My adventure with MoviePass.

Welcome to my adventures with MoviePass. I first heard about MoviePass way back in November 2012 (Yes 2012, wasn't that a movie?). It was an invite only "beta" service back then, and pricing ranged from $19.99-$34.99 per month ($19.99/month here in Wichita when I checked). The way it works is you check-in at a supported theater in the app, choose the movie you want to see, and the MoviePass card is funded with the amount of the show. You proceed to the box office and purchase your ticket with the MoviePass card. The limitations are it can only be used once a day, only 2D shows, and no special presentations. I remember having a couple discussions back then with my friend about the worthiness of the service. We almost exclusively go to movies at the Old Town Warren on Wednesday for the $5 special, so seeing 1 movie a week only justified the cost, but wasn't really a benefit to me.

Fast forward to January this year. My friend brought it up again after he talked to someone he works with, saying they had lowered the price to $10 a month, and his colleague was using it. At that price it became a more attractive idea, letting me see 2 movies a month free just paying for the other 2. I started doing more research searching forums, and reddit for more information about the service. I found that here in town the Warren East is not an supported theater, but the Palace West and Movie Machine had been added to the supported list. Fast forward to February and the Wichita Eagle had an article about the service stating the monthly fee had dropped to $7.95, although you had to sign up for a year.

So around the first week of March I decided to take the plunge. $7.95 a month plus a $9.95 processing fee for a year totaling $105.35 (or $8.78 monthly). Signed up online, and while the wait for the card was supposed to be 2 weeks, it showed up in about 5 days. The first month I had the card I went to Red Sparrow, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Game Night, and Ready Player One spending $18.89 on tickets. One of those was at the Palace West (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) little did I know it would be the last thing I ever seen there. The best one last month was Jumanji. I went in thinking it was a remake not realizing it was actually a sequel. Ready Player One would be a very close second just because there are so many pop culture references I'm sure I probably missed some.

Now that the Northrock 14 is open again under the AMC banner, I'm anxious to see how long it takes to be added to the supported theater list. I would also like to see the Warren East supported again as they seem to get more indie/art films, which I think would be a perfect option with MoviePass since I would more willing to take a chance on something.

So we'll see what next month holds.

Happy New Year!

Well here we are just a few days into 2015. It seems to me that November/December went by pretty quick. There was so much going on, and things to do, time just flew. That all slowed down today thanks to the snow that finally hit late this afternoon. It got me out of work early (we closed down at 7 pm) tonight so I won't complain.

Thanks to Targets video game clear out I picked up another Wii-U system. We had got one at/near launch, but lack of games and an awesome trade in offer made it easy to give up. Now I just need to figure out where my copy of ZombiU is, and hope that my flash drive game save works.

This year I'm going to update more frequently (once every 3 months on average shouldn't be hard to beat!) at least that's the plan.

I finally got around to seeing Fury Tuesday night. I'm not the biggest fan of war movies in general, but I do have a few that I enjoy. Fury was pretty good, it follows an American tank crew during World War II as they move through Germany with a new green soldier added to the crew. **1/2

I finished Deadpool yesterday.

Raptr says I put in around 13 hours total, which would be about right seeing as the game is supposed to be 6-10 hours long. I probably spent the extra 3 hours cussing at the TV towards the end. It seemed to me that the difficulty spiked up tremendously in the last couple levels especially the last which ended up being wave after wave of escalating bad guys. It compounded my frustration when there are only a few check points within each level, and I would make it through 98% of the wave only to die and have to start over again. I recall there were a couple times during the game when I thought it was kind of cheap of the developers throwing a higher tier bad guy out right after finishing a prolonged battle not giving you time to recoup. All of that said, the first 75% of the game was okay (barring the previously mentioned antics) including some platforming, and puzzle solving mixed in with the combat. I can safely say after beating the last boss I was elated, I only wish it had come about 3 hours earlier. I guess High Moon Studios can take stock in the fact I finished their game (I play a lot of different games, but don't finish many), although once I was done that was it. I thought about going back and trying to grab a couple of achievements, but I was done, Deadpool was traded in towards the next game. I've always said I play games to have fun, not to be frustrated (probably why I don't see the appeal in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Super Meat Boy), because I keep dying all the time.

