Posted by
Anthony Mango
- Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Want to know what happened the past few days in nerd culture? WEEK IN GEEK is your quick fix to catch up with the rest of the fanboys out there.
MOVIES
Colin Farrell and Paula Patton could star in the World of Warcraft film. Paul Dano, Travis Fimmel, Anson Mount and Anton Yelchin could also potentially be in it.
My take: The bigger the stars that join the film, chances are the better it will do.
"Male, 7 ft to 7.3 ft tall with a slim/thin build and upright posture. Not too worked out or too 'thick set' especially in the shoulders. Broad facial features would be a bonus." - does this casting call for Star Wars mean that Chewbacca is returning?
My take: It sure sounds like it! Then again, we're hearing such chaos with casting and character rumors at this point that you have to take everything with a grain of salt.
Glenn Howerton from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia auditioned for Peter Quill aka Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy.
My take: Sunny is one of my favorite shows, and although I'd love to see Howerton in a comic book movie at some point (possibly as a villain of some sort), I don't know enough about Peter Quill to really have an opinion one way or the other on that potential casting choice.
VIDEO GAMES
SteamOS - Steam is coming to a new operating system.
My take: Everyone at Fanboys is kind of confused but excited about this.
TELEVISION
Lots of new TV shows making their premieres and debuts this week. Put that TV on and tell us what you think of them in the comments!
My take: Always an exciting time for television. I hope we get a lot of good ones.
MISCELLANEOUS
Teenage Mutant Koopa Troopas. Need I say more?
My take: Very cool!
Jim Wuthrich has been promoted to President of the Americas at Warner Bros Home Entertainment. He will oversee physical and digital distribution for games and more.
My take: Congrats, Jim. The Fanboys wish you luck and hope you don't screw it up, as we'll be the first people you'll have to answer to!
Watch out for this segment each and every Wednesday. We'll see you next week!
Did we miss something? What are your thoughts on these topics?
Leave us a comment below!
Posted by
Anthony Mango
- Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made its long awaited debut with the pilot episode tonight. Judging by the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the wide appeal that the program has, the experts have already deemed that it will be a huge hit. While that is almost written in stone, does it mean the show is good enough to warrant that?
It's time for another REVIEWPOINT as we break down the film's hits and misses. As always, we'll start with the bad news first.
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW
THE MISSES
1. THE ABC NETWORK CHEESE FACTOR
Is it the cheesiest thing in the world? No. Is it campy? Not really...unless you count Lola the flying car, which I'm sure a lot of people will love because they'll embrace the absurdity of it, but that's just not my style. Still, I can't help but feel like this would be a show I'd enjoy a lot more if it were on a different network, namely NBC or CBS. There aren't many shows on ABC that I have liked in the past 10 years with FlashForward being the only one I can bring to mind - and if you watched that show, you would agree with me that it had a very different tone from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and most ABC programming. Everything feels a bit too clean. Also...and I know I'm going to catch heat for this...the tone is a little too "fun" and reminds me of Firefly, another Joss Whedon project, which I watched ALL the episodes for and did not like a single one of them whatsoever. I'm not opposed to fun, and I'm not one of those people that thinks absolutely everything has to be as dark and realistic as the Dark Knight trilogy, but I'd like for them to take it a bit lighter on the CGI, flying cars and jokey characters to an extent.
2. FITZSIMMONS, LEO FITZ AND JEMMA SIMMONS
For someone like me who absolutely loves puns, you'd think I would love that part of the duo at the very least, but I don't. This is partly due to the cheesiness that their characters exude. They're also rather bland and uninteresting so far and trying desperately to make up for it by exaggerating everything and trying to be these hectic comedic relief characters, but I'm just finding them annoying. I also am not looking forward to all the shipping from my fellow fanboys and fangirls around the world....particularly because they seem more like a brother/sister combo, and that's kind of creepy.
THE HITS
1. AGENT GRANT WARD
At first, before the show aired, one of my biggest gripes was that they didn't make the main character (or any of them outside of Maria Hill) people from the comics. While I do still maintain that notion and I wish Clay Quartermain and others will show up, and that they'll make use of the million or so S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that are in the comics rather than just continually making up brand new ones, I do have to bite my tongue a little bit with Agent Ward. Having a fresh, clean slate to start off with makes it so we can grow along with Ward without any preconceived notions. He's a bit wooden right now, but it's only the pilot, and they've put some groundwork in there to build up to some legitimate characterization down the line with his family issues and his hotheadedness. He's a much more likable lead than I anticipated he would be.
