweet about my latest post to my site, which many of you saw.

    I'm not about to back peddle what I've said.  I stand behind my opinion, as it is just that.  My opinion.  I'm not hating on Ice T, I enjoy watching him in Law & Order.  His performance was severely lacking in Gears 3, in my opinion.  When I discovered the tweet about my post and the slew of mentions toward me defending Ice T, I wasn't embarrassed, upset, worried, or even remotely bothered by it.  I laughed my ass off.  Of all the people out there to read my post it was Ice T.  Have to admit I'm a little flattered.

    To answer all the hate messages I received... No, I'm not fat.  No, I'm incredibly not lazy.   I do not live in my parents basement.  Yes, I've seen a real girls vagina, in person.   All of your trolling messages had the exact opposite effect you intended.  I have nothing more to say than.  "Thanks for the clicks!"

-miniSCHOF

Gears of War 3 Fail!

     So a couple weeks ago I was playing Gears of War 3 on insane in arcade mode.    And stumbled upon a glitch that honestly I found rather fitting of the one of the playable co-op characters, Jace.  Here's my view on this character.  Jace is a "meh" character.  Since this is the first Gears game that has 4 player co-op Epic needed to make a couple new characters for when you're not paired with the classic duo's; Marcus and Dom, Cole and Baird.  Epic's answer to this, is Anya, another Carmine brother(seriously how many beefy low IQ brothers does this family have?), and new characters Sam, and Jace.  Sam's character really actually likable, think of her like a female version of Baird, minus the go-to repair guy.

But Jace... well Jace is... how to put this...  Well I think this video I made puts my point across.

Video from my Youtube page.  Please rate and subscribe.

     I personally would have rather had another Carmine brother, hell make them twins.  That could have been fine.  But thankfully it wasn't Ice-T.  Cause lets be honest his addition to Gears 3 was awful. The character Griffin was dumb, and his voice acting was terrible.  Then the awful "Gears of War" song in  the end credits...  Ice-T just stick to Law and Order, that seems to be working out for you alright.  I mean you have that and Coco...  so you're... doing... fine.

I don't want to come off like I don't like Gears of War 3 at all, cause honestly gameplay, graphics and the new additions of Beast Mode and to Horde.   I think Gears 3 is the best of the series, and I play it almost every day.  

I want the iPhone 4S Glados version please!

As many know Apple introduced it's latest version of the iPhone calling it the iPhone 4S; which is basically just a processor, new camera, and OS update to the iPhone 4.  Many are excited, some are "Meh", but most are disappointed.  To honestly put it, the 4S is just updated under the hood iPhone 4, the shell is completely the same.  But what got some people excited and being used as the main selling point is the announcement of a digital semi AI built in personal assistant called Siri.  To better describe it watch this trailer.

I won't lie I think it's awesome! And I'm going to use the crap out of it. But lets be honest, more than likely I'm going to sit down and find out how many inapropriate words Siri knows.  And if she can learn them.  But shortly after this commercial launched a fan made commercial showed up on the internet.  Where Glados from the Portal series voice was digitally instead of Siri.  Now I nothing more than this version of it!

                                     More Portal 2 Videos

Video embeded from IGN.com

Delayed "Dead Island" Impressions.

With the launch of "Gear of War 3" I've fallen behind on my "Dead Island" review.  So here is my impressions of "Dead Island" until my finished review officially goes up.

It has awful gameplay, awful story, awful voice acting, but it's SO much f*cking fun!

My "House of the Dead" review from 2003 returns from the grave.

Last night while I was playing around, working on some design work and new ideas for my site here (which I'm planning on changing up here very soon), I was watching some Netflix streaming.  and happened to stumble across this little jem.  This is a review that I wrote on Netflix for 2003's "House of the Dead" directed by Uwe Boll.  I completely forgot I wrote this and decided I would share it here with you all.  Enjoy.

