Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Picture Kaleidoscope 2/27/13

What will I find to share today? Hmmmm


The Treasury by Andrew Waddington at Earthshots.org. I've always been fascinated by Petra. 

Waddington Photographic: Lakes and Mountains &emdash; Shiprock After Storm

His website - Waddington Photography - has some awesome shots!  



How It Began by Matthew Feeser at Earthshots.org. I love these types of pics! (He got other nice pics at his site)


Galactic Canyon by Alex Noriega at Earthshots.org (I'm a sucker for these too!) :) (And he's got other cool photos at his site.)











Hope you have a great day!





Monday, February 25, 2013

Mind Sieve 2/25/13

Back to normal! Woot!
Did you miss me? Heh.






Feed Me from Simon's Cat - The ending just about killed me. lol. My cats are way more patient. Heh heh


Homemade Preview for Star Trek's Into Darkness. What's really weird is the longer you watch it, the more you fall for it. Weird! 



It's even freakier when they do a side by side comparison! lol.


Tor.com has a fun blog post about Nathan Fillion and taking Valentine requests on Twitter. Too cute!


Fast And Furious 6 - dang! Everyone is ramping up the explosives! lol.



The Big Wedding - looks cute!







E-Publicity: Notes on My E-Séance With Grace Wright (Part 1 Twitter) from the In Retrospect Blog.

Facebook Graph Search Review: How It Works by Chris Treadaway at the Social Media Examiner.





Woot! Back in the swing of thing. Yeah!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Virtual Tourist - Angry Birds Star Wars 2/24/13

Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, choochoo!

Yeah, still struggling to catch up. Two conventions back to back are always murder.... Didn't get to play much this week, but...

Angry Birds Star Wars


I've posted this pic before - but it had to be posted again. This particular one was HARD! Took forever~! But when I finally did get it done, I'd pretty much destroyed everything. So much so that it was like 154K points and they gave me 3 Stars. I was shocked. lol. 


I love the cute transfer scenes. Chewy now has like an amped up zoom or smash power. Still trying to figure that one out.


Wow, this came out weird...


Smacking Chewie into the asteroids worked really well here. heh heh.


Sadly, this is my lame post for today. Hope you have an awesome Sunday!

Friday, February 22, 2013

Movie Review - Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures



Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emmy Rossum, Thomas Mann, Emma Thompson, Eileen Atkins, Margo Martindale, Zoey Deutch, Tiffany Boone, and more.

Directed by: Richard LaGravenese Screenplay by: Richard LaGravenese Based on the Novel by: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl Cinematography by: Philippe Rousselot Original Music by: Thenewno2

Premise: Ethan is tired of living in the nowhere town of Gatlin. But when he returns to school for his junior year, he meets a new student, Lena Duchannes, and she reminds him of the girl who has been haunting his dreams for weeks. So despite the fact, or because of it, that she's part of the shunned Ravenwood Family, he finds her the most fascinating thing he's seen in years. But unbeknownst to him, hanging out with the Ravenwoods could prove deadly. (Rated PG-13)

Review:

1) Acting - Total Thumbs Up: As Ethan, Alden Ehrenreich gives us a quirky, complicated teenager that is too fun to watch. Alice Englert had good chemistry with Alden, which made for a cute and believable romance. Emma Thompson was a big surprise, and I loved what she did with her role.

2) Special Effects - Total Thumbs Up: Though effects were somewhat scarce at the beginning of the film, we got to see more and more of them as the story progresses . Many of the effects were subtle, while others were obvious, but all were excellently done. The battle of wills in the dinning room was amazing. The storms during the climax were breathtaking. The scene with the falling snow was gorgeous. Lots of great work by the special effects team.

3) Plot/Story - Thumbs Up: The movie takes place in the south, so the fact the story takes its time to be told, should be expected. I haven't read the book series "Beautiful Creatures" is based on, so I can't say how faithful the film makers remained to the book, but it has definitely made me curious about them.

