Entries Tagged 'Entertainment' ↓

Kevin Dubrow, lead singer of Quiet Riot and heavy metal icon, was found dead at his home in Las Vegas yesterday afternoon. Along with Quiet Riot, Kevin blazed new trails in American music, and helped create a huge movement. There isn’t yet an official cause of death, but whatever the cause, it is certainly tragic. My condolences go out to Kevin’s friends and family.

More information is available at TMZ.com.

If you’re a movie freak like myself, you’ll love this stupid website. It’s a site where you can take a quiz about trivia on fairly recent movies, and it will drive you freaking nuts. I got 80%, gotta go back and try again!

80%The Movie Quiz

FilmCritic.com - Movie Reviews

I really try my best to stay away from celebrity news, but every once in a while I need to weigh in. Does anyone else feel like this Paris Hilton thing is a complete bastardization and mockery of our justice system? Seriously, people are locked up for a long time for stupid drug related offenses, which are arguably less dangerous to society that this idiot drunk driving heiress.

So what does this mean? Does it mean that Scooter Libby will get put under house arrest after only a few days in the slammer because he’s an old crotchety fuck? Of course, I’m only talking about the time between surrendering to the authorities and when Bush signs the pardon papers, but still, are we going to send every rich inmate home?

It’s like my friend Wes said though: What’s the point in getting pissed about this when people go free for much more heinous crimes (cough…OJ Simpson…cough cough)? Our justice system is obviously fucked.

Shit I’m vulgar today. Oh well.

If you grew up in the 80’s, there’s a good chance that you love classic Nintendo games. Even if you grew up in the 90’s, I would still bet that classics like Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Super Smash and many others have a place in your heart among the first person shooters and MMORPGs of today.

A few years back if you wanted to play these games on your computer you had to run an emulator, figure out how to make it work, and then track down the ROMs of whatever game you wanted to play. This is not the case anymore, as excessively.net offers free online games just by going to their website. Excessively.net was one of the first sites to offer a place to play free online games, so they obviously know what they’re doing. Plus their free online games are all in Flash, not some proprietary language that only works on the PC.

Last night my friends and I had a wine and cheese and horror movie party. We had dinner, had some drinks, and watched some horror movies.

The first movie we watched was “The Omen,” the one that came out on 06/06/06. It pretty much follows the story of the first one, only takes place in 2006 intead of the mid-70’s, which would make sense since it’s a “remake.”

One of the reasons that I am such a horror fan is that it takes me away from reality, and allows me to forget everything in a freaky strange world where people have problems much bigger than mine (beacuse being tied up in famly drama bullshit is much less disconcerting when you compare it with being the parents of a little Satan). I was a bit bothered, and was momentarily prevented from going to my…uhhh…happy place(?) beacause of the filmmakers’ decision to use footage from the WTC collapse, the Columbia disaster, and the Thailand tidal wave to set the foundation for Damien’s coming. It seemed a bit out of place and awkward to me, plus the constant profiteering from these disaters makes me sick, although that’s a topic for another post.

Unfortunately, as creepy and suspenseful as the first Omen was, this one failed to capture the feeling and suspense of the original. I have slowly come to the conclusion that the horror of the ’70’s is unbeatable when it comes to overall feeling, mainly because of the low budget nature of the effects and that ’70’s film quality that just seems so homemade and freaky.

The Omen was not bad, but just didn’t capture the magic of the first. The bottom line is if you really want to check out The Omen, rent the first one.

Last night visited Disneyland with my wife and some friends. Disneyland decided this year to fully embrace the Halloween season, and has decorated both parks appropriately.

In true Disney fashion, the decorations are more amusing and happy than scary, which is normally not my thing when it comes to Halloween, but they pull it off well. The decorations consist mainly of jack o’ lanterns scattered throughout the park, with the centerpiece being an enormous Mickey jack o’ lantern in the middle of Main Street.

As is tradition for the past few years, the Haunted Mansion has been transformed into Haunted Mansion Holiday, featuring decorations by Jack Skelington the Pumpkin King himself. There seem to be a few subtle additions to the HMH, but I also didn’t see it last year so it’s entirely possible that I just don’t remember the little things from last time I saw it.

Anyway, I had a great time in the brief three hours spent at the park, and highly recommend a trip to the Magic Kingdom to see their Halloween decorations before they go away on November 1st.

If you’re in the voice over industry, Voices.com has just come out of beta and is a great resource for finding leads or find voice actors. During the beta releaase, Voices.com worked closely with their customers to find out exactly what they need. Because of this attention to their customers needs, they are a step above all the other voice acting recources online.

If you are like me and are sick of paying $10 or more for a movie ticket, AMC has a great deal going on right now. I just came across it this morning when looking for showtimes on their website.

It turns out that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday every movie starting before noon at AMC theatres is only $5 per person. It’s kind of like a super matinee, or a reward for getting up and out of the house early on the weekend. I thought any of you movie freaks like me would appreciate the tip.

I’m happy to report that poker night last night went pretty well for me. I have been reading about poker rules online and have found it to be extremely helpful with my game.

Are these new poker websites popping up all over the Internet with detailed rules and strategies making the Internet a sleazier place? Or are they just a simple, innocent way of disseminating information on one of the most popular card games on the planet? I’m leaning toward the latter, although I’m not opposed to the first. Either way, reading about strategies and rules on sites like bet365 helped me double my money last night. And there’s no way I’m going to complain about that.

As I have made quite obvious, I’m quite the horror fan. I just got back from seeing The Grudge 2 (#1 in the box office this weekend by the way), and am on the fence about it. I really enjoy the supernatural horror more than the gory horror (although I am very much looking forward to Saw III), so The Grudge series is much more my speed.

Although I can’t say I was necessarily disappointed with The Grudge 2, I wasn’t all that impressed with it. The story was good, albeit a bit too familiar. It seems like a lot of the scares in 2 were the same as in the original (like the little boy sitting in the corner and the girl showing up under the blankets), which was a bit frustrating, but still managed to get the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up a good number of times.

One of my main issues with the movie was that the moments that should have been epic and exciting were less than exciting and a bit poorly timed. For example (semi-spoiler coming), the point at which we realize what is going on with the timeline happens at a very awkward moment. I feel like with a little better acting these disappointments would have been averted. Unfortunately the acting was less than stellar, and I feel like the movie suffered for it.

Overall, if you liked the first one, you’ll like the second one. I’m not going to recommend against seeing it in the theatre, but I’m also not going to suggest rushing out and seeing it right now.