I'm going to put it right out there and tell you that I hated this movie. I can't think of another movie that I so strongly hated within the first ten minutes of viewing. This film has terrible writing, unbelievable dialogue, and it didn't help that I hated all four of the main cast members - and when I say "hate" I don't mean that I strongly dislike them. In this instance, I mean like I am vehemently opposed to seeing their faces. I mean like when I do see their faces, I boil over with insurmountable rage. I should also mention that I did not even finish this movie because I felt more concentrated apathy and disinterest in the first five minutes of this movie than I have in a complete year. The orange was this film and the juice that was squeezed out was 100% pure hate. One could argue that my review of said film is faulty because I did not fully evaluate the product, but that is a stupid point of view. If I bought a car that fell apart before I even got it off the lot and rated it poorly, anyone who argued with me would be an asshole. 30 Minutes or Less is a fucking terrible movie and I couldn't wait to tell everyone I know, regardless of how little I watched of it. When I first saw Schindler's List, I had missed the first 40 minutes of it and somehow it was a fantastic movie. Who knows, maybe 30 Minutes or Less turned it around and became a coherent film after the ten minutes I watched. Based on all the dick jokes in the first couple minutes, I ejected the disk, pretty sure I wasn't missing a film gem, a life-changing cinematic event. This was garbage a moron wouldn't even like.
This next section is going to get rough. Jessie Eisenberg successfully ruins another movie by having been cast. Aziz Ansari has enough screen time to remind me that I hate him, despite stepping out of his underling role on NBC's Parks and Recreation. He burns through my patience within five minutes of talking. Danny McBride and Nick Swardson rounded out my hatred for this movie only because I am angry that they are so successful in a career path where people have to look at them and listen to them. Is that fair to reflect not on their performances in this movie, but on their real-life persona? Who cares - if you can spend five whole minutes watching anything with either of these two in it, then get the fuck off my review site because you are not familiar with "good." Let me quickly round out why I hate Danny McBride and Nick Swardson: I hate Danny McBride because redneck humor starts and ends with Jeff Foxworthy, not to say that Foxworthy isn't funny (he isn't), but everything McBride contributes just seems like a disgusting visualization of joke that was previously delivered, but was delivered conversationally as a joke. Danny McBride does not tell jokes, he assaults you with a concentrated bolt of the two things he knows: dick jokes and profanity - his bread and butter. Danny McBride doesn't even act, he just shows up and his mouth spews that shit that is his films. Nick Swardson hasn't contributed anything to society that didn't involve stupid voices, urine, pot, or feces - all four pretty much average out for how I feel about him, as he goes to sleep every night, probably feeling pretty accomplished in what he has done in life. Fuck this movie and everyone in it.
Score: 0% (four out of four actors that I hate)
Written by Mike
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Campbell's Hearty New England Clam Chowder
It is not often that I get sick, but when I do I am not unlike other humans in that I require comforting while my body heals. One of the things that comforts me during this time of immunal-refurbishing is soup. I enjoy soup, but only two kinds: chicken noodle and clam chowder. Yes, I realize that chowder is not really soup. Chowder is chowder, but it is like soup in that it is served hot in a bowl, mostly liquid, and I eat it with a spoon. For this purpose, clam chowder is soup and my second favorite kind of soup.
So there I stood, in the soup aisle of the supermarket, ill in body, but excited in spirit at the prospect of purchasing what would soon be a fantastic, hot meal. Of all the cans of potential candidates for my soup purchase, I had chosen Campbell's Hearty Clam Chowder. Its label boasted true warmth and deliciousness - and why the hell not? With such a giant spoon, so much larger than the puny utensils of mortals, filled with so much fucking clam and potato and MY GOD, it was a beautiful sight. I would have been a god damned fool not to choose this New England panacea, blessed by King Neptune himself.
I grabbed the biggest can of clam and potato goodness, bought it, and drove home. At each stoplight I glanced at the passenger seat to make sure my tasty co-pilot was still safely confined in the shopping bag. It was ever-important that nothing happen to that can. I was sick, god damn it, and that can was my miracle cure. The second I arrived at home, my kitchen was called into duty - it was my command center and heating that soup was my mission. My rusty can opener almost stymied my progress, but through sheer hunger-fueled rage, I got that bastard to work. The metal was pierced and the smell of clam and potato leaked into the air. Actually it didn't smell like I imagined it would. There was no aroma of sea-side wonder, or heartland potato. I pretended I wasn't bothered as I slopped the pale slime into a pot and placed it on the stove. The waiting - oh good god, the waiting was awful. I was so hungry, doubly so because I was so damned excited about this soup!
