Category Archives: Opinion
Man of Steel: Superman is Finally the Man of Tomorrow
After three great but decidedly non-comic-oriented Batman films and one stillborn attempt at tackling Green Lantern, one can almost smell the despair wafting off of DC and Warner Bros. Picture the publisher that invented the superhero comic and is couched in one of Hollywood’s most venerable studios, looking on sullenly as Marvel Studios cranks out hit after hit and then successfully combines them into the theatrical equivalent of Scrooge McDuck’s moneybin, while their own half-baked plans for a Justice League movie are foiled time and again like the predictable machinations of a Z-grade supervillain. The good news is that for DC and Warner, Batman’s no longer the only game in town. Superman’s back, and Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is a huge leap in the right direction, which if played correctly could be the definitive first step towards a shared cinematic universe to compete with Marvel’s unstoppable Avengers engine. That is, if the Internet can manage to not foul things up for everyone.
Thrift Store Adventures Volume 5: VHS Edition
The last few themed installments of Thrift Store Adventures turned out better than expected, so I’d like to ride the coattails of Ryan’s review of V/H/S with a discussion of VHS tapes, most commonly found in thrift stores, along with used bookstores and garage sales. To be realistic, VHS tapes are outdated, bulky, you can degrade the tape by rewinding it improperly, you can degrade the tape by watching it too many times, magnets don’t really work well around them and they’re afraid of water. Why watch something on VHS when you can watch it on Bluray? Well, “it’s not available on Bluray or even DVD” is the best answer to that. I collect VHS tapes because they’re cheap, and because I have a fondness for 90s anime. Most have made it to DVD, although when a production studio closes the distribution rights it owned may not be immediately available. Some are formally out of print, or in that græy area until another studio comes along to re-re-release the anime on Bluray. It’s an innocent “thrill of the hunt” kind of collection, where I’ll occasionally look through a thrift store’s VHS selection and see if there’s anything I recognize or anything that looks cool, and might only pay more for something I clearly owned or wanted to own. Here are seven examples of the kinds of tapes I’d buy: Read the rest of this entry
2012 Music as Zombiepaper Heard It
Hello, readers. In celebration of a sleepless night, day one of possibly being snowed in, without any foreseeable work options in the foreseeable future, on the first day of 2013, let’s take a look at that goddamn awful year 2012, and pick out some music that was better than Skillrex or that teenybopper shit. In 2008, I was the world’s foremost expert on new albums – or at the least, I was crazy enough to hear over 700 of them – but this time, time and interest was not on my side, so I went the more subdued route. No hipster indie crap, no poking through hype-maker blogs, just my favorite bands and some extras. Here’s a hint of what the tracklist will look like:
I turned this whole thing into a greatest hits of 2012 compilation album, so why not make an album cover?
My 10 Favorite Films of 2012
For the past couple months I’ve been weighing the last year’s worth of films against one another in an effort to come up with some sort of obligatory year-end “Top Five” list, and I’ve arrived at one conclusion. Considering the intense war that Hollywood seems to be waging on its own product and the identical feculent pods that issue forth every weekend from the bloated reproductive sac at the very core of that foul hive, 2012 was an unusually entertainment-rich year. I lurched my shambling form into the theaters more often than usual to be sure, and I can’t lie: I saw a whole lot of really great movies. There’s a lot that I thought might be horrible but wasn’t, and a handful of really big things that didn’t get covered on A Nerd Occurrence due to some poor coordination on our part. So in an effort to talk about everything I want to talk about, I’ve expanded the list to a more inclusive count of ten, and even then I had to make some cuts. So without further ado, in a suspenseful and roughly ascending format, here are my favorite films and strongest recommendations of 2012.
Thrift Store Adventures Volume 4: Bellevue is Crazy
The first two Thrift Store Adventures took place over several visits to various thrift stores, because frankly, there just wasn’t enough oddity to fit into one occurrence. Recently, I started taking a writing class in Bellevue. There are many Bellevues across the United States and the world, perhaps most commonly, the Bellevue Hospital Center. The Bellevue in my mind is where I received my higher education and met many of my friends, but is also a rich, snotty part of the greater Seattle area. I stopped in at the Bellevue Goodwill twice, and each time found enough content for an article, so here are fourteen – rather than seven – crazy things I came across in those two thrift store adventures:
Thrift Store Adventures Volume 3: Seven Favorite Finds
For the this installment of Thrift Store Adventures, I thought it might be nice to show why I enjoy going to thrift stores. It’s not always for the lulz. Sometimes you see some really cool stuff. Here are seven of my favorite things I came across in my thrift store adventures:
ANO’s Top 11 Zombie Movies
(Please excuse my tardiness.) On behalf of the ghouls and ghosts at A Nerd Occurrence, here are eleven zombie movies we believe are worth your consideration. The choices were culled from many other top zombie movie lists, with some other choices thrown in to keep things interesting. We have a few passionate zombie movie fans and some more casual horror fans, so it should be a good mix for everyone. Let’s start with a good summary of the genre from one of our experts, sift through some honorable mentions, and then get to the meat of the matter.
Disney Buys Lucas Films: Why This is Good News
It is an energy field found in all things. It unites us, it binds us, it brings the galaxy together. Those words sparked more hope, inspiration, and deep feelings of what it means to be a good person than the entire sum of the rest of my whole life has to this very moment. I was hooked young, some of my earliest memories are of watching the Star Wars trilogy. Read the rest of this entry
Best Buy to Relocate Entire Movie Stock to Unorganized Bins by 2014
Let me start by saying that I am a Best Buy Reward Zone Premier Silver member. I guess that means that I’m a boss like Rick Ross in the Best Buy world or something like that. I’ve achieved this status by pretty much only buying movies and TV shows. Rewind to two weeks ago. I walked into my local Best Buy to browse the movie sales like I always do and what I saw caused me to become overwhelmed – so much so that I walked out of the store to go to another Best Buy. When I went to the other Best Buy, I was equally overwhelmed. What could be so overwhelming, you ask? Best Buy has combined their DVDs and blu-rays into one section! You may not think this is a problem but until you’ve seen it but trust me when I say that it is not a pretty sight. Read the rest of this entry
Thrift Store Adventures Volume 2: Now in 3D
Last week, Thrift Store Adventures taught you seven things about thrift stores. This week, we’ll cover seven more weird things you could come across in your own thrift store adventures:
