I loved the first Pacific Rim, so it is not a surprise that I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for the sequel. It won’t be long now, and here is the first major trailer with all the mega-bot versus giant monster action that you could ever want!
Life With Hulu With Live TV!
Since Comcast has continued to raise rates and give me nothing extra for my money, the wife and I have decided to give Hulu with Live TV a try, and it has been working pretty well, with some caveats.
First off what the service gets right. You get a good selection live channels as well as Hulu’s already excellent selection of on demand shows. You also get a feature called ‘Cloud DVR’ which allows you to record shows, but obviously as its name suggests it stores them on the internet. Then the big seller for us, Hulu with Live TV has most of the local Seattle stations included as well. Most of the other streaming cable services do not. We have to be able to watch those Seahawks! Then you get to take this all with you. Visiting a friends house for the weekend and your show is on, but they don’t have cable TV? Just take your Roku Stick with you, and you and your friends can watch it (provided your friend has internet), or you can find a corner and watch it on your phone.
All this is not without its flaws. The new Hulu interface is not intuitive. Little icons on the top row indicate were you are, and then massive pictures and bold print tell you the names of shows it wants you to watch, but it is hard to find something other than what they are promoting. You get used to it, but there is a steep learning curve. Also, it seems that right now the service is having a slight issue keeping up with demand. While for the most part everything looks great, it isn’t uncommon for the picture to get a little blurry while the stream catches up. This doesn’t appear to be due to my internet, since Netflix and Amazon don’t also have this issue. Lastly, and maybe most importantly for a lot of people, Hulu with Live TV isn’t that much cheaper than cable. Though you do save some extra green because there are no random fees or cable boxes.
If you are like me, and you just got sick of all the standard cable options and want to give something else a try, Hulu with Live TV is a good choice. They need to work on their interface, and maybe add a few more live channels to the mix to justify their price, but I gain the flexibility of taking my TV anywhere I want, and more importantly, on whatever internet provider I want. With the added bonus of sticking it to Comcast. So far it has been worth it. Who knows, I may go back to Comcast, but at least then I will be a ‘new’ subscriber again and get all the good rates.
Shmee Visits Dunkirk!
I heard a lot of things about Dunkirk before going to the theater and watching it: It was inspired by silent films; It got events and names of soldiers wrong; It starred that kid from One Direction, but most of all I heard that it was excellent, and guess what? All those things are true! While it may be slightly historically inaccurate, and it does give Harry Styles his first starring role, Dunkirk is 106 minutes of gripping cinema!
Most war movies are all about the action. You are either down in the trenches/foxholes with bullets flying by, or up on the battlefields while men are giving heroic speeches to other men before they to charge headlong in to combat. Not so with Dunkirk. The battle is lost before the movie starts. This movie is just about 400,000 men trying to get home while being harassed by Nazi Germany. That is not to say there is no action in Dunkirk, but for the most part it is different. Guys just trying to keep their heads down and not get shot. Though Tom Hardy’s fighterpilot sequences are a little more straight forward.
Speaking of straight forward, Dunkirk’s stories, there are three main plots, all happen at different times, so that was a little jarring at first, but once you get the pacing down it all makes sense and comes together nicely in the end. Also all of the stories are great. There isn’t one where I felt that Nolan lingered too long, or conversely didn’t develop the thread enough.
Dunkirk is a Christopher Nolan film from frame one. The sound, the color, all of it exudes his style. If that is a turn off for you, I think Dunkirk is still worth watching because at least all of his style is still working with a story worth telling. Dunkirk is the best war movie to come out in a long time, and I am sure that it will get some talk around award season, though I am not sure that it will win (we have to wait and see how the indies fair this winter). Dunkirk was a movie made for theaters, so do yourself a favor and go see it before it leaves your local multiplex in a week or two. It is well worth your hard earned cash.
Shmee Played D&D With His Friends And Has This Video As Proof!
Well we went and did it: The Paladin, Plumpy Thimble, Shaun and I played D&D on the internet. It was a fun experience, and we learned a lot for next time, if there is a next time, like check if your mic is working right off the bat instead of waiting to hear from your little brother that there is no sound. Mr. Thimble has hosted the video for us on his YouTube channel, along with a brief explanation of what happened during the first 45 minutes.
We got this setup working with a great free software package for streaming OBS Studio (OBS = Open Broadcaster Software). It is a little finicky, like the fact if you open and close it you need to re-add your mics, but the price is right, and it is very easy to use, so if you want to start streaming it is a great way to test the waters without spending your hard earned cash. It works to just record your video, or stream it to YouTube, Twitch, or Mixer. We could only get three cameras working, but that was because of my Surface Book’s hardware limitations, not OBS.
Anyway, if you want, you should check out our little adventure above. Though I won’t be hurt if you don’t. The other guys might take it personally though.
The Nut Job Is A Con Job!
Every now and then you make a mistake, and you let your daughter pick a movie because she thinks a purple squirrel is cute. She tells you it will be silly. With The Nut Job your daughter was wrong on all counts. Well maybe the squirrel is cute, but it definitely isn’t silly. In fact is, it isn’t anything. It is just a collection of scenes with the run time of a feature film. It is a waste of everyone’s time.
We live in an age now where most kids movies a parent can watch and still be at least mildly entertained, but that is not the case with The Nut Job. It is an hour and twenty-six minutes of torture, and to cap it off, my daughter didn’t even like it that much. It is a low budget cash in. A job for everyone involved, but a disaster for anyone that was actually forced to watch it.
I would normally give a plot synopsis, or talk about the actors involved, but if they didn’t care about their movie, why should I? Okay fine, but only for the sake of a complete review! Animals in a park are hungry, so they try and steal nuts from bank robbers, and people of various fame levels voice the animals with varying degrees of blandness.
Somehow this movie got a sequel, which my daughter will not talk me in to watching. Though to her credit, I doubt she will be asking to watch The Nut Job again. If you happen to flipping through Amazon Prime and your kids squeal when they see a purple squirrel, just keep flipping and pretend you didn’t hear them. It will be better for everyone. We need to keep our families safe from terrible movies. Especially ones with Psy performing Gangnam Style.