Paul (2011– 104 mins) S. Pegg, N. Frost, S. Rogan, K. Wiig

“Paul” is a hilarious take on the crashed alien who just wants to go home movie. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are two geeks who, after attending comic-con go on a trip to see all the touristy extra-terrestrial crash sites and end up stumbling upon a fugitive alien on the run from the feds. The alien is, friendly, speaks English, has a great sense of humor and oh did I mention he is a stoner? And he’s also voiced by Seth Rogan. Yup don’t expect anything too serious here, this is a pure laugh out loud ridiculously fun time. “Paul” the alien is trying to get his butt off this planet after helping our gov’t out for the last 50 years.

On the trio’s journey they will encounter all sorts of SNL currents and alums and all sorts of comedic cameos. The whole movie is just plain classic and funny. I cannot even say a whole lot without ruining anything. Pegg and Frost have amazing chemistry in all their movies and this one is no different. The writing is spot on and the three characters riff off each other perfectly. I am sure that it would prolly be just as fun if it was just Rogan in the part, but hearing his voice from the alien makes it all the better.

Verdict–> One of the funniest movies of the year and likely to be on my top 10 red box review list for this year. HIGHLY recommended to be rented from the box today!

Ironclad (2011–121 mins) Paul Giamatti, Jason Flemyng and Brian Cox,  James Purefoy

It’s 13th Century England… The tyrannical King John (Giamatti) has just been forced to sign the Magna Carta by nobles/barons of the land and the people…ensuring rights for the people. Of course being the evil S.O.B he is King John plans to go back on his word. He enlists the help of a rebel army with promises that he will not then invade the viking lands, to take back his kingdom. He then begins to sack castles in the land and kill the barons who once stood united against him for the cause of justice. That is, until a noble (Cox) puts together his own little rag-tag army of 20 or so, including a knight-templar (Purefoy) and his own allies. They then hunker down at Rochester Castle and hold out hope that their Alamo-like stand can rouse the country against the king, and bide them enough time until allies from overseas can come and help them reclaim their lands for peace and justice.

I remember seeing this trailer a month or two ago and thought it looked decent. It had this sort of “Brave heart” look to it with the added attraction of Giamatti doing his screaming thing well. Giamatti has a great ability to be one of the better actors when he screams. He’s up there with Samuel L Jackson and Tom Hanks as people I love to watch them act when they are screaming and yelling, their approach to it is just amazing. You think I am crazy but think about each of those 3 actors and you cannot help but laugh or enjoy thinking of some of their roles in which they are yelling at the top of their lungs. So I had some interest in seeing this on DVD when it came out, which I thought would be around Christmas, but as it turns out, this movie went straight to DVD, which was a bit surprising. And then I saw it. I don’t say that to mean it’s bad. In fact I kinda enjoyed this medieval take on the Alamo. However, it’s brutal, quite brutal. It’s got some fight scenes in which heads are split open and bones stick out of wounds as people are still pounding on them. Limbs being split off before your eyes is not the best way to be embraced by mainstream movie goers.

Everyone seems to do a decent job and the movie never feels too long. Giamatti, as I stated above, does his screaming psycho King thing well and Cox is great as a motivating baron trying to rally the troops to defend the one last safe bastion of hope against the tyrant King John. Purefoy is a great Knight-Templar but at times becomes a bit too brooding to be taken too seriously, yet he seems to be made for this type of Knight role, wielding the sword like an old pro at times. We just need a little more inspiration from him, and that dialog never truly exists in the film. Yet a good historical type epic, which is quite a bit brutal so it might lend itself more to a guys type movie b/c I don’t know if many women (GF’s and spouses especially) will want to sit through 2 hours of blood and guts.

Verdict–>  It’s not great it’s not bad, but guys who like Medieval historical movies will enjoy this “Remember the Medieval Alamo” take. It’s a guys movie and I wouldn’t recommend getting it for a date night or family movie watching. But worth the dollar for a guys beer and pizza movie.

The weekend had finally arrived… it was basically my first board gaming convention ever. I have always been a big gamer, both in board games and in card games (and obviously video games but we all knew that) but it was a little over a year ago that I took the plunge and decided to head to a Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) and take in a Board Game night, to check out and become part of “the community” of local board gamers. From the very first night I went I knew that these people were the tops in how friendly and open they were to a noob in their midst. I pick things up fairly quickly and had been playing some games at home from time to time when my parents came to town and with my wife and best friend, so it wasn’t completely like a non-gamer trying to pick up the hobby. But I ended up after a few months of gaming with the same people most nights, getting an invite to a local annual gaming convention. I had heard it was a great event and a nice LONG weekend of gaming so I was suuuuupppppeeerrr excited for the event and I have to say it did not disappoint in one bit.

I am going to attempt to go day by day and remember what I played and in what order but I learned a lesson this year… if you want to remember everything you play WRITE IT DOWN… I saw a ton of people doing the same thing throughout the con, and I intended to do so, but I just never did write down what  I was playing… Basically after the first night I came home and posted what I played on facebook, and so I figured I would do the same thing every day, but when you only sleep roughly 4 hours on those nights, it’s hard to remember to do ANYTHING let alone write down what you just played. So keep that in mind when I re-cap the different days, I will try and be spot on with what I played, and hopefully as I write this it will all come back to me…

Thursday

World Without End-- Good game just not Pillars of the Earth good.

