the fretless bass reviews: Skyrim

I did something with Skyrim I have never done with a game before, I went to the midnight release, and then spent the next 24 hours playing it.

Skyrim is incredible, if you played Oblivion, then you know how good Bethesda is at making fantasy RPG's, and I'm happy to say that Skyrim improved on Oblivion in many ways.

In Oblivion, the combat system worked perfectly, If asked, I would have told Bethesda to change nothing, but they did, and it's awesome. In Skyrim, you can duel wield weapons and spells. This comes in handy when you're fighting off three undead Nords in a dungeon, steel sword in one hand, fire spell in the other. You can also do cool combinations like two spells, or duel swords. Throughout my time playing, I experimented with several different combinations. When you wield duel swords, you occasionally get what I call "cutscene kills," which are essentially one hit K.O.'s except really messy. A sword and a spell lets you capitalize on balencing your stamina and magika, when one runs out, you can switch to the other. When you wield a bow and arrow, that takes two hands, which stinks for me because that's my preferred weapon.

The other major difference I noticed was that there was no class system. At first, I was opposed to this change because without having a distinct class to be, the individualism that I value from playing RPG's is lost. However, I was swayed from this opinion when I realized that this let the player enhance any skill they wanted instead of being stuck in one class they may realize they don't like. For instance, in oblivion, I was a bard, this meant that I was predominantly a stealth fighter, and specialized in hand to hand combat and bows. But what if while on a quest, I discovered the sword of amazing penmanship? Well then because I wasn't skilled with a blade, I'd be stuck wielding the bow of two bit poems instead of writing review masterpieces.

Also, in Oblivion, whenever you talked to someone, it would zoom in on their face, and they'd creepily stare at you for the ten minutes you spent seducing them into telling you where they hid the teddy grams? They took that out, now you get a wide view of their body, and you can look around during conversation. The thing about speaking that they changed that I didn't like was getting rid of the conversation wheel. Every now and then in Oblivion, you would encounter a situation in which you had to get someone to tell you personal information, only you're an elf, and everyone in the game is racist, so they don't exactly draw you a map to the sword of amazing penmanship. So you would have to enter into a fun mini-game, where you tell jokes, threaten, coerce, and make small talk with the person until they trusted you enough to leave you alone in their house so you could steal all their sentimental heirlooms.

Instead, Skyrim takes a conversation lesson from Dragon Age, and just gives you options with (threaten), or (persuade) next to them, and you better hope you're character's skill level is high enough, because there's no playable way to control whether they take nicely to that, or introduce you to the business end of a very large axe.

Now for the plot, You're dragon-born, and you need to kill some dragons to save the world. That's really it, the story plot isn't what makes The Elder Scrolls good, it's the freedom. The freedom to rob a palace dry and then sell it back to the court blacksmith, the freedom to chose any side in any confrontation, and the freedom to be a freaking awesome game.

So at the end of the review, Skyrim is the coolest game of the year, and if you don't play it, you're missing out on the adventure of a lifetime.

the fretless bass reviews:Contagion

Alright, this certainly took a while, it's been a few days since I saw contagion, and several since most people who are interested in it will have, so this review might not be timely, but people like to either have a semi-professional agree with them, or have something to argue, so here goes nothing.

Contagion was good, it was like a zombie movie without zombies (which ironically, would have improved it a ton). It followed the outbreak of a deadly flu-like virus worldwide through the eyes of several different people. The closest the movie came to a main character was the dad who's wife was patient zero and who also turned out to be immune. He had to spend the rest of the movie defending his daughter, so all of the societal breakdown was told through his point of view. There was also the high-ranking doctor in the CDC to explain the virology behind it all, and the journalist, to give the perspective of the genius capitalist, making millions off of deaths.

The plot is really simple, disease enters public, and society almost collapses. The aspect in which the movie shines is suspense. You see, the nature of the virus is that you contract it by touching something a sick person touched. So throughout the movie, the camera would pan in on doorknobs and peanut jars, it's a mysophobic's ultimate nightmare.

There are many parts of the movie where the CDC's overreaction to swine-flu is brought up, which leads me to believe that this movie is essentially saying "THIS IS WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED!"

The other good point the movie makes is that fear is the most contagious disease. And that's true, there is no force on Earth that moves faster than sheer terror.

