MoviePass!

I love seeing movies in the theater. It's just a great experience to see stories play out on the big screen. We are a movie family in general which is why we own hundreds of movies (slowly getting our library on digital) and go to the theater as often as we can.

Out of the three of us, I might be the biggest movie freak of the family because I love seeing my favorites multiple times in the theater. I've already seen The Last Jedi three times (twice opening weekend!). I saw the Lord of the Rings movies so much in college that I ran out of people to come with me. Thankfully, I like going to the movies by myself!

I had heard, before Christmas, about MoviePass. For about $10 a month, you can see one 2D movie a day. Most of the movies I see are 2D anyway so I thought about it for a while. Now I had read online that some people were very unhappy with MoviePass, mostly because of cards never showing up. But I decided that I would try it out.

I paid for it a few days before Christmas and I got the card earlier this week. Today was the soonest I was able to get to the movies and I was a little nervous that it wouldn't work. Basically you have to have the app and the card. Once you get to the theater, you pick the movie you want to see on the app and click 'check in'. From there, you have 30 minutes to buy your ticket with the MoviePass card.

When I got to the front of the line, I gave the cashier my rewards app for the theater I was at and the MoviePass card, and held my breath for a minute (yes, I am a worry wart). The cashier ran it like a credit card and I got my tickets plus my rewards points for the theater! It was so simple!

Today I enjoyed Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, tomorrow, I'll probably go see Star Wars again. Next week, maybe Pitch Perfect 3! There are tons of great movies coming out this year and I can't wait to see them all! I would highly recommend MoviePass to anyone who loves movies!

Summer Adventures - The Drive-In

One of my favorite memories as a kid was going to the drive-in. My mom would always buy us new pj's since we would nearly always fall in asleep in the car. I honestly don't remember any movies I saw, but the experience of sitting in the car to watch a movie was awesome.

There is a drive-in that shows new movies about an hour away from my house. We've passed it a few times over the years on the way to Charlotte, but we'd never gotten there. Finally I decided that Emily and I were going to go this summer.

A few weekends ago, the Sunset Drive-In Theater was showing Despicable Me 3 and Spider-Man: Homecoming. This kind of killed two birds for me because I had promised to take Emily to see Spider-Man once she got home from Michigan.

The gates opened at 7 pm and I got there about then. Since this was our first time, I wasn't sure how fast it would fill up. It was pretty empty when we got there so we got a great spot right by the bathrooms and concession stand.

We had a few hours to kill so we checked everything out. They had a Despicable Me 3 coloring contest so Emily sat down and colored a picture. They also had a Despicable Me 3 photo booth and one for Spider-Man too.

As the sun was setting, we got some popcorn. We got some other snacks as it got closer to movie

time. Before the movie, they gave out some prizes. Emily didn't get anything big but she got a little Despicable Me 3 poster and some Minions stickers.

To hear the movie, we had to tune into their radio station which was a bit different. But it worked well. The drive-in filled up quite a bit before the movie started. After Despicable Me 3 finished, quite a few people left. We stayed to the end.

Emily was clad in pj's but she did stay up until the end of Spider-Man. I do think she passed out as we drove away.

It was a lot of fun! Next time, I may bring my own drinks and just get popcorn there. Hopefully we'll get to go again this summer!

Wonder Woman

No spoilers for those who haven't seen it - though if you haven't seen it, go and see it! It's awesome!

I loved the movie, it was excellent, but I also am loving the fact that I was able to take my daughter to see a movie that I wish was made when I was a kid. I loved the Wonder Woman tv show when I was small.

I do admit that I did tear up during different parts of the movie, in part because Emily was sitting beside me watching Diana kick all kinds of butt. I felt similar things when we went to see Ghostbusters last year, which both Emily and I liked quite a bit.

I'm very happy that my daughter is growing up in a time where she can see women being able to shine as the stars of their own universe. Wonder Woman does fall in love, but she still had her own drive and her own goals.

Basically, Wonder Woman made me so happy as a geek, as a woman and as a mom. My husband did see it as well, and he really enjoyed it too. So go see Wonder Woman!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Image: mvlteenvoice.com

I've read most of the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events as well as seen the movie version starring Jim Carrey. The movie had its issues so I was really looking forward to seeing how the Netflix series stacked up.

