the Fretless Bass reviews: The Cape pilot on NBC

Today, I'm snowed in, so I'm writing about something I saw yesterday. It was The Cape, a show about a man who was unjustly framed for a horrible crime and must don a new identity to protect his family and get his life back. So it's pretty much every super hero movie or show ever made.
I kid The Cape, I actually liked it a lot, but I'm a fanboy, and as a reviewer, it is my duty to look at this in perspective, objectively, without bias.
The show was entertaining, but was it really good? Luckily, I'm here to answer that question for you, so you don't need to think as much. (Orwellian?) The pilot's job is to draw the audience in with high action, focus, and conflict, so its job is to be the best episode in the entire run of the series. If every episode of The Cape is as good as the pilot, then this show is the next 24 for me until The Walking Dead staggers back onto my TV next fall. But TV shows rarely replicate the quality found in the pilot. The Cape makes the mistake of giving the protagonist one ultimate goal, in this case; it's to prove his innocence by taking down a private military contract army that runs the city. This is going to get old fast. Luke Cage made that mistake as well in his first issue, but the geniuses at Marvel were smart enough to leave Luke's problems open ended enough to keep the series interesting after the death of this antagonist. This is not the case with The Cape, should the main villain fall, there's no more juice left in the tank, and The Cape dies. Like I said, the same bad guy in every episode is going to get old. They also introduced one villain that has scales on his face, and a whole organization of super-killers, but they all work for the ultimate villain as well, so it's kind of a fail on that scale.
At the end of the day, or this review, or whatever you and your cult may call it, the pilot of The Cape was good, but the show has nothing to really set it apart from any other super drama on TV or the big screen. If guys wearing capes and cool hoods excites you as much as it excites me, then you'll probably like the pilot of The Cape, as for the rest of the series, I predict it will fall into the problem Power Rangers had where you could recite what was going to happen in every episode before it even happened. So don't get your hopes up. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go put a towel over my head and pretend I'm Batman.

The Fretless Bass informs you of his new position.

I would tell you how long I have been writing on this blog reflectively, but I didn't check before I went to the writing page, and I don't want to have to save this as a draft.
Any way, I've been blogging for a few months now, and I'm finally crawling out of the gutter of the writing world, from internet blog with very few followers, to reviewer for a high school newspaper!
If there are any of you reading this that may fear the end of this blog, FEAR NOT! My position on The Voice staff may bring in more viewers, I will keep posting on this blog. Here's how it's going to work, I split my posting between here and The Voice, and on The Fretless Bass, you will get the more edgy/inappropriate version of the same review I might post on my school newspaper's website. You might enjoy reading this blog more, but the review with The Voice will probably be more accurate.
This has been not a review, but an informational message to anyone who reads The Fretless Bass, you will now find many of my reviews at http://cchsvoice.org/

the Fretless Bass reviews: The Walking Dead on AMC, season one.

There hasn't been a good drama on TV, since we lost 24 and Lost. (I'm still crying myself to sleep.) At least there wasn't until last Halloween! That was the night The Walking Dead, Based on a popular graphic novel, premiered on AMC. I watched the show from the beginning, and I can tell you, no TV in my life has been so capturing, entertaining, and horrifying.
The story follows Rick Grimes, an idealistic sheriff's deputy in Georgia, who, after being sent into a comma by a gunshot wound, wakes up to a deserted hospital, with the undead clawing at him from behind a locked door. Rick escapes from the hospital and embarks on a quest to find his family. Throughout the season, Rick must do battle with insanity, loneliness, racism, and above all, the dead.
The thing that absolutely hooks me on The Walking Dead is how many episodes could go the entire length without seeing a zombie once, because the show isn't really about zombies, it's about people. The conflicts in the show are largely not about zombies. You think your husband is dead, do you hook up with his best friend? And when he comes back? What do you do then? You need to go back into the zombie infested city to save a member of your group, but he's a vile racist. You fight a street gang for a bag full of guns, but the street gang is protecting a nursing home. The conflicts in the show are all about morals, and How they break down or get stronger after the dead rise.
There is one thing that really caught my attention on the show. Throughout the season, you see some characters slowly fall to insanity, and you love it, every episode, you are wondering if someone is finally going to crack, or if they go so far over they edge, they make everyone else zombie fodder. It's conflicts like these that set The Walking Dead apart from other zombie movies and shows.
The next thing I want to talk about it the three kinds of horror. There's type one, where things jump out at you really fast, type two, which I call gore-horror, where some idiot assumed that more guts=scarier, and type three, which is psychological horror, it's also the only good kind. Three guesses which type of horror the walking dead is? Well for all you gore-horror enthusiasts out there who can't connect my last two sentences with this one, I have two things to say to you, get therapy, and it's type three. There is only one instance of type two horror in the entire season, and even that is used very creatively to make a type three. The survivors need to chop up a dead zombie and smear it's guts on them so they can't be smelled, the scene is disturbing to watch, not because of the gore, but because of the fact that they are chopping up another human. Type three horror is good for this show because you know that the zombies are coming, you just don't know when, and you pray it isn't when the kids are getting home-schooled, or Rick is having a tender moment with his wife, and it eats away at you, by the end of every episode you feel as crazy as some of the characters are.
My only complaint with the show is that at the end of the season finale, Rick gets a secret whispered in his ear, and we need to wait for next fall the find out what it is. I'm guessing it's something terrible, like the bite doesn't cause the disease, only speeds it up, because it's actually air-born!
To end, I want to say that if you haven't yet seen The Walking Dead, see it right now. Because if you don't, you're missing out on some fabulous TV. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to eat, I'm starving, I wonder if we have any leftover brains in the fridge......