2. REFERENCES TO THE UNIVERSE
This show needed to prove that it was in the same continuity as the movies and it did very well illustrating that so far. Extremis, the Chitauri, gamma radiation, flat out mentioning Dr. Erskine and his super soldier serum, and so forth were all moments that made me smile as a fan. "I don't think Thor's technically a god", saying that there are cosplay girls parading around Stark Tower....awesome.
3. AGENT COULSON LIVES....SOMEHOW
At first, the mere write-off that Coulson only stopped breathing for a few seconds was bothering me. What a slap in the face to the movie, right? Then, with the allusion that there's more to the story than him just getting a vacation to Tahiti in his recovery, they sold me. I fully expect Coulson to turn out to be a Life Model Decoy and the revelation of this is sure to be a huge plot point that will develop over time. Putting that seed out there at the beginning of the show will pay off and every show that is worth a damn does this properly, just as they did here.
END NOTES
Melinda May still has to win me over and I don't like Fitz and Simmons, but the rest of the cast is good and I'm much less worried about this show's potential now that I've seen the first episode. They can certainly go down the wrong path and make this turn out worse than this, but there's just as much of a chance that they improve upon the flaws of the first episode. A slightly less cheesy tone, straying away from the things that remind me of Firefly, and keeping up the continuity will help it at least from my perspective. I'll be watching until they convince me to stop.
Would I recommend it? Yes. If you're a fan of the Marvel films, you'll get at least some entertainment out of this. Your mileage may vary on some of these concepts, though, either for the negative or the positive.
What were your thoughts on the episode? What should the next Reviewpoint be?
LEAVE US A COMMENT BELOW!
Posted by
Anthony Mango
- Monday, September 23, 2013
The final season of How I Met Your Mother has started with two episodes back-to-back, titled The Locket and Coming Back.
Rather than run down the episodes in synopsis format, I figured I would do a standard Hits & Misses Reviewpoint-style post.
THE MISSES
1. LILY THE DRUNK
One of the things this show has had a lot of fun with in the past is showing Lily as more of a raunchy, disturbed individual than her outside persona would appear. This time around, though, I found it simply annoying. Lily spent the entirety of the hour complaining, looking like a wreck, and just being problematic, despite having the absolute least to complain about and the easiest time out of every character.
2. NO REVEAL OF THE MOTHER'S NAME
The main thing I was hoping to see in this was the reveal of her name. Why? I don't know. I'm just tired of calling her The Mother or Yellow Umbrella or any other pseudonyms.
3. THE TIME FRAME
Maybe I'm jumping the gun, but I don't want to see an entire season of people talking on the phone and traveling. I want to see the How I Met Your Mother that I've watched for 8 seasons, where they interact in their apartments and the bar, can flash back to previous things and flash forward.
Likewise, am I overlooking something, or is there a plot hole with the train situation? Lily and The Mother (name would work so much better there, wouldn't it?) are on the train to Farhampton and we see that Lily has arrived. All leading up to this, we've been seeing The Mother arrive via a cab much later, when it's raining at night and it's either just before or during the ceremony. If she arrived with Lily, why is she re-arriving? Someone fill me in if I'm wrong here, please.
4. TED MOSBY, SAD SACK
Again, I might be jumping ahead, but if Ted spends the entire season acting the way he did in these two episodes, then no wonder a lot of people don't value the character, as he won't be entertaining. I want there to be a huge payoff to the character and this storyline with a lot of emotion, but just because I want drama doesn't mean I want Ted to be a totally humorless, pathetic and pitiful character. That's unnecessary.
THE HITS
1. THE MOTHER TOTALLY WORKS
We haven't seen much of her yet, but I completely buy into The Mother BEING The Mother. She seems to fit well so far in the orchestra of the cast. There's not much to her character as of right now, but I already find her very likable. For someone who has been told more times than he can count that he's extremely similar to Ted Mosby...I can see why Ted would go for her.
