CUBEsMIND

Zoo (2018)

2020-02-14

skeletonsintheclosetNot your run-of-the-mill zombie flick. This had more of a psychological cabin fever kind of vibe. You see maybe a half dozen zombies in the whole thing. The movie is more about a couple stuck in their apartment and how they are dealing with the passage of time and their relationship, as they wait to be rescued.

I liked the acting and the drama that was involved, which was pretty much what the movie was about. So if you're looking for scense of people being devoured or zombie skulls being smashed in, then this isn't the zombie film for you. If you are into more of the psychological effect of an outbreak occuring and what it would be like if you stayed indoors trying to wait it out, then you may enjoy this one. It's just showing the other side of the outbreak.

Frozen 2 (2019)

2020-02-13

skeletonsintheclosetWell I didn't hate the movie, but really it just wasn't close to as strong as the first one. Story, music, comedy, etc. was just kind of okay. I started to get worried at the very beginning, when it was less then 30minutes in and they already had three songs, non of which really stood out. Honestly none of the songs were memorable to me.

Story was just kind of...well standard. It was like they just took a Bending page from Avatar, and went with that. I don't know if her being the "fifth element" was supposed to be a twist, but it was kind of obvious. Where in the first movie that prince being a bad guy was a pretty solid twist, because he never showed his hand. I think my big poo-poo about her being the center of these elements, was that ice is just a property of water...so...yeah, like why would she be at the center of the elements but only control one state of one of the elements. I guess we could say that a new person takes over that central role every, well they are in olden times, so lets be generous and say every 60 years a new "custodian" comes along, and that person randomly gets control of one of the properties of one element. I don't know, maybe I missed something by the time the movie got to that point, because I was just kind of getting bored.

The movie was just to simple, it felt more like a kids movie, whereas the first one had more complexity to the story and felt more mature.

As for comedy, the funniest thing that Olaf did was reinact the first movie. They had him sing a song at one point, and I was just sitting there in a state of confusion as to why the "goofy" character was singing about getting older. Overall the funny parts just made me smile, but not really laugh.

The couple of things I don't want to mention, because they may be spoilers to some people, just didn't really feel like there was any reason for them. Like they didn't really get into exlpanations of things, so there was not much depth to a lot of the scenarios.

The Magicians (2005)

2019-07-10

the-magicians-2015I watched the first season back in 2015, then lost track of the show for the past four years. I finally heard some friends had been watching it, so I jumped on the band wagon and have been catching up over the past couple of weeks.

I finally finished the 4th season, and I still think the show has held up over time. I was going to give it 4 stars, but they really have some great story plots. Like when I think they really aren't going anywhere, they throw something in their explaining everything that is going on. So I'm still excited for the upcoming season, unfortunately now that I'm caught up I have to wait like five months or so.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

2019-07-08

scouts-guide-to-the-zombie-apocalypseNot really one for the classic zombie lover. Zombies were more like "Return of..." instead of "Night of...", but it was still a fun movie to watch. Made me laugh a couple of times, and the production value was way better than I thought it was going to be!

So if you are just looking for something to laugh with friends, I would say go for it!

Dungeonfog

2019-06-16

I started to use this for building DnD maps, and I'm liking it so far! It's pretty easy to use and, if you pay for it, you get a lot of textures and assets that work with it.

It looks like they are still rolling out some updates, but as is it works really well. You can even use it as an online or VR tabletop system. I haven't tried this feature yet, but I was watching videos on it and it looks pretty smooth. Right now I've just been exporting the maps and pulling them into Roll20.

It's neat that it's pretty easy to add lighting/shadows to the level, but I do wish there was a way to set it so that everything automatically had it applied. As far as I can tell you can only add it to one object at a time, so if you want things to look really cool it takes some time.

https://www.dungeonfog.com/

Dungeon Painter Studio

2019-05-18

I found this a little difficult to use, not enough assets, not enough functionality, and I found something that is better. Also, the issues or questions that I did have and found on the forums, came down to things that the developer wasn't going fix, instead saying to users don't use the tool the way you want to, use it the way we want you to use it.