I had just gotten off work for the week, and before I headed to the convention I needed to get my dog’s stitches and staples out from her surgery and then I was going to need my usual nap after a long week of work. So as badly as I wanted to head to get the gaming goodness started I needed to charge up the batteries first. So I woke up had some dinner with the family, and headed up to the convention for night #1. I wasn’t staying up there at the hotel this night so I was going to have to cram in what I could before heading home for the night. I arrived and right away a buddy of mine was setting up World without end, the sequel to the game Pillars of the earth. I love Pillars with the expansion a lot. It’s a great worker placement game with a ton going on. Sure it’s long, complicated and a good bit random with the pulling of the workers from a bag, but I love that crap. My buddy Mike has been trying to get World Without End to the table for a while now so since I saw him setting up I was raring to get the festivities started so I sat down for a game! It was a fun game. It’s got role selection which basically takes the place of the worker placement in the game, and has a mechanic that at the beginning of the turn the lead player for the round decides the placement of a turn round card, and then depending on how the player orients it, everyone gets something for the round. You have to help build projects and pay certain costs in upkeep every round or suffer penalties. A fun game but I still think there is something I like better about Pillars over this one. It’s not bad and I think I wouldn’t turn it down at all which is good, but Pillars is just a stronger game. I finished either last or 2nd to last IIRC (which is a theme in most of my gaming especially with being so new to every game… usually I have to play a game a few times to get it 100% and then I am quite competitive.) The problem I have with me and some games, is when you learn a game you start to check it all out and formulate a general strategy. Of course in most you have to change things on the fly as they happen but you start to get an idea of what you want to do. Sometimes I try to do something which is not 100% what everyone would do. I like to take some chances b/c after all it’s a game and why not have fun right? Unfortunately this is often an idiotic thing for a newbie to do the 1st time you play a game and it usually costs me. BUT, in doing so I often see how this could have worked in my plans and it helps for future plays of those games.

The second game I got into was the Lord of The Rings co-op game. I have this game at home, and it’s a real nice first edition game with some real nice figurines and a heavy Sauron EYE figure for the bad guys counter. I have been trying to trade it for a while since I have only ever opened it and not played it ever, but no takers online, possibly next year I will bring it or throw it into the math trade for the event. Anyway this was to be a 5 player game with us using all 5 hobbits the game comes with. A couple of people had played it before so we had a leg up but it’s still a pretty luck driven game with drawing blind tiles and rolling dice. Which is fine with me since I love cards dice etc. We had a real fun time playing and I was the third hobbit dead but the fellowship kept on going! We all thought we were going to lose as a group but Merry and Pippin were able to get some lucky tile draws and some lucky dice rolls to get the win for the group! Success! The group I was playing with all kinda went off to different games so I was all of a sudden game-less. But I saw 3 players starting in on a game of Egizia so I asked if they minded a 4th, and another game had begun!

Egizia is another worker placement game kinda like Stone Age. It’s got the whole Egypt theme with a Sphinx, tombs, obelisks, and a pyramid. The big catch in the game is you start with your boats (workers) at the top of the river and you can only place them down river. Once you place one a few spots down river you cannot go back up them with your boats (exception being one card that allows you to break the rules once a turn and go upstream if you own it). You also have to collect 2 currencies in order to progress. First you need fields to feed your worker “crews” in the game, and then you need stone quarries to have stone to build the structures in the game. You get your points in building the structures but you also get bonus points at the end of the game depending on if you fulfill the objectives on the Sphinx cards you acquire throughout the game. I play a lot of Egizia on Yucata.de so I was real familiar with the game and it was a perfect one to round out the first night of gaming. We could not remember which cards were the overpowered ones in the game, that you usually take out when playing online (which is the one which gives you +2 cards each time you go to the sphinx, and the card that gives you +1 point per every 10 you have in the game) so we played with them. I like playing the 3 and 4 player version a ton more then playing with just 2 b.c you have to make some real decisions in the larger game, and it’s MUCH more strategic. I did fairly well in the game getting a bunch of my cards completed and getting a bunch done in building despite being so far behind in grain fields. But that’s what’s good about games like this, the reaction and coming up with a plan to offset the unexpected. I ended up finishing 2nd in the game. I did well but the guy who finished first got the dreaded +2 to sphinx cards and naturally it paid off in points. I think even without it he might have won but it would have been a bit closer then it ended up being in the end. But I enjoyed it and thought I played well so no harm no foul. Alas, the night had gotten a bit late and I was going to try and spend some time with the fam for breakfast before they headed out for the day and before I packed up and was going to be gone for 2 days b/c I was staying at the hotel on Friday night, so I headed home.

Friday

I got up to the game room late morning and things were beginning to get into full swing. Most people were already engaged in some longer games so I hopped on a table with a couple of friends and played a card game called Bottle Imp. It’s based on some short story about this bottle that gives you unlimited power while you have it but you will go to hell for having it, so you must get rid of it before you die.. the catch? Well other then the whole hell thing, is you cannot sell it for more then you bought it. So translate that into a trick taking game. It means that the person who has the bottle has to get rid of it for a card lower then the one it has under the bottle at the time. Yeah I know it confused the hell out of me as well before I played 2 rounds then it still confused me but I was at least able to play it enough to be somewhat competitive. After playing a few rounds of this we packed it up and started off in a 5 player game of El Grande.

El Grande is actually an older Euro from around 1995. It’s an area control game, with some bidding mechanics for who gets to choose the action card first. There’s plenty of bluffing and screw your neighbor that goes on but all in all this was a fun as hell game to play. We had 5 great people playing who can get along with a wall and all had a blast playing it. Two guys ended up grabbing a run away lead near the end and the other 3 of us couldn’t catch up and were just trying to stay out of last place. I was trying to do my best to stay out of some of the conflicts and still peck away at whomever was leader. It was my first time playing (surprise!) and I enjoyed it quite a bit and also since I finished out of last, hey couldn’t be too bad! I just have to say with games and this whole weekend I don’t really care about winning or losing ever b/c I just love playing. When I don’t know a game I don’t expect to win, but I generally want to be competitive. I didn’t get mad the whole weekend about where I ended up until the last game I played but more on that when we finish up talking about Sat. So anyway, my take on El Grande is, that it’s a fun game. I think I won’t shy away from this at all in the future. It’s got the bidding which I always like, and also has the variability of the cards which is something I LOVE in games. After heading out to lunch we got into a game of Automobile.