The first season was available yesterday, and since it was only eight episodes long, I watched the entire thing. What follows are some of my thoughts, including some spoilers so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read any further!

I honestly loved this series. Neil Patrick Harris was brilliant as Count Olaf. He had the perfect air of ridiculous and menacing that is in the books. The children were also perfectly cast and the supporting characters were all great as well.

I've read some reviews that says it's too dark, too morbid and too unfortunate. I read one review that was unhappy that the story is actually a series of unfortunate events the Baudelaire children go through which seems odd to me since it's right in the title.

It's gothic and dark, but so were the books. I didn't watch it with my daughter, but I wouldn't have a problem with her watching it. Yes, there is death and murder, but none of it is gory. Usually the dead person is either not shown, or is taken away rather quickly. 

There is bits of humor, here and there. Patrick Warburton's deadpan portrayal of Lemony Snicket adds a lot and of course, the outrageous behavior of Count Olaf's acting troupe / henchmen lighten the darkness.

The biggest surprise I found was the short bits showing a mother and a father. We aren't told who they are until near the end of the season. They bring hope but it is dashed away, sadly. But as we are told often in each episode, this is not a happy story.

All in all, this show is all I had wanted the movie to be. Each book is presented in two episodes which gives plenty of time to explore the story fully. The movie tried to cram three books in and it felt rushed.

I'd highly recommend A Series of Unfortunate Events to fans of the books and fans of gothic misery!

The Importance of Ghostbusters

Image:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostbusters_(2016_film)

There has been a lot of talk about new Ghostbusters pretty much since they announced it. Lots of anguish over the fact that the Ghostbusters were now going to be females. Many people shouted loudly that their childhoods were going to be ruined over this.

I love the original movie, it is one of my favorites from my childhood. But I adopted a "wait and see" attitude with the new one because I thought it had the chance to be good. I didn't see it opening weekend but as soon as reviews started pouring in and friends posted on social media how good it was, I knew I had to see it.

Finally last week, Emily and I headed to the theater to see it. It was wonderful! It was funny and a bit scary. But it also had these amazing characters who were just doing their thing - which was busting ghosts!

Even though I'm a girl, I've never been a fan of romcom's. Honestly, my husband likes them more than I do so I've see my fair share. But I was very pleased when there was no romance at all in Ghostbusters. Yeah, Erin kind of drools over Kevin, but he doesn't seem to notice her. And her appreciation of him isn't really noticed by him. He seems to like himself more than anyone else.

Holtzman is a big flirt, but flirting with her fellow Ghostbusters is as far as that goes. In the end, they are just four awesome women trying to save their city from destruction. It was empowering to see and I was very glad that my seven year old daughter was able to see this movie because it showed her that girls can be anything and save the day.

This is why Ghostbusters is so important. You have your Black Widows and Wonder Womans in the  super hero movies, but they are just part of a team that is vastly comprised of men. Hopefully from this point forward, we are able to see more women lead action movies.

If you haven't seen Ghostbusters, I highly recommend it. Beyond the whole girl power thing, it's a solid movie that doesn't disappoint!

Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice Review

Last weekend, I finally got the chance to see Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Todd had seen in opening weekend, and had said it was ok. This was not a great review from a man who looooves Batman. I had heard mixed reviews from my friends, but I still wanted to see it.

It was worth seeing, but some parts were better than others and it definitely had a lot of flaws.

Spoilers Ahead! Scroll past the picture if you want to read on!

Image: www.batmanvsupermanmoviedownloadhd.com

This movie was long, super long. They tried to cram so much into it that there were long parts where I started to get a little bored. I mean, did we need Bruce Wayne's back story yet again? I think nearly everyone who has access to movies or TV across the world know that Bruce Wayne's parents get shot and put him on the path to being Batman.

What Bruce was doing during the Man of Steel movie was a bit helpful because we got to see that he already was not a fan of Superman. Beyond that, too much backstory!

A lot of the movie wasn't action. It was maneuvering by Lex Luthor (who was brilliantly played by Jesse Eisenberg) to get Batman and Superman to fight. Once we got to that fight, it just seemed so pointless. All Superman had to do was say, "I don't want to fight you but Lex has my mom captured."

Instead, we get Superman telling Batman that he was going easy on him which didn't end up well for him because Batman had weapons with Kyptonite. It wasn't until Batman was about to kill Superman and Superman said "Martha" that the fight ended.

