Author: Shmee

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This Is Not The Hot Dog Toaster You Have Been Waiting For!

ne-rs-hot-dog-taoster

The Nostalgia Electrics Retro Series Hot Dog Toaster looks to be a hot dog lover’s dream, but sadly that dream is a bit of a nightmare.  There are few things easier in this world to cook than an American Hot Dog.  I mean they are already pre-cooked.  You can, fry them, grill them, boil them (please don’t), steam them, hold them over a camp fire, wrap them around a light bulb, or just about any other heat source you can imagine, so you would think that a toaster would be up to the job, but I have found it to be lacking.

Like any toaster it is easy to operate.  Well in theory it is anyway.  You have twist dial on the side that goes from one to five to pick how long you want to cook your dogs and buns, and a leaver which you pull down to start the cooking.  There is also an emergency stop button, just in case.  So being the accomplished toaster-user that I am, I turned the dial to four and put in two hot dogs and two buns, and I pushed down the leaver.  The dogs came out undercooked.  The next two I turned the dial to five, and guess what?  It burned the crap out of them.

It is crazy to me to think that the one thing this toaster was designed to do, it would be bad at.  Sure it did indeed heat up my hot dogs, but it didn’t do a good job!  It has one reason for its existence, and it does it poorly.  I guess I could put the dogs in at five and then watch them, and then push the button when they are ready, but that defeats the purpose of a timer.  Plus it can only do two at a time, so if you are cooking dogs for friends, you would have to use something else anyway unless they like to wait while others eat.  If I had to give this toaster a classroom grade it would get a D+.  It toasted the dogs, but just barely successfully.  It gets the “+” because it looks good doing it.

Pretty much anything that heats stuff up in your kitchen or backyard is going to do a better job of cooking your hot dogs than this thing.  Sure it kind of works, but not well enough to recommend it.  It is such a shame too, because it does look cool.

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Please Don’t Apply For The Internship!

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You have got to give Google credit, The Internship is a heck of an add.  That doesn’t mean it is good.  Because it is really not (It is so Bad!).  It is just good for a two hour long employment video.  The fact that they got Shawn Levy to direct it, and Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson to star in it is just icing on the cake for them.  I hope Google paid 20th Century Fox a lot for this 2013 film because it is incredibly bland, and a little creepy.

The film is about two out of work salesmen, Billy McMahon (Vince Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Owen Wilson), who decided to lie their way in to an internship program at Google.  They of course get paired with a group of misfits in quest to get a full time job at the tech company.  They have to use their old school charm and wit to overcome their complete lack of tech savvy.  Who knew lying on your resume, and being a smarmy salesmen could land you a job at a Fortune 500 company!

Honestly that description doesn’t sound like that bad of a movie.  Fish our of water comedies can be very good.  This movie is not.  It was a lazy cash grab.  Google must have agreed to this because it makes them look good, and everyone else involved gets paid.  Everything about this movie is derivative, and then to make things worse they pad the running time everywhere: a quidditch match, a bonding strip club scene that refuses to end, and a long support call montage to name a few.

Lets talk about the strip club scene for a second.  It feels like it is half the movie, and it is awkward to watch as these kids “live it up”.  It is even worse when you consider that Wilson and Vaughn are like twenty years older than the rest of the cast, so it makes them feel like those creepy uncles you won’t let your kids hang out with.

Vaughn and Wilson can be funny, and when you see them on screen you want to root for them, but they just play less funny versions of their Wedding Crashers characters.  They are just going through the motions with this film, and looks like the rest of the cast is on cruise control too.  It is a waste of talent all around.

You shouldn’t see this movie.  It is disappointing on just about every level, and if you paid money to see it you are just encouraging bad film making.  Luckily if you do see it, it is completely forgettable.  If I hadn’t had to write this review, I would have blissfully forgotten all about it.  I hope Google got what they wanted out of this film because the people that had to watch it sure didn’t.