2. BARNEY IS SURE OF HIMSELF
I'm sure we'll see something down the line where Barney second-guesses the wedding (after all, we've already seen it with the ducky tie situation), but for now, I like that Barney isn't going straight into that.
3. MARSHAL IS STILL NOT CORRUPTED
Something I've always enjoyed about Marshal's character is that he could have the world shit all over him, but he's still very optimistic overall. Ted can be quite depressed, Lily can get quite psychotic, Robin and Barney can be manipulative and angry, but Marshal is always hoping for the best and expecting that out of everyone.
END NOTES
This was one of my least favorite openers for the show so far, so I'm disappointed. I'm very, very worried that this is going to feel stretched out and too different from the previous seasons. I hope the addition of Daphne to the cast isn't a big deal and she's gone within the next episode or two, as nearly every show that adds a character at the end just focuses on bringing a lot of attention on them and losing it on the main characters that got us to this point.
That being said, if I would put my trust in any show to pull this kind of a drastic thing off...it's How I Met Your Mother. The show has been brilliant so far and I truly think I won't be disappointed by the end. I also fully expect that I will cry when all things are said and done.
What were your thoughts on the episodes? What should the next Reviewpoint be?
LEAVE US A COMMENT BELOW!
Posted by
Ronnie Brown
- Sunday, September 22, 2013
Welcome to New Hampshire, the "Granite State"! That's right, we've taken a huge step towards catching up to those flash forwards sprinkled throughout season 5 in what was admittedly a weaker episode than last week's, but that was bound to happen. If you go into this episode expecting "Ozymandias" part 2, you're going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is- showing the fallout of last week while putting everything in place for the series finale- it was an extremely effective hour of television. Where "Ozymandias" left us completely emotionally drained, "Granite State" just had a heavy sadness weighing over the whole thing, and it also contained one of the darkest moments in the history of the series- but more on that later.
We immediately got to see the fallout of everything from last week, and the best part about it was we finally got to meet Ed the disappearer! He wasn't really what I expected, but then again I don't know what I really expected. Looking back on him now though he was perfect. In a fantastic mirroring of Walt's menacing "We're done when I say we're done" moment from last year, he tried to bully Saul into going with him to New Hampshire, but the lung cancer stopped him in his tracks and sent him into a horrible coughing fit. The great Heisenberg truly has fallen.
For me, one of the most heartbreaking aspects of this episode is even though Walt's menacing phone call last week was meant to free Skyler by making her seem completely innocent, the cops are still after her and will stop at nothing to take her down unless she can give them Walt, whose name and face are now nationally known. Since she couldn't, the house was repossessed and, as Ed informed Walt, it became kind of a tourist attraction for kids, so the city put up a fence around it. That explains the appearance of the house in the flash forward scenes. It was also amazing mirroring when the scene with Skyler in the deposition greatly resembled Walt receiving his initial cancer diagnosis back in the first episode of the series (the high pitched noise drowning everyone out, someone asking if he/she understood what they just said, etc).
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| This episode finally showed that everyone will indeed remember his name. |
The sadness REALLY kicked in starting with Jesse. After rather brilliantly managing to escape his cage and getting caught, Jack decided to punish him. And what an awful, awful punishment it was. Todd luring Andrea out of her house and shooting her in the back of her head while forcing Jesse to watch from the nearby truck was so heart-wrenching for us as an audience to watch, especially since Jesse originally broke up with Andrea to keep her away from this business. Then thinking about how Brock would discover his mother dead on the doorstep the next morning makes it even worse.
After that brutal scene, the episode jumped forward a few months, meaning now we're extremely close to the flash forward scenes showing Walt's 52nd birthday. Here is where I felt more sympathy for Walter White than I had in a long time; he had lost a drastic amount of weight, to the point where his wedding ring would no longer fit on his finger (excellent symbolism of that sliding off too), and he was so desperate for human contact in that cabin that he begged Ed to stay longer and bribed him with $10,000 to do so. He also didn't even have the spirit left to try to find a vein to inject the chemotherapy into. This truly is a broken man. Then even his endeavor to "Ensure" his family had a better future (I'm so sorry for the terrible joke, please don't stop reading) blew up in his face, with his son telling him off and to just die already; again, great callback to season 1 when Junior said basically the same thing, albeit in a drastically different way.