I heard a bubble from the pot and quickly grabbed a ladle and slopped some of this thick, potentially delicious elixir into my waiting bowl. I snatched a spoon and filled it with potato and clam and sauce, raised it to my mouth and… was disappointed. The soup had no taste. It was as if Campbell's had replaced all the potatoes with soggy pieces of tube sock and all the clam with erasers. I slopped some on a napkin which touched the bowl and in the five minutes of misery I would have otherwise called "eating," the soup had GLUED THE NAPKIN TO THE BOWL. I was effectively eating glue. Thanks, Campbell's. Thank you for the tube sock, eraser, glue soup.
If I had a time machine, I would have jumped into it at that moment and gone back to twenty minutes prior to shout down the aisle of that supermarket, "DON'T GET THAT SOUP. IT IS TERRIBLE AND LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE LABEL!" To which original timeline Me would have replied, "That's stupid, look how much fucking potato is on that spoon!"
Rating: Zero. Zero fucking cans of soup out of five, because what I ate wasn't soup.
Written by Mike
So there I stood, in the soup aisle of the supermarket, ill in body, but excited in spirit at the prospect of purchasing what would soon be a fantastic, hot meal. Of all the cans of potential candidates for my soup purchase, I had chosen Campbell's Hearty Clam Chowder. Its label boasted true warmth and deliciousness - and why the hell not? With such a giant spoon, so much larger than the puny utensils of mortals, filled with so much fucking clam and potato and MY GOD, it was a beautiful sight. I would have been a god damned fool not to choose this New England panacea, blessed by King Neptune himself.
I grabbed the biggest can of clam and potato goodness, bought it, and drove home. At each stoplight I glanced at the passenger seat to make sure my tasty co-pilot was still safely confined in the shopping bag. It was ever-important that nothing happen to that can. I was sick, god damn it, and that can was my miracle cure. The second I arrived at home, my kitchen was called into duty - it was my command center and heating that soup was my mission. My rusty can opener almost stymied my progress, but through sheer hunger-fueled rage, I got that bastard to work. The metal was pierced and the smell of clam and potato leaked into the air. Actually it didn't smell like I imagined it would. There was no aroma of sea-side wonder, or heartland potato. I pretended I wasn't bothered as I slopped the pale slime into a pot and placed it on the stove. The waiting - oh good god, the waiting was awful. I was so hungry, doubly so because I was so damned excited about this soup!
I heard a bubble from the pot and quickly grabbed a ladle and slopped some of this thick, potentially delicious elixir into my waiting bowl. I snatched a spoon and filled it with potato and clam and sauce, raised it to my mouth and… was disappointed. The soup had no taste. It was as if Campbell's had replaced all the potatoes with soggy pieces of tube sock and all the clam with erasers. I slopped some on a napkin which touched the bowl and in the five minutes of misery I would have otherwise called "eating," the soup had GLUED THE NAPKIN TO THE BOWL. I was effectively eating glue. Thanks, Campbell's. Thank you for the tube sock, eraser, glue soup.
If I had a time machine, I would have jumped into it at that moment and gone back to twenty minutes prior to shout down the aisle of that supermarket, "DON'T GET THAT SOUP. IT IS TERRIBLE AND LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE LABEL!" To which original timeline Me would have replied, "That's stupid, look how much fucking potato is on that spoon!"
Rating: Zero. Zero fucking cans of soup out of five, because what I ate wasn't soup.
Written by Mike
Sunday, November 6, 2011
High-school of the Dead
High-school of the Dead (HOTD) is a Japanese Animation that, like most anime, is an adaption of a manga conveniently of the same name. The story follows a small group of students who have managed to survive an outbreak of zombie in their high-school as they attempt to survive a larger world wide zombie apocalypse.
