Crate's Toy Review: Toys from Riff's

You can definitely expect more of these sorts of reviews in the future.

Crate's Toy Review: Lego Monster Fighters (Vampyre Hearse/Swamp Creature)

Honestly I love doing toy reviews

Crate Cuisine Ep. 2: Buttered Toast

The (possibly) long-awaited return of Crate Cuisine! These are a lot of fun to do, I've got to say.

Crate's Movie Review: Excalibur

Today I look at the 1981 cult classic, Excalibur.

Crate's (Brief) Movie Review: The Phantom Menace

I'm going to hell for this

Crate's Movie Review: Brave

Took longer than expected

Hang in there

I've been getting lazy again. Sorry for the lack of... anything over the past few weeks. I was busy with exams for a couple of weeks, but I've got less of an excuse for the rest of the time. Anyway, I should have a new video (or maybe a few smaller videos, I don't know) up soon- probably on the weekend. Thanks for your patience.
-Crate

Crate's Movie Review: The Woman in Black

I feel like I might have exaggerated this one, but I honestly can't tell. What do you think?
EDIT: This is a reuploaded version, since I forgot to add the disclaimer at the end.

Crate's Movie Review: Spider-Man

Today we follow up on last week’s Thor review with one of the moves that made it possible; one of the films that, in the early 2000s, revitalized the genre of the superhero film: Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man.

The film retells the classic Spider-Man origin story. Peter Parker is the average sad fuck going to school in New York, with his best pal Harry “Son of the Rich Guy” Osborne and a crush on popular girl Mary Jaen Watson. He lives with his struggling-yet-optimistic aunt and uncle. It’s not long though, before Peter is bitten by a genetically engineered spider- no radioactivity here- and develops spider-like abilities, fighting crime to avenge the death of his uncle, for which he feels he is responsible for. Harry’s dad Norman trips out on his own performance-enhancing chemical serum and becomes the villainous Green Goblin, a separate personality that violently avenges perceived slights against Norman. Spider-Man and the Goblin come into conflict and the rest is history.

Like last time, I guess I’ll go through the cast first. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, I have somewhat mixed feelings towards. While his quiet, awkward demeanor works well for sad fuck Peter, it isn’t so great for professional wiseguy Spider-Man. Then again, maybe that’s for the best, since the one time he does try a one-liner (“You’re out, Gobby! Out of your mind!”), it’s hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Overall though, I like Maguire’s Spidey. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone else who could do it. Also, it’s worth noting that he sometimes bears a striking resemblance to Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Make of that what you will.

The rest of the cast is pretty good. Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane is good and a somewhat interesting character in her own right. Rosemary Harris’ Aunt May is excellent; she brings this wonderful warmth and optimism to the role. Cliff Robertson is also excellent as Uncle Ben, trying and failing to reconnect with Peter before his death. You really get the sense that he’s trying to understand Peter’s situation and help him, but isn’t sure how to approach his increasingly distant nephew. James Franco is a good Harry Osborne; he’s rich and good-looking, but you can just tell how resentful and downright broken the guy is inside, especially towards his father and later Peter and MJ. This leaves us with our two scene stealers, Norman Osborne, and J. Jonah Jameson. Willem Dafoe, my friends and I decided, is some bizarre fusion of Christopher Walken and Denis Leary. Who better to play a brilliant repressed psychopath with latent Dissociative Identity Disorder? He’s perfectly over the top, and it works... mostly. Sometimes he’s actually too casual, particularly the scene on the rooftop where he tries to convince Spider-Man to join him. He’s great in the role, though he’d be greater if he had a decent costume.  More on that later. Finally, there’s J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. The man IS J. Jonah Jameson. End of story.

The movie has a lot of good scenes. The scenes where Norman is tormented by his alter ego in the mirror or the Goblin mask on the chair are excellently done, and genuinely a bit creepy. Another scene that sticks out is the Goblin’s attack on Aunt May while she’s praying, a scene that disturbed me a bit when I was younger. The wrestling match between “the Human Spider” and Bonesaw McGraw (Macho Man Randy Savage!) is a lot of fun and contrasts nicely with Uncle Ben’s ensuing dead scene, which is pretty sad. Jameson’s scenes are great, of course, and deliver some much-needed comic relief. And naturally, I have to mention the upside-down kiss in the rain. What? It’s a good scene.

