In reference to the last post by FZR, Ramis defiantly has a more down to Earth tone on Ghostbusters 3. If it happens, it happens. That video was posted up on Makingof.com July 08, 2009. So, this is damn recent. He also comments on how Dan (Akroyd) has always ‘kept the fire alive’. I think what that means is, “Dan is like an eager kid”. I mean that in a good way. It does makes sense. Think about it, every time us sleepy folk have gotten excited about a third movie, it’s because of something Dan Akroyd has said. All of the original cast is proud of the legacy of Ghostbusters, but Akroyd is like a kid on Christmas Eve. Can’t wait to get under the tree, ya know? In fairness to Dan, most of this is internet hear say, meaning it’s not the most credible story ever. But it seem like every last rumor on GB3 is along the lines of, “Dan Akroyd said they’ll start filming in the winter.” When, if you watch the video Frank posted, it’s clear that the script is still in development, first draft to be precise. Also the studio has obligations to other scripts that come first. So if they even approve the script, it might not get to pre production til next fucking year! In short, we all need to sit back and chill. Even you, Dan Akroyd, you eager beaver you 
Now, how about a movie review? Time for a Ronin’s look at Inglourious Basterds!
Now, you should all know that I’m do not worship Quentin Tarantino has a directing god, has sooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many people do. That’s not to say I hate his films! No no no! They’re merely OK. Got that? Not bad, not great. He’s ok. How was Pulp Fiction? Alright. Reservoir Dogs? Ok. Jackie Brown? Never seen it. Kill Bill 1-2? I liked em. Death Proof? Sucked ass. On a whole I think the guy is overrated. Not terrible by any means! Just overrated. Not a directing god, that honor goes to James Cameron.
Now that you know my thoughts on the man, what did I think of Inglourious Basterds? Not nearly as bad has I though it would be. Still, I don’t like the ‘bait and switch’ advertising of the movie. My sisters husband thought from the trailers that the movie would be a fun killing Nazi’s action flick. No no. Boy, he sure was surprised when he found out it nothing like that. The trailers give Brad Pitt top billing. You know, that whole “Killiin Nazis” speech with the heavy accent? Truth is, this movie has surprising little ‘Killin’ Nazis’ at all! Pitt has maybe, 30, 40 minutes tops in this 2 hour and 40 minute movie! The Basterds themselves don’t really get any screen time til the end and pretty much no character development. Talk about a bait and switch. We’re lead to believe this film will be a fun romp around Nazi Paris with the Basterds ‘Killin’ Nazis’. There’s a little bit of that…the shit in the trailer. If that’s what you wanted from the movie, then watch the trailer and call it a day. This would normally lead to me shouting and ranting about how much I hate this movie, but I won’t. Why, I didn’t hate it. Sure it sucks that in a movie called ‘Inglourious Basterds’, the ‘Basterds’ get shafted. But the movie manages to good despite this. You see, this film is more about a Jewish girl named Shoshanna, and her revenge against the Third Reich. She also gets one hell of a bad guy to run and hide from. In the form of Colonel Hans Landa. This guy goes right up there with the best em in terms of villains. I mean, this dude knows how to work the whole ‘Jew Hunter’ thing. And the scene with him and the double agent in the theater! Man that was a great scene. Enough to sell the movie. One more selling point about the guy is his linguistic chops! He acts in four languages fluidly; English, German, French and Italian! Oh yeah, if you weren’t really for it, this movie is maybe 80% subtitles. I don’t think it’s that much a issue considering how many people loved Pan’s Labyrinth. I’m just throwing that out there.
All and all, this movie is alright. What really hurt it for me was the bait and switch the ads pulled on us. The film is simply not what they’re selling us. But like pretty much all of his films, it’s not bad either. I dare say, it could have been better without the ‘Basterds’ at all. Think about that if you’ve already seen it.
3 out of 5
You guys know me by now. You’ve either heard me on Sleepy Cast talking about Ghostbusters or you’ve seen videos of me talking about Ghostbusters. In short, I fuckin’ love Ghostbusters. And it is my great love of this franchise that makes my review so credible; no one will be harder on a Ghostbusters game then a true Ghostbusters fan. That’s this guy right here. To be honest, when I first heard about a Ghostbusters game, I was pretty sure this game was gonna suck the big hard one, if you feel me. And all it’s trouble during development didn’t make me feel any better. I was hoping for, at the very least, an ‘Ok’ game; something passable, with a few cute lines here and there. What did we get? We got a really good game that made me smile the whole way through.
Dan Aykroyd has stated on many occasions that this is Ghostbusters 3…which is funny, because now they are making Ghostbusters 3. Anyway, this is a fully thought out story happening two years after Ghostbusters 2 and was written Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. It’s not some cheap attempt to make money off the fans, a lot of love when into this game. The story follows the Busters’ and the new recruit (your character) as those pesky Gozerians are at it again. As I mentioned, you’re playing has the new rookie who is never given a name. In the beginning I thought this was kind of lame, but in the end it works quite nicely. I don’t wanna hear this new guy talking and ruining the flow of Ghostbusters chi! By playing as the silent observer, you become a part of the story without interfering with it. It was a brilliant decision and the story actually has a better Ghostbusters feeling then GB2 had.
