64 - The Tip (Event Horizon Pt. 2)

This week Steve Scott joins Jason and Wally as they start off finishing their thoughts about Event Horizon, but tangent off onto who would be a great Batman director and the brilliance of Breaking Bad. Stay tuned after that as Jay reads a new email from BJ Wanland that demands to be heard!

All this and more from the Broke Nerdcast: The only podcast that tastes better with age!

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Minute Men

This week Jason’s Mac causes so much trouble that we almost didn’t have a show! In an effort to appease our literal dozen of fans, we have a fast paced, quickly dismiss-able episode that is short in length, but long in content!

Learn about such fun, yet useless stuff such as when Sony plans on unveiling the PlayStation 4, what acclaimed science fiction director is taking the reigns of the World of Warcraft movie, the next phase of Marvel movies, and more on the Broke Nerdcast!*

*If your enjoyment lasts more than four hours, please consult a physician.

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Perusing Pixeldom

Seeing as how I am a broke nerd, I have to try to figure out ways that I would still be able to do the things I like to do.  Most of the extra money that we have currently go to our impeding Disney World vacation, so what am I to do?

Well, there are a few things that I've been doing that I'm sure many other broke nerds are doing, like only going to the movies on discounted nights, or entering sweepstakes (I hope to write more about sweeps blogs like Embracing Beauty ); however, I've been looking near and far for a way for me to get discounted or free Microsoft Points.

I have won a few different sweepstakes in which I have won these points, which are purchased in exchange for games, movies, and downloadable content (DLC).  Specifically, I need these points due to my crippling addiction to Rock Band.

Enter Pixeldom.

Pixeldom, whose motto is, "Share Something, Get Something", allows you to review movies, videogames, or even the weekly video podcast-type show they produce and in return, you get "pixels".  After you earn enough of this digital currency, they allow you to exchange them for iTunes, Microsoft, Sony, AMC, or even McDonald's giftcards.

After hearing about this site, I immediately went into my archive of reviews that I've written all the way back from ten years ago and whittled them down to the required length of less than 1000 words.  This was rather advantageous, as with each new movie or game entry, you receive even more pixels than if you were just reviewing something someone had already posted.

The down parts of this whole thing was, in fact, the 1000 word limit.  If you've read any of my reviews...and I'm assuming you have considering you are, in fact, currently reading one of them, then you know I tend to write a lot more than that.  After reading other reviews on the site, there are also a lot of reviews that seem to just be a sentence or two and do not give any real criticism of the subjects.  While I understand that this is inherent to a system like this, it makes me wish that the pixels would be based on quality.

Pixeldom seems to feel the way I do about quality as well, as a way to encourage good writing, they hand out extra pixels for comments and having people signify that they like your review by clicking "Pixel It".

The customer service via Twitter @pxldm is fast and friendly as my own mistake was quickly explained and they gave me points for the confusion.  They were a complete class act very similar to how the acclaimed @XboxSupport group work.

After getting enough points for my Microsoft Points, there were a few hiccups as I had to log out and back in for it to allow me to purchase them despite having just received the points, but they are in beta and I was surprised that it was as smooth as it was.

After two weeks, the points have made it here in a handwritten envelope....I couldn't be happier.

All said, this is a great website for those who like to review movies and games and always wanted to get something for the work.

You know?  Like me.

See my Pixeldom page by clicking these words and don't forget to comment and Pixel my reviews!
www.pixeldom.com

Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points [Online Game Code]Xbox 360 Live 4000 Points

You Do Hulu?

I haven’t had cable television since 1999.  My family went without for about a month in the late 90’s, so as a working man in my household, I decided to sign up for satellite service.  It was glorious when it wasn’t raining …so, you know, the winter.

 After the WCW was purchased and completely dismantled by what was the WWF, I decided that it wasn’t worth paying for any more, so I got rid of it.

I was at a point in my life where entertainment was easy to come by.  Video games, the newfangled DVDs, and over the air TV got me through until the weekend, when I would go to the theater and watch one or more movies.

The digital age beckoned and with it the promise of crystal clear television reception with the help of HD tuners.  For whatever reason, these tuners never worked well with any of the televisions I owned, even the new Vizio 1080p HDTV that I currently use, so I was pretty much out of luck when it came to network television.

As a reaction, my wife and I subscribed to the Blockbuster rental service and we were able to see as many movies as we wanted to as long as we drove to Blockbuster and got them.

Being broke necessitated that a change be made.  Blockbuster had decided to raise the rates on the rental subscriptions, so we decided to try out the lower cost option of Netflix.  

Netflix proved to be good enough for the price and we went exclusively with them for our DVD rentals.

A few months later, Netflix became an app on the Xbox 360 so that I could stream some videos directly to my TV without having to wait for the physical disk to get to me.

 

This pleased me greatly.

At first there wasn’t too much content and it wasn’t a very intuitive experience, but with each Xbox update, the app was improved.

During this whole time frame, there has been a supplemental experience that I was using to see the latest network and cable TV that I wasn’t getting through Netflix, and that was Hulu.

At the peak of me using the computer based site, I was using Hulu frequently to catch up on “The Simpsons”, “Ghost Hunters”, and “Hell’s Kitchen”.  Ever since the inclusion of “Hulu Plus”, I decided not to use it any more as the frequency of the commercials had gotten pretty bad and the backlog of episodes available to basic users had shrunk.

When Microsoft allowed Xbox users to try out the “Plus” app for free, I jumped at the chance and was excited to dig into my old shows again.

The problem with this idea is that when I searched for “Ghost Hunters”, it advised me that I could only watch it at a computer.