The film, though, is not without downsides. The special effects... yeah, it’s an older movie, but it looks pretty bad sometimes. The CG Spider-Man often looks stiff and rubbery and unnatural, and some of the acrobatics look pretty silly (Peter’s flip when he fights Flash). The worst is the scene where the Green Goblin attacks the festival in Times Square. Goblin’s murder of several of his former co-workers is hilarious, because they disintegrate into bad CG skeletons. It’s like freaking Looney Tunes. The worst offender, though, is the Green Goblin’s costume. For all his awesomeness, he’s got an awful design. Sure, his comic design looks really goofy and probably wouldn’t work in live action, but... come on. If Spidey wanted to beat this version of the Green Goblin, he should have gathered up four other teenagers with attitude. Some of the scenes don’t quite work for other reasons. There’s one scene where Peter cries over Uncle Ben’s death, but it looks very much like Tobey Maguire is trying very hard not laugh. Some of his more Sheldon-like expressions can make scenes unintentionally funny as well. Generally, though, the film’s writing, acting, and cinematography are very good.

So, final thoughts on Spider-Man? Yeah, I like it. I can’t really bring myself to feel really strongly about it either way, since it’s not really outstanding and I only saw it once as a kid and never got a sense of nostalgia for it. Nor is it terrible. It’s not as good as Spider-Man 2, but it’s not as bad as Spider-Man 3. It’s got a few bad points, it’s got a lot more good points, and it’s what we in the industry term “pretty darn good”. A must see for any fan of superhero movies.

Crate's Movie Review: Thor

Trying out a new, hopefully better style, now with effort!
And yes, I went to The Avengers wearing that helmet.

Crate's Movie Review: The Mummy- Tomb of the Dragon Emporer

What a pleasant surprise this one was!

Belated Free Comic Book Day Special 2012

Crate's Comic Review: Justice League #08/The Curse of Shazam!

As promised. I'll start doing movies again soon, I promise. The Free Comic Book Day Special should be up later today.

Next video will be up tomorrow

Hey folks, today went a bit busier than I expected and so I haven't had time to do a new video yet. Rest assured, though it will done tomorrow. And since today was Free Comic Book Day, as PalinDrome stated, I went out and got some Free Comics! So tomorrow I'll be reviewing those in our first ever (but hopefully annual) Free Comic Book Day Special! Stay tuned!

It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! No, It’s Free Comic Book Day!

Each year on the first Saturday in May, Free Comic Book Day is a chance for comic book lovers, young and old, expert and amateur, to unite in solidarity to celebrate! Coming together in comic book stores worldwide, they gather to engage in conversation with other fans, meet local experts, and to receive free comic books!

This international event takes place on every continent! In fact, every Comic book store in the world can participate in the event if they chose, their only limits may be to some titles due to licensing. Starting in 2002, Free Comic Book Day has been running for nearly a decade. Why are they just giving away free comics you ask? Well, the event has two main purposes: to expose new people to the world of comics and for Comic Book companies to give their audience a taste of what they are all about. Marvel, DC, Bongo, Image, and Oni Press are among the many companies participating in this year’s event. Each company will produce a special Free Comic Book Day edition of one of their most popular or newest comics and make them widely available to comic book stores all over.

Around here, Free Comic Book Day has brought much attention to The Lair over on Broadway. Teaming up with the organizers of ATLANTI-CON, the newest genre convention to hit Atlantic Canada, Sean Ezekiel and his team have brought in seven different titles such as The Avengers, Star Wars, Yo Gabba Gabba, Mega Man, Transformers, The New 52 and Witchblade.

It is a common misconception that comic books are just about super heroes, however, this is not so! The Lair will be offering a variety of free comics this Saturday; ranging from superhero stories, to children’s stories, horror, sci-fi and fantasy.  Comic books are becoming more popular than ever before and this day is a great way to expose new people to this Sub-culture. Jeff Keeping, one of the Co-Executive Directors of ATLANTI-CON had this to say about comics:

“With the various comic book titles out there now (and not all of them are superhero stories) comics have never been more popular and we are using this as a means to reach out to fans. For me personally comics are one of  the best forms of entertainment. I have been reading and collecting comics for about 30 years starting with Casper and Richie Rich as a young child. I actually still have my very first "serious" comic book that started me on the collecting path, "West Coast Avengers Vol. 2 #30 (1988)" from Marvel Comics.”                           - (Jeff Keeping)

Jeff and his partner in crime, Matt Connolly, the other Co-Executive Director of ATLANTI-CON, along with a few other volunteers will be on scene at The Lair from 11am until 2pm to meet with fans and chat about their rapidly approaching convention. They will also be selling tickets to the convention. I’ve outlined their prices below. I don’t want to give any surprises away, but word on the street is that a certain Dark Lord of the Sith will also be making an appearance.

