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Nerd Lunch Episode 51: Does it live up to the hype? Part 2

Posted in fast food, movies, podcast, TV shows with tags movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, podcasts, pop culture, TV shows on September 4, 2012 by Paxton

AND WE ARE BAAAAAAACK!!! After a few weeks off the Nerd Lunch crew is back kicking holes into your eardrums. This week we are doing a sequel to Episode 7: Does it live up to the hype?

Breaking Bad

In this episode we are joined by Brian from Cool and Collected and show runner for The League of Extraordinary Bloggers. We each pick something that we haven’t seen or done that has been hyped to us by friends, family and pop culture in general and we watch it. Or do it. Or eat at it. My choice was the TV show Breaking Bad. Brian picked Star Trek, CT picked Quentin Tarantino movies and Jeeg picked Chik-Fil-A. Listen up to the discussion to find out if we thought our picks “lived up to the hype”. Spoiler alert, there are more “NO”s than you would expect.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or, listen to the audio right here in your browser.

Review of Oz Book 7: The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913)

Posted in books, movies, Wizard of Oz with tags Book Report, books, movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz on September 3, 2012 by Paxton

As of this book, I’m halfway through the official original run of Baum Oz books. I’m not including “extra” stories Baum wrote like The Woggle Bug Book or Little Wizard Stories of Oz. I’m talking about the main “canon” Oz books. There were 14 of them and today’s book is number 7, The Patchwork Girl of Oz.

This seventh book begins with two munchkins, Ojo and his Uncle Nunkie living in seclusion in the forests of Munchkinland. They are about to starve so they leave in search of help. They go to Nunkie’s old friend the Crooked Magician. While there, the two witness a demonstration of “The Powder of Life” which was previously used in The Marvelous Land of Oz to animate Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse and The Gump. However, Nunkie and the Crooked Magician’s wife are accidentally turned into marble statues when the Magician tries to use the Powder to animate a patchwork rag doll for his wife to use as a housekeeper. So Ojo volunteers to search the Land of Oz to find the five rare ingredients the Crooked Magician needs to reverse the marble spell on their loved ones. The five ingredients Ojo needs are 1) Six leafed clover found only around the Emerald City 2) Three hairs from the tail of The Woozy 3) Water from a Dark Well 4) Drop of oil from a live man’s body 5) Left wing of a yellow butterfly found only in Winkie Country. Along the way, Ojo meets many crazy characters and eventually makes it to the Emerald City and meets Ozma, Dorothy, Scarecrow, Nick Chopper (Tin Woodsman) and the whole gang who help Ojo to find the items and free his Uncle.

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Creating a team of 80s ninja killers

Posted in movies, ninjas, pop culture with tags LEB, movies, ninjas, pop culture on August 29, 2012 by Paxton

New assignment from The League. This week we are pitted against an evil conglomerate that is protected by an army of bad ass Russian ninjas (Russian ninjas, wha-?!). So I need to put together a team that does nothing but kill goddam ninjas.

It would be too easy to say, “I’ll take the JLA” or “The Avengers” and be done with it. However, I’m going with non-super powered heroes. As a matter of fact, I’m staying away from all supernatural characters. I’m going to treat this as an 80s movie/TV project. Which means I will also limit myself to characters from the 1980s, so no Jack Bauer (sad face) or Jason Bourne (well, the Matt Damon version).

So, let’s do this. The five members of my own personal team of ninja killers from the 1980s:

1. John “The Master” McCallister (The Master)- The older, wiser ninja leader. Plus Lee Van Cleef is just BAD ASS.

2. Sho Kosugi (Ninja Trilogy) – I didn’t pick a character here, I picked the actor mainly because Sho transcends the characters he plays. It doesn’t matter if I pick Cho Osaki from Revenge of the Ninja or Shiro Tanaka from Rage of Honor. They are all the same bad ass ninja mo-fo and I need him to help defeat the ninja army. Plus, he catches ninja arrows IN HIS TEETH.

3. Scott James (The Octagon) – Scott James was built to kill f’n ninjas. He single handedly takes on a terrorist organization comprised of deadly, deadly ninjas (led by the awesome Tadashi Yamashita) with just his wits, super fast roundhouse kicks and copious amounts of chest hair. Qualifications ACCEPTED, Mr James.

4. Joe Armstrong (American Ninja) – Another dude created to kill ninjas. Joe here defeated one of the fiercest ninjas ever, the Black Star Ninja (played, again, by the awesome Tadashi Yamashita). He’s the American Ninja and he’s on this team.