As I watched HOTD it occurred to me that it would make a great video game. Then it occurred to me that it already is a video game; HOTD could basically be Dead Rising: High-School Edition. Even though the main character has the personality and depth of a balsa wood cutout he would still be more compelling than Chuck Greene.
HOTD is well paced with each episode clearly moving from a point A to a point B without too much dithering in between. All the events serve a purpose to move the plot along and there is no sense that they are trying to prolong the story; it moves along nicely and is never boring. The action is also good. For example, it is incredibly fun to watch Saeko Busujima beat zombies to death with her bokken (wood sword). The art style is not awful though I find the angular nature of the faces a little off putting but anyone can tell you that I am a little (extremely) hard to please. The opening theme is catchy and I like that each closing theme was different. Way to go the extra mile there!
Now that I have that out of the way I'd like to say “What the hell, guys?” That whole well paced thing I talked about earlier has the negative side effect of story sometimes being dropped casually into the narrative in ways that are either ineffective or bizarre. The story starts with the main character, Takashi Komuro, brooding over a love lost when he sees several teachers at the gate get attacked. He promptly runs into class to tell said lost love that shit is hitting the fan. When she, in a reaction that is utterly shocking to all, asks him what he is doing, he slaps her. This will not be the only time he acts weirdly violent towards women. He then drags her and her boyfriend out of the classroom where, apparently, the teacher and other students are used to people coming and going at random. The boyfriend gets zombied in the ensuing race to the rooftops (because that makes sense) and Takashi kills him. Rei Miyamoto (lost love girl, you following?), having failed to comprehend ZOMBIES, accuses him of killing her boyfriend out of jealousy. His reaction is to threaten suicide disguised as heroic charge into the horde.
This seemed so weirdly manipulative that it left me utterly baffled as to how we were supposed to identify with this character. The show was basically a power fantasy where the girl you can't get is left relying entirely on you - what's that? Oh, the boyfriend was your best friend despite there being no indication of any affection between the two of you over the last 20 minutes? I guess that was supposed to make Takashi deep and tragic but, really, that should have probably been establish early on. The effects of this “tragedy” are mostly invisible during the rest of the series except when randomly brought up to create tension and character depth. Throughout the series Rei will randomly become critical about things and he will always assume she is comparing him to boy/best friend.
And speaking of her being randomly critical, it is just plain weird. At one point he says he has no money to activate the self serve gas pump and she says, “you are the worst.” What? You are mad because he didn't prepare for a zombie apocalypse? Maybe we can chalk this up to the stress but it is not the only time in the series characters seem to behave in strange or inappropriate ways. Or become drunk without any indication of having actually had any alcohol. After groping each other in the bathtub. Moving on.
HOTD is supposed to be a horror story but it is as if the writers never quite fully settled on it being horror or comedic action. The characters behave in ways that are only silly and obviously intended for comedic effect. Kohta Hirano, for example, is almost completely a clown character. He is fat and wimpy until he gets his hands on firearms, at which point he turns into a maniac except when he suddenly becomes soft and polite when speaking to the girl he has a crush on. Shizuka Marikawa is another example; she is the ditzy blond school nurse who seems to exist purely to carry around a giant set of ridiculously squishy breasts. I would not be far off comparing them to udders, especially with some of the “camera angles” employed by the animators.
And oh how they jiggle. In fact, every single one of the female characters jiggle at every chance they get. This is something I have noticed in a lot of more recent anime but I assumed that this was because they were all silly comedies intended to get a laugh. This is somewhat jarring when it is supposed to be a tense and horrifying story. It is hard to take anything seriously when the show contains the line “my boobs are killing me because you used them to balance an ak47!” There is a surprisingly large amount of content that exists just to be titillating considering that it is a world where 90% of the population has recently become a lot less articulate. HOTD is filled with lovingly drawn panty shots, has an entire episode basically devoted to the women groping each other in a bathtub, and several episodes with the women running around in skimpy underwear. Saeko spends some time wearing nothing but an apron and a thong. None of this is conducive to tension or terror.
Besides the main plot there are a few little subplots, mostly dealing with character background. Also, there is a love triangle of sorts since every single one of the female survivors happen to be people who have the hots for Takashi (remember what I said about a power fantasy?), except maybe the nurse because she was just drunk when she tried to grope him. She is 26 and he is 17, by the way. But whatever.
