Wednesday, April 22, 2015

What A Great Time To Be A Fanboy

Last week was a great geek-week.  We got a new Star Wars trailer, a Batman V Superman Teaser, and a Battlefront 3 Trailer.  I'm super excited about all of the comic book, sci fi and fantasy games and movies on the horizon.  I'm even excited to go see Fantastic Four, which doesn't look promising based on the trailers, but it's a comic book movie and I'll happily pay my $15 to go enjoy it.

I'm also eagerly awaiting Avengers 2 which comes out soon.  I really like all those Marvel Studios movies.  The movie I'm most excited about, though, is Batman V Superman.  I'm a big fan of Zack Snyder's style and I definitely lean toward DC in my fanboy tendencies.  I think seeing the 3 biggest superheroes of all time share the screen will be an epic event.  If Snyder puts the same love into BvS as he did in making a panel by panel recreation of Watchmen, this will be truly incredible.

I know some people didn't care for Man of Steel, but I loved it.  I also though Bryan Singer painted Superman films into a corner with his sub-par take on the character.  Zack Snyder played the only hand he could, which was to distance himself from Christopher Reeves and Bryan Singer as much as possible.  The result was a dark, violent and sort of tragic movie with heaping portions of Superman whoop-ass.  I absolutely loved the Russel Crowe sequences on Krypton.  I thought Michael Shannon's off-beat Zod was great, and the epic battle at the end was incredible.  To the people who complain about the collateral damage in that movie, I say this....It's a movie!!!  I want to see stuff get blown up!   And I have a feeling that there will be repercussions for Superman's recklessness in the movies to follow, so don't get your panties in a bunch just yet. 

I'm also hearing a lot of people say that BvS is going to suck...after only seeing a teaser.  This is really silly.  Why would you want a movie to suck when you know you're going to pay to see it? From what I've seen so far, I'm very satisfied.  It looks like Snyder is really bringing Frank Miller's Dark Knight into the real world.  Affleck looks totally jacked in that batsuit.  And his anti-Superman suit looks like it walked right off the pages of Miller's Dark Knight Returns.  I even went to that special IMAX trailer screening just to see 4 seconds of extra footage....and it was awesome.

On the TV end of things, Arrow and Flash continue to crush.  I'm really enjoying their shared universe.  Gotham is still finding its footing.  I'm not 100% in yet, but I'm finding more things to like about it.  I'm even enjoying some Marvel shows.  Agent Carter was an excellent mini-series which I highly recommend.  I'm also a few episodes into Daredevil which is also really good.

Basically, were at the point where you can watch new superhero content every night of the week.  How cool is that?

I haven't had much time for gaming lately with my work/podcast schedule, but I continue to sneak in Artemis sessions with my friends.  That game is really amazing and if you're a Star Trek fan, you owe it to yourself to get 5 friends together and try it.  It's cheap, fun and excellent.   It can be a little glitchy at times since it's  designed to work on many different devices, but the occasional restarts are a small price to pay for the amount of joy this game creates.

My wife is back into Diablo III.  She's playing with my friends and I maintain that that's the best multiplayer console game ever.  It's so easy to jump in and out of games with your friends which is so important.  I think every game should be like that.

I'm looking forward to Arkham Knight and Battlefront 3 as I mentioned earlier. I'm really hoping Battlefront 3 offers that persistent ground to space transition that was rumored in the early development stages.  We'll see.

Meanwhile there are a couple of crowd-funded games that have caught my attention.  Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen both look like tons of fun.  I haven't had the chance to play them yet, but I have been watching other people play on twitch.  Twitch is a great streaming service for spectating video games.  It sounds like a silly concept, but I really like it.  It's a great way to really see what a game is like before spending any money on it.


So now that the geek stuff is out of the way, I have a busy musical schedule coming.  After a month off, Blue Oyster Cult is back on the road with plenty of shows coming up.  I'm also doing a solo show opening for Eddie Money on May 31st at the St. George Theater in Staten Island. NY.  I'm very excited about that.

We also have some great stuff coming up on my Band Geek podcast.  If you haven't seen our ridiculous Michael McDonald video, please check that out here: https://youtu.be/Fu5XXkn6exo

To subscribe to Band Geek, go to www.riotcast,com/bandgeek


-Richie

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