Freemium = 'not really'

I've been playing QuizUp, a freemium game, for a year and a half now. It's a free app, but it does allow in-app purchases of 'experience point' multipliers, a buck to double your experience points (or whatever the game calls them) for ten minutes, a couple more bucks to double the experience for half an hour or an hour. I have yet to pay a single penny through the game, but I know that freemium games are wildly profitable - Clash of Clans had more than $1.8 BILLION in revenue in 2014.

Thankfully, South Park laid it all out...



This last one, I warn you, is more than a little NSFW.

The Summer Media

Quick hit reviews as I continue not to accomplish the tasks on my summer to-do list...

Movies

• Lucy - moderately interesting for the first half, less so for the second half. Scarlett Johansson is attractive but plays an thoroughly unlikeable and not-engaging character. Don't bother
• Ant-Man - Possibly the funniest of the Marvel films and way better than I expected it to be. Computer generated effects during the shrinking scene are wildly inventive and entertaining. Paul Rudd is charismatic and engaging, too. The young effects on Michael Douglas at the very beginning of the movie are impressive as heck, too.
• A Million Ways to Die in the West - kinda chucklesome but not entertaining enough to sit all the way through a second time. I can't even suggest you make it a first time.
• Superman: Unbound - passable adaptation of a far more interesting comic book 

• Knights of Badassdom - A movie about LARPing that loses most of its entertainment value when Peter Dinklage dies. From there it's mostly a long slog to a predictable ending.
• Chasing Amy - I rewatched this for the first time in at least a decade. It's still pretty entertaining but didn't connect as well with me this time around. I'm pretty sure I've moved on from Kevin Smith.
• Don't Be a Menace While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood - It's been twenty years since I watched Boys in the Hood, but this parody echoes that movie and its era marvelously. Funny even if it's dated
• Frank - Weird, weird film...far less chucklesome and entertaining than the trailer suggested, but it's well acted and written, just weird and kind of depressing
• I Hate Christian Laettner (30 for 30) - Like most of the ESPN 30 for 30 series, this one's very well done. It's not Bo Knows or the one on Brian Bosworth, but it's still impressive.

Television

• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - I watched the entire first season. Chucklesome if formulaic sit-com. The characters are likeable enough as are the actors, but the pattern (something mentioned in passing during the 1st act turns out to be the solution during the 3rd act) does get repetitive by the end. 
• The Spoils of Babylon - Only watched the first episode but wasn't too interested in watching more than that. The comedy is very broad as is the satire. Big, big cast of funny people, though.
• Arrested Development - I'm currently halfway through the second season. I appreciate that the gags are repetitive and recurring. Funny stuff

An old skit...

I dig the sketch Le Jeunes de Paris on Saturday Night Live. It's just absurd enough for my tastes.

I am curious, though, why the videos rarely survive on YouTube for long - issues with music licensing, perhaps?

Luckily other video streaming sites aren't quite as legally-bound...

Les Jeunes De Paris from pete theman on Vimeo.






There are still two more I'm trying to embed - one with Anna Kendrick and a second with Emma Stone. I'll see what I can find. 'Til then, I'll link to them.

Once More With Feeling, finally

I'm working my way through the full series of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (wonder if there really should be a colon in there or not) on Netflix. I watched most of the first five seasons when it was on the WB but lost track of the series when it moved to UPN for the last two seasons.

That meant I didn't get a chance to see "Once More With Feeling", the nearly-all-musical episode in season six. Turns out it's pretty spectacular. Who knew?

Coming television

Television about which I am minorly or more excited in the coming time...

A new season of Red Dwarf...

A new season (or two-part special, whatever, BBC) of Luther...

New episodes of Danger Mouse...

A new season and a non-continuity special of BBC's Sherlock...

In tribute to Scrubs

I noticed recently that The AV Club has been doing episode-by-episode reviews of Scrubs. So far they've been through the first three seasons leaving like six or so more seasons to go through. Sadly they seem to have set the project aside, having not reviewed anything since August of 2013.

And I keep bumping across Buzzfeed articles about Scrubs: 27 Things You Might Not Know About Scrubs...23 Times Scrubs Got Way, Way Too Real...The Janitor's 39 Best Lines...The Cast of Scrubs Reunites on Cougar Town...

Of course there's a Scrubs wiki...

There might be a Scrubs musical...