I have to note that I watched the English dub. The voice actors were less terrible than having your eyes eaten by rats, so that was a plus. One little oddity was the localization. At first I thought it has been localized as if it were taking place in the US but after watching more I realized that this was indeed supposed to be Japan. The comment about the US having been overrun was apparently supposed to show what a worldwide disaster this was. Still, I was thrown off guard by references to Sarah Palin, the NRA, Blackwater, and a comparison of a corrupt teacher's group of student followers to Scientology. Were these added in to the English Language version in place of more Japanese references? I can see Sarah Palin being a large enough figure that the writers might throw in a reference, and I suppose the same could be said for Blackwater, NRA, and Scientology but I can't help wondering if in the Japanese version that last one was actually SGI Buddhism. And what should I make of the line “very breakfast cluby?" Was that movie ever popular in Japan? Would that have meaning for a Japanese audience? I could find a Japanese Language version to figure it out but, really, I don't care that much.
It may sound like I hated HOTD but this is actually not the case. The story played out well even if there were some threads not fully brought together at the end. While I did want to see more character development I also have to acknowledge that twelve episodes does not leave a lot of room and, in the end, I really did like all the characters. I even liked Shizuka. Her best moment is when she seems keenly aware of her place in the world stating that her ditziness was not her fault because it was her character. Maybe the writers were a little self conscious about her portrayal up to the point. Did I mention the part where she protectively hugs a seven year girl while her breasts drape over the girl's head? No? Okay then. Anyway, these 12 episodes also seem to be only half of the story told in the manga, so maybe some of those loose threads and the character development is continued in the rest of the story. Maybe they will even animate the second half at some point but it is not entirely necessary. HOTD managed to tell a seemingly complete story with a satisfactory, if open, ending. All in all it was compelling enough that I pretty much watched it straight through and in the end I didn't want it to be over. Sure, it is only “pretty good” but that is saying a lot these days.
Summery: Don't expect spine tingling terror or deep emotional content but, all in all, a good time.
Rating: Three out of five MASSIVE BREASTS
Reviewed by: Leer's Poor Fool
As I watched HOTD it occurred to me that it would make a great video game. Then it occurred to me that it already is a video game; HOTD could basically be Dead Rising: High-School Edition. Even though the main character has the personality and depth of a balsa wood cutout he would still be more compelling than Chuck Greene.
HOTD is well paced with each episode clearly moving from a point A to a point B without too much dithering in between. All the events serve a purpose to move the plot along and there is no sense that they are trying to prolong the story; it moves along nicely and is never boring. The action is also good. For example, it is incredibly fun to watch Saeko Busujima beat zombies to death with her bokken (wood sword). The art style is not awful though I find the angular nature of the faces a little off putting but anyone can tell you that I am a little (extremely) hard to please. The opening theme is catchy and I like that each closing theme was different. Way to go the extra mile there!
Now that I have that out of the way I'd like to say “What the hell, guys?” That whole well paced thing I talked about earlier has the negative side effect of story sometimes being dropped casually into the narrative in ways that are either ineffective or bizarre. The story starts with the main character, Takashi Komuro, brooding over a love lost when he sees several teachers at the gate get attacked. He promptly runs into class to tell said lost love that shit is hitting the fan. When she, in a reaction that is utterly shocking to all, asks him what he is doing, he slaps her. This will not be the only time he acts weirdly violent towards women. He then drags her and her boyfriend out of the classroom where, apparently, the teacher and other students are used to people coming and going at random. The boyfriend gets zombied in the ensuing race to the rooftops (because that makes sense) and Takashi kills him. Rei Miyamoto (lost love girl, you following?), having failed to comprehend ZOMBIES, accuses him of killing her boyfriend out of jealousy. His reaction is to threaten suicide disguised as heroic charge into the horde.
This seemed so weirdly manipulative that it left me utterly baffled as to how we were supposed to identify with this character. The show was basically a power fantasy where the girl you can't get is left relying entirely on you - what's that? Oh, the boyfriend was your best friend despite there being no indication of any affection between the two of you over the last 20 minutes? I guess that was supposed to make Takashi deep and tragic but, really, that should have probably been establish early on. The effects of this “tragedy” are mostly invisible during the rest of the series except when randomly brought up to create tension and character depth. Throughout the series Rei will randomly become critical about things and he will always assume she is comparing him to boy/best friend.
