Rise of the Planet of the Apes

When I say that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is one of the best genre films of the year so far, I'm not monkeying around. The quality of the visual effects and motion capture performances will make you go bananas. You'll forget all about that horrible Tim Burton Planet of the Apes film from ten years ago, like... like... like so much thrown feces. Seriously though, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a pretty solid flick. What it lacks in Heston, it makes up for in Lithgow.

Rating: 77%

(Image from thefilminformant.com)

Little Otik

A woman pretending a twig is her baby is how you say...creepy. The twig becoming alive, turning into a monster and eating the townsfolk adds up to excellent and enthralling creeptastic Czech cinema.

Rating:85%

SYR6: Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui

Another soundscape album of semi-songs by Sonic Youth, I feel that somehow this one seems like less of a throwaway experiment and more like a mature work by musicians extremely deep into their career. On the other hand, nobody reading this blog post would enjoy it, so bear that in mind before you run out to make a purchase.

RATING: 76%

Ryan’s All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #1 Fallout 3 (XBOX 360/PS3)

Starts with the absolute best training session in a game ever. Your first quest (as a baby in a fallout shelter) is to take your first steps. Soon enough you will be traversing an eerily serene and disturbing world post nuclear holocaust. The makers of Oblivion give you the same customization and freedom, but vastly improve the story, mood, combat, etc. A beautiful blend of a 50’s Cold War vibe, radioactive mutants and incentives to level up. Might possibly be the end of my marriage.

Rating: 99%

Ryan’s All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #2 Princess Tomato (NES)

Hilarious story and character interactions fuel this rare gem. Rather than shoot or punch your way through the vegetable villains, you must defeat them at rock, paper, scissors. The concept (talking veggies in a quasi-medieval setting) sounds like a trippy kids show, but it is a fantastic joyride of a game.

Rating: 98%

Ryan’s All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #3 Déjà Vu (NES)

A man wakes up in a bathroom stall, memory gone, fedora askew. He has to first solve the mystery of who he is and then solve the mystery he was solving before getting conked on the head. An astounding story trumps the abysmal graphics.

Rating: 97%

Ryan’s All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #4 Tetris (NES)

Sometimes the simplest things are the best things. Blocks falling from the sky needing to be put in order. Put on your favorite rap CD, cancel your appointments, the hours will vanish in a haze of entertainment.

Rating: 96%

Ryan’s All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #5. Madden (various)

Every annual incarnation is another step toward football perfection. Live your fantasy to be the Dolphins quarterback or the Bears GM in this highly addictive game. All the glorious fun of the NFL with almost no chance of suffering a concussion.

Rating: 95%

Ryan’s All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #6 Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (XBOX 360)

You have great freedom to roam around the beautifully crafted landscapes, to free elves from dream worlds, steal a ship from a ghost pirate, assassinate, sneak, cavort. Customize your character’s race, clothes, skills. Your inner D&D nerd has never been this giddy.

Rating: 94%

Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat

A Beer For Every State #12 - Massachusetts

My friends, who are admittedly mostly pinko liberal hippies, tend to deride every beer that is not out of a craft brewery, and while I agree that craft and micro breweries usually put out the best beers, I have to admit there are a few big beers out there I'm partial to - Shiner, Blue Moon, MGD 64 (jk on the last one). Samuel Adams puts out some good seasonals, and I think the Coastal Wheat was pretty good. Wheat beers are kind of hard to get wrong, I think, especially with everybody putting all kinds of citrus slices in them to try to turn them into a Zima or something. I can't imagine a situation where you'd have to drink this instead of Blue Moon, a much better big company wheat, but I don't really know what Massachusetts is like. Yes they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in Hell!

RATING: 60%

Ryan's All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #7 Rock Band

Karaoke!
With instruments!
The more fun your friends are
exponentially increases the fun of this game.

Rating: 93%

Sonic Nurse by Sonic Youth

You know, I always thought I liked Murray Street a lot more than this album, but listening to it for the first time in a few years I realized it's one of Sonic Youth's best. They claimed it was their attempt at a classic rock record, like something by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, which I can sort of understand - there aren't any four part harmonies, but the guitars are really gentle and layered in a way that can best be described as pretty. It's probably the least "aggressive" SY album out there. Maybe it'd be in my top three of their albums? I can understand why 24 year old me only thought it was ok - he had some pent up issues that were probably best solved by listening to At The Drive-In on repeat.

RATING: 91%

Ryan's All-time Top Ten Video Games #8 Silent Hill (Playstation)

This game is like stepping into a well-crafted eerie-fest of a horror movie. A mystery to solve, undead creatures to run away from, sounds like a sleepless night well spent. A lot like Resident Evil, but with a far more overwhelming atmosphere.