Don't Overlook this

That's pretty frickin' awesome. Adam Savage of the Mythbusters built a near-perfect scale model of the Overlook Hotel's magical maze from The Shining, and he built it in ridiculous detail...like stunning, OCD-level detail.

And he filmed the process and did an hour-long podcast after the fact.

I've watched them both, and the podcast is further afield into the minutia of the program. Both are fascinating, though.

That's two dozen

"Ya got ten...then ya got ten more...then it's like, what's this, four more?...twenty-four, faggetaboutit..."

This could revolutionize math as we know it.

Tweedy on Austin City Limits

Check out the full episode of Austin City Limits featuring Jeff Tweedy, his son, and a few friends.

The Marvel cinematic universe may be going downhill

What if Randall Munroe met Stephen Colbert?

I love xkcd like nobody's business. I even have a hoodie from their online store and own Randall's first book just because I wanted to support the man.

That being said, he's not the best interview on the planet.

"Not Our Fault" from Bob's Burgers

I am so geeked for the premiere of Cosmos this Sunday. Yeah, I love Bob's Burgers and all, but I don't think I've ever watched it anywhere but on Hulu anyway.

Return of revenge of reviews...movies and tv today...comics later...

It's been a very long time since I've done any proper reviews 'round this blog, and I remember a long, long ago that Ruffryder asked that I keep reviewing, so I will...

The Goldbergs - The television Adam Goldberg has the GI Joe aircraft carrier...and Castle Greyskull...and ridiculously big, nearly mint condition Transformers...and so much more...

It's just ridiculous how many awesome toys he has. People are writing about it on the internet, and Adam Goldberg - the show's writer and eponymous source material - responded, stating that most of the toys in the fictional Goldberg's room are from the real Goldberg's collection.

This is a man of my age, of my era, of my childhood...though a man clearly better about keeping track and taking care of his childhood treasures. Not that I had anything remotely as cool as the USS Flagg.

The show took a little while to grow on me, but I'm thoroughly hooked, watching every week's episodes on hulu.com sometime over the weekend. The first couple of episodes were a little too formulaic - Mom interferes or misunderstands the kids, and things only become right when she realizes the errors of her ways.  As the show's grown a bit and done some meandering from the by-the-book opening episodes, it's hit a nice stride with Adam 'dating' the pretty girl from up the street, Grandpa sometimes struggling with retirement, Mom trying to let her baby boy grow up, Dad finding ways to connect with his children, and Adam's siblings fitting their parts like hands in gloves.

It's a fun, fun show for any child of the 80's.

Room 237 - This documentary reads like a disaster. It's a series of interviews with four people who have fairly involved theories about what Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is 'really' about. None of the four are ever shown. Instead we get a mixture of footage from The Shining played over and over, played forward and backward at the same time, animations of how the hotel was laid out, and footage of the real hotels in which the movie was filmed.

No people to see...no one to connect with...nothing much to look at sometimes.

It should be a disaster and certainly isn't. It is, in fact, far from that.



It's a brilliant exploration of obsession and desperation, of five people looking for meaning in a piece of art. All five are given absolute respect and presented without comment, as though their theories were entirely rational and reasonable and not crazy in the least. In fact, it's only in the last few moments of the film that one of the theorists notes aloud the similarities between his life - lost job, economic tough times, adolescent son - and how he has been trapped in the Overlook every bit as much as was Jack Torrence by the end of the film.

I don't in any way believe that the film is about the holocaust, the plight of the Native Americans, or the faking of the Apollo 11 moon landing, but these people do, and they believe it with the entirety of their souls.

The film is a brilliant look into the love of art taken to extremes, to the dangers of confirmation bias, and to the fact that once an artist hands his or her work over to the public, the artist loses control of what the artwork means. From thence forward, whatever the public thinks of the artwork becomes what the artwork is really about.

If you're interested, there's a longer clip (11min) from the documentary on YouTube.

The Way Way Back - Here's a bit of summer, coming-of-age fun for ya.

Awkward son gets trapped at the New Jersey beach with his mother, mom's new boyfriend and slightly older daughter. He hates the beach, his mother's boyfriend's friends, and his life.

Enter manic pixie dream girl in the form of Sam Rockwell, here to teach our protagonist the lesson that 'you're alright just as you are.'

Man, I'm cynical. I actually enjoyed this movie a lot, and I still struggle to write a nice review of it.

