This is an automated a manually edited schedule update for the reviews in the week of August 2, 2010 through August 8, 2010. This message will self-destruct upon the arrival of August 8, 2010.

Inception is the latest hurdle in acclaimed director Christopher Nolan's track. He's directed such movies as Memento, The Prestige, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight, all of which I loved to pieces. He's known for his ability to bend minds, and seems to never disappoint (we don't talk about Insomnia). I typically love his work, so when I heard that he was making a new movie, I didn't care what it was about, I was convinced to see it. When I heard it had Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Paige, and Michael Caine, I made a squeaky "Ooh!" sound of curiosity mixed with glee. When I saw the trailer(s), I pretty much said "Okay... So what is it about?" None of the trailers explained a dang thing about it. I walked into this movie just out of respect for Nolan, DiCaprio, Paige, and Caine, taking a leap of faith. Before I tell you if it's the blockbuster it's made out to be, allow me to let you in on what it's actually about.

Note: I have not seen the predecessor to this film.
Quite a while ago, a now classic sci-fi movie was released starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It became one of his 3 biggest hits. This movie, named Predator, was about a team of highly-trained soldiers stranded in a jungle being stalked by a deadly alien warrior dubbed "The Predator." I never saw this movie, but I've been told many times that I should. It spawned a sequel (Predator 2) 3 years later, which I know nothing about, and a third movie 20 years after the second. In the year of 2010, they revived the series by making Predators, not quite a follow up to the movie, but taking place in the same reality, definitely. No characters were shared between the 2 movies, save for a reference.]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0500 movie-predators http://www.ecoticity.com/m.php?movie=The~Last~Airbender "How Can I Piss Off Even MORE People? Oh, I Know!"

Note: I have never watched the TV series in question.
In a recent string of movies based on TV shows that I have never watched, another one has hit the theaters. Infamous director M. Night Shamylan has, yet again, made a movie. He is known for his somewhat good movies The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, and his relatively terrible movies such as The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening. In most circles of movie geeks, people who watch movies, and people who have heard of movies, he's known as "that director" who tries so hard to be cool like the other directors, but utterly fails by making terrible movies; right up there with Uwe Boll. Most people dislike him, and wish he would stop spending perfectly good money on such terrible movies. I, for one, am among these people. Regardless, I enjoy laughing at his terrible movies, so I went to see his latest failu- Ahem, attempt. That, of course, is The Last Airbender.

Note: Sorry for the longest intro ever there. Please, bear with me.
Every once in a while, an animated movie rolls out into the theaters, and it's billed that it's for kids. All the adults go to see it for their own reasons, their kids want to see it, they love Pixar/Dreamworks, they review movies, they want to see the pretty 3D, whatever. A while ago, Dreamworks came out with a movie that hadn't really been done before. It followed the quest of an ogre saving a princess for a king so that he could get his swamp back from invading fairy tale creatures. It took the classic fairy tale story and warped it entirely. It was culturally relevant in it's jokes, it had throwbacks to so many different fairy tales it was almost sickening, and it was genuinely hilarious. This is, of course Shrek.

Explanation: The "Wax-On, Wax-Off" part of the original movie, which I always just saw as Miyagi making him do chores around the house so he didn't have to, was taken out of this one. Instead, he has him take off his jacket, and put it back on. Lame.
A movie straight out of the 80s, with pure 80s style has been remade. Everyone that lived in the 80s, and I do hope people that began living after them, have seen this movie, and it has affected them somehow. It's a classic, and a movie everyone must see at least once. Of course, I'm talking about the classic tale of Daniel Larusso and Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid. In this epic, Daniel, a young teen, is placed in a new habitat with his mother, and isn't adapting well, for he gets beaten up by the local bullies. That's when he discovers the venerable Mr. Miyagi, Karate master. He teaches Daniel the way of Karate so he can defend himself. It's a fantastic movie. Recently, they decided to remake this movie, and have it slightly offset from the original. Here's how it is:

