And I can’t stress this enough: the trailer does not do Avatar justice. I thought the movie kinda dumb from the trailer. It looked like a scifi FernGully or something. But it is way more than that. So instead of watching that crappy trailer, watch this instead. It is a behind the scenes making of the movie. And you’ll see that Avatar is the greatest technical achievement for a movie that there has ever been.

“This is not an animated movie,” as Cameron says. Every single thing scene Avatar was filmed by real actors, with them actually acting everything out with capturing devices on them, not just voice acting. A special camera was even built to specifically look at their face to capture their exact facial expressions and recreate on screen. Cameron even built a special “virtual camera” for him to see what the final product will look like as the actors are working! This movie is what people will compare movies in the next decade to, just like they did with Cameron’s ‘Titantic’ years ago.

Cameron said that he wrote the script for this movie 14 years ago and waited until recently to actually create Avatar since technology has evolved to the point where he could actually portray what he envisioned onto the screen. And I am so glad he waited.

So back to what you actually see on screen when you go to the theater. The world, Pandora, shown in Avatar is SURREAL. It is without a doubt the most beautiful scenery ever created for a movie/video game. I’ve heard others say this before I saw the movie and I agree, that I almost teared up during a part of the movie; not because any emotional involvement with the characters, but because what you are seeing on screen is just so awesome (the part I’m talking about is actually what Cameron says in the video above is his favorite part of the movie–where the two main characters are flying with each other for the first time). When you go to the theater to watch this movie you are entering the world of Pandora. You’re not watching a movie; you are having an experience unlike any other.

Avatar is on an epic scale on the same lines as Lord of the Rings. Tolkien fanboys might burn me at the stake for saying that, but if they do it’s because they haven’t seen Avatar. The movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, but it didn’t feel long to me for 1 minute. I wanted more as soon as I walked out of there. I may even get the most-likely-crappy game (as most movies built on movie IPs generally are) just to re-enter the world of Pandora.

This may be my favorite movie of all time, but I’ll have to see how it holds up watching it in my tiny TV (42 inches?) in my home before making that decision. Everyone needs to go see this movie in 3D as soon as you can. It might be a little experience for some people to see it in 3D (it was $14.00 at my local IMAX 3D), but it is well worth it. James Cameron has said that he looked at doing the 3D in this movie as another light, another tool to make the movie a more intimate experience, not a gimmick thrown on to make more people come see it. GO SEE AVATAR!

[ Oh yeah, and Michelle Rodriguez is awesome, even the little bit that she's in this movie. Some how this image alone in the film made me go "hah! awesome!" It makes more sense in context... ]

Law Abiding Citizen is a movie about a dude who something terrible happens to and the person responsible gets away with it due to what he thinks is a poor judicial system. He then gets thrown in jail and terrifies those who worked on the case of the terrible thing that happened in order to prove to the world how flawed the system is. (I know this seems a little spoilery, but this is basically all shown in the trailer)

The movie is a fantastic ride and is all around fun. The most fun is had with the element of wit. The movie is for anyone that likes movies such as Inside Man or Memento. Its full of plot twists and Gerard Butler’s character just seeming like the smartest man alive. In this respect, the movie is awesome.

The only problem that I have with the movie is that the first 30 minutes or so is fully devoted to Gerard Butler’s character locking himself in prison to prove that our judicial system is screwed up. But after that 30 minute or so mark, he stops trying to prove that and is pretty much just killing everyone that let the guy go that did the terrible thing (sorry, don’t want to spoil it). I would have been fine with this, but if they stuck with it the whole movie. Theres too much of a conflicting message. Its more obvious when towards the end of the movie Jamie Foxx’s character is trying to convince Gerard Butler’s character to stop, but Gerard says, “You still don’t get it!” I was excited at this point, because I thought the end of the movie would reveal a crazy plot twist of which makes the whole screwed up judicial system message come back and make complete sense. Well that didn’t happen. There was a crazy plot twist, but the movie never came back to the original message it was trying to convey. And no, it wasn’t something that just went over my head…

Conclusion

This movie is still worth seeing. If you are the type of person that only sees a few movies a year in theaters, then you might want to wait for this to come to DVD, but then definitely see it. For everyone else though, I’d still suggest seeing it. It’s a fun movie.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Top Gun – iTunes link
Real Racing – iTunes link
Monster Trucks Nitro – iTunes link
3D Rollercoaster Rush – iTunes link
Touch Hockey: FS5 - iTunes link
Homerun Battle 3D – iTunes link
Tiger Woods PGA Tour by EA Sports – iTunes link
Slope Rider - iTunes link
Aqua Moto Racing - iTunes link
Finger Foos – iTunes link
2XL Supercross - iTunes link

I will be writing a review for each game as the days goes by, one game a day, starting tomorrow. I will update this page with scores and links to each review.

