Category: Reviews

I like how everytime I go to the used CD store nowadays (or garage sales) there’s a slew of albums from grunge/alt era that I wanted to own, so I’m just discovering them now.

Let’s take 1997’s debut album of Days of the New. What can I say about them?

Acoustic folk/grunge/country?/rock album. You can’t go wrong! His voice is something else also which just pulls you into the music.

But my only gripe with this album is that there are quite a few songs that sound the same! In fact at one point, the track had changed and I thought I was just entering a different verse of the song.

Perhaps the repetitive sounding guitar lessens his their subsequent releases and I would hope so.

Alright sci-fi geeks, listen up.

Joss Whedon (of Buffy fame) made this kickass sci-fi TV show called Firefly back in 2003.

I finished watching the 15 episode series (before it was cancelled) and my thoughts on it are this:

Awesome.

The show revolves around smugglers out in space, but since it’s only 500 years in the future, the customs of Earth are still there such as guns and dialect, but then you couple it with the new customs of the world (such as America and China being the supreme super power which rules the galaxy, hence the reason why everyone seems to know how to speak Chinese and English).

There’s a crew of 9 people and the main storyline revolves around two stowaways, River and Simon, River being a special girl who was in Alliance (the big superpower, think THE GALACTIC EMPIRE) custody and Simon broke her out of there because they were doing some crazy mind experiments on her.

So, like any good TV show, not every episode revolves around the MAIN storyline…you have your humour filled episodes in which the crew of the Firefly class ship Serenity has to deliver cattle to other planets, or when they show up to one town and the slave workers workship one of the crew who had an encounter with them in the past…

All in all, I highly recommend this series. Vero even gave the thumbs up after watching one episode and she doesn’t even like sci-fi. She thought the story was good and even if the setting was in space, it really had nothing to do with space.

Alas, the series was cancelled, but there was such a major fan following that a movie studio allowed them to come back and make a major motion picture out of it to tie up some loose plot points (and to give what the fans wanted).

Hence, the movie Serenity came out.

I watched this on Saturday and I was blown away. It follows the crew of Serenity being chased by the Alliance who are trying to take River back because of some secrets she knows.

All in all, I would have definitely loved this movie even if I hadn’t seen the series. It was a great movie, great acting, great effects, great STORY!!! I will probably pick this movie up myself seeing at how good it was. It was strange to see the settings a little difference (such as the entire ship of Serenity all dark and mysterious) as opposed to the TV show where it was bright. Also, some characters have moved onto other planets but you still get to see them during the movie.

All in all, two thumbs up for both the series and the movie.

How the heck can I review this movie without spoiling some of it? Being an X-Men fan of old (someday I’ll get back into comics…like when I retire!), this franchise is near and dear to my heart.

Unfortunately, to go along with my spoiler free policy on Palmer’s World, I suppose I can’t get into too much detail here, so I’ll throw a pro/con list out here.

Pros

• Beast was AWESOME!!! So cool. Way cooler than Nightcrawler. Well, I suppose this is true if you actually like the Beast better than Nightcrawler.
• Decent ending (? if it is?) to the whole mutant vs. human storyline. The 3 movies revolve around it – I can see the next movie just focussing more on one villain (ala James Bond).
• Storm – Hey! She got to speak in this movie!
• Excellent clip after the credits which follows the comics (from what I can remember of them) and opens up the new storyline I think.
• Good action?

Cons

• Well, if you’re fan of the comic books, then this movie may irk you a little because it goes against comic lore in a few ways. But if you don’t read the books, then you will probably find it enjoyable (as many friends have).
• Angel – Come on. Did he even speak in the movie? Way too little screen time. Should have been cut out of the movie.
• More characters like Angel – A slew of characters introduced for little or no reason.
• Juggernaut – Ugh. I don’t know…I don’t know. In some ways it was cool to see him, in others, he was kinda silly.
• Deaths – Am I spoiling the movie if I say someone dies? So be it. Someone dies. Kind of unnecessary.

Yeah, so…all in all, definitely not as good as the other two X-Men…but not the worst movie ever. Benoit thought it was so horrible that he put it in league with The Incredible Hulk. Good lord, that movie was awful…but X-Men 3 was nowhere near as bad. I equate X-Men with the equivalent of a bad comic book in the series – you still love the X-Men and what they do, but the comic just wasn’t the greatest (but you still like it anyhow). It’s like with anything you like – take a TV show for example. There’s good ones and bad ones.

