It looks like I got ahead of myself last week and previewed all the movies for this week on accident. Unfortunately my Magic 8 ball is down right now so I cant preview whats up for next week. I don’t need the 8 ball to tell you that next week kicks off the summer movie season with some big releases! cough..Wolverine FTW…cough..
DVD
New releases this week are: The Wrestler, Frost/Nixon, and Notorious. I have a review up for The Wrestler so for more info you can check that one out. Frost/Nixon is a movie based on the historic interviews between reporter David Frost and former President Nixon after the Watergate scandal. The movie is directed by Ron Howard who usually does a great job of capturing the vibe of whatever era he is filming. Personally, I feel Howard’s movies are very hit or miss. When he is on, his films are excellent and when they’re off, he usually winds up wasting some potentially excellent subject material. I’ve heard that this film, although not the most exciting, is well acted.
Notorious is a movie based on the life of the late great rapper Notorious BIG. While I’ve only seen parts of it so far, it would be cool to see reenactments of all the stories surrounding Biggie’s life that were so highly publicized on VH1 and MTV over the years. One thing I did notice is that none of the actors bear much resemblance to the real life characters they’re playing. Regardless, hip hop fans will want to check this one out since at the very least it looks to be pretty entertaining.
GAMING
Sadly, the gaming drought continues for another week. Left 4 Dead released downloadable content which includes a new Survivor mode. This is basically like horde mode or zombie mode found in other games where you are defending a lighthouse from swarms of zombies. They also added the ‘Dead Air’ and ‘Death Toll’, two campaign maps that were previously unplayable in versus mode, to the versus rotation. Nothing really groundbreaking here, but fans of the versus mode will have some different scenery to chew up.
The closest thing to a new game that people might care about is the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine game based on the upcoming movie of the same name . Then again I expect the people who are excited about this game will suddenly wake up and realize that it is a game based on a movie. The drought continues.
MMA
The MMA front is pretty quiet also after the lackluster UFC 97. It seems that everyone has something to say about the mediocre main event and the less than thrilling performance of Anderson Silva. Perhaps the most exciting news to come from that event is the retirement of Chuck Liddell. As much as I disliked Liddell in his prime, looking back now I see that I was bored of him because he was so damn good. I think now that he’s not on top anymore I can appreciate everything he brought to the game. In a way, I’m sad to see him go.
As bad ass as Anderson Silva CAN be at times, he’s got nothing on Liddell. Chucky was the ultimate championship dream crusher. He wasn’t afraid to just stand in there and bang, even when he caught the worst of it. Funny how it took him getting wrecked 4 out of 5 times and then retiring to make me a fan. I ’m sure they’ll give him a job as a commentator or something, which is a good thing because I’m actually starting to like him.
That’s the week in entertainment. Until next week, that’s a wrap.