Friday, January 23, 2015

Chaturanga to Upward Facing Dog

No, I'm not beefing up on my yoga poses (although my lady says I can join her anytime), this is about  the action crashing, mind twisting, face melting, and possibly epileptic episode inducing sci-fi action thriller titled Edge of Tomorrow. The tag line Live, Die, Repeat itself conjures up a variety of thoughts. Immortals maybe? Zombies perhaps? Nope; this is a sci-fi blockbuster and that means only the most cerebral of conundrums will do: time travel. Gun it to 88 Doc.

But time travel isn't enough for these science fiction freaks. There's aliens, super soldier exo suits, Bill Paxton (the only actor to be killed by an Alien, Predator, and Terminator), and oh yeah, a chick with a sword. She's like 'Fuck guns, a big ass anime looking manga sword is all I need'. And its awesome. Oh, is it awesome. This bad ass bitch is played by none other than Emily Blunt. She's played a variety of roles, and has dabbled with some other sweet time traveling sci fi before (Looper anyone?) but this role puts her not only in the front of an action movie but directly in the driver's seat. You see those triceps pop each time Tom Cruise's character meets her, which needless to say is a lot.

Powerful, cool, and maybe just a tad sexy. Okay, pretty sexy. But you can tell this chick doesn't mess around when you see her on the battlefield. Speaking of battlefield, the movie opens with Cruise's character, Cage, getting thrown under the bus and involuntarily receiving a front line spot to the battlefield he's been rallying support for. He was perfectly happy when his support didn't involve pulling a trigger, but the General had other plans. Cage stumbles through his day of training, barely makes it out of the drop ship alive, and bares witness to the alien apocalypse version of Normandy. Freak events occur, Cage dies, and then he ends up reliving the previous 24 hours only to be killed on the battle field again. And again. And again. And again. You get the idea. Its essentially a more bloody, deadly, and alien infused sadistic version of Groundhog Day. Speaking of aliens, these things are gnarly. Heinous beings plucked out of an imaginative child's REM sleep. Actually more like a man's sleep; children shouldn't know these things. The horrific creatures are fast, destructive, carry multiple appendages, eye wincing squeals, have subterranean tendencies, seemingly bullet proof, and generally hunt in packs. You would feel pretty great taking down a single one if only you wouldn't turn to find the other 5 ripping apart your back. Okay, gotta calm down. Gettin' myself all amped talking about it so now I'm gonna have to go out and buy it. Pop it in the PS3, watch, repeat. An easy choice considering how sweet it was the first time, and if by no other merit than it has Exo suits as well. I basically must watch/own almost any movie with them. Love 'em. I LOVE THEM. Off the top of my head I can think of Aliens, Matrix Revolutions, and Avatar; I'm sure there's many more but I'm just too excited to think now. And yes, I have many Exosquad action figures, both from childhood and adult life (they seem so much cheaper as an adult). Anyway, back to Tomorrow. This movie rocks. Acting is solid, characters are cool and have time to be fleshed out and developed. A cool/strange benefit of reliving the same day over and over is that you can have 100s of interactions between characters over similar circumstances without them aging like some kind of crazy montage of character growth. Pretty fun, huh? I give this time bending, alien killing, exo-suit bearing, metaphysical masterpiece an easy 7/7 fox tails. Acting is great, special effects are top notch, story line is fleshed out (especially well for time travel), and its just plain fun. Fun to watch, fun to think about, fun to discuss, and fun to watch. It came out last Summer but you can still find it at many Redbox locations, or even pick it up from your local library for free dizzle (that's what I did). Pop it in. Watch. Repeat.


Friday, January 16, 2015

Big whoop, you wanna fight about it?



Yeah, so I haven't put up a post in awhile. Big whoop, you wanna fight about it? I could blame the holidays; I've been busy. Well, kinda busy. Okay fine, the office wasn't really that busy, but maybe I just didn't have anything to talk about. My mind was too focused on what I was gonna get for Christmas (ME,ME,ME). My lady did get me a pretty sweet Ninja Turtle Chia pet. You grow his shell, or at least you're supposed to. Not much luck yet, but he does sit in a cold office most of the day.



Hopefully I can update you next week with a few sprouts as I leave him over the weekend with no light and no water (its a Chia pet, come on). 
The holidays were actually pretty great; I got a good haul and I had one of the best times ever handing out gifts I picked out for my family. Otherwise I haven't done much anything of note lately. The SoMo men's broomball team has had a rough start with 2 losses (Go SoMo!), but we're really coming together and I feel good about our next 2 games against what appears to be the runt of our little league. Come cheer us on; Mondays at 6pm at Matthew's Park

Haven't watched much lately either (or at least something that has enticed me to write a full review), but we did watch 3 Days to Kill the other night and that was pretty fun. Kevin Costner was awesome and the french setting with Euro cars is a nice change of scenery. Too much family crap for me, but it was funny and the action was cool whenever it came up so I give it 4/7 Fox Tails. 
I'm still not fully back into the swing of things yet, so I'll just finish with some pics of someone else's project; a solid axle swapped (SAS) VehiCross that I've been following on vehicross.info. There's not much aftermarket for the VX, and certainly no SAS kit so a lot of work and creative thinking has gone into this beast. Check out all his pics here. Nice work Rado!
Front Pumpkin

New Front Long Travel Shock


Fully locked and ready to ROCK!