the Fretless Bass reviews: CCHS's Noises Off.

This Friday, I went to my high school's fall play. This play was fantastic, I had many friends in it, and that only added to the experience for me, as a thespian myself. I would have auditioned, but this play is only for sophomores and up.
Anyway, Noises Off is one one of those plays with a play within a play. That is, it's about a bunch of actors putting on a show, and of course they fail. The show is in three acts, the first act is a dress rehearsal. In the second act, they all hate each other; the set is turned around and they go through the show again, only they are all trying to kill each other for various love reasons. In the third act, the set is forward again, and nothing goes right.
Every character was hilarious, especially the characters played by Evan Sibley, and Maddie Mahoney, who's characters, and the characters "played" (within the play) by those characters, never stopped delivering laughs. However, what really stole the show was the set. It was fantastic! It turned around in the second set, and showed us the backstage. Also, the number of doors in the set required tons of quick entrances and exits. Props to the actors and actresses for all the quick thinking, especially with all the fake attempted murder going on in-between entrances. The absolute height of the play was when Evan's character fell down the stairs.
The only grievance I have with the show is sort of a compliment in a way. It was that sometimes, there was too much going on, and you missed something, because you were already trying to watch three other events.
In summary, Noises Off is brilliant, and even though it closes tomorrow, you should make every attempt to see it, either with CCHS, or another company. Now if you'll excuse me I have to clear out forty thousand hours of the Simpsons from my Tivo.

the Fretless Bass reviews: Modern Warfare 2

Do you remember my review of the first Modern Warfare game a few weeks ago? I do. I remember how I said the game's major flaw was that the plot was thicker than a linebacker and the fantastic gameplay made up for it. Well, Mod Fare 2 has the same issue, except that the plot is slightly easier to understand, so by a simple conversion, Modern Warfare two is better, much better, than its precursor.
The game once again splits between following two units, one American (Rangers) and always in an intense battle, and the other seemingly British (Task Force 141) and more stealth-based. However, in Mod Fare 2, I wasn't sure what country Task Force 141 was from. Every member had a British or Scottish accent, but they took orders from the same guy who commanded the
American Rangers. One thing I noticed in particular was how the game was more about Soap again. You play mostly as a character named "Roach" (again with the weird code names) who is under the command of the protagonist from the first Mod Fare game. I'm sure this was just put in to get the fanboys excited when they first saw Soap's name, and it gets even worse, because Captain Price makes an appearance, too! This is a good tactic, I, as a fan of the series, did get very excited when I saw those two names on my heads up display.
So let's get down to the juicy, meaty, center of this review.
What Mod Fare 2 did right: Modern Warfare will always go down in my mind as the game with fantastic gameplay and graphics. Now, I have said about movies that graphics shouldn't matter that much, and the same goes for video games, but the graphics in this game are amazing. The gameplay, all you need to know about that is that it lets you do everything you wanted it to do, with very simple controls. I will hail Mod Fare 2 forever as well for its unique gameplay mechanics. The height of the game for me was when an EMP went off over the warzone, first, you see through the eyes of an unfortunate astronaut who witnesses the explosion, then gets killed by a flying satellite. Then, you have to play out the rest of the stage on the ground without your read-dot sight, which makes combat a real challenge. No other game can integrate story and gameplay as well as Modern Warfare 2.
What Mod Fare 2 did wrong: again, plot. In the beginning of the game, I couldn't tell what the heck was going on, mostly because I skipped the level where you massacre Russian civilians, because I didn't buy a game to see/do that. Also, stop making every war character either a badass or a wimp that freaks out at everything. What about a guy that has a personal vendetta against Russia, or a female character for once? There has been little to no variation in personality of characters in this franchise.
At the end of the day, Modern Warfare 2 is the best FPS I have ever played and I think you should get it right now if you haven't yet. I know this review is behind, but every critic has to put his two cents in on the big games, and now you have mine, don't spend it all in one place.

