New SimCity game a disappointment?

by Matt Pollari on March 17, 2013

in Computers, Gaming, Technology

SimCity_(2013)_limited_editionWhen I was growing up SimCity 2000 was one of my favorite games that I played and I had a great amount of fun with it.  When I started to hear good things about the new SimCity game before it launched and watching some of the preview videos I got a bit excited about the game and it brought back memories from the earlier version of the game.  Once the game was released that image started to change.  First off EA had a massive problem with the servers for the game and people had a very hard time connecting to them to just play the game, since you had to be connected online all the time to even play at all.  Other problems related to how the game works and the AI they use in the game presents another problem that made me sad to read about. Problems such as the path finding that they use for sims when they are driving or walking to a certain place. I did read a piece that they are working on a fix for some of the car traffic problems, but seems like a bad bug to release with.

The last point I will add is that I was disspointed to read about the point below about the options you are allowed for traffic management.

Past SimCity games have included highways and subways, and I expected the new game to build on this solid transport infrastructure foundation. But it didn’t. It didn’t even keep pace with its predecessors, and I just can’t defend that by saying, “Oh it’s a reboot.” Yeah, OK, it’s a reboot. That doesn’t mean it can simply discard core elements of city-building gameplay.

via SimCity review: One week later, time doesn’t heal all wounds | Ars Technica.

Creating subways and highways was great fun to figure out how you wanted to lay it out and where to put them.  Subways especially were always very fun to lay out and create stops since you got to go underground in SimCity 2000 and have a bit more freedom in laying them out compared to roads that where more straight lines.

EA & Maxis said that the Mac version of the game will be out later this spring, so I will have to see what types of reviews the Mac version gets and what patches they have made to the game by then to really decide on whether it is worth getting.  A game that I was at first quite excited about getting I am now much more cautious on whether it is worth the money.

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Why I am disappointed Argo won Best Picture

by Matt Pollari on February 27, 2013

in Entertainment Industry, Hollywood, Matt's thoughts, Movies

Argo Oscars

I was not surprised last night that Argo won the Best Picture Oscar, just disappointed because I did not think it was the best movie of five of the nine nominees that I had seen.  The five I have seen are Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained and Silver Linings Playbook. For me I would have been happy if Lincoln or Zero Dark Thirty had won Best Picture from the five I had seen.

I am not saying that Argo is a bad movie, but like I said not the best of the nominees. In my opinion the problem with Argo was that I did not feel much tension at the end of the movie, in the final road block that the characters were facing.  Given the movie is based on a true story and has at least some basis in fact, we already knew the outcome of the movie before going into it.  In the case of Argo, the movie did not give me enough story or gripping characters to make me forget that I already knew the ending to this movie given its ground in real life. Overall it is a good movie and worth seeing once, but it is not one that I am going to go out and purchase for my movie collection.

Lincoln PosterIn contrast to Argo both Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, while based on real life events like Argo, gave me enough in terms of story and character development/investigation. For Lincoln, the movie gave me a great character study of one our great presidents, Abraham Lincoln, to help set off the fact that you already knew that he died and that the amendment would pass. Daniel Day Lewis performed amazingly as Lincoln and made you feel like you were getting a real glimpse at what Lincoln was like. Steven Spielberg and the entire production did a great job at pulling you into the past with how faithfully they created the world of the 1860′s Civil War era.

For Zero Dark Thirty given that it is a military story enough details have been shrouded in secrecy that it is great for the movie to lift the veil on what happened in the search for Osama Bin Laden. The movie also gave us a great performance by Jessica Chastain and her character of Maya showing the very determined CIA officer who relentlessly tracked down Bin Laden and did not give up.

ZeroDarkThirty_v2

In the end we are still left with two great films in Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty and just because they did not win the Oscar for Best Picture does not take away from the fact that they are great films.

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The Promise of Netflix’s House Of Cards

by Matt Pollari on January 31, 2013

in Politics, Quick Post, TV

Given my background in politics, I am naturally excited about a new TV drama that is set in Washington D.C. like Netflix’s House of Cards is.  Add in that Kevin Spacey is the lead actor in it and famed director David Fincher involved it seems like it has potential to be a great show.  The show is a remake of the original UK  version of the same name. I watched the UK version a few years ago on Netflix and will be neat to see how they adapt it to the U.S. setting.

Likely touch on this more in a future post, but it is interesting to see Netflix get into the original content business with House of Cards and the relaunch of Arrested Development.  Instead of Netflix just licensing tv shows and movies made by other companies.  Will be interesting to see how it works out for them here in the long run.