Because they both had moms named Martha, Batman and Superman went from beating the shit out of each other to being best buddies. Well, maybe not best buddies, but they were on the same team from then on.

Diana Prince was in little bits of the movie as we went through long back story land, but we didn't see her as Wonder Woman until the last battle, which had it's own issues.

I love the Doomsday story. I really regret not buying the comic books when they were out but I do have the novelization of the whole thing that I got a long time ago. It's one of my favorite books. But I didn't like the way the movie handled it.

Doomsday in the movie was a creature that Lex Luthor whipped together using General Zod's body and Lex's DNA. The fight didn't last very long and it was really easy, compared to the comic Doomsday, to take down.

He did kill Superman, which was ok I guess. But I doubt we'll get the whole rest of the Death of Superman story which is a real shame.

All in all, it was mildly entertaining. While I'm sure Todd will buy it when it comes out for streaming, I don't know if I would watch it again. Lex and Wonder Woman were the best parts of the movie though I did like Ben Affleck as Batman. Jeremy Irons was a wonderful Alfred too.

Mostly they tried to jam too many storylines into one little movie. It would have been much better if they had picked one and gone with that.

The Star Wars Experience

Last Friday, I took my daughter to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The movie was amazing and there will be no spoilers in this post, though I think you all should go see it as soon as humanly possible!

But seeing this movie that is part of a fandom that was and still is huge for me in the theater on opening day with my daughter was an amazing experience. We went to an afternoon showing in 2D but the theater was still packed. We had gotten there really early so we were able to get great seats.

With popcorn and drinks, we settled down to watch the first new Star Wars movie in a decade. As the words "Star Wars" burst onto the screen, I got a little teary eyed as I watched my daughter getting excited to see the movie.

Emily enjoyed the movie as well. Her favorite character was BB-8. She is also a big R2-D2 and C-3PO fan. We laughed, I cried as we watched the movie and I look forward to seeing the upcoming ones with her as well.

Star Wars is a family experience for me. Like my father before me, I love sharing this universe that I love with my child.

Happy Star Wars Week!

Image: need2read9.blogspot.com 

I love Star Wars! It was one of my first fandoms as a kid. I had some really awesome Star Wars toys and I remember seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater when I was six. 

My love of Star Wars stayed with me. It was because of mutual love of Star Wars that my college best friend and I became friends. We would have marathons of the original trilogy on some Saturdays. We'd always order pizza between Empire and Jedi.

Like most Star Wars fans, I was super excited for the prequels to come out. I saw them all in the theater multiple times, I think hoping they would get better. I also kept hoping that the next movie would be better, but in most cases, they weren't.

The prequels haven't diminished my love of Star Wars, but I tend to ignore them. Since Emily hadn't seen any of the movies, we've been watching them. Originals first and then the prequels. We still need to watch the last one, hopefully we will get to it this week.

Thankfully Emily found the originals more exciting and I'm super thankful that she didn't really show any interest in Jar Jar. Her favorite characters are R2-D2 and Darth Vader.

Even though the prequels were not good, I'm very optimistic about the sequels. Disney plus no George Lucas seems to be a good combination to me. My husband is more of a realistic and he's not so optimistic. But we shall see and soon!

I have tickets for me and Emily to go see an afternoon show on Friday. We aren't the only ones excited because quite a few shows are already sold out. Thankfully Emily gets out of school early on Friday for the beginning of Christmas break so we can go to an earlier showing. 

For Star Wars week, I hope to watch "Revenge of the Sith" with Emily. I also will probably play a lot of "Knights of the Old Republic" on my xBox 360. I'll be avoiding spoilers too on Friday, since the internet will start filling up with them.

Happy Star Wars Week! And may the Force be with you always!

Date Night!

Image: wikipedia.org

When you are married with a child, alone time can be a rarity. Luckily, Todd and I have fun with Emily in tow quite often, but we do like our occasional date nights.

This past Saturday we went down to GA to visit my aunt and uncle. We missed the holidays with me being so sick so we went down mostly to see family. We spent several hours - my cousin, Casey, and his wife, Serella, brought their kids over. Emily played with them happily - their oldest is only six months younger than Emily.