the Fretless Bass reviews: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

I love Harry Potter. Now that that's out of the way, I need to criticize this movie through teary eyes, because I was let down. First and foremost, it's just a ploy to get us to spend more money. The movie took a very small amount of material, and turned it into a full length movie; you could have walked out of the theater at any time, walked back in ten minuets later, and figured out exactly what you missed. That's bad. Movies need to be deep and involving, and you need to have to focus to follow them, like Inception. HP7 was not one of those movies. Second, there was a whole lot of pointless crap in it. At one point, Hermione was feeling sad, so the music on the radio became background music, and she and Harry started to dance around to it. I'm sure that was just a trick so the writers wouldn't have to think of an actual plot event to have happen. Thirdly, there was the part where Hermione read about the story of the Deathly Hallows, and it went into an animation of the story that looked like something out of an artsy film festival. It sucked! It was another time waster! Lastly on the hate list, the director obviously went out of his way to make the whole thing an analogy to 1930's Germany. The "snatchers" were nazi's (they even had red armbands), the "Mudbloods" were Jews (who were put on trial for their heredity), and Voldemort was Hitler. It all seemed really unnecessary, like the movie makers thought we needed to connect Voldemort to Hitler to understand how evil he is; we don't, everyone in America has read the books, we know Voldemort is evil, we don't need to be reminded of the Holocaust to connect the dots.

Lucky for all of us, there were some things I did like about this movie. The movie focused on two characters more than it ever had, Hermione, and Voldemort. I can't tell you about Hermione without a spoiler, so I'll only tell you that Voldemort has more lines in this one than he did in all six other movies combined. The last thing I liked about it was how you really got the feeling that the main characters were alone, and there was no one in the world they could trust. That's a really hard feeling to get from a movie, and HP7 did it.

Now, after all the negatives I've given in this review, I want to make one thing clear, the movie was good and entertaining. Come on, it was Harry Potter! But this time it failed to enchant me quite like the others did.

the Fretless Bass reviews: Final Fantasy X

(WARNING! IF YOU ARE A FINAL FANTASY FAN, DO NOT READ THIS POST, IT MAY CAUSE YOUR INFERIOR SENSE OF JUDGEMENT OF GAME MERIT TO COLLAPSE OPPON ITSELF IN A BURST OF LOGIC!)

In order to start this review, I'm going to have to tell you a story.

It was the first month of high school, and I decided I needed a new activity. I said to myself "I'm a game and movie critic" so I went to sci-fy club! I ended up leaving and never coming back because I was the only person there not dressed in all black and wearing cat-ear dilly-boppers with purple died hair, but that's beside the point. The meat of this story is that while I was there, I mentioned that I hated final fantasy X, I was told to leave by the president of the club, so I did, jokes on him.

So I was chastised by a super nerd for not liking final fantasy X, well lucky for all of us, my brain works like an english report, so I will now state reasons and evidence for why I hated that game, and apply the problems to all gaming, because to me, FFX is the "what not to do guide" for all gaming.

I got FFX, and I was excited, I had recently finished playing Kingdom Hearts, witch is the ultimate example of game storytelling, and the main character in FFX, appeared in KH as a whinny, asshole, 10 year old.

I plugged the game in, and after watching an obnoxiously long opening sequence, I stood still for five minuets because it was never obvious that the cut-scene had ended. I was then taken through a sequence of moving my character five yards, then watching a ten minuet cut scene. Then, I was introduced to a plot so thick, you needed scuba diving gear to breach the surface. Characters were introduced with no backstory, people just started talking and interacting with them like they were introduced six hours ago, when in reality it was thirty seconds! During one of the ten minute cut scenes, your character is about to fall off a broken bridge, and some random guy catches him, and the main character exclaims this mystery guy's name and thanks him, they obviously new each other, I DIDN'T! And this is all during the time when only five percent of the time is gameplay and the rest is cut scenes, this isn't a game, It's a figgin' movie! (just so you all know, the reason I labeled this review as a movie, is because in my opinion, FF games are movies.)

Now for the real evil, Turn based combat. It's not fun. There, that's all the evidence I have, and it's good. Games are supposed to be fun, when you take one of the most important things in gaming and make it not-fun, you make the game not fun. Some people would say "Mickey! It's about strategy" Well it isn't, all you ever do in turn based combat is select attack when you aren't about to die, and eat a magic puppy intestine when you are.

So to sum it all up, FFX is a horrible game because, its more of a movie then a game, you can't tell if you need to kill the antagonist because he slept with your wife or if he stepped on your blue suede shoes, and you are about as involved in the combat as George Lucas is with making those three other Star Wars movies he promised us!

So if you are a die hard FF fan, and you read past the disclaimer at the top, I can guess that right about now, you're deciding which day of the week you want to set my house on fire, and I can't blame you. I just ripped apart a game that thousands of people would fight to protect. So hate me for it. But no matter how bad it gets, I can still say I was right about Obama, he said the troops would be out in six months, and two years later, we're still in the middle east, just like I said we would be.