TV review: The Cape

The 2-hour pilot for NBC's The Cape aired on Sunday, January 9 at 9PM. I've been waiting for this show to air for a long time. While I wasn't able to watch the show live, I did record it to watch last night.

Vince Faraday is a cop in Palm City. Many of the officers around him are corrupt and a mysterious blogger known as Orwell has been outing them. When the city's new police chief is killed by a masked criminal called Chess, Faraday sets out to make things in his hometown right again. He joins Ark, a private security company, run by Peter Fleming, on the edge of privatizing the police force.

Shortly after joining Ark, Orwell sends Faraday a message pointing him toward a shipment of a deadly toxin. Faraday and his partner, Marty Voyt, check out the cargo train delivering the shipment. Unfortunately, Voyt instead delivers Faraday into the hands of Chess, who is none other than Fleming himself. Fleming frames Faraday as the masked villain and sends his security force, armed with Nikon rifle scopes, to catch him. During the chase, the news helicopters above see him die in a large explosion.

However, Faraday is not dead. He is discovered by the Carnival of Criminals, a strange circus-themed group of bank robbers. Faraday buys his freedom with his Ark passcard. Soon, Faraday asks Max Malini, the head of the circus, to help him clear his name and get back to his wife and son. Max and the others teach Faraday hypnosis, cape tricks, and other skills that will transform him into the superhero known as The Cape.

As The Cape, Faraday goes after Chess and his henchmen. While on one such mission, he comes across Orwell trying to get the dirt on Chess. Quickly, Orwell and Faraday join forces to take back their city.

I had a lot of fun watching this show. My favorite character, by far, is Max Malini. He's not only wise, he's also funny and devious and just plain awesome. I almost wish he was the superhero! As for the rest of the characters, I am willing to give them time to grow. It seems like a lot was shoved into two episodes, almost like the audience missed a season and had to catch up to the storyline. I think that the writers should have kept the pilot as an origination story and kept some of the baddies for later. Hopefully they will not disappoint me. I want this show to be successful and, in order to do that, it has to be good.

Aluratek Cinepal

I was planning on waiting a few days to talk about this...but I just can't. On Friday, I received my Aluratek Cinepal multimedia player. After charging it and loading up a few jdorama episodes, it was ready to go for my daughter's Saturday morning swim class. I expected it to do "OK." It did a lot better than that. It blew my expectations away. For my first viewing, I used the earbuds that are included in the box. They are rather uncomfortable, but so are most packaged earbuds. The sound still came through nicely. There was no fuzziness, even when I had to turn the volume up to overcome a very loud swim instructor. Acceptable but not preferable.

The video, however, was beautiful. Absolutely no artifacting or slowness at all. It even handled the subtitles well. My one complaint here is that it auto-plays the next video if you have more than one uploaded. I had the first and second episodes of Tsuki no Koibito ready to go. Once the first episode ended, the second immediately started. I would prefer to make that selection on my own. But that really is a minor complaint that is more of a preference anyway.

Today, I used the device's speakers to listen to the second episode. They aren't anything amazing but they are adequate. No fuzziness or tinniness or anything distracting. Just don't expect to be amazed by them. However, I would suggest using the speakers over the earbuds. The speakers sound better and it will eliminate the uncomfortableness of the earbuds.

I can't believe how awesome this 8.9" media player is. It doesn't play video games, like an iPad, but it will play mp3s, be an eReader, and be a photo album. If you're looking to pick one up, I got mine at Newegg. Hopefully you will be as happy as I am.

JMovie review: Rookies: Sotsugyō

Title: Rookies: Sotsugyō Also known as: Rookies - Graduation Release date: 5/30/99 Genre: Sports, drama Cast Sato Ryuta, Ichihara Hayato, Koide Keisuke Plot: The baseball team of Futakotamagawa high school are now seniors. After recruiting some freshmen players, the team once again begins their journey toward Koshien. Of course, their beloved teacher and coach, Kawato Koichi, is back to cheer them on. What is good: The characters seem to have grown up a bit. What is bad: The big payoff is missing. Letter rating: B

I was really hoping for some real closure with this movie. The boys would make it to Koshien and we'd see them kick everyone's butts in the tournament. Alas, we don't get to see that. We see the boys make it to Koshien but then the movie skips to their graduation. We never really find out how they performed.