Automobile is only a couple of years old and is from famed game designer Martin Wallace (Brass, London,Steam, Age of Steam etc). Now I haven’t played any of Wallace’s train games but I have played London. I enjoyed London a bit, it’s a bit puzzle-y in a game form which is pretty cool. (I saw 2 copies of Few Acres of Snow circulating around the weekend but I was unable to play it). Anyway Automobile, as you might guess, is about the rise of the automobile industry. It’s an economic game in which you select roles each turn (named after famed auto producers) and must open factories and produce cars and be able to sell them based on a variable demand. This was one in which I tried to go out of the ordinary to start. Everyone was doing the same exact thing on turn 1 so I didn’t want to be a Lemming so I went a bit different. However, it seems this is what doomed me from the start and be

Automobile--- This should be more fun then it is.

comes (as we will see) the main reason I didn’t enjoy the game at all. I tend to like to play the variable role selection type games. I like being able to pick your “powers” and roll with them for a round. That was a good part. The bad part is, none of them had enough of said powers. Sure you don’t want to screw up balance but it seems like there really wasn’t too much to those roles to make any of them much ebtter at times then the others. Also for a game that has 3 different  types of cars (high end/luxury, mid level, and mass market) with different times where each of them are in demand it doesn’t seem to reward you for going for it all. If you go for the bottom two levels you can make money no matter what others are doing. If you go for the luxury cars the only way you are going to win or make your money is if NO ONE else is doing the same thing. There simply never is enough demand, and it’s quite rare there ever could be, to make it worth it. I say it ruined the whole experience for me. The other thing that ruins it, is there are times in the game where you just can’t do anything else and have to just Pass. Sure that’s pretty normal for games when you do a ton of things you have ot pass to end your turn, but it just felt like I didn’t do much on my turn and then just passed at the end. I finished second to last but we were so close it might as well have been last. Peter did an excellent job explaining the game and the people I played with were great and fun, but the game is REAL flat to me. I won’t be playing automobile again any time soon. So it was just about dinner time but I was still full from lunch so I was going to have Mrs GeekJock meet up with me and have some dinner while she brought up my toiletries (yeah I always forget SOMETHING at home). So I knew I had about 90 mins to kill. So I was walking around and Greg says to me… “Hey want to play Marvel Heroes?” Apparently he has been trying to get people to play this with him every year and has little success. So I ask about how long and the famous last words of the weekend were born “Oh only about 60 mins!”.

So on to Marvel Heroes we went. Peter from the Automobile game before us, Greg, who’s game it was and had played before, myself and Ken all picked out a super hero team. I went with the X-Men. The game took right at 60 mins itself just to explain the rules, but I was already liking the make up of the game, so maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. The game is LONG. The problem isn’t really with that, but the rules are written awfully and if you don’t have Boardgamegeek.com handy you might miss out on something critical. It turned out that it was so long I wasn’t going to be able to eat with the Mrs., which was fine with her b/c our son wanted to come up to see us instead of staying home with my mother in law (who was in town), so the Mrs didn’t mind just dropping off my stuff and saying hi for a few mins and then I finished the game (or else I would have had to bow out of the game for a while b/c I was wanting to see them and hungry as all hell— To be honest I would have eaten and only ended up missing about 1 turn in the game b/c of how long it is hahah). Ok basically without getting into a 2 hour long novel about the rules, you have both the ability to do an overall scenario which the game comes with a bunch, or just play to a certain victory points. We just went to 15 ourselves. Each round you spend these “plot points” to activate your heroes and then they go off to fight crime which amounts to going to a spot where random cards say there is a crime and you roll some dice to see how much power the crime ends up being. The other players then play cards worth certain power to make up who you will fight at the crime spot and you see who wins different dice roll offs. That part is long-ish but a ton of fun. The problem I have with the game is it costs too much in plot points to try and ready your guys and they are real hard to come by. One false move and you could end up getting less in a turn b/c your heroes are not back to “ready” in front of you and you have then screwed a whole round of the next 5 turns of your play. That’s the big problem of the wonkyness of the game. Not the game itself. It plays well when you get going and know what you are doing, but before you get there you could end up with turns that have you doing next to nothing. I ended up having to save up a round and half of plot points just to make a big attack so I could take out a crime then take on Magneto (my arch villain). Once that was done (and I WON THE FIGHT!) I had to try and get my guys back to “ready” which I was only able to get about 1/2 of them back, and then I ended up with not enough points to do much of anything for the WHOLE NEXT 5 TURNS. That’s just piss poor game design. You simply cannot have a long game where you need one resource which is less then scarce to act. You then end up with the potential of one player (which was myself and one other earlier in game), who simply cannot do anything, and that sucks the fun out of it. What ended up happening, is myself and Peter had to take “story action” b/c there wasn’t anything else to do, but the unluckiness of it was our story cards were not out and we kept helping the other two with VPs and only getting ourselves some hero cards. So we were basically tied in last and the other two who kept benefiting from it fought it out for 1st place. Not a bad game just pretty poorly designed and felt a bit like they just stopped working on it and threw it out to release. I think something could be done about the readying of the heroes so you can better play. There is a guy working on a variant or re-tooling of the game on BGG and from looking at his cards I think he might really be onto something with his designs. A cool game overall that I might end up playing next year at the con but I will know full well I am in for a 3-4 hour game.

