HEY WHAT’S UP BRO.

It’s indeed been some time. What have I accomplished in this approximately 2 months of time? Very, very little.  I purchased many more NES games out of my disturbing obsession with them. I began playing Minecraft in an even more obsessive manner, although a horrible incident involving lava, water, and the odd physics of fluids in that game have caused me to take some personal time off of Minecraft. I played L.A. Noire, and learned that, were I to become a policeman who’s only options were Truth, Doubt, and Lie, crime would run rampant in the world. What else have I done, you ask? Well, for that, you’ll just have to wait and see. ;)

Nah, I’m kidding. Things I’m currently working on/planning:

•  Beating the entire main series of Mario games. I realized about a week ago that I own pretty much all of them (barring Sunshine and Galaxy 2) and thought it would be fun to go through them all.
• I recently got access to a Netflix account, and I’m considering watching terrible, terrible old horror movies and reviewing them on here. The only problem is that there are far too many. This means that you (yes, YOU) should suggest movies that would be entertaining…or cringeworthy.
• Beating my normal complement of summer games. There are certain games I just play through about once a year because I love them with all of my heart. These generally include Startropics 2: Zoda’s Revenge, Resident Evil 4, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Kirby Super Star, and The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past.
• Getting more Genesis and Game Gear and Dreamcast games. I was always a Nintendo kid, and never had any Sega systems. Although now that I own some, I think that may have been the right decision. I can’t seem to find any games that are like…good. I’ve got Sonic, and Mortal Kombat II for the Genesis, Alien 3 (ugh…) for the Game Gear, and Soul Caliber for the Dreamcast…and that’s it. Again, you need to tell me if there are games for these systems that will not make me cry.

And that’s pretty much it. I’m glad to be back! See you around. And please read this as much as the Slender Man post. That would make me happy.

Review: The Hangover Part II

Weeeeeeeeee

Whatever.

That was my initial reaction to seeing The Hangover: Part II, the highly anticipated sequel to one of the better comedy flicks in recent memory. Whatever. Thanks to the vast success of the first Hangover movie, the sequel was pretty much immediately announced by noted raunchy filmmaker, Todd Phillips. Soon the trailers and posters and other hype machines began coming around. The Wolfpack was returning to the big screen, and soon enough every bro and ho was updating their Facebook status with eager anticipation of the new movie.

I give most of the blame for this ridiculous over-hype machine to the young people of Generation Y, AKA the Bros Icing Bros Generation (we deserve it. We’re the worst). The common motif with the Bros Icing Bros Generation is to embrace only a choice few pieces of entertainment and run with the damn things for as long as they exist, no matter how obviously stupid they eventually boil down to. The short list of prime Bros Icing Bros entertainment is relatively short, but it more than answers everything you need to know about how truly committed people can be once the general population decides something deserves to be called the best thing since sliced bread.

• Twilight
• The Hangover
• Glee
• Jersey Shore

That’s just the few things that I can come up with off the top of my head, but the pattern is already well-defined. Granted, the first Hangover movie was very funny, but most of that praise came from the fact that it took some relatively unknown actors, threw them into an inappropriate movie, and then kept on giving the audience new lewd shit to gasp and laugh about. It was fresh, but the freshness pretty much died as soon as the sequel was announced. It was only a matter of time before that became clear to a lot of snooty film critics.

The Media Experiment Lives

Should two three (three and a half?) months really seem like a long time?

The last time this simple little blog had a new post was two months ago, but it seems so much longer than that. This may have something to do with the fact that my last post, a shitty attempt at live-blogging what turned out to be an awful Oscars show, was posted in late February. As time went by, and as I tried and tried to think of things to write, I couldn’t come up with anything, and simple procrastination turned into a hiatus, and I was starting to feel like the site was finally done for.