That doesn't mean it was a bad movie. The two new characters, Akahoshi Shoji and Hamanaka Taiyo, are great additions to the cast. Without them, I think the movie would have felt repetitive since the team pretty much does the same thing over and over. I also enjoyed the actual graduation of the senior players. It was extremely heartwarming. There was more than one tear that came to my eye.

If you watched the drama, then you should watch this. It won't give you a ton of closure, but you will get some. However, if the drama wasn't your cup of tea, then you should be fine skipping this entirely.

Movie review: Easy A

Olive (Emma Stone) is a normal high school girl. When she figures out that one's popularity doesn't rest on actual events in one's life, she begins rumors about her sex life to skyrocket her social standing.

The movie opens with Olive trying to avoid going on vacation with her best friend, Rhiannon, and Rhiannon's hippy parents. She lies about having a date with a college boy, which leads Rhiannon to believe that Olive will lose her virginity. When Monday morning arrives, Rhiannon grills Olive for details. Initially, Olive says nothing happened on her date. After attempting to endure Rhiannon's antics, Olive lies about having sex. The rumor quickly spreads around the entire school and Olive finds herself slightly more popular as a result.

In class, where they are learning about "The Scarlet Letter," Olive is harassed by one of her classmates. She uses a vulgar retort and ends up in the principal's office, receiving detention as a punishment. In detention, she meets Brandon (Dan Byrd), a gay classmate with bully problems. The two become quick friends.

Brandon convinces Olive to pretend to have sex with him a party so the other guys will think he is straight and stop bullying him. Olive goes along with the plan, believing that more fake sex will raise her popularity even more. When she receives a gift from Brandon afterward, she realizes that there is a financial gain as well.

Soon, word gets out among the unpopular kids at school. Olive will have fake sex with people for gift cards. Unfortunately, this leads Marianne (Amanda Bynes), the leader of the school's religious group, to try to reform Olive's evil ways. The two strangely become friends. Until Marianne's boyfriend, Micah (Cam Gigandet), lies about contracting a sexually transmitted disease from Olive. An enraged Marianne tries to get Olive expelled.

With her reputation in the trash, Olive realizes that this type of popularity isn't what she actually wanted. As she tries to figure a way back to normality, she finds out that her old friend, Todd (Penn Badgley), has been in love with her the entire time. He never believed any of the rumors about her sex life. Together, they crash the school pep rally, telling everyone to watch a webcast. Of course, everyone believes the webcast will be of Olive having sex with Todd. Instead, it is Olive telling the truth about everything.

This is one of those movies I wanted to see as soon as I saw the first trailer. Unfortunately, I ended up having to wait until it hit the RedBox. I'm sad that I waited so long because this was an awesome movie. I had a little bit of difficulty believing Amanda Bynes as a Bible Thumper, but that didn't detract from its enjoyability. Emma Stone was absolutely perfect as Olive. She has managed to perfect the sarcastic wittiness that the character needed. I'm sure many people will write this off as a terrible teen flick. Don't. Go see it!

Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol

For the first time ever, on December 25, 2010, the Doctor Who Christmas special was broadcast in both the UK (on BBC One) and the US (on BBC America). This year's special was titled A Christmas Carol.

We join Amy (Karen Gillian) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), the Doctor's companions from the previous season, on their honeymoon. Unfortunately, the passenger ship they are on is about to crash into a planet covered in strange clouds that screws up their controls. Of course, Amy calls the Doctor (Matt Smith) to save them. He can't use the TARDIS to save them so he lands on a building that seems to control the clouds. Sadly, he finds a bitter old man, Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon), unwilling to help anyone.

This is where the Christmas Carol story begins. The Doctor goes back in time to Sardick's childhood to figure out where the man went wrong in life. He finds a boy who has had his curiosity and love stomped out by a demanding father. Luckily, the Doctor steps in to help foster the boy's curiosity about the fish that swim in the strange clouds. But where there are fish, there are predators too. After dodging a shark attack (and losing half of his sonic screwdriver in the process), young Sardick is crushed to find that the shark is dying. Unless they can get it back to the clouds, it won't survive. The only way to save the shark is to use an "icebox", a life support chamber that Sardick's father uses to control people, to transport it.