What?  Why the heck would you split up the content available for your product?  The idea that I would be paying extra so that I could use a gimped version of Hulu on my TV is absolutely ludicrous to me.

I figured that this was some sort of fluke, so I continued searching.

“Hell’s Kitchen”, online only.

“The Simpsons”, online only.

Wow.  What is wrong with these people at Hulu?  Why can’t I watch the content that I want to watch WHERE I want to watch?  I’m sure that this has to do with the licensing and it wouldn’t be that big of an issue if they told you about it before signing up.  

What kind of pitch meeting could that have been?

-“Hey, I have an idea on how to make more money off of this Hulu thing!”

-“Great, give it to me!”

-“Alright, now picture this: Have customers pay a monthly fee to watch our content on their TVs!”

-“Genius! We can develop the apps in a few weeks!  We just have to get all of the shows to…”

-“Oh, no…not ALL of the shows!  Just the programs that are available online for free anyway from other sources.”

-“Ok…I guess that would work and I suppose we won’t have commercials, so we have to…”

-“Oh, no, there would be commercials…”

-“sigh”

That’s right.  Not only can I not watch all of the shows available, but we also have to sit through commercials.  Even broadcast television allows you to skip commercials nowadays, but here we are paying extra to watch these shows, most of which are already free online in other places, network TV you can get over the air, or available on Netflix sans commercials.

The worst part of the whole thing is the fact that it’s about the same price as a subscription to Netflix.  So you get less content, more restrictions, and commercials for the same cost as your closest competitor. 

Remarkable.

To be fair, there are a lot of good points with Hulu as well.  The picture quality is top notch, the sorting is easy to understand, and you get a lot of shows the day after broadcast.  

These good qualities are unfortunately underscored with the fact that there are only a few shows WORTH the expense of seeing it the day after, like “Bones”, and “Glee” (shush, I like it).  

I would have mentioned “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” as I was enjoying them quite a bit while I was under the free trial; however, when I tried to watch “The Daily Show” this morning, all I got was ,”Available Online Only”.

Sigh.

NOTE: In Hulu's defense, The Daily Show eventually allowed me to stream it once more.

A Thor Thubject

When you are a Broke Nerd, such as myself, you begin to plan out your entertainment months.  This is in part because I need to know when we will need my mother in law to watch the baby if we go out as well as being able to afford it after the bills have been paid and the food purchased.

As far as movies are concerned, the most likely scenario is that it sits in theaters for so long, that it’s on DVD or instant streaming by the time I get around to seeing it.

This whole process still feels pretty foreign to me since I used to be the guy who had to be in the theater for the midnight showing only so that I can see it again later that night after work.  Of course, this doesn’t happen any more.  Ever.

Nowadays, I have to be judicious in my choice of movies to watch in theaters, the last movie I had seen was “Red State” in March, but before that, it was “Tron Legacy” in January.  As a movie geek, this drives me crazy, but I really have no choice.

Marvel movies are something of an event for me and I do everything in my power to be able to see them in the theater and thankfully, the stars aligned and I was able to see the latest in the line of “Avengers” set up movies, “Thor”.

THOR

“Thor” as a movie seems like it really shouldn’t work.  It goes between the mythical world of Asgard and Earth, it has larger than life characters, and it  does  the whole “fish out of water” story that we’ve seen hundreds of times, but despite all of these factors working against it, it turned out to be a mighty entertaining movie.  Warning…spoilers ahead!

“Thor” starts, in earnest, very similar to “The Fellowship of the Ring” as it allows a lot of exposition in a short time frame.  I quite like this device as it was visually entertaining, got some action out there, and it introduces us to the true heart of the film, Odin.

It is soon after that we meet Odin’s two sons, Thor and Loki.  Immediately we get a sense of what the relationship is like between the two as Thor is the favorite and Loki desperately wanting his father’s approval.

After screwing the pooch pretty badly and thrusting the kingdom of Asgard into war, Thor gets stripped of his birthright and sent to the Earth realm in banishment.   

Odin adds insult to injury by taking the source of Thor’s power, the hammer Mjolnir, and sending it to Earth with the caveat that only one worthy of the power can wield it, making it all the more frustrating when Thor goes to retrieve it from the government agency S.H.I.E.L.D. and he can’t lift it.

Thor’s time on Earth includes many of the same “fish out of water” jokes as any other, thankfully it doesn't build the entire premise around how wacky it is that the guy is out of his element.  In fact, Thor gets comfortable enough to cook and teach the kind folks who have taken him in, the science behind his magic.

Back on Asgard, Loki discovers something about himself that is too much of a spoiler for me to give up and the information makes him freak out, causing his father to fall into a coma.  This part kind of didn’t make much sense for obvious reasons when you see the movie (size matters), but I’ll allow it as it helped set up the actions that allowed Thor to prove himself worthy of his position of Thunder God.

The only gripes I really had with this movie seem to stem from the fact that it wasn’t longer.  The scenes on Asgard are all quite beautiful beyond description, and are all more entertaining than most of what occurs on Earth.  I feel that there should have been more time dedicated to the budding romance between Natalie Portman’s character and Thor. 

In the same topic of the story needing to be broadened, the sudden appearance of Hawkeye seemed odd and tacked on, and I’m reasonably sure that it was.  

In conclusion, I really enjoyed “Thor” as a fun fantasy/action movie and pretty well done as far as introducing him into the world populated with more realistic super heroes.  It isn’t as good as some of those other super hero movies, as “Iron Man”, and “The Incredible Hulk” are better, but it is better than “Iron Man 2”.

3/5 Mythological Figures