WARNING: This post is UNEDITED. I wanted it up immediately; the edited version will be up soon.
I'm working on a webcomic. I've been working on "a webcomic" of some kind for over 2 years now, but this basis for this "webcomic of some sort" has change. I've worked on it with 3 different people, and had 4 different ideas to base it around. I had such ideas as a crew on a starship and their antics, 2 roommates and a homeless Frenchman that start up an electronics story, a planet/time/dimension-hopping soldier in a never ending war across time and space, and even just a "Joke-a-Day" one-off comic. Only in the past 6 months have I decided to buckle down on an idea, script it out, draw it, and put it out on the web without a partner. I almost had a buddy write it, but that idea fell through. I'm working on it as we speak. There's a slight tweak on mine that I, for one, don't see too often. Maybe there are plenty of people who do this and I don't know any, but here's what I'm doing:]]> Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500 blog-site-06-27-10 http://www.ecoticity.com/m.php?movie=The~A-Team Extra Review!
Movie: The A-Team

NOTE: This review is from the point of view of a man who has never watched an episode of the original TV series.
A TV show from the 1980s has recently been resurrected in cooperation with the latest film trend of doing remakes. This TV show featured... Well, I think the opening narration describes it better than I ever could. Take it, Mr. Ashley.

There is a comic currently being published by DC. It has been in the comics ring since 1972, and is still arguably the most successful comic series of the Western genre. I'll admit right off the bat that I have not read a single one of the comics in said series. Never touched a graphic novel of his, a comic, I hadn't even read up on the backstory until I started doing research for this movie. If you haven't figured out who this disfigured anti-hero of the western comics is by now, I'm of course referring to the supernatural bounty hunter Jonah Hex. Recently, Jimmy Hayward (director of Horton Hears a Who) decided to pick this up. An odd choice and quite a change from his only other directing piece, but I figured I'd give him a chance.

WARNING: This movie contains the big 3, the 3 Bs, Boobs, Blood, and Bad Language, along with a Sex Scene. It is rated R for a reason!
A while back, a movie was announced by the name of Splice. I assumed it would just be another "bad" (by which I mean the fun, enjoyably bad, like a "Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie" kind of bad) Sci-Fi movie, so I decided to wait for a trailer. The trailer proved my assumed idea right, and that made me excited. I tried many times to get my usual movie-going buddy, Ethan (a former reviewer here), to see it, but he would have no part of it. Instead, he forced me to see such things as Get Him to the Greek (which I will not be reviewing, but I'll tell you right here that it was terrible. If you liked Forgetting Sarah Marshall, then you'll probably like it. I hated both). The other day, I finally got him to see Splice. It wasn't entirely necessary to see for sheer Ecoticity purposes, seeing as I would have 2 more movies for that week to review (The Karate Kid and The A-Team), so it was one of the first movies I've seen in quite a while for just the pure fun of it. "Then why are you reviewing it now?" You might ask. I am reviewing it because A: I like reviewing things, you got a problem with that? And B: I felt it deserving of a review. First things first, a synopsis:

I love open games, be they sandbox, open-world, what have you; I love them. I also love my sci-fi. My friends tend to the fantasy, but I am a sci-fi geek at heart. I enjoy shooters, for they are fun and let me shoot things. If you were to tie all these things into one game, you might get the 2007 smash hit Mass Effect. I never played it, but I heard nothing but amazing things. I actually bought it up, and my gamer buddy asked to borrow it and never gave it back. I wonder if he still has it... Anyway, that's not the point. It was a major hit; so major that it spawned a sequel this year. That's what I'm here to tell y'all about. Keep in mind that I never played the first as you read this review. Let's delve into the depths of Mass Effect 2.

I'm not entirely sure I've stated my opinion of movies based on video games in this setting before, so I'll take this opportunity to share them with you. They suck, at least based on the data I've compiled so far. To list a few that prove my point: Super Mario Bros., Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Doom, Bloodrayne, Max Payne, Hitman, Dead or Alive, the list goes on. To be fair, a lot of those games were terrible to begin with, but they all adapted into bad movies. I have never seen a video game adaptation that I actually liked; the only one that came close was In the Name of the King (But that's just because of Jason Statham, Ron Perlman, and Burt Reynolds). Director Mike Newell recently decided to do an interpretation of a fairly good platformer known as "Prince of Persia." I heard this news and figured "Eh, he's not Uwe Boll, maybe it has a chance." So I gave it a chance. Here's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Do you love Film Noir films -- those old gritty, dark detective movies about trying to solve a murder, generally with multiple storylines? Well, if you're a gamer, you might be in for the ride of your life. A game has recently released from the makers of the 2005 hit "Fahrenheit" ("Indigo Prophecy" in North America), Quantic Dream. I have bought this game, and played it simply so I could tell you if it's worthwhile or not.

