Cowa-Sequential

Another Christmas holiday, another Hobbit movie. However this isn't just any film about Shire-folk with hairy feet, The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies brings both Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy and larger six film Middle Earth Saga to a close. The film serves as a climatic conclusion of Bilbo and company's quest to reclaim the Dwarf Kingdom at the Lonely Mountain and acts a bridge to the Fellowship of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The Hobbit trilogy has been criticized as being a poor man's LOTR and while I somewhat echo that sentiment for I found this new trilogy very enjoyable. Does Battle of Five Armies reach the heights found in the original films or does it still lie the shadow of its more epic predecessors. Battle of Five Armies begins as Desolation of Smaug ends with Smaug laying waste to Laketown ans after a bit of time and burning Bard dispatches Smaug by piercing  the hole in the dragon's armor-like hide with a black arrow. Following th...

Sony is one of those companies while not exactly a trainwreck, is prone to have soap opera-esque public relations nightmares. From the lackluster launches of the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita to the bungling of the Spider-Man film franchise and the Network data breaches, they seem to have an ideal mix of hubris and clueless-ness which makes The Interview debacle all the more fascinating. The Interview of course is the Seth Rogen, James Franco comedy vehicle where they are sent on a mission by the US government to interview then assassinate the North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. In response to the film, the North Korean government hacked Sony Pictures's confidential data and released them to the public. There were also threats of 9/11 type terrorist attacks against theaters that showed the film. Sony pulled the film from its Christmas release date though ultimately released the film digitally and at the movies. Sony is currently being sued for the breach and faced criticism f...

Super Smash Brothers is back and now portable with Super Smash Bros. 4 3DS. Super Smash Bros. 3DS is the portable version of the Wii U console game that has just been released. Not having yet taken the plunge on Nintendo's newest console, I am left with the 3DS version. If what you wanted was Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the go, Mashiro Sakurai and Nintendo have delivered exactly what you have ordered. I can't help be impressed by the sheer amount of content that has been put into this game. The character  roster is expansive as is the stage count with special attention to the F-Zero Super Nintendo themed stage. In actual overall content, I would place it between Melee and Brawl. While the game is lacking Brawl's expansive adventure mode, Smash Run, Classic, and All-Star modes provide a quick but familiar burst of fun. The graphics are among the most fluid I've seen during my limited experience with the console and the 3D effect does provide some added depth. H...

Besides Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel's other great success in 2014 was the launch of  the new Ms. Marvel comic series. Ms. Marvel, the newest incarnation of the titular hero stars Pakistani-American Kamala Khan. Kamala Khan is a Muslim high-schooler from Jersey City who gains superpowers upon encountering a mysterious gas. While I am weary of Marvel's other attempts at 'diversity', Ms. Marvel is an interesting series in both tone and art style. In a medium often accused of one-dimensional characterization, and gender objectification, Ms. Marvel oozes personality, and creates a world which feels far more real than the rather cardboard Gotham City. The comic art is drawn in a way that gives the comic a somewhat grungy feel that one can reach out and touch it. The cartoonish style matches a hero who's primary power is shape shifting.   The series has also been a critical and financial success for Marvel and Kamala Khan proves to be a worthy entry into Marvel...

T he Legend of Zelda is one of gaming's oldest and most esteemed franchises. Originally appearing on the NES in 1987, the series has appeared on every Nintendo console and portable machine with entries such as 1998's Ocarina of Time be lauded as one of the greatest games of all time. I have played the majority of the series and am a solid fan of franchise, however lately something seems amiss. My most recently completed Zelda games are The Minish Cap for the Game Boy Advance and Twilight Princess on the GameCube released in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS remain unfinished as does Wii's motion controlled entry Skyward Sword. Is the Legend of Zelda series losing its spark or did I just lose the motivation to complete these titles? P hantom Hourglass is the touch screen controlled sequel to 2003's Wind Waker. Sailing remains a key element in this film however instead of controlling the ship directly, players c...

Scarlet Johanson has enjoyed an impressive string of success thanks in part to her role as Black Widow in the Avengers movie franchise.In her newest film Lucy , she stars as a woman who is implanted with a drug that allows her to access up to 100% of her brain. Lucy is a French film starring Johanson, Morgan Freeman, Mar Waked, and Choi Min-Sik. Lucy is kidnapped by ruthless Korean gangsters who operate a human trafficking ring that uses tourists as drug mules. During a fight with her captors, the drug pouch implanted inside her ruptures and she is inundated with the potent pills. As explained by Morgan Freeman, this allows her to manipulated objects with her mind, learn information rapidly and even travel through time. The film revolves around Lucy gradually unlocking greater portions of her brain while hunting down the Korean gangsters that kidnapped her. The main theme of Lucy is the passing down of knowledge to the next generation. The cycle of lif...

Not a Selfie When all is said and  done about the Millennial generation, it is my sincere and honest hope that we are not defined by the word selfie. It is unfortunate that selfie is now even a word according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Selfies are narcissistic but then one can say the same for other forms of self portraiture. However  I feel that smartphones have made the an individual selfie picture worthless due to the sheer volume of pictures taken. They are taken to be looked at for a moment and then cast aside for the next one. Artistically rendered self-portraits take more time and care and are ultimately more valuable than a photo file that is lost among the millions online or stuck on a forgotten hard-drive. According to Google's spell-check, the word selfie auto-corrects to both self and selfish and I feel that this is particularly telling. I look forward to the day when this selfie craze dies down as a feel that the word is reaching its saturation point. ...