Seeing family was great, but my aunt and uncle offered to watch Emily so we could go to a movie. Todd and I left a little early so we could also go to dinner. The movie theater we picked was party of a huge mall and we misjudged the time so we had plenty of time.

The mall was great! We just had supper in the food court and then did some looking around / shopping. I may have squealed out loud when I saw they had a Disney store. They also had a Lego store and a cool Japanese store that had a lot of anime stuff.

I only bought something at the Disney Store though. I got Emily new pj's because they were having a sale. Todd also found a great Nightmare Before Christmas hoodie for me and a Sofia the First stuffed griffin for Emily in the clearance section. It was a great deal!

We took our stuff back to the car and went to the theater. We saw Kingsman which was excellent and we saw it in this fancy theater that had reclining chairs. It was an interesting experience. The chairs were very comfy and it was almost iMax like with the sound quality. The screen seemed bigger too.

It was really nice to get some one on one time with Todd outside of the house. Hopefully we'll be able to do it again soon!

Ghostbusters!

Yesterday after work (and after our power came back on after a brief outage), Emily and I sat down to watch the classic movie, Ghostbusters.

She really enjoyed it. She loved the Staypuft Marshmellow Man at the end - she described him as cute and smiling and evil. She wasn't scared at all by the ghosts in the movie. Immediately, she wanted to watch Ghostbusters 2 once we were done.

She liked Ghostbusters 2 even more - because of the baby. She danced and sang with the Ghostbusters theme song and once Ghostbusters 2 was over, she wanted to watch it again.

I'm really glad that she liked it!

Frozen Sing-Along

I love going to the movies and it's nice that Emily is old enough to sit through a whole movie. We don't take her very often so it's a big treat when we do go.

We saw Frozen as a family when it first came out, but when I heard about the Frozen Sing Along showings, I really wanted to go. We have the soundtrack so both Emily and I know all the words to the songs.

There was a showing last Friday so I decided we could go because Todd had no interest in seeing it again. When we got to the theater, Emily saw one of her best friends. They hugged and talked for a minute but they were going to go see the Lego Movie.

The theater was empty when we got in there but a few people showed up. Even with a near empty theater, it was a lot of fun to sing along with the movie. Emily had a good time too.

I'm guessing that the sing along won't be in many theaters for much longer (if at all) but I'm glad we got to experience it!

Back to the Future: The Game Review

Image: http://www.telltalegames.com/backtothefuture/

I was eight years old when the first Back to the Future movie came out and I remember going to the theater to see it. I loved it and I still love the whole trilogy to this day. So I was excited when I heard about Back to the Future: The Game which is by Telltale Games.

I had heard about the episodes of this game that had been released for the computer but I never opted to play them. But I was glad when I heard that all five episodes were going to be bundled into one game for the PS3 and Wii consoles. The version of the game that I played was for the Wii.

The gameplay in this game is a bit simple. You are basically pointing and clicking on people and objects to reach the goal for the various level. There are some puzzles but they are fairly simple. There is a ‘hints’ button that will help you if you get stuck and I honestly used that a lot because it make it easier to get through the levels and not just have Marty run around aimlessly.

I think the strength of this game is with the voice actors and the story. Christopher Lloyd did the voice for Doc. Michael J. Fox wasn’t available to voice Marty, but the voice actor who did, AJ LoCascio, did such a good job of sounding like Michael J. Fox that it was hard to tell the difference.

The story was really interesting too. I really did feel like I was playing through a whole new set of Back to the Future movies. The game took me two days, which was about 15 hours, to play. I had a hard time stopping because I wanted to know what happened next.

The only issue I had was that with the WiiMote, because it was hard to click on some things. Especially if it was in a part of the story that I had to click something at a certain time. I would eventually get it but it would take me several tries.

All in all, Back to the Future: The Game is a pretty interesting game if you are a fan of the Back to the Future series. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a point and click game where you get to star as Marty McFly. This game is currently available for both the Nintendo Wii and the Playstation 3 as well as for PC/Mac computers.

Note: I received a copy of this game for review purposes.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I’m a huge Tolkien fan and have been since I was a kid. I adored the Lord of the Rings movies and I loved the first Hobbit movie. I was able to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at the midnight premiere and it didn’t disappoint.

Now I’m going to let you know, I’m not a huge fan of The Hobbit as a book. I always preferred Lord of the Rings. I re-read The Hobbit after seeing the first movie, and it is really lacking in some area. Character development is a big one and a lot of things seem rushed near the end.

