2019 in Film

Posted by John Klein III on December 31, 2018
Posted in: Film. Tagged: . Leave a comment

I was noticing all of the movies that are coming out this upcoming summer and it looks like a major movie like every other week or so!  Once I started down the list, I had lots of opinions and I figured I’ll get them out of my head.

For anyone who wants to follow along:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_film

January

Glass.  I still need to watch Split but I’m super excited from what I’ve seen from the trailers.  I just loved Unbreakable and anything that gives us more stories from that world, the better!  Why is Dunn even locked up?!  I could see if he made various visits to Glass and then it timed out well with the Split fellow but he’s clearly locked up there too.

February

Jacob’s Ladder.  Can you believe they are remaking Jacob’s Ladder?!  That’s when I knew I was going to want to write this article.

Lego Movie 2 : The Second Part.  This movie once I tell Walker Dennis that it is coming out, is going to be very eagerly anticipated.  He saw the trailer and wanted to watch it immediately.  Luckily, he’s forgotten about it for a minute so that’s good for us.  We’ll watch it probably the second weekend it is out.

What Men Want.  On the flip side of Jacob’s Ladder, I read this title was thought to me self “what is this, a female version of What Women Want?”  And it totally is and I love it!  Especially as it stars Taraji P. Henson!  I imagine there will be at least one joke about how men are always thinking of sex, or it would be a running gag but I’m hoping it has more than that.

All-Star Weekend.  Jaime Foxx is writing and directing films now.  Pretty great cast with Robert Downey Jr., Dr. Ken Jeong, and Gerald Butler.  I’m not sure why Butler doesn’t act more, him and Clive Owens should have much better careers.

March

Chaos Walking.  I’m not familiar with the series but this has Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, both of whom must have filmed it in-between breaks from their bigger films.  This is supposed to be the start of a new franchise so we’ll see about that.

Fighting with My Family.  Stephen Merchant wrote and directed this movie about WWE’s Paige, who I’m not familiar with at all.  But I do love me some Stephen Merchant.  If you haven’t listen to his episode of Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, please do so!

https://player.fm/series/series-2331217/ep-29-stephen-merchant

So great!

The Rock co-produced the film and will be in the movie too.

Captain Marvel.  I can’t wait for this film, my first film of the year that I really want to see.  I want to see Lego Movie 2 as well but if I had to choose only one film, will it probably be a later film but I wouldn’t watch that one unless I got to see Captain Marvel.  My wife might be done with the Marvel films so I might have to take Walker Dennis with me.  The Marvel films are usually rated PG-13 but that’s for like superhero violence and he sees that type of stuff with most action cartoons.  I was folding laundry and he sat through Scott Pilgrim just fine.  He seemed way into it, now that I typed that.  I was building some Lego sets that he received for his birthday and I had Captain America : Winter Soldier and he didn’t seem to pay too much attention to that one.  Those are two completely different films though.  Scott Pilgrim holds up like crazy.  This past weekend, I was folding laundry again (a weekly chore), and I started Black Panther and that movie starts off pretty slow for a now five year old.  I’m sure watching it in the movie theater will help too.

Dumbo.  Tim Burton’s Dumbo.  The trailers look pretty good and I like how they seem to focus on Dumbo but I’ve seen Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and I’m hoping Dumbo is treated better.

April

Shazam!  I’m all for funny super hero films and Captain Marvel probably lends itself to more comedy or at least, more family friendly fare, but that first trailer left me rather cold.  I do like how both Captain Marvels are getting films in the same year.  At least Carol came first.

Pet Sematary.  Another remake but horror movies can be remade all the time, with special effects being what they are and how long ago the first film was, I don’t see a problem with it.

Hellboy.  I’m really hoping this new version works out as I would love a new Hellboy movie every other year.  He could easily sustain that type of franchise.  David Harbour should be great in the role too.

Breakthrough.  I saw a thumbnail of Chrissy Metz on YouTube and made a dumb judgment call on what the trailer would be like and what type of film it would be but I was pleasantly surprised.  I also had to look up the true story as I do with any film based on true events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impossible_(2017_novel)

It comes out on Easter so that’s pretty smart.  The film also stars Topher Grace and Mike Colter.  We just started Luke Cage’s first season last night too.  Such a great first episode.  We’re hoping to go between Luke Cage and Season Five of Agents of SHIELD but we’ll see how that works out.

Under the Silver Lake.  A neo-noir film starring Andrew Garfield and Topher Grace, could be interesting.

Avengers : Endgame.  My buddy Greg has a theory the film will end with Tony in space, giving Pepper that farewell speech of his that can be seen in the trailer.  I’ll be curious who survives and how Captain Marvel plays into the film.  I’m really hoping no one dies and any of these actors can just come back as they please.  But I also get why the studio has to write them out if the actor doesn’t or can’t come back.

May

Pokémon : Detective Pikachu.  I had shrugged my shoulders when I first heard of this film and figured it would come and go like the other Pokémon films that come to the theater.  Then I saw the trailer with Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu and now I’m all on board.

The Hustle.  A female version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson.  Could be good.  I do like Anne Hathaway.

John Wick 3 : Parabellum.  I have yet to see any of these John Wick films but I really should.

Aladdin.  I’m still iffy on Will Smith as the Genie but once I see the first official trailer, I’m sure I’ll be sold on him.

Brightburn.  A horror film using the premise of Superman, written by the Gunn brothers (but not the third one, he’s producing it though), I’m all signed up for this.  Teenage Superman but with invisibility and maybe only heat vision?  Also, the film has Elizabeth Banks, so that’s great too.

Godzilla : King of the Monsters.  This film will have Mothra, that’s all I needed to know!  One day, we’ll get Mechagodzilla but I imagine that’ll only come with a Pacific Rim crossover.  Hopefully this would be the film that makes it 80/20 monsters vs humans seen on film but I doubt it.

Rocketman.  The Elton John biopic, with Taron Egerton has Elton John.  I still only really know him as the voice of Johnny from Sing!  He was the gorilla.

June

Dark Phoenix.  So odd they dropped “X-Men” from the title as this is going to be the last X-Men film made by FOX.  I’m still hoping that they go into space but it seems like this will be based more off of Ultimate X-Men’s Dark Phoenix, which we sort of did to poor results.  I have high hopes for it.

The Secret Life of Pets 2.  Another film Walker Dennis is going to love.  I wish Patton Oswalt was at least attempting a Louie C.K. impression but I also completely get why Illumination didn’t want that.

Men in Black International.  I didn’t even know we were set to get this picture.  Doesn’t look like we’re getting either Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones but maybe they are holding that as a surprised.  I know it was the first thing I looked up.  This is the London based MiB with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, both great in Ragnarok.  I’m also happy to see Kumail Nanjiani will be in it as well as Liam Neeson.

Shaft.  I was all about Samuel L. Jackson as Shaft with Christian Bale as the villain way back in 2000.  This one stars Jessie Usher as the latest Shaft.  Richard Roundtree is back as well.  Tim Story of Fantastic Four fame is directing the film.  I was hoping they were going to make Usher the nephew to Jackson’s Shaft, so that it was always the brother of the previous Shaft but they are not going in that direction.

Toy Story 4.  I still wished they stopped at 3 but 3 made $1.067 billion so that’s pretty hard to walk away from that type of money.

Grudge.  Another horror movie remake.

Child’s Play.  The eighth installment but a reboot!  Aubrey Plaza is in this one so that’s two things.

Ford vs. Ferrari.  James Mangold who directed the 3:10 to Yuma remake and The Wolverine and Logan, is giving us our sole Christian Bale film of the year.  I thought Vice was supposed to come out but it must have had a limited release in 2018.  Bale is neither Ford or Ferrari but based on the events of the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans.  Matt Damon is also in this but is neither Ford or Ferrari.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_24_Hours_of_Le_Mans

Tracy Letts is Ford II and Remo Girone is Ferrari.

47 Meters Down : Uncaged.  This reminds me I hadn’t seen the Mandy Moore first film where she fights sharks.  Probably not a good sign for her that she’s not in this one.  I do wish they titled it, 48 Meters Down.  That would have been awesome.

July

Spider-Man : Far From Home.  The European Vacation of Marvel films!  I’m all for Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio and Cobie Smulders is in this too!  Keaton is back as the Vulture too!  So many coincidences!

The Lion King.  I know they were never going to do this but it would be great if they let Jon Favreau had his way with the film but just carried over the audio from the 1994 film.  Since there is no human element like Jungle Book, this is just going to be a feast for the eyes.  Plus, they had James Earl Jones come back as Mufasa, so they should have just let everyone come back.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film, and I like how we’re still counting these.  His take on the Charles Mansion instructed murders.  A giant cast for this film!  DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Damian Lewis, Luke Perry, Emile Hirsch, Dakota Fanning, Nicholas Hammond.  Yes, that Nicholas Hammond!  thwip thwip!  I forget he was one of the young children in The Sound of Music.  Apparently he made two films in 2018, The BBQ and Ladies in Black.  Ladies in Black has Julia Ormond as one of the ladies who was Sabrina in the 1995 Sabrina remake.  Which is always high on my list of worthwhile remakes.

Al Pacino is also in the movie.  Lena Dunham and Rumor Willis too.  Damon Herriman is Charles Manson.  Looks like a guy who has been in known films but wasn’t known from said films.  Bruce Dern rounds out the cast.  In nondisclosed roles are – Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, and James Marsden!

August

Hobbs & Shaw.  The Fast and the Furious spinoff.

The New Mutants!  Hopefully this movie doesn’t get pushed back any further!  Several July/August horror films so they can be released on BluRay in October.  I can’t wait to see more of Anya Taylor-Joy as Magik and I really hope Lockheed makes the cut into the film too.  I also want to see them in a variation of the New Mutants classic uniforms.  Since this is going to be the last last FOX X-Men project, I want them to just go crazy and include everything as there will not be a sequel.  Unless there is and we can get Warlock and Karma but time will tell.

Dora the Explorer.  A live action take on the story.  I wonder if the plan is to make one of these every year or have this transition into a live action series.  Benicio del Toro is Swiper, I’ll have to rewatch a scene but it feels like a miscasting but I’m sure he’ll be fine in the role.  She’s entering high school and there’s a plot about rescuing her parents.  You know, like in the cartoon.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  I want to be in so hard with this film!  I love the classic children’s stories so much!  They are barely a page long but the images and the words really stick with you as you read.  I used to reference this as my favorite horror stories back in high school and only a few even remembered it.

Such a great collection and Amazon has it for under $20!

The film is co-written by Guillermo del Toro.  Imagine if this was done like a 30 minute HBO series, roughly animated and retold five stories in those 30 minutes?  That would have been awesome or at least, another take on the story.

Angry Birds Movie 2.  Can you believe they are making a sequel?  I can now that I see the first one made $352.3 million.  That and I’m sure the tie in game makes Rovio Entertainment tons of bank.

Playmobil : The Movie.  Like the Lego Movie but harsher on the eyes is my best guess for the film.  I’m hoping it steals a lot from Lego and has a wealth of references to their playsets.

Especially their Ghostbuster sets!  Walker Dennis got all of these except for the Egon/Ghost and the Terror Dogs sets.  Mostly as I didn’t even know they made a Terror Dogs until right now.  He still wouldn’t have gotten it but still.  The Firehouse, Ecto-1, Stay Puft and Slimer all look amazing.  But the individual figures do not look great on the box.  They are fine and clearly in the Playmobil model but ooof.

A real shame we ended up with two Janines and no Egon but that’s how you sell a boxset.  Walker doesn’t mind at all and he got plenty of people and he’s all for a play house set.

Angel Has Fallen.  A film I was going to scroll pass even though it has Gerald Butler and Morgan Freeman in it.  So first the White House (Olympus) falls, then London fell, now Butler’s character is being framed (of course!).  Classic Jack Bauer nonsense where the one guy who has spent years (or two days?!) saving the country and should have a school in every state named after him, is of course, turned traitor and everyone immediately doesn’t question it.  But this one taking place on Air Force One does catch my attention.  I have yet to see any of these films but I’m a sucker for a airplane hostage film.  I get that from my mom’s love for disaster films.

September

It : Chapter Two.  I’ll watch these eventually.

Downton Abbey.  My wife was interested in this once I told her about it.  The show has been off the air since December 2015.  It doesn’t feel like three years has passed but I also haven’t heard people talk about the show in a while.  Probably at least two years.  I wonder if it was better to do a film than a revised television series.  I guess it was as they went with the feature film route.

October

Gemini Man.  Ang Lee directed.  An aging assassin (Will Smith) has to fight a younger clone of himself, also played by Will Smith?  For some reason the younger clone can predict the older one’s moves when you’ll think it would be the other way around.  So the original older model will have to come up with some new tricks, I supposed.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead is in this, which is what caught my eye.  She’s so great in Scott Pilgrim and one of these days, I’ll pick up Mercy Street again.  I read All About Nina was a good film of hers that came out in 2018.

The Addams Family.  A few horror movies get released in actual October.  This is the kid friendly animated horror movie.

Zombieland Too.  I have to still watch the first one.

The Goldfinch.  Our sole Luke Wilson film of 2019.  Another great actor that I don’t see why he doesn’t get more roles.

November

Terminator 6.  With this film, I’ll be three movies behind on the Terminator series, and one television series.  Linda Hamilton is back, so this one might be the one to watch.

Charlie’s Angels.  This was the other movie that sparked wanting to write this article.  I’m all for Elizabeth Banks directing this film.  I wonder if this is why she didn’t direct Pitch Perfect 3.  The cast on the other hand, ooof.  Kristen Stewart, probably ran out of Twilight money and now needs another success story.  I imagine she’s available for two more films.  Naomi Scott, of Pink Ranger fame in the last Power Rangers film.  She’s also going to be Jasmine in the Aladdin live action adaption, so 2019 could be big for her, she’s on both ends of the year, so that works for her.  Ella Balinska rounds out the trio.  I guess she’s the Lucy Lu of this cast.  I’m sure the other two are fine to great but Kristen Stewart being the star of the film isn’t ideal.  Maybe she’s loosen up these days and is ready to have some fun.  Patrick Stewart is also in this so that could be really neat too.  Seems like this could be a television series if it wasn’t for Naomi Scott blowing up.

I had to check.  Taylor Lautner hasn’t acted since 2016, Run the Tide as his last film and he had a main role in Scream Queen’s second season.

Robert Pattinson has been steadily in films and has four films in post production right now.  I heard Good Time was supposed to put him back on the map.

Sonic the Hedgehog.  We didn’t get Walker the Sonic Lego Dimensions set so he still doesn’t have much connection to the game.  He’ll love it if we got it for him but it doesn’t seem likely.  I like that they kept his red shoes but apparently are giving him two separate eyes, which seems disappointing.  Once the official image comes out, I’ll make up my mind if we’re going to watch it.  It has to be better than the Mario film, right?

Midway.  We way into playing Lego Dimensions again and my initial thought was this was going to be related to the Midway Arcade era of games but that isn’t the case at all.  This movie gives us the sole Aaron Eckhart film appearance of the year.  Not sure why he doesn’t get more work either.  He had four films in 2016 and now this film.  I forgot he was in London Falling and he was in Tom Hank’s Sully film too that year.  The film is about the Battle of Midway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway

A decisive naval battle between America and Japan during World War II.  So it will be pretty intense.  I should check to see if there are any documentaries or docuseries that have dealt with the subject material as Wikipedia doesn’t offer any insight with that.

The film also has Woody Harrelson, Mandy Moore, and Patrick Wilson in it.  I like Wilson in most things I see him in but he’s making those Insidious and Conjuring films.  He’s always working and it is hard to keep up with him. Glee’s Darren Criss is in the film as well and Nick Jonas is back to acting as well.  Jonas is also in that Choas Walking film too.

