Ready Player One Review

 by DigitaLoz

In his debut novel, Ernest Cline does not simply present a fun novel but a love letter toward geekdom. Cline, as screenwriter at its best, is known for films of the geeky variations like Fanboys. Ready Player One tells the story of a dystopian future in which oil is increasingly hard to come by, the gap between the social classes has been driven to a breaking point, and the only thing keeping people at ease is the Oasis. The Oasis is a blend between an mmorpg and a virtual reality; in some places it’s gone to fat as to replace the educational system. James Halliday, a genius game developer, is the mastermind behind Oasis. Upon his death, James leaves his multibillion dollar legacy to whomever finds an Easter egg inside Oasis; five years have passed and nobody has come close. Grunters, egg hunters, are born from this dystopian future, forever searching for Easter eggs and clues.

Apart from having a lot of fun reading Ready Player One, half the time I was scavenging through references of Joust (a decade old video game), Rush, and Earthbound; obscure allusions of Will Wheaton, Ultraman and Supaidaman were also worth googling. While the story is not too complex and there are no real surprises, it manages to get the reader rooting for these characters as they battle the big corporation and be the first to find the Easter egg. It is the classic battle between man and corporations. Ready Player One is an 80’s geek fest of epic proportions.

My only gripe with the book is that it is categorized as a YA novel, and I understand that it reads like one, yet it references are so obscure I doubt a sixteen year old might get them—supaidaman, Mechagodzilla, and Joust being the least common among casual gamers. I could not help but reminisce on playing Joust back in fourth or fifth grade in the old Macs in my school. I can only hope that those whom read this book and do not know about these mentions will go and find out for themselves.

Beyond the incredible technology driven setting, Ready Player One tugs at the hardcore gamers’ nostalgia. It is about looking back at all the things we loved when we were kids and remembering them like it is the first time. Whether one enjoyed Star Wars or Super Mario Bros., Ready Player One connects with geeks; in doing that, Ready player One immensely succeeds.

Netflix Addiction: West Wing

By Temper

What if you had access to the lives and minds of the President and his cabinet members? What if you could follow them around on a day-to-day basis and see exactly what it means to run the United States of America? Well that is precisely what Aaron Sorkin brought us on September 22, 1999.

The West Wing is set primarily in the West Wing of the White House, where the Oval Office and offices of presidential senior staff are located, during the fictional Democratic administration of Josiah Bartlet. The show, which won multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards, includes a cast of memorable characters played by amazing actors.  The cast includes the likes of Stockard Channing, Dulé Hill, Jimmy Smits, Alan Alda, Rob Lowe, and Martin Sheen.

All seven seasons are on Netflix, and though I have fallen behind on watching the show in the last few weeks, it is one of my favorite television shows of all time. The West Wing mixes dramatic, triumphant, comedic and thought provoking moments while providing you with enough insight into what it is like to be there, running the country. Most episodes follow President Bartlet and his staff through particular legislative or political issues. The typical episode loosely follows the President and his staff through their day, generally following several plots connected by some idea or theme.

The West Wing captivated my interest for its use of the political landscape to create its characters and grow them into people you know, people you love, people you can’t stand. There really isn’t much else to say about the show without going into spoilers or criticisms about the layout of The White House being a bit off, like Susan Ford (daughter of former President Gerald Ford) commented many years ago.  The West Wing is one of the best television shows in the last few decades and is very much worth viewing. I encourage you to live through the Bartlet presidency.

Comic Review: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja & Star Power

By. Temper 

I read a lot of webcomics. My webcomics bookmarks folder has around 20 pages that I read on a daily basis. Webcomics have been around for a long time, and they tend to be part of the lives of many geeks and nerds. My morning ritual isn’t complete without checking for updates on my reading list. Tonight, I give you two webcomics that are worth checking out.

