Jackie Chan Christmas Part 1: Armour of God

  I watched a couple Jackie Chan movies I just got for Christmas from a good buddy of mine. I'm going to talk about both of them but in different posts. This post we're going to talk about Operation Condor 2: Armour of God. Why talk about Operation Condor 2 before talking about Operation Condor? Well that's because Operation Condor 2, was actually filmed and released as Armour of God before Operation Condor outside of the United States.

  Armour of God is about Asian Hawk aka Jackie an ex-singer turned fortune hunter. In a plot to get Jackie to find the rest of the actual Armour of God, a cult kidnaps his old flame, and the fiance of his former band-mate, and uses her as ransom. Well Jackie, his old friend, and a rich guy's daughter go to help save the girl, and Jackie Chan shenanigans ensue.

  As with pretty much all Jackie Chan movies, there are a bunch of crazy martial arts, and car/motorcycle stunts, with many of them consisting of a comical twist. Actually that's one thing that I do like about Jackie Chan movies, is that they are very light hearted. You can just sit and enjoy them. Armour of God was all of that, as you would expect. It was a fun filled ride all the way through. Once in a while Jackie's buddy would start to get annoying from him going back and forth from acting like a tough guy, to being humbled, and not having the ability to learn from any of his lessons in the flick. The one thing that actually made me pause was how it ended, it felt like it happened too quickly, but the crazy jump to the hot air balloon was pretty cool. Overall I give Armour of God a solid 3.5 out of 5. I enjoyed it all the way through, and it was a true Jackie Chan flick from beginning to end. I definitely suggest anyone to watch it at least once.

Walking Dead Season 4 Mid-Season Finale

  The Walking Dead season 4 mid-season finale has come and past. Season 4 thus far has been one of the best seasons of The Walking Dead, and I really enjoy the show from the very first episode to now. The reasoning for my opinion is episode six "Live Bait", and the actual mid-season finale episode eight "Too Far Gone". To give fair warning I'm going to give a few spoilers if you haven't watched season 4 yet.

  Episode Six, "Live Bait", follows the Governor in flashbacks to what happened after his massacre of the Woodbury Army. That episode felt like a well done short film, that could practically stand alone all by itself. He barely says a word all episode, which in my opinion contributes to the talent of David Morrissey, the actor who played as the Governor. In this episode he becomes this post-apocalyptic drifter until he runs into this family who slowly bring him back to a state of caring about something. There's a little girl in this family who truly contributes to this due to her being about the same age as his daughter was before she died, and came back as a walker. It's my favorite episode since the beginning of the series.

  Episode Eight, "Too Far Gone", is one of the most emotionally rough episodes I've seen in a while. The Governor is now leading a new group of people along with his new found family. They decide to invade the prison with a tank, and kick out Rick and his crew. After Rick and the Governor exchange words, Rick basically saying they all can make things work and live together, and the Governor stating that, that can't happen, and if Rick resists he's going to kill Hershel, and Michonne, who he took hostage before he decided to invade to use as leverage. Well the Governor really does end up being "Too Far Gone" and chaos ensues after the Governor decided to take Michonne's sword to Hershel's head.

  After episode eight, the mid-season finale, we are left with the prison in shambles, the Governor dead, Hershel dead, Carol has been kicked out for murdering a couple sick people, Rick's baby "little ass kicker" possibly dead, or at least missing, and everyone else completely split up, and running from the prison. This episode felt more like a season finale, not a mid-season finale. Now we have to hurry up and wait for February to see what happens next.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

  I finally had a chance to play Batman: Arkham Asylum. Yes I know, I'm a little behind the times, but none the less, here are my thoughts on the game.

  Batman: Arkham Asylum takes place at Arkham Asylum. If you don't know much about the Batman universe, I suggest that you look it up. The actual story and game play were great. It kept me wanting to know what was going to happen next. In Batman: Arkham Asylum you go through Arkham Asylum trying to capture The Joker before he executes his crazy plans in which you need to figure out, while you're also trying to contain everyone else he sets free to run amok in Arkham, or to do his bidding.


