jadegl

I've been pretty much all Wonder Woman so far, but Green Lantern is also very fun and I find myself choosing him a lot more as I play more. I also like Black Canary quite a bit.

ATM (2012) - 2/5

Pretty good premise ruined by HUGE, NUMEROUS plot issues. Many times I was saying to myself "Why don't they do this?" and "Wait, why don't they just...?" and it made it really hard to get into the movie when the people in it were so unbelievably dumb. Also, the ending was a big let down. No reasons for what happened or why, no cleverness, no intrigue. Really disappointing.

The Caller (2011) - 3/5

Pretty cool, certainly spooky, but a little uneven overall. I really liked this quite a bit even with it's faults. I didn't really love the ending, but there were a lot of really creepy moments that I found left an impression on me. I would say keep an open mind and don't read anything about the movie!!! This is one where you want to go in completely blind.

Logan (2016) - 4/5

This was a really good end to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Hopefully they stick with it because I feel like they really put a bow on that character. It's a hard watch in that it's really bleak. I got major Last of Us vibes from it (of course). But, in the end, I really liked that they had the guts to do such a serious story with such a kind of sad ending to a lot of fan favorite characters. Really good, so much so that I want to watch it again and really just take it in. Plus, X-23 is the bomb. Awesomely realized from the comics.

Wonder Woman, at least in the comics, has had many interpretations of her appearance. Well, the basics stay the same, but depending on the artist, she can either look similar in body type to Gal Gadot (I'm thinking like how WW was drawn by Michael Turner) or more muscular, but still feminine obviously. That's the style I like, which I think was best captured by Adam Hughes and Terry Dodson.

I totally understand what you're saying, though. When they first announced that Gadot was WW, I was kind of disappointed. I was hoping for someone more in line with my "perfect" idea of WW, which was the Hughes/Dodson look. Like someone who looked like Gina Carano, maybe someone unknown, I don't know. I just was worried.

I think she's done a pretty good job so far though. I don't even mind her not looking thick and muscular. It's more the character now and the story. I hope they nail that, and the appearance is a lesser worry. I don't mind her accent either. Wonder Woman is Greek, so I think she should sound different and exotic. I'm not saying she has to specifically sound "Greek" but I like that they didn't just get an American or British actress.

Long story short, I can accept the appearance not fitting my idea of the character, so long as the character herself is close to the comics and captures what makes WW unique and unlike people like Superman/Batman etc.

I am cautiously optimistic. Like really cautious.

I am a huge WW fan. I started reading WW back in the late 90s when I bought the trade paperbacks for The Contest and The Challenge of Artemis at a local comic book shop. I started picking up the running series and getting back issues. I ended up falling out of picking up the monthly comics at about when New 52 happened, or maybe a bit before that. I still pick up trades and series that catch my eye, most notably Wonder Woman: Earth One and Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman, which was a digital anthology series that they collected into 3 trades. I also watched the 70s TV show, the animated movie that came out a few years ago, I pretty much tried to watch and read almost anything I could that involved Wonder Woman.

So, on the one hand, I'm really stoked that there is a big tent pole super hero movie starring a classic female hero. That is a huge step considering we've only really gotten Elektra (ugh) and Catwoman (UGHHHH) and some more indie type stuff (Tank Girl, Barb Wire). On the other hand, I've let myself get excited about super hero films before that feature heroes I really love. Remember Green Lantern? Yeah, I was super excited for that one too, and that ended up being pretty bad, except maybe Sinestro, who they did a good job with.

The trailers have been pretty good. I like that it looks a bit more lighthearted than Man of Steel, BvS and Suicide Squad. The supporting characters look spot on. Chris Pine makes a good Steve Trevor, at least based on appearance in the promotional materials. They even are doing a classic and kind of silly villain with Doctor Poison, which I think is really kind of neat. But, all of the promotional stuff is made to generate hype, so I am trying not to fall into the trap of being too excited.

I hope they do a good job. Diana deserves a good movie and a good interpretation of her character in live action.