It's not very often when you watch a zombie movie and root for the zombies to kill the heroes faster just so the movie will just end. This movie should enough reason as to why Uwe Boll should never direct a movie again, and why David Richardson shouldn't be within a 100 mile radius of editing software.  I know this movie is based off a SEGA video game (and believe me they make sure you know by displaying the SEGA logo on huge banners through-out the movie) but explain to me why you would mix shots and scenes directly from the F*cking video game into the actual movie,?!?!  When I fist heard this I thought it was some kind of a joke; but it seriously happens. It's not like the movie Doom where they shoot 11 minutes from a first person perspective to give you a feel of the video game. No Uwe Boll must have realized that he was running out of reels and needed filler to make his atrocity longer.  There's horrible acting, god awful action sequences, and one of the most anticlimactic endings to grace the silver screen. The only redeeming part of this movie is you see Erica Durance's breasts in the first 10 min of the movie. After that you can turn the movie off and stare at a wall for an hour and thirty minutes while a midget head-buts you in testicles repeatedly cause I promise that will be more entertaining than watching this garbage.

Where Xbox's achievements went wrong.

“Bleep Bloop!” (or something like that)  Recognize that sound?  Accompanied along with an inappropriately placed onscreen message, “Achievement Unlocked.”  To most, the casual gamer, it’s an occurrence that just gets written off; congratulations you unlocked an achievement, you’re life hasn’t changed, you’re still the same person that you were when you started, and the game hasn’t changed.  But to the select few hardcore gamers, these “Bleep Bloops” are at times the bane of our existence.  Achievements are suppose to be just what the name implies, you achieved something in the game and here is the proof.  Before achievements your bragging rights have been solely on your word.  I can tell you that In high school I beat Final Fantasy VII, maxed every character’s levels, along with getting a gold chocobo, beat both Ruby and Emerald weapon, had master materia across the board, and maxed out the game clock.  But would you believe me?  Probably not because the proof was on a memory card that has been long lost in the trade-in policy of the Gamestop corporation.  But with achievements I would have an earned digital “trophy” of yes I did this, and yes I don’t have a life.

Since achievements were first introduced on Microsoft’s Xbox 360, it’s been a welcomed addition in the evolution of gaming and not to mention one of the most clever ways to hook a gamer.  Not only do you feel a little boost of pride (admit it even if you don’t care about achievements, when you unlock one, you kinda feel like the sh*t!) but it also makes you wonder what other ones you’ll unlock.  It‘s worked so well in fact that apart from Nintendo every console has mimicked it’s own version of the achievement system.  PS3 now has trophies, Steam has in game achievements that link to your profile, even the iPhone has an achievement system with Game Center.

I myself have fallen prey to these addicting little “bleep bloops.”  I constantly find myself in turmoil as stand before my tower of nerdy’ness trying to decide which game to game, and honestly majority of the time it’s become a deciding factor of which game can I unlock the most achievements in.  I’d like to brag that I have a gamerscore of over 50,000 on XBL(Xbox Live).  But thats under half the the overall possible score I could have if I unlocked all the achievements in every game I own.  And there are people out there with over 600,000 gamerscore.

But with greatness of course comes the the flaws keeping it from perfection.  The achievement/trophy system by all means isn’t perfect.  There are a lot of things wrong and have room be improved upon.  At the birth of achievements developers didn’t fully understand what the possibilities could be with these little “bleep bloops” and it showed with the launch games for the system.  “Peter Jackson’s King Kong” is one such game and one of the few games I have 100 percented in my gaming history on XBL.  Thats mostly due to that all you had to do was beat the game on normal difficulty(which is not a hard feat accomplish).  Now games have begun to integrate in-game unlockables and avatar awards, but only a few handfuls of games take advantage of this system.  A perfect example of this is “Halo Waypoint;” an app on the xbox that scans all the achievements you’ve unlocked in the Halo series.  Which then gives you a ranking and unlocks in game and avatar rewards pending on what achievements you’ve unlocked.

Like them or not achievements/Trophies have open the door to making gaming more social.  Attaching them to anything from killing “X” amount of baddies, finishing a level, to finish the game co-op, and win “X” amount of ranked online Multiplayer matches.  Not only do they promote the game’s co-op/multiplayer functions but they also give gamers a extra level of competition amongst their friends.  How many times have you played a game and decided to see which achievements your friends have unlocked in the same game just so you can go out and rub in their faces that you’re a better gamer.  Or so they can’t do the same to you.  