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Impatience with ‘How I Met Your Mother’

by Matt Pollari on December 17, 2012

in Matt's thoughts, TV

imagesOne of the creators of the TV show ’How I Met Your Mother’ Carter Bays in a recent interview talks about fans impatience at not yet meeting the mother referenced in the title. In the question before this Bays talks about the last girl Ted dates before meeting the mother.

Is she actually the last girlfriend? We’ve seen him try to do that before and it doesn’t go anywhere.
Bays: I know, but this will be the one that tops all of those. … I know people are impatient and we appreciated the impatience. I would contend that most people who watch the show watch it this way. We’re not trying to jerk anyone around, but if the series has a point, it’s not about the destination, but the journey. It’s about these five friends. We’re not making ‘Mad About You’. It’s not ‘How I Romanced Your Mother’, which would be a great show and there have been great iterations of that, but that’s not the show we’re doing. I appreciate people’s frustrations and would maybe ask them to forget the show’s title. If we had called it ‘Ted and His Buddies’ or something, maybe there’d be fewer complaints.

via How I Met Your Mother Boss on Show’s Fate, Barney’s Proposal and More – Today’s News: Our Take | TVGuide.com.

For me I have been impatient with the show really in the last two years. I have felt like they simply have not given fans enough clues or hints towards the mother to help tide us over until they finally decide to reveal her.

Also some of the reason I have had less patience with the show is that simply I have not enjoyed the journey as Bays referenced above as much as in earlier seasons.  Maybe not a surprise since when I have felt this it has been during seasons 7 and  the current season 8. It is an older show which is not a surprise that it gets harder to continue having good story lines after so many seasons.  Maybe if I was still enjoying the journey I would not be as impatient as I am now about who the mother is.

The follow-up question to what I posted above touches on the connecting issue I have with the show:

Does that imply that we won’t see the courtship of the mother?
Bays: I still can’t say. [Laughs] But we’re going to start, I’m sure, frustrating a large segment of the viewership by answering a couple of small questions this season here and there before getting to the big shebang. We will get a couple more glimpses of her this year.

Personally I don’t to really want to for the first time meet the mother in the series finale and then have the show end.  I can accept Bays saying that it is the journey to meeting the mother, but at some point I want to met her and get to know her for more than one episode.  I feel like they could give new life to the show if they introduce the mother as a new full-time cast member and stop stalling.

As the show now stands I am really only continuing to watch because I have been a fan from the start.  For me the show has fallen from a must see show or one that I want to catch up on if I miss an episode to not really caring if I miss a new episode now.

Edit: Of course tonight’s (12/17) two new episodes were good after I wrote this post in which I pored cold water on the quality of the show.  Will see if they can keep it up, which I hope they can.

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Why Spielberg does not view ‘Lincoln’ as a biopic

by Matt Pollari on December 11, 2012

in Uncategorized

I read a good interview with Steven Spielberg about his latest film ‘Lincoln’ that provided good information about the making of the film. This section of the interview from Deadline.com struck me the most because this answer really showed to me what Spielberg did with the film. How he made it more successful having a tighter focus on what areas of Lincoln to show.

DEADLINE: This is just my opinion, but I felt that you and Tony Kushner kept Lincoln from being a succession of scenes of backroom politics and blustery speeches by making it a caper movie, where the heist was basically all the maneuvering that went into passing the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery, before accepting the South’s surrender. As you were putting this together did you approach it as a biopic?

SPIELBERG: I never saw it as a biopic. I sometimes refer to it as a Lincoln portrait, meaning that it was one painting out of many that could have been drawn over the years of the president’s life. Had I done the entire presidency, or his entire life, that would have qualified as biopic.

via Steven Spielberg On Making ‘Lincoln’ — Interview.

In another interesting part in the interview Spielberg relays from a historian how even for a figure as large as Lincoln one could get lost if you tried to tell a story about the Civil War, because of the war itself being so vast.

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‘Oblivion’ Trailer, has potential?

by Matt Pollari on December 10, 2012

in Movies, Quick Post

The trailer for the new Tom Cruise film, ‘Oblivion’ certainly looks like it has promise.  The trailer intrigues me enough to make me curious to find out more, which obviously is the goal, but did it well for me.  Nice to see Morgan Freeman in it as well,  have always enjoyed his work.

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First footage of Star Trek Into Darkness

by Matt Pollari on December 7, 2012

in Movies, Quick Post

The first trailer that is out for “Star Trek Into Darkness” has certainly made me excited for the film.  I think this film might be the one I am most excited for in 2013 I think.  I have been a long time Star Trek fan, so already some built-in excitement for me.  Still can’t tell who the villain is that Benedict Cumberbatch will be playing in the film yet from this footage.