The screenplay, the second from Jim Rash (above, doing the Charlie Brown dance) and Nat Faxon (just to the right in the blue, button-down shirt), their first after the Oscar-winning The Descendants, leaves plenty of room for Rockwell to do exactly what a Rockwell does best: be wacky and flippant and do the Rockwell dance. Just jump to 0:11...go ahead...



Killer Joe - Matthew McConaughey has turned into a heck of an actor. There was certainly a phase there where he was just chugging out fluff romantic comedy after fluff romantic comedy where I kind of wrote him off. From an npr interview with him a year or so ago, McConaughey felt the same way. He wasn't getting offered parts that were anything other than the romantic comedy leads, so he stepped back and waited until something juicier came to him.

Killer Joe, the title role, is certainly something juicier. Joe is a law officer - though we never seen more than a glimpse of him in that capacity - who kills people on the side. Emile Hirsch hires Joe to kill his mother, promising Joe his fee from the insurance policy. Hirsch's divorced father and developmentally disabled sister are in on the plan, as is father's new girlfriend. As Joe isn't inclined to take jobs on promises of later payment, he moves in with the dysfunctional family and takes the sister, Juno Temple playing underaged, as his retainer.

Joe pays up on his end of the bargain, but everything else goes wrong from there...everything...

After a very violent, sadistic kitchen scene - trimmed somewhwat to avoid earning Joe an NC-17 rating but still disturbing - the bad end unhappily and the good unluckily. Strike that, there are no good in this film, though the film is very well acted and adapted from the stage source. It's dark, dark, dark, though. Tread carefully...it's certainly and strongly .

American Hustle - That's what this movie is about, those five actors right there.

Bale, Cooper, Adams, Renner, Lawrence...they act the hell out of these parts. The women look gorgeous. The men look comedically period. The combovers, the pompadours, the perms - all are outstanding. The dresses, the leisure suits, the fur coats, the cars, the phones, the gold medallions, the discos - spectacularly '70's, and the actors absolutely revel in their opportunity to play dress up.

The sink their teeth in and shake the movie for all it's worth, chewing up scenery with wild abandon. In most cases there isn't a resemblance of the actors. It's tough to see Christian Bale in the fat, bloat-bellied, horribly coiffed con man. Adams has never played this unethical, this sexual, this conniving. Cooper is the closest to a part he's played before as the charismatic, brash FBI agent who flies a little too close to the sun and doesn't realize that he isn't the smartest guy in the room at any point in the film. Lawrence plays manic and manipulative and stupid and drunk well enough that any inkling of Winters Bone or Katniss are subsumed entirely. And Renner may just be the only remotely good character in the film, a family man who just wants to do right by the town that elected him mayor.

The story - a pastiche of Abscam  - offers the players a number of double crosses, jilted lovers, mixed and obscured loyalties, and characters within characters within characters to inhabit, and the actors are clearly having a blast the whole time. Numerous stories about the film have portrayed the actors and having strong influence on their characters, the plot lines, and the overall story arc of the film. To the film's detriment, is appears that David O. Russel valued these contributions more than he valued tight editing. The film feels overly long and meanders at points, as Russel never seemed willing to cut any bit of the leads' great performances.

It's a fun film, but I can't imagine it's the best film of the year.

The Wolf of Wall Street - The record has been broken. Wolf apparently used the f-word 506 times in its three-hour-exact running time, shattering the record 433 of Summer of Sam. I've no idea whether Wolf also broke the record for ways showing the greed, for lack of a better word, is good, because that's about all that this film espouses.

There are beautiful people - DiCaprio looks like he's found the fountain of youth, playing a fit and youthful twenty-something taking his investors, initially the mailmen and plumbers of the country, later the wealthy whales, for all he can. As Matthew McConaughey's character says, "the name of the game is to move the money from your client's pocket into yours...nobody knows if a stock is going to go up, go down, sideways or in circles....It's fairy dust."

In the course of the film, DiCapro's titular wolf uses every drug he can find, sleeps with every woman available - and some who aren't available until he comes along for them, buys everything he can buy (yachts, houses, helicopters), and makes ridiculous amounts of money for himself, his employees, his friends, and his family. He pays for prostitutes and midget darts and half-naked marching bands to entertain his brokers, ships his money to Swiss banks, and ignores every bit of 'good' advice that is handed to him - from his lawyer, his father, his private investigator - until he eventually is tripped up through absolutely no direct fault of his own. Eventually his luck simply runs out.