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EA Access Is A Good Start

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Yesterday EA announced a new program for Xbox One called Access.  Access will either cost you $5 a month or $30 a year, and in return for your hard earned money you will get “access” to a bunch of their older games.  In this first round you would be a able to play Madden NFL 25, Battlefield 4, Peggle 2, and Fifa 14.  Since I already own two of those games, it is not a very compelling package for me.  Though they have said they are “working” to add more very soon.  I am not sure what working means.  It must be hard to allow people to download games or something.

On top of old games they will also give early “access” to new games, but unlike normal demos your progress will transfer over to the games.  So if you are really excited about Dragon Age: Inquisition it might be enough to get you to try out the service.  You will also apparently get discounts on EA games, though I haven’t seen any specific numbers for that.  So if you really like EA’s upcoming lineup this might be the service you have been waiting for!

This seems like a no brainer move.  It allows EA to leverage their old games so that you will be more inclined to buy the DLC for those games, or use your discounts to pick up the new ones.  For now however, I don’t think the games being offered are enticing enough, and even though I love RPGs, I have never gotten in to the Dragon Age series, so I don’t really want “early access”.  Once there are more games, and a better range of titles coming out for Xbox One I might be more inclined.

I would much rather have had this come from Microsoft or Sony themselves, so it wouldn’t just be EA games, but games from all publishers as well.  They both kind of do it already with Games with Gold, and PlayStation Plus, but you only get a chance to activate those games for a month, and if you forget you miss out.  It would be much better if the games kept getting added to a pool of “free titles” instead.

EA Access seems like where the future is headed, and even though I am not swayed by the service now, it will definitely be something to watch.  Now if there was a super EA Access for $10 a month that gave me “access” to all their games and DLC, I would probably sign up.  Somehow I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon.

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Shmee Takes A Ride On The Snowpiercer!

snowpiercer

For people that don’t know, Snowpiercer is the Korean made film based on the French graphic novel of the same name.  It was directed by Bong Joon-ho, one of the best Korean film makers around.  He also directed the excellent movie The Host (the Korean monster movie, not the American YA book adaptation).  If you don’t like foreign films, never fear this movie is 80% in English, and it is very easy to follow.  Which you should, because it is a great ride.

The movie starts out by explaining that the world powers tried to control Global Warming by using artificial means, and instead they caused another Ice Age.  The only people that are alive are on a train that never stops called the Snowpiercer.  The people in the back of the train are growing angry about their treatment at the hands of the people in the front, so they start a revolt lead by Curtis Everett (Chris Evans).

Now I will grant you that is one far fetched plot, but they do such a good job telling the story that you will not mind.  This movie does what the best Sci-Fi films always do, and that is to use crazy ideas and situations to really talk about the here and now.  I didn’t always appreciate what this movie was trying to tell me, especially about religion (I think Bong Joon-ho believes in God, but that he is not a big fan), but at least they got their point across well, and in an entertaining way.

They got a great cast for this movie.  For the first half of this movie Chris Evans is in full Captain America mode, but at the end of this movie he really gets to show his acting chops.  He says he wants to retire from acting, but this movie makes me wish that he stick with it.  Tilda Swinton once again proves her worth as a character actor as Mason the smarmy front car middle-manager who is in charge of the rear car passengers.  John Hurt and Ed Harris bring their great presence to this film, and add depth to their roles even with limited screen time as Curtis’ would be father figures.

This movie manages to play the edge between action film and drama very well.  Enough action to keep you entertained, and then it does what very few films these days try and do, engages your mind.  It also believes you are smart enough to understand it, and that again is a very rare thing.

This movie is not perfect.  It is a little odd, but considering we don’t get movies like this very often, I will take it.  It is a shame this movie didn’t get a bigger push from the The Weinstein Company (they didn’t think you were smart enough to understand it) because I think it could have been a bigger hit.  If you get a chance, I think you should book passage on the Snowpiercer.