The problem with online gaming achievements is that some of them are so damn hard or next to impossible that the achievement feels more like a giant middle finger from the developer.  For someone who doesn't play games online they would only unlock half (or at times less than half) of the achievements for the game.  “Quake 4” included an achievement called “Number 1” and “Top 10” Which consists of being the top in the top 10 and  #1 on the leaderbords for all of the games online game types.  Which is impossible now that no one plays the game anymore.  It should be now since the game is so unpopular the leaderboards should be reset or the game should be patched so it just unlocks the achievements for you because honestly you’re never going to be able to unlock them. 

Another aspect of achievements that just doesn’t work is the meaningless number/point system.  For every achievement there is a value attached to it that should reflect and match the difficulty of reaching said achievement, for instance in “Dead Space 2” completing the game on “Insane” mode, which allows you only 3 saves to use throughout the entire game and every time you die you re-spawn back at the previous save.  Meaning you are constantly playing at least one third of the game every time you play.  Upon completion earns you an achievement worth 50 gamerscore points.  Which when you think about the task you had to go through to earn said achievement, doesn’t really seem justified.  Earning the same achievement in “Dead Space 2” on PS3 grants you a Gold trophy which honestly seems more worth your while than 50 measly points. On top of which on the 360 it just gets added to an over all pool of points that you’ve earned so far amongst all of your games. So you’re accomplishment just gets lost in the overall number.

The developers who are smart and know how get the ones who are achievement whores include this little tasty treat into their games, the achievements that are worth 1 whole whopping point, but then gives you the missing 4 points in an achievement that is much much more challenging.  “DJ Hero” has an achievement that does this you earn the 1 point achievement really easily and right off the bat, but you earn the other 4 by completing a song set with 4 stars on hard.  I don’t mind this because it’s making the achievement whores get better at the game but it’s annoying to look at your number and see that odd number of points you’ve earned.  On the PS3 you earn a bronze for the easy achievement and a gold for completing a set on hard.

DLC(Downloadable Content) also breaks the achievement system.  Because with DLC it adds additional achievements to the game.  Which is great!  Who wouldn’t want more achievements for a game that they love to play along with the new content.  But on the Xbox this now voids your 100% completion for that game unless you unlock all the achievements for the DLC as well.  Resident Evil 5 was an amazing game to play.  Even though it was a departure from the series(which is a topic for another post) it was incredibly fun to play and earn its achievements.  Then came the DLC for online matchmaking.  An aspect that is pointless, glitchy, and overall not fun to play.  I have no desire to play this mode as it was clearly an afterthought when the game was close to being finished.  But now I no longer have this game in my 100% completion list, which is just dumb.  Well if thats the case you could just not download the DLC right?  Nope.  Wether you download the DLC or not the game still updates for everyone and voids your 100% by adding the new achievements to games catalogue.

These are aspects the PS3 has taken, looked at, and made better; you don’t earn meaningless points on the PS3 you gain bronze, silver, gold and platinum trophies.  All of which work in a similar fashion compared to Xbox’s achievements.  Think bronze trophies comparable to achievements that you would unlock in the 1 to 50 point range, Silver the 50 to 100, Gold 100 and above.  This isn’t how it really is because thats not how developers use the achievement system on the 360 but it gives you an idea.  

DLC also doesn’t affect wether or not you qualify for the Platinum; In fact some games have the platinum trophy programmed to unlock if you earn a certain number of trophies rather than just the trophies that come with the retail version, i.e. you unlock 38 trophies regardless if it’s DLC trophies or not.  On the PS3 DLC just tacks on extra lower level trophies for the game, and doesn’t restrict you from getting platinum.  Not only does the PS3 keep track of how many of each different trophy you earn there’s also an unseen/unknown point value system which in turn you gain levels according to the trophies you earn.  So saying I have a gamerscore of 50,000 points could be equivalent to saying I’m a level 15 gamer.  Which to a gamer the later is more coherent.

Still its up to the developers to makes achievements/trophies a better working machine, but when you compare the achievement system of the PS3 to the Xbox, PS3 has the advantage and a much more workable system.  You never learn until you try, I’m very much looking forward to how achievements/trophies will evolve in the next generation of systems that will probably hit the market in the next 2-3 years.  I just hope that Xbox learned a thing or two and is the wiser from its competitor, as it is the system I game on the most because of it’s exclusive catalogue and personal preferences.

