√Bestamvsofalltime ▪ Animegraphy 2013 AMV

Zach Goodier

Hey, SNR viewers, we apologize for the lack of new material, save for the manga updates.  Things have been a little busy, and there are currently only 2 of us able to work on material at all, and school/work commitments interfering.  Since we do this as a hobby, it really isn't our primary bread-winning method, so this is usually one of the first things to get shuffled out of focus.  I figured that following the Hobbit review, I would provide a weak follow-up with an AMV off of Youtube, this year's animegraphy, so just relax and enjoy a condensed look at this past year in new anime.

That being said, I should have more time now, and I will try to keep the site updated as regularly as possible, so thank you for your patience and continued interest in the site.  Hopefully, I can reward you with some fresh, home-grown, all-natural material at some point, so please bear with us, and stay nerdy.

Don Jon

Don Jon is a new movie that focuses on a young man, Jon, as he goes through his life full of adult movies and casual hookups.  He has a couple friends, a sharp looking Chevelle, and a family.  He also attends church regularly and confesses his sins, but it hardly stops him from continuing.  Despite his highly active sex life, he finds greater joy in adult films, citing that they offer more excitement than the real thing.  However, his life gets more complicated when he sees the attractive Barbara, and immediately falls in love.  However, she’s an attractive woman who demands that Jon conform to fit into her life, and this becomes a central issue in the movie.  Does Jon want this girl enough to give up his lifestyle and to give up his biggest passion?

Not exactly the typical "love at first sight" scene, but not at all out of the ordinary.

The story here is surprisingly interesting, despite the racy overtones the movie uses with pornography and casual sex.  At the heart of this story there are a couple key themes: the process of growing up, and the battle between fantasy and reality.  Barbara really brings some conflict to the movie with her love of Hollywood romances where the man gives up everything for his love, which she projects onto Jon, while his fantasies revolve around pornography and the more erotic, physical side of relationships.  Watching the two of them is interesting, because they each embody a distinctive, yet separate form of unrealistic expectations of their partner, and the conflict really adds the intrigue to the story. 

Right off the bat, you can tell he wants to, and she wants him to want to.

The characters are fairly straightforward, but that isn’t a bad thing.  Jon is a “typical” guy, and Barbara is what many would expect from an extremely attractive woman who can afford to be picky with her boyfriends.  They are both a little rough around the edges, and they definitely are at their best when they first meet, and Jon wants nothing more than to sleep with Barbara, and Barbara wants nothing more than to make Jon work for it.

The father is one of the more entertaining side characters in the film, and one of the few that actually had some sort of presence in the story.

However, this movie really has some faults.  Namely, it tries to deliver a moral of sorts but it really doesn’t present itself in a way that makes that point entirely accessible to the audience.  It makes the movie feel a little excessive at times, and that they could have done away with some of the extremes and still get the point across, if not better without all the distractions.  Around the middle of the second act, there is a new female character that is introduced, and she adds a great deal of wisdom to the situation, but she herself is a drug-addled, manic depressive who has casual sex with Jon later in the film.  This just doesn’t seem to fit, since she is depressed over the loss of her family, so why is she casually hooking up with some random guy?  Arguments could be made but it felt somewhat forced without explanation.  Another big issue is just that several side characters were introduced and never really used in the story to any major extent, so why even bother having them?

One of the little gems that you learn along the way: you can get away with anything as long as you go to church, and then confess your sins. That makes it all OK.

Overall, this movie is surprisingly decent, but not stellar in any major area.  I would have to say that it is rather refreshing to see a change in the typical “romance” formula, and a story where it’s not about heartwarming romance, but realizing that what you thought was a heartwarming romance might not be exactly what you expected, and how to deal with that reality that sets in after the fantasy is lost.  However, it does have some trouble delivering this message in the midst of the provocative material that fills the movie, as well as the attempts to utilize characters that have no real place in the film outside of the odd, cliché, “fratboy” style attitude and jokes.  That doesn’t make this movie a pass, but it does get in its own way a bit and doesn’t provide the sense of closure at the end that one might want.  For a first attempt at writing, it’s really a decent start, and it does a good job of not conforming to traditional expectations, but that also works against it in some key areas.

Good:

-Some humorous moments.

-Great message in the story and characters.

-More "down-to-earth" approach to the romance in the film.

Bad:

-Little over-the-top with the use of sex, as well as the inclusion of adult films.  Only needed to let the audience know that he liked it, not make it a big distraction.