By this point it was time for a fast food run for dinner so when I came back it was time to find something shorter to play (shorter being 90 mins to 2 hours hahah).After wandering around the room a little with a couple of friends I saw a copy of Can’t Stop in someones collection, so it was time for some dicey goodness! I love Can’t Stop. It’s push your luck goodness to the max. You roll 4 dice and have to keep the first of 2 each time and put up markers on those. Then you get one more number you can work on, for a total of 3 each round. The board has the numbers 2-12 on it and you have to get a certain number of rolls in each, which correlate to how hard it is to roll the number. For example you only have to roll 3 12’s to lock it up. The catch is for each turn you can only work on 3 numbers at any one time and they have to be ones you rolled this turn. So if you have some bad luck rolling for a couple of rolls you can end up working on 3’s 4’s and 10’s and those are not easy to work on! But after you roll a couple of times you can bank at any moment you want and you cannot go any lower on the track. If you do not bank and you roll where you cannot move up any of the three tracks you are working on then, you bust and have to start back where you last banked or at the bottom if you haven’t banked. The first player to close out 3 numbers is the winner. I managed to finally WIN A GAME this weekend woo hoo. Sure it’s a luck fest but I will just think that it’s got some skill to it and I had a good strategy (yeah right). But I like the game and it was fun so I cannot complain one bit really.

My copy of Quarriors! had been circulating around the room quite a bit, being one of the new hotnessesof the summer, so since someone mentioned playing it to me, I was REAL happy to play it. I knew it and loved it so no chance of not having a good time. and it’s more dice a

Quarriors Set up (image borrowed from baordgamegeek.com)

nd we all know I love some dice! So Quarriors! is basically Dominion with dice. Yeah save me all the ranting about it being too random or not very strategic. It’s just plain fun as hell. I love the game and cannot wait for expansions to come out. You start with 12 basic dice. Every round you draw 6 dice out and roll them. You can then buy a dice from the card of the 10 available and add one to your discard pile. Next turn you draw six more etc. You try and get a die to come out that has a monster and have said monster live until your next turn so you can score points. Again, it’s pure dice rolling fun. Don’t take it serious just have a great time! We played 2 or three games of this until it was then time to pack up and head to bed for the night. It was 4am and I was supposed to be back at a table for a 10am long game of Descent with 2 expansions! Ohhhh Sat is going to be great as well!!!

But I will have to save the stories of Sat for part 2 of  That Board Game Thing! weekend recap…. Special thanks to Boardgamegeek.com for images.

–GeekJock

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011–90 mins) Morgan Spurlock Documentary

I have quite mixed feelings about documentaries. Generally they are interesting when well done, and SHOULD show all views of a certain subject to give you all the information. That, or be about a subject that doesn’t have different views. However, you have more often then not, filmmakers who take the documentary and make it a journalistic piece of crap. Take anything made by the anti-american piece of crap Michael Moore. He is the prime example of what happens when you give a moron a camera and an ajenda. You see his work and he takes a normal statement from people and cuts it to pieces and pieces together what he wants you to see so that the message is the complete opposite of the intended message, as well as completely falsifying any and all messages. Basically sensationalism in filming to make a buck and trying to make a bigger name for himself.

I kinda don’t want to put Morgan Spurlock into that same category, but his claim to fame is a sensationalist piece tho. He made his name making “Super Size Me”. So while I think that doc is kinda crap, he does have some other good works. I won’t fault him 100% for using one sell out sensationalist exaggeration fest to make a name for himself. In “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” Spurlock is taking us inside the world of advertising/ product placement in movie making. He films every step from idea for the movie to execution of pitching it to product owners and businesses. He has some narration and some comedic takes of the process and genuinely seems like he’s actually learning something of the process as he goes along. He gets some bumps in the road, he has some successes and eventually seems like he gets it all paid for.

The doc starts off highly interesting and keeps you into it. However, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through it starts to get a bit boring. Not sure what it is, same old same old or just not very thrilling but it grinds to a halt. Luckily he finds his way right before then end, gets us re-interested and thus finishes on a high note. I gotta say it was pretty interesting to watch it all tho, and I think people who enjoy any sort of documentary would enjoy this. Even people who might not enjoy docs should check it out b/c he has a nice comedic wit about him as well as a knack for producing docs. I think he got to a point where he felt it was enough and seemed to just end abruptly, which was a shame since it was at the point where he just got me back interested in the whole thing, but the positive here is he leaves you wanting more which is good b/c it leaves you with a positive taste in your mouth. Just b/c of how much I loathe the type of sensationalism “Super Size Me” was I don’t think I will or would ever pay money to see one of his (or almost any for that matter) documentaries in the theater, but this is a good pick for the Red Box.

Verdict–> You don’t need to be a documentary  lover but it certainly helps. I wouldn’t get this to watch by it self but if you watch this before you watch another movie then you will be fine. A good film by a decently interesting  filmmaker. I would recommend this to just about anyone.

Priest (2011– 87 mins) P. Bettany, K. Urban, Maggie Q

Priest is a post-apocalyptic super-heroish movie based on a comic book. For ages there has been a war between man and vampires. The war was won by man only with the help of super hero-like skilled warriors of the church… the “Priests”. Since the victory, the race of man has been living in walled off cities under the rule of the church. They use strict discipline of the church and fear in the people to rule. The heads of the church feel there is no need to keep the priests around keeping the peace so they basically have disbanded the order and will not indulge any claims of vampire sightings in the wastelands.

The vampires since the war have been kept in “reservations” to themselves where they supposedly have kept to themselves not challenging the cities or settlements of man. That is until “Priest” (that’s all we know Bettany’s character’s name as) gets word that his brother and sister in law have been killed and his niece has been captured by the vampires. He wants to investigate the attack but the church will not acknowledge that it could happen under their watch so they tell him “no”. Therefore, he must break out of the city as an outlaw and go out on his own to rescue his niece. He ends up getting a couple of companions on his quest one of which is his niece’s fiance, a gun-slinging sheriff from the wastelands.

