Why Planet of the apes is horrifying and excellent.

So I'm excited for Rise, if you're a true Planet of the Apes fan, that's all you call it, Rise. This movie will fall in the continuity of the other five movies and depict the initial beginning of the super intelligent apes.

A friend of my father's said that Planet of the Apes was popular when he was a kid because it was one of the only sci-fi things they had, but I beg to differ. Planet of the Apes was and is popular because it horrifies and intrigues due to cultural establishments.

To understand why Planet of the Apes is popular, we need to go back to the late 1400's. Why are the late 1400's important to Planet of the Apes? I'm getting to it. The grinding stone and the printing press were both invented in that period, and that's important because then serfs didn't have to work as hard, because the grinding stone did their work for them, so many of them ran away and eventually became the middle class. With the printing press, they could formulate and spread their ideas. In other words, a group of people was created that had nothing better to do than learn about and criticize the world around them. This is what the layman calls the Renaissance.

During the Renaissance, four values arose among western civilization, the most important one was humanism. Humanism, put simply is the belief that humans are the cat's pajama's and the bee's knees and anything that says otherwise gets made into coats and furniture.

Whether you know it or not, humanism and the other Renaissance values still have an astronomical effect on modern culture, so people still think that nothing can beat them. A perfect example of humanism in culture is Independence Day.

So when Planet of the Apes came out, suddenly people were exposed to humans being turned in to slaves and pets, and apes, a species we thought we had mastered, dominate them. People, thinking this was impossible, were intrigued by the concept, went to the movie, then were horrified by the startling possibility.

So there you have it, we have Guttenburg and Martin Luther to thank for Planet of the Apes.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Captain America: The First Avenger

Let's start this review by saying this is my 50th post on my blog! (party horn noise) This is exciting, but there's really no way to make the review more exciting except mentioning that in the beginning.

Captain America is the last Marvel installment before the Avengers movie in 2012 (appocageddon can wait until after that and the Dark Knight Rises.) Needless to say, it had to be darn good to build up psych. It pulled it off fabulously.

The story is set in the final years of World War Two, Democracy was on the way up, Hitler had a fire under his ass, and more Americans were enlisting than ever; except Steve Rogers, who's five feet tall, and has breathing issues. A German-American doctor gives him a chance to enlist and makes him the first test subject of the super soldier serum, which grants him peak physical and mental ability.

As far as story goes, it's above par for the super hero course. After his injection of the serum, you would think they would send Cap right to Adolph Hitler's front door to roundhouse kick his face with the power of democracy. Instead, they make him a show-boy that sells war bonds, until he disobeys orders so that he might free P.O.W's. The best thing I have to say for this movie is that it pulls off a full blown musical number in the war bond selling scene. That's right, a superhero movie had a musical number.

The real gem in the movie is all the easter eggs they throw in to appease the fans like me and my dad. It would be too difficult to name them all, but if you read Cap's wiki before watching, it would make watching more entertaining.

The other interesting thing they did was how they handled Buckey. In the comics, he was Cap's pre-teen sidekick, but that wouldn't fly in the gritty realism of spandex/leather clad World War Two, so they made him Rogers' best friend who was, until the experiment, always tougher and stronger than Steve. Throughout the movie, an envious dynamic develops between the characters, which I'm sure will come back to haunt Cap when Buckey returns as Winter Soldier (LOOK IT UP!).

I would like to take this time to talk about how the movie is in 3D. You will recall from previous posts that I think 3D is unnecessary to make movies good, and Captain America proves it. This movie would have been unaffected by being in 2D, I stopped noticing the 3D after a while, and it added nothing to the experience. Maybe 3D draws in a specific crowd, but if I were marketing movies, that's the crowd I would want to keep as far away from my movies as possible, mostly because of the smell and noise because that crowd is made up of ten year old children, and Avatar fans.

At the end of the day, (literally, I'm writing this at 9:40) Captain America is worth seeing, and worth buying on DVD, and that's just about the highest praise you can give a movie.

the fretless bass reviews:Assassin's creed

I just got Assassin's creed, so I'm a little behind, but I want to get my opinion out there.

Assassin's creed is an overall good game. It has excellent mechanics that are fun to execute (pun intended). If it has any slip anywhere it's that it's as repetitive as a power rangers show. Sneak into the city, climb up some churches, interrogate people by punching or pick-pocketing them, plan your attack, kill target, run for you life. This is the step by step plan you will follow for every mission.

I'm not saying the repetitiveness is bad, it's still fun, it's just that the game hardly throws you a curve ball. So what if your character is a master assassin, if every mission went perfectly, (and they do) it would get boring.

Combat is not the game's strong suit. Thankfully, you can almost always avoid it. you get four weapons, but I found myself only using the assassin blade, and only the sword when I absolutely needed to fight. Most of the combat time is spent waiting for your enemy to attack so you can counter and insta-kill him. This gets old fast, so I tried to run from every fight, and you can. It's good to see a game give you options on how you want to handle things.