Margie Claus.  Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy are bringing us a new holiday musical about Mrs. Claus stepping up.

Last Christmas.  One of my favorite Christmas songs and it is being turned into a film now.

Frozen 2.  This is finally happening and I’m sure we’ll be taking Walker Dennis to it.

December

Jumanji 3.  Combining story elements from both previous films and recognizing the sequel was a sequel and not a reboot.

Star Wars : Episode IX.  Working title has been Black Diamond but I’m sure that’s not what will be on the poster.

Cats.  The famous musical will be finally given the movie treatment.  Jennifer Hudson and Taylor Swift are in it so that’s happening.  JHud has been growing on me with the previous season of The Voice so either she’s tone down her antics or I’ve grown to accept it.  I’m sure it is the latter.  The film of course will be a big deal, lots of names in it.  Ian McKellen, James Cordon (of course), Idris Elba, Dame Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson (also back in a big way in 2019), and Jason Derulo. I recall watching some of Cats on VHS back in the day from the Broadway show but I think I lost interest 20 minutes into it.

Super Intelligence.  Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy are also bringing us a Sci-Fi Action Comedy and they are bringing James Cordon along as well.

Little Women.  This film is finally being remade as 1994 was 15 years ago.  1994’s version is when Christian Bale met his wife, Sandra Blažić, who was Winona Ryder’s personal assistant during the film.  That was mine and his main take away from that film.  So it is time to remake that story.  Apparently there was a remake done in 2018 but it doesn’t look as big of a deal but it does have Lea Thompson as Marmee March.  Susan Sarandon was the character in 1994 and Laura Dern is the character in the 2019 edition.  So a rich legacy there.

Call of the Wild.  Jack London’s 1903 classic novel come to life.  Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Omar Sy and Karen Gillan are in it.  Omar Sy was Bishop in X-Men : Days of Future Past.  He was also in Jurassic World as Barry and provided the voice for Lego Dimensions : Jurassic World – it is truly all connected!

. . .

So that’s the 2019 in Film!  Some big films and some small ones and several sequels and remakes.

Happy New Year from your friends at S&FwM!

Uncharted 3

Posted by John Klein III on December 21, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Thanks to UNCHARTED for hosting its own video!

I finally beat Uncharted 3 on Normal!  I had such a great time with the game.  I was a little concern when Elena wasn’t showing up but then she showed up and all was right with the world!

I attempted a Crushing playthrough and got to the fifth chapter when I wasn’t in the mood to continue doing so.

After I beat the game, I went back and got all of the treasures and the Strange Relic.  I was pretty proud of myself for only missing 29 out of the 101 treasures, so that’s not a bad percentage.

While hunting for the treasures, I was attempting to get a couple trophies.  I was attempting to kill 75 enemies in a row without dying, kill 30 enemies in a row with only my side arm, and defeat 50 enemies in a row without auto-reloading.  I must have killed 100 enemies without dying or if I did die, I exited to main menu as soon as I was dead, and selected Continue so that the death didn’t count.  I figure, once I get back to the game, whenever that day will be, and I’ll choose a later chapter and continue on from there.  I was doing pretty well for myself and then at one point, I had to use grenades for a tutorial and I knew that reset both my side arm kill and my reload, so I’ve attempted to do get these trophies twice now.  I bet I was pretty close to the 75th kill but it felt like I had killed at least 100 foes.  From the stats page, it looks like I’ve killed 64 people in a row so that’s either my current number or the highest I’ve gotten before.

So while attempting that, I couldn’t try the kill 10 enemies in a row, alternating with melee attack then kill with a gun.

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/uncharted-3-ps4/guide/

This has been my main guide during my post game adventures.

I also committed to the idea of not getting the platinum.  I don’t have the platinum for the first game but I do have the platinum for the second game.  Maybe I’ll do better during the fourth game.

I figure I’m close to killing 50 enemies by melee attacking from behind.  Then again, I would have thought I was close to killing a number of people with specific weapons at least 30 times but turns out, I wasn’t as close to those numbers as I thought.  I have 25 stealth kills so I just need to do that twice more and I’ll get the trophy.

I must be close to killing 20 enemies by blind firing while in cover too.  I was worried about reloading and losing track so I wasn’t attempting it during my treasure hunting.  I just have to kill one more people using this technique as I have killed 19.  Which makes me want to really turn on the game tonight and just get it done.

I have no idea of how many dumb people I’ve killed by throwing their grenades back at them.  I would have sworn I’ve killed at least 10 but according to the trophy, I haven’t.  Also, I haven’t killed two people with the same thrown back grenade as well.  The game doesn’t keep track of that, or at least, it won’t tell me that number but it clearly keeps track of it somewhere for the trophy management.

I’ve attempted to kill four enemies with one explosion but I didn’t get all four of them in the explosion during Chapter 16.

When I’m hanging off of a ledge, I either don’t think about grenades or I don’t have them.  I just need to kill one more person doing so as I’m at nine of the required ten.  The guide recommends Chapter 12 or Chapter 7 when we first learn the technique.

I know I have killed at least three riot shield enemies so I just need two more for the trophy.  It could be one more as well.  The game doesn’t keep track of this either.  The guide recommends the beginning of Chapter 15 so I might just replay the beginning until that is done.

I have the following weapons that I have to get 30 kills with:

Dragon Sniper – 28 kills
RPG-7 – 14 kills
Mag 5 – 26 kills
PAK-80 – 8 kills

So that’s not bad.  The Dragon Sniper is a weapon I can call upon whenever I want now that I beat the game, so I’ll get that one easily.  RPG-7 is hard to come by and we don’t get too much ammo with it either.  I do enjoy using the Mag 5 when I get my hands on it.  PAK-80 is also a hard one to come by and then I usually only had the guy who was holding it left on the field so I bet I only have three kills with it.

The Dragon Sniper can be found in both Chapter 8 and 12.

The RPG-7 can be found in Chapters 12, 13, 19, and 21.  So that’s two 12s.

The Mag 5 can be found during Chapter 16 and 19.  I know I’ve gotten it in an early chapter as well but jumping in and out of chapters for the treasures might be tripping me up.

The PAK-80 can be found during Chapters 14 and 20.

I attempted the speed run for Chapter 7 and the nine and a half minute mark came and went and I’m not sure I’m good enough to shave three minutes off of my speed.  I should attempt Chapter 16 and 20 as those have 12 and 15 minutes respectfully.  On Easy, it should be a tad better to do.  16 has a long fight in the middle that I’m already anticipating taking forever as it felt like that on Normal.  20 feels doable as it is just racing to the front of a caravan and only killing a few people along the way.

That makes up the normal trophies, the disc came with additional DLC related trophies.  I’m never going to beat the game on Brutal, and from what I’ve read, few have.

I probably can defeat 5 Djinn with a sniper rifle during Chapter 21.  That would work towards my Dragon Sniper goal too.  I’ll probably will try Chapter 21 first to get the Dragon Sniper trophy and this one at the same time.  That’ll be working smarter and harder, which is usually the Klein way.

I’m not sure about completing a speed run as Doughnut Drake in less than 4 hours and 15 minutes.  From what I’ve read, if you don’t do it in one go, the trophies can be a tad glitchy.  Also, how horrible would it be recognize it isn’t going to happen when you are at the three hour mark.  I guess to take full advantage of the opportunity, I should attempt the speed run and the other trophies at the same time.

Now I just have to try to get some of these trophies above and jump into Uncharted 4.

I’ve heard so many great things about Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy (that I will play after 4, eventually).  My only grip is how different Nathan looks from the original trilogy. 

I get that 4 was the first game for the franchise on the PS4 so Naughty Dog took advantage of the more powerful console but he just looks like a completely different person.

I just have a hard time seeing how we got from 3 to 4 and I’ve stared at these faces for a very long time.

Whereas Elena pretty much looks the same, but in higher definition.

But she’s looked great throughout the entire original trilogy for that matter.

. . .

I’ve attempted SOMA and was having a good time, if not an overly challenging time.  The game is fine but there are times where I just feel like I’m missing direction on where to go and the locations are a tad confusing.  I just got to the Theta station.  The story is super interesting but I’m doing that thing I hate and I’m resorting to walkthroughs to get me to the next point.  Once I’ve done that a third time, it kills my buzz for a game.  IGN has a great guide as does Game Pressure.  I’m just disconnected from the game.  I’ll come back to it eventually.

. . .

I’m going to make Heavy Rain my next game I’m going to tackle.

Man of Medan : Dev Diary # 1

Posted by John Klein III on November 29, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Thanks for PlayStation for hosting this video!

My Twitter app did right and told me three separate times that the above Dev Diary had been released.  I accounts I’m following are : @SuperMGames, @TheDarkPictures, and @PlayStation.  Which I didn’t mind at all getting these notification blasts.

The video is Part One of Designing the Ghost Ship and I really enjoyed the interviews.  The video is barely two minutes and twenty five seconds.  Production Designer Lee Robinson, Audio Director Barney Pratt, and Art Director Robert Craig were interviewed.  I’m very eager to see what Part Two looks like.

I’m already committed that when I buy my wife’s Amazon Christmas presents, I’m throwing in my preorder to the game.  I’ll try to caution myself to not get too deep in the weeds but I’m sure they won’t spoil anything in these interviews and teases.

. . .

PlayStation announced the free games for December 2018 –

Arcade_Master22 made a great thread for it over at the PS4 subreddit:

[Video] PlayStation Plus – Free PS4 Games Lineup December 2018
byu/Arcade_Master22 inPS4

I hadn’t heard of any of these prior to the announcement but they sound like pretty fun games.

SOMA is a horror game that I’m pretty excited about.  OnRush came out in June of this year and looks like a racing game that you try to damage the other cars more than try to come into first place, so Walker Dennis should be a big fan of that game.  Iconoclasts is a crossbuy Vita game that can be played on the PS4, it looks like a fun medieval platformer.

I’ve been told Papers, Please is super fun on the Vita and now I regret not making a point of going to the online store and making sure I downloaded all of the pure Vita and PS3 games, I have three months left before the PSN Plus no longer offers PS3 and Vita games to correct that.  I’ve heard great things about the visual novel, SteinsGate, so I’ll download that and while I’m there, I’ll get Steredenn too.

Nice when I copy and pasted his list of the games, it copied over the links, that’s pretty handy for my purposes.

I’m starting to try to start speculation about what PlayStation is going to do about the lack of six free games come March 2019.  I think what they should do is offer four PS4 games, one from each year : 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.  I’m sure, like OnRush, that there might be some games they can offer from 2018 but I figure they can definitely find gems that are popular but interest has started to wane.  It’ll be nice if they could throw in a free VR game every four months, but I’m not sure if there are enough of those to just toss about.  I think it’ll be a truly wonderful idea if, whenever Man of Medan comes out, that month PlayStation offers Inpatient.  They already made Until Dawn : Blood Rush a free game back in December 2017.  Which is nice as whenever we buy a PlayStation VR, we would have all of these games already.  Inpatient is the only Supermassive Game I don’t own but it is hard to justify buying a game for a system I don’t have.

Which is true for these Vita games but since I only downloaded the crossbuy ones, I’ve already played them.  At least I only missed out on a years worth, I guess I could create a list of which ones I missed out on and if I ever get a Vita, I’ll know which games were the free ones.

According to this great website, here are the games I missed out on :

https://www.finder.com.au/gaming/playstation-plus-free-games

Wanted Corp (December 2017)
Furmins (May 2018)
Squares (June 2018)
Atomic Ninjas (June 2018)
Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma (September 2018)
Draw Slasher (August 2018)
Space Hulk (August 2018)

So only seven games, that isn’t too bad.  PlayStation was wise enough to offer several cross buy games and then I was dumb enough not to take the extra step to purchase them through the online store.  It would be nice if the PS4 store would just offer me handy links to download all of the free PSN Plus games and not make me go through a different route to get the other games but it is only one additional step and the problem is fixing itself soon.

Wanted Corp is $11.99

Furmins is $6.49 right now and comes with a bonus world.

Squares is $4.99

Atomic Ninjas is $9.99

Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma is $39.99 and that’s heart breaking!

Draw Slasher is $5.99 and I see there is a Bundle for $5.99 but I can’t tell if the Bundle includes game and whatever else or just added content.  The website could be a tad more informative.

Space Hulk is typically $19.99 but there is a 40% off right now and is only $11.99.

So over all, I’m an idiot to the tune of one hundred dollars!  That Zero Escape game being a full price game upsets me.  That’s why you always add everything to your library.  You don’t need to download everything, just add it to your library and you can download it whenever you like, as long as your membership is active.  If it goes inactive, you are just blocked from the games until your membership is renewed and then you pick right up again with your progress.  Also, membership stacks, so if you buy a 12 month membership and then see a three month membership discounted, those three months just tack on to your 12 months.  Which might be obvious but I didn’t know any of this up to like six months ago.

People complain about the quality of games that are given away but just Vita games alone in 2018, half of the ones that were given away for free, are a hundred dollar value right there and we only pay $60.  Well, during Black Friday, there was a deal for $40 and that was incredible!  Some people bought two and I hope we can be that lucky going forward.  Just never worry about it.

Which is why I’m trying to speculate on what they are going to do come March when the six free games (two for each system, PS4, PS3, and the Vita) go down to two guarantee games.  To justify the $60 membership, I think they should offer two older games (2014/2015) and two newish games (2016/2017/2018) as I’m sure asking for six PS4 games might be asking too much but four seems reasonable.  I started with just three but then I remember 2014 was almost five years ago so there has to be a slew of games that can be given away.

Membership to PSN Plus also gets you the ability to play multiplayer and access to 10 GB worth of cloud storage space.  I use it for the free games and the cloud storage space.  I’ll restate, by March, I felt like I had gotten my $60 worth.

If you are interested in a nice summary of the games, here are two great videos!

Thanks to PlayStationGernade for hosting his video.

I really like how he discusses the reviews and his own experience with the games, if he has any.  Also a nice benefit is that he plays the trailers and game footage too.

Thanks to Platinum Chasers for hosting his video.

What I like about Platinum Chasers, and I only discovered his video for the November 2018 games, is that he strictly talks about the trophies.  I now know SOMA doesn’t offer a platinum and has one missable story trophy.  That’s good to know before launching into the game.  Apparently it is one where you have to talk to someone and if you don’t follow the blue lights to green lights to blue lights once you are outside again (I hope it makes sense within the game).  I usually like to wait until I earned my first trophy in the game, and then I will go check the trophy list on the PS4.  I look at the top one, the two surrounding the first one I earned, and the last one and I try to memorize those ones.  Then usually at some point later that night or in the morning, I’ll check to see if there are any missable ones.

I don’t usually care about if a game has one or not, it is disappointing but turns out, I have several games that don’t offer a platinum.  I’m not even that crazy about getting the platinum or all of the trophies, some games, I just know I’m not going to be able to get several of the trophies and that relieves some stress.

OnRush has some multiplayer trophies so that’s nice to know ahead of time.

Iconoclasts has a trophy that is pretty grindy, so that’s good to know ahead of time.

. . .

I’m at Chapter 17 of Uncharted 3 and I keep thinking of Golden Abyss, the Uncharted game that is for the Vita.  I looked on Amazon and that game is still $70 and it came out in 2012.

Worst, it is $78!

I’m not even sure if it comes with a Vita or not.  I’m pretty sure it doesn’t but there is a Batman : Arkham Origins : Black Gate that is only $25 and that game came out in 2013.  I imagine that boils down to one game being amazing and the other game being Batman Arkham Origins Black Gate.  he he he

So if I ever get a Vita, I want to be able to purchase Golden Abyss too.