For example, many people are interested in scaling objects by only the X or Y axis, but the developer replies by just saying you shouldn't need to scale at all because the objects are the size they are supposed to be. And can't even fathom why someone would want to scale by only one verticie since it would distort the image even more.

"In fact, I do not quite understand why do you want to scale objects. First of all, they are the size of which should be, secondly, they are raster objects that lose much in quality being scaled up" -developer

The point being that you don't need to understand why a creative person wants to do something, you just give them the option to do it. That's the whole point of creativity, is going beyond the box!

Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up

2019-05-04

https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

rick-astley-never-gonnaI don't care what anyone says, this song is awesome! I remember back when getting "Rick Rolled" was the big thing online, and it took me a while to figure out that it was a bad thing. I was always like, cool I like this song! The only downside I had about getting Rick Rolled was that then I would sit there and listen to the whole song and froget what I was in the middle of doing.

I mean come on he's a snappy dresser. Great hair, good smile, upbeat tune. Look at that very tastefully done video. Not over the top, but still classy. Even the ladies are sensibly dressed and tastefully dancing. Lets ignore the fact that he's singing to an empty room with one bartender. That's neither here nor there.

Shazam! (2019)

2019-04-25

shazam-2019SHAZAM!! Damn, this movie was way better than I thought it was going to be. I mean I thought it was going to be pretty good, because the trailer was showing a good mix of action and humor but I really enjoyed the whole thing...well actually I think we ended up missing the first ten minutes or so but nothing that we couldn't figure out during the movie.

Now keep in mind this was one of the heros I didn't know much about growing up. Like I knew the name and I knew he was a kid...well I think at one point it wasn't one kid but it took like seven kids that had to be like in a certain range of one another to change into Shazam, and I remember them all being like foster kids. Like I said it felt like the creators were still trying to work out the details of the superhero, so I never really latched on like I did with XMen and Venom and some others. Getting off track...

Point being if you like humor and superheros I think you're going to like this one! I'm not going to say the ending, but I did like the way the last fight branched out the way it did.

Santa Clarita Diet (2017)

2019-04-23

santa-clarita-diet-2017Love it! It's a zombie show, but it's a comedy one, so that made me a little more open to check it out.

Great casting choices in this show. It just feels like everyone fits their character to a T. I've also enjoy their slant on zombies, I don't want to give too many details about it, but it's got some neat little twists that are pretty good and keep you guessing.

I binged the first three seasons of this, and I'm excited for a fourth one. Now from a quick search it looks like they haven't officially approved season four, at this time, but it seems to be popping up a lot on social media too so hopefully they go for it!

Riesen

2019-04-22

riesen chewy chocolate caramelI just had to put these up. These aren't a new candy by any means, but I just love them so much! Best consumed at pocket temperature.

Luckily, I have yet to get a cavity, but I certainly believe that in the end it will be because of these delicous little chocolate caramel candies.

I have to force myself to buy the smallest bag, because I'll just keep eating them. I've easily gone through a bag in a day, which just happened again last Sunday. I woke up and put a couple in my pocket, went downstairs to make some eggs, and while I was waiting for the eggs to cook I snacked on some pocket candy.

I ended up eating more candy, then real food before lunch hit. My stomach was even upset from the large quantities of sugar I was putting in it and I still continued to eat them.

On the plus side, it does make me brush my teeth more...mostly because I want to make sure I have teeth to keep eating them. This is the main reason I hope I don't get dentures. Come on scientist! Figure out how we can regrow our teeth! I'm thinking we should get at least three teeth regrowths a lifetime.

Black Summer (2019)

2019-04-21

black-summer-2019Yes, another zombie show.(notice the period instead of an exclamation point) I have to admit, it's kind of odd that they keep pumping out more and more zombie content.

I mean I know that The Walking Dead is still pulling in viewers...or I guess a better thing to say would be pulling in money, but this over saturation of the market is kind of how things die and we have to wait years for them to re-emerge. It would be great if different concepts would be scattered about the viewing landscape, so that we get more of a sprinkle here and there to wet our appetites. But I digress...

