Box's Toy Review: Cars Harmonica

I love music, I wouldn't consider myself musically talented. I remember some of the very basics of my piano lessons, and I can sing well enough, but I usually just lack the patience to learn an instrument well. So it should come as no surprise that I tend to gravitate towards "easier" instruments, and learn to tap out a few simple tunes on them, a couple of jams, etc. I consider myself more of a musical hobbyist (TM) than a musician. One of my favorite instruments, though, is the harmonica.
   So there I was in the dollar store, looking around. I had noticed the other harmonica they had there, but had dismissed it. I had my bag of Cowboys and Indians, and my silly red dinosaur, and I was ready to leave, when something caught my eye. A harmonica, below the first one I saw, branded with Disney-Pixar's Cars. A fine enough film, but easily, in my mind, Pixar's weakest (until it's sequel, I hear). A Cars harmonica (a... Carmonica, if you will) is just such a silly, inane piece of marketing that at $2.50, I couldn't help myself.
   I thought it was a bootleg. It was made by a company apparently called 'What Kids Want!' which I'd never heard of before and I just can't see Disney or Pixar endorsing something this crappy. But according to this press release, they actually work with Disney. Well, way to freakin' go.
   The harmonica comes with a case, so let's get that out of the way. It's made of transparent yellow plastis and has a very odd latch design that doesn't close very well. The right end is emblazoned with a small, shoddy looking Cars logo. Whoops! My bad. It's a sticker. Oh, the excitement's building now.
   On to the harmonica itself. Both sides feature the same image- Lightning McQueen driving on... um, something red and black, with a yellow sky (or wall?) behind him. Also written there is the rather cool-but-meaningless phrase 'Thunder After Lightning'. Well okay. Maybe there's a character called Thunder McKing and we just can't see him because he's behind Lightning. I've got no idea what the phrase means, but it's a good name for a band. A small, blurry logo reading 'The World of Cars'  is visible in the lower right corner of the image.
   The harmonica's construction is apparently all cheap plastic and stickers. There appear to be fingerprints in the glue carelessly smudged across the front of the instrument. But how, you all wonder, does it sound? HAHAHA! It barely sounds at all! Yes folks, you have to blow WAY too hard to get any kind of sound out of this thing, and even then all you get is a half-assed, discordant wheeze. Even better, upon closer inspection, it appears that each of the ten holes has only one reed. One hole you can only blow, one you can only draw, and so on.
   Bottom line? This was a waste of $2.50. With this money I could have bought 2 1/5 dinosaurs much nicer than the one I actually got. I could have saved it for something else. Instead I got a piece of crap that will probably kill me if I play it too much and sounds like a dying cat dragging his teeth on a blackboard. It just goes to show- if you need a harmonica, don't go to a dollar store. Even if it's just for a kid, get a cheap but good. A lot of companies that make harmonicas make cheaper models designed for children. If you have to by from a toy company for whatever reason, get one from a good company like Schylling. THIS. SUCKS.
   And for a harmonica, it barely even does that.

   What Kids Want's site can be found here.

Box's Movie Review: Dead and Deader

   I'm going to start things off with a movie review. I watched this movie few days ago and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.
   I love SyFy channel original movies. Savage Planet, Swamp Devil, Mothman, Raptor Island, etc, they epitomize bad movies and I love them for it. Every now and then, though, they turn out something better. Never great, mind you, but better. I though Mothman was decent enough, and D&D 2: Wrath of the Dragon God was, strangely, much better that the first, big budget film. And then there's Dead and Deader. This one really surprised me. It's about a soldier (played by Dean Cain) who's squad dies, and are brought back to the US for autopsies- but Cain's character, Lt. Bobby Quinn, wakes up. Not that he comes back to life, he's still dead, but he can function as a normal human. The rest of his squad, though come back to life as more typical, ravenous zombies and Quinn, the base's cook (Guy Torry), and a film student-bartender (Susan Ward) have to stop the spread of the infection.
   Aside from the awesome idea of a zombie fighting other zombies, this movie isn't your typical SyFy film (in case I haven't mentioned that already). The acting is pretty good, better than, say... most of their output, the effects are pretty good, the story's alright, and a lot of the jokes are actually pretty funny. The problem I had with the effects is towards the end, there are several shots of zombies shambling down a hall. Aside from the fact that they may have used it more than once (I can't quite recall), it looked to my admittedly untrained eye to have been sped up. It's just kind of distracting, to be watching this movie, really enjoying it, wondering what's going to happen next and then WOAH that didn't look right. Perhaps it was done on purpose to make the zombies look twitchy and unnatural, but it seems like if that's what they wanted, they should have told the zombie extras that and filmed it at regular speed. If they wanted the fast zombies which have become oh-so-popular of late, why didn't they have the extras run? They already showed the zombies running! But, despite the words I've wasted on it, it's a small gripe. The other effects are pretty good, the zombie make-up is good, and I particularly remember the scene where a zombie's hand gets caught in a meat grinder. Another minor problem my friend brought up is that when- not to give too much away- they use C4 to blow up a building, the explosion is MUCH too small for the rather excessive amount of C4 they used.
   The story? It's not bad. There's three main sides in the conflict; Quinn & Co, the Zombies, and the scientist who wants to exploit the zombies to stop people from dying. To sum it all up, Quinn and the cook become fugitives after killing some zombies because nobody believes in the zombies yet, they meet the film student in a bar, circumstances force them to work together to stop the zombies and escape the scientist. Looking back it's pretty basic, but the writing is good and the characters' interactions are entertaining. I think my favorite joke is a blatant, straight-outta-nowhere stab at Michael Bay that I won't spoil for you.
   All in all, Dead and Deader is worth checking out. It's no masterpiece, but it's decent, especially for a SyFy channel original. Go in with low-enough expectations and a bowl of popcorn and you should have a blast.

Welcome

Hello internet! Box here. This is my first blog, so I guess we'll see how it goes. There is no particular theme here, this is a blog for basically whatever I think is cool enough to warrant a post. You can probably expect posts about dinosaurs, bears, and history (which I will try to keep accurate), as well as perhaps reviews of movies, books, toys, tv shows, etc. I'll try to make things interesting for whatever poor saps stumble in here. Until next time, gang, welcome to the Box Lounge!