$210 makes me hesitate, naturally, but maybe a pawn shop would have it for $100 or something.  Way too much for me to spend on myself and also too much to ask for it as a present.

PlayStation VR, with two games, is still $300 but you can get it for $275 right now.  I’m told it isn’t good for five year olds to use it, much less, it probably wouldn’t fit on his head, so I’m probably a year away from legit being able to buy it.  I just know that Walker Dennis is going to want to play with it and it isn’t fair to have it if he can’t just play around with it.  Plus, it is three hundred dollars!  It is still new technology so that makes sense.  People who own it love it though.  I wished GameStop could offer a demo of it but someone would probably steal it or break it.

. . .

We had gotten Walker Dennis the Nya from Ninjago set for Lego Dimensions

But the box came in pretty rough shape so we just gave it to him.  We don’t have any connection to Ninjago, we tried the first episode of the series on Netflix and it seemed fine enough.  I believe he is getting the Lego Ninjago movie for either his birthday or Christmas, so that should be nice and then we’ll have all three Lego movies too.

Thanks to Glenn Builds Bricks for hosting the in game video of how to build the Samurai Mech.  We like to build it prior to putting it on the gateway so that Walker can play with it when he isn’t playing the game and I don’t have the pressure of trying to build it while the game is active and he wants to be in the World.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/144665-lego-dimensions/faqs/72740/ninjago-world

Thanks legogamesguy for writing a nice FAQ of all of the gold bricks.

We are missing two water ones, one needs a Chima person, which Walker is getting, I forget if it is the eagle or the lion.  I’m pretty sure it isn’t the crocodile guy but it is probably the crocodile guy.  The other water one requires someone to be able to laser gold items underwater, and he isn’t getting the Cyberman so we’re probably not going to be able to get all of the gold bricks.  The third gold brick we couldn’t get requires us to get all of the minikits from the Ninjago level of the main game, Elements of Surprise, the third level.  We are only missing one minikit and it is in the beginning of the level.  We need Chell from Portal 2 which he is getting so that’ll be nice that we’ll be so close to getting all of the gold bricks.

See the Portal wall on the bottom left corner?  That’s where Chell will open a portal and then open a second portal under the middle snake head.  You can barely make out the minikit behind the bars in the photo.  Once we have that minikit, we will quit and save the game, and go back to Ninjago World and activate the mini game there.  Is how I imagine it will play itself out.

Because of this discovery, I finally figured out which gold brick we are missing from the DC World, as there is a gold brick behind completing all ten minikits in the DC World level, Paint the Town Black, that we’re missing a couple minikits in.  It is a work in progress.

We essentially completed the Ninjago world in two play sessions, which was faster than I thought we were going to do it but we’ve been starved for new content in the game.

I wished we were getting Wonder Woman in December as she has mind control abilities and that is one of the missing abilities we need in the DC World and a couple other locations.  Sometimes the game would let us rent characters but not in either of those two situations.

. . .

Happy Tenth Anniversary to my love wife!  We made it to ten years!

Burly Men at Sea

Posted by John Klein III on November 23, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Thanks to PlayStation for hosting the trailer for this game.

Yesterday, I earned my 13th platinum!

This was a fun game, it has 12 different endings, spread out over three story branches.  You get swallowed by a whale, from there, you can either put on barrels, don’t put on barrels, and wait it out with three ladies who were previously swallowed by the whale.  Since the game presents it from left to right, that’s the order I went in.

It wasn’t a bad game, and I enjoyed it for the most part.

There is this one segment where you race against Death that I completely didn’t understand what I was doing so I kept holding down the R2 button and nothing was happening.  Then I read that I was either supposed to click on one of the men or Death.  By then, I was pretty tired and went to bed.

Then I played a few more times and got two or three playthroughs completed.  I think that’s the best way to play this game, maybe do all four storylines of a branch and then come back the next day, or just remember you choose the right cave so next time, you will choose the left cave.

The game can become very repetitive, once you finish an ending, you will come across this sea monster who will tell you that you have finished an ending but she hopes to see you again.  I was hoping when you finished the very last one, she would say a different line of dialogue but she just repeated the different ending line.  That was disappointing.

You will see the sea monster either underwater or above water, pending how you finished an ending, then you will go to a coffee shop and the guy there will essentially say the same thing.  But he will show you a bookcase of all of your endings as you progress through the game.

He will say you have completed the shelf, which was nice.  I’m not sure why they wrote one character with a conclusion line but not the other.

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/burly-men-at-sea/guide/

I didn’t use a guide until the very end, to get my last two trophies.

I was missing Out of the Deepening Darkness and Nice Day.

There is a segment when you are stuck in a maelstrom that I made too much of a game out of, you are supposed to either widen (R2) it so the men go all the way down, or shorten (L2) it and have the men break free of the storm.  I was going back and forth and essentially, kept it open so I ended up doing that playthrough twice as I didn’t realize which I one I did originally.  If I had thought about it, I should have known I didn’t close the storm but I was just ready to get the Platinum at that point.

For the other trophy, there are two seals that turn the men into seals and they say as long as you stick together, you’ll make it to the surface but I didn’t keep them together so they just got carried up to the surface.  It took some doing but I had them stick together and got them to the surface and got the platinum.

It is supposed to take two hours but I was using it mostly as a break from Arkham Knight.

. . .

Last update regarding Arkham Knight, as I’m done with the game.  I attempted some additional AR Challenges but I’m not doing anymore of those, knowing I can’t get even 20 of them, kills my buzz.  I’m pretty sure I barely got ten or 15.

I did beat the game on New Game Plus, and the fights were not all that bad, including the underground tank vs tank fight and I didn’t even have a harder time with Arkham Knight, I avoided his crew, got underneath him, grappled up and did those quick moments and then took out his goons then.  Then repeat that twice more, so all for all, the only real problem I had was the 60 tanks outside of GCPD during the assault.  After like 15 tries, I finally wussed out and stuck to the left side of GCPD (where that breakable wall is), and I would come out, attack, and hide out.  A few tanks and drones came to me, which was nice but for the most part, I would take out five or six tanks, fire a slew of missiles, and let Barbara do her business.  It was a frustrating matter prior to the final time I completed it.  Same for the underground tank fight, that third round took forever!  I was able to acknowledge that the long load time was for me to strategize and to calm down but I just wanted it to reload immediately.  Same for the tank battle, just get me in there, I heard Batman and Oracle counting down from five so many times, it started becoming a tad maddening.

I only got two additional trophies

The Long Halloween, beat New Game Plus
Savage Metal, smash 10 militia transport vehicles off the road without using the immobilizer

I was hoping to get Savage Metal so it was nice to finally get it when I did, it was during one of the AR challenges.  At first, I though Long Halloween was a bronze medal but I see now that it is a silver medal.  I was expecting a gold medal so when it wasn’t gold, I didn’t note what type it was until typing this.  Silver is better, as it does take a lot of time and skill to get through the story.  Besides the tank battle, I wouldn’t even say the game was that much harder.

I could do the side missions but there is no real incentive to do it so I’m pretty much done with it.

. . .

I’ve started Roundabout, I’m not sure how many chapters there are but I’m on the third chapter, with the farm.  It is a fun game thus far.  You play a  revolving limousine driver, Georgio Manos, who is a lady.  Whenever you pick up passengers, you get a fun live action sequence.  The story is fun and the driving mechanics take a minute to get used to them but there is no way I’m going to be able to get everything done in the game.

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/roundabout/guide/

Especially as one of the trophies is unattainable right now but even if was an option, I probably wouldn’t be able to get it.  It is the trophy you receive from completing everything, so of course, that would be the trophy that would be glitched.

The game only has 18 bronze trophies and one silver, so I don’t feel compelled to get everything.

I do want to just go down the list and just get those trophies as it seems pretty doable that way.  I’m definitely going to finish the main story first, and then from there, I’ll start checking the list.  I have to start pressing L3 for the horn as having to do it literally a thousand times doesn’t sound great and it isn’t like the horn does anything in-game.  I’m in the habit now of dying, blasting my horn ten times, and trying again, as I’m not concern at all about the time limit, so I imagine I’ll get that trophy eventually.

There is a trophy where you have to drive for 8 hours without pausing, and I’m not doing that one either so the pressure is off from this game.

. . .

Once I’ve had my fun with Roundabout, I’ll go back to Uncharted 3 Normal play, I’m on the chapter with all of the boats and I need to figure out the proper route through them all.

I was thinking about playing a different game in-between my Normal and Hard mode playthroughs, and I thought Life is Strange would be a wonderful game to put some distance in-between the two games.  But now that I’m typing that, I wonder if I shouldn’t waste the muscle memory and just go back to back playthroughs.  My problem is that the way I’m planning on doing it, I have to play Uncharted 3 three times, Normal, Hard, and Crushing.  Which I’m all for doing (so Crushing doesn’t, well you know, crush my desires), but that is a lot of time to spend with one game.  A great game but still.  I’m just thinking back on how Crushing was like in Uncharted 2 and having a Hard playthrough would get me even better at the game (I’m hoping), so Crushing will feel doable.  I’m all about the self-motivation.

I’m using psnprofiles to check and that is how I did Uncharted 2, Normal (which gave me Easy), Hard, and Crushing.  Apparently it only took me six days to beat the game on Hard.

https://psnprofiles.com/JackalsIII

Whenever I see that giant gap in my gaming timeline, I have to realize that was when Fallout 3 killed my PlayStation 3 with the Yellow Light of Death (YLOD).  Which I’ve learned that Fallout 3 and New Vegas both killed many PS3s back in the day.

. . .

Proving that Supermassive Games has an awesome PR team, they released another trailer for Man of Medan!

Thanks again to PlayStation for hosting this video as well!

Also, thanks to WordPress for it keeps capitalizing the S for me.

Odd that PlayStation is hosting the video as the game is supposed to be on all systems but who knows, I’m a PlayStation guy so that works for me.

Such an amazing trailer and it gave me real Peter Stormare/Dr. Hill feels from Until Dawn.  Which I’m sure is on purpose.

Of course, I didn’t know about the trailer until recently so I changed my Google account to notify me of all news pertaining to Man of Medan so I’ll be even more updated.

Which, also on my own, I found that we can preorder the game through Amazon!

But since it says December 31, 2019, I’m holding off in case my lovely wife wants to buy it for me for either a late Christmas gift or early Birthday present.  I love that it is a thirty dollar game, as it is supposed to be half the length of Until Dawn, so a five hour game, and $60 seems a bit much for that.  I was willing to spend $60 but $30 makes it even more doable.

I was tempted just to download the game straightly from PSN, but I’m still old fashion and I like to have my disc.  I’ve read numerous times that it doesn’t change the download size, and the free games from the PSN has gotten me in the habit and appreciation of just scrolling over and starting a new game.  That’s what happened with Arkham Knight, I beat the game, attempted some AR Challenges and didn’t want to make all the noise of ejecting the disc, opening Uncharted 3’s case and inserting that game into the PS4.  I wouldn’t think it makes a lot of noise at noon but it is so much more quiet at 11:30pm, that it could wake someone up.  So I just went back to Burly Men at Sea and committed to that game.  I also learned how to spell “Burly” as I keep wanting to throw an e in there but that isn’t how you spell it.

Another game I have my eye on is Hellblade : Senua’s Sacrifice, which has been strictly a downloadable game, but might be coming to disc.  Which I guess I’ve been waiting for a disc copy so then I can add it to my wife’s Amazon account so she can maybe buy it for me.  A little harder to do without the hyperlink.  I’m having that issue now with the $40 PSN membership (down from $60).  She used the link but since it isn’t a physical card, she’s bummed that she’s going to have to print it and give it as a lame presentation of a gift.  I told her not to worry about it but I get it too.

Heck, even Batman : Enemy Within, TellTale’s second Batman game (and most likely last), that disc only comes with the first episode and a code for the season pass, so buying the disc is essentially pointless as you are still downloading the rest of the episodes.

Yet, it is another game that I want and it is hard to put aside $30 for a game but these are nice goals to have.

I imagine Man of Medan is more of a placeholder date and it will come out earlier in the year, which is another reason why I don’t want to preorder it now, as I might not have the funds for it when it first comes out.  Not like it will surprise me (I hope) but I rather not get ding for it either.

 

 

Batgirl : A Matter of Family DLC

Posted by John Klein III on November 16, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

I’m so glad I spent an extra week with this game!

Thanks to Batman Arkham for hosting the trailer.

I had such a good time playing as Batgirl, I might even do the AR segments, I won’t get enough for her trophy but I’ll have a good time with it.

There are a couple segments where Batgirl and Robin team up and we get the option to perform duo takedowns, which is fun but then you automatically switch players and I was making a point of switching back to Batgirl immediately.  During the proper game, I would do the same thing, switching from Batman to Robin, Nightwing, or Catwoman, as it is nice to take a break from the Bat.

Another relief with this game was that I was able to get the two missable trophies rather early in the process.  I got Ambush as soon as I could take down thugs with a scare effect and I was making a point of taking down all thugs with hacking for the Weird War Tales, prior to even getting to the Ghost Ship, so that felt good.

I needed a guide to locate three of the Jack-in-the-Boxes as those were really well hidden.  I liked how the teeth moved so I was able to see them from a distance and the balloons were proudly displayed.

The only mini game that gave me any trouble was the strength test as I wasn’t dive bombing well enough to beat it as I was either missing the giant button or not getting enough speed for it.  After a handful of tries, I finally got it done.

. . .

I haven’t made any progress on the 23 Batman AR missions but I made a slaying at the Riddler trophies!  I’m down to the final 25!

Which means I’ve gotten 91.9% of the trophies!

It took some doing to get a picture of the two I’m missing in the Arkham Knight’s HQ.

I’m missing the following trophies:

Bleake Island: 8
Miagani Island: 7
Founders Island: 3
Stagg Airships: 5
Arkham Knight HQ:  2

But the number of trophies I’m missing being 25 makes it a nice number for me to stop at.  At one point, I was pretty proud of how many I got in Founders, thinking I was done when I realized I hadn’t gone back to Miagani and even attempted those.

I have all of the riddles solved, all breakable items, and saved all of the thugs with bombs in their brains.   The ones I’m missing are puzzles that even with the assistance of videos, I’m not fast enough to complete, or there are races that I can’t beat the time for.

I was having a pretty fun time searching for Riddler informants to get more information regarding the Stagg Airships and then I was reminded there were items in the Arkham Knight’s HQ and an underground base as well.

I have three Harley Quinn audio tapes and an Arkham Knight audio tape.  I should check again to see if I unlocked any more since calling it good.

. . .

I’m pretty proud of myself for going back, it was bugging me when I wrote the previous article and leaving so much undone.  I bought some upgrades and I was able to eliminate the watchtowers, I left the one with the four minigun grunts for last and that felt so satisfying taking the last one down.  Once I found I could take out a medic and minigun grunt with a hackable device, that sped that section up.  I still have some upgrades to get, but I don’t know which ones I want, so I’ll probably concentrate on Batmobile upgrades as I know the sections I’m not looking forward to the most are all Batmobile and Arkham Knight related.

The landmines was what I concentrated on first and those tank battles took a while but I got them all taken care of and I located the few road blocks I was missing and take care of those as well.  I saw that aerial drones could be destroyed with the Batmobile so that saved on time having to grapple to tall buildings and hope I landed on all of them.  It took some doing to do it with the Batmobiles as you have to sort of aim below the drone but if you stick with it, you’ll knock them all out.  Some drones hover near tall buildings so it wasn’t that hard to reach them.