Come on out this Saturday, May 5th, and drop by The Lair! Bring your friends, your children and anyone you might think who would enjoy reading a good comic. Chat with the guys from ATLANTI-CON, Pick up a Free Comic and have a great Saturday afternoon.

Pre-sale tickets for ATLANTI-CON

Day passes selling for $10.00

Weekend passes for $15.00.

Families (of 4) also have the option of day and weekend passes at $40.00 for a family day pass and $60.00 for a family weekend pass. Additional family members can be added for $5.00 per person extra.

Crate's Toy Review: Gumby!

If you've got a heart, then Gumby's a part of you.

And with this, I'm caught up. All the Youtube episodes are now here on the Lounge for your viewing pleasure. All future episodes will be posted at both locations at the same time. Enjoy!

Crate's Movie Review: The Ape

Another unexpectedly good movie, this time starring the legendary Boris Karloff.

Crate's Movie Review: Van Helsing

I have this theory that when a reviewer first starts out, they've got a few movies in mind that they want to really savour up and then tear apart. For me, one of those movies was Van Helsing. In retrospect I should have got the plot more straight in my head before I started, but the character-by-character approach was fun and did give it something resembling structure.

Crate's Comic Review: Justice League #07/The Curse of Shazam!

It was actually kind of fun doing a comic review. I have Justice League #08 now, so look for that in the near future.

Crate's Movie Review: Justice League- Crisis on Two Earths

It would have been nice to see more of the alternate Justice League, but Jester and good!Lex Luthor are cool enough to make that a minor complaint. The romance, on the other hand...

Crate's TV Review: The Adventures of Robin Hood

This show was a nice little surprise... I really didn't expect anything out of it but good old-timey cheese, but I was very impressed after I watched those episodes.

Crate Cuisine Ep. 1: Cereal

This is so far the only episode in the Crate Cuisine series. The day I made this, I don't know, I just didn't want to watch a movie, so I started toying around with some other ideas. The best idea I came up with was a cooking show focusing on really simple food, since I'm not a very good cook. In the end, it actually came out really well, at least in my opinion. All the same, this is a filler series. I'm saving it for other days when I don't want to watch a movie or review something else.

Crate's Movie Review: Transmorphers

Pretty much the worst movie I've ever seen. I've seen a fair few bad movies, but I'm hard pressed to come up with competition for this one.

Crate's Movie Review: The Truman Show

Crate's Movie (?) Review: Winnie-the-Pooh (BBC )

This tape is weird. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information about it online. This review is a bit inconclusive, with me saying one minute that it's boring and the next that it's pretty good. I figured out later what it was; this would make a good audiobook, but you don't necessarily want to sit down and watch an audiobook do you?

Quick Review: Wizorb

Wizorb is a Breakout style game developed by Tribute Games. Originally, it didn't interest me very much because hey, I can play breakout online, those games are a dime a dozen, right? My opinion changed, however, when I saw a Let's Play of the earlier levels online.

Wizorb takes standard Breakout style game elements and mixes them quite beautifully with RPG elements of all things. Yes, you still smash blocks with a ball and a paddle, but now you can cast spells, enchant your ball, and even fight enemies and bosses. If I had heard that idea without seeing the game in action, I probably would have said it was awful and didn't make a whole lot of sense. Wizorb would have proved me wrong though.

In Wizorb, you are a wizard tasked with saving the Kingdom of Gorudo from the monsters that inhabit it. To do this, you must battle evil with your magic wand and orb (paddle and ball), and help the citizens of the kingdom rebuild by spending your points on renovating a town. Wizorb takes you through five classic RPG locals, from a small town to the mysterious netherworld. Along the way you fight equally classic enemies, such as slimes, flying eyes, and skeleton warriors. (And their giant boss counterparts)

An example of a giant boss enemy.

