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Shmee Visits Hamilton!

After years of hearing that Hamilton was the greatest Broadway show of all time, Mrs. Shmee finally got to see the touring production in Seattle at the Paramount Theater, and of course she took me with her.  Living up to ‘the greatest show of all time’ would take some work, and Hamilton fell at little short of that, but it was very good,  and well worth checking out.  If you can.

Obviously Hamilton follows the life and times of founding father Alexander Hamilton, and while its historical accuracy is not always the greatest, it is much closer to the truth than fellow historical musical The Greatest Showman.  It is a fun way to learn about a founding father that doesn’t get a lot of love.  Well until now that is, because he has an entire Broadway Musical about him.

Hamilton is not a show you go to for the crazy sets or special effects.  The floor can rotate in two different directions and the stairs can move around and that is about it.  What they have built is nice, but don’t expect any giant floating objects or crazy canon fights.  What you go to Hamilton for is the music, and that lives up to the hype.  It is great.  The first act is a bit better than the second, but the first act is so good that everything else kind of pales by comparison.

At this point it is almost impossible for Hamilton to live up to everyone’s expectations, but the music is amazing, and King George III steals the show whenever there is a lull.  Honestly, I would love a musical just about a whiney and petty King George III.  Anyway, if you can get tickets to Hamilton you should go.  If you can’t, take heart because a movie adaptation in on the way.

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Venom’s First Trailer Forgot About Venom…

As you can see in the trailer above, we see Venom’s symbiote in a glass jar at one point, but we never see it on Tom Hardy, so the first Venom trailer is Venom free.  Tom is also doing some strange take on an American accent.  I don’t know if he is trying to be more New York or something, but it is not working.  I hope he gets a mask to mumble in to quick to straighten that out.  Anyway, it is not a great first impression, but they have until October to win me over.

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Bruce Wayne Digs His Hole Deeper In What Ails You!

It turns out the reason that Bruce Wayne spends all his time fighting crime as Batman is because he just screws things up as Bruce, or at least I screw everything up as Bruce, and since 80% of the people out there made the same decisions I did, we are all screwing up together.  I mean things have really hit the fan in Batman: The Enemy Within, Episode 4, What Ails You.

I guess I should have seen this coming.  Leaning on my father’s criminal past to infiltrate a group of crazy criminals was always a bad idea, and I hate Amanda Waller for making me do it.  Still, I have only myself to blame for the way things have turned out.  Which is not good.

Sadly since this is only Episode 4, I wasn’t able to go full Batman and finish things they way I should have from the beginning.  Which is the problem with all TellTale Games’ forth episodes.  They are short and don’t have satisfying endings.  They are pure setup for the finale.  That being said, I have not seen things get this out of hand in a TellTale game before either.

I swear that I have done everything right, but crap is still falling apart.  Which is why I have been loving this series.  Generally in a TellTale game, you do what you are supposed to do and things end up okay.  With The Enemy Within, I am not sure that is going to be the case.  Which is a far more interesting story than everything being just peachy.

If you haven’t got TellTale’s Batman: Then Enemy Within, you need to start playing this game.  You will have no regrets, other than the fact you will be terrible at being Bruce Wayne.  Which, if we are fair Bruce is usually pretty bad at being Bruce as well, so this is a faithful adaptation.

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Shmee Observes The Cloverfield Paradox

Netflix pulled off quite the trick when it announced and launched The Cloverfield Paradox during the Super Bowl.  Which is now the third entry in the Cloverfield franchise.  Much like 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Cloverfield Paradox started life as a stand alone movie and then was edited to be part of the Cloverfield universe.  Sadly, it was not as successful as 10 Cloverfield Lane, but it does add some interesting things to the universe.

In the near future the human race is almost without power, so a team of scientists have headed to space to try and find a way to generate limitless power with a particle accelerator aboard the Cloverfield space station.  Since this is a Cloverfield movie, you can guess things go poorly.

Even though the trailers give away some of what happens, I will do my best not to spoil anything because this movie is at its best when it surprises you.  Which unfortunately is not that often.  It is the standard haunted house in space setup with some Cloverfield stuff edited in, and the Cloverfield stuff hurts the pacing of an already iffy movie, but it did add some curious pieces to the Cloverfield puzzle.  Even if those pieces don’t entirely fit, but the premis for the movie almost means that they don’t have to, which I enjoy thinking about.

While the cast is fine (it has Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd!), there is no John Goodman here to carry the weaker parts of this film, so whenever the action stops the entire movie almost grinds to a halt.  No one is elevating the material, and it could have used a little elevation.

While I have been pretty hard on The Cloverfield Paradox, I will say I find the implications this movie has on the rest of the Cloverfield franchise intriguing, and I have been thinking about where they go from here, so I don’t regret the hour and fortyish minutes I spent with it.  It didn’t squash my excitement for the franchise, which I guess they just bought and are re-editing another one now, so for Sci-Fi fans it is probably worth watching just to be up to speed for the next one.

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Tide Won The Super Bowl!

Considering I am not a fan of either the New England Patriots or the Philadelphia Eagles, I was watching this Super Bowl for the ads, and for the most part they did not disappoint (actually the game was pretty great too), but Tide was the clear winner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gGXnE1Dbh0

It was funny and smart, and they just kept coming.  I don’t know how much tide spent on this year’s ads, but all that money was worth it.  Runner up had to be Netflix who dropped Cloverfield 3 in an ad, and then started streaming the movie right after the game.  I will be watching it this week.

Anyway, congratulations Philadelphia on the hard earned Super Bowl win, and good job NFL for figuring out what a catch is, but more importantly, congratulations Tide for making the Super Bowl worth watching.