The story is all well and good, but it ultimately it all boils down to the important question- is this game fun? And it is. Handling the proton pack feels just like you always thought it would. Ghost bustin’ is a three step process: zap em’, cap em’, and trap em’. You begin by sustaining a burst of concentrated proton against the negatively charged ectoplasmic entities. Once you’ve whittled the ghost health down, the game prompts you to fire off the capture stream which allows you to wrangle the ghost towards the trap. Once there, nature takes its course and the ghost is captured and ready to be taken to your custom made storage facility. One of my fears was that this would be all you’d do in the game, which would get old really fast. But there are several enemy types beyond ghosts that don’t have to be captured in the trap. Lesser spirits, demons, even ghoulish zombies! The Ghostbusters fight slime zombies in a fuckin’ grave yard! How bad ass is that? And aside from the proton packs basic proton beam, Terminal Reality took a few liberties and created new streams for the pack to fire, like the Boson Dart- a concentrated proton blast. Most of the other streams run the typical shooter genera weapons. You have the shotgun-like Shock Blast, the rapid fire Overload Pulse, and the Slime Blower…Hey, not all of it is genera based. While some enemy types are weaker to certain streams, admittedly you can pretty much just stick with the proton stream.
Another key piece of Ghostbusters equipment is your Paragoggles and PKE Meter. Equipping these puts you into a first person mode which let you see more paranormal activity in the area, such has the ectoplasmic residue the ghost leave behind, which you’ll intern use to track down the wrascally ghost. They’re all the games way of keeping you on the path you should be going on. You bring up the goggles and use the read out to get back on the proper path. It also shows any cursed artifacts and gives you a heads up on the enemy spook, via Tobin’s Spirit Guide. It’s such a small thing that goes a long way, and again shows a lot of time went into the presentation of game. The PKE Meter is meant to be your navigator, while the Proton Pack serves as a HUD showing health, and your streams overheat level. It all goes into making a more immersive experience.
This isn’t to say the game is flawless. The in game animated sequences vary from very good looking, to almost robotic in their movements. And the lip sync quite often doesn’t sync. It’s rarely perfect in any game, but it can get mighty bad in Ghostbusters. There are also audio problems where two characters lines will over lap each other. And remember when I said how the PKE acts as a navigator and the pack is your HUD? Yeah…that doesn’t always work in your favor. It works well most of the time, but there were enough points where I wished a fuckin’ red arrow or something would pop up on the screen to give me a hand. And the two little bars that represent your health are quite little and hard to see. I didn’t die that much, (Authors Note: As I write this, I have not yet gone through the game on its hardest setting) but I can see how it could quickly cause a controller to be thrown. Oh yeah, the final boss is lame as hell! Now let’s talk about the multiplayer. I’ll come out and say that there is NO co-op campaign mode. Yes, this sucks hard. I can understand why they didn’t make the campaign co-op, they wanted a deeper story mode. But the fact that there are four Ghostbusters and no co-op campaign of any kind hurts the replay value. It does have 6 multiplayer modes though. Most of them revolve around the same idea of catching ghosts with some constriction added. Personally my favorite is the Slime Dunk mode where you have to dunk more Slimers in the trap then the other players. It’s fun and all, but damn…no co-op just plain fucking sucks.
This is a Ghostbusters fans dream come true! A Busters’ game that doesn’t suck! There’s a lot of fan service here, everything from the Proton Packs to the PKE just looks and feels right. If you’re an uber fan, it’s a must own. However, the casual fan of Ghostbusters may feel a bit cheated by the only average multiplayer options. Perhaps a sequel of some sort could fix this, but for now, we’ll just have to settle. Now if you’ll excuse me, there are ghosts that need bustin’. And bustin’ makes me feel good.
4 out of 5
Alright, I just got back from the theater, and I’d like to give some quick thoughts on Terminator Salvation. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Thought it was way better then T3. I’m not just saying that to bash on T3 (I actually thought it was pretty good), but Salvation is just a better movie. The action is scenes are very well done, which is saying alot considering this is the same guy that did both the Charlies Angels movies. The man defiantly knows how to handle an effects heavy production like this. I dare you to watch that interstate chase and not say ‘wow’. Sam Worthington has chops man, and surprisingly steals the show from Christian Bale. Honesty in my opinion this was more a movie about Sam Worthington’s character then a movie about John Conner. And any time you put Michael Ironside in a film, I’m so down. There were also alot of nods to the three previous films, I don’t wanna spoil much, but it was pretty awesome. I know some of the early review were pretty negative, but I don’t get what the reviewers are getting at. Salvation’s biggest problem is that everyone keeps comparing it to T2. I’m not knocking T2, it’s about has close to flawless has any film can be. I love it. But everyone keeps saying, “You know it lack the *insert comment here* found in Terminator 2″. Get over it. It’s not T2. NOTHING will ever be T2. T2 was a different kind of action movie then Salvation. If you go into this movie understanding that, you’ll probable enjoy yourself. Is it perfect? By all means no, and a few things did bug me about it. None of those things are crippling flaws though. And it was a damn fine movie experience. I had a fun time watching it.
