Movie weekend and Parting

 
Happy Tuesday little bots, a day late but at least I am not skipping an up date. This past week I mostly played Destiny Beta on both systems just for comparison sake. Newsflash, not noticeable difference graphically or otherwise when comparing the two. I did a whole blog on how I felt about Destiny last friday and you can check it out here: Bitchn' Fridays: Destiny Beta Review

Friday night my man and I went to the movies to see Lucy staring Scarlett Johansson. I know quiet a few people and critics have bashed this film, mostly due to the tag line and the premise that humans use only 10% of their brain capacity. While yes this is 100% false, but if you take it as this is this films reality and think of it more fantasy than science fantasy you will enjoy more. Towards the end of the film it started reminding me of Akira, if you have never seen Akira you really need to it is a classic anime that many films have attempted to touch on. If you can relax and watch a film as a film and not over analyze every little detail of “science” that goes on, you will enjoy it.

Sunday we saw Hercules starting Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. It was ok, it was not the Hercules movie that everyone has been waiting to see. Instead of the 12 labors, which Hercules is known for, and being a true demi-god that he is. What we got was a “realistic” Hercules, who is a leader of a mercenary group, and a story line taking place after the 12 labors that no one really cares about. You do have great PG-13 fight scenes and Dwayne Johnson did a good job, it is more or a rental flick than a go out to the movies type. Hell, Lucy crushed it at the box office.


Aside from movie going, I attended a friend's annual midsummer party. You usually dress up as faeries or other woodland creatures and come eat and drink the night away. I of course went as Catbug, it's the only wings that I have people, and drank a little to much. By a little to much I mean I some how wounded up in a bikini and jumping into a hot tub with a bunch of people I barley know. But good times all around and I left early...12am-ish I think...

My friend and I at the party...I was already 3 sheets to the wind at this point.

Well this week its back to the grind stone of finding work or at least a temp job. Maybe I'll see Guardians of the Galaxy, I don’t know yet, but I will be going to my favorite place to get chilli: The Chilli Shack with some friends. See you back here friday for some rant of some kind.



See you on the other side

Bitch'n Friday: Godzilla Moive Review

I had the up most pleasure to see the new Godzilla film last night at the I max theater in downtown Seattle.  I will try to keep this as spoiler free as much as possible.

   When I was a child I would wake up early on the weekends and watch the old classic (poorly dubbed) Japaneses Godzilla films.  I loved how they would tease you with the monsters and then towards the end, BAM, the big battle pays off.  That's why I always like old monster films, gives you brief glimpse of the monster, shaking of the bushes, and when you finally see the creature it is a reward within it's self.   With this new rendition of Godzilla it does just that and stays so true to the original source material.
  

Love me bitches!

         Yes you do not see the monsters for a good portion of the film and when you do it's always supper up close, from a distance with fog or dirt derby, or on the news helicopter.  I didn't mind these perspectives since it is a take on different view point in which the humans (in the film) could see the monsters.  It add a sense of mystery and awe as these giants battle it out and humans are reminded how truly weak we are compared to nature.  But when the final battle comes it is a huge pay off with wide shots of the monsters battling it out.  I like to think that it is some random solider view it from a roof top.
         Another thing that sent me to the moon was the sound mix.  I know you must be rolling your eyes and mumbling to yourself, "well no shit you like the sound since you are a sound editor." Well I feel anyone with a decent pair of ears will appreciate how well they incorporated the sound design and music to add tension and fear giving you the perfect roller coaster ride for your ears.  The heavy Taiko drums leads the viewers into impending destruction long before the monsters even reveal a finger nail.  The build up from the drumming along with impending beeps has the audience on the edge of their seats, dying to know what is going to emerge from the foggy depths.  Even  better is when they decided to give the movie a quiet atmosphere, building up tension with each passing second to only jolt them back with a loud boom from the monster.  The most pleasing sound came for the king of monsters himself, Godzilla with his iconic roar.  Granted it leaned on the bass side of the vocal range, but by doing so the audience and actual feel the rumble of the beast's  powerful roar.
        Now I have to briefly discuss the appearance of Godzilla.  Finally America has got it right with his design!  He is currently the largest Godzilla to date but his looks closely resemble the original 1954 Godzilla.   Below is a pic of all the Godzilla's (including that god awful 1998 versions) So you can see how well the designers stuck with the original design while adding a bit of flair.

http://s1351.photobucket.com/user/TrueAmericanGodzilla/media/1954--2014GodzillaFamilyTree_zps1bff4fe7.jpg.html

 

 

 

 

         I also love how they gave him more facial expressions, telling the audience their is more to this monster than fighting and destruction.  Godzilla has some presence of intellect of what is going on around him and problem solving abilities.  Also when they do the first pan up shot of Godzilla and he roars, the whole audience flipped out.  It was not only because of his roar but is facial expression right before, it was almost invoking a bitch please look.   Also his face is just too cute!