After the image, there will be both book and movie spoilers.

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/

Desolation of Smaug was very good. I think what I like best about the Hobbit movies are that they try to give the dwarfs beyond Thorin some character development. Kili gets his own subplot with the new elf character, Tauriel. I like the character of Tauriel a lot but they were a little heavy handed with trying to compare her to Arwen near the end.

Beorn and Bard were awesome to see come to life, as well as the barrel ride. Bomur actually got to shine in that scene. The subtle and not so subtle hints that Thorin is starting to lose it were extremely well done as well.

Smaug was so good and that entire sequence where the dwarves and Bilbo are trying to evade him to get out of the mountain was brilliant. It was just a lot of fun to watch. I was also happy to see more of Gandalf once he left the company. That was one of the biggest things that bugged me about the book is that Gandalf goes off but in the book itself we don’t know what the heck he did.

The only issues I have with the movie is that they built up this whole subplot with Kili being poisoned and Tauriel having to save him. But Kili dies in the book during the Battle of the Five Armies. Annoying enough in the book we don’t see the death, it’s just mentioned that him and Fili had died like an afterthought. It makes me wonder if the movie will let them live.

Beyond that, the movie was great. I was hoping to see Bard against Smaug but the movie ended right before that. I’m very excited to see the 3rd movie next year!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Image: http://www.thehobbit.com/

Since The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug comes out this week, I thought I'd share my review of the first movie from last year!

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I’ve been a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien nearly all my life. One of my earliest memories was my dad reading The Lord of the Rings to me. I would sit on the arm of his old red chair as my father brought to life the story of Frodo and the ring. When I heard that movies were going to be made, I was very excited. While there were parts of the story left out in The Lord of the Rings movies, I loved all three and saw each one several times in the theater.

Peter Jackson did a great job of bringing Middle Earth to life with The Lord of the Rings, so I was psyched to see what he could do with The Hobbit. I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D, in 48 fps and I was not disappointed.

The movie had stunning visuals. With the 48 fps, it almost felt like I was in the movie. The extra frames per second was a bit jumpy in several parts of the movie. But overall, I could tell the difference with the faster frame rate, which made it even more defined than just normal 3D.

With the 3D visuals, the rolling hills of the Shire were immediately striking. The battle scenes put the viewer right into the action. For example, when the wargs were chasing after the party, there were  close-ups on the warg’s face and it made me it feel as if I was the one being chased up a tree. And when the party is captured by the goblins, I felt like I was also there under the mountain surrounded by the hoards.

The Hobbit is a lighter story and has a great deal of humor in it, unlike LotR. The movie is the same, especially centered around Martin Freeman as Bilbo. His expressions alone caused me to roar with laughter as he tries to deal with the invasion of the Dwarves in his hobbit hole.

There are more laughs in the sequence when everyone is captured by the trolls and Bilbo must talk his way out of being eaten. Even during the riddle game with Gollum, the humor remains. Freeman was a perfect choice for Bilbo.

The last time I read The Hobbit was a while back, so I was a little fuzzy on the details of the story. The movie seemed to be very faithful to the book but there were obviously some scenes added to the movie, such as the Rivendell sequences that included both Galadriel and Saruman. As noted in the appendixes of the LotR stories, Saruman tries to put the breaks on Gandalf’s work. And there’s a short original scene between Galadriel and Gandalf where she supports his decisions and encourages him to continue.

There was quite a bit of foreshadowing of the events that will happen in the LotR trilogy, but it also worked well in the course of this movie.

While the journey represents the physical one that the dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf take to the Lonely Mountain, we also see Bilbo’s  emotional journey as he finds out who he truly is inside, which is the heart of the story. Even though there are two more movies to go, Bilbo is transformed from a homebody to someone who is willing to risk his own life to save another’s. This is a story of hope and trying to find your way home.

I would highly recommend everyone to see The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey. It is a wonderful adaption that I think really captures Tolkien’s story. I would also recommend seeing in 3D with the new 48 fps because it makes the movie so amazingly beautiful, even more so than regular 3D.