But as I left The Media Experiment for dead, I started discovering some great new pieces of pop culture geekery. Since February, I’ve experienced the joys of Breaking Bad and Community. I’ve found some great new bands to listen to, especially this cool little group from Canada called Meligrove Band. I’ve played awesome games like Borderlands, I’ve read superb books like Olympos, and I’ve even found the time to do other meaningless things, like graduate from high school and officially decide on going to the University of Missouri, starting this fall.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that while silly little blogs will stop moving, the rest of the world doesn’t. And as the world doesn’t stop, neither does entertainment. So really, there is no reason to actually kill this blog, even if a break from covering the whole wide world of time-wasting was worth it.

So, with all of that behind us, it’s time for the folks here at TME to get back to what we do best, and that’s providing amateur analysis and praise/criticism/irrational hatred to the world of media entertainment.

I speak for Jimmy, Emily, Trevor, and Jackie when I say: we’re back (at least for the summer), and it feels very good.

I now leave you with iPug

First Impressions of Okamiden! (From an Okami Nerd)

Dear all those who are reading this: If you have looked at any of my other blog posts (If you haven’t, read them now you ass), you would know that I am in love with Okami. Okami is my favorite game. Ever. So when the news came that there was going to be a sequel, I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited. I rushed right to the nearest Game Stop to preorder me a copy of Okamiden. The following article will be a smidgen of my opinion on the game; the full review will come later. Here is my first impression of Okamiden, straight from an Okami addict.

Top 5 Video Game Soundtracks

Adorable!!

Well hello, readers! We all have those video games where the music is incredibly catchy, and just sticks with us, right? Well I know I do. And I can confirm that I have around 530 tracks on my iPod from various video game soundtracks. From Zelda to Silent Hill, I tell you what the best are!

2011 Best Picture Nominees

Yesterday, at 10:00 AM, I decided that watching all 10 of the nominees for Best Picture was a much better plan than like, sleeping or something foolish like that. Anyway. I sat for 24 hours and watched what are theoretically the 10 best films released this year. Now after roughly three hours of sleep I’ll see what I can yell angrily about them.

2011 Oscars Liveblog: Toy Story 3 vs. the World

Franco only loves his anime pillow pal

So apparently tonight is the Oscars, and for whatever reason I see fit, I guess I will liveblog the damn thing. After watching two best picture nominees yesterday (Winter’s Bone and The King’s Speech), all I’ve able to think about is the Christopher Guest movie For Your Consideration (great movie, by the way). Why? Because so many Oscar films just have this air of snottiness and self-importance that just makes me sick sometimes. It just feels like people will only make movies to try to rake in awards based on merits such as “dysfunction, crying, over-the-top emotions” and so on. Maybe I just hate seeing other people succeed, but then again, Transformers 2 is one of the highest grossing movies of all time, so I guess it’s not just the awards show films. The point is, I see movies as something to entertain first, and then inspire second, and not the other way around. I’d be totally fine if a movie about Gandhi fudged things and made him a bodybuilder with a Gatling gun.

Anyways, here are the Best Picture films I have seen: Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone, Inception, The King’s Speech, and True Grit. Here’s how I’d rank them and why…

5. Winter’s Bone: The intrigue of the story kept me interested for the majority of the movie, but damn, the ending was about as uneventful and unexciting as one could possibly expect. Weeee, they all do meth! Weeee, they’re ignorant hicks with anger issues! Weeeee, the lead lady is stuck in a horrible life at the beginning of the film and the end of it too! Jennifer Lawrence did a fine acting job, but if this wins Best Picture, I’m not going to be pleased.

4. Inception: Everyone wants to talk about “how overrated” Inception is, simply because of all the hype that came with Chris Nolan and the fact that it was a high-grossing summer movie. That said, it still had an interesting story and some really cool visuals that made me enjoy it overall. Let’s be honest here: not many people outside of Nolan could make something like dream inception seem plausible. This shouldn’t win BP, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad movie. Also, let’s not forget a certain blue alien film that was nominated for Best Picture last year…..

3. Toy Story 3: It is near impossible to not like this movie, but it’s in the minority simply because it’s a kid’s film. I would totally get behind this winning Best Picture though.

