More Music

I'm sorry for the lack of musical reviews but hey will be coming.

Comedy

Comedy. As you might have noticed I don't have a picture up there because it is hard to find one thing that defines comedy as a whole. In this post I'll be talking about some of my favorite comedians. For one, some comedians who rely on one thing too much isn't a good sign. For example,  a comedian who relies completely on vulgar statements isn't very good. I prefer comedy that has thought put into it and is clever. A few examples of this are Demetri Martin, Monty Python and the english double act Mitchell and Webb.  Comedy that pokes fun of just plain stupid things is also good, but controversial. Nowadays comedy writers that write TV shows aren't willing to make jokes on subjects they think they'll get a lot of hate for. Movie writers do the same. When you can escape the confines of what other people think you can make something that other people will like. It seems odd but true.

Arrested Development: A Review

Hello there, and welcome to my review of Arrested Development. It might seem weird that I'm reviewing a TV show, but after watching all the episodes I think it really deserves a review. Let me start this off by saying, this is the greatest show on TV in a long time. This show never got bad or "jumped the shark" as some would say. Every episode was as good as the last. Consistency is a big thing when it comes to television. With a movie it's a 2 hour thing that can't really get bad in the middle...maybe it can, but not usually. With a TV show with 4 or 5 seasons it can get bad really easily. Arrested Development is similar to the more current show The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret in the way that it is funny to watch all the characters make crappy decisions that often lead them into bad situations. Arrested Development also has a quite wide range of characters– Michael who is the competent one, G.O.B who is a magician, Tobias who is a "Analrapist" (Analyst and Therapist who wants to be an actor but can't be fully naked (never-nude), Lindsay who is hopping on any trend that will make her seem cool, Lucille who is a rich, somewhat evil person, George-Michael who is Michael's son and runs the family banana stand, Maeby who is a 14 year old film exec and George who is a rich housing tycoon imprisoned for embezzlement. Overall this show is one of the best TV shows ever. To bad it got switched to Cable mid-run...

State of the Day is Back!!!

Hello there. Remember a while back I did State of the Day. And then I stopped doing it... But, now it's is gonna be back hopefully at least thrice a week (that's three times.)

The Hunger Games: A Review

Hello there, welcome to my review of The Hunger Games. This review might seem a little late. I saw the hunger games a few weeks back and I had mixed thoughts towards it. Anyone that has read the book will already know the plot, but for anyone who hasn't read the book or seen the movie (I suggest doing both) here is the plot. A girl from poverty stricken District 12 get's chosen to be in the hunger games. Katniss, her sister volunteers in her place. The Hunger Games is a fight to the death, pitting a boy and a girl from all 12 districts against each other. The winner would bring home riches and prizes to their district.
My two biggest criticisms are one, they writers of the movie added a lot more corny love stuff and two, most of the violence is implied and not shown. The second criticism I can understand. When someone's making a movie based on a brutal, violent book it's going to be rated R. The fact is though that most people reading the Hunger Games books don't go to rated R movies. So, the writers cut out large chunks of violence and replaced it with sappy love bull-crap.
Besides those two things the movie was a pretty good representation of the book. The book is still better, though.
When the first hunger games book came out I was in 3rd grade and most kids weren't into it much. It wasn't until my year of 5th grade that I saw a lot more interest in the series. Most of my friends totally lost interest in the books in 6th grade (that I know of) and when the movie came out more kids started reading the book. So...the movie was a good, three star, representation of the book.

The Avengers: A Review

Hello, yesterday I saw The Avengers, the newest of the Marvel action movies. I'd seen previous Marvel movies such as Iron Man, Spiderman, Hulk, etc. and this one was the most thought out of them all. If you have seen the Spiderman movie you know they alter some of the back story to make it more movie-worthy. It is no different in The Avengers either, but sometimes bending the story is required when tackling such a big one, like The Avengers. Robert Downey, Jr. did a superb job playing the role of snooty, kind of dickish, smart Alec Iron Man. They certainly did add an element of humor to his character. In the Iron Man movie he was a little more serious. Also, they didn't address his alcoholism, which I think would of made for a good joke opportunity.
The main premise of the movie is Loki leaves Asgaurd and is goes to earth through a device called the Tesseract. Loki is teleported through the Tesseract into SHIELD's laboratory. He tries to kill Nick Fury and Black Widow–with no luck. He continues his rampage and Nick Fury is forced to assemble a team of Heroes. He calls them The Avengers.