Uncomfortable Flashbacks

Me at the horror con

Todd and I are big horror fans. We found a horror convention in Charlotte earlier thisyear which had Bruce Campbell as a guest. We had such a good time that we are planning on going again next year. They have started announcing guests so we decided to watch The Lords Of Salem last night because some of the guests are in it.

Rob Zombie movies tend to be hit or miss for me. This one started out okay and had a lot of potential, but the end was really weird and bad. But the movie made me increasingly more uncomfortable to watch as the main character started to see things that weren’t there.

A few years ago, I got very sick. I lost two days that I don’t remember at all. Todd says that I was awake and seeing people that were all white. When I do start remembering, I would see things that weren’t there out of my right side. It was vague shapes and I ended up in the hospital for five days thanks to a mass in my brain.

I recovered, though it took months. Finally I was back to normal but the doctors didn’t know what happened or why I had this mass in my brain. They just knew it wasn’t cancer because it got smaller. It was the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me so I was really uncomfortable watching the character in the movie going through something a little similar.

Catching Fire Review

Last night, I went to my local theater to see the Hunger Games double feature. The Hunger Games was one of my favorite movies of last year and I love the books. The double feature was fun – it was great to see The Hunger Games on the big screen again. Plus I got to see the new Hobbit trailer twice. After the first movie, some of the theater staff came in and gave us all lanyards which was cool too.

Finally it was time for Catching Fire. The movie was great and I really enjoyed it. But I have some comments that are spoilers – for both the book and the movie. So if you want to read the spoilers scroll down past the movie poster.

Image: http://catchingfiremovie.org

The casting for this movie was really brilliant. I especially thought that Johanna Mason and Finnick were spot on. I wasn’t very happy that Mags was silent. It’s been a while since I read the book but I could have sworn that Mags did talk. It was just really distracting that she was mute.

The only other thing that didn’t seem to make sense to me was the spinning cornucopia. The spinning was fine but the comment that Plutarch Heavensbee makes about the tributes not being able to tell time now didn’t make any sense. The tributes didn’t seem to have any issues telling the time in the arena because the lightening tree didn’t move. It just felt off to me.

Otherwise, it was great, and very true to the books. I’m still curious on how the 3^rd film will be because Katniss spends most of that book in the throes of PTSD. I’m sure they will focus a lot on the action stuff that happens later in the book.

All in all, Catching Fire was a great movie. I think I liked The Hunger Games a little better, but that’s probably because I liked the first book better than the 2^nd too.

Back to the Future: The Game Review

                Image: http://www.telltalegames.com/bttf

I was eight years old when the first Back to the Future movie came out and I remember going to the theater to see it. I loved it and I still love the whole trilogy to this day. So I was excited when I heard about Back to the Future: The Game which is by Telltale Games.

I had heard about the episodes of this game that had been released for the computer but I never opted to play them. But I was glad when I heard that all five episodes were going to be bundled into one game for the PS3 and Wii consoles. The version of the game that I played was for the Wii.

The gameplay in this game is a bit simple. You are basically pointing and clicking on people and objects to reach the goal for the various level. There are some puzzles but they are fairly simple. There is a ‘hints’ button that will help you if you get stuck and I honestly used that a lot because it make it easier to get through the levels and not just have Marty run around aimlessly.

I think the strength of this game is with the voice actors and the story. Christopher Lloyd did the voice for Doc. Michael J. Fox wasn't available to voice Marty, but the voice actor who did, AJ LoCascio, did such a good job of sounding like Michael J. Fox that it was hard to tell the difference.

The story was really interesting too. I really did feel like I was playing through a whole new set of Back to the Future movies. The game took me two days, which was about 15 hours, to play. I had a hard time stopping because I wanted to know what happened next.

The only issue I had was that with the WiiMote, because it was hard to click on some things. Especially if it was in a part of the story that I had to click something at a certain time. I would eventually get it but it would take me several tries.

All in all, Back to the Future: The Game is a pretty interesting game if you are a fan of the Back to the Future series. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a point and click game where you get to star as Marty McFly. This game is currently available for both the Nintendo Wii and the Playstation 3 as well as for PC/Mac computers.

Note: I received a copy of this game for review purposes.

My Thoughts on Ben Affleck as Batman

Emily is a super hero too!

Last night, my Twitter feed exploded with the news that Ben Affleck was cast as Batman in the new Batman / Superman movie. Most of the reactions I saw where negative. My initial reaction was Wha??