2. The King’s Speech: The two lead actors stole the show on this one, and made this movie go from 2 stars to 3.5 stars for me. Geoffry Rush was simply fantastic as the speech therapist; if he doesn’t win Best Supporting Actor, I will never look at this already “whatever” award again.

1. True Grit: That’s right, I’m a Coen Bros. homer, so sue me. Even with this movie, a movie that breaks a lot of artsy guy code (it’s a remake of an adaptation of a book, for one thing), but True Grit was the best Oscar movie I saw all year (my favorite movie overall of last year is still Kick Ass). The presentation, the acting (everybody was great in their respective roles), the feel; it felt like I was living in a snarky, slightly humorous Western world. This movie won’t win Best Picture, but it deserves to get at least Best Actor, and I’d root for Best Actress too.

And yes, I know my opinions are skewed since I didn’t see the likes of the other five movies, although you won’t get me to ever see The Kids Are Alright.

Anyways, catch up with me after the jump when the awards show starts. There’ll plenty of making fun of snooty celebrities after the jump, when the Oscars actually start. See you then!

Dead Island: Quite Possibly the Most Epic Video Game Trailer Ever

Let’s detail out a few quick facts here before I link the epic-ness you are about to see:

1. I randomly saw a tweet by Entertainment Weekly for the trailer of this game. I was intrigued, as I hadn’t heard anything about it at all, and because I’m a sucker for zombie games, moves, et cetera.
2. I was simply expecting a normal, action packed, heavy metal-filled zombie video game trailer.
3. I saw the description “Lost-meets-The Walking Dead and suddenly became way more interested.

And then I watched the trailer…

Hoe. Lee. Shit.

Say it with me now: Hoe. Lee. Shit.

I know that trailers of any sort shouldn’t be used to judge an unreleased game or movie, but damn. I think it’s going to be pretty hard for me to not pick up a copy of this when the game comes out, especially if the game is story driven ala World War Z.

What’s more is that this is coming off of the trailer for the decade-late game Duke Nukem Forever, which had an equally entertaining trailer, albeit far less serious. What are we coming to in this world where people are making video game trailers amazingly artistic? In short, I have to play this game now.

[Sidenote: As far as movie trailers go so far this year, Battle: Los Angeles definitely takes the cake. Sure, there’s a good chance it can still be a lackluster movie, but it’s certainly not straightforwardly cheesy like Skyline.]

H/T to EW

The Rural Alberta Advantage

You like Neutral Milk Hotel, right? You’ve never heard of Neutral Milk Hotel? Ugh. Okay, I don’t have time for that. Right now we are discussing The Rural Alberta Advantage. They’re a very folksy band from, surprise, Alberta. I discovered them while looking at the list of bands on Saddle Creek Records. If you have heard of Neutral Milk Hotel, and I hope you have, you’ll hear the extreme similarity in the vocals. The RAA’s first album Hometowns came out in 2009, and on March 1st, their second album, Departing will be released. I am way excited, and this band is pretty much all I’ve been listening to for about a week. They made me put down The People’s Key, and that takes some work. Here’s In The Summertime, by the Rural Alberta Advantage.

Media Man Crush: Alan Tudyk

We here at The Media Experiment are not afraid to shout to the world our strange attractions to people of the same sex (Ok, maybe that’s just me, but still (I’m not gay (ladies))) and with Valentine’s Day tomorrow, it’s high time to have our second installment of Media Man Crush! This month’s installment focuses on an actor that has been in almost every type of movie imaginable. From sci-fi’s to westerns, comedies to dramas, Mr. Tudyk is one of those guys that isn’t necessarily a household name (unless you’re a Firefly/ Serenity super fan), but is instantly recognizable. Add to that his stunning good looks and general awesomeness, and you’ve got a guy that you can be attracted to without being gay. In fact, if you actually are not attracted to Alan Tudyk, you might be considered gay by 95% of the male population. Fact.