It’s a pretty good action/hero/monster movie in the vein of the “Underworld” series of movies. It’s not too serious, it doesn’t waste time with too many blah details in the beginning, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. Bettany actually plays a pretty good bad-ass and also has some good lines (although not too many of them period).  All things I like in action hero movies. However, some of these things can actually work against you. I will say again I liked this movie but here are a few things that really bugged me. First the movie falls short of GeekJock’s cardinal rule of motion pictures. It’s less then 90 mins. And that is one HUGE pet peeve of mine. If you expect people to go watch your film in the theater and/or buy it on DVD/blu-ray you should provide ample entertainment. and that “ample” means a film of at least 90 mins in duration! The second thing is being a bit short we feel a little short changed on the whole story. Sure they do a great job with the animation in the beginning telling the back story but we could have used a bit more of the now story as well. We get a man on a mission a couple of fights and BOOM game over. It has that feeling of them running out of resources so they just stopped filming and went with what they had. Give us more story at the reservation, give us more kick assery of the priests as a group. Sorry I just feel cheated out of what could have been a good action/horror epic.Even the dialog, while good (when it was present) was just lacking in quantity. I think Priest himself has 10 lines the whole movie.

Again, all that complaining not withstanding, the movie actually is entertaining and a good watch. And being so damn short it might even be one your significant other won’t mind sitting through.

Verdict–> A decent rental and worth the buck to get it. I didn’t see it in blu-ray format but I gotta think it looks amazing in it tho. A good recommendation by me, and nearly perfect for a double feature with your significant other/date. Pair it up with a rom-com or drama since it’s short you can prolly watch any length of a first movie before finishing with this quicky!

Everything Must Go (2010– 97 mins) Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall 

A struggling former alcoholic, Nick Halsey (Ferrell) is having problems keeping off the suds. He got fired today and came home to find all his earthly possessions on the front lawn, and the locks to his home changed, and a Dear Nick letter in tow. “Everything Must Go” is the story of Nick’s crappy day and his attempt to get his act together and deal with it all. Will he succumb to the pressure and just drown his sorrows or will he try and snap out of it. The only other people who can give him some insight are his AA Sponsor and Cop Frank, who keeps him out of jail for having his stuff on the front lawn and public drinking; Kenny, a Local kid who helps Nick sell his stuff and gives him someone to talk to; And finally Samantha, a pregnant woman who is new to the neighborhood and living by herself until her husband comes to the home from working out east.

“Everything Must Go” is a character centered drama with some comedy sprinkled in. It never truly sways too far one way into drama or comedy but still becomes a little bit of a downer at times. Yet, Ferrell has this natural way of bringing us out of the downer portions with his manerisms. Maybe it’s b/c we can’t take him too seriously after all these years of shake and bake and cowbells, or maybe he’s that good. I think it’s more of the former rather then the latter but it’s not to say he’s a bad actor, just not one we will be able to take seriously any time soon. And yet I think he was decent in this movie but if it was much longer or much more serious I think we might have lost interest in him being serious.All in all, it’s actually a decent movie. I normally don’t enjoy these types of movies with all of the boring intraspection and semi-useless dialog but I happened to actually enjoy this a bit. I don’t know if I have to be in the right mood for this type of character film and given the right mood I might enjoy something like “Lost in Translation” (which I thought was an utter bore…decent dialog but utter bore), but either way this one is worth the rental.

As far as the supporting cast goes, only Christopher Jordan Wallace, who previously only played a role as the kid version of Biggie in “Notorious”, was noticeable here. He brings the role of the local kid willing to help out the down on his luck Nick, from just another kid to a kid we care about as much as we care about Nick himself.

Verdict–> This is going to be another movie where if you like the type of movie, or LOVE the actor you will like it. It’s not a movie the people who love to yuk it up every week watching “Anchorman” are going to like tho. This is still a character piece and it’s that type of fans that will like the movie. I recommend this movie to those types of film fans and those looking to see Ferrel do something different. If you are looking for “Talladega Nights” then turn around now. But if you want to see an actor you like in a decently written movie then give it a shot. Just don’t look at the picture on the cover and see Ferrell, and expect a laugh a minute riot. It’s a serious movie.

Your Highness (2011–102 mins) James Franco, Danny McBride, Natalie Portman

I will make it pretty simple for all of you loyal readers of my Red Box Reviews… “Your Highness” is a swords and sorcery version of “Pineapple Express”. There really isn’t any other way to explain it. Franco plays the perfect son and amazing swordsman Prince Fabious. The bad son/screwup is Danny McBride as Prince Thadeous. They embark upon a quest to rescue Fabious’ captured love Belladonna (Z. Deschanel). On the way they have some adventures, get betrayed, go to a dirty old sooth-sayer, hit on wenches, and pick up a worthy and hot companion in Portman’s Isabel.

As far as crude rude and over the top humor goes, I enjoyed it a lot more then “MacGruber”. But then again “MacGruber” was one of the worst movies I have ever sat through. It’s not that “Your Highness” is bad, it’s just a bit sloppy, the effects are brutal at times,  and overall the writing was too over the top at times also. HOWEVER, that being said I can 100% say that if I was with the boys drinking some beers this movie would be one I wouldn’t turn down at all. It’s got that type of humor. Franco and McBride are 2 guys who are so damn good at poiking fun at themselves and delivering the perfect lines that it’s 100% enjoyable to watch. But I think the uncomfortableness of the flick makes it one where I don’t know if I would always think it’s a great watch with the wife movie. It might not even be a good date movie. It’s just a guys movie. A good one but just a guys movie.

Portman, while I think is beautiful, isn’t the perfect one for this role. I think she was trying to emulate Kira Knightly, and be better then her from “King Arthur”, and sure she looks decent with a bow, she’s just out of place here. Possibly it might have been better to have Zooey Deschanel as that part (she can play a decent badass too), and some typical model type or another comedienne as the fair maiden.

Verdict—> I think I said it about 4 times above but here’s one more!—> It’s a guys movie. A very good and funny guys movie. If you got some beers, some pizza, and want to laugh then sure grab the unrated edition and enjoy it. Anyone else shouldn’t bother.

So 6 months (or so) ago I made a post right before launch of RIFT after doing a while in BETA. It was my first impressions and if RIFT was any good. Find that post HERE. It’s not at the 6  month birthday/anniversary of the game launch and I am here to ask the next question. After 6 months, is RIFT still any good?