Finally in the end we got to see Heisenberg return. It seemed that Heisenberg was dead and Walter White was about to die with him, ready to turn himself in and get caught in that bar. Leave it to Breaking Bad to surprise me because the absolute LAST people I would've ever expected to see were Gretchen and Elliot. We know that Grey Matter has been a sore spot for Walt since the beginning, but hearing the two of them reduce his contribution to the company down to the name and nothing else was too much for Walt to bear. When Gretchen said that the man everyone knew long ago was gone, that reinvigorated Walt. He realized she was right; Walter White is gone and Heisenberg remains. And Heisenberg would not go out with a whimper. He'd go out with a bang.
Random Thoughts
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| "Remember, there's still the kid." |
- I decided to save that image for this section because I just feel so bad for the poor guy. He's been through so damn much and I really hope he can make it out of this okay, but I'm not holding my breath.
- Todd is really the world's nicest sociopath, from giving Jesse ice cream to telling Andrea "it's nothing personal" even to his intense scene with Skyler (orchestrated by Lydia) in the White House.
- I really hope that wasn't Saul's last appearance in the series. It very well could be and I don't feasibly see how he could come back from Nebraska, but I still have some hope. Saul deserves a much grander exit.
- The show got two "fucks" this season. Vince Gilligan and others have said numerous times in the past that AMC gives them one "fuck" a year, so they try to make it count when someone says it. I guess AMC was more generous in the final eight episodes, since Hank got to say it last week and Jesse got one in this week. Both were so effective.
- Of all the things I want to see answered next week, close to the top of the list would have to be will Huell ever get out of the DEA safe house?! Hank was supposed to come back for him and never did...
- Finally, congratulations to Anna Gunn (Skyler) for her well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Emmy for last year's episodes! And congratulations to everyone involved for the outstanding drama series Emmy! It's about time! I'm so disappointed that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul didn't win, but I'm so happy for Anna and the show itself. You all deserve it.
So there you have it. The end is almost here. The use of the extended Breaking Bad theme at the end of "Granite State" and the excellent despite showing no new footage trailer for the series finale have gotten me so incredibly pumped for the finale. I'm personally glad that this episode wasn't nearly as emotionally devastating as "Ozymandias" so we could get a chance to recover, but I'm sure the finale won't be so kind. So come back next week for the last time and join me for "Felina!"
Posted by
Travis Goss
- Thursday, September 19, 2013
Hiroshi Yamauchi, former president of Nintendo, passed away Thursday, Sept. 19, of pneumonia at the age of 85.
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| Photo courtesy of AP |
From turning a company who manufactured playing cards and various toys into one of the most popular and well known video gaming companies in the world, Yamauchi helped save the gaming industry from total collapse.
According to Reuters:
Yamauchi was the third-generation head of the family-run business, founded in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto in 1889 as a maker of playing cards, and served as president from 1949 until 2002. He was an executive adviser to the company at the time of his death.
With the launch of the Family Computer (better known as the Famicom, the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System) and the Game Boy, Yamauchi solidified Nintendo's place in the world of video gaming entertainment.
We here at Fanboys Anonymous are indeed saddened by the loss of this major gaming icon.
Thank you, Yamauchi-san.
Posted by
Unknown
- Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Anyone who has been a fan of the Persona series or the Megami Tensei series knew about the issues that Atlus, the company who created these series, was going into this Fall. With parent company Index Corp. filing for bankruptcy, these series along with all of the other ones that Atlus creates were in deep trouble and that their futures were in questioned. However, earlier this week, sunshine and good news was given to all of us Atlus fanboys out there! the news was that Sega bought out Index Corp. for a whopping 14 billion Yen, or 141 million dollars, and with this news the future of Atlus was saved! Now that this is out there, we can all feel good knowing that the ever so precious Persona 5 will continue its development (even though very little news has been given on this since 2011/2012). Peace has been restored to the world, and I can now return to playing Persona 4 Golden and drinking my hot cocoa. So with that, I'll end this with a very cute picture.
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| Look at how cute Teddie is!!!!!! |
