And down we go... (my impressions of the Crown of the Sunken king)

Though much easier to find than the original's DLC, From software has brought the pain. It starts off simple enough, tall and hard hitting toxic zombies with some new puzzle switches, it shakes things up considerably fifteen minutes in.

For one, and this is kind of a spoiler, I knew it was only a matter of time before player phantoms (those transparent ghosts running around that are actually other people playing the game) became enemies. I fell for it. Hard.

If you've got $25 to throw down for some more dark souls, go for it. I say this after only sampling the first course of three.

Whiplash Trailer: One half boiler plate relationship story, one half J.K. Simmons being a complete and total BAMF.

You'd be hard pressed to find anyone on the internet that isn't on Simmon's side. He's so lovable, especially when he's being an asshole. Whiplash looks to turn that around, giving him a character that is so caustically abusive in such a short amount of time, that this trailer scared me more than most horror movies.

Oh and Miles Teller.

He's in it too.

...he's ok.

Gardians of the Galaxy: It's apparently really, REALLY good.

While it may be surprising to some people that Chris Pratt can carry a movie, It's no surprise to me and my fellow pawneeans. I love James Gunn and I loved all the trailers, but even still, I've fallen hard for some real pieces of sh*t. Yet I still want to believe.

But the film has been recently screened. And the word is thunderous.

That word is also amazeballs.

Superego is back for Season 4! ...and Paul F. Tompkins is along for the ride.

My favorite gaggle of improvisationalists are back after a what seems like a 2 year absence. It's only been one, but that's how much they've come to mean to me. I've tried to put into words how funny I think they are. How they're just as much fun when they miss their marks as when they hit it out of the improv park. How the word of the day calender makes me spit hot coffee out of my nose after I've heard them both at least 4 times each.

They return September 1, with only an agonizing two month hiatus between each episode... probably. It will feel like two months to me, anyway.

Musings about Planes: Fire and Rescue

You remember cars? The red headed step child of the Pixar family so ridiculously lucrative it's straight to video sequels still get a theatrical release?

You know the one.

Anywho, I was reading the reviews on RT and I stumbled across a pretty damn interesting insight from the National Catholic Register. Yeah.. they review movies. But more to the point, Stephan Greydanus  points out a stunning logical fallacy about the whole thing that just made me smile:

"Think of the climactic forest fire in Bambi, and then take away the deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, birds and people. A forest fire ... in an uninhabited forest"

The movie exists in the Cars universe. The one without people or animals. But planes are stopping forest fires. What are they rescuing? Car campers? 

I had the weirdest argument today...

I've never been a big reader of peanuts, but I read enough to get the major themes. I liked it, but when a peanuts book was sitting right next to Calvin and Hobbes... there was no competition for me. But to the point, I was having a conversation and St. Paul Minnesota came up. "You know who's from St. Paul, right?"she said.

"Prince." I said.

"Charles Shulz!" She retorted. And then we went off on Peanuts for a while, and it got me to thinking. No one has ever tried to copy Shulz's success. You'd think peanuts rip offs would be a dime a dozen, but 50 years later, nobodies even taken a swing.
 
"You know why that is, right?" I said, smugly steering the conversation into waters it didn't need to go into. "Because the strip's all about Shulz's depression, and only someone as talented as him can make a sad and lonely child funny."

She disagreed. She just didn't see it, and I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to explain it to her. Lucy as the therapist, Lucy and the football, pig pen and dysentery.  But I couldn't get through. I guess some people see what they want to see. The fact I needed to make her childhood memory of her favorite comic strip sadder says enough about my issues.

Author: Charles Schulz.

Snowpiercer is Online!

I've been waiting about a year and a half for this! Supposedly it was released a few weeks ago, but it just made it to North Carolina, and now it's all over the internet too. For the price of a matinee, minus gas of course, you can bring Bong Joon-Ho's english opus home to you.

I've got it queued up in the tab next to this one and uh... the "hd" option leaves much to be desired. By which I mean, I don't want to see giant brown pixels in my "HD" black space, Google play! It's like they want us to see this as an inferior option.

...but that's ridiculous.