A lot of great one-liners and teasing quips were sprinkled throughout the script. One funny moment had no words at all, yet made me laugh out loud. The sense of discovery and the teasing of the audience about further mysteries and secrets was nurtured well. There were also a few surprises in the plot, which kept things quite interesting.

Yet while having the film told from the point of view of Ethan gave it the flavor of something different, events which happen later switch the focus, which unfortunately drained away some of the film's momentum. The audience was vested with Ethan, so the story lost a lot when he wasn't around.

4) Locations/Cinematography - Total Thumbs Up: The film used great locations to create the ambiance of a small town in South Carolina. The Ravenwood estate with its seemingly dilapidated home and walls gave the sense of an old southern plantation. This gave it that much more impact once Ethan sees the interio.

The long shots of the lonely road leading to and from the estate only helped fuel the fun later when Ethan finds himself going in circles. Some of the areas were touched up, but these only added to the fantasy look and feel of the film. 

Conclusion: "Beautiful Creatures" is a sleepy tale full of colorful characters. Mysteries and secrets abound and proved to be quite entertaining. You won't run around town shouting its praises, but it definitely did entertain.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5 (Hubby's Rating: Better for Matinee)

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Picture Kaleidoscope 2/20/13

Pics, pics, pics, and more pics!
Heh heh

This past weekend I was at ConDFW! So here's a few pics from there mixed in with some others. One day I will figure out how to load these in the order I want...One day... :P


Great looking Wonder Girl no?


He even has the poofy pants. Heh heh.


She was still making costume pieces from yarn when I snagged this pic. 


A couple of weeks ago, I caught the sun and sky doing fun things. :)


Like melting caramel...Mmmmm




Greek crepes and salad at a new place we tried across the street from the Angelika theater in Plano. YUM!


New creation by my daughter for her ChibiChains chain mail jewelry efforts. Looks even better in person.



There's so much on him you could spend all day looking at the detail. lol


Dice Tower of DOOM at the Roll 2 Play booth area at ConDFW.


Ah! The ever elusive author A Lee Martinez caught in his natural element at ConDFW. For any fans of his writing, he's got a Kickstarter project going on for an anthology with short stories linking back to his novels. Could be fun!


Steampunk Plus! Like her partner, she had a ton of detail on her person. ConDFW had a strong Costumes track this year.


See you next time!

Monday, February 18, 2013

Mind Sieve 2/17/13

Greetings!
This one is sparse. Between two conventions back to back, work, and life, I've really had to rush around like a crazy chicken. :)





New The Host Trailer - should be a ton of fun :)



The Internship Trailer 1 - Comedy at Google - this could be fun. The whole Prof Xavier thing was a riot.








Excelsior!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Virtual Tourist - Dishonored 2/17/13

Two events two weeks straight! Struggling to keep up. Whee!

Did play a little though. :)

Dishonored


Decisions, decisions. I know there's a way to get past the electric archway, just got to find it!


Aha! I found it. Then I stumbled over this. Heh.


Interesting Ad.


This looked especially cool. 


The evil electrified archway. Avoided you. Nyah Nyah! (Way harder to just go through it than the first time. So avoiding it was bliss.) :)


The skull with the crown was totally an unexpected sight. 


The Cat Bathhouse. Looks mighty plush.


Really a spectacular building. Someone is making some nice money. 

That's it. But don't worry. Should be drowning you in virtual tourism again next week. :)

Friday, February 15, 2013

Movie Review - A Good Day To Die Hard

A Good Day To Die Hard


Starring: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Yuliya Snigir, Radivoje Bukvik, Cole Hauser, Amaury Nolasco, and more.

Directed by: John Moore Written by: Skip Woods Based on Characters Created by: Roderick Thorp Cinematography by: Jonathan Sela Original Music by: Marco Beltrami

Premise: When he thinks his estranged son is in trouble for shooting a man, John McClane flies to Russia to try to help him. He isn't there long, however, before everything takes an unexpected turn for the worse. (Rated R)

Review:

1) Acting - Total Thumbs Up: Bruce Willis is as fun as ever in his latest incarnation as John McClane. Jai Courtney was quite convincing as John's estranged son, especially when he slowly realizes he's more like his father than he ever thought. The two actors shared some great father and son 'not going to share our feelings' moments. Sevastian Koch was full of all sorts of surprises in the film.