However, when you do choose to run away, it's fairly easy to lose guards, you have the ability to turn invisible whenever you sit on a bench, or jump in a pile of hay.

this review was rushed, so I'm sorry if it was terrible, at the end of the day, you should by Assassin's creed because it has fabulous mechanics, and you will sincerely enjoy stabbing beggars.

the fretless bass reviews:Thor

I want to start this review by saying that i just got a score of 420 on snake.

Now to Thor. For those deprived individuals among you who don't know, Thor is the bad*** Norse god of thunder, Thursday is named after him. In the 60's, Stan Lee decided to give him his own comic book, which was a good idea, because it turns out that gods make awesome super heros.

The movie is set up my explaining that the Norse gods are not deities as we think of them, rather, they are immortal, highly developed aliens that ancient peoples worshiped as gods. Thor decides to get into a punch up with a bunch of Ice giants agains Oden's specific orders, and he gets banished to Midgard, or Earth. There, the get taken in by some lovably comic scientists and attempts to get his Hammer of power back. Meanwhile in Asgard, Loki, has set everything up, and it's a ploy to start, and end a war between the frost giants to get his father's attention, couldn't he have just gotten into a fight at school? anyway, he goes to lengths to ensure Thor never returns to Asgard.

What I liked about Thor was the accessibility. You by no means had to know anything about the comic book history to understand every part of the movie. they did throw in some clever allusions to the comic series though, the ones that only the hard core fans like myself and a handful of others would get, and that just heightened the experience for us, without taking away from the layman's.

Some reviews I've read say that it "Re-invents" the super hero genre, but I would argue otherwise. I would say Thor has just wised up and done the thing i've always wanted to see super hero movies do, make the movie a sci-fy action move, about a super hero, not a super hero movie with sci-fi and action between the comic references. Thor has successfully built a big, beautiful rainbow bridge across the gap between sci-fi lovers, action lovers, and comic book nerd, and for that, I give Thor an 8/10.

I just feel like writing

today, I'm going to see Thor

I like dogs, and cats more

I went to a pre-dance party, and the hosts had dogs, I got my all black suit covered in hair.

I've learned how to fold a pocket square

I don't think Bin Laden being dead is going to change much.

I think anyone who likes pink is dumb

that is all.

Four problems that I can solve with toys.

#1 Teenage pregnacy.

The problem is that girls are shown from a young age that parenthood is awesomesauce and the younger they raise a kid, the better by products like this. So my idea is to make a baby doll that spews vomit and turds whenever you touch it and also make the kid play with it 24 seven, also, add in a cry factor that deprives your child of sleep! It will make your little girl stay un-pregnent until her hormones overpower her devastated psychological state.

#2 Murder

The problem is that kids see murdering in video games with no consequence, so the answer is to just make a game that makes murdering people un-fun by putting you in jail for ten minutes whenever you look at anyone funny. This will make the entire experience of being able to kill anyone you want incredibly un-fun, but that game already exists, so just buy your son Oblivion.

#3 Teenage insecurity in girls

The problem is that everything young girls play with makes them believe that they NEED to be pretty in order to be wanted, and that getting a man trumps your family, culture, heritage, and untainted criminal record. (Disney princess movies, i'm serious, these are the values our beloved classics are teaching.)

This one is simple, make your daughter play with transformers.

#4 Young girls dressing like tramps and young boys dressing like jerks

A&F and other fashion stores are constantly feeding our girls that in order to get anywhere in life, you need to be under 100 LBS. and be looser than knot tied by a drunk four year old. They tell our boys that they need to drink, abuse women, and act like jersey shore. Unfortunately, there is really no way to prevent this, because these ads are everywhere. My suggestion, keep you kid locked up in the basement until they turn 18, it's for their own good.

the fretlessbass reviews: You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

I used to go to this middle school; I graduated from it last year. So this year I decided to go to that school's musical, because I am a vet of the program, and I have some pretty BAMF eighth grade friends in the play.

This year, it was You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I don't generally like this kind of musical, because it doesn't really have a plot. It's more of a series of vignettes from the comic strip.

So I don't like the play, but everyone in it was awesome, especially the lead, and my good friend, Johnny Kilcoyne.

Now I'm about to assault the play, but I want you all to know, I enjoyed myself at that play, I just really don't like the writing.

My first and foremost complaint, every character in that play is a jerk in the upper echelons of nasty. Half the play is spent with multiple children telling Charlie Brown that he is a terrible person right to his face. Therefore, I think the play is a commentary on bullies, but this play isn't about bullies, if that were so, then Mr. Brown would be the only non-bully in his community, therefore, I think it's something in the water they drink, but Chaz is too busy being an emo to drink anything put pain and his own tears.

This has been a hastily written review, by Micholas.