Throughout all of this, the film feels hollow, without any moral compass, without any soul. DiCaprio is brilliant, carrying every scene and providing the energy for his entire office to run and to run rampant. His scene trying to get home from the country club once the drugs take hold is marvelously well acted.

But the movie left me cold. It's empty. It's blank. The best description that I've heard of the film in the media is that it's douchebag porn.

But it does have Ethan Suplee, and that is something, as is Margot Robbie who is sex on two legs in the film.

That's enough for today...I'll come back another day to review the comics I've read.

Back to basics to say goodbye

I've been in on Community since the beginning, and I'll certainly agree that last season found the show wandering. This season, though, with Dan Harmon back as show runner, the series has hit its stride with this week's episode being among its best...great, great stuff...

My top tens

Tastes shift, and favorites come and go.

It's a fact of life.

Because of this any attempt to list my ten favorite whatevers will only result in a list of my tastes at the moment. A year down the road, things in favor could fall out, and others could take their place.

With all that as caveat, I offer up my all-time top tens (or so, and in no order within each list)...

• Movies...(not necessarily the greatest, just my favorites)
• Hero
• The Usual Suspects
• Dr Strangelove
• Fight Club
• Hoosiers
• The Muppet Movie
• The Player
• The Thin Red Line
• The Big Lebowski
• Goodfellas 
• Books (must've read each at least twice to earn inclusion in the list)
• Brave New World
• Slaughterhouse 5
• The Electric Brae
• The Book of Basketball 
• Infinite in All Directions
• Haunted
• Iowa Baseball Confederacy
• Radioactive: a tale of love and fallout
• The Disappearing Spoon
• The Great Shark Hunt 
• Albums/CDs (the most prone to shifting tastes...avoiding Greatest Hits packages)
• My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West
• The Heist - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
• Blood on the Tapes - Bob Dylan bootleg
• A Ghost is Born - Wilco
• Plastic Beach - Gorillaz
• Alright, Still - Lily Allen
• Gold - Ryan Adams
• Graceland - Paul Simon
• Step Inside This House - Lyle Lovett
• Body Talk - Robyn
• Traveling Wilburys - Traveling Wilburys
• Television Shows (also very much prone to shifting tastes)
• The Wire
• Deadwood
• Scrubs
• Mad About You
• Parks and Recreation
• Bob's Burgers
• Archer
• The Daily Show
• The Colbert Report
• Sportscenter
• Albums/CDs (greatest hits collections only)
• Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years - Richard Thompson
• The Best of 1980-1990 - U2
• A Quiet, Normal Life - Warren Zevon
• Carry on Up the Charts - The Beautiful South
• Decade - Neil Young
• The Hits/The B-Sides - Prince
• Just Another Band from East LA - Los Lobos
• Personal Best - Harry Nilsson
• The Very Best of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
• The Very Good Years - Frank Sinatra 
• Comics (not full series)
• Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow
• Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader
• Spider-Man: Blue
• Supreme: Story of the Year
• Pride of Baghdad
• Superman: Secret Identity
• Eternals
• Batgirl: Year One
• Superman: Red Son
• Batman: The Long Halloween
• Superman/Batman: Absolute Power
• Dark Knight Returns 
• Comic series
• Planetary
• Sandman
• Invincible
• All-Star Superman
• Powers
• Watchmen
• Astro City
• Ultimate Spider-Man
• Astonishing X-Men (Whedon's run)
• Fables
• DMZ 
• Locke & Key
• Scott Pilgrim
• Restaurants & foods
• cajun - Knotty Pine on the Bayou
• burger - Terry's Turf Club
• steak - Jeff Ruby's (downtown)
• breakfast - Waffle House (Cincinnati-Dayton Rd location, specifically)
• all-around casual - Troy's Cafe & Catering
• best fries - Senate
• pasta - Paesano's
• pizza - Dewey's and Betta's Italian Oven
• Greek - Greek Isles
• bbq - Eli's

Are there any other 'favorites' that you'd like to know?

Update: Update: Update: Lego SImpsons...my guesses

Apparently the Simpsons Lego rumors only beat the official rollout by a couple of days as the Lego Group made the official announcement today (perhaps nudged by the leaks, I dunno). There are loads and loads of high-res pics at the link above or on Lego's official Facebook page. They also announced the listed price of $199.99 and the impending release of February - possibly on February 17 - and the new prices for the May minifigures at $3.99 per figure (hopefully only inflated because of the Simpsons license and need for new head molds).

