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.