Thirty five years old, a doctor, and a ninja. These are the descriptors of the main character of Christopher Hastings’ webcomic, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Launched in 2004, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is written and inked by Christopher Hastings, and colored by Anthony “Nedroid” Clark.  The comic is updated three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), and centers on the adventures of Dr. McNinja, his secretary Judy, the signing Gorrilla, and Gordito, the twelve year old mustachioed pistolero, as they tend to patients with normal and not so normal ailments in Cumberland, Maryland. If this sounds ridiculous, that’s because it most certainly is. Dr.McNinja not only cures illness, but also fights enemies like Dracula, gorilla vampires, Dr. McLuchador, and his most difficult enemy, King Radical, all to keep the city of Cumberland and the rest of the world safe. Hastings is a brilliant comedy writer and a great artist, having written stuff for the iconic fourth wall breaker Deadpool, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that a good amount of hilarious word play and panels will show up in his work. I’ve laughed hysterically so many times just from a single panel. The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is on its 21^st story arc, and shows no sign of stopping. Give it a try at http://www.drmcninja.com/

Danica Maris is your run of the mill astronomer on Space Station Sanctuary Six. That is, until she observes a peculiar star through her private telescope one night after work. The star turns out to be the last Star Power, transforming Danica into the universe’s last Star Powered Sentinel. Written by Michael “Mookie” Terracciano, and inked and colored by Garth Graham, Star Power follows Danica as she masters her newfound powers while keeping them and the dangers a secret from the crew of Sanctuary Six. Featuring a cast of colorful human and alien characters, Star Power quickly became one of my favorites this past year, thanks to its portrayal of a normal girl suddenly thrust with the powers and responsibilities attached to them. One of the comic’s best qualities is that Danica actually isn’t the most interesting character, despite being the protagonist. Her supporting cast garners as much attention as she does. While Star Power isn’t as over the top as McNinja, the beautiful art, the great story, and the amazing characters should keep you very interested. Check it out at http://www.starpowercomic.com

10 Movies on Netflix You Probably Haven’t Seen but You Definitely Should (Part II, 5-1)

By.Hemlock

  We haven’t even begun to scrape the surface of the iceberg of weird yet! You may notice that many of the weird films on Netflix aren’t on this list. Off the top of my head I can name stuff like The Beast with a 1,000,000 Eyes, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, The ABC’s of Death, and all the great MST3K stuff (of which there is plenty). This is only a top 10 though and it mostly adheres to the kind of things I watch… Here are 5 more oddball films as stated, even if I can’t guarantee you’ll love them, I can guarantee you won’t see many films like these at your local theater these days.

5) Yoga: The Movie

                You ever wanted to do Yoga? Well you better not watch this movie. This is one of those Korean horror films that even the poster looks unsettling and scary. If you like the scare tactics in movies like The Ring and The Grudge, you’ll probably get a good kick out of this one. Korean horror films don’t normally get the recognition they deserve, they usually get overshadowed by their Japanese counterparts, so it’s good to see one of them get a spot on an American-centered market. Witchcraft, great scares, and some acting that’s better than this kind of horror movie actually deserves, Yoga will have you running away from people doing stretching exercises for a month.

                                                       

4) FDR: American Badass

                The story-I’m-pretty-much-sure-is-based-on-real-events of how president FDR fights nazi werewolves in order to stop the spread of polio using his machine gun wheelchair. Read that last sentence again. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will. I’m not going to tell you that this movie is always funny, or that it’s better than the studio’s predecessor, Poolboy: Drowning out the Fury, but if you liked Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and thought “I can do with more of American presidents killing monsters”, then this is absolutely for you. (Also Abe Lincoln Vampire slayer has an asylum spoof that’s basically the same thing but with zombies and it is way better than the original. It has a line where Honest Abe is about to chop a zombie’s head off and he shouts “EMANCIPATE THIS!”. Great little exploitation film.)

 

3) Chasing the Kidneystone

                If your grandma ever gets a kidney stone remember: Shrink down and team up with her immune system to fight the kidney stone with your bare hands. Doctors don’t know shit. Punch that thing and be hilarious in the process. I’m serious, that’s what this movie is about. Let’s go through this: someone wrote, green-lighted, casted, shot, edited, promoted, and screened this film somewhere and no one ever thought “Huh, does this sound a bit…silly to you?”

 

2) Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

                I’m not going to lie, I love this movie. It is fun, above everything it doesn’t just depend on the weird premise to be funny; Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is actually trying to be a good film. Well, as good as something like this could be. This movie is so bizarre even when I re-watch it; I’m still surprised by how baffled I am during some parts. Is it something on the level of Night of the Lepus? No, not really, it’s not funny because it’s bad or fun because it’s weird. It’s just enjoyable beyond any right it has to be. But it is weird, in a great way.