-Ending leaves a bit to be desired.

Scully Rating: 7 out of 10

Riddick

Zach Goodier

Vin Diesel returns as Riddick, one of our favorite movie badasses.  We see him start out on a desolate world, fighting to survive on his own.  As the movie progresses, we see his situation explained, and how he fell out with the Necromongers from the previous film.  Taking advantage of his desire to find his lost home world, they lured him to this world and after a brief fight, they leave him for dead.  Riddick only blames himself for his fall from the badass ranks, saying he became “civilized” and didn’t see this betrayal coming.  Now, Riddick must call in the very people that originally wanted his head, bounty hunters.  His only way off this world is by racing against the clock, stealing a ship, and getting off world before the local monsters come for him.

Oh yeah, he kept what he killed.

Riddick takes a strong step backwards, which might sound bad, but this actually turns out to be a good thing.  While the Chronicles of Riddick was a solid film, it often got too caught up with other characters, feeling like the whole film was weighed down by too many distractions.  In this movie, it’s just Riddick, and the guys trying to kill him.  Like Pitch Black, we get to see that the biggest enemy of the film isn’t the guys with all the guns, it’s the savage world full of alien creatures that are out for blood.  If there is any major fault to be had in terms of story, it would be that the film tries TOO hard to be like Pitch Black, to the point where you almost want to call this a remake of sorts.

It needs some training, has a tendency to bite when it gets nervous.

Vin Diesel has always done a good job as Riddick, and I believe it’s because he doesn’t take the character too seriously.  While many people fault action movie characters for their lack of depth, I think Diesel has a good handle on what he’s doing.  This movie isn’t about depth or sophistication, it’s about enjoying some action and humor.  With the new set of bounty hunters, we see the usual disposable jocks who waves guns around and start dropping like flies once Riddick gets his “Furion swagger” going.  A couple of the bounty hunters set themselves apart, namely Santana, Boss Johns, and Dahl.  Most everyone else is just comic relief or cannon fodder. 

Not all mercs are hard to look at.

The creatures are more diverse than in Pitch black, with a few different varieties in the movie.  The worst of the bunch comes out of wet ground, making rain a particularly frightening thing.  These creatures are some sort of scorpion-inspired creature, and while it definitely doesn’t look like something you want to take home, they don’t have the authentic feel that the creatures from Pitch Black offered.  Another breed of animal, a canine-looking creature, is much more interesting, and provides for one of the more interesting elements of the story, even if you end up a little disappointed later on in the film. 

Riddick is still in his prime, and hopefully in future movies we can get to see more of this universe... namely Furia.

The only real shortcoming of this film is that it doesn’t feel like it moves the franchise anywhere.  It was almost too safe with its’ “Pitch Black” approach.  It also brings up the possibility of seeing Furia, the place where legends like Riddick were made.  However, you end up feeling a little disappointed that they whet your appetite, just to drop it to the background in favor of more of the same.  That being said, this is still a fun film that will entertain almost any fan of the other films.  However, don’t go in expecting big changes, because this movie essentially stuck to the tried and true formula that has worked for the previous films.

Good:

-It’s Riddick… so… yeah.

-New sidekick is way cooler than Riddick’s old fan club… whines less too.

-Doesn't get as large in scale as Chronicles, which lets it focus more on the smaller setting.

Bad:

-Not as creative, takes a lot of ideas from Pitch Black.

-Tempts you with offerings it kind of forgets about until the very end.

-Attempts at chemistry between Riddick and Dahl just felt clumsy in the writing department.

Scully Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Man of Steel

By: Zach Goodier

The long-awaited return of Superman is at hand, and the big question is, "will this be the movie we've all be hoping for?" Well, Zach Snyder definitely has a resume to bring forward when heading to the theatre, but that's not all this movie has.  A strong cast brings a lot of talent to the lineup, and we see all the familiar names, and most are backed up by some highly renowned names.  So is Man of Steel the Superman we've been hoping for? Or is it just another bird or plane going over our heads?

It's a bird... It's a plane... Oh, you get the point.

In short, this movie is pretty good.  Now you might note that I didn't use any long or exciting words to praise it, that's because it doesn't really earn one from me.  Was it long? Oh yeah, it's listed as 2 hours and 23 minutes, so there's plenty of quantity there for your dollar, but it's the quality that starts to nag at me.