I like Ben Affleck and I think he’s a good actor, but I can’t see him as Batman. It seems like such a miscast to me. My husband had a similar reaction to mine but he also said that he’ll go see it.  I’ll go see it too, mostly because I love Batman.

When I was in high school, I started watching the animated Batman series that was on at the time. It would air right after I got home from school so it became a routine for me to watch it.  Because I loved the animated series, I subjected myself to the awful Batman movies of the 90’s. Now the first one with Michael Kenton was excellent, but the other ones were increasingly more and more painful to watch.

When the series was rebooted a few years ago, I still went to see it because I still love Batman. Christian Bale was an excellent Batman and I enjoyed all three of the movies he was in. I wish he would come back for this Batman/Superman movie. But instead, we get Ben Affleck.

I’m still going to wait and see. I’m not a huge fan of Superman, but I’ll still see this movie. Once it comes out, I’ll write a review on how well Ben Affleck is as Batman.

My First Star Trek Con

With the addition of John de Lancie to the guest list for this year’s Dragon Con, I’m feeling a little nostalgic for my first Star Trek Con where he was  a guest.

Star Trek conventions have been happening all over the world for the last 40 years. The very first convention that I ever attended was for Star Trek when I was 15 years old. Even though it’s been over 20 years, I still have vivid memories of that experience.

My dad had been a Star Trek fan since the original series and he and my mom started watched Star Trek: The Next Generation from the premiere episode. I was a preteen and didn't consider Star Trek was cool. Once I started watching on a regular basis, I became a big fan, even going back to the original episodes to watch them.

One night while we were watching Star Trek as a family a commercial aired for a three-day Star Trek convention in East Lansing, Michigan. I had attended a few one-day conventions with my dad that featured only one cast member from the shows and a small dealer’s room. This was our first chance to actually experience three days of constant Star Trek.

We planned for my dad and I to attend the con while my mom and sister went shopping. I had my mom order a Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform shirt for me, I was that excited. My first cosplay!

September 26, 1992 arrived and we drove a couple of hours to the Michigan Star Trek Festival. The dealer’s room was huge and sucked up most of the first day.  I had never seen so much Star Trek stuff in one place in my life. This was the only con I've been to that you could go into the dealer’s room without having a badge. Even my mom and sister decided to come in, since they were allowed.

I cosplayed at the dance on the first night. I didn't stay long dance but I do remember that was the first time that I ever heard The Time Warp. After I had gone back to the hotel room, I watched the news broadcast which had a story about the con.

The next day, I scored several autographs. Majel Barrett-Roddenberry was signing in the dealer’s room and John de Lancie was set up in a separate room. While I was in line for John de Lancie, I heard a woman behind me complain about needing a badge to get his autograph. How times have changed.

I also attended a panel about the new series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I spent some time in the video rooms watching older episodes and specials. Even though I didn't know what it meant, I was first introduced to filk at this con.

Sunday was the last day of the con we attended the art show but headed home soon after, so I missed most of the later events.  It was years before I attended another con but I knew I wanted to repeat the experience.I attended anime cons in college. After I moved to the South, I started attending Dragon Con in 2007. It became a yearly experience for me and my husband.

But I didn't attend another Star Trek con until a couple of years ago.

I went to Trek Trax Atlanta in January 2011 and it was like I had stepped back in time. Even though there has been several more Star Trek series and movies released, this con still had the same feel as that first convention. It is always so fun to get together with like-minded fans who love Star Trek as much as I do.

Despicable Me 2 Review

Image: wikipedia.org

This past weekend Emily and I went to the movies to see Despicable Me 2. The first movie is one of our family favorites so both of us were looking forward to see it.

Gru and his girls are back, but now they are fighting on the side of good with the help of the secret organization AVL (Anti Villain League). Gru teams up with Special Agent Lucy Wilde to find a chemical that will turn anything into a mutant killing machine.

Gru and Lucy are an adorable team and their relationship gives the movie a lot of heart. There is a lot more of the minions this time around, though we do see a lot less of the three girls.

Both Emily and I enjoyed Despicable Me 2. When I asked her what her favorite part of the movie was and she said it was the minions going beep-beep-beep. She laughed a lot throughout the movie and I laughed too.

I’d recommend Despicable Me 2 to anyone, but especially for kids who will love the adorable minions.