And speaking of her being randomly critical, it is just plain weird. At one point he says he has no money to activate the self serve gas pump and she says, “you are the worst.” What? You are mad because he didn't prepare for a zombie apocalypse? Maybe we can chalk this up to the stress but it is not the only time in the series characters seem to behave in strange or inappropriate ways. Or become drunk without any indication of having actually had any alcohol. After groping each other in the bathtub. Moving on.
HOTD is supposed to be a horror story but it is as if the writers never quite fully settled on it being horror or comedic action. The characters behave in ways that are only silly and obviously intended for comedic effect. Kohta Hirano, for example, is almost completely a clown character. He is fat and wimpy until he gets his hands on firearms, at which point he turns into a maniac except when he suddenly becomes soft and polite when speaking to the girl he has a crush on. Shizuka Marikawa is another example; she is the ditzy blond school nurse who seems to exist purely to carry around a giant set of ridiculously squishy breasts. I would not be far off comparing them to udders, especially with some of the “camera angles” employed by the animators.
And oh how they jiggle. In fact, every single one of the female characters jiggle at every chance they get. This is something I have noticed in a lot of more recent anime but I assumed that this was because they were all silly comedies intended to get a laugh. This is somewhat jarring when it is supposed to be a tense and horrifying story. It is hard to take anything seriously when the show contains the line “my boobs are killing me because you used them to balance an ak47!” There is a surprisingly large amount of content that exists just to be titillating considering that it is a world where 90% of the population has recently become a lot less articulate. HOTD is filled with lovingly drawn panty shots, has an entire episode basically devoted to the women groping each other in a bathtub, and several episodes with the women running around in skimpy underwear. Saeko spends some time wearing nothing but an apron and a thong. None of this is conducive to tension or terror.
Besides the main plot there are a few little subplots, mostly dealing with character background. Also, there is a love triangle of sorts since every single one of the female survivors happen to be people who have the hots for Takashi (remember what I said about a power fantasy?), except maybe the nurse because she was just drunk when she tried to grope him. She is 26 and he is 17, by the way. But whatever.
I have to note that I watched the English dub. The voice actors were less terrible than having your eyes eaten by rats, so that was a plus. One little oddity was the localization. At first I thought it has been localized as if it were taking place in the US but after watching more I realized that this was indeed supposed to be Japan. The comment about the US having been overrun was apparently supposed to show what a worldwide disaster this was. Still, I was thrown off guard by references to Sarah Palin, the NRA, Blackwater, and a comparison of a corrupt teacher's group of student followers to Scientology. Were these added in to the English Language version in place of more Japanese references? I can see Sarah Palin being a large enough figure that the writers might throw in a reference, and I suppose the same could be said for Blackwater, NRA, and Scientology but I can't help wondering if in the Japanese version that last one was actually SGI Buddhism. And what should I make of the line “very breakfast cluby?" Was that movie ever popular in Japan? Would that have meaning for a Japanese audience? I could find a Japanese Language version to figure it out but, really, I don't care that much.
It may sound like I hated HOTD but this is actually not the case. The story played out well even if there were some threads not fully brought together at the end. While I did want to see more character development I also have to acknowledge that twelve episodes does not leave a lot of room and, in the end, I really did like all the characters. I even liked Shizuka. Her best moment is when she seems keenly aware of her place in the world stating that her ditziness was not her fault because it was her character. Maybe the writers were a little self conscious about her portrayal up to the point. Did I mention the part where she protectively hugs a seven year girl while her breasts drape over the girl's head? No? Okay then. Anyway, these 12 episodes also seem to be only half of the story told in the manga, so maybe some of those loose threads and the character development is continued in the rest of the story. Maybe they will even animate the second half at some point but it is not entirely necessary. HOTD managed to tell a seemingly complete story with a satisfactory, if open, ending. All in all it was compelling enough that I pretty much watched it straight through and in the end I didn't want it to be over. Sure, it is only “pretty good” but that is saying a lot these days.
Summery: Don't expect spine tingling terror or deep emotional content but, all in all, a good time.