Sleepy 3 1/2 stars outta 5
I’ll go ahead and make a confession; I don’t like the Marvel Animation movies. Ultimate Avengers was lame and The Invincible Iron Man sucked because Iron Man is just a lame character. So when I heard Marvel was gonna make a Hulk animated movie, I didn’t care. Then I heard he was gonna fight Wolverine and Thor. Still didn’t care. But then, I found out that Deadpool was in the movie! Fuck yeah! Let’s watch this fucker! Hulk Vs. is broken up into two separate short stories. Each one is about 30 minutes long. I’ll start with Hulk vs. Thor because the kids all love Wolverine, and since I don’t like kids, fuck em! Wolvie goes last!
Hulk vs. Thor starts with a monologue about how cool Asgard is. It’s also pretty damn vulnerable when Odin takes his nap every winter. When he does bad guys try to attack Asgard. However they always get spanked by Thor. The monologue turns out to have been given by Loki, the God of Mischief…the God of Mischief. See- here’s my problem; Thor’s main enemy is the fucking God of Mischief. The God of Mischief should be a ferret! Not this douche, with his fucking clown shoe ass horns. Lame. Back to the review, eager to prove how evil a mischievous god can be, Loki has brought Bruce Banner to Asgard to use the Hulk to kill Thor. Loki has Amora cast a spell that pulls Banner out of the Hulk, and cast another spell that allows him to control Hulk. With the Hulk now under control, Loki goes forth to smash. All goes according to plan as Hulk pretty much beats Thor to death, but Loki’s own anger caused by not being able to wield Mjolnir leads him too lose control of Hulk. Free of Loki and without Banner to bring the Hulk back down, Hulk decides to go and tear Asgard down…just because it’s there. Which brings up the question, what would Hulk do if he can’t change back to Banner? Anyway, at some point during this, Loki kills Banner and Amora saves Thor because she’s got the hots for him. Thor confronts Loki, and they realize that the only way to stop Hulk is to unite Banner and Hulk again, meaning they have to go to Hell and get Banner’s soul back. Apparently if you die in Asgard and you weren’t fighting, your ass goes straight to Hell. Fuckin’ Asgard…Long story short, they reunite Hulk and Banner, send him back to Earth, and Loki is trapped in Hell. It ends with Banner walking down a long road with the classic ‘hulk piano theme’ playing.
Now we’re swinging into high with Hulk vs. Wolverine! This one opens up with Wolverine being flown into a ravaged town near the American/Canadian border. The Hulk’s been through town and the Wolverine has been called in to track down and kill the Hulk. Good luck with that bud! Wolverine has no trouble tracking down Hulks’ smelly ass with his mutant blood hound nose, but it is the form of Banner. Banner smells like Hulk, so we know this won’t end well given Wolverine’s glowing personality. Of course, Banner transforms, and the two begin their epic and bloody battle. Unlike Hulk vs. Thor, Hulk vs. Wolverine is graphic as hell! I guess the reasoning for this is… well, it’s fuckin’ Wolverine! Their battle is interrupted when Deadpool (yay) and members of Team X (Sabretooth, Omega Red, and Lady DeathStrike) tranquilize Hulk and Wolverine, and take them back to Weapon X headquarters. The movie takes an odd turn here. It’s not so much Hulk vs. Wolverine as it is Hulk and Wolverine vs. Team X. Also included at no expense is some Wolverine origin stuff. It’s cool to see and all but really, it doesn’t aid the story in any way. So Hulk just beats the fuck outta Team X, completely destroys the Weapon X facility, baseball bats Wolverine into the woods with a support pillar, and hops right after him as the base explodes. With Weapon X now out of the picture, Wolverine and Hulk are free to continue their fight. But they don’t. Fade the black.
On the whole, I liked these movies, although the Wolverine movie is clearly the better film. It’s not that vs. Thor is a bad, it just feels kinda forced. I know that the two have fought before in the comics, but the Wolverine character was created to fight the Hulk, with his first appearance being in The Incredible Hulk 180. The two have a long history of battle. They were made for each other. But Thor? Ehh…. I don’t know. It just isn’t as cool. Maybe this is also partly due to my not being much of a Thor fan. On the whole though, I recommend giving this watch. It’s definitely worth a rental, if nothing else.
A Sleepy 3 outta 5