I’ve earned the following trophies:

Streets of Gotham, destroy all militia checkpoints
Gates of Gotham, destroying all watchtowers
Dark Allegiances, taking out the Arkham Knight’s replacement, which is what the other three were leading up too.

I attempted what I thought were eight different jumps but I never went further than 100 meters or I only attempted six, as I thought I tried ten of the 16 but clearly I’m not doing it right.

Since I’m going to attempt to get 23 stars in AR Challenges, I’ll attempt to smash 10 militia transport vehicles during the Seek and Destroy AR Challenge.

I took the time to destroy 20 moving cars without using the Batmobile, The Real Deal, which took way longer than I hoped but not as long as I feared.  There are a few street corners that gets lots of traffic.  My secret was pressing square as soon as I thought I was within range which worked more times than not.  When I first attempted it, I was relying on the icon to appear but then I almost missed a few waiting for the icon so I just attempted it.  The hardest part is when the cars are driving faster than I’m gliding and there’s no way to catch up to them by that point.  The best location is to be perched on a street light and just prey on any and all cars that drive under you.

Since I can’t get to Riddler, I can’t get the official Knightfall Protocol started, I sat through what felt like a 15 minute sequence but the trophy never popped.

I’m going to attempt New Game Plus but only focusing on the main quest and burning through as much of it as possible.  I’m imagining the first real hurdle will be the tank battle in front of Ace Chemicals with the Arkham Knight in his helicopter, as that was the first real obstacle I faced in the game, and the first upgrades I had to purchase.  I’m really hoping the Knightmare difficulty isn’t the same as Crushing difficulty in an Uncharted game.  The quick saving mechanic could be a little more forgiving in Arkham Knight.

I’ve been sort of missing Uncharted 3 and Burly Men at Sea, but I kept thinking of typing this article and that encouraged me to keep trying.  I might give this game another week to try the AR missions with both Batman and Batgirl, and I want to do those in the normal game as I can only imagine how much harder those will be in New Game Plus.  Turns out, I do have access to Nightwing, Robin, and Catwoman in certain AR missions so that’s pretty nice.  I might try the Catwoman ones too, just because she has a different fighting style as well.  I’m mostly looking for new experiences before reliving the same experience but facing tougher obstacles.

I was having such a great time, I’m still thinking of getting the Season Pass to get everything but there is talk of me getting the Spider-Man game and I’ll want a PSN card for the additional DLC in that game as those additional DLC packs come with additional costumes and I’ll want all of those when I play.  Shame the DLC costumes are so tied with the DLC achievements so you can’t play with them earlier but that’s what New Game Plus is all about.

. . .

Walker Dennis has been home sick the last couple days so I’ve had a chance to play during naps.  I’ve gotten past the part with Harley Quinn at Panessa Studios.  I’ve been only focusing on the main mission and not doing any of the side missions.  Which I like the idea of Batman just being hyper focus, though he does ask for updates from Alfred on other crimes.

So far it hasn’t been bad.  The only real obstacles I’ve faced has been large group fights where I haven’t paid the best attention and allowed a few wild punches to occur.

The Arkham Knight fight outside of Ace Chemicals wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, I credit my ability to do well with the tank battles and having better aim against rockets as I didn’t even lose that fight.

Large boss fights and the Cobra Tank fights seem to be my downfall.  Those Cobra Tanks, I wish it took half as long to lock in on their weak spot, and I can’t tell if it takes a little longer than in my Normal playthrough or if I have just forgotten how long it takes.  I had to fight five of them before I could make Founders save to use the Batmobile.

So now I’m really not looking forward to the Cloudburst fight with five additional Cobra Tanks and the Arkham Knight’s tank, but that has been one of the three fights I have been dreading.  The other problem with that fight is that, where it takes place in the game, you have to complete it as you can’t just escape and do side missions.  The other two being the Arkham Knight chase sequence and the following fight with him and his goons.

I was only the menu screen and was noticing the WBPlay icon and figured I’ll do whatever little work it was to unlock the Anime Batman costume and the Zurr En Arrah costumes.

The Anime costume came easily and I had to join the WBPlay forum to get the Zurr En Arrah costume, which I keep wanting to type as Zenn.

I don’t care for how broken the Anime ears look, like there is a clear bend in the ears that isn’t great.  I thought Walker Dennis was going to get a bigger kick out of the Zurr En Arrah costume but he didn’t even notice it.

It feels good having two additional costumes though.

I also got one more Riddler trophy in the second Stagg Airship, which I thought I was going to be able too.  It was the one that is under the floor where we have to move the crates about.  For some reason, I can’t move the crates in that same room in my post game but I was hoping to be able to do it during New Game Plus and it totally worked.

Walker Dennis is now finding question marks everywhere, like road signs or whenever he sees a question written out and wants to point out the Riddler has been up to no good again.

I took him to Hallmark to buy my lovely wife a tenth anniversary card (for November 29) and we looked at all of the Hallmark Christmas Ornaments and he wanted pretty much all of them.  I’ll be all for a Frank Gorshin Riddler being on our tree.

We also rewatched Lego Batman and that movie holds up like crazy and I just love how much Bat-mythos are introduced to such a young audience.  Shame Riddler doesn’t show up more in it.

Another shame is that Batman The Animated Series isn’t available to watch without having to pay $1.99 an episode.  I imagine those will be available through the DC Streaming Channel and that might make that worth the investment.

We’re going through a real Batman phase right now.  I should have showed him Mark of the Phantasm as we still own that on DVD, such a great film!

Still no progress on the AR Challenges but I figure I’ll hit a roadblock during New Game Plus and that’s when I’ll pick those up again.

I’ve also looked into buying a replica of a Riddler trophy but Amazon didn’t have anything besides action figures.  I thought that’ll be a fun thing to own.

Batman Arkham Knight

Posted by John Klein III on November 9, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

So after playing the game for a couple weeks, I finally ejected it.  I didn’t get the Platinum but I never was going to get it.

I had a blast with it and I completed most of the side quests.  The one I absolutely wanted to finish was the rescuing the Fire Station 17 crew.  The missions I didn’t complete were:

Riddler’s Revenge
Occupy Gotham – the Militia Watchtowers
Campaign for Disarmament – the Militia explosive devices
Own the Roads – the Militia checkpoints

So the bulk of the Militia storyline and, of course, the Riddler trophies.  After just spending a lot of time destroying the breakable items with the Batmobile, I figured I’ll knock out the riddles that were scattered throughout Gotham.  But after spending a lot of time with guides, I didn’t want to just be going down a website trying to figure out where all of the riddles were.  I also was having a hard time with the trophies requiring me to attempt many of them several times and those are not easy to google either.

The whole time I knew I was never going to get the Platinum, I just wanted to see the main ending and do what I can on my way there.  Not like I wasn’t enjoying myself nor wanting to rush it but after losing so many different fights with the Militia, I got the clear hint that my skills with the game were not up to par.

There is also this disconnect once I know I’m not going to get a Platinum in a game.  I don’t have the stress of trying to make sure I collect everything or that sense that I have to accomplish something to get the full story.

Thanks to HarryNinetyFour for hosting the video.

I watched the above video on how to go under all three bridges, which I attempted, and then watching the video, I was never going to be able to skim the small section between the water and the bridge.  I like the glide, and I do it quite often but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert at it.

I’m glad I didn’t buy the Season Pass, as I was never going to do all of the AR challenges, I was tempted to go for the “Complete 8 challenges” but the lowest number was 16 and that’s just too much for me to fail and fail again.  I have such a backlog of games that I don’t need to suffer through a miserable time for bragging rights.

Typing all of this, I realize I never did do the Batgirl DLC that I paid seven dollars for, so I should pop the game in and attempt to do that, at the very least.  That would have just been a waste of money otherwise.

. . .

At one point, I attempted the Watchtower, Explosive Device, and Road Block missions , several times before making progress in the main storyline.  I just kept getting my arse handed to me.  I recognize that there are several different ones of these so I should try to get a few of them done but knowing I had a hard time with at least one each of these, I was never going to accomplish the overall goal.  One Watchtower has four brutes with giant miniguns, plus two medics, and another fellow.  I could get down to maybe two brutes but then eventually die.  Which would result in yet another minute long load time before having to slow down and attempt it again.  Which I’ll admit I probably don’t have the proper patience for it and I rather it not be easy but it doesn’t have to be devastatingly difficult too.

There were times when I wanted to break my controller during the very long load time, like with the underground race against the Arkham Knight.  I’m not sure why it needed that entire minute to reset everything.  I rather there were times like when you fall in the water in the Batmobile, it just instant loads right back to where I was prior to missing a ledge, but that long wait was a real buzz kill.  Or earlier when I’m trying to take out the hard fought tanks with the one weakness in their back, that sequence took forever and then the Arkham Knight’s own tank battle took a while too.  But I would die in my several attempts to get through the sequence and each time it took so long to load.  I could have really used an auto saved after destroying three of the tanks.  During the underground race, Rocksteady was nice enough to create a save for each time I successfully had the Arkham Knight drive through the mines.  That was nice of them.  They were also nice enough to put auto saves while trying to save Gordon from the Arkham Knight.

I had a suspicion who the Arkham Knight was but I like how I was able to consult many guides and none of those writers ever spoiled it for me, I really appreciated that.

The explosive devices, I enjoy those battles with the Batmobile, but they last way too long!  I can do 32 easily but one of those on Founders Island is 42 tanks and that seems to be 12 or 17 tanks too many for me.  The drones don’t help with that and I really need the option to upgrade the Batmobile one more time and to have my weapons strike a bigger punch.  I should drive around to see if there are other explosive devices that I can accomplish but knowing that there is two more of these battles but with 50 tanks and one with 60 tanks, those are three of them that I’m not going to be able to do.

One of the Road Blocks, I can get down to maybe four of them, but then I’ll die and that was a rare instance where I got down to the last four.  I could use another upgrade to Batman’s health or bigger defenses.  Those electric stunners can be a real pain.  Even though I’m getting a lot of experience and coming up with different strategies, I’m clearly not where I should be.  It’ll be nice if I regained health when I walk away or if I could defeat four of them at a time, run like a coward to GCPD, open a door, save the game, and run back and not have those defeated thugs back on their feet.

I think I do have skill points I could distribute so maybe I’ll fully load up the Batmobile, I believe I only have an 8 point upgrade left, but I have so many gadget and skill upgrades left but typing all of this, I do feel like I have some unfinished business left to do with the game.

. . .

The trophies I don’t have are:

The Platinum, naturally
A Leap of Faith, maybe if the locations to jump from in the Batmobile were clearly marked or if I found more than the same four of them, and if I knew I was successful in my attempt, I would be more inclined to get this one.
Absolution – achieve 69 stars in AR Challenges, even Fortunate Son with 46 stars is out of my range.  Sins of Youth at 23 stars is also not ideal.
Blunt Trauma, it appears I’ve done several of the predator takedowns but I have no idea how to do a vent takedown or a smoke pellet takedown or a perched takedown and it is glitched too so I’m not sure I can do all of them one more time either.
Brutality 101, I can barely do 21 combos if I’m lucky, so trying to string 15 different moves, in a row, is never going to happen.
Gates of Gotham, destroy all militia watchtowers
Gotham After Midnight, glide 400 meters while less than 20 meters, I might attempt this again but I’ve attempted it many times.  Either I must be too high above the ground or I’m not going the distance.
Gotham Underground, I should check my numbers on these and really narrow down which ones are beyond me.
Point of Impact – perform five perfect shots in a row with the Vulcan cannons and not take any damage, which just sounds like a trophy I wouldn’t be able to do already as I’m constantly taking damage.
Run Through the Jungle – the bridge gliding trophy
Savage Metal, smash ten militia transport vehicles, I missed my many opportunities to do this in my proper game but apparently I could try again through one of the AR challenges.
Streets of Gotham, is the militia road block challenges
The Real Deal, I should try, you have to takedown 20 moving cars not using the Batmobile, I know I’ve done it at least twice so 18 more times sounds like a lot.  I may also been mentally combining it with take down ten militia vehicles, thinking it was regular vehicles so that isn’t great.
There is a hidden trophy for beating the game on New Game Plus that I’m also not going to do, and mostly due to the Arkham Knight sequences, I had a hard enough time as it was with them being on normal, so being a higher level of difficulty isn’t ideal.  I guess I could start a new game plus and see how that unfolds or how far I can get into it but it just feels so daunting.

Those Riddler trophies, there are just so many of them!  315 of them, 179 trophies, 40 riddles, 6 bomb rioters, and 90 breakable items.

http://www.powerpyx.com/guides/batman-arkham-knight-trophy-guide.html

Thanks to powerpyx for having that information!

I’ve saved one bomb rioter and broke who knows how many items, probably not 90.  I do like fighting fools and then interrogating the last Riddler informant, that’s a fun mechanic.

I’ve made a lot of progress in Uncharted 3 (I think I’m on chapter 12?) but I’ve stopped playing that to try out Burly Men at Sea as it is a free game in November through the PSN, but I really should get more information on where I’m at in Arkham Knight.

I figured this post was going to be a bunch of excuses but having using a guide for so much of RiME, it just feels like cheating but there are not that many riddles so I should be able to knock out portions of the riddles and who knows, maybe this new resolve would get me a tad further in the game and enhance my rudimentary skills.

Plus, I do like making a list and crossing items off of said list.

I went back to bold the trophy names in that giant list above and I’m probably still not going to be able to accomplish those items but I’ll give it a shot.

I had asked for the copy of the game that included the Harley Quinn DLC but didn’t end up with that copy but I should play the Batgirl one.  Especially after finding it in the Clock Tower, so I will go back to that one.  I read there are some missable trophies so that turned me off from doing it but I’ve also read it is short and if I missed a trophy, I imagine I can do it during my new game plus.  I believe that just creates a second file and it doesn’t override my original one but I’ll put off starting that until I’ve gotten as far as I actually think I can get in the normal playthrough.

Those Arkham Knight sequences though, do not sound ideal.  Like, at all!

Gosh, the more I think about it, I could at least attempt all of the AR Challenges, at least once, per character, and even getting one star every so often, should net me 23 stars.  I really did give up on this way too early.  I guess I just needed a break and a moment to think about it.

I’m also two side quests away from getting the next to true ending of the game, and four away from getting the proper ending of the game, and releasing the Knight Protocol.

. . .

The next day after typing the above, I got me two additional trophies!

Gotham After Midnight, the glide for 400 meters while less than 20 meters off the ground
Seduction of the Gun, achieve 50 critical shots on light tanks

I also started working towards my 23 AR Challenges, I have maybe nine?  I’m not very good at remembering the three objectives.

There is a Riddler trophy that I can’t locate on Miagani Island in the Wayne Tower park garage but I can’t find an entrance way or breakable wall to locate it.  I figured I’ll focus on Miagani Island , as I only had one landmine and two Watchtowers, but I had to find those, I’m still missing a Watchtower but I know now to look for those red lights as those are the sentries guarding the Watchtower.  So I took out the landmine, 36 tanks showed up, I got one critical hit off but not four additional ones in a row without taking damage but then I forgot about the do 50 critical hits trophy, which I didn’t even list above.

Apparently Miagani translate to a Bat tribe.

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Miagani

I thought maybe it was an unknown Batman creator that I hadn’t heard of.

https://www.ign.com/wikis/batman-arkham-knight/Miagani_Island

I should use the above link to really locate the rest of the trophies I’m missing.  I did figure out two bomb rioters so that was nice to do on my own.  One of them required me to use the charge gun as I spent like ten minutes looking for an electrical source for the sonic batarang.