SONY announced the launch date for the PS4 (November 15th, 2013) at Gamescom last week, while Microsoft did not. Microsoft did announce a delay in the launch (until early 2014) in 8 European markets. At this point in time I believe I'll grab a PS4 at launch, and an Xbox One down the road sometime. This will be opposite of the last cycle where I grabbed the 360 day one, and picked up a used PS3 about 1 1/2 years after launch (mainly as a blu-ray player). I found this Killzone: Shadow Fall multiplayer clip yesterday on the net (I'm assuming it comes from Gamescom). It features six and a half minutes of team deathmatch in glorious 1080p, and although it's a massive download (almost a gig) it is gorgeous. I wasn't planning on picking up Killzone at launch, but it may have changed my mind.

New year, new post!

Meant to update a while back, but as you can see I never got around to it.

I picked up a PS Vita back at the launch in February. I wasn't going to get one (hadn't picked up a PSP/PSP Go at launch even though I did do so later) figuring I would wait and see how they panned out over time. I didn't even try it at E3 last year because of the line length, although my friend did and he really enjoyed it, and was planning on a day one purchase. I was reading a lot of the launch/unboxing stuff around the net since there was a "early edition" that came out a week before the regular retail launch, and then a lot of retailers started offering 'deals' for the regular launch. So having a bunch of credit at Amazon stored up I grabbed one getting a $20 discount, and a free memory card to boot. Most everyone decided launch week was a good time to do a buy 2 get 1 free deal on the games too, which made it even better. I've really only put time into Hot Shots World Invitational so far it's a lot of fun, and actually looking forward to Resistance next month.

My PS3 had been having memory issues for a while the 60GB drive just wasn't able to keep up with game installs, PSN+ downloads/add-ons, and everything else. I was constantly having to delete stuff or transfer it around to even maintain a ~5GB buffer for new stuff. I was looking to grab a new slim, but never ran across a great deal and since my old one was still running it just made more sense to upgrade the drive. I found a 320GB drive on clearance for $40 bucks at TRU and decided it was a good candidate to pump up the system. SONY makes it really simple remove the old drive, put in the new drive, boot up and the PS3 will ask if you want to install the system software on it and away you go. Of course there were a couple of extra steps I needed to perform like backing up the current drive, then restoring the back up to the new drive. This was all working out great in my head until I realized I didn't have another 60GB drive to put the back up data on. I scrounged and could only find a 30GB, and 10GB laying around the house which weren't big enough to cover the back up (which clocked in at ~43GB since the system software didn't have to go). I put it off for a week (including a jaunt down to Branson (note:Silver Dollar City during Spring Break=BAD but that's another story) trying to think of alternative storage (thumbdrives, etc), but didn't want to have to buy anything else. I remembered I had a DVR put up/shelved somewhere so after some disassembly I had a big ol' 80GB drive to use for the back up. After a 2-3 hour back up, and a somewhat quick swap out then another 2-3 hours to restore I was back up and running with ~250GB to spare.

I finally broke down and picked up the Playstation 3D display about a month ago. I knew it wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, but really wanted something that was 3D capable, and 24" was an acceptable size for the bedroom. These things came out last November for $499.99 and have been dropping in price pretty much ever since, holding pretty steady at $299.99 for the last couple months. I had been really close a couple of times after Christmas for the $299.99, but so-so reviews and drawbacks held me at bay. These things had some bad juju out of the gate they were only 24", it's a display not a TV (no tuner), no remote, and one of the 'features' simulview (2 players each seeing their own screen using the glasses, not sharing one split screen) required another set of $70 glasses. Well last month a couple retailers had a deal where you got the 3D display, MLB 12, and another set of glasses (fixing one of the problems) all for the same $299.99. I decided that was pretty good way to use up some Best Buy credit, and grabbed one. I sold off the games (MLB12, and Motorstorm Apocalypse (I already had a copy)) and figure the extra glasses would set you back $70 bucks means I paid about $170 for the display. I've tried a couple games (Wipeout HD, Super Star Dust), a bunch of movie trailers/demo reels, and watched The Three Musketeers (actually not a bad movie) in 3D so far. Luckily I have been buying the blu-ray sets that included the 3D blu-ray anyway/when possible so I already have 10-12 movies to watch, and I have 6-8 games that work in 3D too.