     

        If you are on the fence, GO SEE IT!  While some people argued that there isn't any character development in this film, I just want to point out this film is following several people as they witness a never before scene event in human history.  It is a monster film giving a nod to it's classic predecessor and not a story about a guy who has to over come a monster to discover who he truly is.  What do you think of the film are you going to see it? Let me know in the comment section below.

See you on the other side

Bitchin’ Friday: Pentatonix Concert Review

            Last night I went to see Pentatonix (PTX for short) concert at the Paramount Theater.  I haven’t been to a concert in forever and the one I usually attended are rock concerts.  But I like PTX from their YouTube channel and my man thought it would be interesting to see who they perform live.  

            The band originates from choir and added base vocals and beat boxer to forum a more harmonic a cappella group.  There voices are lovely and each one of them has such a huge vocal range.  Here is where it gets messy, in the opening song “Daft Punk” (which is one of my favorites by the way) they sounded like a jumbled mess.  The tenors and sopranos over whelmed the bass muddling up.  To top it off there was very little choreography and felt like we were attending a high school choir concert with lights constantly blinding us.  It wasn’t until after there first act when they brought out their beat boxer to play on his cello while beat boxing.  It was beautiful song he played/sung and it really wanted me to get up and do a sensual dance with my man. You can watch the cello beat box here:     

After the cello beat box the concert turned around and was so much better.  There was less vocal fighting and each vocal range shined at the proper moments. 

            What this concert really needed was a live sound mixer.  They really needed him in the first half of the concert, but threw out a really good sound mixer will help balance out the vocals and create more dynamic range in each song.  If you compare a local band concert to a professional stadium concert you know the pro’s sound quality is ten times that of the locals.  This is not to say the locals music is bad but I am comparing to the over all sound quality of the instruments and the vocals.  In the Pro’s the vocals can be heard loud and clear and the instruments are not muddling together.  Compare that to a group that does not have a live mixer and the instrument start to muddle together and you can’t really hear the vocals unless they shout into the microphone.

            A few tweaks from a sound mixer during this concert would have helped with the muddling problem.  Aside from the vocals, visuals would have helped significantly.  Simple blocking and a bit of dancing from the artists would have been more entertaining.  Even something as simple as a costume change would have shake things up.   I go to concerts not only to listen to the music but to be visually stimulated as well.  A little choreography goes a long way.

            I still really like this group and they are a very talented young bunch of kids.  What they are lacking is stage performance and grandeur.  With a few tweaks to their performance and a sound mixer off stage, this can be a worth while concert to attend.  Check out PTX for your self at their site PTX Official.

           

            See you on the other side

Bitch'n Fridays: Review

This week I wanted to write a review on an app that I have been addicted to recently: Zombies Ate My Friends

  The game is made by Glu and came out a few months ago.  I have only started playing this past week and am digging it for an app game.  I like the fact that you can customize your character right off the bat and it has and episodic game play.  I do not know how often they launch a new episode but when I downloaded the game on my iPad it had 8 episodes.  

 Starting off you are a survivor running away from zombies who just ate your friends.  You run into other survivors, complete missions and go on to the next chapter fleeing in a helicopter.  Eventually you gather your crack team of survivors to find a cure for the zombie out break.  

The game play isn't hard, tap on zombie and out pops a list of attacks to kill him with.  Your attacks depend on your chosen weapons, they vary from pistols to assault rifles and frying pans to a pie cutter of death!   You can only equip two weapons at a time and will have to be constantly fixing them before they break.  You will also be using energy to attack the zombies, but that run out very quickly.  You have two options to regain you energy, Waite or buy it.  This is a free download game but they will get you on buying in game cash.

When you are not killing zombies you are looting around garbage and crates for energy,xp,and cash, or finding a person to complete or gain a quest.To upgrade of sell unwanted items you sell them to merchants in safe houses that are in predetermine areas in which you have to fortify.  The whole point of safe houses is when you die you will be transported to the nearest one.  

Overall I am digging the art style and cartoonie sound effects, the music is solid and works well with the game.  Easy combat and funny story makes this an easy game to pick up in your App Store.  The down side is the pay for more money and skulls(currency) and the combat can get a little repetitive.  Go out and give it a try, it's free and I have found if you wait an hour most of your energy has come back and you can keep on playing.

See you on the other side 

Bitchin’ Fridays: Defiance the Game review

            This week I thought I would do a game review on a gamed that I had been playing for the past month.  The game was Defiance, and never in my life have I been so frustrated at am MMO style game.  Not for the excessively repetitive quests but for the updating and the constant getting screwed over by the game it’s self.