Rating: 92%

Storage Wars

Storage Wars is the kind of reality television programming that appeals to both my thrifty side and my hoarder side. The show follows a handful of buyers as they bid against each other for abandoned storage lockers. After purchasing a storage locker, the buyers rummage through the locker's contents, hoping to generate a profit from what they find. Sometimes it's valuable art and antiques and sometimes it's garbage and used porn. The people behind the show were smart enough to cast some interesting buyers (my favorite being Barry Weiss, the eccentric collector with the Charlie Sheen wardrobe) as well as establishing a formula for the show that's part Scrappers and part Antiques Roadshow.

Rating: 73%

(Image from blog.sparefoot.com)

Ryan’s All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #9 Rampage

Fulfills your giant monster destroys the city fantasies. Not a touch of sophistication or precision here, just full-on joyous destruction.

Rating: 91%

Wax Packs

I haven't collected trading cards since the mid-nineties, but after a recent nostalgia fueled eBay session I ended up with half a dozen unopened wax packs. Until the late eighties/early nineties, virtually all trading cards came in wax packages, often with a "bonus" stick of terrible, terrible gum that would often shatter in your mouth and cut the inside of your cheek when you tried to chew it. Since I was more of an indoorsy kid growing up, I was always interested in non-sports trading cards (Garbage Pail Kids, Dinosaurs Attack!, Wacky Packages, etc.) and my recent purchases definitely reflected that (no need to get into details, but let's just say I'm now the proud owner of a pack of Alf cards). While I have no interest in collecting full sets of classic cards, there's just something nice about holding a vintage wax pack in your hands. I told a friend recently about buying the wax packs and he asked, "What did you do with them?" I said, "Well, I took them out of the envelope, looked them over, and then put them away." He laughed, but I hardly regret the purchase.

Rating: 80s%

(Image from timemachinetoys.com)

Ryan's All-Time Top Ten Video Games: #10 Kingdom Hearts

10. Kingdom Hearts (PS2)
Gorgeous graphics, smooth controls, pick your own Disney character posse. Might seem like it’s just for the kiddos, but who was alive when Aladdin and Lion King came out? Embarrassed how giddy I was to play the Little Mermaid level. An enthralling adventure from start to finish.
Rating: 90%

Johnny Suede

At times, triptastic, other times deeply funny, all the while saturated with cool. Catherine Keener does her usual routine and Brad Pitt gives one of his most underrated performances. Cameos by Samuel L. Jackson and Nick Cave are the icing. The scene where Brad Pitt and his roomie go over the pros and cons of moving in with a girlfriend is in itself worth the price of admission.

Rating: 93%

NYC Ghosts & Flowers by Sonic Youth

Well, this album sucks, but the question is does it suck as much as Pitchfork famously claimed? I guess it'd be hard to, but I doubt even Pitchfork really believed the album was a 0.0. It's got some good moments musically speaking, but those are frequently ruined by bad impersonations of high school students imitating Jim Morrison imitating the beat poets. Well, there was nowhere to go but up after this I guess, but it's easily the worst thing Sonic Youth has ever been associated with.

RATING: 19%

The NFL Draft as a viewing experience

Even the diehardest of diehard football fan doesn’t know a bunch of the guys getting drafted, so you have no idea whether to be happy or pissed when your team picks the cornerback out of Murray State. In spite of this and all the waiting time between picks and the sheer nerdiness of watching a sporting event with no actual sports, I find myself drawn to it every year, partly to watch the Jets fans boo everybody and partly because of the intoxicating hope that the Texans will pick the next great player.



Rating: 36%

The Replacement Killers

I could tell I was going to like The Replacement Killers as I read the names in the opening credits: Chow Yun-fat, Michael Rooker, Til Schweiger, Danny Trejo, etc. After watching the movie, I was actually a little mad at myself for not having seen it years earlier, since Hong Kong style shootouts and character actors are like manna from heaven to me. I guess my initial reluctance to watch The Replacement Killers stems from my overall disappointment with most North American-made action movies featuring actors or directors who first gained prominence overseas. I mean, as good as Chow Yun-fat's films are (especially the ones he made with John Woo), no one in their right mind could possibly think Bulletproof Monk is better than The Killer. No one.

Rating: 82%

(Image from moviepostershop.com)

Men in ponytails

Women like their men to remind them of horses. And they enjoy sharing their scrunchies. Win, win.