The Villain in an intense action movie like this one is extremely important. If the villain sucks than no one will root for the Heroes. Also, crappy villains often result in crappy movies, take any Disney cartoon for example. The Heroes are also an important ingredient. Every avenger was pretty badass except for...Hawkeye. Hawkeye in my opinion kind of brought the whole crew down. His power is he is really good at shooting a bow. That seems underwhelming compared to the Hulk or Captain America or Thor. I also don't like heroes that rely on machines to be awesome so that rules out Iron Man and Black Widow. 

Overall this movie was awesome for a Marvel movie and Great for a movie in general. Probably the best Marvel movie I've seen. Right next to Iron Man...

Hallo there, welcome to an overview of the SFIFF Youth Media Mash-Up. There were about 10-12 short films featured on the program that I saw. There were mostly extremities. What I mean by that is there were really good films and utterly horrible films. I am only talking about a few of these.

First off, the first film of the program was a documentary about a circus school, specifically the sport of trapeze. It focuses mainly on one girl who goes to this circus school. This movie was a pretty good length and very precise and to the point.

The next film I'm talking about is one that I don't even classify as a film but as an ad for a vacation to Tahoe. This is the most simple film ever. It is a few seconds of stock footage of mountains, then some kid walks in frame for a few seconds. All this connected by cheap stock film burns. This film was about 20 seconds long and had no purpose whatsoever.

The last film I'm talking about was my favorite. It was an in-depth documentary about Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party. It features some key landmarks in the development of the party and struggle to preserve it. For example, the bullet-ridden residence of Huey P. Newton and the house where Little Bobby Hutton died. It was a brief history on something I didn't know was "just around the corner"

Katamari Damacy: A Review

Hallo and welcome to this review... First of all I don't know where to start! Stare at that picture. The three main components are a cow, a rainbow, and a huge ball of stuff. This game is an almost insane compilation of every weird thing you could ever think of. Its soundtrack is awesome: I'll post it below in the gallery, its graphics aren't perfect but they are weird and its story is the most bizarre part. A very large king who enjoys rambling about chewing gum and Thailand accidentally destroys the stars. I have no idea how he manages to do this; it is fiction though... He gets the prince and the prince's cousins which you can unlock, to roll big balls around picking up anything from thumbtacks to cell phones to people to the eiffel tower!!! The game is fairly short with a play-through time of 8-10 hours. The game is comprised of 10 different levels and a few bonus ones. Also many humorous un-lockable movies that all star a kid with his mom witnessing the stars being shot in the sky.

As far as fun goes this game is like a goldmine. This game is so fun you might want to play through it 2 or 3 times. This incredibly simple idea goes a long way. The first few levels might seem tedious but when you reach level 6-7 your patience pays off. You can roll up octopuses, skyscrapers, small islands, clouds and rainbows.

The camera in this game is somewhat annoying when your ball gets large but other than that I find no issue in the game's in game awesomeness.

This game was made nine years ago so the graphics are a bit outdated. Circles look a lot like pentagons. That is somewhat of a problem though because there are circles everywhere: trees, your ball, the princes body, etc, and textures are a little dull. Besides that though this game's colors and people who all look like lumps that shake are awesome.

These songs as I explained are awesome. I will leave one down below so you can listen for yourself.

Overall this game is wonderful and odd, but in a good way.

FINAL RESULTS

Fun--90/100

Graphics--70/100

Ease of Play--90/100

Sound--1000/100*

OVERALL

85/100--Awesomely Weird!!

*Not a typo, see for yourself...

Gallery

 Random Bear

The Prince changes sizes!!