The game doesn't add many new power ups to the classic breakout formula, instead opting to give your character two spells: a fireball and a wind spell. These can be used to both enchant your ball and effect the level itself. Fireball will hurt enemies and destroy blocks just like a ball would, and enchanting your ball with it will enable it to cleave through massive lines of blocks with ease. The wind spell can change the left-right direction the ball is traveling in, and enchanting your ball with it lets you steer the ball with your mouse.

An example of totally stacked power ups. (Magnetic paddle, double damage and extra balls)

All in all, Wizorb is a really fun, decently lengthy and challenging experience. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys breakout style games, as this is a welcome departure from the stale experience that most of them give. It's cheap, too, coming in at 2.99$ US on Steam, Desura and the App Store.

Sorry if this review is badly written, I'm a bit rusty. Hopefully I'll get back into full swing soon.

Wizorb can be read about and purchased here:  http://wizorb.com/

Crate's Movie Review: The Mummy Returns

If the first Mummy movie was a guilty pleasure... I just hate this one. What bright spark had the idea to stick in a smartass kid sidekick? Short Round could pull it off. Not Alex O'Connell. Also a bit notable as the first really negative review I did.

Crate's Movie Review: The Mummy

Again, not a lot to say. The Mummy is kind of a guilty pleasure I guess.

Crate's Movie Review: Marked for Death

The second. Not really much to say about this one. I really do love Seagal movies. After this I started cutting down on exposition where I could and generally got a bit lazier.

Crate's (Box's) Movie Review: Teen Titans Trouble in Tokyo

My first video review, a tad shaky I guess. The first couple I did were in two parts due to both Youtube's time limits and the longer plot summaries I gave. I'll probably put up a bunch tonight,and after that stay tuned for more of these every Saturday (when possible). And of course, disregard what I said about moving away from the Lounge. I knew not what I said.

Thou Shalt Not Be Forgot Just Yet!

Hark! Ye few followers, if there be any of thee left, lose not your faith in we few noble writers of The Box Lounge!

So here's how it stands right now. Since our subtle beginning back in July of 2011 we have seen many posts from our beloved creator, Box, a few from the dear Derek Fro and but one post from I, PalinDrome. Unfortunately, however, The Box Lounge slipped in to this terrible state of  idleness after Box's last post nearly four months later to the day.

Please forgive our few writers as life has a funny way of getting in the way.

Since October here is what has been happening with the crew.

I for starters, went away to university nearly eight hours away. I lived that free and glorified life for four months until my (what some might have called inevitable) return home around Christmas. With that PalinDrome is back on the scene primed and ready to write again! Which is just what I did! .. unfortunately just not for The Box Lounge like I had hoped. Instead I was offered a writing position on a very popular local news blog called the CornerBrooker.com. This new position took up much of my time. With my free time I became a Student Member on the board of a community radio station, a DJ of my own show on that same station, became a member of a Gay-Straight Alliance, worked at two jobs and kept going to university at a campus much closer to home. These my dear readers, are sad reasons why I, PalinDrome, have failed to write for you until now.

Box, becoming engulfed by his new hobby of doing video reviews for YouTube, has since grown his extensive movie collection to a whole new level. He has been reviewing old, new, and very obscure films that he has obtained from thrift stores, flee markets and any other means he could find! Admittedly he should have been linking those videos to our beloved blog, however, as I've mentioned before, life gets in the way. Box continues to juggle school, his love of film, a very close family, a social life, and his unbreakable obligation to hold very important game nights with his best friends.

And lastly, Derek Fro. Like Box, a lover of film and comic books, Derek Fro also enjoys anime and a vast number of video games. His love of these genres have created an unquenchable thrust for knowledge in these categories! This alone keeps him rather busy, but aside from that Derek Fro also follows the treacherous road to grill mastery! Creating what some may call abominations to the culinary art form, he has crafted some of the most ground breaking forms of edible art that man kind dare not look directly at with fear of blindness from their beauty. Derek Fro also dabbles in some comic drawing and continues to go to school.

So that is were we are now you few followers of The Box Lounge, but we must ask, through tear filled eyes and quite sobbing, will you forgive us? Will you hold on just a little longer and give us one last chance to redeem ourselves?

I thought so. You guys rock!

Stay tuned for some new material from Box, Derek Fro, and me, PalinDrome!