At the end of the day, Contagion is terrifying. Not in the same way that most other horror or thrillers are terrifying, but in a totally unique way that makes all other horror movies look like Care Bears. Contagion could happen, and this one, single, all-encompassing truth will rock you to the very core, and keep you up at night wondering about God. It is entirely possible that a disease could be introduced to the population that would wipe out one out of every twelve people on Earth. So don't see contagion if you don't like The Walking Dead (so essentially, if you don't like Contagion, you can't appreciate good suspense films, and should probably culture yourself).

the fretless bass reviews: All you need is love Quannapowitt playhouse

I had an awesome weekend. Three plays in as many days. The most important of which I feel is the original play that I saw in a room that was more suited for storage than theater (That's how you can tell it's indy.... indy? ). Anyway All You Need is Love is an original play written by the director, a Mr. James. J. Girgenti, and Composed, or in this case, rearranged by Mr. Mario Cruz. It is the story of the life of the director, focusing on his relationship with his mother, which as any man will tell you, is a pretty freakin' important relationship.

The play is told through Beatles songs that have been rearranged to suit the mood of the number. Now normally, when I hear a musical has been constructed by pre-written music, my first reaction is to start making hurtful jokes about the songs for my review. Because that usually doesn't work very well. When you have to base a plot around pre-existing songs that often have little or no relationship in content, it tends to get pretty haywire and out of control. AYNiL is an exception, a glorious, angelic exception that has re-defined the style for me.

You see, AYNiL was good, not just kinda good, like the infrequent SNL, but really good, as in I would buy you a ticket if I had the funds.

First of all, it's impressive, they rearranged almost every song they used to fit moods perfectly in ways I never would have done. "I Want to Hold Your Hand," for instance, it's a happy song, about a guy who is excited to be in love. In the play, they slowed it down and made it about a man comforting his dying mother.

Second, it was really entertaining, it was fun to watch, and probably fun to be in. One of my favorite parts of the show was "When I'm Sixty Four." That was just the young main character playing with his friends while the parents interjected lines like, "Play nice!"

Finally, it made me cry. I'm not ashamed of it, take any man that had a good relationship with his mother and stick 'em in that room for the last ten minutes, and you'll have an ocean in his lap before long. Not in a very long time have my emotions been so thoroughly manipulated.

You may notice that the picture in the upper left hand corner is not of the subject matter as it usually is, but of Anne Hathaway in a tuxedo, that's because this play is not heavily publicized, and may well not run again in a very long time, so see it, Google "Quannapowitt Playhouse" before 10/16 or you'll miss out on the play of a lifetime.

Let's start the platinum age!

There's no denying it, Thor was a good movie.

Now that my opinion is out of the way, I'm going to tell you why, and relate it to all superhero movies. I can guarantee you that you didn't think I would think of this.

Because I didn't, I'm basing this review off of something that a guy named Moviebob said, except he related Thor to Transformers, but I said, "Why not relate Thor to its genre?" So that's what you're getting. I also encourage you to check out Moviebob's "The Big Picture" on The Escapist.

Thor was campy, maybe not Adam West/Batman-campy, but it was certainly more lighthearted than any movie Wolverine has been in. Thor wasn't trying to be gritty and real, it was just about some super-powered dudes having a punch-out in New Mexico, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Recently, there's been some kind of idea going around the super hero genre that movies need to have some level of what most would call "grit." Not real grit, otherwise they would need to sell toothpaste at my local AMC, but grit as in the hero can't go five minutes without saying "shit," or having a shot of Dack Janiels.

Thor was something else entirely, it was just a bunch of super-powered dudes, having a punch out in New Mexico. This is what the comics industry got started on, when the Silver Age started booming, all comics were just like the Thor movie was, except all the super-powered dudes were having thier punch-outs in New York. But then the 90's came and went (thank God), and now the children of the Silver Age are my Dad. Now that comics are more or less on their feet again, I believe that the writers of the comics and movies think they still need to play to the same audience, and thus, the comics have grown up with the readers. (See above image.) I don't think this is right.

Instead of making every superhero movie a chronicle of the human struggle, or about a middle aged man battling alcoholism, or having comics be overly violent and gory, they should be targeted towards the youth of today.

Marketing to a new generation would get said generation into comics, and perhaps even start another great age, all they need to do is relaunch all the series like DC just did, and make the comics less about Wolverine's lovers, and more about a bunch of super-powered dudes having a punch-out in New Mexico.

I'm not saying gritty realism is bad, I just think that there needs to be a balance, and right now, the scales are tipped. Thor exposed us to what we've been missing, and I say we run into that light full force.

