Godzilla

Hello peoples. Today I'm reviewing another movie. Here it goes.



This movie is actually a new one that came out in theaters recently. GODZILLA. THANK GOD. I saw it just yesterday and it was quite good. I'm not gonna spoil the plot but the story is that Godzilla and other enormous creatures like him roamed the Earth when it was much more radioactive and they used that as a food source. Once the earth started to become less radioactive they all went underground or into the deepest parts of the ocean to absorb radiation from the earths core. The nuclear explosions in Japan at the end of WW2 awoke one... The tests in the Pacific afterwards were not tests.... They were trying to kill it.



I loved this movie. Compared to Pacific Rim I liked them equally but I do have a bias from watching Godzilla movies since I was a kid so every time Godzilla let loose his earth-shattering roar I nearly stood up in my movie theatre seat. I guess Pacific Rim was more colorful but some of the angles in this movie are really good and it really makes you feel just how enormous these things are.



(SPOILERS). So there is one time where it feels a lot like Godzilla has died before the climax of the movie. When it seems like he is dying you can feel a little sad just like in the older movies where Godzilla might have died protecting Japan from some sort of creature and the people of Japan always seem sad when that happens. When I was small I always thought that was a little silly but I thought they did it really well in this movie and it makes more sense in this movie because most of it is from a main characters perspective instead of from the monsters it makes it seem more believable why they would feel that way. I also liked how the story followed more like the older movies but still appealed to new audiences.

Godzilla was an epic movie and you should see it now on the big screen. Bye.


- By Ashton

Deep Blue Sea

Hello peoples today I'm blogging about another movie. Here it goes.

On friday we saw a movie called Deep Blue Sea. The movie starts out with a rather large shark attacking a boat of party-goers who quite surprisingly for a horror movie survive because a guy with a heavy tranquilizer gun managed to shoot it. Turns out this shark had escaped from a research center that floats in the ocean. The research center has been trying to develop a cure for Alzenhiemers by getting proteins from large shark brains, which don't degenerate with age. Well you guessed it pretty soon an accident involving a helicopter and a large storm leads to a group of people trying to survive in a flooding and sinking facility filled with 3 super big super smart sharks.

I thought it was a quite a good shark movie. There weren't any parts that looked particularly fake and there was definitely plenty of action. The movie also doesn't take itself to seriously and lightly parodies other shark movies like Jaws without being a joke movie. The movie also surprises you by not abiding by the who's-gonna-die horror movie rules.

Overall Deep Blue Sea was a good movie and offered some good changes from the regular shark movies.

Bye.


- By Ashton

Hello peoples. Today I'm blogging about something I got recently. Here it goes!

So me, my dad, and Alex were at the mall yesterday and we ducked in Fye. I like that store because it's always got horror stuff in it that I haven't seen before that isn't a hundred miles away. While I was there I saw some cool stuff like some large Pacific Rim jaegers and kaijus as well as Dutch from the Predator movie colored like a predator was looking at him with thermal vision. But there was one thing that immediately caught my eye and that was a classic alien figure by Neca. Technically I have one but it's pretty cruddy and a bad paint job and I bought it with its inner mouth missing, not knowing it had one at the time. This one is really really cool.



Here's the box.






It's got the premise of Alien along with a picture of the figure, and a picture showing how a new alien warrior and Hicks are also available. It's like that because Neca releases it's figures in waves of 3. The front of that sheet in the box also make a good poster to put the figure in front of.



Here it is in all it's glory straight out the box.






You can tell it's difference from the alien warriors in Aliens from the head...






Hands...






Feet...






And elbows. Also mine had one of its elbow spikes bent as you can see which is a little annoying.

The figure has a mostly black paint job with some rusty gray in areas. I didn't find any flaws in the paint job on mine except a streak of black near the edge of the head piece that's only present on one side and a white spot on the back of the head.


It's a pretty good paint job with the gloss and everything but I've seen Neca do better paint jobs on Aliens before. Neca kept the improvements it made in articulation and also fixed the joints being to loose. It's articulated at the neck, although understandably limited because of the head and neck being the way it is. It's got a nice ball joint in the chest. The shoulders are ball jointed but rather stiff and the sculpt makes them quite hard to move. It's similar to the neck joint but I feel like they could fix that a bit more. There's also a cut joint right below the shoulder on the arm so you have to be careful not to put to much strain on that. Really the upper arms aren't that great. The elbows are ball jointed and the wrists turn with both those joints being fine. It's ball jointed at the hips but these are also restricted and it would be quite hard to get him into a crouching or sitting position. The knees are hinged above and below the knee caps, ball jointed ankles and hinged claws. It's also got a bendable wire in its tail and a movable jaw and inner mouth that Neca has done quite well with. And I also like the opaque head carapace that you can see its skull through.



You're beautiful.... You're beautiful it's true



Here's a pic showing all my most realistic aliens. Including the newest and oldest (both in movie appearances and figures I've gotten.)

Sent from my iPhone


By Ashton

Star Trek: Fleet Captains

Hello peoples. Today I'm gonna write about a game I've played with my dad. Here it goes.

The game is called Star Trek: Fleet captains. It's easiest to play with 2 people but with the expansions it's easier to play with more. In the basic game there is a Federation side and a Klingon side. You start off randomly recruiting ships from the two armadas. The size of the ship is how much points it is and however many points you use determines how many victory points a player needs to win but both players must have the same point total. After you have your fleet of ships and the cards that go with them you lay out the battlefield. The battlefield consists of face down hexagons in any shape you wish and normally your command post at one side and your opponents at the other. Then you place your ships in your command post and the game is ready to begin.