Family Guy: Uncensored is a game where, if you do story mode, you go through different levels where each one is a different mini-game, and you are presented with cut scenes in between each one. The game has a sort of 8-bit mixed with new-age graphics feel, which is pretty cool. The problem is that every other thing in the game sucks so bad that the graphics are the furthest thing from my mind.

The gameplay itself is absolutely atrocious. I’m pretty I’ve never played something this bad in my entire life. Each mini-game is completely different, yet each one still finds a way to make me want to kill myself before progressing in the game. I wanted to get through each level to be able to review it, but I only got through 4 out of the 7 because I simply couldn’t take any more of it. In every level, I found myself just trying to get through to the next level. And the mini-games aren’t just terrible, they’re hard; like, really hard. I almost through my phone at one point. Also, the load times are longer than any other game I’ve ever played on the iPhone. You end up spending more time loading than you do playing the game.

On top of that madness, the cut-scenes are terrible. There aren’t any fast, witty jokes or even references to anything (at least enough to make you laugh or happy about anything at all). Actually there was a cut-scene where the greased up deaf guy runs past the screen, but that was the closest to anything funny in the entire game. There are some references in the games themselves, but barely any.

Oh, and the music is TERRIBLE! It’s so bad I can’t begin to explain it. It has absolutely nothing to do

So the bottom line is that this game is the most terrible piece of crap ever made for the iPhone. And Glu Games, the company that made Deer Hunting 3D, made this game. How could they make such an epic, disasterly failure? And the game is $4.99 somehow. There is no way I’d recommend downloading this game for free, not to mention $4.99!

Oh yeah, and I’ve had this game downloaded and played on and off for about 2 weeks, maybe 3. I had to play the game in 5 minute increments to keep myself from throwing my iPhone into the blender. Going back to get the screenshots was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life.

TTR is your typical music game where where circles come floating to the bottom of the screen and you must, in this case touch, the “notes” as they reach the bottom, going along to the music. It includes over 100 free songs to download, the best online play of any iPhone game to date, and tons of other features that make it stand far from its competitors. If you want to read more about TTR 2.6, read my review here.

TTR 3’s biggest new feature is it’s DLC (downloadable content). You can now buy track packs of different bands which include 2 to 6 songs for $0.99 to $2.99, and special themes for each pack. The recent iPhone 3.0 software started allowing this DLC feature, so it seems that Tapulous was just waiting to implement this as soon as they could.

The game also adds avatars that you can dress up and show off online, which I guess isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t add too much to the game either. I feel like that may have been them trying to grab the tween audience that play all the Facebook apps. TTR 3 also adds chat support either overall, or in each game lobby.

Weapons were also added to the new version. Certain sections of the notes are stars (star power anyone?) that you must collect to gain a weapon or shield, then you tap it to use it. This addition is actually pretty cool rather than gimmicky. The only problem I have with it is one weapon make the sound crappy, and I don’t exactly enjoy playing a music game when the music sounds crappy.

All in all TTR 3 is an awesome update/sequel and I strongly urge everyone to pick it up. The only downside of the new app is that it costs $0.99 as opposed to the last edition which was free. The reasoning for this is that an app needs to cost money in order for it to include DLC, so they made it the cheapest price it can be at $0.99. It’s still worth it.

Tap Tap Revenge 3 – $0.99 [iTunes Link]

The game is simple, where you just tap the sheep, frog, or pig while it’s in the air to make it go higher, and if you fall to the bottom of the screen then you lose. There will be items along the way that either save you when you fall or make you go higher faster. Like I said: simple. But for some reason it’s so captivating and fun. It’s the sort of game that some people won’t be able to put down, and others will just come back to it time to time again.