The Factory (2012) - 2.5/5

In recent John Cusack films, there is a continuum of quality that goes from Awful (The Raven) to Mediocre and Boring (The Numbers Station) to Almost Okay, which is where The Factory fits in. I read a review that likened it to a slightly higher quality Law and Order: SVU episode, and that's about the best description I have come across. And boy does John Cusack try to carry this movie, but in the end it's just average. It's almost worth a watch for the ending, though. Almost. In the end this is a perfectly acceptable time waster, just don't expect The Silence of the Lambs or anything.

The Accountant (2016) - 4/5

Really good but also kind of weird, especially the ending. Ben Affleck was awesome. I don't know what else to say about it, honestly.

Heights (2005) - 3/5

This is a movie where actors are acting and that's about it. The movie follows a handful of New Yorkers through a 24 hour period. It's based on a stage play, or at least that's what the credits said, and that I can definitely see. Most of the meat of the story takes place at a party, and most of the lead up through the story before that is all about this party. And then the movie just kind of ends. It's good, I won't say that it's not interesting, but at the same time you have to go in knowing that it's really a movie that's not really about anything. Just following some people around as they bounce off of each other.

Never Let Me Go (2010) - 3.5/5

Ooooof. Talk about a movie that just seems to want to break your heart. I mainly decided to watch this because of the science fiction hook, but in the end it's more about the three main characters and their relationship. I expected that, but I kind of also wanted just a bit more of a look into how their society got to where they were. It's not important to the overall story, but I am a stickler for that kind of world building stuff. Very good, watch it if you need a good gut punch.

Boys and Girls (2000) - 2/5

Typical late 90s early 00s romantic comedy, I just wish it was funny. I don't know, it just didn't hit with me. It felt like the movie had no stakes, that nothing was really in jeopardy throughout. It was the film equivalent of store brand vanilla pudding cups - okay in a pinch but the vanilla is a little too bland to get excited about and you realize you should have gone with butterscotch or chocolate after a few bites. Pretty good soundtrack, though.

I had the most fun playing Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls. I had this notion to play every FF game from 1 to whatever the number was at that time (I think it was only 12 at that point) but I only managed to burn through 1 and 2 and the bonus content that they put into the remake. I started both the DS remake of III and the GBA remake of IV (which I got really far in before losing steam) but never followed through on my original idea. I have played almost all of them in fits and starts, but I just never got as into one as the first one for some reason.

On a side note, would anyone be mad if I was true to myself and said Kingdom Hearts? :D

I tend to play a ton of co-op games with my husband. While we usually do really well with stuff like Halo, Gears of War and Borderlands 1 and 2, my favorite memory comes from a time when we were less successful.

In 1999, when I was a senior in high school, and my husband was a freshman in college, we tried to do stuff like play online games together every once in a while. We did Warcraft and Warcraft 2, but we really got into playing Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, a 4X space game. He would play as the goody goody Federation, and I would play as the Romulans. One day, after playing on our own for a while, we decided to set up a co-op game against the computer. We made the largest and most complex galaxy that we could and decided to meet up and form an alliance once we confirmed where we were on the map. So I would tell him that I was in the south corner and he would tell me he was in the top middle and we would send our little scout ships out so that we could meet up and immediately team up with each other.

We successfully meet up and are making awesome progress. We both have huge armadas of ships from the tiniest scouts to the biggest warships. Our production is humming along, literally everything is perfect. All of a sudden, after a number of turns, a Borg cube starts to bisect the map. We decide to take all of our ships to a specific hex to confront the cube and beat it. We figure if we throw everything we have at it, we will take it out for sure. I was a tiny bit apprehensive, but we each had so many ships, we figured it was a foregone conclusion.

So we take our ships to the designated spot and wait. Within a few turns, it hits our spot on the map. The game switched to space combat mode (3d graphics, not great but cool for the time) and I see the Borg cube decimate the entire Federation fleet. Just green murder beams hitting all of the Fed ships. My husband freaks out because my ships weren't targeted. WHY!? I didn't know either, but when I discovered what had happened, I couldn't stop laughing.

So, what happened?