I found the Legend of Grimrock was released a couple days ago for the PC from a studio called Almost Human. It's available directly through them, STEAM, or GOG (Good old games) and is normally $14.99 but is on sale for $13.49 right now (first week up until the 18th I believe). This game could be called a reboot for the Dungeon Crawler genre (think Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, etc...) or a homage to them. I found a thread about it this plus watched a couple video reviews this afternoon, and by this evening STEAM says I've put 3 hours into it. This is old school first person 3D dungeon corridors with traps, switches, and giant snails probably not intended for people under 30. This is the 2012 version though with gorgeous graphics (the lighting effects are amazing), and all of that old school charm.

Club Nintendo - Order Complete

Club Nintendo started offering digital downloads for coins, and says they will be changing them out monthly according to the website.


Club Nintendo - Order Complete

Club Nintendo - Order Complete

Tap, tap.... Is this thing on??

Hey what's up? I'm going to assume a lot since August 10th, since that was just shy of 4 months ago. :)

Let's see probably the biggest thing was the indoor wading pool in my basement, #!$*%@! sump pump. You never realize how much furniture and stuff you have until you have to move it all somewhere else.

I went to watch the K.C. Chiefs lose to Miami back in early November. I joked with one of my friends that I need to quit going to games, because every time I go they lose. I can't remember the last game I was at when they won, it had to be sometime before that 2009 Colts playoff game...

The people I worked for at the Haunted Island (Watson Park 2008/2009) opened again this year at a new location (Kellogg & Tyler) with a new name Moudre (you can probably google some news stories about it). I was there every weekend in October and found that an indoor "haunt" is really different from an outside location, but it was pretty cool and we didn't have to worry about the weather.

I actually did some black Friday shopping this year hitting Toy's R Us at 9pm, and then shuffling over to Wal-mart just after 10pm. We got to TRU ~30 minutes before 9pm and the line was down to Famous Footwear. I began thinking this may have been a bad idea, especially after hearing 'horror' stories from people in line about a couple years prior. I was impressed though with their setup and we were in and out (with everything we wanted) in just over 15 minutes. Since we got to Wal-mart a little after 10pm (10:20ish) I think we lucked out and missed most of the crazies. It took longer to check out at Wal-mart, but we found almost everything we wanted. I got lucky and picked up a few other items early from Amazon.com, and BestBuy.com before Thanksgiving.

I finally picked up the Gears of War 360 bundle (look back in June's post) after finding a good deal. If you've talked to me you probably know I'm not a fan of the Gears series, but it is one sweet looking 360. It has the added bonuses of more storage (320GB vs. 120GB), and N based wireless (of course the next thing on the agenda will be a new router). Not to mention I can ditch the kinect power cord, added USB ports, and custom sounds (!). Not being a fan of the series I'm not even sure what the eject sound is(?), and it seems really quiet (I don't think I ever heard the Halo Reach custom sounds so I have nothing to compare it to). I was really looking to upgrade my PS3 also (my 60GB is cramped) with the 160GB slim holiday bundle everyone had for $200, but just couldn't swing it after getting the 360.

Speaking of consoles Oct-Nov were nuts with big name game releases this year. Right now I'm playing a lot of Modern Warfare 3, and Skylanders (shock!). I'm pretty sure I snickered at the Skylanders exhibit at E3 this year, and here I am playing the heck out of it. If you like old school Spyro (PS1 era) games you'll enjoy this. I was assuming it was just a cash grab from Activision putting out a $70.00 game with $8-$20 add-ons, which it sort of is, but if you go in knowing you can finish the game with what's included in the box it's not as bad. Now if you want to 100% the game/achievements you'll need at least 5 other characters (to cover all 8 elemental types seeing as you only get 3 in the box), but look at it this way your buying 'dlc' but getting something tangible to show for it. The other positive is I think this stuff has been on sale more than it's been regular price the starter pack has been $50, and the figures have been $5 or B1G1 free a lot. Now let's not talk about Batman Arkham City, Rage, Elder Scrolls:Skyrim, or Saints Row 3 that I haven't even opened yet...