So to sum up, Thor was awesome because it showed us what super heroes once were and hopefully will be again.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Game of Thrones season one

Game of Thrones is fabulous, not for a long time has TV seen a fantasy show so vivid, real, and most of all, believable.

Fantasy is a popular genre, as a result, a lot of people write it, so it's hard to be better than everyone else when all anyone's really doing is ripping off The Lord of The Rings anyway. So George RR Martin decides that he's going to rip off Lord of The Rings like thousands of other writers of fantasy worlds, but he does it better. What he does is he tells each chapter through the eyes of one of a few characters, and as a result, they become real people, real believable people.

The TV show is good for the same reason the books are, there's nothing special or interesting about the world Martin has created, nothing at all, it's not nearly as interesting as Middle Earth, or Dune, but the characters are fiercely developed and I feel like I know most of them personally.

The show follows the Family Stark of Winterfell, wardens of the north and keepers of the great wall that protects the seven kingdoms from the snow zombies beyond. When the old "hand" of the king dies under mysterious circumstances, Eddard Stark is called upon to replace him. Thus the family is thrown into the middle of a massive conspiracy, and they must fight to protect each other, and the king's peace. There's also a couple of scenes that would be classified by a bible group as porn, so don't watch it with your mum like I did.

The show is much more complicated then that, but if I went into detail, then this article would be so long your goldfish attention span would short-circuit.

To close off, Game of Thrones impressed me, both the book and the TV series, and I believe with all my heart that everyone should read and watch, also the theme rules, here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yydcG9woWA

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Real fans just call it Rise. As you can see by the poster on the left, This is the planet of the apes, Earth, and in a way, it always has been. Planet of the Apes has had five movies, a reboot, a live action TV series, a cartoon series, several comic book series, some novels, and now we have Rise. If I do say so myself, it is a worthy addition to a series that has defined sci-fi over the last forty years.

Rise depicts an alternate beginning to the rise of the apes and downfall of the humans. If you go on the first five movies, then the human society fell after an ape slave uprising. This movie comes at the rise and fall of the two species differently.

In a nutshell, the plot follows a scientist who is developing the cure to Alzheimer's disease, and tests his virus on a chimp he names Caesar. This chimp starts a revolution and enhances every ape in San Francisco and brings them to the redwood forrest. However, in their haste to make enough money to buy a fleet of private yachts, the corporate executives fail to realize that when humans are exposed to the virus, they die.

This is different from the fall of the humans as depicted in the original movies, in those, humanity wiped itself out via World War III, this movie would replace the latter with a deadly plague that makes humans die and apes as smart as humans.

This movie is not a remake, if anything, it's one big memorial to a series as ground-breaking as Planet of the Apes. The sheer amount of quotes and references to the original is staggering. They gave the big one to Tom Felton, (guess what it was in the comments, you get it right, you're a true fan) who appears to have been type cast, because many of his lines could have come right out of the mouth of his more famous persona. They also paid homage to the big man himself, Charlton Heston, by having clips from some of his other movies like, "The Agony and the Ecstasy."

The plot of the movie is very well laid out. Caesar lives with the humans for a while, then in a primate home and sees humanity's capacity for good and evil. He uses his smarts to break out and show the law enforcement what for, and has a cathartic moment with his human father figure. At the very end of the movie, we see a pilot who was infected with the virus that made Caesar smart deliver the disease to Great Britain, where it spreads to the rest of the world. At the end of the film, the camera is circling a globe that is not longer controlled by humanity, at the end of this film, all you can see is the Planet of the Apes.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: The best of Foreigner

I've always been interested in Foreigner, but only just recently have I maned up and bought a five dollar best of album, and my mind got blown.

Hands down Cold as Ice and Jukebox Hero are the two best songs. I admire the band's ability to fuse rhythmic piano parts with hard rock guitar lines. unlike bands like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, who base their songs off of one guitar or bass riff, Foreigner bases their songs off of a piano riff, and it's good to hear the keyboard getting it's due awesome in a world currently dominated by bass beats.

The band is obviously influenced by blues music, as heard very plainly in "Women." If I had to guess, I would say the Doors also impacted the band's sound, because like the doors, they often use a quickly repeating guitar line during the refrain.

Foreigner also makes good use of the rhythm guitar, see "Hot Blooded." Two guitars has never hurt a band.

All this banter is just making the article longer so I feel like I've looked into the origins of the band deeper than I have, Essentially, if you don't know what Foreigner is, you should buy an album right away, because they rock.