Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
The N5 Show! – Week 3, 2012 – iBooks, SOPA Blackout, And Costco?
Another week, another N5 Show. We chatted a little bit about it on the latest podcast and it’s cool that peeps want to see it, so here we go! Today, I’m covering Apple’s new iBooks, my desire to stop reading about SOPA and PIPA despite our position on them, and… Costco?
‘Haywire’ Review
Just think of it as a small action film. Would you give Steven Soderbergh (the Ocean’s films, The Informant!, Contagion) a hundred million dollars to build an action film around gorgeous MMA fighter Gina Carano? No, probably not. So here we are with Haywire: a stylish spy thriller redux with a lot of MMA-style fights. Does that tickle your fancy?
Star Wars: The Old Republic Sales “Below Expectations”, I Cancel My Account, Cats And Dogs Now Living Together
Twenty-nine days ago, I started my Star Wars: The Old Republic account. Last Night I cancelled it. I had put two days into the game and despite Rob’s enthusiasm and Sam playing it like it was a full-time job, I simply could not get over its overly-obvious MMO trappings to keep playing. It’s just too similar to other games, namely World of Warcraft, to keep investing time in. It wasn’t the first MMO I’d given up on, it certainly won’t be the last.
Bioshock: Infinite’s New 1999 Mode Sounds Awesome
My biggest complaint with the original Bioshock was that it played far too close to the team’s previous success in System Shock 2. The mechanics were identical, the plot was identical, and other aspects were still a spitting image of Irrational’s success with that game. Bioshock had a very unique setting and aesthetic, but part of me felt that I was playing a streamlined version of that game, which featured the best villain in a video game ever. But System Shock 2 was something else: very difficult. Now it appears that Irrational is out to rectify this with their newest game.
New iBooks Are For Education What Lipstick Is To A Pig
I remember being a sophomore in high school and dreaming of gorgeous interactive textbooks that existed in a tablet computer that I could carry from class to class. Or massive digital whiteboards that could be jotted on and saved for reference later. Did I believe these would actually help my education? Only slightly. I knew that even if those tools existed, they would be prohibitively expensive. Today, Apple didn’t show off large digital whiteboards, but they did show off textbooks that were gorgeous and interactive for tablet computers that can be carried from class to class. They’re also prohibitively expensive for most high school students I knew, which is the group they’re targeting now.
‘EAMES: The Architect And The Painter’ Review
If you think today of a legendary slightly egotistical designer who sought perfection and whose work influenced entire industries, you’d probably think of Steve Jobs. This would be wrong because Steve Jobs wasn’t a designer, however keen his eye was for the craft. Charles and Ray Eames essentially crafted the look of the 1950s and 1960s, an era popularized by TV’s Mad Men, through ingenious design. But first, they started with chairs.
I Love Whiskey Media’s SOPA Coverage
Did you know that the capital of Sweden is Scandinavia? Or that Steven Soderbergh originally worked on The Golden Girls before being ousted in his attempt to kill off the principal characters? While a lot of internet sites were down today in protest of SOPA and PIPA (including our own), the Whiskey Media folks took to Giant Bomb for a live show instead. Read the rest of this article…
‘Gentlemen Broncos’ Is The Worst Movie I’ve Seen This Year
After watching Gentlemen Broncos, I felt like hero Benjamin about two-thirds of the way through as he stumbles out of a screening for the amateur production of his book, Yeast Lords, and vomits into a trash can. Benjamin submitted the book some time earlier at a writing camp to gain the attention of his literary hero, science fiction auteur Doctor Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), who, short a hit novel, steals Benjamin’s work and is now making millions through plagiarism. Throughout the film, Benjamin, trying to be a nice guy, gets walked over as others take advantage of him. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that this film has taken advantage of me in my humble attempt to give the Hess’s a rebound shot. They completely failed. Now it’s 4AM and I have to deliver a receipt of the time I wasted.
The Best Game You Didn’t Play In 2011… Saints Row: The Third! (Video)
If you’re a Grand Theft Auto fan, you should buy this. If you’re a person who enjoys cooperative play, you should buy this. Are you crazy? You should buy this. Saints Row: The Third, for all its brash offensiveness, enlists so many things that are fun in video games and gives them to you. And then explosions. I could sit here all day and go over how cool this game is and how much time I’ve planted in it (which I’ve done, anyway), but instead, I offer you a video montage of Cody and I ripping up the city of Steelport over the course of an evening. Check it out!
‘Napoleon Dynamite’ TV Review
I mentioned on our recent Caucus that I wasn’t turned away from the hype that Napoleon Dynamite got when it washed upon the population a few years ago. Everyone remembers the lines, the quirky characters, and the desolate Idaho setting, but what kept the movie fresh was its distinctive slow-paced humor. Since no one from the original film has had a career since its mid-00s limelight (Jim Heder continued to be Jim Heder, the married director/writer/producer Hess duo went on to produce Nacho Libre and Gentlemen Broncos, both relative failures) it makes sense that they would roll back to stock for another run at a regular paycheck. To its credit, it almost works.
