Top Hat Sasquatch

Man, it kills me to write this review. I really liked The Amazing Spider-Man, and I’d been following all the sequel news for a long time and was excited to see them flesh out the world more and add new villains. I had heard some people didn’t like this one, but I figured I would like it at least as much as the first movie. Ugh. I hated The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Honestly, this film didn’t even feel like it was part of the same universe as the first one. The writing and tone is what killed it for me. After the prologue at the beginning, things pick up with Spidey swinging around New York chasing after a criminal. The level of camp, slapstick, and cheesy dialogue in this sequence made me cringe and get that embarrassed feeling for the filmmakers. I turned to my wife (who also really liked TASM) and mouthed I’m sorry. Spider-Man pantsing Paul Giamatti sealed the deal. This was not the Spider-man I was ready to see.

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After months and months (and months) of speculation, some really for real news has finally come out about Star Wars Episode VII: Take All My Money (working title). Lucasfilm/Disney just announced the cast, and it’s looking pretty great. First off, let me get this out of my system:

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Today I’m dusting off the site (busy, busy, busy) and starting a new series of posts: Kickstarter Roundups. There are so many awesome projects on Kickstarter at any given time and it can be hard to weed through them all and find ones you want to back. Hopefully this new series will help point out some that have been on the radar of the Top Hat Sasquatch team and in return, you can let us know in the comments about cool projects you’ve backed.

The first entry in this series is all about games, tabletop games to be precise. Kickstarter is the perfect place to figure out if your game will have an audience and then fund production if it does. I’m sure there are a lot of awful games on Kickstarter, but there are a lot of awesome ones. I have had a few ideas lately for games I’d like to develop, and just browsing Kickstarter has been an enormous help. In the process, I have backed some cool projects that I’m really excited about.
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I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier last night, and although I had myself hyped to the max about the sequel the one of my favorite superhero movies of all-time, I didn’t expect it to be so damn amazing. After talking about it with my wife today I realized that TWS may be my new favorite Marvel movie. The story, action, and writing are all excellent and even though I hold The Avengers on a pretty high pedestal, The Winter Soldier may be my new favorite.

Maybe.

First off, the action. The fight scenes in TWS are so well choreographed and hard-hitting I was giddy in the theater. Winter Soldier shows off Cap’s talents better than his other two movie outings for sure. He easily knocks out thugs, sends them flying with a kick, and is super agile.

That wouldn’t be enough to make this my favorite Marvel movie by itself, but the supporting characters are great, the story is very interesting (and will impact the Marvel Cinematic Universe more than any other film) and the dialogue between characters is a lot of fun. TWS made Nick Fury seem like a real person to me for the first time. I hated his dialogue in The Avengers, but in TWS he feels like a real person and actually made me excited to see him in more movies. The same goes for Black Widow. She has more depth in this movie and has some great banter with Cap.
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We’ve already seen the amazing LEGO Simpsons house (which will be mine, I swear), but the series of blind-packaged, collectible minifigures based on the hit show hadn’t all been revealed yet until this week. And good news, not only did they do a great job on all the characters, but they replaced the heavy eyelids of the Simpsons family with better looking ones! These new versions of the Simpsons make me want the House set even more.

I never would have thought that Simpsons characters would look so good in LEGO form, but they do. Everyone from Ralph Wiggum to Krusty to Nelson look great, and I love that they come with appropriate accessories. A ‘Choo Choo Choose You’ valentine? Awesome.

I hope these minifigures sell like hotcakes so we can get one or two more series based on the show. There are so many more characters I need in LEGO form. Lenny, Carl, Barney, Moe (seriously, where’s Moe?), Comic Book Guy, Bumblebee Man, Skinner, Groundskeeper Willie….well you get the point.