In short yes, and in short no. Confused? Well yeah me too. So READ ON!

First let me preface a bunch of things with a history of both my play style and my happenings with the game. My “play-style” is almost a 100% prototypical casual-hardcore. Meaning that for me, I can only play the game on my off weeks of work (I work nights 7 on 7 off–so for those 7 nights of working I cannot get into game). So the typical friend/relationship building in guilds is REAL hard to generate this way. This can take away from enjoyment of the game if you sign on to a game and even tho you have a guild you still are a stranger in your own guild because you are gone for 7 days at a time. I also hurt myself this way b/c I tend to be quite the alt-aholic and I have 5 characters I have been playing and I think of them 4 are in a guild and only 2 of those are in the SAME guild. I freely admit, it’s my own fault, but a nice lesson learned going forward. Find one guild get as many toons into it as the guild will allow so you are around the same set of people in the game. The hardcore part of my self proclaimed “casual-hardcore” is that when I AM off from work, once the family is in bed and I have finished with blogging, and catching up on various stuff, I am then in game for 2-3 hours a night.

My second preface for this RIFT experience, is my crashing issues. It’s no secret if you have been following my blog that for the first 4-5 months of launch I had some SEVERE crashing issues with the game. The 1st instances of it I knew 100% were my CPU’s fault. I had a video card that was on it’s way out so I knew I needed a new one. Sure enough 1 week into launch and the card officially waved bye-bye so I ended up with a new one and a new power supply to go with it. Alas, my crashing was not fixed. Going back to the whole work thing… When you have problems with something and support opens tickets for you, it’s nearly impossible to get into game and check out said fixes you get real fast. SO when these suport people close tickets in 48 hours with no response it was a huge PIMA to get the ticket constantly re-opened then a fix sent to me. I got the usual idiot the 1st time every time who cut and pasted all the usual stuff… Is your computer on, is it plugged in , yep that bad…. Then I would get the next guy who would always ask about my video drivers blah blah… BUT, finally I got to the mighty level 3 support! I finally got to a guy who handled my ticket and even when it auto-closed in subsequent weeks he was able to grab the ticket pretty quickly and work with me. And to Trion’s credit, they never gave up and they finally last month (yeah I know a LONG time) fixed the issue (apparently), and I haven’t gotten any crashes of my system since then (knock on wood). If I hadn’t had these issues, it’s kinda likely that not only would I be max level on at least 2 toons, but it’s possible I could have had more contacts in my guilds. Yet, it’s quite a testament to the game that I kept with it this long and saw it through to when I could play full time with no issues. I still love it and now let’s go over why!

Six months ago the first thing I mentioned I loved were THE RIFTS! Make a game called RIFT and you better make said things good. Are they still as good? Yes, and no. The yes part is, sure they are fun and the rewards are still good. The problem is that after you solo 1-2 of them in a short session, you can grow weary of them kinda quickly and then they bore you. If you have that killer AOE build and can mow them down quickly then it might not feel as bad but they tended to get old after a bit. Granted, this is only b/c I am 90% a solo player. See the normal “minor” rifts are mostly a piece of cake to solo. That is, until you get to the 1st end boss of the rift it gets a bit more challenging, but still manageable. What happens next is that you get a timer on that boss and if you beat him in the timer range you get to the bonus stages. The #1 problem with the bonus stages is, they always end in an elite boss. Which in a group is fine, but when you are soloing the RIFT it’s damn near impossible to defeat. Sure you still get the rewards, eventually, but it’s frustrating to put in the time and have to wait for the payout. Now, if you have a buddy (or 2+) and group up just wander around completing RIFTs in a zone, then you tend to not grow tires of them and it’s an absolute BLAST to do them. I loved this the few times I hooked up with a couple of strangers for some good old fashioned kill fests. It’s a ton of fun to game this way and a good break from soloing quests/rifts.

Last time my big fear was that the RIFT system was going to have the same issues that WAR had with it’s PQ system. That, after a month or so once people out level the content and quit that there wouldn’t be anyone left to help you complete them. Well, the good thing is that you can solo the RIFTs (see above). The bad thing is that you cannot solo the zone events. And if you are in zones of level 20-45, even at peak times you tend to not have enough people to complete a world event. And these events are 100% non-soloable. Even if a level 50 was doing the zone event in the lowbie 1-10 zone I highly doubt he could be everywhere at once and be successful before the zone was over run and it would fail. This can be HIGHLY frustrating on a few levels. First, the zone events are damn cool. They have some story to them, they are challenging and they also have good rewards if you have done them from begining to end (They have decent awards anyway but when you go from start to finish you really clean up). Second, even if you know you won’t be able to complete/succeed with the event and ignore it all together, you still have to worry about the damage it’s doing to the zone. The invasions will take over smaller towns and even some of the big cities of the zones. This makes traveling around a lot more perilous. Sure the argument can be made, “This makes the game more exciting”, which sure I will agree with. Yet, when you alreayd know you don’t want to do the event and also are just trying to cram in some questing before bed, then you just simply do not want to worry about if you will be killed trying to turn in a quest, or even worse the quest giver is gone and you gotta wait for the zone event to time out and the attackers to de-spawn and you get the npc’s back. It’s something Trion will have to keep an eye on for the future of the game and see how they can combat this problem which, like I said, sometimes even happens on peak hours.

World Events—> Trion has made a big deal about their dynamic world events and how interactive they were supposed to be. They also have been rolling out these world events every couple of months. I would grade these as merely average at best so far. All they are, in essence is taking a different element, building a story around it, creating a currency for the event and throwing in different skins of the same daily quests to get these drops as rewards. You take these rewards and go to the event vendor and buy new loot. Sounds good right? Well it’s a tad monotonous. And that’s just from me. Imagine the guy who plays this game daily or 4-5 days a week and keeps getting these dragon tears from dailies or rifts etc. It’s great when the world event starts but becomes a grind in less then a week. They need to make these events TRULY dynamic. Make something big happen for the event. Make a town or city disappear for a few weeks if players don’t do enough to help out. If not enough tears are gotten and spent make the god get pissed and exact some revenge. So world altering things! Right now a bunch of dailies and a dungeon event isn’t big enough for these world events to truly make a splash or make big headlines. They have become nothing more then a WoW holiday event. I hope they can mix it up a bit and make it fun, challenging, and rewarding without the daily quest grind.

