onewheeled999

Bon Iver - "Blood Bank" How I've never listened to this guy's music, I don't know. I love it.

Time to think long and hard as to why I did not like Kick-Ass 2 ANYWHERE near as much as the first.

Justice - "Let There Be Light"

Congrats to Alliance for beating out Na'Vi and becoming the champions of Dota 2's The International 2013! That final game was INTENSE, easily the best match I've ever seen. The Million Dollar Coil will go down in history. But there was so much more... Dendi's triple kill, the Aegis/Roshan steal from said snowballing Dendi, the beyond incredible split pushing... Amazing.

Amaranthe - "Leave Everything Behind" Interesting stuff, with the 3 very different vocalists.

Brief, extremely fragmented reviews of movies I've seen recently, go! Event Horizon: Caught this on Netflix after hearing a lot about it. Good. Incredibly tense, due in part to great acting and atmosphere. Not quite as terrifying as everybody made it out to be. Definitely doesn't deserve the 22% Rotten Tomatoes score it has. The Way Way Back: Just got back from this one. Very good coming of age story. Not as funny as you'd expect, but charming through and through. There's a heavy helping of cringe humor, which isn't my favorite, but the writing is pretty great across the board, so all is forgiven. Steve Carell made me HATE the complete jerk his character is, which is an impressive achievement and a plus in my book. The movie's a roller coaster of emotions, go see it. Valhalla Rising: As a big fan of Drive, I felt obliged to watch this, as it's by the same director. It's interesting. Extremely slow, but oddly beautiful. It's not exciting, but it's not exactly dull either. I honestly don't know how to describe it. If you can tolerate a plodding pace, try it, you'll know immediately whether or not it's for you. I think I liked it, I'll be giving it another view later. Super: &@$*. I knew this movie was going to be dark, but wow, this may top the list for me. I was speechless after watching it, as were the friends I showed it to afterward. Regardless, I loved it. Equal parts spent laughing and squirming in my seat at how disturbing things got. The animated intro might be my favorite thing I've ever seen. Upstream Color: ...I can't even think of anything to say, what the hell was that? Pacific Rim: So much fun! It's worth seeing for the awesome-factor alone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a movie as well. Yeah, there are tropes and stereotypes EVERYWHERE, and some of the humor falls flat (case in point, the Newton's cradle gag), but I was just enjoying myself too much during the rest of the movie to care much at the time. The sense of weight and scale in the action scenes is the best I've ever seen. Go see it! Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing: Okay, I'm cheating a bit, this was a good month or more ago. As a fan of theatre and Shakespeare, Joss Whedon, and Nathan Fillion alike, I loved this. Of course there's the language barrier with the original Shakespearean script, but you get used to that quick. The cast just seemed to be having so much fun with this movie, which made it just as entertaining to watch. I had some issues with differentiating characters (they almost never say the chararacters' names directly to them, so you sort of have to assume who is who at first, and some look kind of similar to make things worse), but everything was fine by the end. I very much enjoyed this one.

FedEx SmartPost. Need I say more?

Board games are quickly taking over all my free time, and my wallet... Seriously, games, why do you all have to be $40+? Dominion, 7 Wonders, Settlers of Catan, King of Tokyo, Tsuro, Citadels, and so much more... I need a job before I get really into this.

The board game Pandemic is evil. I played it for the first time tonight and I love it, but MAN is it hard.

Dethklok - "Bloodrocuted" ...I'm really listening to a fictional, satirical metal band. And they're incredible. What kind of world is this?

This movie was so fake! LOL As someone who loved it for what it was, a sort of satire/silly re-imagining of the horror genre, what exactly did you guys not like about it?

Gojira - "The Art of Dying" I'm on a roll with some heavier metal lately. Gojira, Opeth, In Flames, Skeletonwitch, Strapping Young Lad, the like.

Devin Townsend - "Ants" ...what the &@$% is this song?

Lindsey Stirling - "Crysallize" Good, good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMuDIgnif00 Give it a chance.

Streetlight Manifesto - "Down, Down, Down to Mephisto's Cafe" I forgot how much I love the energy of ska.

C2C - "Happy" Seriously, this album is addictive.

If you liked that, check out Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs on Netflix. RD was Tarantino's first, and PF is considered his magnum opus, so you can get a good taste of his unique style. The other night I watched Darren Aronofsky's Pi. More than almost any other movie I've ever seen, what the #%!&? did I just watch? It was impeccably shot and acted (just like Requiem for a Dream) and it was oddly thrilling, but seriously, what? Tonight: either Children of Men, or Oldboy. Maybe both. I like heavy movies, what can I say?

C2C - "The Cell" One song into this album, and I'm already in love. DJ-style music is my guilty pleasure, and this is some of the best I've ever heard.

Caught a couple movies at the drive-in last night. The Purge: Sigh. I really wanted to like this. The concept had solid potential, but it's all squandered in a home-invasion movie that essentially had nothing to do with the titular event. As such, despite the awful amount of deus ex machina (the answer to everybody's problems appearing out of nowhere), all the twists were easily predictable, and the conclusion was really unsatisfying. I thought the film was well-shot and decently acted, but there was just so much frustrating stuff that the movie wasn't all that enjoyable to me. I'd pass. The Hangover, Part III: I don't know how to explain why, but I really enjoyed this movie. However, I've never seen any of the other Hangover movies, so take that as you will. A lot of the criticism I see has to do with it not living up to the legacy of the first film, or that it completely changed the tone of the series in a negative way, but having no reference point, I liked it for what it was. It was fun, over-the-top, not reliant on gross-out humor like the second apparently is (aside from the opening animal scene.. that was just dumb), and on the whole, I enjoyed it. I'm the only person in my group of 7 that feels this way, but still.

A friend of mine showed me this last night. I love it.

ARMA II and, most likely, DayZ Standalone are very processor-heavy games, just like Minecraft. Click the Windows key + Pause/Break to bring up your system panel, it'll say what processor you have right under your Windows Experience Index. Let me know what it is, and I'll be able to tell you if DayZ is possible on your laptop.

Daft Punk - "Give Life Back to Music" The new album is streaming on iTunes right now, or you can do a quick Google search and find a way to listen to it. If you don't set your expectations too high on it being Discovery 2.0, it's a really great album. "Get Lucky" is pretty representative of the overall sound, but I love it, so that's alright.

Any word on The Great Gatsby? I'm probably not going to see it, as I didn't care for the book, but I'm curious how it ended up being given the director's style.