Oh! Let’s take James Bond and the whole Roger Moore era for example. Boom. Point proven. A low point in the James Bond history. Not as low as Timothy Dalton though. I liked him better as an actor compared to Roger Moore, but I didn’t care for the rogue agent story they were going for in…License to Kill? Or was it The Living Daylights?

If you don’t read the comics, you’ll like the movie. If you read the comics, you will be disappointed, but hopefully not TOO disappointed. I would say that if the movie had another 30 minutes added to it, it would have been great. I found they cut down a lot of stuff that would have been better if they added 5 minutes to each major sequence (like a fight vs. Pyro and Iceman…give it 5 more minutes and it would have been mint.)

I invite whoever wants to chat it up with me about specific points in the movie to do so (I know Benoit has been waiting 2 weeks to talk about how it was the worst movie ever. I’m not sure how I want to oppose his points. It wasn’t the Hulk, but it sure wasn’t Spider-Man)

We all know my faithful readers love Star Wars that they love it when I talk about it and they tell all their friends also. Crack a beer, here’s another review.

For the past six weeks, I’ve been reading The New Jedi Order series which is a 25 book opus in the Star Wars universe. It involves some new bad guys coming and kicking ass from another universe and everyone is having a hard time with them.

The books are an average of 300 pages long so I find them short reads now (compared to years ago where this would have taken me a month!) so I think I may end up finishing the series in the Fall. I’m currently six books in. Maybe the 8th. I’ve lost count.

I gave up on the Star Wars series when this came out because:

• 25 books is a lot
• I figured I should start reading other books out there. When I was a teenager, it was rare that I read anything else.

Anyhow, I am enjoying this series as they nod towards other events in the timeline of the movies and books. All characters of old come out and there is reference to events that have happened in the past – for example I just read a part where Han Solo and his kid are in the Mos Eisley cantina and they make a joke about how it never goes smoothly in that joint.

A lot of faithful Star Wars readers didn’t care for the NJO for the sole reason that it changed the way the universe is played out and it really takes away the emphasis on the old characters. Let’s be honest though…if you have a set of books and they are spread out over 25 years past the time of the last movie, your main characters ARE old so you need to focus on the new blood. I don’t mind that really. Luke Skywalker is much better as a wise old master than he was when he was a young buck not knowing what the heck he is doing.

One thumb up so far on the series and I am sure the other one will rise as soon the Jedi start kicking some ass.

iplaying: The Golden Path – Chemical Brothers – Singles 93-03

Vero ended up buying Beauty and the Beast at the garage sale so we ended up watching it last night.

I haven’t watched a Disney movie in ages so was pleasantly surprised at how good it was, although I had forgotten the crucial part of any Disney movie – the singing.

It was funny to see Vero watch it because she had only seen it in French so the words to the songs had changed.

All in all, one thumb up, only because we all know Aladdin is THE Disney movie of all time.

“Are they built for speed or built for comfort?”

Classic.

Watch this movie. It is amazing.

Ah, victim of the hype.

My friends went to see this last year in the fall and said it was a very scary movie.

I love scary movies. Finally, I picked this up for $8 in the bargain bin at Blockbuster.

Trish, Eric, Vero and Mike assembled to have their socks blown off by this fright show.

Was it super scary? NAH! It had its moments but I was thinking a full out creepfest.

Was it a good movie? Sure it was! I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t say it’s a must-own but it was interesting to think that its based on a true story of exorcism. You don’t really see that around these parts that often.

I especially liked how the exorcism moved from the bedroom (ala The Exorcist) to the barn. I thought it was a wink and nod that they started out the bedroom scene for Exorcist fans.

I’ll give this 1 1/2 thumbs up for the sole fact that my friends hyped it too much. Much like how I hyped up MI:3 and Mike and Melissa didn’t think it was the greatest.

Oh, I almost forgot…I woke up this morning to Running with the Devil by Van Halen. Nice touch after watching this movie.

Yesterday, we went to see M:I 3, although we didn’t manage to hook up with Alex since he was working on something. Sorry buddy!

MI 3 follows our favourite Ethan Hunt, spy extraordinaire on the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) where he has retired from the mission life and is now an in-house trainer. Until something goes wrong and he’s brought back into duty.

Hey, let’s be honest. I can’t say we’ve never watched a spy film with this premise before. 😉

Anyhow, I was anticipating an excellent movie from the fact that JJ Abrams was helming it and…

I was not disappointed!

We all enjoyed the flick. Excellent action, excellent STORY, and the villain was one of those villains who you don’t want your kids to be around. They’re scary.

And for all the wackiness which is Tom Cruise, I will be the first to admit that he puts on a good film. I’ve never been disappointed and I wasn’t with this film either.