Kneel before Zod!

The pacing felt very rushed, we are hurried along almost from the moment the opening credits are done as Krypton is faced with cataclysm.  While this is obviously no surprise in terms of the story, it only takes a few moments for the action to pick up, and we hardly have time to set our feet on the ground and settle in.  And even afterwards when Clarke is living his life on Earth, with no real idea of who or what he truly is, the narrative is still hurrying along in an attempt to carry us onto the next big plot point. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how substantial Jor-el's presence was in this movie.

The only way we get to glimpse Clarke's back-story is through flashbacks that occur sporadically throughout the film.  While some of these are tastefully done, it really felt like they wanted to try to skip along most of the childhood material, only showing a couple of highlights.  I found this disappointing because with origin stories there is almost as inherent demand for lengthy scenes filled with emotional depth to add some life to the character, bringing them closer to us as human beings before making them into the larger-than-life people they eventually become.  While all of those elements are worked into the narrative, they feel sporadic and almost feel like an afterthought, like they didn't consider we might be interested in seeing Clarke's childhood until they had their first draft and said, "whoops, people might still want to see what brought him to this point as an adult."

The childhood is only really covered in flashbacks, and rarely in any extensive detail, or at least as extensive as I would have liked.

Another issue one might have as a comic purist was that the writers decided to change up the story by having Lois Lane discover Superman's identity before he ever thought of working for the Daily Planet.  This changes up a lot of the story, but it does allow for some interesting changes to keep you engaged in story and keeping the feeling fresh.

However, these are relatively minor issues.  When it comes to Superman, we want to see him leaping tall buildings and flying around beating up Zod, right?  Well, there's plenty in that department, and the special effects are very well done.  The action is top notch, and you truly feel like these guys are gods when compared to you or me.  Towns get leveled, and beams, vehicles, and landscape become handheld weapons to these characters on-screen.  It all comes off very well and makes you really feel like things are authentic, and not the usual clumsy look that comes with mixing actors with CGI-heavy stunts and scenes.

While I couldn't find a picture from the parts surrounding this still, there are a lot of explosions and carnage.

All in all, this serves as a competent, even good, origin story for the Superman name.  While my lack of emotional investment, or "soul," to this movie prevented it from being everything I hoped it would be, it was still an enjoyable thrill ride that had solid execution on screen, but feel short off the camera with writing and direction with some of the characters and story.  I feel like this movie should have somehow been broken up, with Zod being introduced in the Kryptonian intro, but left for a later installment.  

I would have liked a more down-to-earth look at Clarke growing up, with him making the emotional transition into Superman without being rushed along by the conflict with General Zod.  I mean, let Superman start out with a few bank robberies, would ya?  Then you can slowly work him up to bigger villains like Zod and Lex.  Oh, and that reminds me, there are quite a few easter eggs that hint at possible story elements to be worked into future movies. They should have built up to Zod in a future installment as a final test of Superman as a hero, let him start with some good ol' fashioned bank robbers first, then end the movie with a known villain, like maybe start Superman's conflict with Lex rather than come out swinging with one of the baddest and toughest villains Superman has ever faced, and Lex could have provided more towards the sentiment that Superman didn't belong with humans.

Good:

-Solid action, with great visual support to make things feel as grandiose as they should.

-While this Superman seemed a little tense, and even stale at certain points, he does a surprisingly good job with the role.

-Outstanding cast adds a certain element of quality to the story and characters

Bad:

-Pace felt rushed at times, dragging you along this roller coaster and never allowing you to take everything in.

-Writing was not as good as it could have been, the backstory of Clarke's childhood felt like an afterthought more than a substantial story element.

-I feel like Zod came in too soon as the big villain for Superman to overcome.


Scully Rating: 8 out of 10

Surgeon Simulator 2013

By: Robert Murphy

**Heads Up** This game isn't for everyone.

Did anyone else ever wanted to preform open heart surgery but didn’t want to go through all the work of going to school and getting a valid medical license that wasn’t printed on the back of a Chinese take-out menu. Well now you can, that’s right the popular game that allowed you to perform complex surgery without all the hassle is back with more in “Surgeon Simulator 2013” and is just as much fun as before. For those of you who don’t know, the game is essentially and update from the previous “Surgeon Simulator” and adds new features such as more surgeries and more tools to use during your operations, all the while offering the same enjoyable experience that the original did.