Astro Wireless A40 Gaming Headset Review and Unboxing Video

     I've had my Astro's for a good month now; and I have to say I LOVE them!  For those who don't know about them, Astro makes a high end gaming headset that has the ability to produce 7.1 digital surround sound in headset form.  Sounds awesome right?  Well they are!  But here's the kicker... they're $279.99.  A price point that will turn away many who are in the market for a fancy gaming headset.  With three other companies making simmular products and promising simular performance for a cheaper price point(Turtlebeach, and Triton).  The cause mainly of the steep price point is that they are the official headphones of the MLG (Major League Gaming).  

     In doing my research I found a lot of promise in the other companies products but without having the ability to try them out in the circumstances I would be using them in, It boiled down to what I've read and my gut instinct.  I watched a lot of unboxing and video reviews of all the products and in my opinion Astro's were the way to go.

     The design is very slick and very comfortable.  The foam ear padding sits comfortably around the ears, I wore them for a long run-through on insane mode in Left 4 Dead and I never once felt like the headphones were squeezing on my head.  Nor did I have a headache afterwards like some over ear headphones do with prolonged use.  Only a few disappointments to the design one being is that they are big and bulky, the case they come with takes up half the space in my backpack; making them not the best fit as a travel companion.  Another flaw is the the capability to turn the actual ear pieces so they sit flush with a table top or around your neck, the A40's allow you to do so but when you turn them it feels too loose and have a tendency to snap into that postion when taking the headphones on or off.  The movement could be a little tighter on that end.

     Set up for the Astro A40's wasn't complicated at all but I could see where it could with a complicated setup in a home theater surround sound.  Luckily I bought the Wireless setup, which has 2 Optical ports on the back of the wireless receiver, one an input, the other an output.  From what I've gathered from the wired setup, there is only a single optical input, and no output.  Which could be problematic and a pain for those who have complicated setup in their home theater.  But it makes it very simple and great for using at a desk or a LAN party.  

     Now to the part thats most important.  The sound quality.  I was blown away when I first tried them out on my Xbox 360, there were times that I swear the sound wasn't coming from the headphones.  I kept finding myself pulling one side off my ear just to make sure sound wasn't coming from my surround sound speakers.  Nope, I was getting true surround sound from my headphones.  Things that were happening behind me sounded like they were actually behind me.  

     The clarity from the mixture of bass and treble blend so well.  I was worried that all the sound would get jumbled and just sound like a mess.  But every thing is clear, and sounds crisp.    I've played Dead Space 1 and 2, and found myself being overwhelmed by the surround sound, which just added to the experience and ambiance of the game.   I've tried several times to distort the sound purposefully to find the limits of the headphones, which was turning the volume dial of the voice for the attachable headset all the way down, and turned the volume dial to about 90 percent up till I got the sound distortion and pops.

     Movies worked really well on them as well, I've watched both Tron Legacy and Paranormal Activity 2 on Blu-Ray with my A40s.  Tron Legacy being the only movie I own that puts out 7.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound, It was amazing to listen to.  Wearing the A40s while watching Paranormal Activity 2 was a horror movie dream.  It sounded like it did when I went and saw it in the IMAX theater.  I was completely taken back by the quality of sound.  Music works really well with them also, plugging them into my iPhone sounded like a dream, I havent messed around much with the AUX input so I can use the mix-amp with my music, but I imagine it would make it sound that much better.

     Overall with the steep price you are getting a superb piece of equipment.  I thoroughly enjoy using them, and at times I prefer using them instead of my home theater set-up.  I highly recommend getting them if you can afford them, but the price will more then likely turn people away from this brand.  If you can't afford the A40, there is an alternative cheaper version, which I haven't had the opportunity to check out, but looking for a cheaper good quality gaming headset I recommend going with Turtle Beach.  

     I made this video a while back, and unfortunately I didn't have the time to edit this video together and post it with this last semester coming to an end.  Below is my video of unboxing and showing off what all comes in the box.

*All pictures used from astrogaming.com  Video was made by myself and on my youtube channel here.

My Bad!

I know its been a while since my last post.  Life has been crazy with the end of this semester coming up in three weeks.  I'll try to get unboxing video of my A40 wireless headset up and running by tomorrow.  Till then since we are in the shadow of Portal 2's release enjoy this deliciously funny "Penny Arcade"  comic.  And... BAM!!  Headshot!