So I spent like an hour and a half just chasing Riddler trophies and breakable items, I was having a hard time just coming across Riddler informants, but then I found two of them but I was too lazy to get out of the Batmobile and I enjoy going into battle mode and electrifying the Informants’ buddies but I got the Informant too.  So that wasn’t ideal.

There is also a riddler puzzle that I got started and I was throwing countless Batarangs at but then I had to start throwing multiple Batarangs and I wasn’t ready for that change up.  So I have to go back and do that one but I’m not thrilled about it.

I should have concentrated on starting with the Batgirl DLC but I wanted to write down the information of what I was missing but then I didn’t even do that.  I thought I had located all of the landmines, Watchtowers, and road blocks but turns out that I hadn’t so now I have to locate all of them so I know which ones I’m missing.

There are two missable trophies with Batgirl that I’m concern I’m going to miss due to my slowness, so I wanted to get back into the flow of things.

I have also taken down two additional cars without the Batmobile, so just 16 more, so that’s going to be a grind as I’ll be gliding down to the road and no cars would be in sight until I was nearly landing.

I need to check which DLC I own and which ones I don’t as I’m looking at the trophy guide:

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/batman-arkham-knight/269336-batman-arkham-knight-trophy-guide-roadmap.html

and I know I own the Batgirl DLC, A Matter of Family, and the 1989 Batmobile and 1966 Batmobile packs but I’m not sure if I own the 2008 Tumbler or the Batman vs Superman Batmobile pack.

The problem with these packs is that I have to achieve 33 stars in AR challenges and there are 23 missions so that’s just one star per mission plus ten more stars and you’re done, which seems like a decent amount of leeway, generous even, but the 23 missions is only if you own all of the other packs which I’m not sure about so I might have to 3 star many of these, which I know won’t be happening.  Of course, there is only the one trophy associated with the DLC too, so it isn’t even like a complete 11 or 22 trophies for the types like me that are only going to barely make it.

I will at least attempt them.

I wished the 66 Batman came with the Batmobile but at least I got 1966 Robin and Catwoman, so that’s nice but also super irritating that I’m missing the other key member.  If I got the $20 season pack, I believe I’ll get all of the suits, including that one, even if it isn’t available to purchase on its own.  Shame the whole world doesn’t get a make over as it’ll be fun to see 66 Riddler and Joker too.  But then it’ll be too jarring when you saw modern Scarecrow, or awesome.  It will for sure be something.

Do I have the Catwoman pack?  I imagine I have not accidently purchased it or that it came with any of the other content that I have purchased.  This is considered an Arkham Episode along with Batgirl’s A Matter of Family, and the Harley Quinn and other episodes.

Since I have Batgirl’s DLC, I also have access to that DLC’s trophies but it also gives me access to her Motherlode trophy, which is to achieve 21 stars in the AR Challenges.  The base game comes with 21 but with all of the DLCs, there are 87 stars, as each additional character gets DLC but I’m not sure about DLC variants like 66 Catwoman and Robin, so who knows, I might just have 25 stars with the base game and Batgirl.  I like the advice of concentrating on combat challenges over predator ones, not only are they easier but are faster too.

I’m also back to wanting to buy the Season of Infamy DLC as I would love to go up against Mad Hatter, the League of Assassins, and Killer Croc.

Okay, I was able to look up the DLC I own through the PlayStation Store:

Crime Fighter Challenge Pack
Batman Inc Skin
2008 Movie Suit
Arkham Knight Batmobile
Batman : Noel suit
Batman v Superman suit and Batmobile
The 52 Skins Pack

There is another Crime Fighter Pack with the DLC characters that I don’t own.  There is another Crime Fighter Pack with Batman, Robin, Nightwing, and Catwoman that I don’t own.  Four total.

The Season of Infamy is $10

Robin’s Flip of a Coin is two dollars, as is Catwoman’s Revenge and Nighwing’s GCPD Lockdown and Harley’s Story.  I forgot Red Hood is considered an additional character, his is two dollars as well.

What I want is called the PlayStation 4 Exclusive Pack, comes with 66 Batman and a red Batman and red Batmobile.

My copy of the game didn’t come with the free Scarecrow Nightmares, which I missed from the Asylum game.

Does seem like a real value for $20, especially if I want to throw down half of that just for Season of Infamy, so maybe I’m back to wanting everything, it’ll be nice just to have that buffer.  It would also be nice if the PlayStation Store was an app.  The website doesn’t try to sell me on anything so clicking one of the items doesn’t really go further into what comes with the purchase.

. . .

Okay, last night I disposed of all of the landmines, so that felt pretty great!

I went around the map trying to locate all of the other missing items.  I can’t find the sole road block I’m missing in Miagani, and I’m missing the third Watchtower there as well.  I am also missing my third Watchtower in Bleake and I have two road blocks there that I do know about.  I had six Watchtowers in Founder but while finding one, I just took it out as it was just five dudes and I landed to close to them.  So I have five left and I only located four of them, and I have one road block left.

While compiling the list, I noticed I have the four drones on each of the three islands and it turns out, we can destroy those so I’ll add that to the list, even though it isn’t a trophy, I’ll like the skies to be as clear as possible.

This weekend, I’ll finally tackle the Batgirl DLC.

I got a few more Riddler trophies, I solved three riddles, and saved two more bomb rioters so I’m glad I went back to the game.

PlayStation Classic

Posted by John Klein III on November 7, 2018
Posted in: Games, Websites. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

My wife and I have been wanting to buy the NES Classic Edition and the Super NES Classic Edition consoles.  Then news came out that PlayStation was going to make a classic version of the PlayStation One, which I was super excited about.

Like most items of this nature, what games are put on it is the huge selling point.  My mind wandered with what could be included.  I figured Chrono Cross wouldn’t be or Chrono Trigger via a redone Final Fantasy Chronicles.  Crash Bandicoot being on there would make it an easier sell for my wife, though we own the trilogy through the PS4.  I adored Legend of Mana, still the only Mana game I’ve played, and thought that could have a chance of being part of the set as it is (or was?) a popular franchise for a time.  Looking over the list of PlayStation One games over at Wikipedia, I’m starting to think I hardly played the system but I recall spending hours upon months with it so I’m not sure.  Maybe I just played six games and moved onto the PS2?

I enjoyed Pac-Man World, that series got better with future games.

PaRappa the Rapper, I thought had a great chance of being included as I still like to kick, punch, chop, and maintain a funky flow.

I attempted Paradise Eve but wasn’t good at it or there was a disconnect.

Was there only one Marvel vs. Street Fighter game?  I played that one a bunch too, but I figured the rights to the characters would make that a hard one to get released now.  I played that one and X-Men vs. Street Fighter, I thought there were at least two games.

We got one of the Rampage games, not sure which one, most likely, World Tour.

There we go.  Activision’s first two Spider-Man games, self-titled and Enter Electro,  With the success of Sony’s latest Spider-Man game, I thought there was a slight chance the first Spider-Man game could make it onto the list.  I was searching the web for any news about Spider-Man when it was coming out, I remember being in a summer camp program and just using all of the limited computer time searching information on Spider-Man.  Of course, no one else wanted to talk about it or even knew the game was coming out.  It was that game and the first X-Men movie that was stealing all of my focus.

My other great love of PlayStation One was Star Ocean : Second Story, that’s the game I legit played so much!  I was a huge RPG fan back in the day and I devoted so much time playing it and drinking Apple Juice and eating Yogurt covered Raisins.  Which was my go to gaming food for a long time.

I tried Tomb Raider but couldn’t get into it for whatever reason, same for Twisted Metal.

I did have the WWE games that came out in a yearly fashion.  They got a lot better with time.

There was also a snow racing game but googling that did not get me any results that matched my memory.

. . .

The first five games they announced, of the 20, were:

Final Fantasy VII – which makes sense as people love that game.  I picked Chrono Trigger so I have no real connection to Final Fantasy.  Even when I got VI with Chrono Trigger, I attempted it but didn’t get too far into it.
Jumping Flash – I never heard of it
Ridge Racer Type 4 – It sounded familiar
Tekken 3 – Which I did attempt but I’m not much of a fighter gamer.
Wild Arms – Which my buddy Greg was way into and it looked interesting being a Western RPG, like a cowboy western and not Western world.

So a Final Fantasy game I wouldn’t mind playing after decades of hype and Wild Arms were the big sellers to me.  But the other three seem questionable, so it wasn’t like someone would google “Top 25 PlayStation One games” and just assume those were the 20 games.

https://www.i4u.com/2018/09/129523/playstation-classic-games-list

Then we got the entire list and it seems like a head scratcher to me.

Battle Arena Toshinden – Never heard of it
Cool Boarders 2 – Never heard of it
Destruction Derby – Never heard of it
Grand Theft Auto – which I’ll be super interested in attempting but I worry it’ll be like playing Fallout 1 after playing 3, it is a completely different game with different mechanics and interface.
Intelligent Qube – Never heard of it
Metal Gear Solid – I tried my best to get into IV but just couldn’t, and I tried for hours.  The first one is pretty legendary though.
Mr. Driller – Never heard of it
Oddworld : Abe’s Oddysee – sounds cute, just from the title.
Rayman – I have Raymen Legends for the PS4 but haven’t even attempted it, but it’ll be nice to play the game that launched the franchise.
Resident Evil Director’s Cut – I’m not much of a zombie guy and I haven’t played any Resident Evil game but playing the first one, that is also pretty legendary, would be nice.
Revelations : Persona – Persona sounds familiar
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo – Never heard of, that title could use some work
Syphon Filter – Never heard of it
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six – I’m not much of a fighter, racing, nor first person shooter gamer, but here’s another game I wouldn’t mind playing the beginning of another mega franchise.

So out of 20 games, maybe seven games I want to play?  For $100, that might be too much.  None of them are games I have played myself so that isn’t great.  I like how, for the general public, there is something there for everybody.  Five marque names, a fighting game, a racing game, a zombie game, and a platformer, those are not bad.  Heck, there even is an RPG so that satisfies an itch I’ve been having lately.

So we’ll probably be passing on this, until it is like a $50 item.

Goliath listed their top 25 games for the PlayStation One:

https://www.goliath.com/gaming/the-top-10-playstation-1-games-of-all-time/

Chrono Cross came in at 24 (so the list is pretty questionable 😀 )

Spider-Man at 22 might actually confirm the questionability of the list.

It does list games that are on the Classic so that’s good to read a paragraph regarding games like Oddword : Abe’s Oddysee.

PaRappa the Rapper at 15.

Spryo not being on there goes back to my theory about remakes not making the list.  Tony Hawk goes towards my other theory that it might be licensing issues.

Nice that two of the top five games, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII made it the PlayStation One Classic.

. . .

Now, the NES Classic is up our alleys.  This does not disappoint at all!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NES_Classic_Edition

Castlevania
Donkey Kong
Double Dragon II : The Revenge (I’m not sure if I’ve played this one)
Dr. Mario
ExciteBike (which I used to put quarters into at the arcade but I’m not sure I actually owned it on the Nintendo)
Kirby’s Adventure
Mario Bros.
Mega Man 2
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden
Pac-Man
Super Contra
Super Mario Bros 1, 2, and 3
Legend of Zelda 1 and 2

I mean, just putting all of the Mario games and both Zelda games probably made this a guarantee seller.  I’ve seen it at Shopko for $50 and twice have passed up on it but now that a copy can sit on the shelf for a week, I may have to throw down fifty and pick it up.  I would definitely be getting my moneys worth from it.

Then the American exclusive ones got:

Castlevania II : Simon’s Quest
Donkey Kong Jr.
Final Fantasy (which we bought at a yard sell and I totally used the previous guy’s game file to first experience the game with)
Kid Icarus
Punch-Out!!
Tecmo Bowl

With a few other games I’ve heard of but would eventually play too.

. . .

With the huge success of the Nintendo Classic, of course they would make a Super Nintendo Classic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_Classic_Edition

My only thought was, if they put Chrono Trigger on it, I’ll throw down the pre-order money, as soon as they teased it.  So me not owning it right now, should be a sign that Chrono Trigger didn’t make the list, which is a super shame!  As it would work perfectly on this as opposed to the PlayStation Classic (I would imagine they would improve on the load times, right?).

It still has some pretty great games on it though!

Donkey Kong Country
Final Fantasy VI (they were so close!)
Kirby Super Star
Legend of Zelda : Link to the Past
Mega Man X
Secret of Mana (I would love to play the first game of this franchise, not like I was lost with Legend of Mana)
Star Fox 1 and 2
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario RPG
Super Mario World 1 & 2
Super Metroid

Again, just being able to play the Mario games, plus one Zelda game makes this a must buy.  I’m not the biggest Link guy, as I chose Mario back in the day, I still chose Mario, we’re a Mario house – minus us owning a Switch but one of these days.

Then the American exclusive got the following games:

EarthBound
Kirby’s Dream Course
Street Fighter II Turbo : Hyper Fighting
Super Castlevania IV
Super Punch Out!!

Which I adored EarthBound and would gladly play that game again.

I don’t have much connection with the N64, as I had moved to PlayStation after that and have pretty much stuck with them every since.  We’ll supplement it with a Wii and WiiPlus, and I’ll accept an XBOX 360 as a gift, and have plans for the Switch, but I’m a Sony guy.  Nintendo is great for family games though.  I do like how they are still committed to platformers.

We owned like three games for the N64, and one of those was a WWE game, No Mercy, and I pretty much only played that.  We didn’t have Mario 64 or GoldenEye but I was able to play GoldenEye at a friend’s house.  I played Mario 64 on the DS and that wasn’t ideal.  I’m not sure if it was a problem with the port or if that’s how the actual game was, so I missed out on that.  I also missed out on Mario Sunshine too.

If they made a PlayStation 2 Classic, I’ll be curious about that but with the let down of what the One is like, I’m not sure.

. . .

Has anyone had any luck with the Sega Genesis Classic Game Console?

Usually it goes for like $20 or something which makes it seem like it’ll be a pretty cheap product but for that price, it would be worth a risk.  Plus, just keep the receipt and return it if it isn’t quality.

81 games and two controllers sounds pretty good.  You get the Sonic games and Mortal Kombat seems to be the main games of interest.

Atari also has put out a similarly priced product with 105 games that I’ve seen around plenty of times.  Pit Fall and Maze Craze would be the two games I want on it but I’m not sure if Maze Craze is on the list.  It might not be as if it was, we would own it but maybe it is.  My wife is a huge fan of those two games.

My wife got me the Ms. Pac-Man plug n play for Christmas and that was pretty nice.  I think she spent too much on it and I wished it had a couple other games included as I turn it on, I play my four (five?) lives and then turn it off, so it can be a fun five minutes or twenty minutes, then I just lose interest or want to google a gif of the cut scenes moments.

I have been tempted to buy the Ms. Pac-Man game for the PS4 but I have a hard enough time pulling the trigger on buying a $20 or $25 PSN card but if I can ever justify it (or be gifted it), I’ll throw four dollars towards Ms. Pac-Man.

. . .

I was going to buy a PSN card to get the season pass for Batman Arkham Knight but now I’m back to wanting to buy a few smaller things like the Ninja Turtle pack and Batman in LittleBigPlanet 3 and keep some money in the wallet for other small purchases.  Or just buy the story and costume content and not the additional challenges in Arkham Knight but the costumes come with challenges so I should just buy the season pass.  What I need is a $50 one and buy everything I want and not even have an issue with anything.  Oh, the goals I have!

RiME

Posted by John Klein III on November 2, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

This morning, we got my 12th platinum by successfully doing everything in RiME!

My concern about looking up YouTube walkthroughs turned out to be legit as once I looked up one video, I essentially just played around with the video as I watched it.