Rating: 0.351%

Volcano Chocolate Filled Mints

As a Canadian, I could travel to Cuba if I wanted to. I don't want to, but I could if I did. And if I were to go, I could bring back some Volcano brand chocolate filled mints, like a relative of mine did after their recent trip to Cuba. The mints themselves aren't really anything special and they're not really any different than the chocolate filled mints you can get just about anywhere else (if you still have living grandparents, ask them where they buy their crappy candy). But I still had to laugh after looking at the package, because it turns out that they're made in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. That's right, these mints were made by commies, for commies. They're commumints.

Rating: Socialists with fresh breath%

(Image from tootoo.com)

Silver Session for Jason Knuth by Sonic Youth

The story with this album is that while Sonic Youth were recording A Thousand Leaves there was a metal band recording upstairs, and as a result SY couldn't get their songs right. So they turned up every amp and laid every guitar against them for revenge. The result, recorded here, is exactly as you'd expect, but it's actually pretty soothing, and I think you could relax to it if you get my drift.

RATING: 45%

Cottrell Brewing Old Yankee Ale

A Beer For Every State #11 - Connecticut

I don't want to say that Yankees don't know how to make delicious microbrews, but I don't know if this really goes a long way to dispel that nasty rumor. It's a forgettable ale, and also it was warm, which I blame on the brewers and their families. (Caveat: I drank it eight months ago, so maybe the particulars aren't too fresh in my mind)

RATING: 55%

Wayne Robson

It's a sad day for fans of Canadian character actors, Wayne Robson has passed away. Robson got his start with a couple of small roles in some Robert Altman films and would eventually go on to be a part of countless films and television shows made in and around Canada. Mr. Robson was also a veteran of the stage and a voice-over artist, having provided the voice of Professor Calculus in the English language version of The Adventures of Tintin cartoon series from the early nineties. He may remembered most fondly, by Canadians at least, for having portrayed the character of ex-con Mike Hamar for several seasons on The Red Green Show. He will be missed.

Rating: Keep your stick on the ice%

(Image from watt-up.blogspot.com)

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

An atypical robbery story with a Hitchcockian vibe. If you don’t mind loathing every character in a movie, your enjoyment of this tense, sharp film will not be impeded. Meaty performances by all involved. Seeing Marisa Tomei without clothes is not exactly a drawback.


Rating: 88%

The Problem With Reviewing Hobo With A Shotgun

Hobo with a Shotgun is an unapologetically violent exploitation movie that was filmed in Nova Scotia, not all that far from where I live. I wanted, more than anything, for it to be kick-asstastic. However, after seeing the movie this past weekend, I have to say I was disappointed. I thought the movie had some pacing issues and a lot of seriously bad dialogue. It wasn't a total shit fest though. The action scenes all looked good, they used lots of practical effects and fake blood, there were some cool cameos, some excellent music choices, some great camera work, and a number of lighting choices that paid homage to the films of Dario Argento. I hate to give Hobo with a Shotgun a bad review, because it definitely deserves to be seen and I know there's an audience out there for it, but I simply can't ignore the film's weaker points.

Rating: Quammy's Quandary%

(Image from onlinemovieshut.com)

Batman: City Of Crime

Well, what would a David Lapham book be without the constant threat of pedophilia? It's ok, but if you were a parent buying your kid Detective Comics and you happened to read the issue where a 14 year old tries to seduce Bruce Wayne and then ends up half naked and dead of a drug overdose in a hotel room, you might rethink the whole reading comics is better than television thing. Obviously, though, kids probably only make up about 5% of American comic books' audience these days anyway.

RATING: 58%

Chocolate Easter Bunnies with Rice Krispies

Easter is coming a little later than usual this year, but Easter candy is already out in full effect. One of my personal favorites are the chocolate Easter bunnies that come with the crispy rice mixed in. They're not made with Rice Krispies officially sanctioned by Kellogg's, but that hardly makes any difference. It's not like, when you see one on a shelf, you say, "Oh, look at that. It's a chocolate Easter bunny made with crispy rice." Chances are you'd say, "Hell yeah, dawg. It's a chocolate bunny with some Rice Krispies all up in it."

Rating: 70%

(Image by way of couponcrazedmamas.com and smallanimalchannel.com)

She-Hulk's Sexual Attractiveness

She sports a superiorly toned body complete with a flawless pair of chichis. Her long hair sweeps around her gorgeous face. Definitely pretty enough to look past green skin.


But really I think what may turn a lot of fellas off is sheer intimidation as she could hurl you through a wall and is so smart and successful and probably not the type of lady to let a little flirting with your co-workers slide.

Rating: 77%