Go check it out for a solid showing of impossible missions, which, in the end, aren’t that impossible. Now why don’t they actually just show a bunch of missions whom no one can actually complete, hence, an impossible mission scenario?

In a world where we are what we buy (oh there comes my Theories of Communications class), here’s a little taste of things that have piqued my interest in the last while.

Pearl Jam – Pearl Jam: The new self-titled album is good. Pick it up.

Tool – 10,000 Days – Wow. The first Tool album where I can say that it’s not as good as the last one. Still a worthy buy, but meh. It feels like a watered down Lateralus (that’s their last album for people who are saying “Whaaa?”)
Grey’s Anatomy (TV Show): Mike got me into this show. I’m diggging it. I lost interest in ER a few years back so this is my replacement. Also, House is good also.

Alias: Oh man, Alias is getting good towards the series end. Watch it now!

BBQ Sausages: We’re not talking about Johnsonville here people…go to the butcher counter to buy your sausages from now on. It only cost me an extra $1.58. That’s what I will now refer to as “The Price of Happiness”.

On turning 30 years old: Alright, I cannot really review this topic, but a few of my friends are turning 30 this week and they are distressed. Being of 27 in age, I feel this is silly. But maybe in 3 years I’ll be eating my words when I start to lose my mental stability.

What can I say about turning 30? Well…I know that society seems to have put this magic number of 30 as the number in which ‘if you haven’t got it all together, you’re screwed’. Let’s go take a trip down the hall of greeting cards for a moment. Oh, there it is! If a greeting card has your age on it, you know it must be important somehow. I predict in 15 years, the greeting card industry will have covered off every number from 1 – 100.

What else can I say about turning 30? Well, I know that nowadays, my generation seems to put more emphasis on putting off responsibility in the form of settling down. More and more people stay in school longer and longer. Or they choose to travel a little more while they are young (aka before the age of 99 years of age where it’s nearly impossible to board the plane with your walker.)

I applaud this new extended way of living life. Yay! These are great times people!

So, I will agree that a generation ago, by 30 years old, you should have a mate by 20 years old, 7 kids by the age of 25 and were on the way to your retirement.

But we’re living in the new world here people. 30 is like being the old 23. Chances are, you’re going to live until you’re 80. That means that you still have more than enough time to do whatever it is you want to do.

And if you can’t even figure out what it is that you want to do, don’t worry about that either. No one ever said we all have to have it figured out. Heck, I don’t even know. Just because I own a house doesn’t mean anything. It means I have a place to sleep at night. That’s it, that’s all.

What’s my main message today? Whatever your age, go out and have a beer on a patio today. That’s what I’ve been trying to say all along.

Diving into ANOTHER George R.R. Martin novel was too much for my senses so I placed a bookmark in it and will leave it for an extended period of time. Although it bugs me that I haven’t finished it.

So what should I move onto after I get tired of a book? The ever faithful Star Wars series! However, I first read The End of Eternity which was a super good book. Thanks to Eric for recommending it.

Anyhow…let’s recap the whole Star Wars novel phenomenon – particularly The New Jedi Order series.

Star Wars novels (or the ones that came out in the past decade) are based after Return of the Jedi. So it’s just a continuation of the people you all love in various situations vs. the Empire (or what’s left of it) or random warlords that come around to wreak havoc.

So, someone had the brilliant idea to make this massive 25 book storyline that involved a new alien species that comes into attack our friends in the galaxy. A bunch of authors got in on this and contributed to the 25 book monstrosity.

Around the time this started (circa 2000), I finally gave up on the Star Wars novels because that was all I was reading. I moved onto other readings. Off and on, I’ve come back to Star Wars but have been hesistant to tackle The New Jedi Order. I had read Books 1 and 2 in the series and found them very boring.

So, what did I do? Well, I re-read book 1 which was still kind of boring but then skipped to Book 4.

Hero’s Trial is a great novel focussing in on our favourite nerf-herder Han Solo. It follows Han on a solo mission as well as a quest to find his soul after events that happened in Book 1 of the series (which are insanely rocking events). I’m sure if you really wanted to find out what happens, you can just google VECTOR PRIME. That’s the book’s name.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the book immensely and it did a really interesting job of bringing in characters that you don’t usually see – like Bossk the bounty hunter. I am hoping the rest of the series is more like this and I now have renewed strength in reading the entire series.

So, if you like a good Star Wars novel, take a look at Hero’s Trial for a good Han Solo story. The book stands alone well as you don’t really need to know what happened before other than the fact that there is a new enemy on the frontlines.