Huge thanks to YouTubers Sylvain LUCE and PS4Trophies for their most excellent videos.

Thanks to Sylvain LUCE’s above video for Chapter 2.

Without this video, I never would have gotten through to the rest of the game.  I got stuck right at the 23 minute mark, as I just couldn’t figure out where the box thing was.  Turns out, you had to climb a wall, hide in a shadow, or the eagle would get you.  Then I just watched the video all the way through.

I successfully got through Chapter 3 on my own.  I figured I’ll go back and get the collectibles later.  But the entire time, I was thinking I should just play and watch a video at the same time, as that would save a bunch of time.  I had the thought so much that I did that for Chapter 4.

Thanks again to Sylvain LUCE for his video.

The title states (with trophies) but unless I completely missed all of them, he didn’t make a great deal of getting the bonus trophies like Racing and From the Sky to the Abyss, but that’s only two trophies but the video is amazing for all of the collectibles.  To the point that I got the From the Sky to the Abyss, was struggling with getting to all of the fox statues, did three of the five of them, I was tempted to get the above video reloaded but realized I had all of the collectibles and quit the chapter.  I wasn’t going to do the last 30 minutes when I just needed to wake up, load Chapter 5 and get the Platinum.  I waited until Walker Dennis was up and let him actually do all of the walking for Chapter 5 and five minutes later, we got the platinum.

So Sylvain LUCE did a great job with the extended walkthroughs.

PS4Trophies does a great job of just showing you just enough to not spoil the game but to give you the context to catch up to where you should be for the video.

Walker Dennis helped a lot with the first chapter, if you are looking for a game an almost five year old can play, RiME is up there with most LEGO games.  He had trouble with the more complicated puzzles but I did too so the game is pretty challenging even for a 36 year old.

This game has a lot of humor in the first chapter that I missed, there are also no real beacons of where to go next, but the map isn’t crazy large (unless you are looking for collectibles).

I would highly recommend just playing the game, you probably won’t stumble across as many collectibles on your first playthrough but I really enjoyed the sense of accomplishment of figuring out puzzles on my own.  But I also didn’t miss it during my complete walkthrough of Chapter 4.

That Chapter 2 though, seriously kicked my butt, it definitely has the most complexity of the four chapters.  Four’s maze of finding the five fox lights (like the first chapter, in a nice bookend), gives it a run for its money but that’s mostly because it is just columns and dark and rainy, whereas Two has lots of side options you can get lost in.

Honestly, without these two videos, I would be lost, and again, there was a moment when PS4Trophies made a jump cut that I had to pause and figure out how he got there.  Apparently, there is a structure with a sun emblem on the side of a wall, that without that clue, I couldn’t progress to the final section of the chapter.  It is at the 12:20 time in the above video.  I must have ran past it so many times, thinking I knew what to look for but clearly not.

Someone on reddit told me the other two chapters are easy in comparison and they were not lying about that.

Thanks to PS4Trophies for the Chapter 3 video.

Turns out, his name is Brian and has a Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/PS4Trophies

His website is:

ps4trophiesgaming.com

Which I thought was the website I go to for most of my walkthroughs of other games but that would be:

playstationtrophies.org

Which wasn’t as similar of an address as I thought it was.  PSNProfiles has spectacular walkthroughs as well.

He’s also on Twitter so I figured I’ll follow him there.  I’m also trying to remember what other game I would have watched one of his videos for but RiME is pretty much the first game I actually watched a video for the sole purpose of assisting me with trophies.  Usually, I’ll watch game footage for games I want to play or am playing but don’t have time to play the game myself but just to watch someone else play.

So I didn’t really need his video for Chapter 4 except for the Racing trophy, which I figured I already knew how to do but it was the Sky to the Abyss trophy that eluded me.  That happens at the 4:56 mark.

After seeing so many photo mode photos from the newest Spider-Man game, I’ve started taking screenshots of my games too.  I need to upload them but I was worried about uploading photos that could be considered spoilers.  But then why take the photos?  I’m not sure.

RiME was a free game through the PSN way back in February 2018 and it has taken me essentially eight months to do this but really, a matter of weeks is all it takes and that is if you are taking your time with the game.

That true ending of RiME is super heartbreaking, especially after seeing the third person in the keyhole storylines and I’m going to have to look at those again in one sitting (thanks to the Extra menu).  That poor man, I would create an elaborate mindscape too!

. . .

I’m still making my way through Batman Arkham Knight, probably just exclusively focus on that game until I finally beat it.  I’m still committed to not doing that much in terms of trophy hunting, I’ll see what I get and what I’m close to getting, but these games like this and Grand Theft Auto, I’m never going to get the platinum for.  I’ll say the same thing for Fallout games but I’m three for three on those so there’s something different about that.  I imagine the lack of collectibles and lack of side combat challenges helps with that.

I completely messed up on my third Firefly mission and instead of chasing him all over and pressing the eject button and tackling him in the air, I pressed eject super early and flew/glided right past him, like a real dummy.  So I’m hopefully I get a second attempt to catch him.

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/batman-arkham-knight/guide/

According to PlaystationTrophies.org, there are no missable trophies, so I’ll probably have to load the game and hope that it resets after 24 hours.  That was one of the other reasons I pushed RiME back up on the list, I was going to wait until the weekend but I was hoping playing another game, would reset the ingame clock of Arkham Knight and Firefly would be there when I get back.  Hopefully by the time I get the game started tonight, it is back.

I believe this is the fire station on Founders’ Island that I missed Firefly at.  It looks almost close enough that Ghostbuster loving Walker thought it was the Ghostbuster station.

Which he’s been on the look out ever since I made the mistake of showing him that the fire station is in the PS4 Spider-Man game.

Thanks to Ghostbusters News for hosting the above video!

Super fun that they threw a picture of a ghost on the back of the building.  As the building really is Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8’s proper fire station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehouse,_Hook_%26_Ladder_Company_8

But as a guy who will most likely never go to New York City, it will forever be the Ghostbusters house in my mind.

So that’s nice that fire stations all share similarities in both life and in fiction.

Someone did point out since Sony owns both the Ghostbusters franchise and the Spider-Man game is a Sony PlayStation exclusive, they could have easily made it the official Ghostbusters building and it wouldn’t have required too much negotiations.  I imagine Sony wanted to honor the brave firefighters who call the building their home and threw in the ghost graffiti as a nod that they know other people know the building as something else.

Real Ghostbusters : Samhain

Posted by John Klein III on October 31, 2018
Posted in: Cartoon, Fun With YouTube, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

By far my favorite entity the Real Ghostbusters went up against is without a doubt,

Samhain!

Something about his character design is simply amazing or that the episodes were top notch.

His first appearance was in the episode, When Halloween Was Forever:

https://dailymotion.com/video/x6q7pw1

Thanks to The Flintstones over at Dailymotion for hosting the video (I expect it’ll come down eventually).  You might also have to refresh this page to get the link to work.

When Halloween Was Forever is from Season 1, Episode 8

He only gets one additional spotlight episode, Halloween II 1/2

https://dailymotion.com/video/x3rlq19

Thanks to Cartoons TV, also of Dailymotion, for hosting this episode.  It probably has a higher chance of staying up as they at least modified it enough to avoid copyright, I’m not sure.

Halloween II 1/2 is from Season 3, Episode 7.

Here is a great wiki page about Samhain

https://ghostbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Samhain

Every year, I wish I had the Time Life The Real Ghostbusters gorgeous series set.

Luckily, Netflix is currently streaming the episodes so I’m definitely going to watch these episodes tonight.

. . .

When Halloween Was Forever is written by J. Michael Straczynski, who had a awesome run on Amazing Spider-Man, until he didn’t.

I still love that Spider-Man : Last Stand storyline that was hinted at in Amazing Spider-Man 58 (the second volume) and continued in Amazing Spider-Man 500 (parts two and three of an arc celebrating Peter’s birthday and Spider-Man’s 500th issue of Amazing).

It is barely a handful of pages but it captured my imagination so much!

I’m so happy that Insomniac made it available as an alternate costume in their PS4 exclusive video game.

Thanks to YouTuber sebanatic5000 for hosting the video.

Thanks to kwingsletsplay for a great lore video.  Like he says in the video, there isn’t a lot of information with the suit and storyline but it looks sensational!

I do wish his mask was the same shade of red, as it just looks too bright next to that collar.

Here is a link in case you want to know more about him.

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Peter_Parker_(Earth-312500)

That John Romita Jr. art is so spectacular!

. . .

Pamela Hickey and Dennys McCoy wrote Halloween II 1/2, and I want to say one of these episodes aired during prime time which I remember feeling like a big deal.

If you want to learn more about the festival, Samhain, Wikipedia of course has an excellent article about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

. . .

Apparently there is a group of people trying to move Halloween to be the last Saturday of October, which I get but I also rather we not change a tradition that is hundreds of years old just for commercial purposes.

Sure, I remember being a child and wishing Halloween could be longer or trying to manage it and negotiating so I can stay up a little longer on a school night.  That was part of the charm.  Plus, I also vividly remember just sitting around all Saturday, just waiting for nighttime so we finally go out and start looking for houses with lit porch lights.

I also grew up on an Army base (Yuma Proving Grounds, represent!), so we were pretty limited in activities.

Nowadays, Walker Dennis has a full social card and we go or try to go to every Halloween event Helena has to offer, which is a bunch.  Every Saturday, there has been an excuse to put him in his super cute Rookie Ghostbuster costume and take him to an event.  As an adult, I just like being able to get my dollars’ worth.

 

He’s going to be so cute and he loves that cloth proton pack.  Not bad for $35, it is a tad thin for Montana fall but he’ll wear some layers under it.

We took him to an event and there was a teenage boy in a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man costume and Walker Dennis immediately went for his proton gun and the teenager was nice enough to play along.  It was super cute.

We’re way into Ghostbusters now.

. . .

The other cool thing about Samhain on The Real Ghostbusters, is that he would just appear in the containment unit from time to time, as it costs nothing to just throw him into the back of a scene.  Might as well reuse a design than pay someone to create a new ghost for one second of screen time.

He appears in the following videos

Xmas Marks the Spot (1×13)
The Devil to Pay (2×58)
Partners in Slime (5×6)
Jailbusters (5×13)
Deja Boo (6×10)

He also has a storyline in the first four issues of the second volume of IDW’s Ghostbusters run.

So like an hour and a half of content there.

. . .

For my adult plans for Halloween, I’m hoping to play another round (or at least start) a new Until Dawn playthrough but this time, making Matt the aggressor in his relationship with Emily, instead of her bossing him around.  I just want to experience something new with what will be my six or seventh playthrough.

http://until-dawn.wikia.com/wiki/Matt

I still can’t believe Jordan Fisher was Matt in Until Dawn, how did that come about?  He’s such a big deal right now.

I sort of want to do this so that Matt and Emily would be the duo survivors.  Which I know I can do by having Mike not catch up to Jessica (though I hate getting Jessica killed), Ashley locking Chris out, Ashley following the sound.  Then I’m not sure how the final sequence will play out, have Sam successfully complete the Don’t Move sections until Emily gets out, then have Sam fail one, she dies, and Mike sacrifices himself to set up cabin ablaze?  That’s how I envision it having to be.

I know that I have to get Matt to refuse to want to go the radio tower, so Emily would give him the flare gun and he won’t use it as I want him to use it in killing a wendigo.

I’m reading up and there is a way to get Matt to describe both the wendigo and the Psycho but does he ever meet the Psycho?  I know he knows of him and is aware he exists as Chris and Ashley tell him and Emily about Josh’s death.  That must be what Matt is repeating, and how the cable car was tampered with.

I sort of then want to do a playthrough where only Mike and Jess survive the night as well.

I guess there might be a way to get only Chris and Ashley to be the only ones left too.

I wouldn’t mind trying to do a playthrough where only Josh lives too.

I definitely still think about Until Dawn and how much fun I had and there’s so many different end game possibilities.

. . .

Have a safe and happy Halloween!  It is supposed to rain and snow this evening.

 

Gwyneth Paltrow

Posted by John Klein III on October 26, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Retrospective. Tagged: . Leave a comment

I was joking the other day about how much sleep Gwyneth Paltrow got during her conscious coupling to Chris Martin.  I’m simply not a fan of Coldplay.  Do they offer sleeping bags at their live concerts or do you have to bring your own?  I was joking about how she probably respected him as an artist and chose to never listen to his music, in fear that it wasn’t good and she would have to live her days pretending to like it.  But from occasion, she would hear this lovely sound that worked as a nice white noise machine and she would sleep and sleep.

Coldplay tried to trick me into liking them with that Superhero song of theirs that they teamed up with Chainsmokers to create “Something Like This.”  At first, I enjoyed all the superhero references but there was this nagging suspicion that something wasn’t right.  Especially as I was getting sleepy as I was driving and I figured out that it must be Coldplay but with an undercurrent of something else.

I’ve been tempted to start a Coldplay channel on Pandora and just downvote only Coldplay songs, but I doubt that would translate to my other Pandora channels.

From there, I started taking Paltrow for granted, saying how she was only really amazing in Duets, a film I really really enjoy.  She was also great in Bounce and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Within that same moment, I remembered she was in Se7en and got “what’s in the box?” stuck in my head for a while after that.  Ironically so.

She’s really been in some amazing films and I did a deep dive into her career to see if she’s usually great or am I just allowing her early films to set a tone for her that she doesn’t even adhere to.

Here is the link to her Wikipedia page, if you want to follow along.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwyneth_Paltrow

She’s Young Wendy in Hook.  Good film, it is mostly a piece of trivia as she’s not really doing much in it besides one scene, right?

Seven, great film!  She’s quiet in it and almost forgettable.

I want to watch Pallbearer, as I sort of like David Schwimmer and I am still confused why he didn’t get more work after Kissing a Fool.  Such a great film and he plays against type in it so that should have shown his range.  He must have been so confused after that film came out and didn’t get more roles like that.  Shame Jason Lee doesn’t work more these days too.  I get that actors peak and then find roles that they want to do but I want more Jason Lee in my life.  Did Mili Avital ever do anything else?  She’s literally just the girl in that film, the object of desire but I liked what she did with what she had to work with.  Some Law and Order episodes, that’s a shame but what I expected to see.

Back to Paltrow.

Emma, a film I haven’t seen but like Great Expectations, starts forming this picture I have of her of being in artsy films I have no interest in.  I recall watching Great Expectations with my arms crossed, demanding the film entertain me.  Which is no way to watch a movie.  I also was not entertained and meant to read the book but never got around to it.

In-between those films, she did Sliding Doors.  A film that I felt lost during but came back around to it a few years ago and it really stands out.  Big Love’s Jeanne Tripplehorn is in it and that was fun to discover.  That film does a lot with its 99 minutes.  Maybe I came to it a few minutes in on HBO or something and missed the crucial set up.  It is a great concept for a movie and it moves too.

Shakespeare in Love, which I enjoyed at the time.  She’s good in it.  I recall mostly watching it just for Ben Affleck as I’m still a pretty big fan of his.  I should watch it again as most of that cast is amazing.  I didn’t even know Colin Firth was in it.  Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, and Tom Wilkinson (what does he do between this film and Batman Begins?).  Rupertr Everett is in it too, whatever happened to him?  Dame Judi Dench is in it as well though I never quite was impress with her like I’m supposed to be.  Her legend is based off of her stage work, right?  She hasn’t really done many films that I’ve seen.  She’s good as M in those James Bond films and I’m glad they carried her over from the Brosnan films to the Craig films.