Update: Update: Lego SImpsons...my guesses

This morning I posted an image from Carlos S of the front of the box of the new Lego Simpsons House. At forum requests, Carlos S (via GrooveBricks) was able to get a photo of the back of the box showing the inside of the apparently hinged house.

Dang...that's a whole lot of detail in the place, and it looks like a lot of new pieces, too.

Update: Lego Simpsons...my guesses

The first leaked image of the Simpsons' 742 Evergreen Terrace Lego set has been leaked, and it's massive.

It also includes the full Simpsons family and Ned Flanders, six of the characters I guessed we'd see in the next collectible minifigures line. Assuming the leak (from Carlos S via Uproxx) is real, how does that change my guesses as to which figures we'll get?

I'm going to go with thinking it doesn't change things much. I think the Lego Group will give us alternate versions of the family - other than Maggie and Marge. There have been enough different costumes and versions of Maggie, Bart, and Homer through the years that I think we'll get duplicates of those three. I don't see another Maggie or Marge outfit because they're really in the same things most all the time. And I'm thinking Ned's already getting his one version - unless we get a set of the Leftorium or Praiseland (complete with gas leak).

That drops out three of my fairly certain characters and leaves me with three to replace. Here are my original choices and reasoning...

• Waylon Smithers
• Selma Bouvier - probably not because Selma requires Patty
• Patty Bouvier - probably not because Patty requires Selma
• Duff Man - This might be the one that I want most just for its quirky nature, but I think Lego will avoid the alcohol overtones.
• Ned Flanders
• Lenny & Carl - That's two characters who really can't be done individually. When we're this tight on spots, I don't think we can use up two spots on these goofs.
• Troy McClure - They've been resolute about not bringing back Phil Hartman's character on the show, so I'm assuming they won't bring him back in the Lego world either.
• Itchy & Scratchy - I don't know how these two would translate to the Lego world and whether they would be two separate figures or one with an accessory of the other.
• Chief Wiggum
• Ralph Wiggum - Ralph stands onstage with Lisa, but bringing him in edges Lego to dealing with special needs characters, something they might want to avoid.
• Comic Book Guy - I would love getting one, but he seems to be a far lesser character in Springfield.
• Hans Moleman - This would be a quirky choice, but he's never been a lead character in a story, and I can't see him as anything other than a cut-to gag character.
• Principal Skinner
• Edna Krabappel - Edna's voice, Marcia Wallace, passed away in October. I'm thinking they'll let Edna pass on peacefully.
• Nelson Muntz
• Groundskeeper Willie - Like Hans Moleman, Willie doesn't drive stories in the Springfield world, so I think we can manage without him.
• Sideshow Bob - Lego isn't known for characters with dark, violent pasts. This one might be a little murderous for Lego's self-professed target audience.

With three new spots to fill, I'll go with bringing back in Ralph Wiggum, Sideshow Bob, and Groundskeeper Willie.

That means my official guesses are now...

• Homer - alternate
• Bart - alternate
• Lisa - alternate
• Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
• Montgomery Burns 
• Moe Syzslak
• Milhouse Van Houten
• Krusty the Clown
• Barney Grumble
• Grandpa Simpson
• Waylon Smithers
• Chief Wiggum
• Ralph Wiggum
• Principal Skinner
• Nelson Muntz
• Groundskeeper Willie
• Sideshow Bob

Wait, that's seventeen. Apparently my original guesses were too generous by one. Let's drop off Sideshow Bob so Lego isn't endorsing murder.

Oh, and if you're wondering how much the Simpsons' home is going to cost, here are some vague comps based on # of pieces and minifigures.

• 71006 The Simpsons House - 2523 pieces, 6 minfigs, licensed set
• 10243 Parisian Restaurant - 2469 pieces, 5 minifigs, non-licensed - $159.99
• 10234 Sydney Opera House - 2989 pieces, 0 minfigs, non-licensed - $319.99
• 10237 Tower of Orthanc - 2359 pieces, 5 minfigs (and an eagle), licensed set - $199.99

I don't know what the new set's price will be, but I'm thinking I won't be buying it.

Separately, I'm not sure I like the very much non-Lego-minifigure-looking Simpsons shown on the box above. THey look too blocko-ish for my taste.

The 80's from SNL

Bomb diggity...enjoy it while it's up and around...

It's like Ron Cougar Mellencamp says...