This is actually a pretty cool series. I like the way they set it up, so that each episode is broken up into these mini-glimpses of what is going on for different people/groups over the same span of time. It's like here is what is happening to group A, now here is what was happening to group B during that same time of what you watched happen to group A. Inevitably the groups/people cross paths or reconnect, which is a really cool setup. I know this happens a little bit in other shows, but the scale they do it on in this show is more indepth.

Now just a heads up for the purest. These are your fast change, runner zombies, that have enough thought power to climb and course correct. Just wanted to throw that out there, because I've realized that sometimes I get pulled out of the flick when I have to right my zombie logic during the show. Which is basically me talking out loud to myself something like, "Zombies wouldn't be able to do that...nope calm down Captain Judgy, this is just their take on it, lets just enjoy their world building".

There were maybe two scenes where the shakey came was a bit too much and went on for too long, but all-in-all I enjoyed it!

Book of Monsters (2018)

2019-04-19

book-of-monstersYes, the book of monsters! Muwhahaha! This was a lower budget movie and sometimes they stayed focus on the monsters too long, which made it easy to see that low budget monster build.

It wasn't a bad one to watch. Not really any new concepts in it, and it had a bit of silliness too.

Us (2019)

2019-04-12

usIt blew my mind when I realized Jordan Peele wrote this...which made me look up what else he's wrote, and led me to find out that he also wrote Get Out (2017), which again blew my mind.

I actually figured out the movies while I was watching them, but I still enjoyed the heck out of them. They were just a good time.

When they started to explain more of what was going on, in this movie, it blew my mind because I had the exact same conversation with my friend at work like last year. Now don't get me wrong, he took it a further step in a thriller/horror direction so that was cool.

After seeing this I started to think he's one of the people that I would probably get along with, and from the way he writes I feel like we would be good at fueling each others imaginations. In any event I hope he keeps it up, and I'm excited for the upcoming Twilight Zone series he is working on!

Captain Marvel (2019)

2019-04-10

captain-marvelGood movie, but just felt kind of like the standard Marvel format at this point. I wasn't really blown away by it, or anything like that.

I also thought it would be more critical information to get before watching Avengers: Endgame, which I plan to see next, but wasn't anything really critical as far as I could pickup.

About all the movie does is give you a quick background of Captain Marvel, which doesn't really matter, and an idea of how powerful she is. That's cool and all but unless she can remove the infinity gauntlet she still isn't a match for Thanos.

What this all means is that I'm eager to see the new Avengers movie, to see how they play all this out.

Side Note: Kind of a bummer it looks like Marvel's website has been revamped to push the movie stuff. It use to be like looking at the Marvel cards, where it listed their stats, abilities, backgrounds, and was just very straight forward.

Skeletons in the Closet (2018)

2019-03-30

skeletonsintheclosetThis one was hard to get through. It was an anthology, and I didn't necessarily hate it, but I don't think a lot of people will be able to make it through it.

Acting was okay in it, but the quality wasn't the best. I didn't mind the old style filming with the graininess or even the tracking effect they did, but some times the shots were too hand-camy or not framed enough for the details they were trying to get across.

Like in one shot they wanted you to see that a picture on the wall was the picture of a person from one of the other stories, but the shot wasn't framed on the picture it was framed on the wall and there were a lot of things on the wall to take your focus. The shot was also just a couple of seconds so it was hard to figure out what they wanted you to see.

To counter issues like that they would have two hosts, that were watching the film, that would fill in those gaps. So one would ask the other about the picture that you could barely make out. They would also explain the story you just watched, so it kind of took out any discussion...that is if you knew anyone that watched this to talk with it about.

So you're probably wondering why I didn't give it one star? Maybe it was the 80's feel it had going on, or maybe it was that the stories weren't that bad if they had just had more money to improve upon the quality and special effects and flesh out the ending a bit more. Basically it had enough for me to stay interested.