Young Sardick chooses the chamber of a young woman, Abigail Pettigrew (Katharine Jenkins), because she loves the fish. Just after releasing her, the shark attacks again. It is Abigail's singing that soothes the shark into submission. Once they save the shark, the boy decides that this has been a grand adventure. As Abigail returns to her chamber, young Sardick promises that the Doctor will return every year to celebrate Christmas Eve with them.

Years pass and the Doctor makes good on the promise. Every Christmas Eve, they release Abigail and travel around time with her. On the seventh year, Abigail confesses to a now teenaged Sardick that she was terminally ill when she was locked in the chamber. She only has one more day to live. Devestated, the lovestruck Sardick locks her back in the chamber without telling the Doctor about her condition. Realizing that life isn't fair, he still continues on the path to becoming a bitter old man.

Amy appears as a hologram to old Sardick in order to show him how to passengers of the doomed ship are coping. Since they know that singing can have an effect on the clouds, all of the passengers attempt to sing carols to stop the ship from crashing. The sound of the singing begins to break through to Sardick, but he just waves it away stubbornly.

As a last resort, the Doctor appears again telling old Sardick that he has shown him the past and the present. Now it is time for the future. He brings the boy to see what a crotchety old man he has become. This has a monumental effect on old Sardick, who vow to use his machine to save the ship. However, the Doctor has changed Sardick so much that the machine no longer recognizes him. Their only option is to use Abigail's voice to control the clouds again.

Knowing that this will be her final day, old Sardick opens her chamber one last time. She sings into the sonic screwdriver and the clouds stabilize, saving the ship and her 4000 passengers. Amy and Rory reunite with the Doctor, while Sardick and Abigail spend their last moments riding around the clouds in a shark-drawn carriage.

I usually like the Christmas specials. The Runaway Bride being the one episode I hated. This time around, I absolutely loved the episode. The interaction between the Doctor and the various incarnations of Sardick were wonderful. My favorite parts were when teenaged Sardick asked the Doctor for love advice. While I enjoyed CChristopher Eccleson and David Tennant as their respective Doctor, I really enjoy Matt Smith's version. He has the ability to be completely fun-loving yet deadly serious at the same time. If you haven't watched Doctor Who recently, this may be the one to latch onto.

Tron: Legacy 3D

Yesterday, my husband, my daughter and I went to see Tron: Legacy 3D. My daughter doesn't particularly enjoy 3D movies, but we had no choice since it wasn't available in 2D anywhere near us. Twenty years ago, Kevin Flynn disappeared. He left behind a 7-year old son, Sam, and a major computer software/video game company, ENCOM. Today, Sam has grown into a man disappointed by what his father's company has become, yet he is not ready to take the reigns as the major stockholder. When Kevin's friend, Alan, gets a page from this missing man, Sam goes to his father's old arcade to find out what is going on. Little does he know that his father has been trapped inside a computer program, The Grid, this entire time. With help from a program named Quorra, Sam tries to rescue his father from CLU, the program currently running The Grid.

Like many people my age, I have a fondness for the original Tron. When I heard they were making a sequel, I had my doubts. However, I was determined to not make a decision before seeing the movie. Graphically, the movie is beautiful. The reality scenes are in 2D while the scenes inside The Grid are 3D. I think that made the differences between the two worlds easier to understand. Unfortunately, I found most of the movie boring. (I actually almost fell asleep three times.) The Daft Punk soundtrack is awesome, but the storyline is bland. Absolutely everything is spelled out for the viewer. Even the 'twists' were easily predicted. Perhaps it would have been better with a few more fights. Instead, the movie is almost entirely a game of cat-and-mouse. In short, pretty but dull.

