Shmee.Me

March 9, 2015March 9, 2015

Witness The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt!

Are you feeling down that both 30 Rock and Parks and Rec are off the air? Well Netflix has a series for you, the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It is written and produced by Tiny Fey and stars Ellie Kemper of The Office fame. It is zany and fun, and a great addition to Netflix’s library of original shows.

The premise is that Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) was locked underground in a doomsday bunker with four other women by a crazy cult leader. She has now emerged fifteen years later determined to make a life for herself in New York City despite only having almost an eighth grade education, and no idea how the world has changed in the fifteen years since she was abducted.

It is a dark concept to be sure, but they use it perfectly. It gives Kemper the opportunity to act like a middle school student, and to be totally mystified by the culture and technology of today. She often refers to the current day as “The Future”. This show is completely nuts, and I am guessing that is because of Tiny Fey. Her fingerprints are all over Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The randomness of 30 Rock are alive and well here.

Kemper is spot on as the lead. She pulls off the childlike woman struggling to make it in the big city with such gusto and charm it is hard not to smile while watching. She is not alone. Half of the cast of 30 Rock is in, or shows up in this show, and just like on 30 Rock they are great. Especially Jane Krakowski who plays Jacqueline Voorhees the wealthy socialite who employs Kimmy as a nanny. She is so delightfully crazy, you never know what she is going to say or do.

The only downfall I have for the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is that there are only thirteen episodes, and at twenty-two minutes a piece it doesn’t take long to watch the entire thing. At least they have already picked up the show for a second season, and I can’t wait for them to release it. Netflix has been on a roll lately, I hope they can keep it up.

March 6, 2015

Downton Survives Another Year!

Downton Abbey season five has come and gone, and while I was not to keen on the middle portion of the season (it has the Walking Dead‘s ability to get nothing done if it doesn’t want to) it did come to great close. They tied up a few plot points and opened up a few more. They also made me tear up a little bit which was quite nice (Shmee doesn’t have a heart of stone it seems). I hope they will continue to move the plot forward.

They are going to loose a lot of characters in the next couple of years, so we will have to see how that goes. It is always a struggle to bring in interesting characters to replace the ones that have left. They have done well so far, but can they keep it up? I suppose I will have to keep watching to find out. Of course the big question is how long they can keep the estate solvent. I am guessing at some point there will not be a miracle infusion of cash to keep the abbey going.

With five great season’s under its belt, Downton Abbey continues to be must watch TV. I hope it manages to do so through season six. It will be a long wait until January to find out.

March 5, 2015March 5, 2015

GDC 2015 Highlights!

Usually there isn’t a lot of news that comes out of the GDC (Game Developers Conference) since it is primarily a show for developers not the public, but this year was a little different, so I thought I would give you some highlights.

Everyone is in to VR now:

Oculus Rift showed that VR could be done well and cheaply, and since then everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. This year Sony showed off more of its Project Morpheus which will work with its PS4 due in 2016, but Valve and HTC’s Vive stole the show. Apparently it is the best VR headset ever demonstrated, so we will see how that turns out.

More Set-Top Boxes:

Valve is not content to stay on your computer it wants a piece of your TV as well. It announced that Steam Box, a PC based console, will finally launch this year, and it is also launching the Steam Link. A little box that Streams your PC games to your TV, so that if you already have a gaming rig you can play your games anywhere in your house. It is an interesting concept, and for a certain subset of gamers I can see it being very attractive. nVidia announced a new Android TV based console that is part of their Shield line. It can stream games from the internet as well as play games locally. We will see how that works when it launches for $200 later this year.

nVidia wants AMD out of the game:

nVidia has been busy launching new video cards in its great GeForce GTX 900 line, while AMD can’t seem to get their Radeon R9 300 series out the door, so nVidia went for the knockout blow by announcing the Titan X. It has 12 GB of RAM and 8 Billion transistors. I am sure this card will cost a mint, but there is nothing faster than it on the planet.