Conclusion

Sheep Launcher Plus! doesn’t really have much to it, but it’s still really fun for anyone that likes high score games that you just keep coming back to. It is a definite buy for anyone in my opinion. There is a lite version for anyone that wants to check it out, but if you get good at the game then you’ll eventually see this screen:

Sportacular lets you see up-to-the-minute scores for games in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and more, and it presents the scores in an average, but well manner. So Sportacular is a good score-checking app. But what makes it awesome is the push notification support.

You can subscribe to updates for a particular team or game, and within that team or game you can specify whether you want to be notified about when a game is starting soon, when the game does start, when the score changes and what the score is, what the score after each period is, or what the score is at the end of the game. I simply chose to know the score at the end of each NFL game because anything else would be too much, but if you are a huge fan for any sports team then it would certainly be ideal to have the score changing alert on for that team; definitely a great thing to have if you aren’t near a TV.

Conclusion

Sportacular is a good app to see scores, but a must-have app for getting alerts for scores. If you at work or on the go and trying to keep track of the game your favorite team is playing or even if you are at home watching a game but want to be up to date on all games, then this is the app for you. So by that I mean, if you watch sports at all and have an iPhone then you must get this app. There is a free version and a $3 version, but the only difference is ads. So if the ads don’t bother you then the free version is perfectly acceptable.

Now what doesn’t work is that you probably aren’t going to have any Facebook friends using Aardvark, so it’s really not any use unless Aardvark gets a much larger user count. And on that note, your questions really won’t get answered as well as you would want. I never seemed to get an answer to any questions that weren’t common knowledge. But when asked who played Superman in the original movie, I immediately got results. But even if I did get answers to those non-common knowledge questions, they probably wouldn’t be researched at all. There is no moderation as far as I know.

Because of this, I really think ChaCha has a huge advantage over this app/network. ChaCha is moderated to make sure the answers are good and researched, and the answerers are paid (not much, but still paid) which gives incentive for the questions to always be answered. The only limitation is that there is no iPhone app for ChaCha (and looks like there never will be), so you are stuck using text messages, which could be bad for someone without a messaging plan (like me).

Conclusion

Aardvark is a simple, yet spot on application in terms of design, but doesn’t have a large enough user base, incentive, or moderation to keep the questions answered in a timely manner or correctly. ChaCha is without a doubt the overall better service to use if you have a messaging plan (text 242242 or chacha.com), but Aardvark is a decent app if you can’t spare those precious text messages.

Zombieland is without a doubt my favorite zombie movie of all time. It is 5 times funnier than Shaun of the Dead and all of jokes are real jokes, not just spoofing a zombie movie or making fun of itself. Also, you actually care about the characters, or at least like them enough to want to to continue to live. From the previews, it looked like Woody Harrelson’s character was gonna be a big stupid redneck and Jesse Eisenberg’s character was gonna be the typical awkward teen you see in every comedy these days. And they were those things. But they also had character and depth, enough to make you really enjoy them.

But the absolute best part of this movie is that it is fun. In fact it’s the only real fun zombie movie I’ve ever seen. Zombieland isn’t a horror movie and it’s not about surviving or anything depressing. It’s about how to have fun in a world full of zombies.

Conclusion

Zombieland is an amazing movie for anyone. There is enough gore and zombie killing for the core zombie fan and there is enough comedy, action, and emotion for the typical movie fan (or anyone else really). Justin (huge zombie fan) and Melissa (not huge zombie fan) both loved the movie, so that tells you something.

The episode has a clear-cut beginning and end like a movie with it’s own entire story arc, but it still has the same House you know and love. It is the most unique premiere of any television show I’ve ever seen, and I’d love to see more shows do it. Anyone can watch this episode without an prior knowledge of the show, and hopefully (to them) get hooked to watch the remainder of the season.

The episode takes you through the emotion chaos that is House’s psyche, seeing him break down before your eyes, so for House fans this itself is so emotionally.

The beginning of the episode with the credits is definitely the best intro to any show or movie I’ve ever seen. It’s beautifully shot with the feel of an indy movie. You immediately get the impression that the episode is going to be an emotionally roller coaster. It was clear that someone that normally doesn’t shoot House was hired to do the cinematography for this episode.

Conclusion

Everyone needs to watch this episode of House, whether you are a House fan or not. It is a mini-movie with it’s own complete plot so that it is a complete experience throughout, and it is a good experience. House’s emotions get stripped down and laid down on the table for everyone to see, but he’s still the same lovable ass that you know.