I think people lose sight of what a movie is supposed to be about. It's entertainment. Often times, entertainment is not perfect. A musical track may not be mixed the way you wanted it, maybe the bass was a little light or you didn't like how they buried the background singer. Someone else may have a different opinion on both points. Movies are in the same boat but usually, when we don't like a film, we don't watch it again and again. 

Some films are once and done. Some dramas, difficult biopics, whatever the case may be (I'm thinking something like Syriana but don't necessarily mean to pick on that). Others get people coming back to catch things they missed or simply because they enjoyed the experience so much the first time, they couldn't resist. A great example would be any Star Wars movies. When people dislike them, they still revisit 3+ times. And yet some would call the prequels failures.

Those who have visited my sites or seen my work probably know how I feel about the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’ve written a few big ass blog entries discussing it in various points of the game’s evolution. They called me at home for the game I wanted (at least, the initial release). The story telling elements and choices were fantastic.
 
They gave us eight games we could play with our friends. Each of those eight has a light and dark path. Gender and species plays a part in your experience and there are enough nuances to give you MANY hours of entertainment. I’ll provide some crazy examples below of my time playing the game before diving into the latest expansion: Knights of the Eternal Throne.

Halloween is my favorite holiday and so we celebrate it pretty much throughout October. I take my real vacation at this time and we try to watch 1 movie for every day of the month. These are horror movies only on the list I'm about to share. We saw other stuff in October (like Jack Reacher and I watched a couple of things one off) but we focused on random, scary stuff.

Please note that our rating system is not based on great movies. We rated them according to the cheesy horror flicks that they were. A 5 star movie for us does not hold the same place in my heart as say, Inception but in the scheme of what we saw, it means we were thoroughly entertained. The exception to that rule is Extraordinary Tales, which I absolutely LOVED.

Anyway, what you're about to see below is the movie we watched, the rating we gave it (1 to 5) and what Rotten Tomatoes gave it. Enjoy!

Star Trek got a reboot a while back with new actors playing 'iconic' roles from the Original Series aired in the sixties. Why did I need to start this review like that? Because the writers sure didn't remember where their work came from. Or at least, they forgot where some of their characters came from.

While the supporting roles of Doctor McCoy, Sulu, Chekov and Scotty are left relatively untouched, key other characters are dramatically impacted by the modern day. As if they need to apologize for what Gene Roddenberry created, they have nerfed Captain Kirk, buffed Uhura and altered Spock...well, a lot. 

In this latest installment, Star Trek: Beyond, they have taken steps to at least get original again (they didn't bring back Harry Mudd or Klingons) but in so doing, they just...found something flat. It falls into the trap of other big budget titles which rely on character interactions to save them from poor story telling. You go to see people talk to each other (like Thor 2--people want more Loki, they don't care that the dark elves have been basically imprisoned for thousands of years and shouldn't have better technology than the culture which thrived through that time). Let's look deeper.

by Robert Hazelton

​“We have to go now.” The words hurt to say. They represented a finality I didn’t want to accept and still struggled to believe. Saturday, I entertained the thought I might be dreaming but now, wishful thinking became hopelessness. We had a mere three hours to get to the deployment sphere or risk being left behind.
 
“I know.” Rebecca woke up crying at two in the morning and we’d just sat there, numb with disbelief. I held off until three before I gave in to emotion too but by seven, we were both too spent to weep. She hugged Elsa, one of our cats, too tightly. The feline struggled, totally oblivious to what was happening. I envied her in a way.
 
“I’ll open all the doors and windows.” The futile gesture meant nothing. Ten hours later, it would all be gone anyway. Elsa, Dimitri and Orin didn’t have a clue they’d be dead. Perhaps the hardest part of leaving meant knowing their confusion at being let outside and the ignorance of what happened when their lives ended.
 
“We don’t have to go,” Rebecca said. “They might be wrong.”
 