 Surgery Call of Duty style

The game puts players in an operating room, sterilized and ready to go and your patient lays unconsciously on the operating table with either his chest or brain opened up and ready for you to replace the malfunctioning organ. Players are in control of a soul arm and hand that fumbles around the operating table and despite your best intentions to be professional, it inevitably fails but this is done on purpose. “Surgeon Simulator” is not meant for the serious person who wants a precision surgery game, no this game is more for you and your friends to drunkenly move about the operating area and defy all logic behind the complex nature of brain, heart and kidney surgery. The arm is controlled by the mouse and you control each individual finger with the AQWER keys and I’m sure that the game was meant to be somewhat serious but as you smash open your patient’s rib cage and hack out organs because they just won’t come out. This becomes hard not to do as well when you see the many ways you can dig into your poor victim such as a laser, surgical axe, a hammer, saw and other common surgical tools which just put an evil grin on your face.

Now this seems bad but I don’t know I’m not a doctor

Now there lies the games big appeal, “Surgeon Simulator 2013” is a game with a good dose of evil humor as you hack away organs, fumble around the operating room with a scalpel trying sever arteries and yank them right out bare handed. All the frustration that you’d think you would feel from not being able to move precisely and is replaced with the enormous amounts of laughter as blood squirts out of the poor guy’s chest. Don’t worry though you can save him with drugs…..that is if you don’t accidentally or purposely shoot yourself up with the needle as it’s easy to do and if you thought surgery with no medical knowledge was hard before try doing it while tripping out. All this is wrapped together in a nice 2 hour package once you’ve done each surgery you get to relive the fun and do them all over again but this time in the back of an ambulance, where speed bumps and sharp turns constantly hurl your equipment around. After which your patient has been patched up for the sixth time and you've seen most of the game but are able to freely return to all the surgery’s  to improve your previous time and rankings.

 Alright we’re good, close him up

What else can I say about “Surgeon Simulator 2013” except “wow”, the game is a highly enjoyable Steam game, one of those short and simple games that provide you with a lot of laughs for you and the rest of your friends. And there are plenty of ways to do so as I’ve mentioned, players are given every surgery tool under the sun and kind of makes you feel like Dexter Morgan (main character from “Dexter” about to kill someone in your sterile little room and that’s how it happens more often than not. And for the low price tag that you are given and the short but oh so sweet package the game comes in, there is nothing not to love about this game.

P.S. for added enjoyment and for those of you who would like to see just what “Surgeon Simulator 2013” is like you can follow the link to watch Gavin Free and Michael Jones of Rooster Teeth play the game here.

Good:

-Goofy mechanics but are meant to be that way for the added fun

-Cheap price tag

-Three unique surgeries to preform and completely make a mockery of modern medicine

Bad:

-If you were looking for a serious surgery game this isn’t it

Scully rating: 9.0 out of 10 

Evil Dead

By: Kyle Fee

By now you must of heard that Evil Dead is being called a horrific thrill ride and has been proclaimed as a excellent horror movie, maybe the best one this year.  I will not deny these claims, however if you’re a massive fan of the originals then you may feel a little indifferent about this new re-model of the Evil Dead franchise, but again I will not argue that they did a great job with a remake of a cult classic. 

 The movie begins with another group of people that serve to give us a prologue of what’s to come.  From the beginning you see something that when taken side to side with the original Evil Dead would look much different.  After the initial prologue we are introduced to the five characters: Mia, David, Eric, Olivia and Natalie.  They arrive at a cabin in the woods and they have come to help Mia, a drug addict attempt to get over drugs and clean herself up.  This is a interesting approach the story takes and this leads them to finding a book of the dead.  One of the characters finds it wrapped in a garbage bag and wrapped around with barb wire.  This leads to the book taking control of Mia.  When she becomes increasingly violent and crazy the other characters are convinced that it's her acting up because of her becoming clean.  Again, the way the story plays out using Mia and her drug addiction being the cause of her craziness in the beginning was a unique way to start off a story.  Now when the middle of the movie comes it’s a little slow but was still good.  It lacks the same sense of dread that was happening at the beginning but the movie quickly picks up and the rest plays out very well.

Now as for respect towards the old movies, you see a lot of cameos from the old movies, the car Ash used in Evil dead, the signature double barrel shot gun and of course the chainsaw.  This all and said we see that director Fede Alvarez paid homage to the Original movies, which I respected and found awesome. 