Billions of dollars in damage

Atari Anthology: A review

Hallo, welcome to the new and improved Crud Wizard. It's been a few months since I posted anything with school and such so to make up for it I am going to review a retro video game in vivid detail.
Well, let's start things off by saying this game is hugely addicting. The simple ideas that now might seem completely clichéd aren't here because they were the original. A lot of modern video games try much too hard with spectacular graphics, complicated missions and great voice acting. Most of the time these games are good but some just stretch it and loose the idea of fun, while they're caught up in making a flawless product. Other video games just aren't that good. Atari Anthology brings back the simple ideas of Centipede or Pong. These games do lose some of the experience though when they are converted to the Playstation or Xbox controllers, instead of the classic Atari 2600 joystick or Arcade stick. Besides that this game is a fun, maybe even more than some modern games. Some people might say that games from the seventies are not fun and that is why we moved on. I don't think so. While these games aren't technically advanced they are quite amusing; isn't that what video games are supposed to be: amusing?
The graphics in this game are literally the same as those arcade games many people know from the 80s or many laundromats that have them. When it comes to graphics, the advanced, highly-rendered, textured, smooth graphics of new games are an obvious choice to their pixelated predecessors. Not much detail is needed to talk about the graphics in this game.
Soundtrack is sort of a useless topic when talking about this game for the only sound is the classic beeps and boops that were the original soundtrack for most games. This is another case where the modern version clearly outranks the earlier predecessor.
This is a classic don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover case. This is truly the last stand of Atari and it's a pretty good one.

THE FINAL RESULTS

Fun--79/100

Graphics--10/100*

Ease of Play--85/100

Sound--10/100*

OVERALL (NOT AN AVERAGE)

80/100-- Great

*Since the game is an anthology of games from the 70s-80s its graphics and sound aren't expected to be nearly as good as its modern successors. 

GALLERY

What a yellow dungeon...

I never knew there were high scores in space???

The championship game of the PBA (Pixel Basketball Association)

Shadow of the Colossus: A Review.

Hello there, today I will be reviewing Shadow of the Colossus. If you don't know what this is, it's a Japanese epic. What I mean by that is that there are points in this game where you want to stand up and say "that's bad-ass." Sadly, before you get there you have to do a lot of tedious horse-riding and jumping over stuff. The colossi really pay off though, when you see them they are awesome. They are humungous rock dirt things that move. The object of the game is to locate and destroy all sixteen colossi. Several people say that this game is easier than it looks. I think the opposite. It is harder than it looks and it looks pretty hard. The picture I included shows the first colossi. I haven't gotten past it yet. There are sixteen in all and the sixteenth one is extremely hard because it shoots lightning beams out of it's eyes. If you're wondering why your character is going around killing these humungous beasts there's a reason.  He's trying to resurrect a woman who got sacrificed because she was thought to have evil spirits inside her body. Your character needs to kill all the colossi to make her live again. Overall I give this game a 7.5 because once all the finding is done it's awesome!

Thoughts on the New-ish Series, MARVEL CIVIL WAR.

               Hello there, today I'm reviewing Marvel Civil War. The Marvel Civil War is a series of graphic novels documenting the lives of some famous and not-so-famous superheroes...and villains. The whole idea of this series is based of the real Civil War, hence the name. The idea I'm talking about is friends turning on other friends, etc. For instance, Captain America and Iron Man have a long fight because they are on different sides of the Civil War. That is not the only example. Throughout the series Deadpool turns on Cable, and Spiderman has a humungous fight with Titanium Man. There is something in the Marvel universe called the Superhero Registration Act which is a law that forces superheroes to give all their secret info to the government.  This starts a large civil war in the superhero community. Some people do want to register and some don't. This series' concept is cool and the writing is superb. Many of the books were written by modern comic revolutionary Brian Michael Bendis who is one of my favorites. Inside each Civil War book you'll find mini-stories that are sometimes tie-ins, meaning they appeared in other comics first. All in all, these books are one of the best modern series marvel has cranked out yet.

Middle School.

Hello there. Sorry I haven't been posting lately I have been caught up in my work at middle school. I've been in middle school for about 7 weeks now but never wanted to mention it. It is tough but worth it in some ways. There are way more projects and stuff like that. For those of you who have already gone to middle school leave a comment about what it was like. For those of you who haven't yet it's way more fun than I make it sound. Like you can actually choose what you want to do as an elective or special class. Above is some artwork I did in the past few months. I am open to constructive criticism. Also the "R" in in Rathmir is purposely backwards.

Namor vs. Aquaman.

VS.

Hello there, today I've decided to replace superhero of the day with superhero battle of the day. I'll take 2 superheroes, or villains, and have them battle. This idea is strongly influenced by the show Deadliest Warrior, which I am a fan of. This has happened before in Marvel vs DC: The Comic. Today I am going to be battling Namor and Aquaman.
                
                      Namor is a half atlantean, half human. He has the mutant power to fly and because of his human side he can breathe air, and because of his atlantean side he can breathe water. He is relatively stronger than humans and can swim way better than any human can. He carries a large sea trident as well.