2)  Special Effects - Total Thumbs Up: Bullets and explosions filled the screen almost constantly. The film will definitely fill everyone's mass destruction quota. That being said, the spots were CGI was used to enhance or pull off some of the scenes involving the two McClanes were somewhat obvious.

3) Story - Thumbs Up: Though the previews held a few hints, the film started in such a way as to mislead viewers on what was happening at the beginning. Like McClane, we start noticing that things aren't exactly as we've been led to believe. The father and son problem story line was predictable, but with some of the other surprises in store, it mattered little.

The biggest nitpick for me was the fact that for a straight twenty minutes John seems incapable of saying anything by the "J" word. Then later his son picks it up. A little more imagination would have gone a long way with regards to the dialogue here. It also felt a little forced that as a cop, John wasn't at all concerned about causing collateral damage, foreign country or not.

4) Stunts - Total Thumbs Up: The many stuntmen and women in this film should definitely receive a ton of accolades. I don't think I've ever seen such mayhem and destruction as in the long car chase scene close to the film's beginning. If there weren't actual injuries incurred during the whole 'gag', I'd be very surprised.

5) Locations/Cinematography - Total Thumbs Up: Filmed mostly in Budapest, Hungary, the film possessed a great foreign flavor. The amount of trouble the cinematographer went to to take sweeping shots of the courthouse area, the closed restaurant floor, and other locations right before they were totally destroyed by soon to occur events was almost humorous. Each sweep was like a giant hint that things were about to get messy.

Conclusion: "A Good Day to Die Hard" is a wild ride with almost constant action. There is so much action, in fact, it might leave you a little numb. A couple of mostly unexpected surprises helped take away 'the sting' of the predictable plot. The male bonding between father and son and their continuous attempts not to talk about their feelings were very amusing.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5 (Hubby's Rating: Worth Full Price of Admission.)

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Picture Kaleidoscope 2/13/13 - The Scifi Expo 2013 Edition

Scifi Expo!
The Scifi Expo was this past weekend. So the camera was out and busy!


Bruce Boxlightner was in the dealers room so I got to try and take a pic or two.


Kevin Sorbo was nearby as well. They both still look amazing. :)



Queen Amidala


She really did an awesome job!


Kitty Pride from the X-Men. Too cute!


Sir Balin of Chaos.


Rocketeer!


Awesome Steampunk!


The dark elf was fantastic. The pics don't do her justice.


Trying to catch some of her bling.


Star Trek with BITE!


Fencon (SF/F Convention in the fall) and ORAC (Local Dr Who group) table. 


Don't mess with this guy!


Joe Dalek. 


Fellow author Rhonda Eudaly. One of the Four Redheads of the Apocalypse. :)


Some of my other neighbors - Stratum Comics! Nice peeps!


No idea why this loaded sideways. Argh! Anyway, we had a gag going all weekend with artist and toy maker Taylor Lymbery. Saturday it was Wonder Dala (Imagine the previous Queen Amidala pic with a WW tiara and a golden lasso and bracers.) Sunday degenerated to Wonder Dalek, then Damidala. And there she is in her resplendent finery. (We're trying to talk the Fencon peeps into letting Joe Dalek Cosplay! Hee!)


Panoramic View of our surroundings on Saturday before the masses were allowed inside. heh.


My daughter (ChibiChains) was sharing my table and she had some new bling she'd created for the expo. 


Neighbors across the isle - tons of zombie weapons, signed pictures, and jewelry and other homemade goods.


Mad Moxcie from Borderlands 2 - her costume was AWESOME! She even has the tip jar. 


Green Arrow


Backside of the dark elf costume.


Ororo (Storm) from the X-Men. Isn't it fab?


Double trouble!


Taylor Lymbery and Marvin Dog Media - nice guys!


And this upcoming weekend is ConDFW! Whee!
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