The Souls

Ok before I get back into talking about each class and what I have done in them, and before my bottom line I want to gush AGAIN about the soul system. I am 1000% in love with the fact that Trion has said… Hey we have a ton of skill tree ideas, and here, enjoy! Oh and if you get bored we won’t make you break the bank to respec! Sure it’s a bit pricey after a while training the skills again, and beyond 3 or so spec slots, it does get a  bit pricey but oh so worth it. I still maintain the best way to avoid any and all burnout in RIFT is, when you start feeling like it’s becoming a grind go ahead and re-spec and pick something new out. Or even a completely different role in the same class. Tired of a pet class? GO ahead and try tanking. Tired of Tanking or healing with your roles? Then go Assassin and stalk the shadows. It’s this idea that has kept me an alt machine. I have done this with every class and it still to this day works. (as you will see with my class report below) Every single class I have used anywhere from 3-4 different Specs and trees and it’s been rewarding every time. Sure it’s more learning of how to play each time but, that my friends is what makes it fun. Seeing new ways to play and trying to get each and every ounce of DPS or healing out of a new spec is just a blast. And who says you have to lose the old spec? I will go back 2-4 levels later and put the new talent points into an old spec and run with it for a while to see if that one skill has opened up from doing that, that turns an old grindy boring spec into the greatest spec since sliced bread! 6 months later this is still the single best part of the game, the class/soul talent choices available to you, and I think it’s the main reason I have just loved the game. I think that if I had more time and all my guys to 50, there is a good chance I might have stopped playing by now. I have so loved the changing it up so much, that I don’ think it would have the same effect if all my guys were max level.

My Characters—> Ok so I don’t clam to be a RIFT expert with leveling and such, but what I do claim is that I had some fun levelign so far, and I have some tips from what I have done. One thing that I have found about the leveling is that from level 1-20 or so it goes well. You are getting new spells/abilities quickly and they all seem to help nicely. But you hit that 20-30 plateau and it hits a damn brick wall. It starts to feel grindy and the new stuff isn’t awesome anymore. BUT, fear not… hit that magical level 31 point and BAM you can unlock the big 31 point top of the tree talent. So you then pick out which one you like the best, re-spec and go have some fun. SOOOO many fun things come of the powerful and fun 31 point talents.  So check out my history of each class and what I liked about each!

Cleric (Currently at level 31)

When I last wrote about the cleric I was having a ton of fun with the Justicar centered build. I loved being in the thick of rifts and throwing out an AOE heal to help out others. Since then? Well the healing has become quite weak from my justicar to the group. This has turned my Justicar from a tanking healing rifting toon to an AOE tanky grinder. I ended up making him a Justicar (31 points)/Shaman/ Inquisitor. I ended up throwing Inquisitor in there to get some DoT damage on the group I was fighting to help with damage instead of sitting there hitting my cleave attack to hit the 4-9 guys in front of me each time I used it. Great fun 1-20 or so but then boring as all hell. I went pure healer for a few levels of warfront PVP (which I am generally admittedly awful at and hate), which turned out to be kinda fun. You can basically throw 2-3 souls of healer, or 2 soul healer and 1 for some defense, head into a warfront and just heal your little ass off. By the time you are done you have done some good healing, earned yourself a ton of the favor points and you can then buy some pvp gear (which is really just pve gear when leveling but a little better so you can almost always get an upgrade. Eventually I hit the magic level 31 (cue angels singing aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!). NOW it’s time to hit the big talent and see what’s good for DPS. So lately I have been running a Shamen (31)/Sentinel/Druid build and a Druid (31)/Shamen/Sentinel build. The Shamen primary one seems to be a bit more fun right now, mainly for damage output and survivability. Throwing sentinel into those 2 builds was just for the extra healing and when you solo, self healing is a must. The Druid 31 point build so far is decent to meh. It gives you access to the Satyr pet which I think MIGHT end up as a solid damage dealer but for now, he cannot hold aggro enough and can get to be a pain. This is only a factor in group quests or trying to battle elite type guys, b/c you will get banged on and eventually die if you cannot out-heal it before you down it. So for now I will either stick with the Shamen big build or use the Druid on non harder quests opponents and for the change up from the norm when Shamen gets old.

Rogue (level 42 now)

I didn’t do a whole lot of branching out 6 months ago with the rogue. I primarily used the Nightblade back then to throw some firey spikes around and that was it. SINCE then, I changed it up 100% in the Rogue builds and did quite a bit of fighting with different specs. In my teens to twenties I used a Ranger build which gave me a pet. I always say in RIFT you need a pet in the 1st half or so, of the leveling. You can get mobbed quick where even 2-3 guys can overwhelm you if you don’t have self healing and you can die easy. The Ranger helped that a bit till I got to 20 then I was able to get some decent self heals or shields. I then switched to this tank type build for the bulk of my twenties. It was a Riftstalker primary build, which has a ton of teleporting on the battle field and then giving you some shields when you teleport. Not only that, when you kill things with combo points you get healed for a % per combo point left on the dying creature. I think the % has been tweaked a couple of times over the course of the last few months tho, but it was still a blast. I ended up using this mostly as a rift grinding build and it worked awesome for building up exp and planarite in the 20’s. Once I hit that late twenty and early 30’s magic point I went to a Blade Dancer (31) /Riftstalker (heals!)/assassin build. It’s got a KILLER 31 point talent–> Dancing Steel, which is amazing for AOE killing and questing. I think I flew thru the majority of the 30’s with that spec until I started to use the Assassin (31)/RS/BD build. This build also has some healing but just an amazing beast of a burst damager. Might not be as great in huge group fights but in 1-3 people in front of you, you can’t go wrong. The sap, and burst damage and the “oh shit button” of Slip Away is huge for survivability as well. I have been using this Assassin build the most lately in PVE and PVP and it’s been the most funI have had with the Rogue yet. The Rogue continues to be my favorite toon to play in RIFT, the only one that comes close is the Mage but I have to say my Warrior has been gaining ground of late.