As a Romulan player, I had all of my ships cloaked. I would cloak them as soon as I made them and send them out of space dock. I had forgotten to uncloak when I had gotten to the meeting point, so instead of fighting with the Federation ships, I watched as they got shot the F up and all of my ships were unscathed. I felt kind of bad, but that didn't stop me from laughing about it for way too long.

We stopped playing after that. Nobody won. Well, maybe the Borg won, but our alliance suffered a great setback that day.

This post makes me smile. My husband got me into Giant Bomb content ages ago by having me try the Bombcast (at the time I listened to a lot of 1up stuff, GFW Radio being my favorite) and then doing Quests with him as a kind of two person contest to see who could find stuff the fastest.

My favorites (no series, just single videos) -

And for video series, I am a huge fan of the Flight Club videos. They were always super funny. Load Our Last Save are usually pretty special too.

Urban Legend (1998) - 3.5/5

I really liked this. There were a lot of horror movies that followed Scream that maybe weren't of the same quality, but certainly still entirely enjoyable and fun. The best parts of this movie were the elaborate kills that were based on actual Urban Legends. One even made me audibly giddy. Lots of fun. Maybe isn't as hard of an R rating as it could have been, but still had some fun slashings in it.

Valentine (2001) - 2/5

From the same director as Urban Legend, but certainly not as good. It's a movie that just seems to plod along until you look at your watch and realize that there's only 10 minutes left. More like a laundry list of people being killed by a masked murderer than an actual story. Still, there were some neat bits and Denise Richards was super fun in this. She seemed to be the only actress that understood how cheesy and silly the material was and played up her character well.

Pandemic (2016) - 2.5/5

Neat premise, but this movie cheats!!!! Unlike Hardcore Henry, another movie billed as a first person experience, this movie calls itself a first person film but the cameras switch to different people (already kind of annoying) but also security cameras with other points of view. So, not a fully first person movie, which kind of annoyed me since that was a big part of why I decided to watch in the first place. Otherwise, it's a pretty straight forward zombie flick. Without the gimmick, it kind of can't stand on it's own. The most annoying part is that the first person action scenes are really dark and confusing. Comparing it to something like Hardcore Henry, which has well lit and totally coherent action, it just falls really flat. It's a neat idea but the execution faltered. I liked the ending though, and the acting was pretty good.

Paradox (2016) - 1/5

Bad. Bad acting, bad special effects, bad to the point of incoherent plot. Just an all around stinker. I would recommend almost any other time travel/indie science fiction movie. For instance, instead of this you could watch -

• Timecrimes (2007)
• Time Lapse (2014)
• Triangle (2009)
• Synchronicity (2015)
• Predestination (2014)
• Project Almanac (2015)
• ARQ (2016)
• Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009)
• Coherence (2013)
• Primer (2004) - and hey, if you like that give Upstream Color (2013) a try

So yeah, I am literally saying watch anything other than Paradox. Unless you're like me and willing to watch anything to do with time travel or science fiction in general.

More funny than horrible - My husband interrupting me while I was playing City of Heroes during a Halloween event by yelling from the basement to let me know that he needed help because it was flooding. I ran downstairs and water was shooting out of a hole by the one small window and he was pressing his hands against it to try and stop it. We ended up jury rigging a board against it to direct the water down the wall and towards the sump pump. Disaster averted!

More horrible than funny - I got the second highest score in a game of 1 vs 100. This was during one of the big advertised games, so when I got the second highest score, my avatar popper up all big for everyone to see. I immediately was inundated with almost 100 PMs, everything from the innocuous team invites to really vile shit. Because my avatar looks like me (so a woman) I suddenly got all kinds of questions about my sexuality and whether I was a lesbian or not, questions from people asking if I wanted to make smart babies with them, and then just people straight out calling me a skank, etc. This was for no other reason than my name popped up for everyone to see. I even got some audio messages, which I don't think I even attempted to listen to. I just ended up deleting everything and turning off the game. A few random people messaging me would have been annoying but tolerable. This was a five minute long deluge of PM pop-ups.

Also, I made the mistake of telling people that I really was a woman in City of Heroes (I had a female avatar of course) and that led to people following me through zones even when I obviously was doing my own thing. Usually I would just give up (some people were freakishly persistent) and log out as a last resort.