I should watch Chocolat (especially after I Love You Man, I just never got around to it), Iris has Kate Winslet in it.  Notes on a Scandal is one of the first films I recall her being in that was not Bond related.  A trailer that was pretty good in regards to telling me I wouldn’t want to watch it.  Yep, those are the films.  I guess I view her as the British Meryl Streep, she does films that just don’t either appeal to me or cross over into my sphere, so I never even hear of them.

Wilkinson does Rush Hour and Shakespeare in Love in 1998.  Ride with the Devil, a fun western film with Tobey Maguire and Jewel (why she doesn’t act more, is beyond me) by Ang Lee.  I should watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I like that cast, I just never got around to it.  Then he’s in Batman Begins.

Everett wins all of our hearts with My Best Friend’s Wedding, so now I’m going to have “Say a Little Prayer For You” stuck in my head for the rest of the day.  Sometimes these deep dives have consequences.  He commits career suicide with Inspector Gadget.  I attempted A Midsummer Night’s Dream and has started doing voice work which makes sense, he has a good voice.  So yeah, Inspector Gadget buried him, which didn’t necessarily happened to Matthew Broderick.  Hey, Michelle Trachtenberg was Penny in that film, she escaped it.  Though Broderick has paid his dues and his kids needed to go to college so he shouldn’t be punished for doing a money film.

Thanks to Musicloverslove for hosting that video, oh and you are welcome.

I chose Affleck over Matt Damon so I didn’t watch Talented Mr. Ripley.  I like to pick sides.

2000 is the year I start really liking her.  She is in Bounce with Affleck and she steals my heart in Duets.  Well, that entire movie steals my heart.  Duets and Mumford, are two films that I’ve probably seen the most.

Her father, Bruce Paltrow, directed Duets.

She’s in The Anniversary Party which is really Alan Cummings and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s film as they produced, directed, wrote, and star in it.  There is a slew of actors in the film so it is pretty great if you like to play the Kevin Bacon Separation game.

If you are curious, her Bacon Number is 2, she’s in Mortdecai with Johnny Depp and he’s in Black Mass with Kevin Bacon.  Two films I have yet to see.  I didn’t even know Bacon was in Black Mass.

I saw Shallow Hal, and that might be the film that soured me on Jack Black.  He wasn’t the guaranteed good time after that film.  It also isn’t very good.

I definitely don’t see every Wes Anderson film (not sure why not) so I have yet to watch Royal Tenenbaums.  I like the casts of his films, so I’m not sure why I don’t seek them out more.  I want to see Bottle Rocket as I’m a huge Luke Wilson fan.  I saw Rushmore and didn’t get the big deal about it.  I seemed to be the only one in my circle who liked Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, well me and my friend, Jay.  I didn’t care for Fantastic Mr. Fox, we rented it and it was the third movie of the weekend so maybe I was just burned out.  I wanted to watch Moonrise Kingdom.

She has a cameo in Austin Powers in Goldmember, but I don’t recall her at all.

So I start losing track of her around 2002.  I thought about watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, though I’ve never been a big fan of Jude Law or Angelina Jolie.  I was under the impression I wasn’t a big Paltrow fan too, so triple whammy but it looks like I’ve enjoyed the bulk of her films, thus far.

I had no interest in View from the Top.

I hadn’t heard of Possession but it has Aaron Eckhart so I should at least see if it is available.

I type all of that but I’m not watching any movie any time soon.

I keep having this memory of a commentary track where she makes a joke about who Brad Pitt was dating and she said she doesn’t know but she knows she was 1994 to 1997, and she said the dates real fast.  It was pretty funny.  Maybe it was an interview as I just Googled “Gwyneth Paltrow commentary track” and didn’t get any hits on the first three pages.

I haven’t heard of Sylvia and it doesn’t sound like a film I would be into.

I skipped three films of her earlier work.  Hard Eight, I haven’t heard of.  It has John C. Reilly and Samuel L. Jackson in it.  I haven’t heard of Hush.  She was in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, A Perfect Murder.  That film has Michael Douglas and Viggo Mortensen so no rush to see that one either.

I hadn’t heard of Proof but it has Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hope Davis in it.  I’ll watch any film with Hope Davis!  I just haven’t seen enough of her films.  Such an amazing actress.

She was in Infamous, the other Capote film of 2006.  Toby Jones is Capote and the film has Hope Davis, these two would appear in Wayward Pines a decade later.  Sandra Bullock and Daniel Craig are in it along with Jeff Daniels and Sigourney Weaver.  I’ll add it to the list.

Running with Scissors is a film I wanted to watch as the story sounded very interesting.  She reteams with Joseph Fiennes from Shakespeare in Love.  Brian Cox and Alec Baldwin are in it.  So is Patrick Wilson, and there was a time I was watching all of his films, then he exploded on the scene and now it is hard to keep up.  Gabrielle Union is in it and I like her, though I don’t see nearly enough of her films.  Kirstin Chenoweth I can take or leave.

Her brother wrote and directed The Good Night, which I also hadn’t heard of.  Good cast though with Martin Freeman, Danny DeVito and Simon Pegg.  Penelope Cruz is in it as well but I don’t have any real connection with her.

2008 gives us Paltrow as Pepper Potts in Iron Man.  There is that great quote, that I can’t find right now, about Robert Downey Jr. convincing her to be in Iron Man so that she can be in movies people actually want to watch.  I’m sure if I can find the proper quote, I could search for it easier. I found a slew of quotes about him saying Paltrow and Jon Favreau will be in Avengers 4.

She was in Two Lovers with Joaquin Phoenix and Elias Koteas, in what I can only imagine in a small role.  Though from the Wikipedia page, it looks like he’s pretty involved in the final act.  I should seek this out too, though Joaquin doesn’t do much for me since Quills.

Iron Man 2, she’s also good in.

I was tempted to see Country Strong, her third film where she sings in after Duets and Infamous.  Tim McGraw with no hat on.  Tobey Maguire co-produced the film as his daughter’s nanny wrote and directed the film.  Trivia!

I recall the advertising for Contagion, a film my mother would love, I’m sure, as she’s a real nut for disaster films.  The film has a stellar cast – Marion Cotillard, who I have to see more films of hers, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Elliot Gould, Bryan Cranston, and Demetri Martin!  What?!  This reminds me that I wanted to watch Taking Woodstock, which was directed by Ang Lee, that guy is pretty well rounded.

I haven’t heard of Thanks for Sharing, but it has Pink in it so my wife will be interested in that.  The film also stars Mark Ruffalo, Tim Robbins, and Josh Gad.  I guess Paltrow has started making smaller films or I’m even more out of touch with films than I thought I was.

She was great, of course, in The Avengers and Iron Man 3.

At least she had more to do in Iron Man 3.

Mortdecai seemed like a joke of a film and then it got lousy reviews but what else was it going to be?  A sleeper hit?  It does feature Ewan McGregor and Olivia Munn, two people I enjoy watching.  Paul Bettany and Jeff Goldblum too.

Her appearing in Spider-Man Homecoming was a very nice surprised.  I’m glad she came back to the franchise.  Hopefully she’s here to stay or at least, gets a nice payday for a few hours work.

According to Wikipedia, she is slated to be in Infinity War and Avengers 4(Ever? Maybe?)  That seems to be the popular theory.  Time Travel or Fantastic Four related, which would be spectacular!

. . .

Television wise, she’s hosting Saturday Night Live once with Ceeloo Green for Season 36 Episode 12.  My Nintendos!  Apparently she has been on four other episodes, probably friends of those hosts.

She did a voice on the Clerks Animated Series, which seems familiar.

She was on five episodes of Glee, as Holly Holliday, which I think I saw one of those episodes.  I really had to stop with that show once Rachel and Kurt kept flying (or driving?) back from New York to Ohio and I looked it up and there is no way college students can afford that trip as often as they did it.  It is ten hours one way, so they will show up in Ohio for two scenes, be back in New York by night time, during the same day.  It was beyond belief!  Plus, screw those two coming back and not leaving the show.  Argh!  I’m over it.

For those interested, Season 2, Episodes 7 (The Substitute), 15 (Sexy), & 17 (A Night of Neglect), and Season Five, Episodes 12 (100) & 13 (New Directions).

She’s friends with Ryan Murphy and he thought she should showcase her singing prior to Country Strong coming out.

Thanks to vinsanity70 for hosting the entire episode!

She was on The Marriage Ref, a show my wife and I really enjoyed.  She was on the episode with Jerry Seinfeld and Greg Giraldo.  Tom Papa was great as the host too.  Season Two wasn’t as good though.

Thanks to George R. Whitaker for hosting the entire episode of this series!

Her episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was nice too.

. . .

She has won so many awards and nominated for even more that she has her own Awards Wikipedia page!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Gwyneth_Paltrow

Thanks to the Oscars for hosting their own video!  Not bad getting the award from Jack Nicholson.

So she’s an Best Actress Oscar winner for Shakespeare in Love, for her role as Viola De Lesseps, which I don’t think usually precedes her name, for whatever reason.  It isn’t like there is a time limit on how long one can use that.  It isn’t also like her career took a twist like poor Cuba Gooding Jr. either.  She also won a Golden Globe for that role.   She was nominated for her role in Proof for another Golden Globe.

For the Oscar, she beat out Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, Fernanda Montenegro for Central Station, Maryl Streep for One True Thing, and Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie.  Count Blanchett as another actress I’m not drawn towards. Those are four films I also never heard of.  I know Watson from Equilibrium and I’m probably one of a handful of people who kept getting Emily Watson and Emma Watson confused, always thinking Emily was doing very well for herself, getting all types of roles and attention but it was Emma.

Shakespeare in Love won the most awards at the 71st Academy Awards with seven.  Tough competition against Saving Private Ryan.  1998 was a good year for films.  Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture, Steven Spielberg won Best Director for Saving Private Ryan, Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress, Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard won for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Stephen Warbeck won Best Original Musical or Comedy Score.  Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Ron Judkins won Best Sound for Saving Private Ryan.  Martin Childs won Best Art Direction and Jill Quertier won Best Set Decoration for Shakespeare in Love.  Janusz Kaminski won Best Cinematography for Saving Private Ryan.  Sandy Powell won Best Costume Design for Shakespeare in Love.  Lastly, Michael Kahn won Best Film Editing for Saving Private Ryan.  Poor Joseph Fiennes wasn’t even nominated for Best Actor and Geoffrey Rush was at least nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Montenegro is a Brazilian actress, who I’ve ever only seen in Love in the Time of Cholera.

Thanks to AwardsShowNetwork for hosting this video.  Getting the award from Tim Robbins isn’t too bad.  He was in Howard the Duck and Antitrust!  Two fun guilty pleasure films.  Of course, with Shawshank Redemption and Bull Durham, one can afford to have a little fun later in his career.  And earlier, he’s in the pilot episode of Moonlighting too!

Tad awkward with the thanks to the Weinsteins, but that’ll be true for an entire decade of awards though.

The Golden Globe win is a tad more impressive as it is in Musical or Comedy and I’ve seen more of those films.  She beat out Cameron Diaz from There’s Something About Mary, Jane Horrocks in Little Voice, Christina Ricci in The Opposite of Sex and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail.  I’ve attempted Opposite of Sex and it didn’t grab me.  I passed on You’ve Got Mail as I barely watched Sleepless in Seattle.  I’ve never even heard of Little Voice nor Jane Horrocks until right now.  She was in The Witches and Memphis Belle, so I’ve seen two of her films.

Shakespeare in Love also won Best Film – Musical or Comedy.  I can’t believe Patch Adams was nominated, I hate that movie so much!  Bulworth, Mask of Zorro and There’s Something About Mary are pretty great.  People don’t seem to talk about Bulworth enough, except for how it introduced people to Halle Berry.  A British film, Still Crazy, was also nominated.

It also won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay over Bulworth, Happiness, Saving Private Ryan and The Truman Show.  Storywise, Truman Show got robbed!  At least Truman Show earned Jim Carrey Best Actor – Drama, it won Best Music, Original Score by Burkhard Dallwitz and Philip Glass.  Ed Harris won Best Supporting Actor.

Michael Caine won Best Actor – Musical or Comedy for his role in Little Voice, maybe I should try to watch that movie.

Paltrow lost her second chance at a Golden Globe in 2006 to Felicity Huffman in Transamerica.  That year, Maria Bello was nominated for A History of Violence, Charlize Theron for North Country and Ziyi Zhang for Memoris of a Geisha.  I have only seen A History of Violence out of those five and Bello should have won as she’s amazing in that film.  Funny enough, Dench would love to Reese Witherspoon so both Paltrow and Dench were nominated the same years twice, and both won their awards and lost awards together eight years later.  Dench was in Mrs. Henderson Presents and Witherspoon was in Walk the Line, two more films I haven’t seen.  I’ll be tempted by Walk the Line.

I didn’t know John Williams did the score for Memoirs of a Geisha, he won Best Original Score.  Walk the Line won several awards that year as did Brokeback Mountain.  2006 was also the year I started dating my wife as I watched Capote and Brokeback Mountain with her, on the same day so that we could enjoy the Oscars later that day.

George Clooney won Supporting Actor for his role in Syriana, the first Batman to win a major award.  Christian Bale would eventually win an Oscar for The Fighter, so Clooney isn’t alone anymore.

Thanks to rp58641 for hosting this video.  Allison Brie looks amazing, as always!

In 2011, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for Glee.  Apparently Wikipedia keeps these awards under the Creative Arts Emmy Awards and not the Primetime Emmy Award, took me some doing to locate her win at the 63rd Emmys.  She was officially nominated for the Substitute episode of Glee.  She beat out Elizabeth Banks from 30 Rock, Kristin Chenoweth, also on Glee, Tina Fey from various characters on SNL (lame?), Dot-Marie Jone also from Glee and Cloris Leachman from Raising Hope.  There was a time when Glee was pretty beloved.

For her Oustanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role at the 5th Screen Actors Guide Awards, she beat out the same group from the Oscars – which makes sense – but instead of Montenegro, they swapped in her Golden Globe competitor, Jane Horrocks.

Sort of cool to be fifth person to win an award.  Jodie Foster won the first one for Nell – a film I still think about from time to time when Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson have to figure out exactly why Nell talks the way she does.  After that, it just makes sense and they can start communicating with her.  Jeremy Davis is in that film too.

Susan Sarandon won for Dead Man Walking, I’m not a huge fan of Sean Penn’s so I didn’t watch it.  Frances McDormand won for Fargo, a film I tried to watch when I was younger but couldn’t get into it.  Helena Hunt won for As Good as It Gets.

Paltrow also won for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, which is an award that I like.  I hate to be in a film that wins that award but not counted towards the cast of the film.  That’ll be awkward!  Her co-winners were – Ben Affleck, Simon Callow, Jim Carter, Martin Clunes, Judi Dench, Joseph Fiennes, Daniel Brocklebank, Colin Firth, Paltrow (of course), Geoffrey Rush, Antony Sher and Imelda Staunton.

That award wasn’t given out at the first ceremony.  So Apollo 13’s cast won the first one at the second ceremony, next The Birdcage, then The Full Monty and Shakespeare in Love.  I should watch Full Monty again as that cast has gone on to do more work.  I still don’t have much interest in Birdcage.

In 2013, she was nominated for Best Actress in an Action Movie for the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards for her work in Iron Man 3, losing out to Sandra Bullock in Gravity, which is Gravity even considered an action movie?  I guess if you are a film critic.  Jennifer Lawrence one the very first one for the first Hunger Games, the year prior.  Bullock beat out Jennifer Lawrence (Catching Fire) and Evangeline Lilly for Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug.  Did Lilly do much in the second Hobbit film?  I barely remember her in it but that was a long film.

