Awesome post! *explodes*
Things that are awesome:
-lonescorpion, for obvious reasons and for giving me a reason to actually explore this strange town rather than just living in it.
-Zombieland. lonescorpion made a brief review of it here and I agree with his assessment of it. In full disclosure I am not an expert on zombie movies or survival horror in general, my limit on such things is Shaun of the Dead. However, I felt Zombieland took the isolation, fear, and despair one normally associates with the zombie scenario and flipped it around to make a zombie movie about togetherness and hope in the face of the end of the world as we know it. The comedy is great without having to resort to sex or toilet humor (well, mostly), the characters are likable, and the more melancholy aspects are touching rather than maudlin. It seems to be too late for one to catch it in theaters and I only barely saw it at the Dollar Movie, but I'd at least rent it on DVD if you can't bring yourself to buy it.
-Sherlock Holmes (2009). If you like action movies, particularly with a Victorian/mild steampunk aesthetic, go see this movie. If you like Sherlock Holmes, go see this movie. If you like buddy-cop dynamics with affection that teases the line between bromance and outright slash, go see this movie. If you don't like any of these things I'm not sure what you're doing on my flist, but go see this movie anyway. lonescorpion also reviewed it in depth, although warnings for a minor spoiler in the comments. I would say that the major plot is a little ridiculous and convoluted nearly to Dan Brown degrees at times, but it's not so bad that it ruined the movie and the mediocrity. The characters and character interactions make up for it fully. I've seen a lot of people saying this is one of the more faithful depictions of Sherlock Holmes and Watson that they've seen in a while and I certainly agree on the Watson aspect. He's more of a partner than a sidekick and it's a position he well deserves. Even the minor characters like Lestrade have their own charm and wit--in fact, the villain is really the only character who I didn't care for. He rates low on the Large Ham scale of awesome vs. annoying (also known as the Tim Curry scale), but he has the good decency to stay out of the way most of the time so we can focus on the actually interesting characters. It's fun, in a way that doesn't imply that it is so brainless that it can only be described as 'fun'.
-Psychonauts, specifically for the PC. Yahtzee gives a more professional description, but I can fully argue that this is one of the best games I've had the pleasure to play. The story at its vaguest is your average 'child with special powers who is more powerful than the other children with special powers must save world from strange and dark evil', but the exact nature of the evil and what one most do to combat the evil is where the real fun parts come in (with a goodly measure of crack, I found myself saying things like "I need to climb on the meat in order to catch the imaginary chicken the next time it floats by" with a complete lack of irony). I'm not just saying this because I double majored in fictional psychology and videogames as a creative medium, there is something inherently awesome in a game where one can set things on fire with one's mind and bounce to abnormally high levels while navigating a twisted 1950s neighborhood infested with secret agents and girl scouts inside the mind of a schizophrenic security guard. It's not a really hard game bar the nightmarish final level, the real trouble comes in the form of pinpoint jumping puzzles and that goddamn camera that never seems to focus where I want to go unless I manually turn it around. Besides that it's a lot of fun to play, the plot is great, and I'd recommend it to anyone with an available console or a computer that can download it from GameStop.
-Coffee flavored mousse.
-Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. lonescorpion described it as a sort of miniature Las Vegas, with glittering lights and strange buildings and overpriced but still awesome entertainment--and here we'd only gone up there to make pilgrimage to the world's largest knife showplace and confirm that Dollywood actually existed.
-The Tennessee Aquarium, in scenic Chattanooga. Well, aquariums, they've built a saltwater one now in addition to the freshwater one and they're both awesome amounts of aquatic goodness. There are cuttlefish that stare at you and a sleepy giant octopus and a butterfly garden and you can pet stingrays and it's awesome.
-My parents. Just becanse.
-lonescorpion, for obvious reasons and for giving me a reason to actually explore this strange town rather than just living in it.
-Zombieland. lonescorpion made a brief review of it here and I agree with his assessment of it. In full disclosure I am not an expert on zombie movies or survival horror in general, my limit on such things is Shaun of the Dead. However, I felt Zombieland took the isolation, fear, and despair one normally associates with the zombie scenario and flipped it around to make a zombie movie about togetherness and hope in the face of the end of the world as we know it. The comedy is great without having to resort to sex or toilet humor (well, mostly), the characters are likable, and the more melancholy aspects are touching rather than maudlin. It seems to be too late for one to catch it in theaters and I only barely saw it at the Dollar Movie, but I'd at least rent it on DVD if you can't bring yourself to buy it.
-Sherlock Holmes (2009). If you like action movies, particularly with a Victorian/mild steampunk aesthetic, go see this movie. If you like Sherlock Holmes, go see this movie. If you like buddy-cop dynamics with affection that teases the line between bromance and outright slash, go see this movie. If you don't like any of these things I'm not sure what you're doing on my flist, but go see this movie anyway. lonescorpion also reviewed it in depth, although warnings for a minor spoiler in the comments. I would say that the major plot is a little ridiculous and convoluted nearly to Dan Brown degrees at times, but it's not so bad that it ruined the movie and the mediocrity. The characters and character interactions make up for it fully. I've seen a lot of people saying this is one of the more faithful depictions of Sherlock Holmes and Watson that they've seen in a while and I certainly agree on the Watson aspect. He's more of a partner than a sidekick and it's a position he well deserves. Even the minor characters like Lestrade have their own charm and wit--in fact, the villain is really the only character who I didn't care for. He rates low on the Large Ham scale of awesome vs. annoying (also known as the Tim Curry scale), but he has the good decency to stay out of the way most of the time so we can focus on the actually interesting characters. It's fun, in a way that doesn't imply that it is so brainless that it can only be described as 'fun'.
-Psychonauts, specifically for the PC. Yahtzee gives a more professional description, but I can fully argue that this is one of the best games I've had the pleasure to play. The story at its vaguest is your average 'child with special powers who is more powerful than the other children with special powers must save world from strange and dark evil', but the exact nature of the evil and what one most do to combat the evil is where the real fun parts come in (with a goodly measure of crack, I found myself saying things like "I need to climb on the meat in order to catch the imaginary chicken the next time it floats by" with a complete lack of irony). I'm not just saying this because I double majored in fictional psychology and videogames as a creative medium, there is something inherently awesome in a game where one can set things on fire with one's mind and bounce to abnormally high levels while navigating a twisted 1950s neighborhood infested with secret agents and girl scouts inside the mind of a schizophrenic security guard. It's not a really hard game bar the nightmarish final level, the real trouble comes in the form of pinpoint jumping puzzles and that goddamn camera that never seems to focus where I want to go unless I manually turn it around. Besides that it's a lot of fun to play, the plot is great, and I'd recommend it to anyone with an available console or a computer that can download it from GameStop.
-Coffee flavored mousse.
-Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. lonescorpion described it as a sort of miniature Las Vegas, with glittering lights and strange buildings and overpriced but still awesome entertainment--and here we'd only gone up there to make pilgrimage to the world's largest knife showplace and confirm that Dollywood actually existed.
-The Tennessee Aquarium, in scenic Chattanooga. Well, aquariums, they've built a saltwater one now in addition to the freshwater one and they're both awesome amounts of aquatic goodness. There are cuttlefish that stare at you and a sleepy giant octopus and a butterfly garden and you can pet stingrays and it's awesome.
-My parents. Just becanse.