I think that about does it, except for movies and TV updates. Movies I'd have go back and look at foursquare to see what I've seen, and TV right now (at least until last week...damn split seasons) was The Walking Dead season 2.

I'm back, back again...

Okay so I picked up a 3DS (Cosmo Black) yesterday (Thanks Wal-Mart for the early price drop!) which allows me to get the new MSRP $169.99, plus the "Nintendo Ambassador" goodies (10 NES/10 GBA free Virtual Console games) for the early adopters. :) Now I'm in a quandary though.

Nintendo announced today that the Flame Red is coming alongside the September 9th Star Fox release in the U.S. Is 20 free games better than the snazzy new red color? Decisions, decisions.


Went to the drive-in a couple weeks back and saw Captain America, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Super 8 (that trifecta ran until a little after 4am). The stand out was Captain America I went in with low expectations (Thor didn't really WOW me), but was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I'm now really stoked for Josh Whedon's Avengers movie next year. ***1/2
Last up was Super 8 which I had high hopes for. A period (1979) monster movie that fell into the same rut as Cloverfield these are monster movies without monsters. At least in Super 8 we have something that resembles a 'story', but the monster is covered by quick glimpse shots until the end of the movie. I liked it more than Cloverfield, but not as much as I hoped. **1/2

Transformers was okay, not a fan of the girlfriend change out and 'Witwicky' saves the day is getting tired. The action though was top notch giant explosions, and giant robots what more could you want? ***

I caught both The Change-Up, and 30 Minutes or Less at sneaks last week. Out of the two Change Up was definitely better, while at it's raunchy core it may not be politically correct, but gag inducing it made me laugh. A lot. It's a simple Freaky Friday, 18 Again!, and Hot Chick body switch movie. Married family guy with job, 3 kids, and mortgage wishes he had his slacker friend's carefree, sleep around, no job, pot smoking lifestyle, and vice versa. Boom! Pee in a magic fountain and halarity ensues. ****

On the other hand, 30 Minutes just never got going. I had seen the previews and thought it looked pretty good, pizza delivery guy gets jacked by to costumed 'criminal masterminds' who force him to rob a bank and halarity ensues. Ummm, no. While I didn't mind the pizza guy (Jessie Eisenberg) and his friend (Aziz Ansari) the 'criminal masterminds' (Danny McBride, Nick Swardson) never clicked. It seemed like the setup took forever, then bank robbery/conclusion/done. It's only 83 minutes long and 5 of that is probably the opening/closing credits so there wasn't a lot of story added in. Underwhelming. **1/2

A friend wants to see Cowboys & Aliens or Rise of Planet of the Apes today. I'm leaning towards Rise because the word-of-mouth for Cowboys is pretty lackluster.

I've been watching quite a few summer TV series including Falling Skies, Nine Lives of Chloe King, Switched at Birth, Alphas, Teen Wolf and Necessary Roughness as well as returning shows like The Closer, Rizzoli & Isles, The Glades, Covert Affairs, and Haven most of which are ending the season soon (or already Falling Skies). Those were the ones that I stayed with all the way, but there were some that didn't make it very far. Wilfred, Outcasts, Suits, 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show, The Hot Zone, and Sand Masters got anywhere from a single viewing up to three episodes and then fizzled out.

I've also become somewhat addicted to Auction Hunters, and Storage Wars even though I know they're 'staged' I enjoy them enough that I've caught most all of the episodes (thanks A&E, and Spike for re-airing the crap out of them!) of both shows, and watch the new ones now when they air.

First day of E3...