You get 3 different mission cards as well. When you beat these missions you get victory points and in a standard game the first one to 10 wins. You can also gain 1 victory point for destroying an enemy ship or 1 or more points from different missions found in space. The first thing you want to do is make ship adjustments. For instance if I was in a battle I would turn my dial to the highest weapons or shields stats. Next you can move all of your ships. If your ship has an enemy in the same hex as it then it has to roll to successfully move. How far you can move depends on the size of the hex you explored. For example if you have an engines of 10 and the first hex you flip has a size of 5 you can move to the next one and then to the next one until the size adds up to be past 10. When you are done moving you can use an action out of three you have per turn. You can scan, where you flip a hex adjacent to you over so only you can see it and then flip it back, attack an enemy ship if it's in the same square as you, or exert influence on a hex. After you get a certain amount of influence on a hex you can upgrade it to a space station and with more influence tokens you can upgrade it more, and so on. Once one of your ship takes damage it moves from the white normal section on its card to any slot on the yellow alert status. You cannot make ship adjustments to other sections just other clicks in that section. Once your ship is on red alert if it takes one more damage it is destroyed. Once you have a ship destroyed you can recruit more ships as an action from your armada equal to the size you have left. You can also use cards from your hand to help you with systems tests, in combat, or to assign crew members to a ship. Some ships can also cloak and send out decoys so it's hard for me to target them and determine which one is a decoy and which one is not.

Dad and I played recently. I kicked his but. He was the Klingons and I was the federation. I had one powerful ship that I managed to assign Capt. Kirk to who helped with shields and weapons. Next I got Spock on the ship too and his power is that if the ship he was on was to be destroyed he could sacrifice himself for it to remain on red alert. Finally I got McCoy on it too and his power was that if a ship was destroyed he could save all the crew members on it. So pretty much I could use Spock to save the ship and Kirk and McCoy could bring him back to life and save themselves. Sound familiar? We ended the game at 4 to 13. The goal to the game was 10 but if the goal was higher than in the turn that I won I would've been able to get to 13.

Star Trek: Fleet Captains is a great game and I highly recommend you get it. It is a litotes complicated and the best way to learn it is to play it. Bye.


-By Ashton

Pictures

Hello peoples. Today I'm writing about some pictures I've taken in the area where I live. Here it goes.

Also the app I'm using won't post all of these so it's going in a few different parts today so just scroll down when this one is over until you get to the last one.

So I guess it all started with this picture. I think I took it in the seventh grade in late fall in the early morning on my way to school. I took it with my iPod so it's pretty low quality and then the picture disappeared so all I have is this screenshot of it because I saved it as my background. It has no filters on it. I remember I just stepped out of my house with my music in, saw the sky and took the picture right from my front porch.








So in 8th grade when I discovered I no longer had that picture and realized how low quality it was I decided to take more pictures with my phone which has a much better camera in hopes of seeing a similar sky.




This one was actually taken late afternoon just looking down my street. I also thought I had a better picture of this where the filter really made the red bricks pop out more but this is all I could find.




Not the best one just thought I would take it, it's early morning from my bus stop but this was taken more recently so the sky isn't as dark.




Same photo different filter.




I don't remember even taking this picture or when or where I took it but it looks nice.




This is actually the same exact view from I showed you previously but this one was taken earlier and with a different filter obviously.




Not much to say here just another pic from my bus stop.



Wow same perspective again I didn't realize once that I was doing that.



Another from my driveway.



These next few and the above were taken from my bus window as it was moving, once again these are more recent.






This is a really great picture I took from my front yard with a filter on it. One of my favorites.



This is actually the same thing I only pointed my camera straight up and put on a different filter.



Another taken more recently and one of my favorites.



I like this one a lot with our tree standing there in the hard with the black shadow and everything. Obviously filtered.



Another from my porch and also a favorite.



One of the first pictures I took when I started eighth grade, it's just another from my bus stop.



Same pic different filter.



This is the first picture I took and definitely one of my favorites. It's filtered and that wanderer going down the street is my sister.



Nothing special about this one it's one I took yesterday after mowing the lawn it's unfiltered.



Same time, unfiltered.



Peering up through the branches of a tree in my yard. Spring is definitely here. Taken at the same time.



Same tree. I liked how the log looks like a nice seat under the spring tree.



I really like these pictures because it's the same tree taken right after the first one just with a different perspective. The first one is all happy and in spring, and the one below spring just kinda took a lunch break. I also like the slanted view of it and the shadow beneath the tree.

Pictures

Ok my blogpress app is just being weird so if this posts just ignore it.

Hello peoples. It's lawn mowing season again. Here it goes.

I've been mowing peoples lawns as a job for a while now and I'm gonna be doing it again this summer. So yesterday I took care of a yard belonging to one of my Mom's work friends. Parts of his yard are really steep so he has a mower you ride on. It's the first time I've ever used one of those so it was an interesting experience. The entire thing was a lot easier and more fun the only downside was that I got sunburn on my forearms from having my arms out in front of me. It took me a while to finish mowing his lawn on that but I'll get faster with practice. Afterwards I spread some grass seed and fertilizer and I was done. My mom also fed the chicks and chickens while we were there.

Bye peoples.