1) Dogtooth

                I actually have no idea if this film is still on Netflix. I saw it once and I’ve never searched for it again. I can safely say that Dogtooth is one of the most disturbing and oddly original films I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s because no one would ever do what this movie does onscreen. I am a very desensitized person, I play Happy Wheels for fun and the first time I watched Human Centipede I didn’t even blink. This movie got to me and shook my soul. It’s the story of a family in Greece with a very authoritarian father and… Look, this movie isn’t for the squeamish. It’s not disgusting, just wrong on so many levels. I try not to give much away when I talk about films just why you should watch it, but saying anything about this movie besides “you will hate yourself for having sat through all of it but you need to sit through all of it” would be a sin and should be enough to get all those curious enough a go at this… thing. This beautifully-wrong and hateful and terrible and captivating… occurrence in your life.

10 Movies on Netflix You Probably Haven’t Seen but You Definitely Should (Part I, 10-6)

by. Hemlock

  Recommending films is an art form. When someone says, “Tell me a movie I should watch,” they’re actually asking for a movie that has these four characteristics: they haven’t seen it yet, they can find it easily, it’s good, and that suits their personal tastes in film. The first one is actually the trickiest, since everyone has different movie going experiences. So when you suggest a movie, you usually have to mention a very obscure film to make sure they haven’t seen it yet. That idea usually clashes with the second criteria, a movie that’s easy to find. Sure, They Saved Hitler’s Brain is probably a film that not a lot of people have seen, but it’s not exactly widely available either. Most people don’t have a VHS player anymore, nor do they have the patience to look for movies on the Internet. The last two criteria depends on who you’re talking to, since there are different ways to define what makes a movie “good”, and everyone has different tastes when it comes to films. My personal philosophy is to suggest a film worth watching. Be it good or bad, weird or mainstream, suggesting an interesting movie is sometimes worth more than suggesting one that people know they will like.

10) Pontypool

  Pontypool is the story of a radio announcer stuck in his recording booth while a strange virus infects his town. The story is told through narrations of news stories coming into the studio. It’s a lot of people sitting around and listening to other people talk about mobs, mutilations and strange events. So it does sort of sound like a zombie movie. I won’t say what the actual threat in Pontypool is, but it’s definitely one of the most unique looks at the zombie subgenre.

9) Brick

  A noir style movie set in high school, where the femme fatale is a cheerleader, the drug kingpin is a loser kid selling pot from his mom’s basement, and the main character justifies the weird narration as his “deep” existential insights into the world. It’s like going back and reading your old diary from high school, but in movie form. And the movie features a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Add an actually engaging storyline with a pretty good mystery, and you have one of the strangest examples of how film noir can still be done well.

8) Scream Blacula Scream

   The sequel to the classic blackpoitation Blacula movie is an all-black cast doing Dracula on a very small budget chock full of 70’s lingo. I love exploitation movies and this is a great way to get someone into the strange world of low budget Z flicks. If you’ve ever wondered where Black Dynamite came from, it spawned from this type of movie. Check out Dolemite if you want to know more about where Black Dynamite comes from. If anything, Scream Blacula Scream is so mind bogglingly strange to modern audiences that you’ll want to make all friends sit down and marvel at it.

7) John Dies at the End

   John Dies At The End moves out of sequence while playing with expectations. You even get a huge spoiler for the movie in its title…or do you? When you’re a movie buff and you watch a movie that uses the classic frameworks of its genre, you already know who dies, and it gets kind of boring. But this film uses tropes and then subverts them in fun and interesting ways, playing with how we tend to predict a movie’s plot. Plus, the movie has a weird Lovecraftian horror angle with the monsters, toying with the audience’s perception of the monsters. If anything, watch the movie for the giant meat monster.

6) Absentia

   Another good Lovecraftian horror selection, Absentia is the story of a woman whose husband vanishes. Several years later, she’s rebuilt her life, putting all this pain and suffering behind her. Then her drug-addicted sister comes to visit her, and the protagonist stumbles upon a weird tunnel and some strange stories. Great characters with a good thematic edge to it, Absentia is both a powerful film and scary at times, without resorting to jump scares.