It was a long day yesterday, got up early to go to the Nintendo Press Conference at the Nokia Center. Overall not a bad presentation. I was not thrilled with the name "Wii U" of the new console, but I didn't like "Wii" either to begin with. It seems like an HD console with an iPad for a controller, and the fact that you can only have one connected to the system and the rest are normal Wiimotes is kinda weird.

The line to see it on the show floor was huge, and the fact that most of the stuff is just tech demos doesn't thrill me. I stuck around Nintendo's booth since the line was so long, amazingly the line for the 3DS stuff was almost non-existent this year. I tried a lot of 3DS titles including Luigi's Mansion 2, Super Mario, Star Fox 64 (multiplayer), Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D, Mario Kart, Kid Icarus Uprising (multiplayer), and Resident Evil Revelations. Luigi and Resident Evil were both awesome and looked really good in 3D, Mario Kart and Super Mario were both fun although I found it a little difficult to make some of the jumps in Super Mario playing in 3D, but maybe that was just me.

The rest of the day was mainly spent walking around checking out what was there, I did watch presentations on Saints Row the Third, as well as Metro Last Light which both look really good, Saints was just amazing and Metro just reminded me that I still need to play the first one Metro 2033. I noticed during the Metro presentation that Joshua Gomez (Morgan Grimes on Chuck) was sitting a couple rows ahead of me, and after it was over and the lights came up noticed that Zachary Levi (Chuck Bartowski on Chuck) was sitting in front too, so I asked for a picture. :)

I also played Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City co-op on the 360 that was pretty neat, the whole campaign can be played single player or 4 player online co-op. Microsoft again has all of the Summer of Arcade titles set up, along with some other XBLA titles that I'm going to try out today.

E3 baby! Craig Ferguson, and more...

Well 2 of the big 3 press briefings are already over, with just Nintendo left tomorrow morning (check-in @ 7:15am, I really should be going to bed....). Starting with Microsoft, I felt a little underwhelmed by the whole thing. I loved the CoD:MW3 play at the beginning and Tomb Raider, and the new dash control looks neat. Some of the Kinect intergration was neat (game wise), but unecessary as far as I could tell, and I wasn't really excited about anything else. I'm not a fan of the Gears series, but tonight I found that MS was releasing a new console for the launch, this 320GB 2 controller system will be out September 20th for $399.99 and looks sweet!

I only caught Sony's conference after it started, but read up on what I missed. What's up with Sony getting all the 'extra' content included with games now? Bioshock Infinite nets you Bioshock on the same blu-ray, and with Battlefield 3 you get Battlefield 1943. I was not inclined to get a NGP (oh wait Vita) but then Irrational Games goes and says they're working on a Bioshock for Vita probably the one thing that could get me to buy one.

I went to a taping of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson this afternoon at CBS Television Studios, and have come to the conclusion that it's a lot of effort to be an audience member. It's not a very big set at all, but it was fun.

World of Keflings, Source Code, and more...

It seems like "Wow, it's been a while" is starting to be the first thing in all of these post. I started a post back at the end of February after the Academy Shorts Festival and for some reason never got back to it...

I picked up World of Keflings, and Costume Quest from the XBLA sale(s) going on right now. There are some one day deals (April 1st) to check out tomorrow, including a couple add-ons (for Fallout New Vegas, and Fable 3) as well as a couple discounted games.

So far I've only put some time into WoK which is kinda like a avatar based RTS lite. You use your avatar and have control of the little Keflings helping them build buildings, giving them jobs, and more. A very "Sim" like game. I was happy when I got the first achievement...





Best Achievement Ever! I'm enjoying it, and on sale at 400MS points ($5) it's really neat. I would also recommend getting Dorito's Crash Course which is free (it was one of the finalist in last years Doritos promotion) another avatar based game that plays like the Wipeout tv show.