  I played on the PlayStation 3, and the controls on that were great. There was only one part where I got annoyed with how the controls worked. It involved my needing to get over a little fence type thing, that was on a platform, and I couldn't just run and jump over it, I actually had to stop and then hit the action button when I got to it, just to climb over it. But as I said, that was only an issue on one part of the game.

 The random Easter eggs, or secrets, are what they are called in the game, were a cool addition. I kept going back and forth trying to find as many secrets as possible while still wanting to continue the story in the game itself. Using Arkham Asylum as the location for the game allowed the developers to include a bunch of the Batman Villains without making it feel like they were trying to hard to include them.

  I tried my best to talk about the game without giving spoilers. At this point I probably should care due to how old the game is, but if someone had told me how Arkham Asylum went, I probably wouldn't have played the game, and enjoyed it as much as I did. Overall I have to give Batman: Arkham Asylum a 4.9 out of 5 on my gaming list. It's definitely a game worth playing.

Zombie Killer Squad IOS Game

  Zombie Killer Squad is a newly release IOS game. It's a free game found in the App store. I found out about it because of SeaNanners, and Syndicate, a couple of entertaining commentators, that post game play on YouTube.

  The game play for Zombie Killer Squad is pretty simple, you have to go through different obstacles which are zombies, go around metal shipping containers, go up ramps, or under other structures in the road. The point of the game is to collect as many of these coins as possible while trying to survive as long as possible. The concept makes it sound easy, but it's a tougher game than you'd expect. You have to swipe left or right to dodge any obstacles, you can also jump over zombies instead of shooting them by swiping up, and if you need to, you can swipe down to go under certain structures.

  Before I go on talking about certain perks you can get, you can play as three different characters. You start off with Luke unlocked, with Luke you get a mount you can use. His mount is a mule, or donkey. It's actually quite entertaining shooting zombies while riding a donkey. There are two more characters you can play as that are locked, you can either collect 100,000 coins to unlock each of them, or pay $.99 to unlock them ahead of time. They are SeaNanners, and Syndicate from YouTube. If you play as SeaNanners, you can ride a cat as your mount, and Syndicate rides a motorcycle. I downloaded this game just for the chance to play as these two characters. One point I'd like to say about needing to unlock these other two characters is that they don't force you to pay extra to play as them. The game actually allows you to work towards unlocking them instead. It drives me crazy when you download a free game and then to get anything worth while to use in the game, you have to end up paying extra, and a lot of times it's more than just $.99 to get them.

  While you're going through the game you get to run into different perks. The first one I noticed was the magnetic perk, if you pick this up, for a limited of time all the coins and some additional items get picked up by your character. The next perk I found was the Bull Mount. The Bull lets you ride through anything. Basically if you happen to pick it up, you ride a bull for a limited time, and nothing can stop you, you just take all obstacles out that are in your way. The last perk is the flight perk. It has you ride a bird over everything and you can still pick up coins that are in the air for a limited time, just like everything else. You can spend coins to extend the duration of these different perks/mounts, and to buy more ammo, ect...

  Overall I really enjoy playing this game, whenever I have a little bit of free time, I pull my iPhone out and play a round or two, at least. I have to give Zombie Killer Squad a 5 out of 5. It has everything I would expect from an IOS game, and more. Remember it's FREE, and you can find it in the apps store.

  If you'd like to see a few of the videos SeaNanners, and Sydicate post on YouTube, here are links to their pages:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SeaNanners
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSyndicateProject

State of Emergency Movie Review

  State of Emergency is a small film I discovered on Netflix. Actually it was more suggested to me because I happened to be re-watching the first season of AMC's The Walking Dead on Netflix, but that has nothing to do with this post.

  State of Emergency follows Jim, the main character, after a chemical facility explodes which releases a deadly toxin into the air. This toxin causes people to turn into flesh eating zombies. These aren't your traditional George A. Romero zombies, these are more like the 28 days later zombies, where they run. Another difference is that these ones can talk in State of Emergency. Personally I wouldn't call them zombies, they don't even seem like they are undead. Continuing on with the plot of the film, Jim find out others are holding up in a warehouse, and he joins them. He meets what could potentially be a love interest, but she's passed out for half the film.