5. Jonathan Cabot (Gymkata) – Former gymnast turned master of the deadly martial art Gymkata, which is a mash up of gymnastic moves and the ninjitsu fighting style. I only need to make sure that the team goes to places that have things like high bars and pommel horses just lying around so he can “do his thang”.

More ninja killers from around the League:
1. Shez Crafti’s Ninja Force 5
2. Green Plastic Squirt Gun also recruits Chuck Norris as well as Ash
3. Memories of Toymorrow recruits a bunch of awesome ninjas to fight ninjas
4. The Man Who Stares at Toys recruits Sarah Connor and Tackleberry
5. Cool and Collected recruits a malfunctioning robot and the hot chick from Buck Rogers

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Movie Manathon: Freddy Krueger, Crystal Meth and high tech space prisons

Posted in movies, reviews with tags Freddy Krueger, Movie Manathon, movies, reviews, TV shows on August 20, 2012 by Paxton

Steph went to visit her parents last week, so I took the time to watch several movies and TV shows she wants nothing to do with. I’ve done this several times before, check out some previous movie manathons here.

The wife’s away, so Pax will play. Let’s start with the movies I watched.

Lockout (2012) – Starring Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace and Peter Stormare. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. Good action, quick dialogue. Pearce is wonderfully sarcastic. Loved it. My only issue is that Maggie Grace is terrible. I just do not like her and she continues proving to me that she can’t act with every movie she’s in.

Chronicle (2012) – I think of this as “that super hero Facebook movie” because it was advertised so heavily on “the book”. I was well aware of it but I hadn’t really heard a lot about it specificially. But the premise sounded great and I knew my wife would never watch it so I got the Blu-Ray from Netflix and popped it in the PS3. And it’s AWESOME. Wow, I didn’t expect it to be this good. This is how I imagine it would actually happen if teens received super powers. And the movie gets pretty dark at the end. I also like that it’s essentially a “found footage” movie which adds a bit of realism. If you like super hero movies, this is definitely a different take on them. Give it a shot, I think you’ll like it.

Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) – Starring Jackie Earl Haley as Freddy. For some reason I keep thinking of this movie receiving a lot of hate from fans. I’m not sure why. Is the movie perfect? No. But neither is 9/10 of the entire Nightmare franchise. This movie is good and I like Haley’s performance. I like how they fleshed out Freddy a little more and made him less jokey with only 1 one-liner. The effects were spectacular as well. The movie looked gorgeous.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – Saw the first one and loved it, so I decided to check out the second one since Steph doesn’t like horror movies. And it’s good. These “found footage” movies I really love. I do. They are actually pretty scary. I think they are scarier than something like Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th because they feel more “real”. Screw that torture porn crap like Saw and Hostel, these movies like Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch and Fourth Kind really creep me out (Blair Witch not so much any more). I started watching it one evening and actually had to turn it off to watch it the next afternoon. It’s pretty creepy. The “found footage” genre gets a lot of crap for some reason probably because it’s more of a creepy factor than out and out gore and kills. It’s a slow, suspenseful burn. I’ve even heard The Atomic Geeks say the genre is played out which is retarded because there are way more superhero, time travel or fantasy movies than there are “found footage” movies and none of those other genres are considered played out. I thought this movie was well done.

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12 completely awesome movie posters featuring sharks

Posted in movies, pop culture with tags movie posters, movies, pop culture, sharks on August 13, 2012 by Paxton

This week begins Discovery Channel’s 25th anniversary celebration of Shark Week. Shark Week has become an institution unto itself. I love it and I try to watch as much of it as I can every year. So, to help celebrate the 25th Anniversary, I decided to take a look at movies featuring sharks. More specifically, movie posters featuring sharks.

There are lots of ridiculously bad ass posters out there for shark movies. Some of the movies may even be complete ass, but the posters are awesome. So, let’s take a look at 10 of the most awesome.

I normally don’t do these lists in any order, but I’m going to put these posters in chronological order for you.

Let’s “dive” in.

The Sharkfighters (1956) – Man against Tiger Shark with just a knife and his wits. What a great poster. The title evokes images of men in actual fist fights with sharks. Like street boxing matches.

She Gods of Shark Reef (1958) – Directed by the great Roger Corman. Don’t get me wrong, because I love the sh*t out of this movie’s title, but I don’t think the title nor the blurb has anything to do with the actual story. The movie makes no mention of “HIDEOUS STONE GODS”.

Jaws (1975) – Still one of the greatest. I love this poster.

Sharks’ Treasure (1975) – This one has two great posters! I love how they make the “sharks” in the title possessive, as if the treasure belongs to ALL sharks. And that first poster, the frogman is fighting that shark WITH A KNIFE. Awesome. The second poster actually put lips on the shark. LIPS. That’s weird.