You Might Be A Gamer If...

Last night a bunch of us on Twitter tried(and are still trying) to get the trend #youmightbeagamerif to become top trend.  A lot of them were pretty clever.  So I thought I'd share some of my favorites.

You might be a gamer if...

-you start trying to curb stomp people to get loot out of them
-the only parties you get invited to are on XBL!
-The Idea of paying over $200 to see your favorite band is absurd.  But that $250 collectors edition game is a great deal.
-you call coca cola, nuka cola
-you show up at midnight launches even though you preordered the game
-necromorphs are spawning from the dirty dishes in your sink
-your ringtones are all game soundtracks.
-you have played the same level 30 times in a row, so you can get that all important platinum trophy
-all your facebook status updates are your trophy/achievements acquired that day.
-you make alternate accounts based in other countries to get regional exclusives etc.
-you will stand in line for hours for a release but can't run down the street without having to catch your breath
-your first instinct is to melee when someone scares you.
-your k/d ratio is your rebuttal when someone is bragging about their car or income.
-you have a collection of snack wrappers in a perfect circle around you.
-you find yourself saying "ok this is my last map" for three + hours
-you buy the dlc to games you can't stand just because you HAVE to.
-you say "AutoBots Role Out" while your at the mall with your friends.
-you blame all your problems on lag.
-you refer to your friends by their gamer tag even though you know their real name.
-you have ever gone into withdrawal after not having played games/a game in days.
-you try to mute people who are annoying you in real life
-you keep a yellow gumball in your pocket in case of ghost emergencies.
-you know the conversion from microsoft points into dollars.
-someone offers you cake & you have an overwhelming need to say "the cake is a lie."
-your bargaining chips are "but I'm really close to the save point."
-you reference your mad Tetris skills when packing.
-when accomplishing something you say "bleep bloop" and pretend an "achievement earned" popped up.
-noob, pawn'd, K/D ratio, and owned, are everyday common words to you.
-when someone points out that you're wearing the same clothes yesterday you take that as a point of pride!
-when you walk into work instead of co-workers asking what you did last night, they ask you what game did you play.
-you know who LEROY JENKINS is!
-you revolve your sleep schedule around WOW raids.
-you wish at times you could throw a banana out the window to make the car behind you spin out.
-spending 40 hours in WOW sounds like a weekend come true.
-you might be a gamer if you still have 3 unopened games on your shelves cause you haven't beaten the last 5 you bought.
-the term teabagging makes you think of Call of Duty
-instead of oil companies being the evil corporations, in your opinion it's Activision.

If you got some good ones feel free to share!  Also you should follow these awesome peeps on twitter who helped contribute and start this trend!

@FxyMxy - Rachael Kirtley
@SuckMySpork - Jessy Lynn
@Leveluptime - Steve Papoutsis
And of course you should be following me...
@miniSCHOF

Cool Visuals, Beautiful Women, What Could Go Wrong?

Note:  Nothing is spoiled past the first 30 min of the movie.

    “Sucker Punch” is an over-the-top stylized action film following five beautiful broken girls with a need to break free.  The film opens with a stage, a theme that re-occurs through-out the entire film; showing the lead in the Sucker Punch Squad girls Baby Doll (Emily Browning) sobbing on her bed as her mother passes away in the other room.  Shortly after the funeral the evil step-father rips open the mother’s will only to find that everything is left to Baby Doll and her younger sister.  Baby Doll fearing for her sisters life gets a gun and shoots it at her stepfather, only to miss him and accidentally killing her sister.  Seeing an opportunity with the younger one dead he has Baby Doll committed, and bribes an orderly known as Blue (Oscar Isaac) to forge a signature to have Baby Doll lobotomized.

     The film takes place in three different settings, the first being the reality, a dark, rundown insane asylum.  The second being a high class orphanage burlesque house.  The third (the only part you really see in the trailers) is the dream world inside Baby Dolls mind.  Apart from the first 10 minutes and last 5 minutes, its the last 2 settings that you see for the remainder of the film.

