This year was many things in the history of video games. It was the year that current consoles came into their own with multiple classic titles. It was the year virtual reality proved it was more reality than virtual. In other words, it was a good year to play games. The following ten are my favorites from the past year. I don’t note them as the best, because I hate asserting “best” qualifications on anything. These are simply the ten games I played that I most enjoyed, or was at least most in admiration of. Honorable Mention: Virtual Reality (PC,…
Author: Justin
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On September 13, 1985, Nintendo forever changed the media landscape. That was the day they introduced the world to Super Mario Bros. Video games and the broader media environment haven’t been the same since. Of course, Super Mario Bros. wasn’t the first game to feature Mario. He first appeared four years earlier in Donkey Kong on July 1, 1981. Although originally nicknamed Jumpman, he was rechristened Mario during the localization from Japan when, reportedly, Nintendo of America couldn’t pay their bills to a warehouse landlord of the same name. A year later Mario returned for Donkey Kong, Jr., in which…
A few years ago I started noticing the 30 Days of Thankful posts popping up in my Facebook feed. They usually started similarly with people expressing gratitude for their family and friends. People then progressed to their jobs, cars, homes, vacations, and, sometimes, even cellphones. You can probably note the diminishing trend that led to month’s end postings about how thankful they were for string cheese. I liked the idea behind all of this, but I found much lacking in the execution. I found the problem to be in the wording. When we’re thankful we’re inherently self-focused. What is good…
God may not be dead, but He may wish to disassociate himself with this film all the same. God’s Not Dead is one of the leaders of this year’s surge of Christian films that have surprised at the box office. It tells the story of Josh Wheaton (no, none of the names here are subtle) who is a college freshman enrolled in Professor Radisson’s philosophy class. Radisson, a cartoonish Atheist bully played to aplomb by Kevin Sorbo, forces all of his students to sign a form declaring God is dead. Josh refuses and Radisson turns his class over to Josh…
You know these people. You may be one or several of these people. The saying goes that, “Hell is other people.” Well, nowhere has more people than Facebook. The Baby Shamers These people love to post pictures of their children with food smeared all over their faces. These people find this “cute.” These people are wrong. The inability to feed oneself is not cute or worth commemorating in photo and sharing with the world. Think of it this way, would you post photos of grandma in the nursing home unable to feed herself? No, it would bother everyone as they…
Looking back, I grew up in a special time in the history of cinema. The old movie houses were still operating downtown, and the first VCRs were arriving into homes. There was a tangible connection to the past, and an exciting view into the future. Of course, the advent of home video also gave rise to the modern indie film market. Even if a film couldn’t find wide distribution in theaters, video stores were desperate for new content to keep consumers coming back night after night. It was also the era of Sneak Previews and At the Movies with Gene…
There are moments in Obvious Child that are so pedestrianly sweet that they undermine the usual romantic comedy criticisms. One such moment comes when Max (Jake Lacy) warms a packet of butter for Donna (Jenny Slate). Slate’s acting instinct here to underplay the moment is what sells it, and it speaks to everything that is right about this film. Unfortunately, everything right is less than the wrong. Donna works in a bookshop but her true passion comes at night when she does standup comedy. It’s there in the comedy club that one boyfriend dumps her while she meets another. One…
The British have the ability to self-correct during the middle of a comedy in a way that feels perfectly natural. The joke is headed one way, and the comedian realizes the utter silliness of it all and self-corrects to an even more absurd destination. That’s the genius of Steve Coogan in his most famous role of Alan Partridge. Here the character well known to British audiences finally gets a proper U.S. showing in a feature length film. Some of the awkwardness of the character has been toned back here, but he’s still cut in the same mold as Ricky Gervais’…
A long time ago, I used to be a fan of a show called Veronica Mars. Ten years later, it’s the darling success story of Kickstarter raising more than five million dollars for a feature length film version. This presents a dilemma—while thousands of fans certainly care, should anyone else? Veronica Mars began life as a TV show about a teenage detective. That titular detective, played by the charming and comedy chop baring Kristen Bell, returns now as a newly minted lawyer descending back upon her hometown of Neptune, California. There, her ex-boyfriend Logan Echolls has been charged with murder.…
How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it. While not a joke from this film, that is certainly representative of the style of humorous puns. Of course, if you were already a fan of the 1960s cartoon then you knew this. How strongly you hold that allegiance to the original cartoon will determine your enjoyment of this update. The titular Mr. Peabody is an anthropomorphic dog that speaks like a Harvard lecturer (he tells us he indeed did graduate form Harvard). One day he finds a boy (Sherman) and decides to adopt him. This sets up the central conflict of…