Samsung Epic

For my birthday, my husband upgraded my cell phone (an LG Lotus) to a Samsung Epic. While the phone got rave reviews, I wasn't sure if it was for me. Personally, I prefer flip phones...even though they are a dying breed in the US. Despite my dislike of smart phones, I am finding myself warming up to it. I like being able to watch YouTube videos or play Hangman while my daughter is at swim class. (My husband has an app on his HTC phone for a barcode scanner, which is neat but I don't know that I would ever use it.) The camera/camcorder is also much better than the one on the Lotus. The one downfall is that it just isn't pretty. I'm planning on looking around for a case for it...but out of the box, it's just plain and boring and blah. At least my Lotus was a cute purple with flower designs. I know that comes off as very girly but, in reality, I enjoy having things that look different from everyone else. No one I knew had a purple phone or a Lotus (which also comes in red or black) in general. But that is something that is easily fixable.

Overall, I really do like my Epic. My favorite part is the slide-out Qwerty keyboard. I don't like the touchscreen keyboard so it's nice to have the option to use a "real" keyboard if I want. If it is within your budget (it is a rather expensive phone), I highly recommend it.

Kinect

It has now been awhile since we purchased the Kinect. I have to say that the entire family enjoys it a lot. While there are some buggy games out there (I'm looking at you, Zumba), if you do your research ahead of time, many of the games are tons of fun. My daughter's favorite is Kinect Adventures, which comes with the system. To be specific, she likes the Rallyball mini-game. It's a lot like Racquetball but your hand is the racquet. The goal is to use the balls to break boxes. You hit the balls with various parts of your body. It is a pretty interesting game. My favorite is Dance Central. Then again, I really like to dance. The moves are easy enough for anyone to pick up and you still get a decent workout from it. I haven't tried the harder levels yet. I'm working my way up to it.

I'm sad that there are developers throwing out buggy games for the Kinect. I really wanted to play the Zumba game. However, everything that I have read about it says it is terrible. C'mon guys, this is an awesome system. Take the time to develop the game properly before throwing it out there. The users will love you much more for it!

Jdorama review: Rookies Special

Title: Rookies Broadcast date: 10/4/08 Genre: Sports, drama Cast: Sato Ryuta, Ichihara Hayato, Koide Keisuke Plot: The baseball team of Futakotamagawa high school has been banned from playing for six months after fighting on the field. Rookie teacher Kawato Koichi arrives with promises to help them achieve their dreams. Together, the group fights to get to the Koshien baseball tournament. What is good: It's a good recap of the story if you haven't watched the series. What is bad: There isn't anything new. Letter rating: D Overall: I didn't bother to read anything about the special before watching it. As a result, I was expecting a side story about one of the minor characters. Nope. This special is nothing but a two-hour rehash of the 11 episode series. I'm guessing this was supposed to get people ready for the movie's release. That way they could quickly introduce the story to new people and remind fans about what had already occurred. Unfortunately, when the special stands on its own, it is very boring. I can really only recommend it if you don't feel like sitting through the whole series. But then you'll miss all the little moments between Kawato and the team. Watch the series and skip the special.

Rock Band 3

My husband picked up Rock Band 3 the other day. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to play it much. Not to mention that I've had some throat wackiness for the past week, which makes it very difficult to sing. However, I did manage to croak through a few songs Tuesday night. The character creation is OK, but a lot of the default faces are just plain ugly. You need to do a bit of tweaking on the cheeks and jawline to get any sort of prettiness out of them. (At least for the girls. I didn't try to create a male character.) After you finish making your character, each player gets to make their own band. This gives each individual player goals to reach with their band. It also means that each player gets their own rewards. Instead of needing money to purchase upgrades, you win them by playing various gigs. You also get to pick the "stand in" computer players for your band, if you don't have anyone to play with you. (My husband's favorite is Moosejaw - the homeless man that needs to put down the guitar and find some construction employment or something.) I think this makes the whole band experience a lot better.

I've only played the vocals so far. In my opinion, the vocals have gotten a lot better since RB2. I believe they have keyed some of the songs up a bit so they aren't really low anymore. This is awesome for me because I always have problems hitting the very very low notes. (Yes, you can sing an octave up but that sounds wrong.) They've also changed the way spoken words are handled. Well, it's not a huge change. Mostly a visual one. Instead of "notes" to speak, it just shadows that whole section to give you more time to hit the beat.

My husband picked up the keytar yesterday. I plan on finding some time to play around with that so you'll definitely hear more about the new Rock Band in the future!