     Here Baby Doll meets her entourage of beaten down bad-ass girls, Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung), Rocket (Jena Malone), and Rocket’s older sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish).  When Blue forces Baby Doll to dance so she can have the perfect routine for when the “High Roller” comes for her in 5 days, she dives into the dream world in her mind where she discovers her mentor (Scott Glenn).  He informs her that to escape this place she will need five things; a map, fire, a knife, a key and the last is a mystery.  After an unnecessary boss battle against 15 foot tall samurai warriors, Baby Doll comes back to discover everyone is in awe of her dance.  Nobody could take their eyes off Baby Doll; which is where she discovers how to get the things she needs to escape.  She will dance while her Sucker Punch Squad does the dirty work.  Every time she dances the film jumps to the dream world in Baby Doll’s mind.  Where Sucker Punch Squad have lots of guns, awesome acrobatics, and the ability to take on hordes of enemies unscathed.

     Walking out of the movie all I could think about was if Baby Doll’s dance was so hypnotic and moving, why wasn’t it ever shown?  It just made me more interested in wanting to see what she did that made everyone in the room stop and and do nothing but watch, rather than see the pretty special effects.  You can argue that if they showed the dance it would have taken you out of the dream sequence.  But I think with the right editing, cutting to her dance could have made for some very, very cool scenes in the movie.  

     “Sucker Punch” takes on a lot of its influence from Video Games, “The Matrix” movies and music videos.  Which when you look at the movies target demographic (males ages 13-30), it’s a two hour wet dream.  Don’t get me wrong the film is visually bewitching.  But without a good story to back it up it the movie crashes.  This is the weak link in chain of this movie.  It’s story bland, predictable, and full of holes.  From the first visit to Baby Doll’s world to last I never felt like it was amounting to anything, it didn’t fell like it was getting closer to a climax.  The ending where the three different realities come together and forge the story was executed pretty poorly.  Poorly enough that it confused the group I went with, and I struggled trying to explain it to them. 

     The soundtrack to this movie is it’s strongest appendage.  Covers and remixes of famous songs, make this movie feel like the best musical you seen since Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.”  The visuals paired with this heavy, industrial rock versions of these songs blend so well, that the majority of what people will remember the most of this movie is the music.  One scene in particular is on a train where the Sucker Punch Squad gets the knife, the cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows” originally by The Beatles plays. 

     Beautiful girls, mesmerizing visuals, and an amazing soundtrack unfortunately weren’t enough to save this movie.  Don’t get me wrong it’s a fun movie, but is it worth the pricy ticket cost to see this movie?  See it at matinee if you have the choice.  With the bland story line it’s hard to not be bored outside of the dream sequences.  I look forward to Zach Snyder’s cut of this film later in the year on Blu-Ray.  In hopes that it will bring life to this flatlined story.  

RATING:  2 1/2 Stars out of 5

Greetings and welcome!

     Hello and welcome to my website (...well, blog for now)!  It is this that I am using as a medium to express my thoughts and opinions of the entertainment media, but mostly for Video Games.  But first I believe I shall introduce myself.
     My name is Jason Schofield, I was born and raised in a small suburb of Salt Lake City, UT.  From day one, I knew I would never be accepted in those traditional worlds of business, politics and athletics.  No, I was far better suited for the "healthy" lifestyle of a professional video gamer, with a gaming resume that goes from A (for Atari 2600) to X (for Xbox 360). Across these generations, I became a force to be reckoned with by many so-called “gamers” and “geeks” alike.  People who were privileged to be graced by his presence knew this nerd was going places. So voracious was my appetite to suckle at the teat of video gaming, I took a job working for the evil Gamestop Corp. Soaking up the knowledge of all the deodorant-averse gamers who walked into this "chapel," my powers reached near critical mass. I was the Superman of Super Nintendo. The Xavier of XBox. The Magneto of "Hey, this Playstation is neat-o!" But Gamestop could only take me so far. It became clear I would have to move out into the world solo if he was to bring about its destruction by his own hands. One moment I was working the register, the next I was gone. Like a fart in the wind.
     No one knows for sure what became of myself after I left Gamestop.  I became an entity of rumor. Stories.  Old wive's tales.  Whispers in the shadows.  My name strikes fear in the hearts of weak-thumbed gamers everywhere.  If you’re online playing a casual game of Halo or Modern Warfare and you get melee’d from what seems like a ghost in the shadows (followed by a quick tea-bagging) you might have just got PAWN’D by...  ...miniSCHOF