Rating: Three out of five MASSIVE BREASTS
Reviewed by: Leer's Poor Fool
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Review of: The Netflix interface for the Xbox 360
Having access to Netflix on a console is extremely handy if you want to watch a video while still using your computer. This may seem like a blindingly obvious thing to say but shut up, I needed an intro.
The interface is simple. When you log on you have several broad categories including standards like comedy, horror, drama, etc. but also special categories for foreign and independent movies as well as television shows and “anime,” which includes both Japanese animation and North American cartoons. There is also a “recently watched” option (that disappears for not good reason) and usually a list of recently added movies and television shows. In each of these categories there are 75 entries but there are many more available that it decided not to tell you about. When you used to walk into a video rental store (remember those?) all the available movies would be on display. Netflix approaches this at if you were to walk into a video rental store and see a bunch of boxes labeled with their respective genres and all the movies tossed in every which way with you invited to root through the boxes and hope to whatever god you believe in that you might actually find something you want to watch buried in the piles of digitized dog poop. For extra fun these categories don't even make sense all the time. I have seen several movies listed in both comedy and horror, which leads me to believe that someone is very confused / they choose movie categories by blindfolding themselves and throwing darts at the wall.
To aid you in your coprolitic excavation they create new categories based on what you watch. So if you watch a large enough number of episodes of a show they might add a category called “Like: Help My Interface Sucks” and in it will around 20 movies that share some particular (randomly selected) quality with the show or movie you have been watching. It will also set up categories with weird criteria based on movies and shows you have watched. I have seen “TV Shows from the 1960's,” “Violent suspenseful movies,” and “Movies with strong female leads.” Strong female leads? That is getting pretty specific! It must be great to find movies based on such narrow criteria! Haha, sucker. It only shows you those when it wants to show you. It is like some weird video game where you have to unlock genres by watching movies with matching labels.
What makes this especially weird is the fact that it has so many specific genre labels. For instance, the movie “The Lost Boys” has the following genres: “Vampires,” “Teen Screams,” and “Cult Horror.” You would think that they would offer a way to look for other movies in those categories but apparently they decided that would be too easy. You can't even activate a “find movies like this” option. You have to hope that it deigns to give you this option the next time you log on. “You really want to see more Vampire movies,” it says with eyes wild and jaws frothing, “then you would work and find more movies with the “vampires” label! The gods have spoken!” Then it cackles madly and you hire an exorcist because it is clearly possessed.
If you know what you want to watch you can go ahead and use the search feature but this only highlights the problems with Netflix for the 360. For instance, there is no real way to browse the full selection. Sure, you can go to search and type in “a” and scroll through a full list of titles starting with that letter. How about if you want to find documentaries on a single subject? Nope. You will look at the movies it offers and you will like it! Of course you could go to your computer and look up the Netflix site, search with whatever means are available, and then use the search option on your 360 interface to find the movie you want. But this is a bunch of extra steps (assuming you have a computer nearby) for no good reason. Why not implement better search options in the 360 Netflix app? I blame NAFTA.
Besides this, it lacks a “save as favourites” option to easily find shows you were in the process of watching. There is an “instant queue” but, really, who plans out what they want to watch that far in advance? It does have a interesting “party” feature which lets you watch shows with other people who also have Netflix. This has the potential to be cool and maybe I will even get to try it some day.
Summery: Workable if mediocre.
Rating: 2 out of 5 “Be kind, please rewind” stickers.
Reviewed by: Leer's Poor Fool
The interface is simple. When you log on you have several broad categories including standards like comedy, horror, drama, etc. but also special categories for foreign and independent movies as well as television shows and “anime,” which includes both Japanese animation and North American cartoons. There is also a “recently watched” option (that disappears for not good reason) and usually a list of recently added movies and television shows. In each of these categories there are 75 entries but there are many more available that it decided not to tell you about. When you used to walk into a video rental store (remember those?) all the available movies would be on display. Netflix approaches this at if you were to walk into a video rental store and see a bunch of boxes labeled with their respective genres and all the movies tossed in every which way with you invited to root through the boxes and hope to whatever god you believe in that you might actually find something you want to watch buried in the piles of digitized dog poop. For extra fun these categories don't even make sense all the time. I have seen several movies listed in both comedy and horror, which leads me to believe that someone is very confused / they choose movie categories by blindfolding themselves and throwing darts at the wall.
