Burn Notice

Season 1
DVD Release 06/17/08

Like MacGyver was for Jason’s generation, Burn Notice is for mine. This show is great, it was the cleverness of MacGyver but he is actually willing to use a gun and kill people. The main character, Michael Westen, is a highly trained spy who gets “burned” for no apparent reason. He is now stuck in Miami with people trying to kill him, pulling off odd jobs for money, and trying to figure out why he was burned in the first place. It’s clever its funny it’s sexy it’s awesome. I recommend buying it. I just got hooked and have been watching the first season and I can’t wait for the next season

Tom Clancy's HAWX

Tom Clancy’s HAWX
Video Game Releases Fall 2008

The opening quote on this preview is “Yea though I fly through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am 30,000 feet and climbing”. That really doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you look at it as come and get me death I dare ya. This though is definitely a sweet looking game. Tom Clancy’s last masterpiece that I absolutely loved was the Ghost Recon Games. Beyond great. If you look closely at this one, he incorporates the same characters into the game play. The men on the ground are the same characters in the GRAW story and they blend well in this one.
I’m recommending this for Jon, I think you will like it. If you want though, I will buy it and play it and then tell you if you should be all over it. Just watch the preview though. It looks frickin amazing.

Halo Wars

Halo Wars
Video Game Release Date 10/01/08

OHHHHHHH YEAHHHHHHH!!! The first Real Time Strategy Halo Game, this is going to take on the Command and Conquer type game play and finally make it so that instead of controlling just one character (Master Chief) you get to control an entire UNSC Army. The game takes place before the three Halo games and shows the initial battle between the UNSC and Covenant forces. Before we became allies, we blew the hell out of each other. In the Halo games, Master Chief is the last surviving Spartan Soldier. In this game, you have an entire legion of Spartan soldiers. I can only imagine what damage can be done with this kind of ability.
Of course, because Chief is the last surviving Spartan, that leads me to believe that all the Spartans in this game get annihilated. Oh well that should be fun to watch at least. The game is releasing sooner than I thought it would and that excites me. While this won’t be one that I sit in line for, it will definitely be one I will grab the day it comes out. Lookin forward to it.

Hancock

Hancock
Release Date 07/07/08

This movie looks hilarious. Will Smith rarely fails to deliver in his roles. Even if it’s a crappy role, he makes the best of it. As a reluctant superhero he doesn’t really give a crap but he helps anyway. Taylor and I saw this preview when we went to see National Treasure 2 and she hasn’t shut up about it since. So she and I will most likely be at the midnight movie. Hopefully it doesn’t disappoint. The Special effects just from the preview look pretty great and it looks like it is filled with humor and action.

Mario Kart Wii

This game surprised me. I figured that the controls would be a little sluggish and therefore annoying, but it responded pretty well. You put the Wii remote in the steering wheel and drive it like you are in a car. You turn left you turn right and you usually win. It seems that Nintendo delivered what they promised with this one. The graphics are great for a Mario Kart game, not on the scale of an FPS style but its Mario Kart, so who expects it to be like Halo.

The downside to the game for me is playing online. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to play with people from around the world, but the computer is pretty much designed to give the last player, as long as they are human, a blue shell or lighting. This makes it so the race is all about getting blown up if you are in first. It’s pretty constant and it gets old after a while. You now play by being in second and then zooming into first at the end.

Adding the motorcycles to the vehicle list though is awesome. By tilting the wheel back you pop wheelies, and it just makes for a change of pace and is a lot of fun to play. Overall I give it a 4 out of 5 on the awesomeness scale.

Iron Man Review

Orgasmic!!!! This movie did not disappoint. From start to finish you are thrown into and enthralled in subtle humor, action and suspense. The story line was brilliant and only mildly predictable. The bad guys are ruthless and the special effects phenomenal. Robert Downey Junior is able to pull off the super hero persona without having to have a huge vice. Most super heroes are plagued by love, drinking, fear, or guilt, blah blah blah. Bottom line for Stark in this movie is that he has been providing the world with its weapons and they have been getting to the wrong people. Time to fix it.

He has the ability and so he does it. Bam, simple as that. No whining, no complaining and no compromising. Kick ass and take names that’s it. Gwyneth Paltrow is able to pull of the assistant with perfection and makes things funny without sounding corny. Terrence Howard to me was the only real disappointment, he wasn’t a very strong character and when he spoke it seemed like more whining than anything.

Probably my most awesomely favortie part of the movie was when he was bulding the mark 1 suit in the cave. The old cartoon Iron man used the have the opening credits where Stark was standing next to anvil with a hammer, the theme music was going and he was just slamming the hammer down to the beat of the Iron Man song. Frickin awesome!! So when they had a scene in the cave where for like 30 seconds they just show him pounding the shape into the mask, I was stoked.