She referred to the event and what it meant for us as a species. Why were we being plunged into space? Who came up with the idea and how had it come to such a point where humanity had to evacuate Earth? None of the answers mattered anymore. The choices were simple: take a chance in a sphere or die.

I read about the dangers the day before, scare tactics by assholes who took sadistic joy in terrifying an already beleaguered people. They discussed the dangers of space, of what a small rock might do to the hull of an unprotected sphere. Some detailed the results of a vacuum on a human body and the horrors of suffocation.
 
Less than twenty-four hours before we all boarded such a craft, the worst of humanity made it sound worse than dying. No amount of reassurance or explanation from those in charge offset these fears. A vast set of the population decided to simply die, to know their fate, rather than expire in a far worse manner. 
 
Rebecca echoed some of their thoughts but we’d already made up our minds.
 
“They’re not wrong.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “The stuff’s packed. I’ll be back.”
 
Leaving her alone hurt more than anything. Ever since we learned about the event, we spent every waking hour together. With the final days of life ebbing around us, work didn’t matter. Riots flared up but subdued quickly. We stocked up the bare necessities and waited to die.
 
I tried to reassure myself. We measured life by a series of events from birth to death and the last two weeks merely represented a truncated version. The only difference came from the sphere and the thin chance we might find ourselves somewhere else, refugees on a new world. Who harbored such illusions? Maybe the deniers were on to something.
 
Was it better to know your fate or risk a worse one on the slightest chance for survival?
 
Dimitri stared at me when I pushed the screen out of the window to allow him to escape. His green eyes made me cry again and I struggled to contain myself. If Rebecca saw me lose it again, she might be inconsolable. We had to find some strength if we were to make it to the sphere. Falling apart now, hell falling apart at all, did no one any good.
 
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, touching his face with a trembling hand. “I’ll miss you.”
 
I’d lost pets before but never all at once. They hurt worse than the TV, the couch, the computer, the house or the car. All those things represented hard work, yes but these creatures, these family members, cut me to the core. But the spheres had no room for pets and supplies were limited anyway. Animals themselves may not even survive the sleep process.
 
So they stayed…betrayed by their keepers to simply die. I couldn’t have hated myself more.
 
I returned to Rebecca who finally let Elsa go. The cat ran into the kitchen to eat, the familiar sound of kibble moving around the metal bowl. I closed my eyes and imagined six months earlier, before the event, before the spheres or talk of departure. Our lives, our very normal lives sounded like that.
 
Cats playing, the water fountain bubbling, people outside carrying on with yard work or fixing cars. When I opened my eyes, I saw our neighbor clinging to her dog as her husband tried to pull her away. She bawled, her sobs sounding like she sat in our bathroom through the open windows. Gut wrenching sorrow became the new neighborhood norm.
 
That and fear.
 
The next thirty minutes became a blur. A final goodbye to the cats, more tears, pain in my stomach, guilt and remorse, self-loathing and rage at fate for what we faced all assaulted me at the same time. Emotions overwhelmed me until I didn’t know how to respond or act. Silence seemed the best and only course of action.
 
When my senses returned, Rebecca and I stood in line to board what might well become our crypts. Others milled about around us, waiting for their number to be called. I rested my head against my wife’s shoulder, closing my eyes. “I’m finally scared.” Every other emotion came and went, now fear wanted a go.
 
“Me too.” Her voice quivered and I pulled her close. 
 
I wanted to say this isn’t happening and the phrase burned a groove in my mind. Sadly, it sounded just as hollow and empty as the last six thousand times it crossed my lips. Instead, I took heart in the person beside me. We hadn’t lost everything. She remained real, a solid piece of my soul still present, still alive. 
 
Until such time as we no longer drew breath, reality continued. Oblivion needed to work harder to separate us. 
 
“Attention,” a voice from a loud speaker made us both look up. “Be it known the suspended animation chambers will be online immediately upon boarding the sphere. However, those of you with loved ones who would like to take one last week together may do so. Fresh supplies are available for this purpose. Let your handler know your decision.”
 