Game development is now free to try:

You can now download and try to make your own games using the Unreal Engine 4 or Unity Engine 5. Tools like these used to cost upwards of $10,000 a license, but now they are available to anyone. These are not the stripped down versions either. You are getting the full set of tools. Once you are start to make money you will have to pay for them, but if you just want to try it out you are free to do so.

Microsoft’s one OS world comes in to focus:

Microsoft is getting serious about only having one OS. At the GDC it explained more about its universal app store, updates on the new DirectX 12 API, Xbox to Windows 10 cross play and cross buying, Xbox One to PC streaming, and lastly a bunch of new games coming out to its platforms using the ID@Xbox program. Most notably Elite: Dangerous. I think it is clear that Microsoft sees itself as an underdog at this point, and is working really hard to try and be a dominant player again. We will see how their plans work, but at least it is good to see them truly trying again.

It has been a great GDC, and still has a couple of days left, but all the major players have had their say. If anything else noteworthy happens I will update this post. I can only hope next year’s GDC is as interesting.

March 4, 2015

Star Wars: Rebels Season 1 Wrap Up!

I have to say that I was really disappointed when Disney stopped Star Wars: The Cone Wars to start their own show, but Rebels has been great, and season one ended even better. There will be some spoilers in this piece, but so be it.

I was always hoping that they would bridge the gap between The Cone Wars and Rebels and with the season finale they finely did it. They brought in Darth Vader and Ahsoka which is great, but it raises all sorts of continuity questions. Like if Darth Vader knew that Ezra and Kanan existed why does he think that Luke is the last Jedi? You would think he would have mentioned that to someone that there are Jedi seemingly all over the place. That makes me think this series may end in a dark place.

All that aside what really sold me on this show is how all the characters have grown. Ezra is learning to trust in others, and Kanan is learning to be the Jedi that he was training to be before Anakin killed them all. The show can get a little too silly at times, but hey it is still a kids show, so why not get a little silly. They are also breathing more life in to the rest of the cast as well. I would love to see more solo episodes with Hera and Sabine. They seem like they have a lot to offer, but the Jedi are taking center stage. Sabine especially as a Mandalorian would be interesting.

Anyway. If you are not watching Star Wars: Rebels, you really should be. It is a great show, and it is getting me even more excited for the new movie coming out THIS CHRISTMAS!!!!

March 3, 2015March 3, 2015

Hangin’ Out With Mad Max!

With Mad Max: Fury Road coming out this year there was only one thing to do: re-watch all of George Miller’s Mad Max films. Since I watched them all as a kid on Cable TV it is amazing how different they are then I remembered them. The first movie Mad Max was especially different than I remember it. I am guessing that is because they could show so little of it on TV that it was super boring, and Mad Max is anything but boring.

The film is about a cop Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) in the near future. His job is to try and keep the peace in a world spinning out of control as it runs out of oil. Crazy motorcycle gangs threaten everyone’s security, even Max’s family. It is up to Max and his V8 Interceptor to bring these gangs to justice!

When I envision Mad Max I always think of wastelands, rolling sand, crazy cars, and, people in football pads. That is not this movie. There are glimpses of that vision in this movie, but this movie is set on the coast of Australia in quaint little towns. Really not that different than now, and that is what makes this movie almost scary. It is hard to watch people go crazy and do awful things in what could be current day. It is haunting. It is not ‘fun’ like Mad Max’s two sequels.

The acting in this film is all pretty poor. It is fine since this movie is mostly about high speed chases and crazy people being terrible to the populous, so good acting isn’t super necessary. You can tell that Mel Gibson was going to be a star though. He just had better screen presence than the rest of the cast.

Like I said this movie is all about the high speed chases, and the stunt work in this film is great. With the budget for this movie being so low, I am not sure how safe all the stunt work was, but they did a good job, and George Miller managed to get it all on camera. Not bad for a first time director.

Mad Max is not the film I thought it was, that movie is Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior which I will review shortly no doubt, but I am glad that I revisited this film, so I could see Mad Max the way it was meant to be seen. Not just like forty-five minutes of it on cable. It was a solid first outing for all involved, and it launched an enduring franchise.