To aid you in your coprolitic excavation they create new categories based on what you watch. So if you watch a large enough number of episodes of a show they might add a category called “Like: Help My Interface Sucks” and in it will around 20 movies that share some particular (randomly selected) quality with the show or movie you have been watching. It will also set up categories with weird criteria based on movies and shows you have watched. I have seen “TV Shows from the 1960's,” “Violent suspenseful movies,” and “Movies with strong female leads.” Strong female leads? That is getting pretty specific! It must be great to find movies based on such narrow criteria! Haha, sucker. It only shows you those when it wants to show you. It is like some weird video game where you have to unlock genres by watching movies with matching labels.
What makes this especially weird is the fact that it has so many specific genre labels. For instance, the movie “The Lost Boys” has the following genres: “Vampires,” “Teen Screams,” and “Cult Horror.” You would think that they would offer a way to look for other movies in those categories but apparently they decided that would be too easy. You can't even activate a “find movies like this” option. You have to hope that it deigns to give you this option the next time you log on. “You really want to see more Vampire movies,” it says with eyes wild and jaws frothing, “then you would work and find more movies with the “vampires” label! The gods have spoken!” Then it cackles madly and you hire an exorcist because it is clearly possessed.
If you know what you want to watch you can go ahead and use the search feature but this only highlights the problems with Netflix for the 360. For instance, there is no real way to browse the full selection. Sure, you can go to search and type in “a” and scroll through a full list of titles starting with that letter. How about if you want to find documentaries on a single subject? Nope. You will look at the movies it offers and you will like it! Of course you could go to your computer and look up the Netflix site, search with whatever means are available, and then use the search option on your 360 interface to find the movie you want. But this is a bunch of extra steps (assuming you have a computer nearby) for no good reason. Why not implement better search options in the 360 Netflix app? I blame NAFTA.
Besides this, it lacks a “save as favourites” option to easily find shows you were in the process of watching. There is an “instant queue” but, really, who plans out what they want to watch that far in advance? It does have a interesting “party” feature which lets you watch shows with other people who also have Netflix. This has the potential to be cool and maybe I will even get to try it some day.
Summery: Workable if mediocre.
Rating: 2 out of 5 “Be kind, please rewind” stickers.
Reviewed by: Leer's Poor Fool
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Review of my Dell Inspiron 1525
The first warning as to what I was getting myself into should have been the price tag. Three hundred dollars for a laptop? “Affordable” is often a synonym for “put together by our division of trained apes.”
But before I get ahead of myself I should perhaps talk about the laptop itself. The screen is just over 15 inches across. It is easy to see provided you are not in direct sunlight. The case is an attractive blue that I picked out of several colour options, none of which, I was surprised to note considering the company in question, are made from the unborn offspring of the worlds most endangered animals. The keys are actually not annoying to type on like some laptop keyboards; I have to give credit where credit is due.
Unfortunately if I just wanted a comfortable keyboard then I would have purchased a keyboard. The Inspiron worked reasonably well for the first year and a half of its life. Then one day I decided to reformat and reinstall windows. This should have been a simple process. Alas, it was not meant to be. Dell came with this preinstalled program called Dell Media Direct that existed on its own partitioned portion of the hard drive. We peacefully coexisted for a time; I ignored it and it left me alone. However, when it came time to reformat my hard-drive I ran into a little problem. Through an obscure set of conditions, including having a partition of an amount of space that is a multiple of 4 (I believe), Vista was unable to properly reformat. To be fair I had also created a second partition where I was running Ubunto, but when I searched the error code I saw other people with the same computer and the same problem so I can be fairly sure that this was the Media Direct partition's fault.
Here is where the real problem with a Dell product began: I called their tech support line. One of the ways that they can give you a laptop for such a cheap price (besides paying their workers in bananas) is cutting back on their tech support. If you are still under warranty then great! If not, prepare to listen to an Indian gentleman inexplicably named Kevin explain that they can help you at the small cost of your first born child. Or 50 dollars. I can't remember.