“What do you think?” Rebecca looked into my eyes. “Do…do you?”
 
I nodded as if the answer were obvious. “Any minute, any second longer with you I’d take. We can…wrap up our games…tell our stories one more time.”
 
“But leave them open ended for when we’re together again.” 
 
“Agreed.” I couldn’t smile, not then, not yet but I wanted to. A week. Seven short days. One hundred sixty-eight hours. A person shouldn’t be able to measure out the rest of their lives down to hours and minutes, seconds or days…but we could and now, we had to make the absolute best of it. “Are you ready?”
 
Rebecca took my hand firmly. “As I’ll be.”
 
We headed up the ramp to offer our decision.

I decided to give Soylent a try for many reasons. The most prominent one being that I'm a lazy bastard who hates to prepare food. It's annoying and takes time out of my productivity. This means Soylent is literally made for me (and every other slob who can't be bothered to put together a reasonably healthy meal).

I set out to try it and picked up 28 meals worth (that's 7 bags of powder). I went with 1.5 because it's a little less expensive (by about 70 cents a meal) and all I had to do was pre-blend up 4 meals worth of food. You may be thinking 'if you're such a lazy bastard, then how did you think you'd make Soylent?' and it's a good question. I can't answer you but I can say, it doesn't take as long as making a decent plate of spaghetti.

​Many people feel characters are the most important element of a story and I can’t disagree. They provide the vehicle for a reader/viewer to experience the story and vicariously feel the emotional content offered by the author. Because this element of novels/plays/short stories/movies is so important, it can be stressful to develop excellent, interesting characters.
 
When you set out to make a character, you’re creating a person. Congratulations, you now have something in common with Doctor Frankenstein. In order to transcend a two dimensional construct, there are many factors to consider. Many of these concepts will not even make it into your story just as elements of your own person don’t make it into every conversation or situation in your life. 

I’ve gone back to visit some old MMOs, the ones I really loved but needed a break from for whatever reason. The three titles I’m referring to are: The Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World. Each of these I played a LOT (with SWTOR being the one I played the most). This is part 3 of the series and I’m moving into Elder Scrolls Online.
 
I’ve always been a rabid fan of the Elder Scrolls series, all the way back to Arena. I spent entirely too much time on Daggerfall but finally ‘completed’ my first game when Oblivion came out (I played Morrowind but never got far into the story for whatever reason). Skyrim sucked a lot of time from me so when ESO came out, skeptical as I was that an MMO could do it justice, I tentatively gave it a shot through the open beta.
 
I was not disappointed.

​I’ve gone back to visit some old MMOs, the ones I really loved but needed a break from for whatever reason. The three titles I’m referring to are: The Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World. Each of these I played a LOT (with SWTOR being the one I played the most). This is part 2 of the series and I’m moving into Star Wars: The Old Republic.
 
I will never forget playing the open beta for SWTOR. I loaded up my Jedi Knight and instantly fell in love. Tython was a joy. The story telling, the voices, the choices…my friend and I busted out the first planet but I refused to go on because I knew I’d be playing the hell out of the game when it released. I pre-ordered and waited anxiously. When it came out, as I predicted, my addiction hit hard and strong. It rapidly became my all-time favorite MMO.

I’ve gone back to visit some old MMOs, the ones I really loved but needed a break from for whatever reason. The three titles I’m referring to are: The Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World. Each of these I played a LOT (with SWTOR being the one I played the most). I thought I’d talk about each a little bit, starting with The Secret World.

​The selling point of TSW is the setting. You’re in a modern world full of horror movie references, myths and conspiracies. Belonging to one of three factions, you forward their agenda while trying to save the world from a new threat. Technically speaking, we’re talking end of days stuff. Your character becomes mute when one of the life tree bees flies down your throat and awakens your powers.