With all the cameos from all the original movies, you would think this is just an updated remake of a beloved movie like I have said, but when I watched it there were some terrifying scenes that gave me a few jumps and a different story angle that works.  Overall, I felt like this was a different movie then the original Evil Dead and this helps make this new Evil Dead make a name for itself.  To those who have never seen the original movies, yes you’re missing some classic Bruce Campbell awesomeness, but you will enjoy this new movie.  The cast and crew did a awesome job re-creating a classic and this movie has received much applaud for good reason, and in the words of Ash from the original…"Groovy."

Good:

-Cameos from the original movies

-Cast worked, especially Jane Levy as Mia

-Scares and Gore will make modern day horror movie goes happy

-Just when you think the movie reaches its' apex, it proves you wrong and still finishes the movie strong

Bad:

-Middle is a little slow

Scully Rating: 8.5 out of 10

SimCity

By: Sean Dibble

Maxis and SimCity are back after a long ten year hiatus. Following suit with past games you build a city, and hope natural and non-natural disasters don’t tear it down leaving you broke. This version of the game brought new aspects to the design with better graphics the cities look even more pretty then they did in the past. Though the maps are smaller you can do more, trading with close cities in your region and building a great work to help your city grow to monster levels. So let’s take a deeper look into this new game.

And you thought you were safe from meteors

You start the game off by choosing what region you would like to build your city in you get to choose between 8 regions differing in size and landscape. Once you have chosen that you must then name your region and decide if you want it to be public or private, the only difference is with private you must invite people to help you build your region, or keep it all to yourself and build on every plot of land available your call. Also at this screen is something called sandbox mode, which is for you creative type that don’t want your buildings going BOOM. From here you select your plot of land, and play the game.

The gameplay is great. The streets can go from dirt roads to avenues with street rails on them. You can build a green city by adding a recycling center and eventually getting rid of you upstart industry or you could specialize in many different things like: Mining, Metalwork, Gambling, or Tourism among others. You can decide not to educate your sims because honestly who needs a education right I mean what’s the worst that could happen? Or if you really wanna educate them build a department of education on your city hall and get enough people going to school build yourself a university (which you need if you wanna build anything at a great works location.) Another great thing is that if you build any department in one city, it affects the whole region so if you build a Department of Safety in Goldstown, Crapville will be able to build hospitals, and Police Precincts right off the bat….well as long as they have the money to build them.

Add Big Ben to turn your city into a London-inspired metropolis

The gameplay is great, the music is a bit dull, and of course, it’s a sim game; they speak Simolian and pay in Simolians but that’s no big deal…just don’t think about having a full blown conversation with "Joe Billy Bob" on the streets anytime soon. Another thing is keeping balance in your city Residential, Commercial and Industry work hand in hand in building a great city, but if you don’t balance the wealth class of all three you could run into a major problem of ether having not enough workers or too many unemployed. It’s a delicate balance but it makes the game that much more realistic. Throughout the game you will be given missions; some for money and some just to make your sims happy, which is VERY important, happier sims build better buildings, better buildings mean more people and more people means….that’s right you guessed it: strippers…I mean money... yeah money.

One big issue I have faced while playing this game is that if yours happens to crash YOU LOSE EVERYTHING. The game saves on the cloud not your hard drive and there is nothing you can do to fix this except post on a forum your name your regions name and your cities name that was lost. To big of a hassle for me I just built another one and didn’t bother reporting it. 

Something cool that they did though was if you bought the deluxe mode (only available on Origin not in stores), you received a few extras like heroes and villians, French buildings, German buildings and British buildings. Each one gives you landmarks and special buildings for example the Germans will give you a better metro system, the French give you a better police and the British you get double decker busses. Now if you didn’t buy Deluxe you can still get these for around twenty dollars at the Origin store and though it may not seem worth it, it does add a little something to gameplay.

Good:

-Awesome Gameplay

-Beautiful Graphics

-Realistic

Bad:

-Your game freezes you lose everything

Scully Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Star Trek: Into Darkness Trailer

This trailer is for the upcoming movie.  While this trailer doesn't go into specifics on the plot and the characters, aside from the main cast coming back from the previous film.  While we have a glimpse of the antagonist, there is no specifics on his affiliations and motivations, aside from the dialogue alluding to him having a grudge against the Federation.  Stay tuned in the upcoming months for more news about "Into Darkness."  It is scheduled for release on May 17, 2013.