Special effects were amazing, the first time he gets suited up in the Iron Man suit 2.0, you want to stand up and cheer him on. They didn’t just put him in a suit and leave it with no explanation as to how it works. You go through the building of it and the actual science behind it. Granted that kind of technology doesn’t exist, but who is to say it won’t someday. It seems that a lot of super hero movies are turning more towards explaining how they can be what they are without expecting you to just believe that Oh Iron Man can fly, or Batman is able to glide through the air because we said so. Directors are providing reasons and back grounds that may not be possible but make sense to the story.

Lots of super hero movies never tend to make the bad guy get his butt kicked the whole movie and only win because of a fluke, not saying this doesn’t happen here, but I don’t think there is any point where Iron Man truly gets defeated. He is seriously just a Bad Mamma Jamma in this movie. Its believable, it’s awesome, it’s entertaining, and I’m going to see it again.

4.90 on the awesomeness scale

PS for further movies, they showed previews for The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones, and The Incredible Hulk. Let me just say it’s going to be an awesome summer.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
05/22/08
Ok I am looking forward to this movie and think that it will be good. Nothing too great but good nonetheless. Steven Spielberg, awesome gotta love his movies. George Lucas, not so much. Lucas has the tendency to make things flashy to hide the fact that there is no story. It is supposed to pick up like the last one and have the same type of feel.
Adding Shia Lebouf to the cast is genius. He is incredibly funny and quick on his feet, and has worked with Spielberg before. (Transformers) Harrison Ford of course returns and hopefully like Rambo doesn’t just fall over from a heart attack.
Im not terribly excited about it but it looks decent so I will be there. I will let you know how it turns out.

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight
07/18/08
This movie looks scary and I am lovin it. The previous Batman movie did what none of the other Batman movies had done before it, it made sense. Granted there is a guy dressed like a bat fighting crime, hey that could happen. At least they explain where he got everything and he isn’t just flying around with no explanation.
Anyway, this movie looks to show the same dark and evil side of Gotham without turning it into a comical joke, basically no black lights. Good, finally a series that deals with the basics, good versus evil. Evil can get crazy as this hopefully shows, but good kicks evils butt. They have made some improvements to the looks of the bat suit and it looks like they added a new vehicle. Always have to go bigger and better,
I am really looking forward to this movie and hope it doesn’t disappoint. MIDNIGHT MOVIE MANIA BABY!!!!!!!

Lost Update

Ok so far in the season we are all thoroughly confused and the show is driving me nuts. First of all, will someone just kill Locke already? He is getting on my nerves and he just needs to die. Second, its one thing to present a question in the story and not have it answered for a few episodes, but when the question is blatantly asked and then ignored, that just sucks. Locke looked Ben straight in the face and asked about the smoke monster, and it was just ignored.
On a more hey things are getting done note, they are just killing people left and right. Ben’s daughter got whacked, it was one of those Ben thinks he is in control moments and then the world gets ripped out from under him. “I don’t love her, she’s not my daughter”, ok Boom, dead. It was a gripping moment.
On a grand scheme of things level we kind of get a glimpse into what this whole thing is about. It’s a chess game between Ben and Penelope’s father. He had the island and Ben took it from him. Apparently they had rules in this game, they left each other’s family alone, the rules were broken with the killing of Ben’s daughter. Ben had pretty much done everything with his mind. Now it seems he is ready to play dirty. This should get good and as long as they keep the action and back off with the mind crap they will do well.

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica
Friday nights on Sci Fi

Ok so a recap and catch up of the goings on on Battlestar Galactica. Last season ended with Starbuck returning after she appeared to have blown up in her ship. She shows up after 2 months but apparently only thinks she has been gone for 6 hours. Her ship has the same tail numbers, but appears to be brand new, off the factory floor brand new. No information in the computer either. She shows up with pictures of Earth and says that she knows how to get there. Of course she gets thrown in the brig. Hey, it’s what I would do. Adama doesn’t know whether or not he can trust her so he decides to give her her own ship and a volunteer crew and lets her set off in her own direction.
The 4 new cylons that were revealed in the finale are trying to figure out how to live in the fleet in secret and trying to continue to blend in. The president’s

aid is feeling freer with her new found self and has started to flirt with Chief Tirrrel. Calle (Tirrel’s wife) has gotten suspicious and finds out they are cylons. She is confronted by the aid in a launch tube with her baby and gets tricked into giving up the baby and then she is launched out the tube into space.
The Cylon fleet is having their own set of issues. Three of the models have waged a battle on the other set of three and each control half of the fleet. One side has control of the centurions (soldier cylons) and the other has control of the raiders (the ships). At the end of last weeks show the cylons went into full on war against each other and half the fleet was destroyed.