Minority Report: Everybody Runs

I have a confession:  I like Tom Cruise.  Sure, he may be nuts.  The famous jumping up and down on the couch screaming about loving Katie Holmes was certainly a bit much to be doing in front of millions of people.  Being a member of the church of Scientology, also a bit wacky.  But!  I think the guy can act, he has a good screen presence, and he does action very well.  Minority Report is one of those movies that feels like it should be crushed under its own expectations.  Spielberg is directing, Cruise is starring, and it’s a futuristic sci-fi thriller.  Being that loaded with talent is a challenge in itself, but Minority Report pulls it off well.  Not only does it find success as an action movie, but the vision of the future it puts forth raises some interesting questions as well.  I don’t think the future will end up exactly like this, but some of the small things, like the films take on advertising, are well on their way.  Based off the Phillip K. Dick story, Minority Report takes place in a future where murderers can be prevented from killing their victims but jailed as if they actually did.  The ethics of such a thing could be the subject of a whole book.  The film raises these questions without becoming bogged down in them or getting preachy.  The focus remains solely on the narrative despite the weighty ethics issues involved, which gives the audience an enjoyable action film that actually fires some synapses.

Doctor Cops: Check your TV listings

BECAUSE ITS AWESOME THAT'S WHY

It has long since been established that doctors, those brave few who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of knowledge in the medical field in order to save the lives of those who need help, are also comedic gold.  But, it should be noted, that doctors are only really funny when they are also busy being something ridiculous in addition to their more serious roles as doctors.  I recently stumbled across Doctor Cops, MD, wherein the world’s most badass doctors step up to take the hippocopic oath to catch those who had assaulted the innocent, and possibly cure their patient victims of hand cancer.

But Doctor Cops, MD isn’t a typical web comic.  Written by a man only known as “Andrew,” the tale is presented as a story board for a new prime time television show proposed to a surly television executive by a super-excited fan who is absolutely in love with cop and medical dramas.  While you can, indeed, tune in to see the continuing adventures of Detective Doctor Dick Dynamite and Sergeant Surgeon Solomon Slick, the real draw is to see the interactions of producer Max King and Walter Reid (though he prefers to be called by his pen name, Romeo T. Magnum).

“All The Lives He Led” by Frederik Pohl

“If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all” should be Brad Sheridan’s motto in Frederik Pohl’s novel “All the Lives He Led”.  His home, and basically entire country, has been destroyed by a massive explosion coming from Yellowstone National Park (“someone should have known there was something more sinister to those geysers”)- putting his family into poverty and relocating them to a run-down, dirty slum in New York’s Staten Island.  He makes some money running different scams on the streets, but needs more if he’s going to make anything out of life. So he enlists himself as an indentured servant; and winds up in Italy at the 2000th Anniversary of the Destruction of Pompeii (ironic, isn’t it?)

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Lazenby gets the shaft

While browsing my Netflix queue I came across the description for “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and was quite surprise to see it classified as one of the best Bond films of all time. Don’t get me wrong, George Lazenby puts Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig to shame, but he was put in a rather awkward situation when asked to play a decidedly toned down Bond.

The sixth Bond film was the first to lack the dominating performance of Sean Connery, and a significant break from the previous installments in what would become one of the most epic and certainly the longest running series in film history.

Playstation 3: Right now even Nintendo has more online services

Nice Logo, I think I'll take it

I own both an Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.  I have no preference in the eternal console fanboy war.  In fact I always kind of considered them equal, maybe even the PS3 coming out ahead because of its ability to play blurays and its FREE online services.  Xbox live is definitely the slicker system as far as presentation, but not having to pay Sony kind of made up for the lack of bells and whistles on the PSN.  However, as most of you reading this probably know by now, the Playstation network was hacked into and taken down as a result on April 20th.  This is posting on May 4th and the PSN is STILL dead to the world.  Not being able to play any games online (including the MMO ONLINE ONLY DC Universe) would be bad enough, but the question remains of whether or not the hacker(s?) obtained user credit card information.  While Sony is a victim of a crime in this situation, the surprising lack of timely information and concrete answers is of great concern to me both as a gaming enthusiast and a consumer.  To me it says that while Sony wants to be at the technological forefront in terms of horsepower, how people use and interact with the technology seems to be lost on them.

Epicsplosion: Tripp Roguestar and the 150 ways you can kill him

Tripp Roguestar: strategist

Who didn’t love those old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books as a kid?  Who possibly didn’t love those?  Don’t bother to raise your hands or anything, as this is the internet and I actually don’t care.  YOU love those kind of books.  You know its true.  Just relax and roll with it.

There were only two things that I didn’t really like about the genre, though.  First, you had to try to puzzle out exactly the way that the book’s author would have thought, or else the main character (you, I guess) would die a grisly fate.  Second, I didn’t like the fact that all choices seemed to lean toward a unified goal.  In short, you couldn’t just choose the option “eh, screw this.  I’mma go get a burger.”

That was before Tauhid Bondia launched Epicsplosion, which features the adventures of Tripp Roguestar, adventurer extraordinaire, his disgusting, annoying Praxillian sidekick Grope, and a limitless number of bad decisions.