Beside badly thought out partitions and a tech support service that boarders on extortion, the laptop is mostly fine. And by mostly I mean not even a little. There is, for instance, this little problem where several of my keys stop working randomly, a problem that was shared with other users who noticed the same keys on their Inspirons failing. Fortunately no one ever used keys like “T” or “R” or “G”. For example:
And speaking of fewer features: I hope you are not overly fond of your DVD drive. About a week ago mine stopped working. It didn't just stop reading, mind you; It just doesn't have power anymore. I'd open up my laptop to see if I could fix it but, frankly, I know what happened last time.
Finally there is the issue where the laptop sometimes over heats and just shuts down without warning, which is ironic since it was forged in the deepest depths of hell. One would assume that a cooling system that actually does its job would be in order, but who am I to question the Dell Chimp Platoon?
Summery: Don't buy a Dell. Seriously.
Score: 1 out of five Apple IIEs
Reviewed by: Leer's Poor Fool
But before I get ahead of myself I should perhaps talk about the laptop itself. The screen is just over 15 inches across. It is easy to see provided you are not in direct sunlight. The case is an attractive blue that I picked out of several colour options, none of which, I was surprised to note considering the company in question, are made from the unborn offspring of the worlds most endangered animals. The keys are actually not annoying to type on like some laptop keyboards; I have to give credit where credit is due.
Unfortunately if I just wanted a comfortable keyboard then I would have purchased a keyboard. The Inspiron worked reasonably well for the first year and a half of its life. Then one day I decided to reformat and reinstall windows. This should have been a simple process. Alas, it was not meant to be. Dell came with this preinstalled program called Dell Media Direct that existed on its own partitioned portion of the hard drive. We peacefully coexisted for a time; I ignored it and it left me alone. However, when it came time to reformat my hard-drive I ran into a little problem. Through an obscure set of conditions, including having a partition of an amount of space that is a multiple of 4 (I believe), Vista was unable to properly reformat. To be fair I had also created a second partition where I was running Ubunto, but when I searched the error code I saw other people with the same computer and the same problem so I can be fairly sure that this was the Media Direct partition's fault.
Here is where the real problem with a Dell product began: I called their tech support line. One of the ways that they can give you a laptop for such a cheap price (besides paying their workers in bananas) is cutting back on their tech support. If you are still under warranty then great! If not, prepare to listen to an Indian gentleman inexplicably named Kevin explain that they can help you at the small cost of your first born child. Or 50 dollars. I can't remember.
Beside badly thought out partitions and a tech support service that boarders on extortion, the laptop is mostly fine. And by mostly I mean not even a little. There is, for instance, this little problem where several of my keys stop working randomly, a problem that was shared with other users who noticed the same keys on their Inspirons failing. Fortunately no one ever used keys like “T” or “R” or “G”. For example:
“May od pu any ades up ei sos.”Of course sometimes instead of the keys not working they double click when you tap them, turning that into:
“May Ggod putt anggrry bbadggerrs up tthheirr shhorrtts.”The best part is that this goes in and out so you sometimes actually forget about it before turning on the laptop to find yourself with 8% fewer keys.
And speaking of fewer features: I hope you are not overly fond of your DVD drive. About a week ago mine stopped working. It didn't just stop reading, mind you; It just doesn't have power anymore. I'd open up my laptop to see if I could fix it but, frankly, I know what happened last time.
Finally there is the issue where the laptop sometimes over heats and just shuts down without warning, which is ironic since it was forged in the deepest depths of hell. One would assume that a cooling system that actually does its job would be in order, but who am I to question the Dell Chimp Platoon?
Summery: Don't buy a Dell. Seriously.
Score: 1 out of five Apple IIEs
Reviewed by: Leer's Poor Fool
Friday, September 23, 2011
Review of: This Blog
JUST SO YOU ARE AWARE... is a blog dedicated to reviewing anything ever. This may seem like it covers a lot of ground. Well there are plenty of things to be aware of. When you read JUST SO YOU ARE AWARE... please do not expect thoughtful or useful information. Please do expect viciousness and general misanthropy. JUST SO YOU ARE AWARE... is a place filled with rantings, ravings, complaints, accusations, grievances, gripes, grumbles, and discontent. There is something here for everyone... just so you are aware.
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