Trolli Sour Brite Jelly Beans

2019-03-23

trolli-sour-brite-jelly-beansA little sour, a little sweet, a little yum-yum in my tum-tum. I like sour stuff, and even though these weren't like super sour, they still hit the spot.

If you like sour stuff and you like jelly beans, you're probably going to like these, like I do...did I use enough "likes" to get you interested?

The Dwarves of Demrel (2018)

2019-03-14

dwarves of demrelThis is a hard one to rate. It wasn't really a bad movie...I guess I might have been expecting a lot more from it.

It was kind of like that movie The 33, where the mine workers get trapped in the mine, but it's just three dwarves and there is no real information on what is going on outside of the mine.

There is a lot of information that they talk about to help you form a picture of what has been transpiring over the years and how they got into the situation, but it's one of these movies that eventually just fades to black and leaves you with that frustrating feeling.

There are also a lot of dark scenes in this movie. I get they are trying to give you that sense of how dark a mine is when your light source goes out, but just watching a black or barely illuminated screen with random sounds can easily be overdone.

I think I might have been just really looking for a dwarf movie, with large mines, and expertly crafted stone workings of a vast underground kingdom. All I got was three dwarves trapped in a small cave with very little combat.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

2019-03-12

dirk gentlyThis show was really slow to start, but I just stuck with it because I enjoyed all the crazy things that were going on.

At first I was just watching it while I was doing some other work, but it really started to come together as it went along. Eventually I just couldn't do other things while I was watching it, because I didn't want to miss anything.

I'm just about done with season one, but I think there are only two seasons. If the second season is as good as the first, that's going to be a bummer. I can kind of understand why though. As stated before it took me a while to get into the first season, so if you aren't binge watching it, it could feel draggy.

The Umbrella Academy (2019)

2019-03-10

umbrella academyI'm not finished with the first season of this just yet, but this has been are really great series!

I don't know if it's only going to be one season, but as long as they wrap it up nicely I'm not really concerned.

The first two episodes are a little slow, but it really starts to take off after that. It has just about everything I'm looking for in a great show.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

2019-02-25

movie-posterGreat movie! Enjoyed the animation and comedy in it. Don't worry this isn't another reboot of the Spider-man series, they even joke about that in the very beginning.

I feel like this may even be a way to help introduce the multi-verse theory to people that are new to the concept. Which would be really cool if they had planned this to get ready for upcoming live action movies, perhaps even to help with something that may occur in the upcoming Infinity Wars movie.

Although the run time is a little bit long, I would still recommend it. Especially if you, or someone you know, needs a quick brush up on what the multi-verse is.

Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018)

2019-02-03

godzilla planet eaterThis was the third movie, in a Godzilla Netflix trilogy. I liked the first two better. This one was just kind of drawn out. When I watch a Godzilla movie, I pretty much just want to see and learn about Godzilla.

This spent more time on the natives and an alien's spiritual concepts. I started to get to the point where I was just fast forwarding through the jibber-jabber.

I don't know it just seems like they just didn't explain the last part. I can only assume that Godzilla was just going to leave them alone as long as they didn't make any technological advances.

Nature's Temptations Gummy Bears

2019-01-31

natures temptations gummy bearsThese are awesome. I'm not even a gummy bear kind of person, but I really liked these. So as long as they aren't lying about what's in them, they seem like a great candy to me.

Laird Unsweetened Superfood Creamer

2019-01-31

laird superfood creamer unsweetendA Keto friendly coffee creamer. A little bit easier than making your own Keto creamer. If you don't like coconut than you probably won't like this. Apparently the Keto stuff is supposed to help sustain energy, so that you don't crash.

I'm going to say it worked pretty well. I didn't really feel a huge drop in energy like I usually do, when caffeine wears off. Then again this is one of those things where it's hard to say that it was the cause. There are so many things that effect energy levels through out the day, that it's really hard to measure.

Simply put. I thought it was tasty and I didn't mind substituting the sugary flavored Coffee-Mate that I usually put in my coffee, which I know isn't good for me. So from a health stand point it has to be better for me.