Mage (level 36)

Back 6 months ago my favorite thing was the Chloro/Necro/Lock I was running. It worked real well b/c I put more points into Chloro then the others and was able to keep any pet up for as long as I needed. This was my primary spec until a good friend of mine opened my eyes to the Elementalist spec in my mid to upper 20’s and I basically have not looked back since. Once you get the greater earth elemental for tanking and the greater healing for him (I think it’s 25% health to him PER SECOND), throw onto that Fiery assalt which is a nice nuke, there isn’t a whole lot you cannot withstand. I ended up going Elementalist(31)/Choloro/ Dominator. It’s a ridiculous overkill spec. You get the pet who’s nearly impossible to let die, and if you do you can insta summon another, a huge amount of healing in the choloro, and one last safe guard in the CC polymorph squirrel in the dominator tree. Yep, it is one hell of a ride to take.

Warrior (one is 33 one is 21)

Warrior is the only class I have 2 of. I did this b/c I wanted to level one entirely as a tank and one entirely as a DPS. This was a good bit of fun as the Tank using a Pali/ Void Knight/Beast Master as my tanking spec. This was all well and good until late teens early twenties (where I am stuck now on him) where I have stopped tanking. Mainly I stopped b/c there isn’t enough people around to tank for in those areas and solo tanking is 100% a drag (see Justicar! above) So I went more to my DPS warrior. He’s 33 now, but like the other warrior I was bored of him and just didn’t like it at all for a while. There was not enough burst damage and not enough self healing to keep him fun. I have this # 1 theory for any solo warriors out there. The absolute must is taking Paladin. You have to have 8 points in Pali to get the 100% self heal on the 10 min cool-down. Sure the CD sucks but you need this if you are soloing. It will save your life countless times in battles and might even allow you to take on an elite at then end of the bonus section of a RIFT.  SO my 1st spec with DPS ended up being the Paragon/Pali/ Beast Master (see–> Pet + Lay on hands = more survivability). But as always I didn’t feel like I was doing enough damage so I tried something kinda dumb for a DPS warrior which ended up working nicely. I switched over to a Reaver primary spec (with Pali and Warlord) making me a DoT DPS warrior. By then I was able to use the Plague Bringer talent in the tree which spread out the DoT’s to 5 nearby creatures. SO all I did for the longest time (well and still now!) was mount up run around grab 4-5 mobs and then hit PB and start throwing DoTs, including the 31 point tallent which already spreads to all around. Couple that with the healing element of Soul Feast  + Soul Sickness, and Master of the Abyss and you have quite a bit of survivability and damage output. It has made my warrior be sturdy and have a great bit of damage output as well.

VERDICT—> Yeah I know I talk too much… but again is RIFT still any good? For now it sure is. It has me hooked and has me hopful that other MMO’s in the future see how they can have a ton of classes/specs and still keep it balanced and fun. The loneliness factor will cause me to stop subscribing the minute that SWTOR and or Diablo 3 comes out but it’s not so much that RIFT is bad but I will be tired of it solo by then and ready for a break. I still recommend this game 10000% to anyone thinking about playing it. Do so now, get in experiment and have a blast. The game is great and you will enjoy it quite a bit.

Any Q’s or comments post them here or email me directly at Geekjockblog{at}yahoo{dot}com

-GeekJock

Limitless (2011–105 mins ) B. Cooper, A. Friel, R. De Niro

Eddie (Cooper) is a writer stuck in quite a rut. His head is clouded, he can’t write, he’s become quite the slacker and doesn’t do a whole lot with himself. That is, until an out of touch friend gives him the ultimate wonder drug. One that enables us to harness 100% (or more) of our mind’s power. Suddenly the whole world is Eddie’s oyster. He finishes his novel in no time flat, he’s able to make full use of his time, he’s even able to figure out the stock market “code” and make a crap-ton of money. Naturally you cannot do these things without raising the eye of a few people in high places and some seedy ones as well. The supply of the wonder drug starts to become scarce and the other forces that be want their piece of the pie. What develops is a actiony-drama about staying one step ahead of the bad guys, trying to cure the withdrawal side effects and trying to live the wonder life we all want to live.

“Limitless” is a decent watch for a far fetched move. It take some WSoD, but still delivers on a good plot idea well. You get a like-able guy in Cooper playing someone who finally has his eyes opened to what the world can truly be for him. When he grasps it, of course he never wants to give it back. I had quite a fun time watching this movie on all levels. The plot, the lines, the details, the narrating… all done incredibly well. One major thing to keep an eye out for is the pretty subtle yet quite effective use of sharp coloring to the movie. Every time Eddie gets back into the “full world” if you will, the whole movie takes on a crisp color tone. As if he’s seeing color in the world for the first time . When he’s off the drug we go back into a world almost devoid of color. It’s not black and white so much as it’s drab and dreary. It’s a real cool technique that the director uses that’s not quite as obvious as say, “The Wizard of Oz” but you will all of a sudden get it when you see it for the 2nd or third time happen on screen. Look for it, I think it will enhance your view of the movie and some enjoyment of it as well.

Verdict–> A good tense drama. You can’t help but sit on the edge of your seat looking and thinking about what’s next. Of course you can’t help but wonder “What if?” for your own life but that’s a conversation for a different day. Pick it up this weekend, a real good watch, and a top recommendation!