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Steven Spielberg the historian with his movie Lincoln?

by Matt Pollari on December 7, 2012

in History, Hollywood, Movies

Lincoln PosterThe New York Times has an interesting piece on how Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” actually might be advancing the way the historians look at Lincoln with what the movie speculates about why Lincoln’s reasoning was on two different subjects.  One of those being why Lincoln pushed so hard to get the 13th Amendment passed before the new Congress came in later that year.  Here is an excerpt from the post about one of the ways the movie could be advancing the way we look at Lincoln.

The movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president, makes two especially interesting historical arguments.

The first is to explain why the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, was overwhelmingly important to Lincoln in January 1865. The issue is not why passage was important; the movie explains that clearly enough. Instead, the problem is to explain the frenzied work to pass it in that month. As the historian Michael Vorenberg has observed, “No piece of legislation during Lincoln’s presidency received more of his attention.” Why the all-out effort in January, in a lame-duck session before a newly empowered pro-Lincoln Congress began? If Lincoln had waited until March, he could have called a special session of the new Congress, confident of having enough votes for House passage.

The question has long vexed historians. The movie’s answer is that Lincoln and his right-hand man in this work, Secretary of State William H. Seward, realized that the war might end at any time and that, when it did, any prospect for passing the amendment as a means to win the war would end with it.

This is an intriguing argument. But the book the movie cites as its main evidentiary source, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” does not make it. 

via Steven Spielberg, Historian – NYTimes.com.

The second argument is about the connection between the peace talks and getting the votes Lincoln needed for the 13th amendment.  The full article is a great piece to read and I would recommend reading it if you like Lincoln or history.

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Why you should see the movie “Lincoln”

by Matt Pollari on November 16, 2012

in History, Hollywood, Movies, Politics

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a preview screening of the new Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln”.  Possibly because I have an interest in politics and history (my two majors in college) I was already predisposed to like this movie, but I greatly enjoyed the film.  While I have not seen every recent Spielberg film, I think this is one of his better films in a while. Though the movie is not fast paced or action packed, it had enough movement to not make it seem slow to me.

The basic setting of the movie is from January to April of 1865, when Lincoln was trying to pass the thirteenth amendment to the constitution abolishing slavery and the U.S. Civil War was coming to an end. It worked out well that Spielberg chose a small part of Lincoln’s life to make into a movie. If he had not I do not think he would have been as successful as he was with this film.  The time frame that they ended up choosing for the film I think worked well.  They picked a period where there was a lot going on for Lincoln not just with the war exclusively, but also the hard fought battle of one of Lincoln’s bigger legislative fights that he faced with the thirteenth amendment. The time they picked helped to show the continuing cost the Civil War was having not just on Lincoln but the country as well.

For me the cast led by Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln did a great job all around.  Lewis portrayed Lincoln excellently and very convincingly brought him to life I thought, showing the conflict and great stress that the war and the amendment fight brought to Lincoln, along with his family issues he faced. Tommy Lee Jones also did a great job as one of the politicians working for passage of the amendment.  If Daniel Day-Lewis does not get Oscar nomination I would be shocked.

The issue of equality was the great issue that was at stake during the discussion of the thirteenth amendment. I think it is still very relevant to our country today in a different way  at least to me.  Today we are fighting about whether people can marry whom ever they want to marry legally. Having just gone through a tough constitutional amendment fight here in  Minnesota about whether we should ban gay marriage it is a very divisive issue still and bet it will be for a while.  While that connection may not come up for every one who watches this movie, but since I saw this movie before the 2012 election that issue was certainly on my mind.

Overall I think you have a lover of history or Lincoln himself I recommend seeing this film.

The movie is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  Trailer for the film below:

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Zero Dark Thirty Oscar Contender?

by Matt Pollari on October 16, 2012

in Hollywood, Movies

Given the people involved with the new film Zero Dark Thirty dealing with the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, I knew this movie had a good chance at being in the running for various Oscar awards. After seeing the second trailer for Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty, I see nothing that changes my mind.

Kathryn Bigelow’s previous film The Hurt Locker  won her Best Director and Best Picture along with 4 other oscar wins for the film.  I was impressed by The Hurt Locker so I was glad to see that she had decided to do this movie.  Besides Bigelow and the topic the movie is covering, I like several of the actors in it, Jason Clarke (The Chicago Code) and Jessica Chastain (The Debt) among others.

For me at least, all of these factors make it a promising upcoming film. As you can tell, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the films I am excited for this fall/winter movie season.

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