I went to the Source Code sneak last night at the Warren. I enjoy most time travel/alternate reality movie settings so I was intrigued by the previews. The simple premise is they can send someone into the body of someone else 8 minutes before they died. There was a terrorist attack on a commuter train which they believe is a "warm-up" for something much bigger, so Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is being sent back to find out who the terrorist is (think Groundhog Day with a little Quantum Leap). I really liked it, it wasn't until afterwords that some of the time logic seemed questionable, but overall a fun action ride.

HELLO! -- Hello -- hello -- hello...

Wow, it's been a while. Fitting that the last post was getting tickets for the Rockettes show a couple weeks ago, that didn't happen. Evidently they decided to cancel one of their 8 performances, which naturally was the one I had tickets for, needless to say we show up on November 21st thinking "parking isn't bad at the arena" only to find a note taped on the door saying the performance was canceled. I got a refund on the extra ticket we had bought, so I guess I only lost 30-45 minutes of my time back in July, but was still pretty PO'd.

I noticed I hadn't updated the sidebar since then either, as I was adding the sneak of The Tourist I watched last night (Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie), a drama-thriller (so says IMDB). It was pretty good, although I felt it moved at a slower pace than I preferred maybe because going in I had it pegged as an action-thriller. I had flashbacks of Salt which was just ~5 months ago, and sure enough this one has a couple of twist in the story to *maybe* keep you guessing.

I will point out a couple of excellent TV shows that hit this fall, Terriers on FX a crime drama starring Donal Logue (Grounded for Life) as an ex-cop turned PI and his sidekick. It's a dark, gritty police/drama that actually had an overarching story for most all of the season, but the worst title in history. The other stand out was the 6 episode season of The Walking Dead on AMC following a group of survivors in the aftermath of a "zombie" outbreak (although they never use that word in the show). It's based off of a comic book series and while there are a couple of great "zombie" attacks/slayings it's a lot more about the characters than the action.

Rockettes, joining the Mafia, and the Irrational Bomb!

The Rockettes held their Kick Across America yesterday, and Wichita was one of the eight locations picked. They gave away tickets to the first 100 yesterday afternoon at the Intrust bank arena to those who came out for the 'kick line'. I expected more people, but when my daughter and I arrived at noon there was only about 50 people in line, so we hung out for an hour and got tickets. I'm sure people driving by the arena, and working across the street were trying to figure out why 100 people where in a line wearing santa hats, in the middle of the afternoon. :)

When I got home yesterday afternoon, I turned on the 360 to finish downloading the Mafia II demo (the power went out Wednesday evening to the entire neighborhood, cutting short the download then). It turns out it is the same demo that was on the show floor at E3, but that one I played on the PS3. I've played through it a couple times now (had to find all 5 of the Playboy magazines in the demo), and it's really good. I took more time (the demo has a 10 minute timer) to just wander around, shoot people, steal different cars, and buy weapons. As I stated in my E3 ramblings, this wasn't a title I was looking forward to (I was actually waiting to play Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood multi-player when the Mafia guy handed me the controller) but the demo has swayed me. I was burnt out after GTA IV plus the fact that I didn't like the characters (in GTA IV) so I had let third person open world games slide off my radar then we get Red Dead, and now Mafia. I guess maybe I just need my open world games set in a different time period to get me excited about them.

While the Mafia demo was downloading, I had also added "Irrational's new game announcement-What is Icarus" video to my queue from the dashboard ad. When I finished messing around with Mafia I remembered the video download so I went and fired it up not knowing what I was about to see. The video starts off with murky green background that rapidly changes into bubbles and focusing on what appears to be descent underwater, while the music sounds like a 1900's victrola. I'm thinking OMG, OMG it's Bioshock (I was probably out of my chair jumping up and down at this point). The video continues as the plants, and rocky bottom come into focus then we pass a Big Daddy statue, finally coming over the horizon as a city comes into view... Why are you still reading this? Download the video, and check out the Whatisicarus.com (which now redirects to Bioshockinfinate.com).

Hopefully you've now watched the trailer in all it's splendor, and found that it is an announcement trailer for Bioshock Infinate. The new game takes place in 1912 (and as the video shows fantastically) in the floating sky-city of Columbia, and supposedly is coming out in 2012 if internet chat boards are to be believed. I don't think a game trailer has ever made me this 'giddy' before.