  After watching the film I felt like I hadn't learned anything, nor did I feel any connection to any of the characters. It felt like a film made to be a film, where there isn't anything wrong with that, but it also didn't keep me captivated. I found myself constantly waiting for something big to happen, but that never came. The major plot point that I thought would bring at least some sort of on the edge of your seat suspense, and possible action, didn't go in that direction. The possible love interest for the main character is apparently diabetic. He finds out that she needs insulin or she's going to die. The characters talk about a pharmacy at the other end of town, but conveniently enough there happens to be some in an air drop near by. When Jim went out to the air drop container, I didn't even feel slightly worried. He ran into only one "zombie" which he shot in the leg first which made it fall, then he slowly walked up to it and shot it in the head. They did make me think for a second, "yes, he's going to have to go into town anyway", when Jim couldn't fine it at first, but as you know now, that didn't happen.


  Overall I give state of emergency a 1 out of 5. There were certain minor aspects, and shots I did like, but nothing big enough that's worth mentioning. I also wasn't able to connect to the movie enough to care about the characters. It lost points in my opinion for referring to the chemically intoxicated crazy people as zombies in the description. They may have been undead, but zombies don't talk, nor do they run.

Defendor (2009) Movie Review

  Over the weekend I had a chance to see a less known movie named Defendor. Yes, that's the correct spelling, it's Defendor, not Defender. Even in the movie the main character corrects others on how to say it.

  Defendor is about a normal average every day guy by the name of Arthur Poppington, also know as Defendor by night, played by Woody Harrelson (know for his role in Zombieland), who goes out on patrol at night protecting people from the criminal "punks". His goal is to take down "Captain Industry", who's supposed to be head of the city's biggest criminal ring. Defendor has no super powers, just is trench club, marbles, angry wasps, and above all else his courage.

  At first the flick felt like it was going to be this director's version of Kick-Ass, and depending on your perspective, it could be looked at in that way. They both came out about the same time frame, Defendor in 2009, and Kick-Ass in 2010. Also Kick-Ass did come out as a comic book first. In my personal opinion, I'm going to give it a pass one reason, who hasn't come up with their own "Batman" like hero, and wanted to actually go and fight crime when we were kids? Especially those of us who enjoy reading comics.

  Defendor is a dark comedy, a side of heart. It actually did make me laugh quite a few times while watching it. One of my favorite moments, is when Arthur shows up to work bruised and beaten, and his friend asked him who did it to him. Arthur tells him he fell down stairs, and his friend proceeds to push him asking who did it, and what did they look like, Arthur then proceeded to draw the shape of stairs in the air. I ended up liking the main character Arthur as a person. He made me feel like he truly did care about the people in his life, and the citizens of the city. He's quite likable. There were certain aspects of the flick that I felt didn't really need to be explained, the best example of this is when Arthur's psychiatrist explains to him why people in his life love him so much. Woody Harrelson, and the rest of the cast portrayed this well enough where I didn't need it to be explained to me. A cool little note to add, the actor who played Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles plays a dirty cop in it.

  Overall, I give Defendor, a 3 out of 5. That's how I rate a pretty average movie. It wasn't mind blowing, and it isn't the most memorable film. But I did enjoy watching it, laughing with it, and I enjoyed the progression story. It's worth a view at the very least.

BLOCKBUSTER Closing?!

  It looks like Blockbuster will be closing it's doors in January 2014, as well it's DVD mail distribution. This is some rough news, especially for those who still like to go rent physical movies instead of using digital distribution such as Netflix. According to DISH, they will be retaining the licensing rights, for possible digital distribution. Places like Blockbuster, and especially the local video rental places, have a special place in my heart. Growing up there were three places my father used to take me, that have always felt like a constant in my life, going to the movie theater, going to hockey games, and going to the video rental store.

  Now that Blockbuster is officially closing it's doors, this marks a true end to the experience of walking in and seeing wall to wall movies to choose from. Some of you may be too young to really remember the local movie rental stores, those usually went out of business because of the Blockbusters, and other big movie rental places out there. I can't remember how many times I'd force my dad to rent movies like The Goonies, and Star Wars, at our local movie rental store. Those are some great memories to have, and we are now at this point in society, our future children wont have that experience.

  At an end of an era, I give a toast to the good old movie rental store, and have a drink for them.