                       Aquaman is a human. His mother died when he was a baby. His father devloped a home under the sea and taught young Aquaman how to breathe underwater. He later taught himself how to speak to fish and other marine life. After that due to nuclear radiation he developed a disadvantage: he had to be in water at least once an hour.

                      They are both equally skilled at swimming. Aquaman is slightly stronger. Namor can fly and has a trident.
Aquaman has to be in water at least once an hour, Namor doesn't. If the battle between the two were on land, Namor would win. If the battle were in water Aquaman would win.

RESULT:

DEAD EVEN.

If you don't agree, leave a comment down below. If you have suggestions leave a comment down below.

Superhero of the Day: Superman

                    Hello there, today I will be talking about superman, one of the most iconic superheroes ever. He is one of DC's biggest accomplishments, next to Batman. Superman has all the ideal powers, powers that marvel sort of of stole from them. For instance superman has laser vision, so does cyclops. But whatever they're both cool. Also superman has super strength, the ability to fly, x-ray vision, and is impervious to pain. I give superman a 8.2/10, because he has all the essential powers.

Superhero of the day: Iron Man

 

                             Hello there, today the superhero of the day is Iron man. One of the most famous superheroes ever, Iron Man is  really Tony Stark, an alcoholic industrialist who got rich of off his fathers company Stark Industries. Iron man's suit enables him to fly, shoot heat and laser beams, and pack a metallic punch. Iron Man went through a few phases. When he was first shown to the public he looked like the picture to the right. This superhero gets and 8.5/10.

Superhero of the Day: Spiderman.

                 Hello there, sorry I haven't been posting stuff as much lately. I had to go back to school. Replacing State of the Day I have Superhero of the Day.

                Spiderman:
Spiderman's secret identity is Peter Parker. Peter Parker gets bitten by a mutant spider and strange things happen. He is resistant to pain, he has super strength, and he can stick to walls. Thinking this was an chance to make money he performed on television and was a short lived pro boxer. One day after a match a masked robber ran down the hall, with a chance to stop him Peter did nothing. The same robber went on to kill his uncle Ben. Determined for revenge he built himself a pair of web shooters and went out fighting crime and looking for the robber. In 2002 they made a Spiderman movie.
           The movie was very good just not correct on some of the things that happened. This superhero gets an 8.7/10.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Review

Hello, today I'm reviewing Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I am reviewing the 1974 version they remade it like every other classic slasher, and post slasher. The movie is about a group of teens driving through texas when they pick up a strange hitch-hiker and end up at his brothers house. The teens enter the house one by one all of them don't leave except for Sally who gets tortured by head-sick leatherface his brother and a nearby store owner. Thankfully Sally escapes in the back of a pickup truck. All of this happens during the day. This movie is psychologically scary, but physically not.

A View to a Kill: A Review.

Hello, today I’m reviewing A View to a Kill.  This movie was the second best Roger Moore movie, next to Live and Let Die.  It is about a horse-trainer who is injecting steroids into the horses and implanting microchips in them.  He also plans to wipe out silicon valley so he is the leading producer of microchips. Bond foils his plan and fights him atop the famous Golden Gate Bridge, winning. This was the last of Roger Moore’s movies as James Bond. I give this one a 9.1.

Octopussy: A Review

Hello, today I’m reviewing Octopussy. This movie was about as good as For Your Eyes Only. It is about a ceramic egg that gets auctioned to a man who’s associated to jewelry smugglng. James Bond switches the egg and has Q implant the fake with a tracking device and microphone so Bond can spy on the smugglers later known as Octopussy. The head of the corporation Octopussy eventually turns for good after she finds out the man who bought the egg at the auction is helping the Russian army implant a bomb that will blow up tracing back to the U.S.A. Overall I give this one an 8.7.

For Your Eyes Only: A Review

Hello, this is a review of For Your Eyes Only. It was definitely better than Moonraker. A Greek with the ATAC, a british device gets blown up by a bomb launched by a Greek heroin smuggler. It is bonds job to find the smuggler and retrieve the ATAC. The smuggler does get killed, by another Greek smuggler of cashews who throws a knife at him. Bond gets a hold of the ATAC but throws it into the water… This movie reminded me a little of From Russia With Love with the whole” Bond has to get  a hold of a certain item." Overall I give this one 8.6.