Robin Hood: A classic tale told through the generations of a rebel who stole from the rich to give to the needy; a man who, with his pack of merry men, took resources from the people who didn't need it, and helped out the poor. Truly a hero of legend, sir Robin of Loxley. His story has been told throughout the ages, and has been told many different ways. In this, the year of 2010, director Ridley Scott took it upon himself to remind people of this legend in the form of a film. It's a revitalization of the epic tale told through the eyes of one of the greatest directors in all of Nerdom.

Iron Man 2 - A sequel to what was, in my opinion, the best movie of 2008. It was an interesting endeavor, to try to make a sequel to a piece of art as beautiful as that, but it was inevitable. The ending of the first was a drop-off implying a sequel, but that sequel still had quite a feat ahead of it to try to match wits with a masterpiece. Many critics are hitting this film with things like "It doesn't come close to the original!", "It lost the feel of the first one!", and I'm getting many accounts of "There are too many characters! I can't keep track!" I'm here to tell you all of these people are wrong. I am here to tell you they don't know what they're talking about. I am here to tell you... that this is a force to be reckoned with. This is Iron Man 2.

Guest Reviewer: Adam P. Knave

Every country has their own idea of what an action movie looks like. There are certain tropes, certain key structures that let us go "Yes, this is an American action film." Even within that you can generally pin down an ascetic of a timeframe. The '80s actioners looked different than the '70s, and not due to special effects of budgets. There was a different sensibility to them at the core. No one in their right minds would mistake Bullitt for Commando and no one mistakes Commando for Crank and yet they are all action films. Which brings us to the doorstep of Losers.

WARNING: Just because it's a comic book movie doesn't mean it's appropriate for kids. This movie is littered with swearing and blood. Surprisingly no gore or boobs (well, nothing you wouldn't see on National Geographic), however.

In a world where the domain of comics is dominated by incredible superheroes, but no such wonders exist to save our reality, one young man decides to step up to the challenge and help the world like no one else will: in green spandex with dual batons. How does this idea not sounds great? I'll tell you how: it doesn't. Wait, that was oddly worded. Let me rephrase that, this idea sounds undeniably great! The idea was put into comic form originally, , and now in film. I'll say upfront that I haven't read the comics, sadly. I wanted to, but never found the time or money to do it. But before the review, let's do a moderately more in-depth synopsis.

Dreamworks is an interesting company. Their animation company has tried and tried to release great movies, some of which did end up being great, but more have flopped. Some of the ones I enjoyed were "Shrek," "Shrek 2," Kung Fu Panda," and "Monsters Vs. Aliens." Others were terrible, such as "Shrek 3," "Shark Tale," "Antz," "Madagascar 2," and "Bee Movie." They recently released another animated movie that has been the talk of the animation crowd these last few weeks. It's, for once, not a direct rip-off of Pixar's latest movie (read: Antz/Shark Tale/Flushed Away). This movie is called "How to Train your Dragon."

WARNING: This game is not for the faint of heart. It contains boobs, blood, sexual themes, blood, violence, blood, gore, blood, and a wee bit more blood.

Javid Jaffe is the mind behind, most notably, the Twisted Metal series. But in 2005, a simple idea of his blossomed into a game that hit countless people's "Favorite Games" lists, along with hitting the top of quite a few "Game of the Year" lists. The game gave you control of a Spartan named Kratos who is driven to madness with his lust for vengeance against Ares, the Greek God of War. You see, just as Kratos is about to die in war, he makes himself a Slave to Ares in return for victory and life, but when his blades are laid upon his own family, he goes out on a quest to find the power to kill Ares. Somehow, this hack-and-slash spawned 2 sequels and a prequel. The latest installment, the second sequel, is what I'm here to review. This is God of War III.]]> Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:00:00 -0500 game-god-war-3