Ice Age: The Meltdown

Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Queen Latifah, Will Arnett, Jay Leno
Plot: Everything's going great for Sid (Leguizamo), Manny (Romano), and Diego (Leary), until a rip-off sales man, Fast Tony (Leno) predicts that the ice walls that keep the water out of where they live are going to melt. They don't believe him, until they see for themselves that the ice really is melting. Fast Tony then tell all of the animals to travel away from their homes to find a boat that will keep them safe. They all listen to him and start migrating towards where the boat he says the boat is. After a while, Manny becomes sad because he thinks he's the only mammoth left. You get to enjoy many songs from Sid around here about mammoths going extinct, and they rock. I would buy a CD if he made one.

They next meet another mammoth named Ellie (Latifah), along with her 2 possum "brothers", Crash (Scott) and Eddie (Peck). Yeah, that's right, a mammoth that thinks she's a possum. Weird, eh? Anyway, they decide to join Sid, Manny, and Diego on their trip to the boat. Along the way, Manny shows Ellie that she's not really a possum. Not much happens after this. Manny and Ellie develop an interest in each other.... umm.... what else.... oh yeah, you get treated to a great song by The Vultures (literally) called "Food, Glorious Food". As they're about to reach the boat, Ellie and her possum brothers get seperated from the other 3, and they almost die from the melting ice, until Manny saves them. Then all the water drains out and they all live happily ever after. And Sid becomes Manny's dog's son's son's pet.

Verdict: This movie was freaking hilarious. I think it was better then the first one by quite a bit really. 4 acorn-happy squirrel-like animals named Scrat out of 5. I mean come on: Possum mammoths + Sid singing + A great song by The Vultures = awesome movie. Check it out in theaters if you can.

Yup. We're possums.

V for Vendetta

"Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot."

Cast: Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman

Plot:It's some time in the future in England, a country which has become horribly corrupt.
This is the setting for a nice little movie called V for Vendetta. It starts with Evey (Portman) getting caught out after curfew by a couple of fingermen. They try to rape her, but a masked man named V (Weaving) drops in and whoops all of their asses. After a long rant with about 100 uses of the letter v, V asks Evey to join him for an "orchestra". This "orchestra" of sorts will make you love music. He brings her to a rooftop and has music play through the city and then shoots off fireworks inside the Old Bailey, blowing it up.

The next day, V gets into the BTN and broadcasts a message across all of Britain that says that he blew up the Old Bailey and asking them to join him on November 5th in a year to blow up Parliament. Just as the police are about to capture him, he escapes after Evey knocks out the man trying to capture him. She gets knocked out in the process and V brings her back to his underground hideout of sorts. He tells her she can't leave because he doesn't trust her not to tell people where his hideout is. What follows are the murders of a famous TV personality, a bishop, and a coroner, all of which are done by V.

While he's murdering the bishop, Evey escapes. She goes to one of her former co-workers houses, who lets her stay with him. While she's there, he makes a joke about the chancellor on TV. Later, he is executed in his house, and Evey bearly escapes. Only to be caught by another soldier close outside the house. She's sent to a facility where she's tortured and questioned about V, though she says nothing. While there, she finds a letter from a woman who was there before and it tells her story. The interrogator comes in one last time and asks who V is, but Evey says she will not tell him. He then says she is free to go.

As soon as she leaves, she finds that she was really in V's underground home. He tells her he wanted her to know what it was like to feel how he felt when he tortured was in the medical testing facility years ago. He allows her to leave after a while, but she promises she'll return before November 5th. V meets with many of his enemies before the 5th, which leads to the chancellor and 12 finger men waiting for V on the 5th.

Below Parliament, V has a train of explosives waiting. Evey is with him. He goes upstairs to meet the 13 men who want him dead. When they fire upon him, their magazines empty and he is still alive. He kills them before they reload. However, when he goes back downstairs, he dies, leaving Evey to conduct her own orchestra of destruction. She turns on the train and the explosives go under Parliament and blow, creating the absolute coolest explosion ever.

Verdict: This movie was awesome. It shows that government can in fact be corrupt, and that governments should fear their people. Hugo and Natalie were great in their parts. Even though V is a terrorist, you'll love him. It'll also get you to learn to love orchestras. Overall, this is the probably the best movie to come in '06 so far. Go into it knowing you'll have to think about it some though, otherwise you'll hate it. I'm gonna give it 4.5 white masks out of 5. If you can still get to it in theaters, hit it. Then buy it on DVD. Unless you're one of those guys who likes pure action movies without plots, then avoid it at all costs, as you'll probably tell people it sucks just because you aren't capable of higher levels of thinking.