MTV Movie Awards

She won 1998 MTV Movie Awards for Best Kiss with Joseph Fiennes from Shakespeare in Love.  Back when I used to swear only by the MTV Movie Awards, they nominated the films I actually watched.  Then I just stopped watching movies, a kid will do that you during the very few years.  She lost to Cameron Diaz for There’s Something About Mary in the Best Female Performance.  Diaz also beat out Jennifer Love Hewitt in Can’t Hardly Wait, a much better film than those two movies.  Jennifer Lopez was nominated for Out of Sight, which I couldn’t get more than 30 minutes in a few years ago when I attempted the film.  They were on a highway and life happened and I haven’t gone back.  Liv Tyler was also nominated for Armageddon.  Fiennes was nominated for Breakthrough Male but lost to James Van Der Beek for Varsity Blues.  Which I can’t blame MTV for making that choice.  Shakespeare in Love lost Best Picture to There’s Something About Mary.

Paltrow and Fiennes beat out Neve Campbell, Matt Dillon and Denise Richards in Wild Things, which is pretty amazing.  George Clooney and Jennifer Lope in Out of Sight.  Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary, which is surprising as that film sort of swept the awards that night.  I’m surprised to be reminded that Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain was nominated for Lolita, way to go MTV!  Seems very bold of a choice for a nomination.

At the 2001 MTV Movie Awards, she and Ben Affleck lost Best Kiss in Bounce to Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas’ kiss in Save the Last Dance.  I can’t blame MTV for that one.  Also nominated was Jon Abrahams and Anna Faris in Scary Movie, which I don’t recall a kiss in that film.  I mostly remember Tori Spelling (I almost wrote Donna Spelling, 90210 represent!) and the ghost bed scene from that film and the buckets of sperm for Anna Faris in the freezer scene.  David Cross in the wheelchair.  Was the first one the one where the guy puts his football gear on the girlfriend?  That was a funny gag too.

Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt’s kiss in Cast Away (at the end, maybe?) and Anthony Hopkins and Julianna Moore’s kiss in Hannibal were nominated as well.  I don’t recall either kiss.

That was Bounce’s only nomination.

Sean Patrick Thomas also won Breakthrough Male for Save the Last Dance.  I did like how the sequel to that film had a girl from the streets trying out for ballet, the only real move a sequel could do.

At the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, Paltrow and Jude Law lost their best kiss in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow to Rachel McAdams and The Gos’ kiss in The Notebook.  That one, I won’t even question, he built her a house!  Though Natalie Portman and Zach Braff’s kiss in the rain in Garden State is pretty up there but kissing in the year of the Notebook, why even bother.  Jennifer Garner and Natassia Malthe kissed in Elektra and I don’t recall that at all.  Must have been in a middle of a fight, probably in the woods.  That movie isn’t very good.  Elisha Cuthbert and Emile Hirsch rounded out the kissing in The Girl Next Door.

Teen Choice Awards

In 1998, she was nominated for Choice Actress – Film and Sexiest Love Scene for the Teen Choice Awards.  That second one seems odd for a category for the Teen Choice Awards.  Looking at the nominations, I should be watching these awards as they also seem to be nominating the films I watched.

Freddie Prinze Jr. won Choice Movie : Actor, for She’s All That, beating out Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ryan Phillipe, Giovanni Ribisi, Adam Sandler, Will Smith AND Ben Stiller!  That’s my boy!

Jennifer Love Hewitt won Choice Movie : Actress for I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.  1998 was the first year for the award show.  So even more impressive for these two actors to win the very first awards.  She beat out Drew Barrymore, Claire Danes, Cameron Diaz, Kirsten Dunst, Paltrow, Christina Ricci, and Reese Witherspoon.

Sarah Michelle Gellar won Choice Movie : Villain for Cruel Intentions.  James Van Der Beek won Choice Movie : Breakout Star for Varsity Blues.  Cruel Intentions won Choice Movie : Drama and There’s Something About Mary beat Shakespeare in Love for Choice Movie : Comedy.  City of Angels won Best Soundtrack.

Rachael Leigh Cook and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s love scene in She’s All That won Love Scene – which I don’t even remember a love scene in that film, I guess it means falling in love and not sex scene?  Probably as Drew Barrymore and Michael Vartan were nominated for Never Been Kiss.  Sex scene for Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.  Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Ill.  Elizabeth Hurley and Matthew McConaughey in EDtv.  Love scene for Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You.  Sex scene for Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon in Cruel Intentions.

Sarah Michelle Gellar also won TV Actress for Buffy.

FPJr won Hottie Male and Hewitt won Hottie Female.

Stone Cold Steve Austin won Professional Wrestler over Kurt Angle, Goldberg, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, THe Rock, Sable and The Undertaker.

In 2001, Sarah Michelle Gellar won Best Actress : Comedy for Daphne Blake in Scooby Doo.  FPJr was nominated for Fred Jones but lost to Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 2.  Gellar beat out Paltrow from Shallow Hal, which makes sense.  She also beat out Selma Blair and Cameron Diaz in The Sweet Thing (canceling each other out?), Anne Hathaway in Princess Diaires, Christina Ricci in Pumpkin (a decent film), Winona Ryder in Mr. Deeds and Reese Witherspoon in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Instead of Love Scene, they broke it up (maybe?) and went with Movie : Chemistry and Movie : Liplock.  The Spider-Man kiss won Liplock (and Movie: Action/Drama and Actor  : Action/Drama for Tobey Maguire).  Mandy Moore and Shane West won Movie : Chemistry for A Walk to Remember.

Somehow Mr. Deeds won Movie : Summer.

Gellar kept her reign of Best TV Actress Action/Drama for Buffy.  Tom Welling won Breakout TV Star Male for Smallville.  Alyson Hannigan won TV Sidekick for Willow on Buffy.

In 2008, Rachel Bilson won Movie : Action Actress for Jumper.  Paltrow lost, as Pepper Potts doesn’t do anything actiony in the first Iron Man film.  Abigail Breslin in Nim’s Island, Diane Kruger in National Treasure : Book of Secrets, and Christina Ricci in Speed Racer were all nominated.  I haven’t seen Speed Racer but I don’t recall Ricci being in that film.

In 2010, Zoe Saldana won Movie Actress : Sci-Fi for Avatar.  Paltrow was nominated for Iron Man 2, probably lost due to Iron Man 2 not being Sci-Fi.  Scarlett Johansson was also nominated for Iron Man 2.  Rachel McAdams was nominated for Time Traveler’s Wife, a film I still want to see and Amanda Peet was nominated for 2012.

In 2013, Anne Hathaway won Movie Actress : Action for being Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises.  Paltrow was again nominated for Potts (three for three!) in Iron Man 3.  Jessica Biel in Total Recall, Adrianne Palicki for GI Joe : Retaliation and Rachel Weisz in The Bourne Legacy were also nominated.  Iron Man 3 did beat out Dark Knight Rises for Movie : Action, which is a bold choice.  Downey beat out Bale for Movie Actor : Action.  So Poor Paltrow probably thought she was a lock for her category.  Twilight Saga : Breaking Dawn Part 2 ends Twilight’s like five year reign over Teen Choice and MTV Movie awards, is probably when I stopped watching these things.

Paltrow lost the 1998 Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress to Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth.  New to the category that year was Holly Hunter in Living Out Loud and Ally Sheedy in High Art, two more films I haven’t seen or heard about.

She lost the 1998 Empire Award Best Actress to Cate Blanchett, but she was nominated for Sliding Doors, as it is a British award.  Peter Howitt did win Best British Director for Sliding Doors.  Sliding Doors lost to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels for Best British Film.  Odd how they did Best Category and then Best British Category.  Like, one sort of trumps the other.  Here is the best overall actress, but if we are narrowing it down to only British people, then she is the clear winner.  Helen Hunt was also nominated for As Good as It Gets, Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight and Pam Grier in Jackie Brown.  Awkwardly, her Award Wikipedia page states she won that award but the page for the 4th Empire Award states Blanchett won.

She won the 3rd Florida Film Critics Circle Award Best Actress for both Shakespeare in Love and Sliding Doors.  Ian McKellen won Best Actor for both Apt Pupil and Gods and Monsters.  Shakespeare in Love won Best Film and Best Screenplay for Norman and Stoppard.  Christina Ricci won Best Supporting Actress for Buffalo ’66, Opposite of Sex and Pecker.  So the FFCC really appreciates hard workers.

Impressively, Paltrow has only ever been nominated once for a Razzie, 2015’s Worst Actress for Mortdecai.  Dakota Johnson earned Worst Actress for Fifty Shades of Grey, sharing it with Jamie Dorman #NotMyChristian.  Those two also share Worst Screen Combo.  Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four took Worst Picture and Worst Director.  Shades also won Worst Screenplay, I didn’t hate that movie but it different wasn’t the sexy romp it advertised itself to be.  All four “Fantastics” were nominated for Combo.  Katherine Heigl in home Sweet Hell, Mila Kunis in Jupiter Ascending and Jennifer Lopez in Boy Next Door were also nominated for Worst Actress.  I saw the Honest Trailer for Jupiter Ascending and Boy Next Door wasn’t a horrible film.  Lopez still has it going on.  Grey won five of the six categories it was nominated in.  I misread it originally, Fantastic Four AND Fifty Shades of Grey won Worst Picture.  Ouch!  Sam Taylor-Johnson dodged the only bullet not winning director for Grey.

Paltrow lost the 1998 Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress to Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth, so Blanchett may have thought she had a chance at the Oscar.  She was Paltrow’s main rival that year.  Emily Watson was also nominated for Hilary and Jackie.

People’s Choice Awards

I used to be a big fan of the People’s Choice Awards too until Twilight dominated the awards for half of a decade.

In 2013, for Iron Man 3, Paltrow lost both Favorite Actress and Duo.  Iron Man 3 did win Favorite Movie and Action Movie.  I do like how they use “Favorite” instead of “Best” as that is what it really is.  I also like how being nominated in one category doesn’t eliminate you from another.  That’s how Sandra Bullock won Favorite Movie Actress, Favorite Dramatic Movie Actress, and Favorite Comedic Movie Actress.  Paltrow was only nominated in Favorite Movie Actress, as was Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson and Melissa McCarthy.

Somehow Sandra Bullock & George Clooney won Favorite Movie Duo, though I’m pretty sure they are only together for like ten minutes.  Clearly people saw Bullock’s name and just checked her name whenever they saw it.  Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. were nominated for Iron Man 3.  Jennifer Aniston & Jason Sudeikis for We’re the Millers.  Bullock beat out herself and McCarthy in The Heat, one would think there would be vote split action but I guess not.  Chris Pine & Zachary Quinto in Star Trek Into Darkness round out that category.

Shoot, Iron Man 3 won two of its three categories, only losing the one Paltrow was in.  That doesn’t seem right.

In something I find highly suspicious, at the 1998 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards, they awarded Paltrow a “Special Award” for both Sliding Doors and Shakespeare in Love.  I did a quick Google search and no one seems to have written about how silly that seems.  They gave Best Actress to Susan Sarandon for Stepmom, so who knows what is happening there.  Madden did win Best Director for Shakespeare in Love and Best Screenplay – Original went to Peter Howitt for Sliding Doors.  I wouldn’t mind learning more about that Special Award decision.  I like Sarandon in Stepmom but it seems so out of left field.

Satellite Awards

Satellite is one of those words I can never spell.

In 1996, Paltrow won the very first Best Actress – Musical or Comedy for Emma.  So funny to think about these awards that are relatively new.  She beat out Glenn Close in 101 Dalmatians, Shirley MacLaine in Mrs. Winterbourne, Heather Matarazzo in Welcome to the Dollhouse, and Bette Midler in First Wives Club.  Which seems super impressive for her first big role.  Matarazzo was in Scream 3, Princess diaries, Sorority Boys, Saved!, Princess Dairies 2: Royal Engagement.  She’s Hathaway’s friend in those movies.  So she must have been super young in Welcome to the Dollhouse, which I’ve heard of.

In 1998, she lost Best Actress – Musical or Comedy to Christina Ricci in Opposite of Sex.  Ricci was having a banner year that year too.  Horrocks, Hunter and Meg Ryan were You’ve Got Mail were all nominated.  Shakespeare in Love did win Best Film – Musical or Comedy.  But lost a slew of awards!  Truman Show’s Dennis Gassner won Best Art Direction, Thin Red Line’s John Toll won Best Cinematography, Elizabeth’s Alexandra Byrne won Best Costume Design, Thin Red Line’s Terrence Malick won Best Director, Saving Private Ryan’s Michael Kahn won Best Editing, Pleasantville’s Gary Ross won Best Screenplay – Original, and Bill Murray in Rushmore won Best Supporting Actor – Musical or Comedy over Geoffrey Rush.

In 2002, she lost Best Supporting Actress – Musical or Comedy for Royal Tenenbaums, to Maggie Smith in Gosford Park.  Which I still haven’t seen but that’s another good cast.  Anjelica Huston was also nominated from Royal Tenenbaums, so maybe there was some vote splitting.  BUT!  Helen Mirren and Emily Watson were both nominated for Gosford Park, so Smith must have been very good in it.  If I was a betting man, I would have thought all of the vote splitting would have worked in Miriam Shor’s favor for Heding and the Angry Inch.  I’m not familiar with her or the film.

In 2010, Country Strong’s title track lost Best Original Song to Burlesque’s You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me.  127 Hours’ If I Rise, Alice in Wonderland’s Alice, and two songs from Twilight Saga : Eclipse were also nominated, What Part of Forever and Eclipse.

Saturn Awards

The Saturn Awards is another award show I should follow but is it even aired on television?  I thought Spike had them for a time.

In 1995, she was nominated for Se7en for Best Supporting Actress, but lost to Bonnie Hunt in Jumanji.  I do like Bonnie Hunt.  Also nominated was Illeana Douglas in To Die For, Salma Hayek for Desperado, Jennifer Jason Leigh in Dolores Claiborne, and Juliette Lewis in From Dusk till Dawn.  Dolores Claiborne is the only film of that group that I haven’t heard of or watched.  Actually, I know of Desperado but I haven’t’ seen that one, now that I think about it.  It is an adaption of a Stephen King work and in 2013, Time Magazine named it in the top ten best adaptions of his.  Kathy Bates is in it too.  It came in seventh.

In 2008, Paltrow was nominated for Best Actress for Iron Man but lost to Angelina Jolie in Changeling.  Which are two different performances in vastly different films.  Cate Blanchett rears her head again in Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  Maggie Gyllenhaal in Dark Knight, Julianne Moore in Blindness, Emily Mortimer in Transsiberian were also nominated.  I should check out Transsiberian as I do enjoy Mortimer.  Woody Harrelson, Ben Kingsley and Kate Mara are in it.  I do like Kate Mara too!

. . .

So, just based off of Emma and Great Expectations, I have her as this fancy dancy actress in my mind and she clearly doesn’t deserve to be written off like that.  I’m glad I went down this deep dive with her career.  I have a few movies I need to check out.

For my own benefit, those films would be –

Pallbearer

Talented Mr. Ripley

Anniversary Party, as I don’t remember her being in it.

Royal Tenenbaums

Thanks to Rohan for hosting the video.

Austin Powers in Goldmember – scratch that, she’s in the parody Tom Cruise movie with Cruise as Powers and Paltrow as the girl.  Dixie Normous, get it?

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, maybe?

Proof

Running with Scissors

Contagion

Thanks for Sharing, is on Hulu right now

Country Strong

Two Lovers

That could be a decent couple weeks of films.  I’ll definitey seek out Pallbearer, Proof, and Contagion, if I have to narrow it down to three films.