More Blu, Okie for a day, and more...

A couple weeks ago I picked up a clearance blu-ray drive for my PC. I didn't pay that close of attention to it thinking it was a just a blu-ray reader, but as it turns out it also is a CD/Dual layer DVD burner with lightscribe (so technically it could totally replace my current drive). It came with a copy of PowerDVD that was unusable (first it wouldn't select the drive, then it wouldn't recognize blu-ray media) so I gave up uninstalled it, and went with TotalMedia Theatre (because WMP doesn't support blu-ray in Vista, or 7 for some reason) which works fine.
Now I just need to upgrade to a 1080P 16:9 monitor. :)

A friend had a meeting in Tulsa, OK Wednesday afternoon, so I went along for the ride. We knew there was a Dave & Busters now, so we stopped for lunch there after a wonky GPS detour. I've been to D&B in Denver, K.C., and now Tulsa (which is the smallest location out of the three), and have never had a bad meal the food is always good.

After his meeting we decided to take in a movie, so we went to Inception that was showing in IMAX at CineMark Tulsa. It was directed by Christopher Nolan who also did Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight (I still haven't watched either of the last two). I had seen the trailers so I knew it was a sci-fi/thriller/action and it didn't disappoint, and lived up to the praise everyone was telling me.

We also seen the new Quik Trip prototype store with multiple entrances, a coffee/soft serve bar, outdoor patio area, and so many drink choices it made my head spin (there must have been 7-10 iced tea flavors).

I went to a sneak preview of SALT Tuesday night, and came away feeling rather "meh". It was okay, but never really did anything out of the ordinary the action scenes/chases were pretty cool but seemed like standard fare. I can only imagine how lackluster this would have been if I seen it after Inception, instead of before.

The new 'summer' crop of tv shows has started spilling out with some running 4-5 weeks, and others just onto their second week. My current favorites The Glades (A&E), Rizzoli and Isles (TNT), and Covert Affairs (USA). Those that fall somewhere in between Rookie Blues (ABC), The Good Guys (FOX), and Haven (SyFy). Rookie has had 5 episodes now and it's just not 'gripping' me, while Good Guys started off okay (funny odd-couple schtick) it hasn't made any strides lately. I really liked the first episode of Haven, but the second one seemed kinda cheesy, I hope they pick up a bit from here.

XBLA Summer of Arcade, and Knight and Day...

Microsoft has released this year's Summer of Arcade schedule, and pricing information. The titles included are Limbo (7/21), Hydro Thunder Hurricane (7/28), Castlevania Harmony of Despair (8/4), Monday Night Combat (8/11), and finally Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (8/18). All of the titles will be 1200 MS points ($15 real bucks) if you buy all 5 you get 1200 MS points back (buy 4 get 1 free), or if you buy 3 get 400 MS points back

All of these were playable at E3 this year, and I probably played the demo for Lara Croft 5-6 times (why is it releasing last?!) and was already on my "must buy" list. I know I won't get all 5 because watching people play MNC it wasn't something I would play even if I really wanted the other 4. Limbo looks like a cool 2D platformer (which I love) with a weird b&w art style, but I'll need to read some reviews first. I enjoyed playing Hurricane (I loved HT in the arcade, and on Dreamcast), but for some reason can't get over the downloads $15 price tag (especially when history shows it will be on sale for $7-$10 within 6-12 months). Finally the Castlevania game seems more focused towards co-op play, which I'm not a big fan of, although I enjoy the 2D world of metro-vania so it might be my third title if the reviews pan out.

I went and seen Knight and Day today, and don't know what the filmmakers were trying to pull, but I've been to Wichita Mid-Contienant Airport and your visual representation was 'wwwwayyy' off. :( The sprinkling of Wichita jokes were pretty funny though, and it ended up being more of romantic-comedy than action comedy I was expecting. Overall a very fun 2 hour romp with some great stunts, and chase scenes. Think of it as Bourne extra-light less story, less filling, but enjoyable nonetheless!