That's my network.

Mario Kart DS Review

Mario, Mario, Mario, how are you doing everything. He smacks question mark boxes with his head, smashes Coopas, plays Baseball and soccer, and one other thing he loves to do, race other Nintendo characters in cartoony go-carts. He loves it so much, he has many games consisting of it, and now he has a new one, Mario Kart DS. This is a brand new edition of the game that teaches kids that making you racing opponents slip on banana peels, get hit with shells or either the red, blue or green variety, throwing bombs at them, and tricking them with question mark boxes that make them flip over when hit, is back. Oh goody. Now this game is on Nintendo little advanced piece of machinary, the Nintendo DS. So we get to see Mario Kart, in double-screen vision.

Ok, the plot is that you have to race and win trophies to.......brag about it to the other Nintendo characters. Yay. Umm......that's it.

Ok, let's talk about the new editions to this new edition of Mario Kart. It's on two screens, it has some new weapons to use against your opponents, it has a ton (no not our buddy Ton, ton) of tracks, and you Zam (hey, I used Ton's name, so now I get to use mine) through these tracks at high speeds. Ok, so not extremely fast, more like dog running fast.

Like I said, there are a lot of new (and old) tracks. This game incorporates new tracks and tracks from other Mario Kart games all onto one little DS card. Now these tracks are seperated into 8 different cups which are seperated into 4 (you start out with 3 but unlock the fourth) different CC's. 50, 100, 150, and (SPOILER ALERT, WARNING: IF YOU WANT TO PLAY MARIO KART DS AND UNLOCK ALL SECRETS ON YOUR OWN AND NOT GO, "OH NO, I'M NOT SURPRISED NOW THAT I FOUND OUT THAT UNLOCKABLE ON ZAM'S REVIEW, :-( " THEN PLEASE SKIP THE NEXT LINE. THANK YOU)..........150 Mirror Mode. Now these numbers are based on level of difficulty, if you know what CC's mean, then you should know that. But if not, let me transulate the easiness, 50 - oh man, that was so friggin easy, my grandma could finish that whiles on my grandfather with her hands tied behind her back and her bed is moving at 100 miles an hour while she is asleep blindfolded. 100 - ehh, that was a little harder, but (take all of the grandma thing but take out the hands behind the back, asleep and blindfolded part.) 150 - damn, that was pretty hard, hmm, but hey, its wasn't Ninja Gaiden hard. 150 mirror mode - awww c'mon, that was just 150 backwards; (insert 150 part here.) All the tracks are cool and cartoony. I really liked them.

There are 12, but you unlock 4 of them. They are all familiar Nintendo characters, and the final one you unlock, it one character you would never expect to find in this video game. Let me give you a hint, NES. I was extremely surprised when I unlocked this character, and you should be too. The other characters include: Mario (duh), Luigi (my favorite), Peach, Yoshi, Toad, Donkey Kong, Wario, Bowser, (SPOILER ALERT, *INSERT SAME WARNING AS BEFORE HERE*) ........Daisy (who is pretty much an orange version of Peach with redish-brown hair), Dry Bones, WaLuigi, and the last one I can't tell you about but I gave you the hint about before. Great line-up.

The carts are really cool and cartoony. There are a total of 36 karts. In the beginning, you have exclusive carts to that character, then you start having the same karts for a few characters, and then at the end, you unlock all karts. for all characters which means everyone has the same karts. They are all cool.

The weapons are really good. There are many of them and, (if you don't know already) you get them by breaking a question marked box in the track. There are different weapons such as green shells (regular, just go all over the place shells) red shells (tracking shells, hehe) and blue shells (shells that fly to the character in the lead and stop their ass.) There are banana peels, bombs, etc. There is also shrooms that make you go faster, but we don't care about those, right?
These weapons are fun to use. You'll be yelling, "Ha, Peach, biach, I just shot a shell at your ass and wooped you. Eat that, princess biach." and "Whoohooo, Yoshi, just got your booty with my banana peel, that teaches you to keep offering my girl, Peach, a ride. HA!" So, you get my point about how great the weapons are.

There is also a mode which has a game called "Star Runners" and "Balloon Battle". These have their own tracks including my favorite of all time track in almost any game, the Nintendo DS. That's right, you get to play on a Nintendo DS which is really awesome. There is also a Time Trials game and a VS game to play against your friend or computers.