            Defiance is a tie into the Syfy of the same name developed by Trion Worlds.  Set in a devastated San Francisco Bay area after a war between humans and alien alliance of extraterrestrial races; your character is an Ark Hunter (basically a mercenary for hire) assisting Karl Von Bach in search of advanced and valuable arktech.  You start off by crash landing in the Bay area away from your boss and from there the typical walk threw on how to play starts.

            At first I like playing this game (played it on the 360) it is open world and you can interact with vast amount of players to complete quests with out the fear of someone trying to kill you.  I could play with friend in a relaxing environment and do what ever we want.  It was nice to have this MMO experience brought to the counsels but that quickly demolished as I continued to play.  

            My first big gripe is when I first installed the game.  It took for ever to install which is fine but to then open the game to only find over an hours worth of patching updates that needed to be installed before I can play sucks.  I understand why they have so many patches (the game is buggy as hell) but to come off the bat saying that your game is so problematic at launch that it needed over and hour’s worth of patching screams that you needed more time to work on this game.

            Second gripe is the servers. 

You get this

Or this

Or even this:

It is beyond frustrating to go login and try to play a game to only be denied.   To put it simply,

            Ok so eventually I am able to log in and play.  After the first initial tutorial level that only teaches you how to fight and pick your perks you are thrown into the world with out any more help.  Trust me you need an extra tutorial on how to modify weapons, how to use the rest of your menu screen, and other world interactions like what is a lock box or key codes and why do I need to buy these things.  The game did not come with an instruction manual so I had research online on how to do everything in the game and even how to log out.  Oh and by the way to log out is a separate screen that can only be accessed by opening up the main menu and holding down the left trigger button to access it.

            Once you have figured out how to play it is fun, for a while.  Eventually the game play gets repetitive (like many other MMO’s) and even the Ark fall events get boring and repetitive.  What really irks me is when I’m playing with friends and they are a few missions below me and they go do a main mission, half the time I cannot help them.  They disappear for 15 minutes at a time and I sit around doing nothing.  It take the fun out of playing with your friends. 

            The straw that broke the camels back for me was when the game fucked me over.  There are times that I would have to hit and hold the x button and the game would not register it and I would have to repeater my action multiple times before it would register.  Another thing is when I am fighting enemies and I am almost done and poof 15 random enemies would spawn up and kill me.  The last thing that I hated about this game was the inconstancies with your death and respawn.  This usually happens in a boss fight.  I would be down for the first time and cant get back up and die, but other times when I can immediately get back up and continue to fight.

            Over all this game had started off well and a good start for future of MMo’s on the consol but this game feels more like and experiment and a waste of time, money, and disk space.  I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this and if you have any suggestions on what I should bitch about next week leave me a comment.  See you Monday for a wrap up of my week.

See you on the other side.

Bitchin’ Fridays: Restaurant Review: 4 Swallows

             

            Shaking things up this week, it has been ever so nice outside that it put me in a good mood.  As a result, I am going to write a quick review instead of my usual gloomy disposition on life.  Let’s dive in, shall we.

             This past week I visited my parents and went out to dinner at a restaurant that we have never been before on Bainbridge Island.  Four swallows is an Italian/northwest inspired Cuisine, more on the emphasis on Italian.  You have two choices on where to sit.  You can sit in the dinning room that looks and feels like an old French country home, perfect for a date.  Or sit with the locals in the bar area, it looks more like a comfy English pub.  Which ever you chose you will get the same menu.

            The cocktail that I had was spring thyme.  It was light and very refreshing, and not to herby with the fresh sprig of thyme that is placed in the drink.  For the appetizer I had the cheese plate that featured cheese from Vashon Island with apricot jam and house made crackers.  The cheese its self was not over powering and had a lovely velvety texture much like brie. 

            My entrée was beef tenderloin in a red win reduction with butter potatoes and sautéed asparagus.  The beef was the size of a fist and so tender that it fell apart in your mouth.  The sauce accompanied the dish well and the potatoes tasted like they have been injected with butter.  I would gladly come back to have this dish again.

            Finally I went against my better judgment (and full stomach) and had desert.  I had Affogato, which is espresso with vanilla ice cream and chocolate covered beans.  It came in a tall glass filed with ice cream and shoots of espresso, resembling a milkshake.  It was light and I ended up ditching the spoon and drank the remainder of the dish.

            Four Swallows is an excellent date night destination, just hope on the ferry at sunset and come back on for that beautiful Seattle skyline at night.  The down side to this place is that it is off the beaten path and you will be walking for a distance away from the main drag.  Also the wine here is expensive; you are better off taking your own and paying for the corkage fee. 

            I encourage everyone to go off the beaten path every once in a while to discover a new gem.  Four Swallows web site for your enjoyment: Four Swallows.  Thanks you all for reading, please leave a message and what you thought down below.  If you have suggestions on what I should review or rant about next please shoot me an email or comment.

See you on the other side.