Jurassic Park IV Has A Director

Jurassic Park is my favorite film of all time, so I tend to pay attention to any news involving the upcoming fourth installment in the franchise. As it was recently announced, a guy named Colin Trevorrow will direct JPIV.

JPIV has some big shoes to fill.

Trevorrow most recently directed his first movie, titled Safety Not Guaranteed, which was a smaller indie film. I have had it in my IMDb watchlist for a while now, but it just moved up to the top of the list. The reviews of Safety have been mostly positive, so that at least leaves me a little comforted to know Trevorrow at least has something under his belt. I'm still not convinced that someone as green as Trevorrow should be directing JPIV, but I also haven't seen any of his work. So until I watch Safety  (which is happening very soon), I will withhold judgement on whether he is the right man for the job. Of course, Spielberg will still be producing this, and the script was supposedly written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes). So those aspects of this movie should be fine, but the movie is set to be released in June 2014. That's barely over a year away, and we hardly know anything at this point. One final interesting tidbit is that Universal has supposedly reserved a studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for filming to begin in April. That's rapidly approaching, so hopefully casting info will start coming to light soon.

Payday 2 Coming Summer 2013

Back in October of 2011, a little game titled Payday: The Heist came out. The object of the game was simple and straightforward...you are one of four heist men that must complete Some sort of criminal mission. Of course, there was more to it than that. The game felt very much like Left 4 Dead, the zombie shooter. The difference was that instead of zombies, you were fighting cops and SWAT teams. Each mission had different stages, such as setting up a drill on a lock, or disabling the fuse boxes. This created excitement as the cops are trying to stop you as you wait for the dang drill to punch through the lock. The game had six original levels, which were creative, challenging, and extremely fun. Unfortunately, extra levels took a long time to arrive, and the game sort of grew stale. Well, that's all about to be ancient history. Yesterday, it was announced that Payday 2 is coming to the PlayStation Network and PC this summer!

Now with more $2 bills.

These days, my PS3 is mainly an expensive, nice looking decorative piece that sits beneath my TV. I simply don't have the time to play video games like I used to. But if ever there was a game that was going to get me to devote countless hours to it and wasn't named SOCOM, it would be the sequel to Payday.

The qualifier in that last sentence relates to the greatest game series ever made. Period.

This sequel seems to have all the right things going for it. The developers are improving many of the downsides of the first game, while keeping all of the awesome aspects intact. Payday 2 is said to feature 30 new levels, which are all full of random events and layouts. The game will also focus on role-playing game (RPG) elements, which allow the player to truly customize how they want their character to work. There are currently four professional skills that you can improve abilities in, and they include mastermind, enforcer, ghost, and technician. Even though I've never had much interest in RPG games, using these elements in a shooter has turned out very well for the Borderlands franchise. Of course there will also be plenty of new weapons, gadgets, mods, masks, and other items to buy with the in game money that you steal.

And if all these upgrades weren't enough, one example of how the campaign will play out was mentioned by the developers. They said that your heist men may decide to steal some artwork and/or paintings in one mission. The next mission might have you hiding cameras inside the artwork, and then selling the stolen goods to some rich people. The mission after that would have you casing their mansions (not Japanese apartments) via the hidden cameras, so that in the next mission you can rob them.

Philip J. Fry knows what I'm talking about.

To top everything off, the developers really went the extra mile when it comes to paying homage to their influences. I always thought the first game's aesthetics were at least partially inspired by The Dark Knight (which is the best Batman movie by far), and this cements that thought. Watching the first teaser trailer for the game, I noticed an obvious reference to the almost opening shot of The Dark Knight. The comparison is below.

Spoiler Alert: that's The Joker

This put a smile on my face.

Obviously the developers are tipping their hats (masks?) to such an awesome shot in an awesome movie. And I love it. That scene totally makes the trailer, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Having said that, here is the trailer:

You can find out more about Payday 2 by visiting Overkill Software's site, which can be found here.

Finally, in the spirit of bank robberies and The Joker, I have a couple awesome pictures to share. The first two are from behind the scenes photos. The last one is something that somebody very talented photoshopped. Enjoy.

Evil Friends

Portugal. The Man. Confused? That's OK. Portugal. The Man is the name of a band from Alaska. These guys have a new album coming out, so I thought it would be nice to review the first single from that album. Before I get to the review, let me explain a little about this band. In a time when almost every artists take a few years between albums, Portugal. The Man defies these rules. They are constantly putting out new material, much to the joy of their grateful fans. We're talking, at minimum, a new album has been released every year of the band's existence. Of course, having a steady stream of new songs doesn't mean anything if the new material sounds rushed, or empty, or recycled. That's not the case with PTM. Somehow, this band is constantly evolving their sound. It must be the fact that these guys are always touring. They love to jam and experiment with new sounds. Every album has grown their music into something completely new and different, even though the listener can still feel that quality that is unique to PTM. There is some quality that PTM possesses, that I don't know how to describe. The only thing I can honestly compare it to is the chemistry that Led Zeppelin's members had. Apart from each other, they were unbelievably talented musicians, but together...they became rock gods! Not exactly in the same way, but PTM definitely has a unique quality that almost defines them. For this, I can only listen and be in awe of their Majestic Majesty.