Now one big thing is that this is one of the first DS games to have DS wi-fi. You can play against enemies all over the world. This is very cool for this game. Its really fun.

Graphics are really good for the DS. Really cool and cartoony. Great graphics.

The only bad is that the game does get a bit boring after a while. You play another track and go, ohh, this one again. So, it's very repetitive. And another, the bottom screen is just maps (which are sometimes really helpful) and menu screens. They could have done so much more with this.
Oh well.

Overall, this is a good game. I really enjoyed it and am sure that all Mario fans, (such as myself) will love this game. It's a great edition to the Mario Kart series. Mario Kart DS gets 4 racing Nintendo characters bashing each other with color coded shells out of 5.

-Zam

Larry The Cable Guy: Health Inspector

You've probably heard of Larry one way or another, and he decided he was going to get big. Big screen. And it's ok. Here's the very short review:

Plot: There isn't much of one really. But I'll tell you what's there. A big food contest is coming up and someone's sabotaging the best restaraunts in town. It's up to the health inspector to find the sabotager [however you say that]. And guess who's the health inspector. Larry the Cable guy! He and his new assistant, Amy, who he thinks is a guy, soon get to the bottom of it and realize that a person in disquise as a cripple is behind it. It's a really weird plot.

What I Thought: Well, it was ok. All of the acting's fine and everything. I don't get why they wasted Kid Rock on a two minute dream scene though. It's hilarious too if you like the kind of comedy he does. My biggest problem was the plot. Somehow this really didn't feel like a movie, more of a long skit. Otherwise it was really good. Which is why I give it 3 Git'r'dun's out of 5.

See it/Rent it/Forget it: Well, if you're a real Larry fan, I think you should see it. But if you've never seen him, don't make this the first time you do. Forget it.

-Ton

Stay Alive

Cast: Jon Foster, Samaire Armstrong, Frankie Muniz, Sophia Bush
Plot: One night, a man, Loomis (Milo Ventimiglia), dies while playing a video game, called Stay Alive, hence the name of the movie. His two friends in the house are killed as well. One of his friends, Hutch (Jon Foster), uses the stupid horror movie logic and plays the game, along with 5 of his friends. First, the one of his friends, Miller (Adam Goldberg), that wasn't actually with them when they played (he played online) is murdered. Exactly the same way as in the game.

Since both of the murders were exactly as in the game, Hutch decides to think. It takes him a while. He decides that maybe the game has something to do with it. Then, October's (Sophia Bush) brother, Phineus (Jimmi Simpson), dies exactly as he did in the game. Where've I heard that before? Uhh, twice in the past 30 minutes? Anyway, Hutch decides to think again. This time Swink (Frankie Muniz) helps. They decide that you don't get killed unless you die in the game, which might be the reason it's called Stay Alive. That means they shouldn't play any more. And they realize that the prayer they have to chant to start the game is what's causing all this death. It's awakening Elizabeth Bathory / The Blood Countress, a weird 1700's killer woman. And she's scary as hell.

Well, not playing doesn't work. The game starts playing itself. And October gets whooped up on and dies. Exactly the same as she did in the game. Ok, that's getting annoying now that I've said it 3 times. ANYWAY! Swink starts playing the game again so they don't die, while Hutch and Abagail (Samaire Armstrong) go into the Blood Countress's house and try to kill her. Well, after a while of odd things, and Swink dying, they kill her. Then Swink magically comes back to life as if he never died. And everyone lives happily ever after. That ending gets me every time :'-(.

What I thought: It sucked. Really, really, really bad. Worst movie of the year. Seriously, it's rare I don't like movies this much. I'll start explaining it. The acting sucked. The main character who was losing all his friends and was supposed to be sad never cried once. The best actress was the one who played October. She was actually pretty good. The story was really bad too. I mean, it could have been good if they worked on it, but it was way too predictable the way it was. The special effects sucked ass. The dialogue was the same lines repeated about 500 times over during the movie. I can't believe this happening! 500 TIMES! Probably most importantly is that it wasn't scary. Except for Elizabeth. Also, there were about a thousand questions unanswered:
1: Who made the game?
2: Where'd Abagail come from? She like popped up at the beginning of the movie and Hutch was immediately her best friend, and no backstory was given at all.
3: At the end of the movie, why is the game for sale at the video game store after Elizabeth was dead?
I don't know, but I do know it officially sucked. The only 3 good things I can say are that October was played by a good actress, that Elizabeth was one scary bitch, and that the Alienware notebook was great at acting. It played its role as a mirror perfectly. It's amazing how that thing can play so many roles so well. I mean, gaming computer, typewriter, mirror, chair. Actor of the year. Right there. It gets 1.5 out of 5. And that's because I'm in a good mood.

See it/Rent it/Run away from it: Don't see this movie. Don't rent it. Don't look at it. Don't TOUCH it. As a matter of fact, throw it. In front of a very fast train. Final verdict: Run away from it.

-Ton

From Russia With Love Review

Gather around children, it's time for a review of a game based off an old movie from the '60s staring a man with an awesome accent. Yes, I am talking about James Bond: From Russia With Love. Ok, let's get to the point, this game is good and not what some would expect. This game is, like I said before, based off the 1963 movie with the same name, which was based off the 1957 novel with the same name by Ian Fleming. I haven't really seen the movie, so I can't tell you how close the story is to the movie, but from some other resources, they are saying it is not exact. So, on with the review.

The story is very complex and makes Russians look bad, but here it is. There is an organizations called OCTOPUS that want to kill James Bond or something like that, not a very specific story. They have an item James need to obtain with the help of a girl (secretly a spy luring him into a trap) named Tatiana Romanova. The thing is called the Luktor. There is also a man named Red Grant who protects you in the beginning but battles you a few times later.

The game is easy in the beginning but progressively gets harder and harder. Yo get to choose from three different difficulty levels, the highest being 00 Agents. Most of the levels are either escorting Tatiana, or getting something from a Russian base. You are constantly batting carbon copies of the same warrior over and over but you don't really care or notice very much. The normal warriors you battle are warriors usually equipted with weak machine guns and sometimes wear helmets. They are pretty easy to gun down, but there are sometimes a ton of them. There are a few more kinds of warriors including mine workers that look like truck drivers, some that hide behind metal sheilds, and these giant commandoes that have machines guns and take constant reloading to take down. I mean even a few blowes with a bazooka can't take down these guys, they kick ass. When they come near you, you yell, "Oh Crap!!!"

You get many guns and gadgets to help you with you missions from the Q-Copter, to the Laser Watch. The guns include a PP7 and some machine guns, a sniper rifle, bazooka, and shotgun. There is a pretty good and easy aiming system. You just press a button and it puts a big spinning circle with arrows on it around them that are color coded to how much health they have left. Green for a lot, yellow for ehh, he could take a little more gunfire, and Red for oh s**t boy you better run and hide behind a commando or I am going to blow you up, biach. With another hit of a button while aimed you can go to Bond Focus which puts circles around the weaker points of the enemy.

There are many vehicles in this game. There are special cars you drive with machine guns, there is this weird cart thingy, and a jetpack. You do do many vehicle missions and they are all fun to drive. Really good.

The graphics are great. James' facial features are great including all other characters, especially the mouth movements. The environments are realistic and you sometimes are so drawn in you forget it's a game. Really great.

You also collect skill points. I really didn't get what these did, but you collect them. They have Simple and Complex Schematics and other things that probably help you solve puzzles easier.

There are tons of unlockables from new guns, to levels. The unlockables are based on 4 things, their set ammount of guys you disarm during that level, the time they think would be a good time to finish that level, if you got the Bond Moment or not, and if the played the level in the 00 Agent level of difficulty. These are not easy to get. If you aren't the best gamer you can get about 1, 2 tops, but if you are good, you still are probably going to get about 3. They're pretty hard to get.

They pulled out a cast of most of the original actors from the movie to voice the characters in this game, including the original James Bond himself, Sean Connery. There are also two new characters not in the movie, one voiced by Natasha Bedingfield. So, it is pretty cool to see a cast like that.

There are only a few bad things about this game, the camera is a bit lose, but you get used to it, and the biggest problem, you can't skip the cutscenes. This doesn't get annoying if you play the game non-stop and finish it and don't play the level again. But if you turn off your Xbox in the middle of a level, then you have to watch the cut-scene all over, and then it gets annoying. If you play the game through in one sitting, then the cut-scenes are pretty fun to watch, especially hearing Sean Connery's accent (man, what a great accent.)

So overall, this game is great. Very fun, great graphics, awesome accent, great story, oooooh a good game. This game has been doubted by many, being a James Bond game, and some in the past have made some believe that if you played on Bond game, you've played them all. But no, this is pretty different. Again, bottom line, this game is really good. From Russia With Love gets 4 martinies, 'Shakin, not Stirred' out of 5.