You know how I said PTM has released a new album every year since their formation? Well, that was true until 2012. We didn't get any new material from PTM during the entire year, and the drought was definitely felt. Of course, they had plenty of reasons for the lack of a new album. The band has been touring non-stop, and has seen several lineup changes since the release of their last album. So these guys needed a little time to regroup and focus. So I have been waiting quite a while by PTM standards for any news of new material. I am glad to say that my wait was over (sort of) about a week ago. On their instagram, PTM shared the artwork for their new single.

Evil Friends, for those that can't read.

It turns out that the single is the title track from the album "Evil Friends." This album is currently scheduled to be released on June 4, 2013. Trust me, I have marked my calendar. The track listing and album artwork is below:

1. Plastic Soldiers

2. Creep In A T-Shirt

3. Evil Friends

4. Modern Jesus

5. Hip Hop Kids

6. Atomic Man

7. Sea Of Air

8. Waves

9. Holy Roller (Hallelujah)

10. Someday Believers

11. Purple Yellow Red And Blue

12. Smile

So now that we have discussed PTM's history, let's get to the review of Evil Friends. When I first heard the song, I was a little shocked. I wasn't sure what to expect, since PTM usually changes their sound from album to album. So I went into this listening with a very open mind. The track opens with a soft, acoustic intro that has slightly eerie vocals. Something I forgot to mention is that the lead singer uses a falsetto to great effect, so I was a little disappointed that about halfway through the song, when the tempo picks up, distortion is applied to the vocals. The song goes on to feature some great riffs and awesome lyrics. It ended fast, and seemed kind of short. That was my first listen. I reflected for a few seconds, then played the track again. I found that I enjoyed it much more the second time through. Now, after about 15 listens, I can say that I love this song. I have no idea how the album will sound, but I know that this will definitely be a great part of the album.

The song's official video has been posted on the band's YouTube channel, which can be seen here. I must warn you, this video is slightly creepy, due to the fact that they shot the whole thing in night vision with people wearing ski masks. But that just adds to the mystique surrounding the song. So Enjoy.

Once this review is posted, I am forbidding myself from listening to the song anymore. As people close to me know, I hate spoilers. Absolutely HATE them. Which is why I almost never listen to debut songs from albums. I don't want to form an impression on one song more than the others. I find that it causes an unbalanced listening experience. I can honestly say that my favorite albums are the ones that I listen to as a whole, with every song being equally important. This means that there may not be any songs that I would listen to outside of the album, or they might all be great separate. I just don't want to screw up my enjoyment of this album. So my wait for June 4 begins now.

And finally, I leave you with another funny picture. This one is from Cyanide & Happiness, which is a web comic that has some awesome stuff. Enjoy.

The Start of Something New

Well, what can I say? I'm starting this blog because it sounds like a great place to share ideas. I've never been much of a social media user, but I guess this is better than facebook or twitter. It's also better than studying, which is what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

So here it is, my new blog...carefully named after my future sugar glider. Seriously, I have put quite a bit of time and effort into crafting what I consider the perfect name. Oswaego (os-way-go), or Swae for short. Tell me if you think I'm wrong, but doesn't it have all the elements needed for the perfect name? The way it sounds, the way it's spelled, and the story behind it are all top-notch. Heck, even the amount of syllables is ideal. And it can be shortened for a nickname, which I consider a requirement with my names.

 This is a sugar glider, which are known for their

awesomeness...

...and cuteness...

 ...and ability to FLY!

Did I say fly? I meant glide, but it's SO close to flying!

This is going to be fun, but I must warn you. I do not plan to censor much, if any, what is said here. By all means, there will eventually be some R-rated material on here, but I'll make sure that if it's R, then it will at least deserve it. It won't be one of those Die Hard 5, super soft R type of things. Sometimes my posts will be funny, while other times they might not be. And I won't always have jokes built into my picture captions, even though I love it when people do that.

One last thing before I finish this first post and start studying for my test tomorrow. I figure that if I'm going to do the whole "blog" thing, then I might as well do it right. I might as well go all out with it. So here is what I'm proposing. For quite a while now, I have been amassing a collection of funny pictures that I find while browsing the internet. I do not own these images, and am not sure exactly how legal it is to share them. But I want to anyway, so I will. Of course I will try to give the proper credit when I can, but that won't be possible a lot of the time. So anyway, my "gimmick" will be to post a funny picture with every post. Sometimes I may just post a picture and nothing else. But I'll try to do that a lot. Because I have a ton of them. And some are very funny and (in)appropriate. I'll let you determine if the parentheses are needed.

I leave you with these words of wisdom: